TURN 1 - Player Count
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[Music]
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Hello and welcome to an expansion episode of Whose Turn is It Anyway. In this episode, we are going to talk about
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the 2025 GridCon convention. Yay. Possibly Taton's best board game
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convention in the world. Yeah. In Taton. In Taton. It Well, it could be Taton's best board
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game convention in the world. World. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
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I think it is slowly becoming my favorite though. Same. But may And it's not just because
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of location, but maybe we'll go into it. But it helps. It does help. Yeah. Yeah. Before we get
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into that, I am your first player, Adrian, on loan. On loan,
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temp. That's the one. And with me, I have Davey. Hello. Becky. Hello. And JP.
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Hi. Uh, so, how are we all doing? Several days post
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and Dabby Doozy. I'm actually in good spirits. Yeah, I didn't get any kind of conc. I'm all good. Avoided that.
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Me, too. Yeah. I thought this is the first time in over a year that I haven't come back with nor virus co like a week
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of um cron crud or fallen down some stairs following a convention. So there
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you go. You did well. I'm feeling pretty good. Yeah, I didn't dodge a bullet though cuz I wasn't there on the Sunday. So no.
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Yeah, I had um I had DMV from something but I don't know what. But maybe that's too much information. I don't know. But
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this made me get cut. Who knows? I was think deep vein fibrosis. Yeah. No, a different kind of madness.
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The Americans think he queued up for his driving license. The DMV
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also known as squits. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I missed the Sunday, but other than that,
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I actually felt all right the next day. So, nice. Yeah. Just needed purge and I just needed Yeah, that's it. It was
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the purge. Exactly. I was tired the Monday. We'll get into why that was the case. Um, but
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other than that, got over it pretty quickly and it was pretty good. Yeah. Good spirit. Looking forward to next year's.
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Yeah, exactly. But we got we got to bring this con to life for our listeners again for the
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fourth time. I think it's got to be that it fourth the first fourth time. It's actually my fifth time, but our
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episode has covered it. This is be the fourth time cuz we did 3 I think was our first ever in 2022 people.
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A where we was all little babies in our pampers um and as a podcast. So yeah, it's been a while.
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It has, doesn't it? Feels like it is Jeez Louise. We love covering covering this one,
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don't we? We do. Yeah. Especially when uh Adrian has to pronounce Gridcon.
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Hey, I did it successfully this time. You did it the first time. Did it first time? Yeah. There's no Grim. There's no Grim. Go back to listen to those bloopers.
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Like I think it's on one of our first blooper is two or something. Is can I get a rewind volume 3? And I
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know because I relisted to it today. Oh, did you? cuz cuz I just thought, "Oh yeah, that GrimCon outtake. I need to
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listen to that." And I listen to it and it's still funny. Don't look at me. That's all I remember from this.
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Just don't look at me. Giggling for ages. We could not progress with the episode. This is why I like Adrian to host this
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one. Just in case we get some comedy gold out of him. He only do that once.
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Let's face it, but we'll see. [Music]
TURN 2 - GRIDCON 6: THURSDAY
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Well, so should we start off with the Thursday? The Thursday. Yeah. Of GridCon.
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Yeah. So, I as always helped unpack, but this year I felt like I did double duty. So,
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I unpacked some vans and all that lot with Paul. Helped sort of set some bits and pieces up and put some pieces out.
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And then just as I thought we'd all done because we' stuck the raffle prizes in sort of one of the back rooms they do. Came back out and Paul Bryant from Games
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Law turned up and went, "Anyone got a hand to unload a whole van of board games?" I can't say no now, can I? So
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then I unloaded that van as well. Yeah. What's in it for me, Paul? Can we get a little bit of a
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You know, and I meant discount. No, none of that. Yeah. None of either of those options happen.
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Yeah. So yeah, so that was kind of the start and then I just got in a game of Lacrimosa which I've talked about before
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but I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed Lacrosa. I feel like there is only so many plays in it but because I only play
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it sort of once a year okay it's absolutely good. So yeah so played that with a few people on
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Thursday night. That was basically all my Thursday done. I I was there from like 2:00. But yeah,
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top tip though is when you can do your registration the day before, so you're not having to queue right outside the
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door, which people were almost doing on the um Friday morning like this guy. Like that guy. Yeah.
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So that was helpful. You get your you get your orientation little speech about, you know, what's where and you can collect your little lanyard with
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your name on it. So So you're ready to rock, aren't you? On Friday. Absolutely. Yeah. But it does close on the Thursday
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still at a certain time cuz I missed that which meant I still had to register on Friday. But
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I turned up late Friday and there was no quue at all. So it was fine. I was fortunate I was setting up a demo
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on the Friday morning which meant that even though I'd forgotten to go and get my lanyard, they were like, "Well, you got to get in.
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We got to get let you in first." So I got a sneaky like pre five minutes lanyard.
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Nice. There you go. Anyway, other people's Thursday uses is uh Yeah. So me and Curly um Becky turned
Dutch Resistance: Orange Shall Overcome - Liberation Game Design
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up but you didn't play any games. I crocheted crocheted sat and crocheted and watched you guys play
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Orange shall Overcome. So um this is about the uh Dutch resistance during World War II. Um and it's uh pick up and
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deliver. Um I was want to sing what I was want to sing a song when I say pick
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up and deliver but I don't know why. I love how stand and deliver by stand there. money or your life. How to
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pick up and deliver. Right. Um anyway, that's gone right over my head. I know not what you're talking about.
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I know exactly what he's talking about. Yeah. And I'm here for it. So, um it was Simon's game. Uh Simon,
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friend of the pod. Um and Matt and Paul and me and Curly played. Um, and it's
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all it's all based so the designer of the game it's um I think it was his
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great aunt um that was actually one of the people um within the in the Dutch resistance. So it's all based off of
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real events. Um and basically you have uh scenario
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one um it can be set up randomly um depending on uh kind of what
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I don't know what to call them. certain buildings go in certain places and you have to drop off resources to unlock
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them. That's scenario one. Basically, unlock these. Um, and then in the roads
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there are police or soldiers. And when you get trans uh when you traverse
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between them, you'll have to pick up a halt card and they get harder. Um, and
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you have three actions um which are your three main cards and then you get a um
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like a bad action. that you have to play, but you can't tell everyone else what the bad action is. And basically,
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you have to play. You have three actions and then your bad action. And so bad stuff's constantly happening. It's going
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to build like the tension as you're going along. Um, but you could all kind of work together to get these resources around. Um, and there's I think there's
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like 12 characters each with unique abilities which are based on people in real life. Um, and a load of the
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encounters also based off of real encounters. So you read out an encounter. One of them was like, "Do you
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jump in the canal to avoid a policeman or not?" And all Yeah. Yeah. Um and it
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effects, you've got kind of two loss conditions. You've got morale. If that drops to zero, you lose. Um and then on
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each of um your cards, you've got um
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another stat. I can't remember what it's called. Um but it's um if that drops to
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zero, you lose as well. Um, so it's about kind of like managing everyone.
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Um, Matt had a character that was able to keep everyone's kind of um their own
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personal boards stats in check. Um, I had a character that was really good at keeping the buildings on the board
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morale high so they they didn't get raided um or their suspicion um high,
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sorry. So they didn't get raided because I was I was a priest. Nice trust trust trusty priest. Um and then um uh Curly
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was um kind of he played a character where he was able to slip by police
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unnoticed and then sneaky sneaky and then uh Paul had like a coat like a
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magic coat. He was a tailor. Paul's character was a tailor. Taylor so he had a coat. I thought you had a trench coat they
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could open. Yeah. So, it was a trench coat, but you could have extra items in there cuz your
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resources basically the more you start carrying around the more suspicion you raise
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cuz you've got loads of stuff, right? So, it makes sense. So, he had a little trench coat and it is a female tailor
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and she pretend she was pregnant. So, when she had a full coat, clever, she would raise less suspicion when
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walking along, which is actually it's cool, right? Yeah. Was what happened, right? Yeah. Um, and then Simon was the train
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driver, which meant that we could get train tickets. And train tickets usually have a downside cuz you got to get on the train. It's dodgy. It's risky.
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Yeah. He kind of negated a lot of that. So, we were able to all work together and get
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the first scenario done, but it was close. Like I think we were left on like three or four morale. Um, so yeah, it it
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was a cool game. like you'd pick up resources this what you could spend resources in certain locations to do
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things or trade it in between to turn into a different resource. Um so say um
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I could get some information somewhere. Um or it was maybe a newspaper as the
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priest if I went to the church and did like a sermon. It didn't say it was a sermon but if I spent one of those
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resources there I would raise morale. Um, and yeah, you could they had lots of
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different buildings like that. So, it's great. Great little pick up and deliver game. Great theme. Very different.
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The theme of it. Yeah. And that's and I think that's kind of what carried it cuz I think otherwise it's not that it was a basic game, but
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it it the theme really pushed through and it helped like kind of got you got
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into the spirit of the game and um yeah, it it just worked. So yeah, I would
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definitely recommend it. I really liked how they had the a booklet in there as well that kind of told you a bit of a biography of each
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character because like you said before, they were based on real people and I just think that extra little bit of thought by the designers and and to to
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kind of help enrich the game. It just it's just a really nice touch, isn't it? I thought it was really good. Yeah. Yeah. I I definitely think it
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probably helps though. I think it was his aunt um that his great aunt that was obviously um in the game but um she did
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she was the last one to pass away. I think it was about three weeks ago. So Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. So it's obviously holds
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quite a lot to him as well. So yeah, great little game actually. Yeah. To start the con off.
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Have to give uh Paul and Matt a shout out. They're our supporters and it's always great to game with them. We love
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those guys and they're just fun to play with. And Simon as well. Yeah. So, and Simon, the first time we
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met met was Rumgate. It was It was It was Simon. Was he really scared of bringing his new
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baby game near you? Like, I'm playing Dave's got to sit in the corner. Yeah, I did have a Bailey's.
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I think I think that would be worse if that was spilled on. That would be very It would be sticky, wouldn't it? Claggy and milky.
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Claggy label there. Really nice screen printed minis I thought on that game. It was really pretty game.
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Yeah, really good. Yeah. Cool. Definitely recommend it. And then
Lord of the Rings - Fate of the Fellowship - ZMan Games
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we were like, should we play another game? And Simon was like, "Oh, we'll play fellowship and be quite quick." Um,
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play the fellowship. The fellowship. Yeah. Yeah. So, we started that about 11:00 in the bar.
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2 hours later and the rest. 3 hours later. 3 hours later, we lost, funnily enough,
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cuz it is a nails game. But I enjoy a game that's like Pandemic.
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It's It's so different. But it has the same core mechanics there,
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but it works. Yeah. The two character um unique abilities,
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the way you kind of have to work together. You've got more agency of what
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you're doing. It's a bit harder to alpha game. Like one person can kind of try to
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lead it, but you've still got I don't know. For me, I felt like I had more agency with what I was doing
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anyway. Um and it was nails. It's really hard game. Um,
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and the theme they've somehow shoehorned it in really well. So, it was me, uh,
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Simon, Paul, Matt, and Niha. So, bumped into Niha as I usually do.
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We always bump into Niha. Always bumped into Niha. So, and we were like, you know, we got to get our annual game in. So,
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weirdly, like a side thing, we bumped into Nihar during our Covenant demo in
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Essen. In Essen. Yeah. Yeah. I bumped into him. We bumped into him the year before Essen as well. I'm pretty sure he did. Yeah. It's just I don't know.
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It's just like like coincidence to be at the right demo at the right time and there he was.
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He had a mask to start with. He did. So, we didn't kind of So, I didn't recognize him and then took his mask off and I was like, "Oh, Niha,
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hello. Hello, mate." Yeah. And we got to play a game. So, um yeah, we played Fate of the Fellowship. Really
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enjoyed it. I was uh Legalolis and um the Bailey's and Gim.
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Yeah, that was it. Yeah. Uh, and Gimy because I was like, well,
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don't trust the dwarf. Yeah, exactly. Nobody trusts the dwarf. Um, and yeah, it was just it was just
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good fun. Um, I'm not I'm not going to explain it. A
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lot of people probably already know about Fate of the Fellowship. You know about Pandemic. It's basically Lord of the Rings pandemic, but they've changed
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it enough. Shoe horn the themeing really well. Um, if you're if you're Frodo and
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Sam, you kind of have to avoid everyone and and slip away and everyone else has
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to try and distract and uh make sure the eyes looking at them otherwise you end
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up over here. Yeah, the fear overcoming and you lose the game. So, it's tough.
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Yeah, I bought it. I bought it while I was there. So, I'm looking forward to try it cuz I told myself I would I
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wouldn't need another pandemic game. And then everyone was like, "This is different. This might be the best one ever." And I was like, "Oh,
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god damn it." Yeah, I actually enjoyed it. I actually enjoyed it unlike
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my Thursday was great and we kind of like it got to a point where we were like a cuz we were we were kind of close
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to it but again we it was 2:00 in the morning. Um and uh Matt and Simon had to get to
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their hotel before cuz that night they weren't able to get a room in the holiday in. So they had to drive back
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down the M5 and apparently the latest check-in was two. So they just made it
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apparently. Oh my god. Yeah. So fair play to them. They could have crashed at ours if they I said I I I said to them next time as
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well like I'll be in Wellington then. So next time tap us up you guys. We got beds. That's part of the uh the
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the coffee supporters package is that you get a free bed at VidCon. Just point it out there. I don't know if
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that's real or not, but we might make it real. We'll see. They can share a bed with markers at my place if they want to.
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Ours would be okay as long as you didn't mind being woken up at 5 in the morning by a cat. You know, that's that's extra though.
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You pay bonus. Yeah. Yeah. It's alarm clock service. Yeah. With breakfast. Yeah. That's pretty much my cat as well. So, I think that's all
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cats, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So, there we go. That was Thursday, right? That is Thursday. Yeah. Friday. Friday main first day.
TURN 3 - GRIDCON 6: FRIDAY
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Everyone's super excited. You can sort of really feel the kind of atmosphere at the start of the day, can't you? Me and Tambo got there early. So Curley was
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working, but me and Tambbo got there early. We had breakfast, which was really nice. We met Adrian and Marcus. We all sat and had a nice
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chin wagon. Watched the crowd, the queue just like, "Oh my, I'm really glad that I don't
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have to stand in that cuz that would be sad times." But you could feel that kind of excitement. A bit like standing in
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the bring and by queue at the UK GE like, "Oh, in a minute. Oh, there's only five people left. Oh, in a minute we're
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there." So it was cool. It weren't that bad. No, it was all right. No, it wasn't that bad. But I'm just glad I didn't have to do it. That's true. I'd rather not have done
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it, but once bad. Yeah. I ended up taking a work phone call at 10 in the morning and then was like, "Oh, I'll I'll one I'll have a
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little bit of line and then take the work phone call and then two if I go just after about half 10 or 11. What
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time did I get in actually? Was it about 11 12?" About 11 11 12 people would have played the first game. So, cuz if I if you if I
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turned up at 10:00, I think everyone would have been mid game. So, I wouldn't have been able to play with anyone anyway. So, um, I turned up a little bit
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later on the Friday, funnily enough. I kicked off with 10B with, um, me and
Tenby - Mighty Boards
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Marcus and Tambo. So, I think Marcus and Tambbo, they hadn't played before, but it's a really easy game to teach. And,
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yeah, I think everyone enjoyed it and it's quite a quick game. It hit the table a lot. It got a lot of love. Not just my copy,
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but Paul's copy from the library was taken out of the library quite a few times. Quite a few times. So, it was getting a
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lot of I think the second contender of um plays. Yeah, I think the Mighty Boards um
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picking it up is it's got it popularity out there a lot more as well. But I mean, we we I say we I've not played it
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yet, but you've played it back before it was cool. Yeah. Before everyone knew it was cool. Yeah. No, it was it was still cool then.
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It was cool. It was still cool then cuz we we met the designer Benji, right? and uh and then you reach.
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It's just a really nice It's a It does what sort of city builders tend to do, which is like
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adjacencies and stuff like that, but does it sort of in a 2D row, but you can have multiple worlds as many rows as you want. So,
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it's doing that city builder thing, but it's keeping it simple at the same time. There's no And you got 10 turns fairly quick.
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Yeah, it's Yeah, it's just nice. It's just nice. Yeah, I did see a lot of love for it.
Kutna Hora: The City of Silver - Czech Games Edition
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Yeah. Then I cleaved on to Kutnora. My first ever playthrough of that which
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was um I'm surprised you played that. Yeah. Well, how did that happen? Well, um I see Mike at work quite a bit.
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Okay. And we talk about games we've played and we usually talk about Arknova. Barov.
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Yeah. Knew that was coming. So, yeah, we usually talk about that. And he was saying he'd played Kunhor a lot with
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Steve Cooper. Yes. And he was I think you'd like it. I was like, oh yeah, happy to give it a go. So
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yeah, I played through it with two other people. I think one of them hadn't played before and one had. So it was a
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four-player game and it was really Yeah, really good. I think Curly would like it because there's quite a lot of stuff
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going on and you can kind of cleave on to like do this to make it better for that and then if you've done that is
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bonuses for this. So not it's not quite so marker manipulation with with some
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mining. Yes. Sort of. and and yeah, kind of placement sort of with yes placement control or like map
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placement which is not normally my my first choice but I actually really enjoyed it and I would like to play it a second time cuz
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now I know what the point of everything is. Yeah. But it was a really good it was a really good Well, we've got we've got the the pod's
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got a copy so Rob's house. Oh, cool. So Mike did a really good teach so thanks to Mike for that. Um
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yeah, really enjoyed the game. Yeah. Yeah, that was most of my morning really. H. Yeah, fair enough. So, I got in the queue
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while you were playing 10B and then we kind of bumped into Jimmy, board game Jimmy and uh Mark uh Ellis as well. So,
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they're always good to chat to those two. They're always good fun. Good laugh, mate. Yeah, they were good laughs. So, just chatting as we went in the queue cuz you
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know, I don't know 15 minutes got in. Bish bash bos. And Rob was like, I really want to play out a rim. I really
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want to play Star Wars. Like, come on Rob, let's play Star Wars. So he we basically set that up. I'm not going to
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explain Star Wars: Outer Rim. It's been out for eons, isn't it? It has. Most people know what it is. Star Wars.
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It hasn't got another expansion, though. That's one thing that surprised me cuz it's only got one expansion, hasn't it? Yeah, it doesn't surprise me cuz it's
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it's fantasy, so it doesn't it doesn't surprise me anymore. Um, so we played that with the
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Unfinished Business expansion cuz it's mandatory. Yeah. So, yeah. So, we we kind of played that, finished that
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through, and it was just quite cool. It was nice to play it again. Uh, it's not my favorite game. I think I've kind of
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after playing it, I kind of realized that I used to really enjoy Outer Rim and now I just think it's fine.
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Okay. You know what I mean? Like I think it's just one of those games where You've played it a couple of times.
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You've seen what there is to see. Yeah. And it's it's it's it's okay. Yeah. Like and I would play it again, but it's
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just not my favorite anymore. And that's fine. Level level not leveled up, but moved on.
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Um, well, some games are like that though, aren't they? You You've just got your feel of it. Yeah, it's done. It's a good game,
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but you're done. I'm done. But then the game I'll talk about properly is um I went to get a
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drink as you do at the bar. Mike Dennis from Ready Steady Play Saunted in. He went JP. I said, "Hello, Mike." And he
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said, "Let's get a game." I went, "Cool." I said, "Today's a great day because I don't have anything booked. So
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Friday I've left completely open, which I like to do at Quickcon so that I have this opportunity to just kind of react
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to situations and see where the mood takes me. Um so I said, "Cool. Uh well,
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they hit you up after this. I'm playing out of rim." So basically that finished, ended up um wandering over to to his
Chrysalis Prototype - Mike Dennis (Ready Steady Play)
22:14
table and I'm going to name drop now and I don't mean to be that guy, but it is a namerop thing. So we had Mike Dennis, we had Mark Dainty from Not Gaming and
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David Turtzie from David Turtzy Designs. Um and some chap called Michael who's
22:28
just a friend of Mike. Friend of Mike. Yeah. And uh and we all sat down and said, "Right, what we going to play?" And Mike
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said, "Can I be a cheeky git?" And uh put my prototype um on the table.
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And you did you have to try and like, "Oh, do you have to play?" But actually, you're super excited and I'll play anything. And he said, "I'd
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really love to get David's critique." And David was just like, "In fairness, depends on what genre it is whether I
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can give you any feedback or whatever." And then he showed the box and said, "Yeah, this is not typically my game, so
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I don't think I'll have many notes cuz it's just not where his brain is." So it's like, "Fair enough." But we played anyway and we had a game. So the game is
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called Chrysalis. So it's not even out, obviously. It's in prototype form. It's pretty much print and play that he he
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kind of knocked up and it's about caterpillars. Ah, that's what those were. I saw you
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playing them. There you go. And I did I remember I came over and I What are you playing? Pipe cleaners. Yeah. Yeah. It looked it looked quite
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funny on the table cuz it just like what are you doing? Why is there just a load of pipe cleaners on the table? This is really
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odd. So, basically the game is a spatial puzzle game um where you have this board
23:37
of your own with with caterpillars on your caterpillars, as we said, are these pipe cleaners of various different
23:42
colors. So, that means you can bend them around and put them into shapes cuz it's like it's got a metal thing in the
23:48
middle. And you've got caterpillars that grow from like level one to five because
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that's how caterpillars growth works, right? From level one to five. Yeah. I've read that in lots of um books. Yeah. Which means that's the amount of
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squares in the polyomino shape that they can take form. So if it's a one, they're just a single square and all the way up
24:07
to five. All the different combinations of five squares and shapes that you can do. And you can kind of do different things
24:13
where you've got in the middle of the board shared between you. You've got three gardens and each garden is like a
24:18
5x5 grid. And on the garden you've got leaves, you've got um flowers um and
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then around the edges you've got these trees which are kind of face down which has different scoring amounts on um
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which is kind of used when the garden's filled up. So basically on your turn, you can kind of grow your caterpillars, you can move the caterpillars, you can
24:37
put them onto the garden. And it's quite tactile because it's like, okay, I've got a level three caterpillar, so I'm
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going to put them there. And I know that's like a corner shape of three. And you just literally twisting this caterpillar up into the shape of an L.
24:50
And then you put on the board. Um, and if you're on a flower space, you collect flowers, which is always nice cuz you
24:56
can always trade three flowers of the same type to get extra victory points. Um, and if you're on leaves, you don't
25:03
get them straight away. You get them when you do a a garden score. So, everyone's kind of putting these caterpillars on and you're getting stuff
25:09
and and at the start of your turn, you have this upgrade sheet, which is what I quite liked actually, is that you can
25:15
trade in leaves for powers. So, you can go, I'm going to buy this power and this now allows me to do this cool thing. And
25:21
so, you can kind of tailor your your species of caterpillar in different ways to give you more efficiency in whatever
25:27
you're trying to do. So you can like I had one where I could turn the flowers into points of any color. So I didn't
25:32
have to get three of the same. It was like any three. So it made that a lot easier to to spam. Um but as soon as a
25:38
garden is full, you instantly trigger the scoring of it. And whoever triggers
25:43
the whoever places the last one to trigger it will get uh to score all of their colored caterpillar spaces as
25:50
points. And anyone else that's got a five caterpillar on there will then score their five. And again, there are
25:55
ways to modify that and all that kind of stuff. And then for every shape that you've put in, you then um kind of put
26:01
one of your butterflies onto the shape on the garden, which correlates to the the score in the faceown tree that you
26:08
don't know unless you peek at it. And there's ways of doing that as well. Um so yeah, you kind of just keep going.
26:13
You're doing this thing all the way up to 50 VPs and then the whole kind of game's done. And it's like an hour game.
26:19
It's I think it took us a bit longer cuz we were about and having a bit of fun, but messing around with caterpillars.
26:25
Yes, pretty much. Um, but I actually quite liked it. I thought it it kind of reminded me of like a Splitstone Games
26:34
game and you know where they've got Myilia and Stag that's coming out. It's that
26:40
kind of cutesy but mean. Cutesy but there's a there's a bit of something going on underneath it. Um,
26:46
which you know, you could just look at it and go, "Oh, it's patchwork. It's actually it's not it's not patchwork. There's
26:51
something going on." And uh yeah, so I was quite pleased to to give it a go. Um, and obviously Mike wanted to to do
26:57
it and test it out and get some feedback and stuff. So, and I said I'll talk about it on the pod because I actually
27:03
had a bit of fun playing it. It was just nice to play and chat with with the leads as it were. And uh, yeah, so I
27:10
thought that's Chrysalis. Nice. You can't get hold of it. Hopefully it gets picked up by someone. Yeah,
27:16
hopefully it gets picked up. And uh yeah, if anyone's listening is interested in in it, speak to Mike
27:21
Dennis from Ready Steady Play and he'll do you a little demo on TTS that he's got. Um but yeah, if you kind of like
27:27
that spatial puzzle game where a little bit of kind of powers that you can upgrade and make things better and yeah,
27:34
sounds like something I'd like. I think you would bit abstracty. Bit abstracty pipe. I I wouldn't know if
27:40
pipe cleaners are in the final solution, but they should be with little like googly eyes on or something. It would be
27:46
quite cute, right? Weirdly reminds me of a game I played over the weekend, but I'm not going to take talk about that till Saturday, but
27:53
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Japanese weird game, right? Yeah, I know the one you're on about. Yeah.
27:58
So, yeah, that was kind of my morning, mid-after afternoon. So, uh my morning um when I arrived, uh
Clans of Caledonia - Karma Games
28:05
me, Curly, and Tando sat down to play a bit of Slay the Spire to get in for an
28:10
hour cuz I think that was about an hour before everyone was finished. Um, and then once everyone finished, um, I
28:17
actually went and sat down with, uh,
28:22
board game, Jimmy, um, Ellis and, uh, Jez.
28:27
Yeah. Uh, to play a game I thought was a different game cuz I turned
28:32
Art Society Gallerist. It's not Rob. So, I thought it was Glenmore
28:38
Chronicles, which I played. I saw this, which I played. It's one Scottish game to another Scottish game.
28:44
They look very similar. All right. So, they don't The boxes have got blue and green on them. That's the only
28:50
It's that same It's that same kind of pastel color though. Right. So, there was the same kind of like pastel color to it. And the the box
28:58
looked a little bit similar other than it was massive and it had I thought, "Oh, it must be an expansion." Right.
29:03
So, this is quite a hefty expansion. It's got hex's on the board now. It never used to. Yeah. Whereas actually it was uh oh my
29:10
god what was it called? Hands of Calonia. Hands of Calonia Industria. So they they
29:15
chucked so they chucked in the expansion the railway expansion and they sat down and started explaining it and I thought
29:22
yeah I don't think I have played this and I was like yeah I haven't played this. And apparently it was quite a
29:28
heavy game. Um and uh yeah it went went quite well. We had a good laugh playing
29:33
it. um just real nice um resource trading game pretty much for points
29:40
along with some area control and uh there's like market manipulation and
29:46
then with the train bit there's also trading resources to move your train
29:51
around to get VPs at the end for how many times you got your train to go around which isn't that easy and then
29:58
you've also got milestones that you have to hit on the train board so like one of them's have So you which this is slight
30:05
terrammystica because with the area control it when you're putting your buildings and resources from your uh
30:12
board down it's you're putting them onto a space and it's locking that space down. Very terrammystica.
30:18
Um and then the milestones are like a link to that. So have like seven types
30:24
of different uh buildings down which is like and these are like your basic when
30:30
I say buildings some of them are just it's literally a sheep or a cow or uh
30:35
like wheat that's not a building but there is a building as well. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Is it simulating a cow
30:41
simulating cow shed or right simulating a farm right? So um but
30:47
you've also then got another phase towards the end where say you've got a a field down um say you have um bread or
30:55
one of your breads next like down and the um I forgot the other whiskey down
31:03
um that one wheat that you make in the production because you've got the other two resources down as well you can
31:09
actually convert them there and then into the more advanced resources which usually worth a lot more in the market.
31:14
Sounds like Ano. Yeah, that that little resource conversion.
31:19
Having never played it, so what do I know? But what we just described sounds like it's got resource. It is a resource
31:25
conversion market manipulation with heavy Terrammystica vibes with the placement.
31:31
Um, and I think they thought I was going to do really badly at the start because I had
31:36
hadn't placed one building down and basically I had taken a faction which uh
31:42
they thought was going to be really bad. Um but because the I was started focusing on the train section which is
31:48
the bit that's all was was new for all of them. Um it ended up working out
31:53
quite well for me because I was able to convert from the train and I got a massive first turn and it all went
31:59
really well. They've not played many games with you, have they? They don't know how you work.
32:04
Um but yeah, so it ended up being a really tight game though. Um and it was just really good. It was good fun
32:11
playing with the the guys. So, Clan Clans of Calonia. Clans of Calonia. Yeah, I have heard of
32:17
it before and I have heard people talk about it and it was it's been actually one I've wanted to get to the tables,
32:22
but I just for some reason my brain kept going, "Oh, we're playing GL um Glenn
32:28
Moore Chronicles." But, um yeah, so I'm just really bad with names. Um we know.
32:34
But, uh I really enjoyed it. I definitely would play it again. I'll play it a lot more. Um, and what was
32:41
quite funny though was Jimmy was like, um, it's his expansion of the industrial
32:47
really wanting it to get get it to the table. Uh, and then he never touched one train or game. He just played the normal
32:53
game. I'll ignore it. I'll ignore it. He was like, "Yeah, it's just it's different to what he's usually
32:58
been playing, so he didn't want to didn't want to play the expansion, which did make us laugh, but um
33:03
yeah, really good fun." Nice. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Glenn Mort, no,
33:09
sorry. Clans of Cadonia. Clans of Cadonia. Oh, Calonia.
33:15
Cavia. Cavia. Let's move on before he has another.
33:21
This is not my forte. Okay, it's fine. Um, and then yeah, so I end up playing that and that was quite a long old game.
33:27
So, that was that was like my morning, you know. How about you, Adrian? Yeah. What were you up to?
Tianxia (Sponsored Demo) - Board&Dice
33:34
I demoed most of Friday. So, um, I'd signed up to do a few demos for Paul,
33:39
which I really enjoy doing them, but and and thankfully, and I think he does this on purpose, he put them all into one day
33:46
so that I could kind of think about what I needed to do for that day, get it done, and then enjoy the rest of the weekend, which was which was lovely. Um,
33:52
so I've I think I've mentioned them before, but I've played uh Tiangia or I demoed Tiangia um from Board and Dice. I
33:59
think I talked about it quite a bit in a previous episode. Two continue two more thoughts about that which is that a it's
34:05
a massive table hog. Yeah. So impressive. I tried to play it a week before. My friend's got like a
34:10
little pop-up table. It's not like a full dining room table, but it's close. We could literally just get the main
34:16
board on it. We were like really trying to perch playerboard and just decided to give in cuz it was just not going to
34:21
happen. But it is a real table hog for of for what it is as well sort of thing. It
34:27
kind of needs to be because of all the tracks and that, but yeah. Um, and then the other thing is there is a step where
34:34
obviously one of the things you're doing is defending the wall. And a bit like in the great wall game, as you defend the
34:40
wall, the person who's defending the wall the best gets more points. So you do in the first step of any attack, you
34:46
work out who's defended the wall the best. You give them seven points. And then the next person gets four points. Next person gets two points. Then they
34:52
attack the wall cuz they might wipe out the governors behind the wall, which is not great. Yeah, it is a bad
34:59
thing. Um, then what you do is you go back to the person who won the wall
35:05
section, that first bit, and count up the number of governors that are still survived behind their bit of the wall,
35:12
which is good because it kind of goes, well, it's kind of the governors going kind of going, "Well, thank you very much for defending us as well as you
35:17
have. You got all of the prestige for doing it, so have a few more points." Once you've done a few lots of combat,
35:24
especially if there's several on the same go, you've forgotten who's won the section of even though you kind of do it
35:29
sequentially. He says four parts of the wall and you'll do part one all the way through. Then you'll do part two by the time you kind of done part three
35:34
is did did you win part? Especially if you wipe out all the soldiers that are on the wall. Did you win part three or did you and there's nothing to indicate
35:41
that. So you need player markers, right? So this is it. So what I realized about halfway through the game is there's um
35:47
there's a little piece that's a not which is a shipping indicator that you've done ship trading and it's to I think it's to limit the number. You have
35:53
to have one of those to do the ship trading action. I think it's to limit the number but no one ever seems to. I've played like I've played two games
35:59
and demoed a game and I've never seen anyone use them all. So, just use one of those to indicate who won and then it's
36:05
a nice little bit, but it feels like it's something that should have been included anyway. But, it's just a bit awkward. But otherwise, I still think
36:11
it's a really strong game. It still does work placement, bit of engine building,
36:16
um, sort of a bit of just wandering up tracks to get bonuses and that sort of great wall perseverance episode one
36:23
style wall defense. and it made puts it into a really nice package that's just
36:29
above midweight. It's that mid-heavy weight sort of thing. Really enjoy it. Think it's great. But yeah, there's just
36:34
a couple of bits that like if you have a small dining room table, you aren't getting this on it. It's not happening. Unfortunate limit it'll limit who will
36:41
be able to to play it. Yeah. So, I did that first. Um, luckily I was
36:48
that was very nice of them. So, everyone around the table helped me pack up cuz they I said, I've got another demo to do after this. And I was mindful of time.
36:54
So I had sort of pushed them along a bit to stay to time because there is a bit of thinking in it. Right, okay, let's keep going with it and we'll get there.
37:00
We did. And then l love l love l love l love l love l love l love l love l love l love l lovely they all pack helped me pack things up so I could go and get a bite to eat before my next demo cuz
37:07
otherwise that wasn't going to happen. And then I played Ice and Idols which is a I haven't spoken about this too much
Ice & Idols (Sponsored Demo) - Inside Up Games
37:12
but it's an inside up game. It is a pick up and deliver game in a labyrinth style
37:20
move around the map in sort of like very labyrinth. Yeah. Lab. But then it's got the the increased joy of the fact that the
37:27
there's player powers and bits and pieces you have to do that can turn the board or move parts of the labyrinth
37:32
around and it can really mess like you cannot pre-plan with this. One of the one of the people I demoed to was Davey,
37:39
so he can tell you a little bit as well. But you cannot plan more than one one person ahead.
37:44
No, cuz the the whole board state board stage changes. And I really wanted to
37:49
like this game. It is fun, but I don't think I'd ever play it again.
37:54
No, I think I don't think it's your type of game to be honest. It's also the powers just seemed a
37:59
little bit inconsistent. My power I thought was really strong. Um, so I didn't actually upgrade the rest of my
38:06
powers that much, which meant I put basically once when you pick them up and you deliver them, you've got two
38:11
choices. You either put it on your board and get your power, or you put it onto the scoring, which rotates and
38:19
shenanigans. Yeah, shenanigans. Yeah. Um, but I just
38:24
basically was like, "Oh, now I've got now I can pick up two idols. Uh, I think that's the only power I need and
38:31
including my normal power. I'm just going to dump all into points now. And that's what I did. And it kind of
38:37
just it felt okay. You know, it was I enjoyed it for what it was. Like there's
38:43
some design UX I didn't like where um you it's quite hard to see sometimes
38:49
like right at the start when you've got all the ice tiles down, it's hard to see what idles or what.
38:54
Yeah. The cardboard. cardboard underneath has all of the pickup and liver bits on it and then this like lazy
39:01
Susan style twisty table sits on top of it and it's hard to see through. Ironically, I think this is best played
39:08
on a coffee table with everyone sat on sofas cuz you have a slightly more elevated view than you do on a dining room table.
39:13
Yeah. So, you can see slightly underneath it. Yeah. So, so you can Well, no. So, you can see down straight down on top of a
39:18
bit more because you're more vertical. Cuz everyone in all the demos I did, everyone started standing up because it's easier to see what's on the board.
39:25
Yeah. So, I I don't think it's a for me game necessarily, but I do think there is a
39:32
great level of it's sort of that not kid game, but it
39:37
is a family game where kind of everyone can get involved in high jinks, but there's also that slight euroy bit of
39:44
get your powers and unlocks and things. So, you can you can get an extra action point. You can unlock your second hand to be able to pick up
39:50
an idol with the second hand. You can unlock abilities to move the board yourself that you can't do. I agree.
39:56
There is one player power which was which is the jump across to me. Yeah. And every time no one ever uses
40:02
this power, but it's all the other powers are three action points. That one's four action points and should just
40:08
be three action points because for four action points you can normally So the idea is you can jump
40:14
either over missing spaces where the the the bit of the ice has has collapsed like the ice maze has collapsed. Um or
40:22
you can jump over a spot where um you can literally just jump over the
40:27
tile, but what it requires is the paths to line up if you had that gap there kind of thing
40:33
whether there is a gap or not. Well, normally you by especially once you've unlocked a few powers within 4 AP
40:39
you could get there no matter what anyway. So it's just it's just too many AP for
40:45
the action it is. And I think if you house ruled that to 3 AP, I think it it would bring it in line with the others.
40:52
I don't kind of know where they got the 4 AP from if I'm honest for that power, but otherwise I think it's a good fun
40:57
shenanigans game like any kind of labyrinth game. People are going to move things about and do that. You're just going to do a nice pick up and deliver
41:03
game. And then there's a cool spatial puzzle with how you It's like a connect for without the actual needing to
41:10
connect it where you kind of you you pick the lowest place on a rung. Yeah. Okay. and you put your cube down
41:16
and it at the end of the game it'll be worth x number of points but you can change how many points it's worth as you
41:21
go along. So, and then you had a little secret mission as well of where you need to put your
41:26
cubes for certain color relics in. So, I had a straight line
41:32
and you cuz you can rotate it. So, my straight line was ended up being pretty easy, whereas uh some other people's had
41:38
like a like an L shape or a um kind of like a a bridge like in that kind of
41:45
it's just three cubes that have to fit into a certain pattern and they're worth different points as well. So, the more
41:51
complex ones are worth one or two more points and stuff like that. So, which mine was worth the most. So, I'm
41:56
guessing the line they must see as one of the hard harder ones because it was 10 points I think. So, yeah. Um, I'm
42:02
guessing it's cuz you got other people can screw you over quite easily. I guess things are moving around a lot more.
42:07
Yeah, it's moving around if they get the same color on there. Um, but I ended up
42:12
I think I got it in a horizontal line cuz you can rotate it as well. So, I got it in the horizontal line rather than the vertical. But, um, yeah, I I did
42:20
enjoy it, but there was just Yeah, it just it there was something that just wasn't
42:27
quite there for me. But that's that's obviously my opinion. Um, but I can definitely see a family enjoying it and
42:34
it's that kind of late to midweight. Yeah, it's it's a family weight shenanigans game where just stuff
42:40
happens and you'll deal with it as it happens. So I do I did one demo of Changa and then two demos of Icedol.
Obsession - Kayenta Games
42:47
Nice. Fair enough. What' you do in the afternoon? My afternoon um so we popped and
42:53
unwrapped and everything Stew's copy of Obsession with the Wessix expansion. Look good.
42:58
Yeah. Yeah. So, may have mentioned Obsession before, but if those of you who haven't heard it, basically you are
43:06
trying to level up rooms in your fancy pants mansion. Um, you are a posh family
43:13
trying to kind of win the affections of uh a couple of like a brother and
43:19
sister, I think. Um, they're kind of not not Regency, Victorian age, I would say.
43:24
Yeah. You're you're supposed to be like a down on your luck sort of not royal family but sort of family
43:30
aristocratic family. You're a bit skinny. So you're then trying to marry into the family that's got loads of
43:35
money and it'll be one of these two people that you can marry into and caught and stuff like to get yourself a bit like 300th in line basically.
43:43
So you're collecting um it's like grand design mixed with another reality TV show. I was thinking
43:49
King Ralph. King Ralph. Yeah. That's an old movie reference. So you're attracting kind of um visitors
43:56
to your house of either regular prestige, you know, casual guests they're called, or prestige guests,
44:02
which come with higher requirements servants that you need to have um available at the time, which kind of
44:08
rotate. So if you use them this turn, they're going to go in the kind of exhausted section than the kind of servants room. Then the next turn,
44:14
they'll be back, you know, ready to perform their duties again. So yeah, you've got a handful of cards and the
44:20
the hands the cards you have in your hand, you just keep going with that until you've basically used up all of your servants available to to play these
44:27
cards in certain rooms which then get you either reputation, meaning you can play better, more prestigious guests and
44:34
you and better, more prestigious rooms. Um, you buy extra rooms from the the
44:40
shop for one of a better word and you're basically Yeah. blinging up your house with better attractions to woo people
44:47
into your house and garden. Um, yeah, just nice theme, really funny
44:52
pictures because they're all kind of Victorian, maybe a little bit older than Victorian. I don't know what I would say. End of the 18th century, start of
45:00
the 19th century, I suppose. But some of the hats and some of the mustaches on these people are epic. Epically good.
45:07
Yeah. And and you get like kind of dodgy, very disreputable people that come to your house as well, but they
45:13
usually give you a load of money if you play them. But you mean CADs? Well, potentially.
45:20
I had one who was an American like um was this from King Ralph for getting quoting references? an an American, I
45:27
don't know, high society person who was clearly like and you play her with any of your like male cards and you're going
45:33
to get loads of like negative reputation, but you're going to get like £900, which is a lot of money in this
45:39
game. So, you might try and play her just to get the money to buy the nice room. Why Why do you think she does that? How
45:45
How do you think she gets all that money? You don't It doesn't ever say it doesn't. Yeah, it's pure speculation. Pure speculation.
45:51
She has a lot of fans. Yeah. Right. So the only well she she you know
45:58
that the picture is of a very wellto-do lady. She just got a little twinkle in her eye. That's all it is.
46:04
Back then it was lonely fans, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So um you kind of playing
46:09
your cards, getting reputation, getting money. Certain things give you VPs at the end. And it's only over I think 12
46:16
or 13 turns. So it's quite it's quite rapid game. Um I think I would say
46:22
fairly midweight. Yeah, I think it's I think I don't know about with the expansion standard. I think it just adds another
46:27
family and there are other bits that we didn't play. We just played with the Wessex family. We didn't play the upstairs downstairs um
46:34
expansion bits or anything. You mean you rang the lord expansion. Uh you've got the you've got the um
46:40
servants who live upstairs and you've got the downstairs posh people. But there's a way maybe that increases
46:45
more servants or more I don't know. We probably adds more rooms as well, right? May may well do. Yeah, it does. It adds more worker
46:51
placement people and rooms for them to work. So cool. Yeah, I like the look of that. Yeah, it's it's fairly easy to
46:57
understand. You can only play the cards that you've got the servants for. They've got nice iconography.
47:02
Good to play. But nice. Really, really nice. It's just a nice It's basically three mechanics that work together really
47:08
well. You've got the sort of row the column builder sort of action point
47:13
rooms that's going in. You've got a hand builder and then at the same time, you've got the workers who rotate in and
47:19
out. Yeah. And so it's just trying to make the most of those three to fit together. And then it's got the thing
47:24
I've noticed happening a few times. We'll probably talk about one in a second where the first round are the more purple
47:30
rooms you have, they're worth more points. The second round, the more green rooms, then the third round, the more whatever
47:37
blue rooms or whatever. You'd think it'd be each one, wouldn't you? But the one I was collecting the most of never came up. So I had about
47:43
five different pink houses. There's one room that doesn't come up in the game. Yeah. And then at the end of the game,
47:49
you score all of them that have come up before. So only that one type of room won't score at the end of the game.
47:54
The one I had all of them. Yeah. So that was very terramistic and covenant and
48:00
everything else pretty much adding in. But I do like the mechanic. I do like use of the theme. Like if you weren't
48:07
interested in that kind of period of history or pictures, you could still enjoy the game and understand what you're trying to do. But if you kind of
48:14
want to laugh at, you know, crazy handlebar mustaches and big old hats, it's good for that, too. Like Stu, I picked up my copy. So, I'd
48:21
all pre-ordered it from Games Law and then picked it up at Grid Con. And as I walked through about I said, I want to
48:27
say about four or five people stopped me and half told me, "Oh, you got to pick up the expansion for that." And the other half said, "Don't waste your money
48:33
on the expansion." And I was like, "I'm so confused whether I need the expansion for this or not." But I thought it's the
48:39
first time it's the first time I've ever heard people strongly say you really do not need the expansion sort of for this.
48:45
So I'm kind of intrigued. I like the base game. I'll be honest. I don't know whether whether I don't think I was
48:51
going to get the expansion anyway, but the fact that some people said to me, "You don't need the expansion. It adds
48:57
unless you're playing solo or want to play with an extra player. There's very little you're going to gain out of the
49:02
expansions." I was like, "Oh, okay. All right. That kind of saves me some money." So, but yeah, I I do like Obsession. I think
49:08
I enjoy playing it. I enjoy playing it. I was intrigued. Nice. So, for me, my afternoon I was
Star Trek Captains Chair with Dávid Turczi - Wizkids
49:17
playing Star Trek Captain's Chair because Mr. Tootsie said, "Oi, you JP,
49:25
would you like to play test one of the new decks?" And I was like, "Could you have gotten out of your chair any quicker?"
49:31
I was like, "Let's go. Let's do this. Let's do this right now." And uh and off we went. So David had brought
49:37
two suitcases with him. And in these suitcases are um these 3D printed star
49:44
Star Trek ships. He said I on the Thursday I think and he was like I've got two suitcases of Star
49:51
Wars ships of Star Trek ships. Sorry. Of Star Trek ships. Wrong franchise. Wrong franchise. They were all from
49:58
Babylon 5. Um Stargate one quality.
50:04
Fast cape. Um, Fast I really love Fastape last season.
50:10
And then Trump's trying to call the all the AI merging together Stargate. And it's like, oh my god, what's going on?
50:16
God, I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, but yeah, he said, "Oh, I've got two suitcases. They're quite heavy, actually, just full of Star
50:22
Trek ships." And I was like, "Oh, okay." But there's no 3D models in No,
50:27
in Captain's Chair to my understanding. The reason why he's done it obviously because it's cool, but also is because
50:33
he's play testing a lot of decks that he just literally, you know, does in his mind. You know, I think one of the decks
50:39
he told us he created in an hour, right? Literally watched an episode and created a deck in an hour.
50:44
He said it was a balance, but it it was pretty much the mechanics were there. So, he doesn't have all the the ship
50:50
tokens and and everything. So, he just thought, s I'll just 3D print them. And they are they are cool. I have to say
50:56
you do not get 3D models of Star Trek ships in the base game or any game. You'll never get them. You'll get the
51:02
the flat ones which you don't need these 3D ships, but it's quite nice to play. So, yeah. So, um I played a deck that I
51:08
cannot talk about against another deck that I cannot talk about, but and it was fun. Yeah, you you two look
51:15
like you were having a whale of a time and I was just lost into this game and I I
51:20
just I haven't played it for about four or five months and uh and I my thing is to like you're
51:26
playing against a designer, you just don't want to s you're not going to win, but you just don't want to suck, right?
51:32
And I was happy that when we finished it was an eight point difference. Oh, nice. So, he got 103, I got 95. And I was
51:38
like, you got to take that as a win. Yeah. Yeah. The designer. Yeah. I'm having it. So, I kind of
51:45
finished the game going, "Yeah, it's like I won." Yeah, I b I basically had won in my own little
51:51
moral victory. If I'd have beaten him, oh, I would have had to gloat that in front of his face and uh Yeah, that
51:58
would have been amazing winner. How many times could you say have you beaten the designer?
52:04
I think it happens quite a lot if I'm honest because designers are good at seeing stuff like how they fit together
52:10
in the background, right? necessarily the ones who are good at. See, I've played with David's um play
52:18
testing team before and holy on your little holiday. If you want to feel good or you know
52:24
good about yourself, and I don't mean good, I mean absolutely awful. And you think, why am I even bothering with board games, go and play against them
52:31
cuz they will rinse the crap out of you and they're they're just like another level. It's like it's like playing
52:37
against AI or something. It's just it's it's ridiculous. Um, but yeah, they are very very We'll send Davey and see how they do
52:43
then. Yeah, I think I think Davey's probably out of all of us. We'll lose. He's I will lose. Yeah, he's got You're the best hope that
52:49
we have. You and Curly are our best hope. Your only hope just like figure it out.
52:54
Um, but no, it was a great experience and it was good to play a deck and uh yeah. Is there any idea when they these new
53:01
decks will be out or The ones I was playing I know was from wave three and wave two is not out yet.
53:06
Okay. So, it's on the horizon sort of, you know, horizon cuz I'm not allowed. Event horizon.
53:13
Yeah, different different franchise. Uh, but yeah, that's Is there any sci-fi franchises we've not
53:19
left unturned at this point? There's plenty, but let's let's probably move on. Um, and then we did go and play
Covenant - Devir Games
53:25
Covenant. And then we played Covenant. Um, so if you haven't heard about Covenant, it is about dwarfs mining down um
53:34
into the mountain um trying to keep their dwarf king happy while killing orcs.
53:39
So it's a new ringy. Yeah, it's just doing what dwarfs do. So it's a new deve game.
53:46
Uh it's a worker placement, but you have your own kind of set board which where
53:51
you play place your workers. Um, you power up your workers you using beer,
53:56
nice dwarfy dwarfy things. Um, and also you kind of it's very comboy, so you
54:03
power up your worker placement actions. Not you can not only get a better forged
54:10
version action of that, which when you place it, you get stuff. You can also then put a little upgraded token on that
54:18
so that when you do that action, you get other stuff. Um, so it I mean the
54:24
description people have said it's like Manurfer but with a little bit more. Um,
54:30
I'll talk about that in a second. He has played them cuz you played Oh, nice. There you go. Um, and yeah, I re I
54:37
really enjoy it. I I think it's a great little game. You little
54:42
little game is it's like a medium weight for me. It's medium heavy at least. Yeah. Yeah.
54:48
Is it in a small box at least? It's in a standard dev box. It's a standard box. Smaller then on the smaller end.
54:54
There's a lot. It's a standard dev and they fit a lot in the boxes, right? And and all the pieces look like they're
55:00
already up like they look like what you'd buy in an upgrade pack quite often. Yes, they do. It looks amazing. Like all
55:05
the little carts. So, I'll go through it. So, you've got from the actions that you've got, you can mine. Uh it's way of
55:14
getting resources. Um, most of your actions also then give you an upgrade on a certain track and then when you hit
55:20
little markers on those tracks, you get things. Um, so when you mine, um, you go
55:26
down the treasure track because you're mining deeper into the mine. You're more likely to find different treasure. Um,
55:33
then you also flip a tile on the board and depending on what color like gem it
55:38
has on this tile, um, when you then build buildings onto it, it gives you
55:44
different bonuses. Different buildings give you different things. That's the only downside to it is you have to keep
55:51
referring to this little manual because the building resources, it doesn't they
55:56
don't quite make sense to what you're getting, right? the the the the base building, the cottage building. That
56:03
makes sense because you put a blue thing on you put a building on a blue thing that gives you a blue resource.
56:08
That makes sense. That's fine. Some a lot of the others are like, "Well, these ones give you two victory points. These ones give you
56:14
three. These ones give you four." But it it's not explained anywhere. It doesn't say it anywhere apart from in this little manual that everyone has.
56:20
Yeah. So, you mine to get the resources. You can only hold a certain amount of the start.
56:27
Um you then you've got uh like a a forge action which is usually a tertiary
56:33
action of doing something else which is either uh building a building so putting a building down on the spaces it says
56:40
how many buildings you can have. It's usually I think max is two I didn't see any with three on.
56:46
No I didn't. So yeah so each hex that has orcs on it also you can place a number of buildings. It tells you how many buildings how many orcs it can have
56:52
on it basically. That's it. And then there's a fight. So you go and kill the orcs. By killing orcs, you get knowledge at the top,
56:58
which gives you um uh kind of these little permanent powers, which are quite
57:04
cool. Um and then there's uh delivery. Delivery, which when you go and deliver,
57:11
you unlock your buildings and then you can also overspend your action points.
57:16
So, your strength for your dwarf to deliver to the king and it's like an endgame scoring like extra points. Um,
57:23
and sounds very simple, but while you're doing all of this, it's all giving you
57:28
extras. So, like it's giving you income. So, that at the campfire phase, you've
57:34
got like a little income track at the top. And to get these income markers,
57:39
the one's free, the other cost VPs. Um, to get your powers, um, the the first
57:47
one's free, the other ones cost VPs. So yeah, you start comboing stuff off
57:53
really well and I love a good combo. So who doesn't like and who doesn't? So you Yeah, go to the
58:01
forge, you spend these resources, get an extra different upgraded action tile. In
58:06
fact, they're not usually upgraded action tiles. They're just different action action again.
58:11
It does two things though. It allows you to cuz it's an action. It's a worker placement spot. So, it allows you to do the action a second or third time or
58:18
however many, which is great because quite often you'll want sort of semi specialize. And the other thing it does is every
58:24
time you place one of those, it unlocks endame scoring, which there's two. Each endame scoring
58:29
thing has two slots. So, you can choose whether or not you're going to kind of go wide with your endame scoring and do a little bit of
58:35
everything or whether you're going to kind of go down one or two avenues and then you'll unlock
58:40
what's underneath it. Yeah. So, you'll unlock the same endame scoring twice. Yeah. Yeah.
58:46
So, so you kind of if you were just going to build loads of buildings, you'd go down the one that's about buildings and you put both of your extra worker
58:53
like these work placement spots in those sections that score that endame scoring. And then when you place it on there, you
59:00
also gain the benefits underneath, which is like keys so that when you kill orcs to start with, you can only hold two
59:06
orcs in your jail. You can hold more, but when it comes to the check of the
59:12
end of the round, you have to go down to however many key slots you've got and you start with two. So, you can have two
59:18
orcs in there and they give you VPs. Um, you can't have orc jail overpopulation.
59:23
That's what they're saying is it's it's inhumane to keep too many orcs too many. So, you just kill them.
59:28
You just kill them. Yeah. And then get rid of them and then that's humane again. That was my take away from that part of the game.
59:33
You got two beds, guys, and you two are dead. Yeah. So, yeah. So, um that was uh that's Or jail.
59:42
Um and then yeah, it just it had the VP
59:48
scoring mechanic. So, at the end of the round, the campfire would go down, you'd get your income, you' do like the little
59:54
scoring bits, and then you'd look at what your main goal was for that round. Um, and this was very similar to what
1:00:01
you're saying about with obsession where that goal for that round might be what
1:00:07
um place houses on the green tiles or dark tiles or the light tiles. Um, which
1:00:14
the darker light tiles didn't mean anything. They were just a different tile type. Um, but the green tiles is
1:00:20
the green gems and or gold or etc etc. Um, so you but you scored that every
1:00:27
time. So that what's so where with Terrammystica you score it only for that round that round only with this you
1:00:33
score it that round and then you'll score it again the next round. So you really got to pay attention to all these
1:00:40
scoring ones that are going to be and there's a lot of contention there once once once everyone kind of clocks on to
1:00:45
that which it took us all a little bit to get into the flow. We were all quite tired at
1:00:51
that point, I think, and just kind of by round three, I was like willing willing to put it down as a
1:00:56
learning game cuz I don't think any of us were on top four. No. But um yeah, once you get into the
1:01:02
kind of rhythm of that, it was it's a nice little scoring multiplier because as you obviously build out, there's more
1:01:09
and more tiles, which gives you actually more of a chance to get back in there because say someone's taken the only
1:01:16
gold spot that you had early. Later on, oh, suddenly it's all opened up. I can
1:01:21
finally get these gold spots. Um those are all modular, standard, all those scoring ones, they change every game.
1:01:28
Um, it's uh asymmetric boards for the dwarfs as well, which is cool. What was
1:01:35
weird though was the tiles being in different locations, but being the same.
1:01:42
So, our action when I was explaining the action tiles at the top, they were all
1:01:48
in a different location, but they didn't mean anything. But they had different seal colors on
1:01:54
there. But they still could have been in the same column, right? Yeah. I I I think the combination of PL
1:02:01
where they're placed related to the endame score and the colors of the seals.
1:02:06
No, but the top ones didn't. The top ones didn't do the endame scoring, did they? It feels like there was something there
1:02:11
that we missed if I'm honest. Cuz I was cuz originally I was saying, well, this one cuz I was saying, oh, um, mining
1:02:17
should go underneath the mining one. That's what I thought. Yeah. But we couldn't find any rule that did that. So we kind of kept playing it. I
1:02:24
think it's worth us giving another look to that because I have a feeling that there is something to that order. So that so that one will score within
1:02:30
the same or something along those lines. I feel like there was something it seemed weird otherwise, right?
1:02:35
Yeah. Um but we were learning um off of a demo that we were taught in Essen about a
1:02:41
month ago. About a month ago, a quick 10-minute read of the rule book. Yeah. Yeah.
1:02:46
After staying up till 2:00 the night before and then playing games all day. Yeah, I think you can be you can be sort
1:02:51
of forgiven. We could all be forgiven for if we've missed. Please tell us though if we are actually meant to score above it as well. Read
1:02:58
the rule book. We'll read the rule book. But it's nice for them to tell us as well, right? Um I'm sure people enjoy
1:03:04
telling me I'm wrong. Um it's so common.
1:03:11
Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. I think for me I enjoyed the the game. I want to play it properly because we did kind of
1:03:18
like I say mess some rules up but there was a a weird printing error I think on the board on the the relic
1:03:24
the treasure the treasure because it wasn't quite clear that you should get the treasure as you get
1:03:29
every time you hit one of those points we started doing it cuz that felt the natural way to do it and halfway through we're like there's nothing here that
1:03:34
says we're supposed to let's undo all that and at the end someone came Paul came along and was like do you know that
1:03:39
you're supposed it's not quite clear and we're like we got it right like our assumptions about that track were correct the first
1:03:45
time. You do it on every other track. Why? Like why won't you do it on this track?
1:03:51
Yeah, it it's kind of weird. But then I think I kind of left that game going uh like I enjoyed it, but I was kind of
1:03:57
left. But it wasn't a fair play experience. So I want to play it properly with me having sleep and not
1:04:03
just come out of captain's chair and been frazzled for three hours. Yeah. And just go right, let's play it, do it
1:04:09
right, and then I'll see. Yeah. actually cuz I do I was enjoying the the interconnecting mechanisms and you know
1:04:14
the combo nature. It's combo heavy and I do enjoy that and the theme
1:04:20
is cool. The theme is cool and the artwork's nice as well. It's pretty looking game and all the so the
1:04:27
carts are little wooden carts. Oh, tell us which way up acrylics should go because we had an argument at the
1:04:34
table as to whether acrylics should go acrylic side up or pattern side up. the
1:04:39
pattern side look better. But the what's the point of having it on an acrylic if you're not going to put the acrylic side up?
1:04:45
You might be right, Adrian. But I with Dave, I like the the the pattern. I like
1:04:50
the coloration of the pattern rather than like rather than going, "Oh, it's got some smog on it." Yeah. Yeah, that's it.
1:04:56
But yeah, it was a full-blown conversation for about 20 minutes, wasn't it? What if you could put yours up the wrong
1:05:02
way? I haven't put mine up the wrong way. You've put yours up the wrong way. Are you acrylics up or acrylics down? That's what we want to know on this
1:05:08
podcast. very dwarven argument. It's fine. I suppose for me I had a lot of fun, but
1:05:14
actually I think I was grateful that I was tired because if I'd wanted to put my all into it, I'd have been more
1:05:20
annoyed by and this is a thing that I've sort of found recentlyish and just keep cementing it is that if there's just a
1:05:26
lot of wooden components on top of iconography and sort of smooshed
1:05:32
together into a very small space of the board, it just frustrates me. I felt like the whole time I was like, is that
1:05:37
a green? Let's have a move. Is that Is that a a black background? Sometimes like there was weird things. So I felt
1:05:43
like I had to keep moving buildings to see what was underneath it. Yeah. Yeah. And the designer of that previous game
1:05:50
was Menifer. Mhm. Which again is lots of tracks, slightly less combo, but I think the puzzle of
1:05:56
when you activate different areas of the board is slightly more compelling. And it ironically talking about Egypt,
1:06:03
Metife is a little less sandboxy than Covenant is. So, I think if you really
1:06:08
want the sandboxiness and you want that little bit more comboiness in your games, you're probably going to prefer
1:06:13
Covenant. I think if you want it to look cleaner and feel cleaner, but have roughly the same level of complexity, I
1:06:21
think Menfer's the better game. It was still a good game. I just think that while Men's out there, that would be my
1:06:26
choice every time over the other. Fair enough. Yeah, I can understand why. Yeah. Anyway, a nice easy game after that. Basically,
Viking Seesaw - itten
1:06:33
I played Viking Seesaw quite a lot after that. So huge shout out and massive thanks to Martin who when he heard me
1:06:40
say, "Oh, I really want Viking Seesaw. Can someone see if they can get it from Essen?" He said, "Oh, I've got a copy. You can have it."
1:06:46
As on our live stream, right? Yeah. So I kept trying to buy him a drink to say thanks, but he kept not wanting
1:06:52
one at the time. Or then I saw him right at the end and he's like, "The only thing I want to drink now is like warm milk to get to sleep." So Marton, I
1:06:58
still owe you at least at least two pints. I think it was Guinness he mentioned. So it will happen. But uh
1:07:04
just taking him a fourpack makes it right. What a great game. Viking Singaur is just silly balancing game. I love it.
1:07:11
But it's in that kind of same vein of oh I don't know Beroo like Buckaroo or Tinder blocks.
1:07:17
Yeah. But a little bit more thinky because you've got different weighted things and different shaped things. So,
1:07:23
also it's that beautiful balance of do I put it in a safe spot cuz I think it
1:07:28
will come back around to me or do I think it's not going to come back around to me before
1:07:33
I'm going to be an and put it on the most awkward spot possible so it's likely to fall off the ship.
1:07:39
Can I just say I wish we were live streaming cuz you look so proud of yourself saying balance then.
1:07:45
Again, it was like the sandbox thing. I was like, I don't this is an a pun that I didn't intend until I was halfway
1:07:51
through the sentence and thought the way he winked when he said it. I know. Yeah. He's a bit cockur.
1:07:57
There was no winking. He he he shrugged his shoulders like forward as well, right?
1:08:02
He didn't. What he doesn't know is I'm going to leave a big pause before he says it in
1:08:07
the edit. But it's a great game when you just want something lightweight but still
1:08:14
interesting enough to hold your attention in a similar way to I think Kabanga is in that same way. Okay, there's not
1:08:20
balancing but you're kind of gingerely putting down. Oh, this card is anyone going to Oh god, everyone's kabanged me
1:08:25
cuz I left the gap too big. Whatever. Yes. Yes. We could place a different word inside of kabanga.
1:08:32
That's what the game is game is. You have to say it as well. Yeah, the rules. You've keanged me mate. Yeah, I've been well and truly keanged. Yeah,
1:08:39
four people kebabanged me all at once and you gutted. Love it. But I think the good thing with Viking
1:08:46
seesaw, going back to that, is it's there such a lot of like pressure on you
1:08:52
and you try not to have like shaky hand kind of there's a lot of pressure and it's so rewarding when you get the thing
1:08:59
on and when you think no one no one can possibly yep, I've managed it and like ha now the next person's got to suffer
1:09:04
and struggle. That's actually very that's very nice to do. So yeah, thanks Martin and uh yeah, I will find a way of
1:09:11
getting Guinness to you. Yeah, legend. I will find a way. Guinness will get to you.
1:09:16
Yeah. Yeah. It's called Amazon. That was Friday.
Bomb Busters - Cocktail Games
1:09:22
No, I No, I kept I kept on going. So I didn't you I um bumped into Ellis and Bo Game Jimmy
1:09:29
and Jez again and we played some Bomb Busters. You did? You said you we're going to play some Bomb Busters. You want in? You
1:09:35
went Yeah, why not? I only had a late night last night. S it. I liked Bombusters. That was a good
1:09:41
game. Bomb Busters was really good. Yeah. So, it kind of weirdly I don't know why it reminds me of the crypto in the sense of
1:09:47
that you have to So rather than trying to decrypt the code, you're trying to
1:09:53
diffuse a bomb. Um we're all bomb diffusing bunnies and you start
1:10:01
basically you'll have in front of you um numbers from 1 to 12. Uh you position
1:10:07
them from left to right, lowest to highest. There is two yellow wires and one red
1:10:13
wire. And the red wire is a number which is placed on the track in front so you
1:10:20
know which range it is. Um, and the two yellow wires also placed on the track so
1:10:26
they know what range they are. You then basically it's this is in a
1:10:31
tile um facing towards yourself so you can't see anyone else's numbers and
1:10:37
you'll have to basically point at someone's tile and say is it that number? Is that a five or
1:10:42
is that a five? Yeah. But you have to have the number yourself and um well
1:10:49
that's that's pretty much the only rules. number. You try and find say two or three numbers that the same. So you play your
1:10:54
five and you say you point to someone else go, is that a five? Cuz you've noticed that it's to the left of say one
1:10:59
of their sixes. So there's a chance it could be. Yeah. So um and if it's not, you then
1:11:05
you'll grab one of the pointing tiles and you point at whatever number you said um sorry, you point at whatever
1:11:12
number um you pointed at and they'll say what it actually is. But you've only got four lives or however many player lives.
1:11:20
So if there's three, you three, two, two. Um, and you slowly try and
1:11:25
basically weedle down your um your numbers. But there's also a special
1:11:31
skill each person can use where you point at two tiles and say, is it this
1:11:37
number? And then there's also if you there's lots of different difficulties, but there's also different skills. So,
1:11:44
if you get rid of all of the fives, um, and say if you're the only person left with the fives, you you're allowed to,
1:11:50
as a certain action, place the remaining fives down, say, um, but it can then
1:11:56
unlock a card. And one of those cards could be like the super diffusing card where basically you can just say a
1:12:03
number to someone and they'll just play it. Um, but if you ever point to the red
1:12:10
wire and cut the red wire, you instantly lose to basically boom to boom. Yeah. And um there was a lot of
1:12:17
uh cool. There's definitely a safe one around here and stuff like this being
1:12:22
said, which I didn't I didn't pick up on Mark's uh there's a safe one. There's there's definitely a safe one. And I was
1:12:29
like, is that a three? and he was just like,
1:12:37
but um yeah, it was it was good fun to play as a last like end game. Um and we
1:12:42
played that probably about three or four times with difficulties increasing. I'm intrigued by this game.
1:12:47
It's really fun. Was it you were described on it? Tambo and Curly played it at Rob's
1:12:54
birthday. Yeah. And I remember thinking then I don't really see where the game is. like
1:12:59
it sounds like there is must be a game there and you all had fun but I couldn't kind of see where it is and then you're explaining it as well. I'm kind of
1:13:04
thinking the same not the same thing but kind of there's clearly a cool game here cuz you both have been very animated in
1:13:10
how awesome it was but I can't quite see. I think you need to play it. Yeah. So I feel like I need to play it
1:13:16
because there must be something here that makes it there's four there's four numbers of each, right? And you dish them out and
1:13:22
you don't know where they are and then when you have three of them for example. So I might yeah I might have three ones.
1:13:27
That means there's only one one around. So it's quite risky for me to point at the lower end and usually the bomb is
1:13:35
towards the lower end or the higher end. So usually you're thinking, "Oh well, I'll just pick from the top cuz 12's
1:13:41
easy to get." But the bomb might be around that 12. So you're just like, "Oh, I don't know which." And you all start with a
1:13:48
pointer. So there's always an easy one to start for everyone. So you go, "Oh, right. There's he's got a four there. So
1:13:54
I place a four. Is that a four? You know it's a four. Both get rid of your fours. So it starts weedling down and then it
1:14:00
gets harder and harder as it goes along. So that sounds like a bomb diffusing rummy in a weird way.
1:14:06
That's why I liked it. I've kind of got it sat somewhere between the mind which is just put down numbers in order
1:14:13
and like a the crew or um fellowship of the ring trick taking game. It feels like it must sit somewhere in between
1:14:19
that scale cuz I feel like those kind of trick that those trick- taking games are kind of a bit more complex and the mind
1:14:25
is very simple but doesn't feel like a game at all. But it sounds like it sits somewhere in there.
1:14:30
It's a party game. It reminded me as I said weirdly of the crypto but with less still got your copy sat on my shelf
1:14:37
unloved. Really? I don't think actually it's not your copy is it? I bought it bring I think but I like the crypto.
1:14:42
The crypto is really good. Yeah. Yeah. It's our Christmas. Only played it once, but I liked it. Yeah, it's great.
1:14:48
And it just reminds me of it's it's basically Bomb Busters is the crypto but with
1:14:54
numbers rather than words. That's the way I see it. You've got to you got to you got to deduce and kind of
1:15:00
work out what everyone else has got. You got what? Deduce. Drop the deuce.
1:15:06
We're playing this game. Deduce. Deduce. And me and Curly then play Dark Nova because we realized we hadn't played at
1:15:11
all together that day. So, we thought let's get a Hadn't played Bark Bover in 48 hours.
1:15:18
It was in the car, but it was really cold. So, we were going to just play with the library copy and I was like, "Oh, brilliant. That probably doesn't
1:15:25
have marine expansions, which I just don't like fish. I'm just not into it."
1:15:30
So, we went and got the copy and it did have marine expansions in it. I was like, "Oh, okay." So, we played that.
1:15:37
One massive. Can I clarify this statement cuz you've said it about six times now. Is it that you don't like the marine expansion, how
1:15:44
it works, or is it just that you generally don't like animal fish? Um, a bit of both. I think I think fish
1:15:51
are harder to get interested in. If I'm being purely honest, I think pictures of fish. I I'm just not as interested in that.
1:15:58
And also I I like the mechanic where it gets rid of the end of the market.
1:16:03
It drowns all the animals that you didn't want before. Yes, those. I like the drowning mechanic. Yeah. The weight. But you don't like the
1:16:09
coral. But what the coral is okay, but I think I've just never got to enjoy the
1:16:14
coral because I don't ever play the fish. I think it's because you have to buy a specific enclosure for the fish,
1:16:20
which then ties you to getting effing fish. So, I'd unless I've got a handful of
1:16:26
fish and one of the um starting um conservation things is fish, I'm just
1:16:32
never going to do it. I'm just never going to do it because I like the uh openness of having a different
1:16:39
enclosure that you can use for other stuff. I lost so badly. Oh, we play. It was me, Curly, and Martin.
1:16:45
I think Tambo then did you actually convince him to play? He would have. He said, "I I'll play if
1:16:51
I have to." We're like, "No, we wouldn't do that to you, mate. We know you don't enjoy it, so why?" No, he played confident. think he would
1:16:57
like if he gave it a bit more of a go and didn't kind of get fixed on getting
1:17:02
He's played it three times. I know. So, I don't think he's going to like it. It's just my hope for he's given it a fair shake because
1:17:08
they've they've done the whole you add 100 points on at the end, haven't they? It's just So, Ark Nova finished our night and uh then we went
1:17:15
home. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I think that was the end Friday. That was Friday done. Friday.
TURN 4 - GRIDCON 6: SATURDAY
1:17:21
Yeah. Saturday beckons. Saturday. I was very excited for Saturday. Saturday. Yeah, sad day.
The Defence of Procyon III - PSC Games
1:17:27
What did you start off with? I started off with a game of the kind of speak with the defense of Proion 3.
1:17:34
Oh, I forgot about this. And I basically, right, every year it's like Christmas, right? Santa Marton
1:17:41
basically. It says, "Let's get a game in." And we always get a game in and it's always
1:17:46
like some obscure unique game. Heavy game. Heavy game. So last year was Stress Botics, which I loved. It was great.
1:17:53
That was great. And this year he's basically we had a chat um about this
1:17:59
game and he said, "Yeah, let's let's play at Gridcon." I thought, "Set." And then the more I keep reading about this game, I I was like, "Oh, yeah." I
1:18:05
started to go down these uh BGG threads and you know the the masterpiece game
1:18:11
that no one ever talks about and I was like and I kept reading about it cuz I didn't really know much about it.
1:18:16
What's it called again? The longest title ever. It's it's David Ty. Okay. Sure. What was the title again?
1:18:22
The defense of Proion 3. The defense of Proton. It's a mouthful. So the the law behind
1:18:28
just say the word protein and any number behind it and everyone knows what you're talking. I literally kept going, "Oh, they're playing the defense of Proton
1:18:34
7." And they went, "Yeah, yeah, that looks good." I definitely called it about six different things that day as well. Um,
1:18:42
but the the law behind it is the humans have dug up an artifact and they're
1:18:47
experimenting on it and the aliens have come down and are trying to stop them because if you experiment on this
1:18:53
artifact too much, you're going to bring this other alien race in. A worse thing worse. So, the aliens
1:18:59
aren't the bad guys, but they think, you know, you take the other bad. It's like most wars, right? It's a
1:19:05
misunderstanding. Big misunderstanding. Yeah. It's it's you know could be solved over a cup of tea and biscuits but it
1:19:11
doesn't happen. Um but yeah basically this this game is designed by David Tersy and and he's done like a unified
1:19:18
war game experience uh where you fight across two um conflicts of of uh space and ground all
1:19:27
at the same time simultaneously doing a 2v2 um structure. Now patting your head and rubbing your tummy
1:19:32
at the same time. It's all asymmetric pretty much. So you got uh the human armada player which is
1:19:39
I was playing um and you got the human um kind of ground player which is Nandandy which is Nandandy. Yeah. Um and then
1:19:45
Martin was playing the alien ground. Um and Davey was playing the meld which is the alien fleets and stuff. So me and
1:19:52
Davey had the the space conflict between us and they had the ground conflict. But yeah as Davey said all the roles are
1:19:58
asymmetric. So no one's plays the same. So, what that means is just like Routt
1:20:05
or any other game, there's a high uh barrier to entry in this game. So, how it says in the rule book and how David
1:20:11
says to teach this game, and he's right cuz it kind of needs a level investment from everyone who's playing, it needs
1:20:17
it. Um because putting all of that on one person to learn everything and then teach it all out would be a freaking
1:20:22
nightmare. So, this game comes with five rule books. So, you get the main rule book. We were all sitting there reading a rule
1:20:28
book and someone came over and it was like, "You got rule book each." was like, "Yep, yep." And you got one for each player
1:20:34
and it's got your own setup and it's got you what your objective is and what the opponents are doing. And and I was
1:20:40
thinking, "Oh my god, this is going to be really heavy." And but as we played, and I'll kind of go into the the a bit
1:20:46
more of the game, but as we played, it weirdly unraveled itself to be quite a streamlined experience that made sense.
1:20:53
And it was like as long as you understood what you what you were doing and you you basically decided
1:21:00
cohesively worked. Yeah. Like Marson would just go to me, oh, can you sacrif
1:21:09
um so I'll move it to within orbit and then he can land it and do something with it. Um and then I was like, "Oh,
1:21:16
can I maybe have this? I need this." And he's like, "Oh yeah, then I'll do this." So, I didn't have to understand how he
1:21:24
was playing his game. I just needed to basically like we just had to coordinate
1:21:30
our timings and resources. Yeah. Okay. And and then then that's the thing like
1:21:36
you got your teammate and you need to converse and especially as the humans cuz the whole purpose of the human team
1:21:41
is to try and um evacuate the scientists that are on the ground. So the ground
1:21:46
player is trying to basically fend off this invading horde of of death um because they literally outnumbered and
1:21:53
outgunned and all that kind of stuff and they need to get these u scientists out into space. But to do that they need to
1:21:59
use these shared resources called echo drones between the human players and they use it to launch and use it for
1:22:05
things and then I would use it as the amada player for other things. So you have to kind of communicate and go are
1:22:10
you using that and yeah so that's quite cool and and it simulates the communication between ground and and
1:22:16
space. So once the scientist has launched then he appears on my board in the cuz on the board the space one you
1:22:22
got the the planet with the hemispheres on either side and you got all the different um spaces of where all the
1:22:27
fleets can go. And you've also got the alien mother ship, which is Davies. And you had my um Prometheium refinery,
1:22:35
which is where I get a lot of my Prometheium resource, which I use for cool stuff that I never got to activate in the game cuz I was and destroyed
1:22:42
it as well. He blew it up. And then I blew his mother ship up. And He did blow my mother ship up. There's a lot of um so the scientist appears on
1:22:49
the hemisphere that they were launched from. So you got to kind of go, yeah, make sure they go on that side. Um because then you want to protect them
1:22:55
because if they're on their own, the other player just going to blow them up and then that's bad for the human players because if they ever blow up 10
1:23:02
scientists, they win instantly. But other than that, you are scoring victory points, which is kind of a weird thing
1:23:08
for me in a in a war game cuz it's like if you do certain things and conditions, you're getting VPs on the track as a
1:23:14
shared um VP track between the the teams. And and so yeah, like if I blow
1:23:20
up every two ships, I get um you know, three points or two points for every second ship I blow up. If I blow up one
1:23:26
of his big ships, I get five. Or if this happens with the mother ship, I get this. And and Davey would have similar
1:23:31
scoring conditions back. Um but what I really I I really enjoyed this as an
1:23:38
experience. I like this is really different. I've not really played anything quite like this. It's kind of a co-op and a versus it sounds like the
1:23:45
way you're describing it. But it's a team game for me that works because it's not like Star Wars
1:23:50
Rebellion or War of the Ring where you've got basically you're cutting a role in half and going you have that half and I have this half which is what
1:23:56
they do. This is you've got a role and you've got to figure that puzzle out and
1:24:02
I've got a role, I got to figure my puzzle out and haven't got the mental capacity to sort thinking about what you're doing and what I'm doing. So I
1:24:08
can't alpha game you as a team player. you're you're on your own in essence, but we are working together. I have my
1:24:14
thing and I'm doing my thing. Um, which is quite nice from a downtime
1:24:19
perspective because the way they've done the turn order is that the person when you're waiting it, you know, the board
1:24:26
state's not drastically changing in between the the turns that you can kind of figure out what you're going to do,
1:24:32
have time to prepare it and all those kind of stuff. So, the Armada player has
1:24:37
uh basically a combat deck and on that deck they're multi-use cards where um you're playing to activate certain fleet
1:24:45
types like dreadnots and frigots and stuff. Um and also has a technology on there and also it has a number of hits
1:24:51
on the bottom. So, you're constantly going, I'm going to put those three cards into my combat deck cuz they're
1:24:57
the ones I want to draw hits from and obviously the the ones that have more hits on tend to be better uh for all all
1:25:03
aspects. Um, but also actually I want that technology. So if I want that, I'm going to have to keep that card and put
1:25:08
it into um my hand and then play that because whatever card you play to activate like fleet types, you will get
1:25:16
that technology for the next round. So it kind of activates a power. Um, and I was desperately trying to charge my ion
1:25:22
cannon, which I never got chance to cuz the Armada has an iron cannon. If you spend Prometheium resource, they can
1:25:28
start blowing lots of crap up and I just couldn't do it cuz you me over at the right time. Yeah, I did.
1:25:33
Yeah. And then it went it went nicely. You went nicely and I I just did some silly moves because I've never played
1:25:39
before. Yeah. Um you you stuck your neck out. I think that game if you stick your neck out you're going to get it locked off.
1:25:45
You're going to get it lpped off. Yeah. Which you very kindly did. Um but you were playing the meld, right? So you added these uh neuron dice. So
1:25:51
you were playing what I think David called Gloom Haven in space. It's kind of the way Gloom Haven works as a mechanic. You were doing that, weren't
1:25:58
you? So I had I had dice basically and they had two different types of pips.
1:26:03
They had um field like completely filled in pips which were probably more like diamonds um and then they had round pips
1:26:12
on that dice. They did different things. I only ever played two cards on my turn.
1:26:17
One was to activate some ships. So usually it would say activate these two
1:26:22
types of ships or activate these ships. I place that dice down that has the
1:26:30
fulfilledin pips. Anything adjacent to that dice with those ships in, I would
1:26:35
put in some activation cubes. And that means I can only activate those ships in those areas next to that dice.
1:26:42
The second card I would play, which is the bottom the ability would then say, do this ability with the round
1:26:49
pips. And that's me spending two dice. And then I would have to do those other things. So, the way I had to kill JP
1:26:55
ships is JP ships all had theoretically one health. Yes, I just had to bring their shields down.
1:27:02
And the way I brought their shields down is by coughing up spores out. And as
1:27:07
long as my spores in that area beat JP's ships shields, they're gone. Yeah.
1:27:13
And I had an action with a ship that could shoot, boom, bang. It would it would go. And then I
1:27:19
would take a take a spore off. Um, so and then spores would yeah reduce
1:27:26
depending on how many ships I destroyed. So yeah, you could do some cool funky stuff. And I had like basically these
1:27:32
upgraded cards down, but to play them I had to play a card that upgraded into these cards, but that meant I had to
1:27:39
sacrifice ships. But I was getting ships back every start of every turn. Um, and
1:27:46
JP wasn't. JP basically the humans have a set amount of ships and that's it.
1:27:52
Yeah. Um dwindling should we say? Yeah. Dwindling ships. Whereas mine I I can kind of bring them back and and
1:27:58
keep. So I I think well I I was going to
1:28:04
say they bit they were a bit easier to play but then I don't know if it is that
1:28:09
as such. I don't I don't know. When I spoke to David later about it, he said he basically has designed a game that
1:28:15
makes if you when you play them, it always makes it feel like the other team's busted because and that's that's
1:28:23
balanced, right? So, everyone feels like they're strong. So, um yeah, it was uh
1:28:28
it was really good. It was good fun. It was a fun experience. Don't ask how the ground works cuz me and Dave were just looking over going,
1:28:34
"Wow, you're doing some cool stuff over there. People are dying. Playing a lot more cards." Yeah. It seemed like it more like deck
1:28:40
building, like card playing there. There's a lot more cards being played where we were just like shooting each
1:28:45
other. But we have fun. Is it Is it out now? It's It's an older game. It's been out for a while.
1:28:51
Three or four years old. Um but no one talks about it. It's just kind of one and I've forgotten about this. What's it called again? I've already
1:28:56
forgotten. No one talks about Ray. The defense of Proion 3, right? Yeah. I'm not going to remember that. Ask me
1:29:03
like 30 seconds and he's going to be gone. I kept calling it Protoon. Yeah. Pro protocol on
1:29:09
while you were playing that I was playing suburbia. So Marcus every year gets to play suburbia. So he said this
1:29:14
year can't we play suburbia. I said yeah I don't get to play it. Nice little city builder. Great. Playing with um Adam
1:29:21
from Punchboard as well. Um and he hadn't played it in quite a while. So we had a fun game of that. Martin walked
1:29:27
over and I said uh how's Defense of Proton 6 going? And he said
1:29:33
I think we got him next turn. Don't say anything. I think we got him next turn. So I was like, "All right." I all right.
1:29:39
Like he seemed so sure of himself. He said, "Yeah, me and Davey got a plan."
1:29:45
So at that point, I sort of walked up and went over to JP and went, "How's it going?" He went, "Yeah." I was like, "Well, Martin's pretty convinced they're
1:29:51
going to win this game." Didn't make anything more of it. Martin's pretty convinced he's going to win this game. All right. Okay. And then I walked off
1:29:58
again. And then literally about 20 minutes later, I looked over and you were all done. And I was like, "Well, the plan worked then."
1:30:04
We did have a plan. Yeah, we did have a plan. Yeah. And I think that was the the surprising thing is I thought I'd be
1:30:10
playing this game for four plus hours. Yeah, I did. Cuz in my head, I had it built up to be this this four plus hour game.
1:30:16
Two and a bit hours. I think we had a very slow start because it's rule book and nosing rule books trying to figure stuff out.
1:30:22
But once we got going, it was six rounds. Yeah. And it was done. I mean, we might be able to squeeze another round in, but it
1:30:28
I think you could get that done in a couple of hours when you know what you're doing. Yeah, usually it's four to
1:30:33
five rounds, so we were around too much as well, but we're learning the game, knobbing around, probably.
1:30:39
Uh, so yeah, I I'm really looking forward to playing it again. Um, got another game up just before Christmas.
1:30:44
So, again, just want to experience the different roles and get used to it a bit more. And, uh, it's that route thing, isn't it? You
1:30:51
don't feel like you've played it until you played several factions at least. 15% of that game, even though one of the
1:30:57
roles is 25%, I didn't do it for you. So do you think by playing the other roles you'll have a better insight as to how
1:31:04
to beat them then? Do you think work like that? Yeah, I think you would do. I know now how to defeat the Armada player for sure
1:31:11
to do what he did. Um but yeah, I think between the conflict areas, yes, because it's basically
1:31:18
you're ahead of the your opponent that sits opposite you and they're ahead of theirs. But you do like I say, you
1:31:23
interact with your teammate. You don't interact with the cross-section of the opposite player. It's literally I'm it's
1:31:30
in front of you and to the left or right of you. Um which again it kind kind of works. So
1:31:35
yeah, I think the the Amadas seemed harder than what I was playing once I got my head around wrapped around
1:31:42
how to play the the alien um space fleet. It kind of it clicked. It made
1:31:47
sense. There's some cool stuff you could do. Um there was like a lat lattis
1:31:53
shield thing that meant all my load of my ships was shielded which was annoying
1:31:58
for you cuz it was usually meant that if you didn't kill my ship on that turn
1:32:03
Yeah. I healed it back up. So yeah, but then yeah, I didn't use my
1:32:09
interceptors. So basically my interceptors are are your hood killers. So the hoods are the
1:32:15
ones that are defending adjacent areas which is the latis that yeah Dave talks
1:32:20
about my interceptors are the counter measure for that and I should have just swarm them in like foder just to try and
1:32:28
take these things down basically it would have reduced all of my stuff by one or two health right
1:32:34
cuz they're stacking all over the place as well so I could break the the lattice I can do whatever so I already know having
1:32:41
played it what I would do differently and already know I need to try that and that's a good It's a good sign, isn't it? When when that's the thought
1:32:46
processes, oh, next time I can do that differently. But if your opponent plays differently or does something, hopefully
1:32:51
they're not two-dimensional forces sort of thing. You've got a couple of routes to win by. Yeah, I believe so. So that then means if they do a
1:32:58
different route, actually maybe what you learned last time isn't going to stand up. And that's what that's what I always like about sort of war games is you
1:33:04
quite often get that. But it's quite cool. Like if I could get a frig into the orbit of the planet, I
1:33:09
can start do dropping ground troops off for my mate. So he's like, "Yeah, cool. More troops are appearing." And then
1:33:16
Dave, I think you did a ground like a ground strike bombardment bombard
1:33:22
onto the planets. You're like loads of stuff up. So it's kind of nice having some cross interaction between
1:33:28
the battlefields. And then Martin could land one of my ships in an area, which permanently gave it more attack.
1:33:34
But then I lost that ship. But it benefited it benefited him more. So it's cool.
1:33:40
It's cool. It was really cool. Yeah, it's good fun. Very fun experience and playing with Martin and Andy is always fun. So, yeah,
1:33:46
thank you guys. Thank you very much. Yeah, I played lots of games to do with plants.
Verdent - Flatout Games & Mycelia - Split Stone Games
1:33:51
Nice. Yeah. So, you had a plan? I did. I have a plan a planty morning. Um played Verdant again with um Rob and
1:33:59
Stuart. Just a nice tableau building game about house plans. But it's really
1:34:05
it makes total sense. You've got to do plant room plant room. you've got to get the right kind of plant um light
1:34:12
conditions. Then they get burdeny tokens. Soon as you've got enough verdency tokens, you pot it into a plant
1:34:18
pot. And if you do it early enough, you'll get more points. So it's just nice kind of
1:34:24
Yeah. column column build tableau building, pick your room or your plant, get your little additional picture bonus
1:34:32
that might give you more points later. Or you're looking for double points. Yeah, it's really really good. It makes
1:34:38
practical sense. It makes it makes total practical sense. Yeah. So, we played verdance again. Rob enjoyed that. Yeah, he did.
1:34:43
Enjoyed that. Yeah. And then we had another game of Myelia, which again played it. Planting. I I think you'd like it. I
1:34:49
think Yeah, I think I think I'd really like it. It's very noby. It is quite knobbyby, but there is ways of getting out of of that. Like you
1:34:56
can you cannobing yourself. You can you can dnob yourself. Yeah. Yeah. But it's again beautiful to look
1:35:03
at. You've got that little bit of of luck with the dice, but that's only the wind direction of your spores. So,
1:35:10
you're just not going to be silly enough, well, unless you me to go, "Yeah, I'm going to spawn from that one. It'll be fine. I've got two out of
1:35:16
three." Yeah. Oh, it's the wrong way again. Oh, it's the wrong way. So, there are ways of negating that. Yeah.
1:35:22
Um like if you went one in further, it would just land that space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then someone
1:35:28
comes and sits on your mother mushroom and you can't do it. Not your mother mushroom, but your other mushrooms. I know. I know. There was lots of there
1:35:34
was lots of jokes about that. So yeah, if you're you've got one mother mushroom which can basically move around. That's
1:35:39
the only thing of yours that can move around the board. So if you plunk your mushroom on someone else's nonmother
1:35:46
mushroom, they can't move it and they can't spore from it and they can't do anything. So it's Yeah, it's good.
1:35:52
Well, it's very knobby. It It is very knobby. Yeah. Spores flying everywhere. Yeah. I I never knew that it
1:35:59
was scientifically correct that mother mushrooms can move around. I'd never I'd never seen a mother mushroom moving
1:36:05
around. But they're like the cordiceps, right? They've got into an animal like an ant or something. Oh, I thought they were like the wombles
1:36:10
of Wimbledon. Just didn't see them very often. They just scurryed around. Well, when we asked the designer Jack
1:36:17
Neville, uh cuz I said the same, how's it moving around? He said, "You've seen the last of us, right?" Fair enough.
1:36:22
Yeah. Yeah. that that type of cordicep is well that mushroom the cordicep so is amazing
1:36:29
their network as well like it's insane like mushrooms are Facebook and Tik Tok
1:36:36
very sociable aren't they mushrooms are insane yeah I know they're like they're like an alien thing on this planet
1:36:41
absolutely and then we topped that off with playing which me and Stu played which is a game I picked up secondhand
Planet - Blue Orange
1:36:47
at um North Devon Fox and Hounds weekend um basically you have a 12sided
1:36:54
docahedron. 12sided might be I think it's 12sided. And basically that that um
1:37:00
represents your planet. It's got little magnetic bits on and you are taking turns picking terrain tiles to click
1:37:07
onto your doda planet. What is this planet? Yeah, planet. It's really really basic. Really simple.
1:37:13
Plan it. Yeah. No. No. Planet planet like Mars or Earth or
1:37:18
Jupiter like planet as well, right? You do have to plan it. Yeah. Yes. Oh, I saw these double layers that
1:37:24
I didn't even see, David. Thanks to you. Well, Mr. Balance, boy. So, you do have to Yeah, you do have to
1:37:31
plan your goes. You've got five um different terrain tiles which have got a mixture of um ice, water, desert, muddy
1:37:40
kind of thing, and like green grass, whatever. Green.
1:37:46
Lovely. You know, mushroom fields. Mushrooms. Yes. Exactly. Do they move? No, no. Once you once you've stuck them
1:37:53
down, that is that is it. There's no moving mushrooms in this one. Um, and you're basically trying to create the
1:37:59
correct type of habitat for animals that are going to come out. Okay. So, if you've got more
1:38:06
green, more grass section. So, let's say a certain animal, I don't know, let's pick an elephant, needs the biggest type
1:38:14
of desert with at least next to one bit of green. So, you're then going to be looking at your planet. Well, I've got a
1:38:20
1, two, three, four, five, six bit of desert and it's next door green. Stu had a four bit of desert and no green. Then
1:38:26
I'm going to win that animal. So, it's kind of a balancing picking what you want. Can you see what's coming up as well? Yes, you can. So, you're picking what
1:38:33
you want now, but yes, you're definitely keeping an eye on what is coming up and then you score. So, you do have to plan it.
1:38:38
You do have to plan it. You also have like an overarching goal. Like mine, for example, was most amount
1:38:46
of water spaces and stews. It was very ob like they are secret but it gets quite pretty obvious what they're going
1:38:51
for. His was ice. So then he's also looking how many ice animals are coming up. Is it worth me try? Yeah. So simple
1:38:59
over in about half an hour I say but yeah nice little tactile isn't thatification.
1:39:05
Yeah it feels like a different way but I do like that planet thing though. It makes me want to play. It's also because it's it's going to
1:39:12
attach to another three pieces. So each hex, cuz it is a hex shape, has got like made up of six triangles. So most of
1:39:20
them, let's say you're going to have three triangles of of desert, two triangles of water, and then two
1:39:26
triangles of that doesn't make six. Whatever the number, one triangle, one triangle of I don't know, ice
1:39:32
something. And then if you can then sort of align that next to some more ice, make them bigger. That's how you make
1:39:38
that. How do they clip in? It's kind of click to the mag. Oh, it's magnet. Oh, that's really satisfying.
1:39:43
Yeah, it is. It's good. Yeah, it's good. I want to play this game mainly just for that. Really simple.
1:39:48
Some would say you're attracted to it. Yeah. Look at him trying to get in. This is our This is our over here with
1:39:54
these bad cuz we're being positive. Stop being negative, Adrian.
1:40:03
Oh dear. Yeah, there's something about this Gridcon episode that all just falls apart.
1:40:08
Devolves every single time. It brings out the best in us. That's what I find.
1:40:14
So, yeah, that was that was my sort of flora and fauna, although I suppose it was just flora really. There was a bit
1:40:20
of fauna, bit of animals involved. Um, yeah, it was good. Nice. Yeah. Nice. What about you, mate?
Let's Make a Bus Route - Saashi & Saashi
1:40:26
So, I played Suburbia, as I mentioned, and then a few of us had a little bit of time sort of left before our next
1:40:32
planned game. So, um, Punchboard Adam, as I'm going to call him, um, said,
1:40:38
"Should we play a quick game of something? I've got a few things here." and he said, "I've got the Sachi and Sachi
1:40:43
um Let's Make a Bus Route," I think it's called. So, they've now turned like it it's the dice game version, the Let's
1:40:50
Make a Bus Route has turned into Get On Board. Yeah. Um which is the sort of the standard version, but he said, "I've got the dice
1:40:57
version of this." And as I really like Get on board, I said, "Let's give it a go." It's a two-player only. And it kind
1:41:04
of basically takes get on board and um Ganson Clever and sort of smashes it
1:41:11
together basically into one game. So you you'll roll a bunch of dice on your turn and you'll use that to tick off the
1:41:18
passengers you're picking up on the bus. And then with whatever's left, the other person picks one dice and uses that that
1:41:25
tells them what their route on the map's going to be. So it' be like you can go two up and one left or right sort of
1:41:30
thing or whatever it is. And that's all you're doing repeatedly. Then it becomes my turn and I'll roll the dice and mark
1:41:37
off the passengers and like get get on board when for for several of the types
1:41:43
of passengers when you then reach a landmark or a certain type of stop then you start and score points. So, if
1:41:48
you've picked up four four people who are from businesses, when you get to like the business park or whatever it'll be, the skyscraper symbol, then you will
1:41:57
count how many you've got in your row so far, and that'll turn into a number of points or tourists or whatever it is.
1:42:02
Um, there's a couple of other bits where you'll start off on a location that's A, B, or C, or you'll have you have to go
1:42:09
through there's three of them on the board, and the more you go through, the more points you get. And it's just that
1:42:14
typical route builder thing of of going around and also just ticking off the standard roll
1:42:20
and right let's just tick off as much as you kind of can as quickly as possible. But it it's it's that like gantron
1:42:28
clever if someone rolls the dice then they pick the three they really want but they're probably also looking especially towards the end because there's
1:42:34
negatives for different things not being able to achieve certain things. They're kind of looking at what do you want? So
1:42:40
if you pick more than there's six different types of sides on the dice and
1:42:46
if you pick each one more than twice for your route planning then you start taking minus points. So what you're
1:42:52
looking to do is pick every single dice twice really to to so you don't take any negative points. So of course they can
1:42:59
start looking at it and going if I take these three you'll be left with that option. That's only one space you're
1:43:05
moving and you're taking a negative and all that kind of stuff. So takes it is only two-player. You can only play it
1:43:10
two-player, but it takes that get on board style and just turns it into a
1:43:16
dice game that still works and has slight difference in it. It's not I
1:43:21
could say like I'd probably say if you had to choose just get the standard let's make a bus route or or let get on
1:43:29
board whichever version. But if you like the if you like that I think you'd find a place for the dice
1:43:35
game because again it's a small box. Yeah. So yeah, just does the same thing but in a two-player and just does it
1:43:41
differently enough. Nice. Nice. Still be good. Yeah. So I had fun with that. Cool. Weirdly, I then played a game with
Railway Boom - Cranio Creations
1:43:48
Punchport, Adam, but I must have He's doing the rounds of the who's turn. Yeah, I must have played it after. So
1:43:54
you must have played the pass. Defense defense of uh perilicon
1:44:01
three. Defense of the pirates.
1:44:07
Now Johnny, now we're Johnny. Yeah, I was thinking that as well, but um yeah, so um we played uh Railway Boom,
1:44:16
which I've been wanting to play. It's the one of the ones from Essen that I didn't get to play and there was like
1:44:21
the buzz around it. Yeah. And yeah, it was really good. Um
1:44:26
basically it's an auction game uh with bidding. Um, and you've got your resources on
1:44:34
your board here, which is also has a little bit of engine building on it. Um,
1:44:40
and you start off by bidding wood for carriages and trains. Um, and the way
1:44:47
the bidding goes is the person at the back gets to bid first, and then the next person has to bid over that bid to
1:44:56
go to basically be able to bid in. Um, and that keeps on happening. Um, and
1:45:02
then you get another chance to bid and over bid. But the person who's highest
1:45:08
bid pays full price. Person who's second uh in a three player plays half price if
1:45:14
it's a four player plays full price. Um, then in a four player if the third
1:45:19
person play half price and the last player plays pays nothing.
1:45:25
It pays to be a last speaker less option. They pay nothing of the auction cost. Yes. So there's ability to every auction
1:45:31
there's ability to buy or pay more stuff to get more things out. You still have to pay fullback for that but the auction
1:45:37
cost more expensive to be to have the first dibs of because then when you then go so when
1:45:42
you the trains usually don't um cost you anything extra. I don't think it's the
1:45:48
carriage that cost you wood. Yeah. So that not only are you bidding wood, you then have to spend wood. You can
1:45:53
always convert two resources into one other resource. So sometimes you might do because that you get a production
1:45:59
phase before you get coal. So you might be like, "Oh, I can actually transfer some coal here, so I could over bid or I
1:46:06
can actually afford to buy a carriage." Um, so you're building a train with
1:46:11
carriages on. Then you start bidding for cities. And
1:46:18
cities, there's a big board in front and there'll be three placements. you pull three city cards. Those city cards when
1:46:26
you bid for them. Um you use money, which is another resource. Um you will
1:46:33
place your station there if you win. So if you get it or even if you don't win,
1:46:38
you're last and you get to pick it. You get the crab city. You place it there and it's called city crab city. Crab
1:46:44
crab silly. Um you place it there and it's usually got a number on it as well. That number is
1:46:51
the amount of carriages uh you get to put out, but it's not like the physical
1:46:56
amount. There's different terrain around cities. So, uh I think Waters four, um
1:47:02
uh grasslands three, uh mountains five, um and I I think that's all there is.
1:47:08
But those are two grasslanders, too, or something like that. Yeah, there there might be. There's different Yeah, there's two, three, four, and five cost for going
1:47:14
through a cost. So, if you got 12 uh and then you had like you could, you know, four threes in a line, you might be able
1:47:21
to go through another city. And if you go through another city, you get these little carriage uh resource
1:47:28
icons, which you can use to power your train and your carriages, which I'll
1:47:34
explain later. But, um once you put your station in there, you'll get whatever resources on
1:47:40
the station, you'll get that as an income, as your income track. you start put pushing your income track up.
1:47:48
Then there's tech and you bid on tech. Tech does lots of different cool stuff. You've got um passives which um when you
1:47:55
do something you get something usually you get instant effects so you'll instantly get resources or instantly get
1:48:01
something. Um you've got activatables which are like tap do a thing at end of the round it refresh.
1:48:08
Um and I think they're all the types of tech. Um, so on the income track,
1:48:14
they've got little milestones. Um, and if you say So say, so my coal, if I hit, um, I think it's like three in, I'll get
1:48:20
five bonus victory points. Um, whereas with the, um, with wood, you instead get
1:48:27
uh, I think it's money. Is it place train down or there's one of them that's train? Yeah, place coal. One
1:48:34
of them's place to train. One of them's take two tech cards. Pick one. You still have to pay for it, but you pay half price. um round it up and then yeah, you
1:48:42
get to play it. Um so you're bidding on all of these which ones you want and
1:48:47
then there's income. You do your income phase and then you can run your train
1:48:52
and you run your train. So you'll have your train and you have your carriages. Your carriages will have like say uh VPs
1:48:59
on it as well as um it might have two pictures of two coin like two coin
1:49:05
carriages. And you know, I said like you could when by going through a city, you can get these little like resource
1:49:10
pieces. You put them into that train. If you have two in there while you run it, you'll get that effect that's after it
1:49:17
as well. So you be you're building a literal engine um as you go along, but
1:49:23
they usually usually cost you coal to be able to have to run it. So you're spending coal to run this
1:49:28
train and this engine as it goes down. Um when you put the resources onto the train, it locks it onto the train. it
1:49:34
will usually have enough value on there that will say how many kind of resources it can have. There's ones that go up to
1:49:39
five, but they usually cost more coal to run. Um, but you can switch your carriages around. So, next time it might
1:49:45
be more efficient to run it in a different order or run it in a different place. So, you run that, get your
1:49:50
resources, and then there's one last bidding phase which is for endame
1:49:56
scoring. And you'll have this a bidding on endame scoring. And each endame scoring card actually has different
1:50:01
resources that you bid on it. The first one I think is wild, so it's anything. Um, so you you could bid it quite a lot.
1:50:07
Um, and then yeah, you'll do all of that and then you start again. New next
1:50:13
round, you'll go over it. Um, you've got all your, you know, your resources and
1:50:18
you you'll bid again and you basically you've got some uh goal cards to the side which are if
1:50:27
you build a station to another station, bit like Ticket to Ride, um, you get VPs. So, um, and then the very first
1:50:34
person to do it gets the the biggest amount. And it's actually quite a difference. Usually, it's usually about 40 to 50% less for the next person to
1:50:42
actually put one on, but there's five of them, so you can try and aim for different ones instead. That's your own one.
1:50:47
Yeah. Um, and yeah, uh, I was playing with Punchboard, Adam, and Bob. Um, Bob
1:50:53
actually absolutely smashed it. he went down the the VP income route and he was
1:50:59
getting insane amount of VPs a turn. Um, which worked out pretty well for him. So, really enjoyed uh Railway Boom.
1:51:07
I can see why there's uh a lot of uh fuss and a lot of uh Sounds good.
1:51:12
Bang about it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'd like auctioning games so much.
1:51:17
Strangely, the auctioning was the best part of it for me. Okay. So, um, like you, I don't really love auctioning
1:51:23
games, although I've now played three recently that I've gone, actually, that's not so bad. So, the whole first,
1:51:30
second, third, fourth, and how much you pay, there's a real like battle of wits sometimes going on
1:51:37
there cuz you'll look around your board and you'll be like, you can only bid eight, you can bid six, you can bid five. But because you can convert two to
1:51:44
one resources, what you can do is go, you've only got six wood and I want to buy this train. I've got seven. I'll put
1:51:49
it on the six marker because if you because you'll then have to bid seven to get the first pick, but
1:51:56
that means you're going to convert other resources into and so there's this constant back and then I'll pay half and you might
1:52:03
actually only want like any of the stuff that's down anyway, right? But they, you know, they really need it. So,
1:52:09
so in the four player game, obviously, it's the first and second. So, you could end up with the pick you still don't want and pay full price for it. So, it
1:52:16
is a little bit mean in that respect. the the map is the bit that kind of if
1:52:22
I'm honest kind of got me and I was like okay everything else the income tracks the resources I didn't run my train
1:52:28
until round three out of four because I completely misunderstood what the map was doing so I thought you didn't gain
1:52:35
income for what you put down I thought you gained the resources so of course I went after what I wanted and then
1:52:40
couldn't fill up the train properly and all sorts there's a few there's definitely some rules misunderstandings on my part at the first But either way,
1:52:49
I the map bit of constantly counting out how many trains I needed to go through
1:52:55
really for me felt like it's sometimes it didn't, but it slowed the There's several times when it it felt like there
1:53:00
was a good four or five minutes of people just counting hex's out and I was a bit like I'm not feeling
1:53:06
because if someone else has put their sort of mele train on a space, it becomes one more
1:53:13
to go through it. Yeah. for each other mele person's mele and you can't go there twice for what
1:53:18
like one person can't go there twice. So there's that bit and then the other bit is that you have to start from the
1:53:23
station that you put down but if you link to another station or another set of your your trains then you can build
1:53:30
from anywhere. So there's this real sort of can I link up to this? No. All right.
1:53:35
Well, can I do this? Yes or no? No. All right. Okay. And that is after you've done the bidding phase where you're
1:53:41
trying to work out what you're bidding on and then you're trying to work in. Yeah. And then it's what you've got. And I felt like unfortunately that bit, the
1:53:48
city bidding was the bit that really made me go, it's good, it's not great.
1:53:54
Okay. For me, it was good. I enjoyed it. I just probably wouldn't I wouldn't buy it and I would play again, but it wouldn't
1:54:01
be my first choice. Yeah. It's kind of that middle ground of seven out of 10. I really enjoyed it, but I wouldn't buy
1:54:08
it. Yeah, that's it's one of those that if someone put it in front of you put it on the table in front of me, I'd be like,
1:54:13
"Yeah, I'll play that. Let's play." But it's not it's not I don't know. I just
1:54:18
wouldn't buy it. The thing that taken away from this, which has got nothing to do with the game. It's the fact you said train me
1:54:23
and my brains went a pupil. A chup choo choo choo chup. Sure.
1:54:29
Little chuples rather than choo choo rockets. Choo choo train. Just for Marcus cuz this is an in joke
1:54:34
between Marcus and Paul. Choo choo I think it sounds like it doesn't sound
1:54:40
like my kind of thing because it sounds like if your first kind of plan doesn't work, you've then got to rethink
1:54:46
everything. Yeah, you do. And that would do my head in. So, it's not for me. Fair enough. So, I saw you guys playing
Voidfall Resurgence Expansion (Sponsored Demo) - Mindclash Games
1:54:53
that. Um, so I had to kind of rush my my dinner or lunch because I had my
1:55:00
Voidfall demo. You did? Oh, you did? I was kind of like, I need to get that done cuz I need to set VOfall up ready
1:55:05
for 2:00. And anyone who has set Voidfall up, you need time. So I was I was already late and uh feeling the
1:55:12
pressure of crap, I've got like 40 minutes to set Voidfall up and obviously with the expansion. So yes, I was
1:55:18
demoing the uh the Voidfall expansion called Resurgence. Um and finally got
1:55:25
there, they had the whole Gridcon photo happening. I just had to abandon the the Gridcon photo cuz I was in mid setup and
1:55:31
I start stressing and trying to get this thing this ready and get the map tiles
1:55:37
out and everything. I'm going off a PDF as well and I'm like, "Oh, what's this? What's that?" So, it's not like a conventional setup. I have to do these
1:55:43
extra things. Anyway, we got set up. The gang arrived and uh yeah, basically
1:55:48
whizzed them through the new rules. Luckily, they all play VO for as a stipulation for them to play the demo that they had to play and knew know the
1:55:54
base game and then off we off we went. Um, and luckily you had the designer to hand
1:56:00
as well. Both developers to hand really. Yeah. Yeah, cuz Nick um is one of the
1:56:06
lead developers on on the expansion. So, yeah, he was there just to kind of help ask questions.
1:56:11
Oh, nice. I didn't realize. Um Yeah. So, he he knows everything about it. He's played it like 400 times. Like veryful. He's an expert. um
1:56:18
completely. I've played against him again. Don't Richard. Um but let me just
1:56:24
quickly go through the exper I'm not going to cover what Voidfall is. Go and look it up. But for those that actually know what Voidfall, what does the
1:56:30
expansion offer? I mean, we got like a sample I would say of the expansion. Um
1:56:35
I I actually don't know fully what's going to be in the whole thing. Um but
1:56:40
what we got to play with at the uh the demo was a bunch of different things that get injected into the game. And the
1:56:46
main one is you get a fifth agenda type called psionics. And psyionics is a is
1:56:51
like a the thing that the expansion's wrapped around thematically. So you can
1:56:56
get a psyionics agenda just like any other agenda. Um and you have a fifth slot that kind of bolts onto your
1:57:02
playerboard. Um and then you can play that just like you would any other agenda as well. So you socket that in.
1:57:08
Um this one will give you um some boons and and good stuff for doing it. Um, and
1:57:15
it also unlocks your Vanguard. So, your Vanguard sits on that fifth slot, but when you socket that agenda in, you can
1:57:21
place your Vanguard into a sector. And what the Vanguard does is it doubles the score
1:57:27
um output of that sector when you agenda scoring. So, you can kind of give it a real nitrous oxide boost.
1:57:33
Uh especially when it's a high one, you can like double bubble. So, that's what the Vanguard does. However,
1:57:38
the Vanguard also invites the void to come and play. Um because that sector is
1:57:45
always in contention. Even if you surround it off, you have to protect it. You have to protect it.
1:57:50
You have to do all that kind of stuff. It makes sense cuz if you're scoring higher then risk, right?
1:57:56
Yeah. They want it. Um but the other thing you can do as well is you can flip
1:58:01
the sinus agenda over to get that ability again. If you do that, it becomes unpure and then you get a plus
1:58:09
one on the voidorn skirmish. So, you're adding more knobbybiness to to your game, but you're allowed to then move
1:58:15
that Vanguard again cuz obviously it's on the board and now I want it over there because it's more beneficial for
1:58:21
me. So, you have this kind of configurable way of uh adjusting your score, which is quite cool. And those
1:58:27
reset every cycle. So, when you get to the next cycle, they reset back and you can use it again. So, it's kind of like a reusable um benefit, which is quite
1:58:34
nice. Um you get a replacement conquest card. So, one of the focus cards, Conquest, you get rid of that. you get a new one
1:58:40
in there and that allows you to get psionic strikes and psionic defense um
1:58:45
uh tokens basically. So you can add in attacks and or defense when you're going
1:58:51
to go into sectors. So it just helps you get over the hump when without you
1:58:56
having to sometimes have the fleet limit you need. Um but you spend them and they're gone. Um and it's also quite
1:59:01
good in competitive mode because as anyone who's played Vo knows, it's deterministic combat. So, it's like I go
1:59:07
in, I've got this power, I will know we'll win and we'll have a tit for tat fight until someone loses, right? But
1:59:13
with these tokens, you may spend them, you may not. So, you might go, I've got this. I'm going to come in kind of hard
1:59:20
and fast as it were, and to sort you out, or I might spend them, I might not.
1:59:26
And it's this another kind of threat aspect that that's quite good in in the game. um bunch of new techs, bunch of
1:59:32
new um houses that are going to be uh put into the game. We played with uh a
1:59:38
new tech called Ascension and it had like um then it's like a little pink paradise little uh icon icon token where
1:59:48
it replaces where the corruption markers sit with the dice and they sit on. So this like a ascended uh population and
1:59:56
uh ascended uh sectors can never be corrupted and they give you an extra
2:00:01
card called enlightenment into your hand on top of everything else you got and then you can then start doing some cool
2:00:08
things that interact with that ascension. Oh, I like that. I always like the population mechanic in voidful turtling.
2:00:13
It's it's kind of a a play on that one for sure. Yeah. Yeah. You get a new um installation called
2:00:20
command station. Um so they help you uh give you some defense in the salvo step
2:00:26
of combat. Um so again they they kind of work differently and they allow you to do some retaliation damage in the salvo
2:00:32
step if you upgrade them. And then merchant guild is another guild type. So if you build them they notch up
2:00:38
every one of your production stats rather than by your population. Um, so you can literally do a trickle effect on
2:00:44
across all your resources using merchant guilds and they also defend your sectors as well. Okay, so there's more in the expansion, but
2:00:52
this these are the ones that I kind of we saw. Um, and there's there's pulse engines that do different things and
2:00:59
there's a lot more going on. There's more stuff, more scenarios, more houses, more tech, more more bits and bobs and
2:01:06
then the Sonics thing. But yeah, so I thought I'd just kind of rattle through that for those that are interested. I am. I love four. It's great. But I
2:01:13
haven't played it yet cuz I've demoed it and then the prototype came a bit late.
2:01:19
So I literally got it like a week before Gridcon and I didn't have time to set Void Fall up and play it because you
2:01:26
need time, don't you? So I've still got it. Um I might put a session in, have a
2:01:31
game before they launch it next year. Uh I'm always up for having a game for say that.
2:01:37
But that was demo and demo went well. Um, we finished and the the guys that were playing helped me pack away, which
2:01:43
is always appreciative and voidful. They lit cuz they they knew what they were doing. I said, "Give us a text."
2:01:49
Yeah. You hadn't sent me a text. So, I went and had a wander over there and it was nearly all packed up and I was like, "You were all set up like 2 minutes
2:01:56
ago." Fastest packown I've ever seen a void for was like, "Right, just military operations like yeah, done."
2:02:03
I remember I went to teach Joel Voidful at 9:00 at the 20 the 12hour board game
2:02:09
and uh I think we finished setting up at 10. I was like, "Right, let's play an hour of
2:02:14
Voidful. Let's go. Let's go." Just to teach him. But yeah, I still still say it's not a convention game.
2:02:21
It's not a convention game. It's not a convention game. It's play at home game.
2:02:26
Nice. There we go. That's That was my demo. I did some other stuff after that. I played a game that I didn't think I
Boss Fighters QR - Pegasus Spiele
2:02:32
would like. Well, not I didn't think I'd like just completely different to any other game that I've played. Um Joel
2:02:37
from Devon Dice bought a game over and it was called Boss Battler. So immediately I'm like uh not interested.
2:02:43
Is that boss fighters? Boss fighters. Is that the QR code? Boss fighters. Boss both both those
2:02:49
words were like this is not interesting to me. QR and I was like okay. Hm. He's like do you want to play? I was
2:02:55
like yeah go on why not. So, it's a a deck building boss fighter. Really, the
2:03:02
only game I've played that's even vaguely similar is Slay the Spire. So, you've got a hand of cards. You're
2:03:08
fighting and protecting yourself and your teammates as well trying to defeat the boss who you know the healthy has
2:03:15
blah blah blah blah. But the interesting thing about this, you play it with an app. So, you set up which characters you
2:03:20
have. So, you're each going to have a character that's the normal tropes, you know, uh archer.
2:03:26
Archer. Yes. All of those things. Yeah, absolutely. And your class. So, I was I
2:03:32
think I was an elf, I think. So, this basically determines how much health you've got and how many cards your hand
2:03:38
sizes basically. So, you kind of slam two decks together, right? Basically. Yeah. So, you already know
2:03:44
how many um how much attack you're you're going to get at the end of your turn. So, you're trying to defend that,
2:03:51
but you can also use your cards to defend your other team members. And the way it works is you hold the card above
2:03:58
your iPad, laptop, whatever, reads the QR code and it knows what card it is and it does the thing. I thought that'd be
2:04:05
really boring and it's like, well, what am I even playing for then if I'm just But it works really well. You can still
2:04:10
choose who you're, you know, like protecting or not protecting. Um, the choices in there, you sort of haven't
2:04:17
got to, well, you do declare it because you're talking, you're sort of talking together like, oh, well, actually, he's going to do U4 damage. So what I've got
2:04:23
a spell here that can protect what so you were having that kind of conversation and basically making it
2:04:28
work for the for the group of you. And um the way Joel was talking about it, he he said sort of you you unlock the game
2:04:35
as it goes along. So he had already played like the first three scenarios. So he knew that for example this toad
2:04:42
thing if you deal it for damage it then does you a poison damage. Yeah. But you don't know that to start with.
2:04:49
You've got to kind of figure it out as you're going like, "Oh, hold on. I only hit for three that time and it didn't do
2:04:54
the thing." So, if you played it, you know, without ever having played it before, you're going to learn these things. So, so then you're just trying
2:05:01
to do lots of small damage rather than, oh, well, my card will boost my attack for next time, so I'll So, you you
2:05:06
specifically not doing those things. Yeah. Um, so you'd learn that as you went along, which is really cool. Um, and
2:05:13
yeah, really really good fun. I don't I didn't think I'd like something that would be so reliant on a bit of tech.
2:05:20
But then, you know, Mansions of Madness is great and I guess you don't have to have a Well, you do have to have the app
2:05:25
to play second edition, but I could imagine you would be able to play without it. Like, I can imagine
2:05:30
what the game would be like without it. Whereas, yeah, this this really works and it's nice and quick, nice and
2:05:36
simple. You could mash different Yeah. different classes and different races together and have a very different kind
2:05:43
of play each time. So, I really liked that. But you unlock more cars. I played this with Josh. We had a a little run. We
2:05:49
went against the toad. I didn't figure it out cuz we were just messing around. But you do unlock more cards as you play
2:05:55
through. So, we did the training bot. Yeah. Mr. Puppet or something, which is like horrible scarecrowy kind of weird
2:06:00
looking thing. And then you get more cards and then you do the next one and then you get some more options. So, yeah, it literally
2:06:06
evolves as you play. Um, and I think for families that family weight as well,
2:06:11
it's perfect. They want to play. For me, it seemed like a light primal. Yeah. It's like my my first primal.
2:06:18
Yeah. My first primal. When you were explaining it, I was like, well, that's what the deck does. It sort of if you don't look at the deck before
2:06:24
you play, which I think you shouldn't, then you discover the beast the first time round and then you go back and
2:06:30
then you know how that creature works, you go back and fight him again sort of thing. So it does well this you're trying to figure out
2:06:36
why you're playing against it. Um like if you attack it from range and it attacks you back maybe it's the range
2:06:42
that's doing the attack back. So you you work out as you go along.
2:06:47
Yeah it it was really good. So it's got sort of it tells you you know it's got so many protection for magic before
2:06:54
you'll start doing it damage so many protection for range. So you're then talking about right well I can do so many range attack this time and what can
2:07:01
you do next time? So there's quite a lot of nice collaboration. I imagine it would be really good with either people
2:07:06
that hadn't played much of that kind of thing before like you said JP kind of a younger audience that might need a bit
2:07:12
of coaching but it's nice to help them kind of discover those sorts of things. So yeah I actually really I surprisingly
2:07:19
really enjoyed it. Would I buy it? Possibly not. But I don't have young
2:07:25
children that I need to be able to involve in games. So, it's, you know, it's probably I'm not the target
2:07:30
audience probably and I don't generally like fighter games, but actually this I did really enjoy it. And there's very minimal admin with it
2:07:36
as well, which is you're holding a card above the thing. Brilliant. Like, what's not to like about that? There's no scoring. There's
2:07:42
no figuring. I mean, you do have to kind I guess you're figuring out, well, I could do 1 2 3 four damage with this D.
2:07:48
But worked really well. Really liked it. And I think with kids who are obsessed with technology and always on their
2:07:53
phones and tablets, he's kind of like, I'm going to bring the tablet in here. Yes. But now we're going to do something with
2:07:59
it. So it's still there, kids, and now we can play a game. And it's it's quite nice for that. And yeah, I
2:08:05
know Josh enjoyed it when he played it. Sure. Good. So yeah. Nice. During this time, so I went to go
Bean to Bar - analog lunchbox
2:08:11
play a weird Japanese Euro with Martin Nandandy and Adam called Bean to Bar. If
2:08:18
you want to try and get this game in the UK, it's about 150 quid.
2:08:23
What? Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's this tiny little
2:08:28
game. Tiny little game about making chocolate. I'm in already.
2:08:34
So, you have it weight is probably about a 4.
2:08:40
You're looking level. I'm out already. You said that and I was like, I'm in.
2:08:45
Finish the explanation. Yeah. I I take it all back. I take it all back. I mean, I've taken Becky's seat. Yeah.
2:08:51
But yeah, it's it's it's very kind of very cutesy in that kind of sense. The
2:08:57
way it looks, it's all about making chocolate literally from the bean about
2:09:02
procuring the chocolate to making chocolate. Money is so tight. You start off with
2:09:09
six six um I can't I think six euros and
2:09:15
jeez trying to get any more money is is crazy. So the way it works is you've got
2:09:22
a 3x3 um grid in the middle. you have your
2:09:28
workers um in a line kind of that goes around the grid that will either go down
2:09:34
a column or a row depending on where they're aligned up on the grid cuz you move around the grid and using time you
2:09:41
can move around the grid. Time is another resource along with lots of other things. But you'll move around the
2:09:49
grid and then within that either row or column wherever you've ended up around that grid are your selection of actions
2:09:56
that you can then place and do. So you're looking at this grid thinking,
2:10:02
"Oh, I need to be able to go and get some beans and then I want to develop a
2:10:07
chocolate which costs a certain amount of beans." And then there's these like uh polyarmo tiles that you have to place
2:10:14
into your little bean uh into your little um playerboard. You've got four
2:10:20
bars of chocolate you can potentially make. Um and then after I've developed this
2:10:28
chocolate, I need to go and sell it or put it into a competition
2:10:33
um or uh sell it at a department store rather than sell at a normal store. Then
2:10:40
you've got another little grid over, another little section over here where you can build your shops. And depending
2:10:47
on what season it is, um, and what shops you've got out, you might get some more money at the end of the round as income.
2:10:54
There is a load more to it. There's basically there's flavors that you can put in your chocolate. Your chocolate
2:11:00
has to be complete, i.e. it has to be in a row. And you've got loads of different
2:11:05
shapes you can buy cuz you can go from 50% cacao, 70% to 100%. Um each one's
2:11:13
obviously the 100% is worth more um at fairs and the you know every everywhere
2:11:18
else. Um it's just worth more VPs etc. Um but it's harder to you need more load
2:11:25
more beans. It's like 12 beans for um like a a 3x3 piece, you know. It's
2:11:31
really expensive to actually get a row in, but you can't have a little bit of
2:11:36
sticking out in that row cuz that's not a complete chocolate bar. No one wants to buy a chocolate bar with a little big
2:11:42
L shape. So, you have to I'd be fine. You have to basically finish the rectangle.
2:11:48
Um, so I think it's it's a it's a 4x
2:11:53
six area that you get. Um, and as long as you've filled out like you can have
2:12:00
like a tiny chocolate bar. So you can just have a one 1x4 that's chocolate
2:12:05
bar. Yeah. You can have a 2x4 that's chocolate bar. But the quality or how many like how
2:12:11
much money you get for department store and every and etc is done by the cacao.
2:12:17
So if it's 50% you get one quality. Then if it's only one uh uh 1x4, that's only
2:12:26
another quality. So that's only a two quality chocolate bar. Like do you want to sell that to the department store?
2:12:31
You might want to cuz it locks up that space because that means you you when when you sell it at the department
2:12:36
store, you sell all your chocolate you sell out, which means you can't then sell the chocolate bar at your shop at
2:12:42
the end. Um but then you might you can have up to four chocolate bars. So you
2:12:48
you'll build different chocolate types of cacao. you go to develop in different places depending on what region you go
2:12:55
to. So whether you go to um uh Venezuela
2:13:00
or uh Ghana, depending whenever you go and get been there, you have to put like a work piece out and you might become
2:13:07
the best partner, which gives you like a little trickle income uh of VPs at the end, but it gets you the beans to then
2:13:14
go make the chocolate. But people get in your way all the time because of this
2:13:20
3x3 grid. I say I want to go and because you can
2:13:26
recruit as well. You recruit workers which help you spend less time and you level those workers up which then also
2:13:33
give you different abilities. But say I want to go there but three people have surrounded that spot. I've
2:13:40
got no way to get there. So I'm going to have to do something completely different and I have to completely pivot my kind of strategy depending on where I
2:13:47
go. And it's got you a very unique way it works as well is if you're the
2:13:53
first person to move round doesn't necessarily mean you're going to go first in order depending on where the
2:14:00
round marker is cuz the round marker moves around with you. You get 12 rounds is the first person counterclockwise
2:14:08
goes first. So it My brain's already melted.
2:14:14
Yeah, I I'll be honest. I lost you halfway through that. What's happening now?
2:14:20
So you there's there's so much to think about and then like every four rounds I
2:14:26
think there's a competition and you want to submit your chocolate bar into the competition to get a ticket. But you
2:14:33
want to be not only have the best chocolate, it's also if two people are drawing, it's first persons to sub
2:14:40
submit it gets the more VPs for submitting that chocolate. You're the OG. you're the OG. So, yeah,
2:14:47
there's a there's a lot of competition on the table. Like me and Nandy were like neck and neck throughout it and
2:14:53
yeah, it was um whereas Adam kind of had a completely different strategy of just
2:14:58
I'm making this amazing chocolate. Didn't really submit it to many competitions, but I'm just making this
2:15:04
amazing chocolate and scoring points by being best partners by getting a load of the beans. And I think in it there was
2:15:10
only like five VPs between all of us. like it was very close game. Um, but
2:15:17
yeah, I really enjoyed it. Beans a bar was really fun. Very heavy. The the work
2:15:23
placement mechanic is just so unique. One, you got in your way by being in
2:15:29
that row or column, but two, if someone else placed their their token out, it
2:15:34
actually made it cheaper for everyone else. So then um if someone else pays the token out, so your first action cost
2:15:41
you one time, your second action cost you two time, your third action cost you three time. And if you ever run out of
2:15:48
time, you have to spend five money to replace it all. Money's not easy to get.
2:15:55
So someone else being there, it's not cumulative. It's only ever reduces it by
2:16:00
one. But that action being free or that action being one less makes a difference. It makes a massive
2:16:06
difference. So that timing and everything else. Yeah, it was just a really fun and I'm going to say a word
2:16:13
now which probably no one else agree with me. It felt nice and cozy. That's your cozy though.
2:16:19
That is my cozy. Yeah. As we met with Rosie and Cozy Board Games. Cozy is about what makes you feel
2:16:26
cozy. That's your And it was it was it was we're making chocolate as well. Yeah. I'm interested more about this.
2:16:32
Could you add nuts into the chocolate? Yes, you could. What did that do? So, if you added nuts into the expansion, the nut expansion,
2:16:39
I just know that everyone was joking about adding nuts into everyone was with Willie chocolate as well. Rather
2:16:45
than Willy Wonker's chocolate, there was Willy chocolate. Um, but Willy's Willy's chocolate Willy's
2:16:51
chocolate with nuts. Yeah, Willy's chocolate with nuts. I thought like Hendo's Willy chocolate. Willy chocolate. Yeah, it was
2:16:59
This is when Marcus came over, man. I'm going to blame Marcus, but no, it
2:17:04
was it was it was just you could add nuts to your chocolate, but you had to do it at certain times. Like certain
2:17:10
competitions, depending on when it was, they would want nuts in the chocolate. So, you'd
2:17:15
have to time when your nuts were in the chocolate to to get the most points.
2:17:21
You didn't sound much. You don't want your nuts in the chocolate too early, do you? No, you don't. Um, but then there was
2:17:26
also seasonal nutty chocolate down on the in the
2:17:32
storefront. My brain's melting already. Too many options, too much choice.
2:17:38
Which meant that the stores were a really good way of getting income early. I found I got some stores down and it
2:17:45
didn't m My chocolate bar was crap, but it didn't they didn't care about that. You were the Cabri of chocolate.
2:17:50
Cab. Hey. Hey. Cadbury. It's not crap. You mean Hershey's? Hey, they don't use, you know, they
2:17:55
don't even use real milk anymore. They don't use cream anymore. They use palm oil as a fat instead of cream um in
2:18:02
Cabri. But anyway, so they uh there was another option
2:18:09
afterwards after you done cuz there's only been about 50. You're doing a rules teach now, which
2:18:14
was to do sponsorships, which you would sponsor a whole like row, whereas if
2:18:19
your stores are there, you score more VPs at the end. So, there's loads of ways to score VPs at the end, and it
2:18:25
ended up being a really close game, and I would recommend it, but it's a Japanese-on game at the moment,
2:18:31
so it's quite hard to get a hold of. Um, whether it I think it it might come
2:18:37
into production here. If it does, that'll be good. But, um, Adam and Martin are both into their Japanese
2:18:44
games. There's a apparently there's a good company in the UK that supplies
2:18:50
imports stuff. Yeah. Um so if you can get it there then also Essen's normally quite a good
2:18:56
there's quite some quite often there's that little corner of Essen isn't there that so if you know what you want you can kind of go there but
2:19:03
I'm sure JP will be planning a business trip to Japan soon. Yeah
2:19:09
I've always wanted to go so I would I would love a ball game. on the other end of the scale to that while you were
Thunder Road Vendetta - Restoration Games
2:19:14
playing that I was playing uh Thunder Road Vendetta.
2:19:20
So every year again I um I try and meet up with the Welsh contingent of listeners. So Welsh Paul and Welsh
2:19:27
Marcus and we'll play something and it kind of doesn't matter what it's just to play some games together and they said
2:19:32
look we'd like to get together like to get a three a five player Thunder Road Vendetta on the table. So I said yeah go
2:19:38
for it put my name down for it. So, those three and I'm just going to say Jack from Sky Tier Games played with us
2:19:45
cuz it's Jacko Jacomao or I've heard about five different ways of pronouncing it from different people, but we just
2:19:51
called him Jack. So, Jack joined us as well. Um, and unfortunately the fifth player there other game sort of overran
2:19:57
and they kind of lost track of time. So, ended up being four of us and we've talked about it last con cuz you guys
2:20:03
played it last con. I hadn't. And it's just random chaos. Yeah. But there is a little bit of something
2:20:09
to it. So, you know, you're kind of moving your car or bike or big rig up to
2:20:17
the end of the track and if someone gets wiped out, then the end of the track
2:20:23
kind of goes on and it's the first one there. If not, it's kind of the last one standing kind of affair. Like a conveyor belt.
2:20:29
Yeah. Well, we didn't see the conveyor belt. Did you not get ready? No. So,
2:20:35
how long did it last? Did you blow up? Very quick. I didn't. Well, kind of. I I had the most stuff left. I think I had
2:20:41
more pieces on the board than the bike player. Okay. So, and I suppose this is my
2:20:48
little bit of a not a bug bear, but I can It's the one bit that put me off cuz I halfway through the game I was like, I
2:20:54
might buy this cuz I haven't really got a random Yeah. bollocks game sort of thing to to play
2:21:00
and this is quite fun and there's enough agency in there. What happened was unfortunately Jack put
2:21:05
all of his cars kind of in a position where everyone could fire on him. So, everyone moved up and destroyed two of
2:21:11
his vehicles straight out. And actually we disabled the third one quite quickly.
2:21:16
Um but he was able to bring it back. But of course at that point you're like he's only got one car left. I was like I can't keep firing at this car. Guess who
2:21:23
won. So cuz no one wanted to no one wanted to sort of kill his last car.
2:21:28
Eliminate him. Yeah. So in the end what ended up happening was um the big rig ended up dying.
2:21:35
Yeah. Before we got to the end. So we blew up the bike that looked like it was going to push them like push the next bit of
2:21:40
the board on. So again, it's a conveyor belt. If someone goes on to the what would be the next board that isn't there, you take the last board off and
2:21:47
it moves kind of up and you keep going. So we killed the bike before it could do that, but then the big rig came up and
2:21:54
was going through a load of buildings and taking damage and everyone just kind of paid a little bit more attention to the big rig and it blew up. And I had
2:22:00
been there's a little valley in the middle and I had a thing where my cars could put down oil slicks.
2:22:06
Yeah. So, I was just putting loads of oil slicks behind me in this valley and watching all the bikes just collide with everything. It was great. And this is
2:22:13
the thing, the narrative is quite cool. I think every game you're going to come away and say, "Remember that time when?" And again, for me it would be, "Remember
2:22:19
that time I literally I had my three cars. One went down the middle putting out oil slicks and the other two went
2:22:24
down the side sort of gumming the works up a little bit and making that middle one, that middle bit the kind of why
2:22:30
don't you go down there cuz that's probably safer than trying to get round the cars on the edge." Um, and so all of
2:22:36
the bikes were just kind of colliding with the mountain sides and all this like the valley sort of rocky bits and
2:22:42
all that lot. Anyway, get to the killed the big rig. Get to the last turn. Jack's just one in front of me. Oh no,
2:22:50
I'm one in front of him. So he um he collides with me and
2:22:57
roll the dice and yeah to to see what happens. And he flips one way and I
2:23:02
thought I don't really want him to go that way. And someone said, "You can reroll that." And before I'd even thought about it, I picked up the dice and started re-rolling it. And the
2:23:08
second I picked up the dice, I was like, "If I roll the wrong thing, I end up under a helicopter." And if you end up
2:23:14
under a helicopter, you auto die. You die. Yeah. And I was like, I can't even tell you what I rolled. I just remember thinking,
2:23:20
it's not what I want. So, of course, I rolled the dice, ended up under the helicopter. He ran and he zoomed off to
2:23:28
the finish line. But if if that if I hadn't rerolled it, the chances are I would have taken him out on my turn and
2:23:33
would have gone for it. It was just one of those I was just like, "Oh gosh." But the little thing was that a bit like I
2:23:39
don't know if you've played Magic the Gathering Commander, there's a little bit of a social contract that you don't go after the weakest player typically to
2:23:46
kind of you don't want to eliminate people too quickly. So it finishes the game plus the finish marker on.
2:23:52
Yeah. Plus just feel bad from eliminating someone like we could have eliminated him on the second round. Yeah. And I just like I felt bad a
2:23:58
little bit and I did think that I reckon that'll happen a few times and that's why I end up not buying it. So fair to
2:24:03
him he did everything he should write and kind of like used the fact that no one was really going to target him to
2:24:09
get to the finish line. So so yeah, he did the right thing. Well done Jack. But complete chaos and I but and I have
2:24:15
stories to take away from it. But turns out obviously he's from Sky Tier Games. He's designed a couple of games and has
2:24:22
his little I think he said it's four or five man studio that he's got. Um, and he said, "Oh, I didn't realize you're on
2:24:27
like we're talking about it and halfway through obviously I'm, "Oh, I didn't realize you're on a podcast." He said, "Would you like to try my game?" So,
2:24:35
we've got a copy of Onwards to try. Yeah. It looks good. Did you get it from his boot in the car?
2:24:41
Did he Does he have lots of copies of Onward in No, we get you one of these. So, it turns out he accidentally gave
2:24:46
Paul two copies. Okay. So, Paul had already opened one of both of them, but he said, "Look, grab the other copy off Paul." So, so I ended up
2:24:53
nabbing that off Paul. So, going to give that a try soon. Um, but it looks good and Paul said good things about it. So,
2:24:59
hoping that that'll be that'll be something for us to try in the future as well. So, good game. Always good to play
2:25:04
with the Welsh contingency. Lots of silly jokes. So, the reason why I said or a bike or a big rig cuz of course the
2:25:11
explanation was when a car does this. Yeah. Or a bike. Or a bike. Or a everyone had to put
2:25:16
their bit on it to kind of go it affects these things too. And like just little jokes like that that I always like with
2:25:21
those guys. So, yeah. Had a blast. Um, random bollocks. It's is basically that. Yeah. So, after
Ada's Dream - Alley Cat Games
2:25:30
my voidfall demo, I'd have pre-arranged a game of a dream with Stuart and but I
2:25:36
think by this point Stuart is flagging and he was like a flag and he probably would have done anything to stop playing
2:25:42
anything and gone home. Bless him. But, you know, he's he's a man of his word. He's he's committed to a game. And I was
2:25:48
really excited to to play Ages Dream uh cuz I wanted to try it since we had a demo at Essen last year.
2:25:54
Yeah. Uh not the one. Yeah, the one literally last year. Um which I' which which wasn't a great
2:26:00
demo. We struggled to see the point. Well, it's because it the the teach was and someone did say, I don't know how
2:26:06
you teach this wrong, but the teach was move a dice and then I'll tell you what to do. Yeah. We didn't know why we were doing
2:26:12
it. Okay. So, I'll move this one. What do Well, that unlocks this section. You do. Okay, fine. I don't know why I'm
2:26:17
I don't know why I'm moving the dice sort of thing. So, we kind of left that demo with a bit of like h is this game good or was it
2:26:23
just a bad demo? And uh pleased to say it's a bad demo. The game is really good.
2:26:28
I was pretty written off from it and then Yeah. Yeah. So was I. Yeah. Yeah. No, I played um and yeah, the the words
2:26:36
I use is lovely stuff, which is like Alan Partridge's quote, like lovely
2:26:41
stuff. Uh, and it's just really nice. Um, how the game works is you've kind of
2:26:47
got this rondelle right in the middle of the board. Load of dice placed on on
2:26:52
this little circles, three dice each, um, in six pools. And on your turn, um,
2:27:00
you can draft a dice from this pool. So, you have to move one from a pool to the next one. If you want to move it
2:27:05
further, you spend coal to move it further and you nudge out one of the
2:27:11
other dice um into kind of into the middle. Um the the rules there are it
2:27:17
has to equal or exceed the number you're nudging. So you're going I'll take that one just nudge the other one out.
2:27:22
So there you're kind of looking at what space you want to nudge out from because you get a bonus. You might get coal, you
2:27:28
might get brass, you might get card draw, whatever it might be. So that's in the equation, but you're also looking
2:27:33
for the number that you want and also the color. So it's got that kind of coinbraesque
2:27:38
the dice do many things for different things. So the the numbers mean stuff and the colors will mean stuff based on
2:27:46
um various different stuff. So you basically first first type of action is get get a dice, move it, boo, knock
2:27:52
another one out, get the benefit, and then you can take your dice and put it into your computer board. And on the
2:27:58
computer board, it's lovely because you've kind of got um a 3x3 grid on the
2:28:04
right, all all kind of, you know, rows and columns all uh broken up by these
2:28:09
little discs that sit in between all of the rows and columns. Um and on the left, you kind of got
2:28:14
storage where your dice go initially, and they kind of go in your little storage area. Uh you got a steam track
2:28:20
which the more you improve your steam track will allow you to uh increase the
2:28:25
cap of the amount of points you will score which I haven't explained yet. Uh and you got this innovation track which helps you as a resource to spend for
2:28:32
stuff in the game. Um so you're kind of getting your dice there. And uh the
2:28:37
other thing is with the number that you're picking or the dice you're getting, you've got a hand of cards and
2:28:43
uh you can play the card if it's got a matching uh dice number or it's within a
2:28:48
range or you pay the money based on the dice value. The different cards do different things and that means then you
2:28:54
can play a card and you can get extra shisel, extra stuff, do cool stuff. Um,
2:29:01
and the thing is, and you got your hand of cards, you don't like redraw it at the end to draw cards. It's actions you
2:29:07
need to do in the game. So, I quite like that actually. It's like you you're not just drawing up all the time. You've got
2:29:12
to like make an effort to refill that hand to make yourself more efficient. So, you kind of got that as one um lane
2:29:19
of things that you're doing. And then the second lane is you're taking a dice. So, on another turn, you're taking a
2:29:24
dice and putting it into your computer. And then you're activating the color of that dice to do the action on the board.
2:29:30
Now the board's split up into four quadrants around this rondelle. So you've got institutes in the top left
2:29:36
which is green. You got travel which is blue on the top right which is a map of England with lots of colleges and or
2:29:41
universities and and towns. You've got meetings which is yellow at the bottom left. Um which is how you get more cards
2:29:48
in the game. And you got Adah's study uh in the bottom right which is pink. And I haven't mentioned it. Ada Love of Lace
2:29:53
is kind of the person that this this game is uh based around because she
2:29:58
technically invented the computer back in the day. Um but set in an alternate history where she didn't die
2:30:04
young. And the game has got a nice little booklet about the history of Ada Love Lace and if you want to learn more about
2:30:10
it, read that. And I haven't read it yet, so I don't know. Um and I actually have it cuz it's literally that.
2:30:16
Well, did Turing then follow on from that? Yes, apparently. Oh, okay. Yeah. of her designs or or
2:30:23
they work together though, didn't they? I had no idea. I need to read the book. I just played the game. Um, so yes, you
2:30:28
take the dice, you put it in, you activate the color, you do the action, and then the more you're leveling up in that action with research uh track uh
2:30:35
kind of points, the more powerful that becomes that you can do more more stuff. But the whole point of the game is in
2:30:41
your computer, you're putting the dice into slots into columns and rows. So
2:30:47
numbers being, you know, obviously one to six. And you can get programs, which I have to admit are probably one of the
2:30:53
cutest components in a game, little punch boards that you get that you gap
2:30:59
with the little gaps. They're all different as well. And you socket them in to the column or row, which is a
2:31:04
condition which says they must be ascending. It must be odd numbers, even numbers. The maybe two greens have to be
2:31:10
next to each other, whatever it may be. And if you fulfill that condition, you'll get extra points for that column. And
2:31:16
a programming thing, like a programming thing. Um, so you're kind of putting this dice in there. So you may have like I've got a one in
2:31:21
there and a five and a whatever. But the point is when you're doing the secondary action, you're unlocking those discs.
2:31:27
The disc in between the dice. The discs are coming out and then you need to put gears in there. And you start off with
2:31:33
like a plus and a minus gear, but you can get multiplication um gears which are very good for obvious reasons um cuz
2:31:40
you're scoring points off the the equation that you're making off the column and row. So if you're going like,
2:31:47
you know, is 6 + 4 minus one, then you're going to get the total at the bottom. And that's what the steam cap
2:31:52
Yeah. sorts out. Because you could get five times five. Yeah. But if your steam cap isn't enough,
2:31:57
if Yeah. If it's 20, you're getting 20. Yeah. That's all you're getting. So you could have the best equation, but it's
2:32:03
just not enough output. So you're kind of balancing that and and other things. And you might go, why would I put a
2:32:08
minus on? Cuz why would you? Cuz I want high numbers. Well, if you don't fill in
2:32:14
those gears, Yeah. you get penalized at the end of the game. So you minus one is better than having
2:32:20
another and if you have a cap, who cares? Yeah. Like it doesn't do anything. I still get the maximum points. So you're kind of
2:32:27
doing this game until basically the the ninth dice slot is placed in someone's computer. Once that happens, it triggers
2:32:33
the end of the game. Um and then basically scorey scorey euro euro. For
2:32:38
me, the flow of this game was really good. like it it it was very puzzly, very satisfying. Um it fits in for me
2:32:47
like I I've got to the point with Coinbra I love Coinbra to death but I've played it to death and I'm kind of finished with it and I've been looking
2:32:53
for something that kind of fits in the similaresque space which dice it drafting it's it's just nice and it and
2:33:00
this just slots right in cuz it when we did again when we did the bad demo it felt like a dream was going
2:33:06
to be a lot higher weight. Yeah. Is it? I don't think so. No,
2:33:11
no. I I think for me it made it made sense. I might I might give it another go then sense and it flows. My concern was that it was very high and
2:33:18
we didn't get a good teach and I said if it's very heavy and I'm not sure that I will need to play it sort of thing.
2:33:23
I mean Stuart did a cracking teach considering he was knackered and he kind of said well this is how it works and
2:33:29
all right it kind of made sense. Yeah. It might help because I had a an inkling of the game but it's kind of like Yeah.
2:33:36
And the player aids are fantastic. So it's like literally says you do that that and that or you do that that and that and it's like okay. So you're kind
2:33:42
of doing two channels of of action and you don't have to do one then the other. You kind of do the first one a few times
2:33:48
until your warehouse is full. Obviously if you got a full warehouse of dice, you can't take any more dice. You're going to have to start moving
2:33:54
them, allocating them into your computer. Um but yeah, I I really enjoyed that game. And I think coming
2:34:01
off the the demo, I needed something like like that and it was just like, yeah, this is cool. Um, and we played
2:34:07
with uh Stuart's son Josh and Martin came um and Martin won the game. He
2:34:14
stonked it with with a really high kind of programs and equation scoring where
2:34:20
Josh just went full on. I'm just going to max these equations out. He got loads of multiplications and upped his steam.
2:34:27
You know what? He got like 70 odd points just doing that. And it was quite nice to see actually he abandoned a bit on the board.
2:34:34
Definitely multiple routes. got a big wedge on that whereas I kind of was a bit even Stevens and you know
2:34:40
was in the running but not quite enough to to beat Martin out but yeah I'm looking forward to playing this again means there's multiple
2:34:47
ways of winning and there's not just one no different
2:34:53
paths but yeah I really enjoyed it really enjoyed it she worked with child Charles Charles Babage Babbage yeah one of the cars
2:34:59
it's a 100 years later so um yeah just just better than Babage Turing found rediscovered her notes and
2:35:06
used that to help thing but 100 years apart. So they definitely did not wear no
2:35:12
not unless um spiritually not unless he had a Ouija board or something. Yeah. Yeah. There's not much mention of that
Emberheart - Mindclash Games
2:35:18
reincarnated. Me and Becky about that time were playing Emberhart. Yes, we were. Maybe trying to remember how to play it
2:35:24
even though I remember it being really really obvious and simple and then we're like wait what do the dragons do? What
2:35:31
the whole point? What? And it is very very simple. Just a bit of a relearn. Just a bit of a relearn. Yeah. I think
2:35:38
what I might try and do, and I've been thinking quite heavily about this, when I play a game, I'm then going to write
2:35:43
like five bullet points to put in the box so I can remind myself this, this,
2:35:49
and this, and this, and that is what I'm going to do. Ask me again in six months if I've done it, I'll say no. But the intention is
2:35:56
going to be to do it. So, Ember Heart is um a Mind Clash play game. I would say
2:36:02
it is definitely more um in-depth than one of their other Mlash play games which is Astra. Possibly maybe on the
2:36:09
same level as Ironwood I would say. I reckon different game though but Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So, this is a kind
2:36:16
of it's not really auctioning but it's a it is. No, I Yeah, you're not you you do have finite
2:36:22
resources, but you can as the game goes along cash them in for workers that return back to you. So, you start with
2:36:28
10 grunts they call them. I think they actually do call them grunts legit in the book, but they're basically they
2:36:34
basically Yeah, basically it's a one-time worker that will not come
2:36:39
back to you. So, you're just paying for it out as it goes. So, you've got five tokens of
2:36:44
which there are more than five kind of areas on the board to place them. Um, you then play, if you're putting your
2:36:50
token, say in the five spot of one area, you need to put five little workers under it most of the time. Um, there's
2:36:56
another area where you can sort of win cards to add the amount of workers that
2:37:02
you have in your pool. Um, you can win dragons to your area. You can either get
2:37:08
them from the poachers camp or you can, I don't know, tame them from the mountain. Yeah.
2:37:14
Pach them down from the mountain. Yes, exactly. With the sherper looking with the sherper looking person.
2:37:20
Yeah. Yeah. Like the D from above. Like how to train a dragon bit, right? Yeah. And and then you got the the really wild
2:37:26
dragons through the mountains is the really wild dragons. Yeah. So then you've got um sort of
2:37:31
pastures. They end up killing them. Yeah. You're not There's no killing of dragons in this. Your dragon No, they kill They kill the people
2:37:37
though. Yeah. The dragons kill the people in this game. They eat them. Of course they do. Yeah. Yeah. Not in the game.
2:37:43
Yeah. Why else Why else don't they come back? They They're tired. They either get lost trying to find
2:37:49
someone sleep. They get lost trying to find dragons or they get eaten by dragons.
2:37:55
They get lost trying to find a pasture. Thought about it like that. I like that. No, they're tired. No, they're dead.
2:38:00
And the ones that the ones that are trained know how to come back at the end. That's how that works. Yeah. Okay. Well, the dragons are eating
2:38:06
people apparently. Um and the thing I the interesting thing about this game, yeah, you're kind of do
2:38:12
you want extra workers for VP? Do you want um pastures that you can link your dragons to to get other bonuses on? You
2:38:19
know, you can move your tokens up further charts. But there's a really interesting bit there called the poachers, like the raid attack or
2:38:25
whatever it's called. It's the raid attack. Yeah, raid attack. So, you've got two bad things that are are an option for the end of the round.
2:38:32
So, one might be for every blue worker you have, you got a grunt.
2:38:38
A grunt. Yeah, something like that. or one might be for every I don't know uh red dragon in your hand you're going to
2:38:44
lose a yellow worker whatever. So you can kind of you're scoping out what everyone else has got and what's going
2:38:50
to hurt them the most and what's going to hurt you the least. So instead of taking an action one of your five little
2:38:55
pieces you can take one of four options you've got like who's going to be first next time and who can get to move one of
2:39:01
their sort of um you can move action or was it no you can readjust your stack basically. So you can take one stack off
2:39:08
the board and put it back on with within a different number of words. You bidded really heavily on one thing and no one else gives a crap. You
2:39:14
can take that back and then maybe just use it. You can move it somewhere else. Or if Yeah. If you want to be So
2:39:19
obviously there's only three things in each area. So you if you end up fourth in the bid, you're not going to get
2:39:25
they're just going to come back with some equipment. It's not you're not really getting the most out of it. So you can use that to then go where
2:39:31
there's not going to be only one person can do that in each round. And the second thing is um you
2:39:36
get extra gear and you can is it level ties or something like that? Some mountain ties match the ties which is
2:39:42
really good for the mountain. Y that's it. The third one is something like you get to choose which raid y
2:39:49
which bad thing happens. So you're like I say you're scoping it out one face. Blime me. That's yeah you think oh god that's really
2:39:56
going to hurt me but it probably won't affect anyone else. Right. I need to get dibbs on getting rid of that one even at the cost of potentially missing out on
2:40:02
an action I particularly want. And there's a fourth one and I can't remember what that is. Reduce the flame by two. That's it. So all the time you're kind
2:40:09
of trying to balance how I don't know some actions increase your decrease how
2:40:15
hot your actions are. Yeah. And basically it doesn't really matter how hot your actions are. You don't die cuz
2:40:20
you're flame proof cuz you I don't know whatever this whatever the backstory is. But that's a massive score multiplier.
2:40:27
So you win VP at the end. You count up your dragons and all the other stuff, but a way that you can get a massive
2:40:32
amount of points as Adrian discovered if you're really far away from the top
2:40:37
person. Oh yeah. You get a massive amount of VP. So how if you're really cool if you're cool compared Yeah. And
2:40:43
everyone scores. Doesn't matter if everyone's at the top and you are maybe four down, you're the only one that's going to get this end
2:40:49
end of the game score. But if one of you is the hottest you can possibly be Yeah. and one of you is the coldest you can
2:40:55
possibly be, you are gonna get maximum points. But it's only it's only the the bit I liked about that was it's only a 10
2:41:02
space difference. Anything above 10 doesn't matter. So if you spent ages, so I spent quite a long time trying to make
2:41:07
sure I near the bottom and on the last turn I was like there's like a 16 gap difference here. Have I really
2:41:13
wasted that? And then everyone started trying to head down to try and reduce it. But because they all started doing
2:41:19
that, actually, I ended up exactly 10 spaces away and got the most points I could out of it. But it meant I felt I
2:41:24
could be more efficient because of it. Cuz you could be, you're right, there could be 20 spaces between the two. And it's just not an efficient
2:41:31
use of not of that lack of heat sort of thing. But you've only got five. You've only got five rounds. Five or four rounds.
2:41:37
I think it's five. Can't remember now. A a lowish amount of rounds. So this is not going to take forever and ever and
2:41:43
ever. You place your tokens. You got five stacks. Yeah, you got five stacks. So, you place those. And when you've done that, you
2:41:49
then resolve. So, whoever bided the high bidded, I don't know what the what's the verb? Bid.
2:41:54
Whoever bid the highest. Simples. Whoever whoever bidd the highest bid,
2:42:01
they get the first choice and next person gets the next choice. So, you know, yeah, it's typical auctiony type
2:42:07
game. Um, but some things really matter to you and some things really don't. So, of course, they It really surprised me.
2:42:12
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was really impressed with this. My only only criticism of it, and this
2:42:17
is weird because it's also one of the reasons why it's a really great game. It's really beautiful. Lots of colors,
2:42:22
lovely artwork. Um, is it Andrew Bosley who also did Everdale? Yeah. So, artwork
2:42:27
is absolutely beautiful. I have to say though, because the board is quite highly colored,
2:42:33
it can be a little bit difficult to discern what's on the board, like the cards. I just wish that the board was
2:42:39
maybe just toned down just like 5%. So that the colors on the cards are a bit
2:42:45
more obvious. That could have been though because I was playing it like upside down.
2:42:50
I don't I think I thought it was fine, but you're right. If they had toned it down, I also wouldn't complain at a lack of color on
2:42:55
the board. The artwork on the cards is beautiful. I just think because the board is so vibrant and beautiful, that can be a
2:43:02
little bit distracting from the colors that are on the board. The cards kind of blended in a little bit. That is It is so not a problem.
2:43:08
This is me just being really really pedantic and picky about it. But that is a I think that could be difficult for
2:43:14
you. It could be. Yeah. The one thing you've forgotten is you've got a dragon. Oh yeah. You kind of kind of a big part of it. You
2:43:21
get a little dragon companion that you can put on top of one of the stacks and it adds stuff. So
2:43:26
um what it does you can and you upgrade and I'll talk about that in a second cuz it's kind of one of my favorite bits and
2:43:32
slight bug bears at the same time. So it will for instance increase the stack the
2:43:37
power of the stack. So it counts as like it could be worth two or three. In which case if you go for the three space you don't actually have to spend anyone. So
2:43:43
they're not going to get eaten by the dragons or lost in the valleys or whatever it is. They're tired.
2:43:50
Tired of life. No. So that that's one upgrade you can do. The other upgrade you can do is it gains
2:43:56
you gear if you place it on the if you're the first if you're the first one to place it or if you place it on the three spot which
2:44:03
is kind of like the sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad but it then it decreases the flame
2:44:09
your flame hotness. So I ended up we had we had we played
2:44:14
the slightly asymmetric one and my one was you get to upgrade your dragon by spending gear. That's it. I had that one.
2:44:20
Yeah. So, I was just trying to get and they're worth the more upgraded your dragon is on these three tracks, the
2:44:26
more points you get as well. I really went after increasing the tracks to try and get more points and to make my dragon were like more powerful as well.
2:44:35
I felt like there was a lot a lot to it for a simple teach, which I think is the the sweet spot really for those kind of
2:44:40
midweight maybe just over midweightish games. Probably the third time I say it, but most surprising game for me as along
2:44:47
with whispered. Yeah. No, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Uh I met up with uh Pablo
Redacted*** - Eerie Idol Games & On Mars - Eagle-Gryphon Games
2:44:55
and he I can't really talk about it, but they've got a spin-off coming
2:45:02
um from the old King's Crown. Um I think I can say this bit. Um there's a there's
2:45:07
a spin-off game coming in the works and I got to play it with Punchboard Adam and it's a really good two-player game.
2:45:16
simple in nature but has so much depth. And Pablo was
2:45:22
getting so involved with me and Adam playing against each other. Like he'd be like, "Oh, this would be the best action." Oh, but you could do this and
2:45:28
you could do this. And he was he was loving it. And yeah, I I' I've got a lot
2:45:35
of time for Pablo and um old, you know, old king's crown. So um yeah, thank you
2:45:40
for the teach Pablo and yeah, me and Adam had a great time playing it. Nice.
2:45:46
Uh, if he uses the name that I suggested to him, uh,
2:45:51
you want royalties? No, no, no. I don't want royalties. I just want credits. I just want credits. I just I'm going to hold you to that,
2:45:58
Pab. If you're listening to this episode, I'm holding you to the the the credit for the name, right? It wants his name in the rule book as
2:46:04
lead developer, right? No, no, no, no, no, no. Just, just just, just just right at the end. Special thanks. Just right at the end, James
2:46:10
Davey. Do you even have to say special thanks? Just randomly just James Davey. Right. I want my name in a rule book. God damn
2:46:16
it. Fair enough. How many games did you play? I played on Mars with uh Tim and Nick.
2:46:25
So Nick uh the developer of the Voidful expansion. Um we sat down cuz they were
2:46:31
kind of floating about with like a midweight game and I was like, "Oh, you wanting to play this?" I think I can't
2:46:38
remember what game it was. It's the construction uh midweight game came out last year.
2:46:46
Can't remember the name of it, but anyway. Um and they they just went they both kind of went no we we want to play
2:46:53
a heavy game but usually it's easier to get someone to play like a a more midweight and I was like nah let's play
2:46:59
something heavy. So he said what about on Mars? I've got that with me and I was like yeah level
2:47:05
I haven't played Lerta all weekend. Let's get Lord to the table. So, got to sit down and and and play on Mars and
2:47:12
yeah, real real real good chaps. Um, played I think Revive with Tim um two
2:47:18
years ago. Um, that was when I accidentally years ago, three years ago. That's when I
2:47:23
accidentally stumbled on the broken. It's been erased now that broken combo in the corner. But yeah, we had a really
2:47:30
good fun game of on Mars. Just sat around had chilled and had a chat and we actually got it. Everyone kept going,
2:47:36
"Oh, you're not going to finish that." And and we smashed out in two hours. If you know what you're doing, it's not
2:47:42
a long time. Yeah. Yeah. We It was There was no downtime. Smashed out in 2 hours. We all know what we're doing. We've all
2:47:47
played it before. Yeah. Really good game. Real Yeah. close. Good game. Enjoyed it.
2:47:53
So, cheers for that, Nick and Tim. Yeah. If you're listening. They're a good bunch. We love them.
2:47:58
Yeah. Then we got asked to play a game at 11 p.m.
Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock - Perro Loko Games
2:48:04
Crazy. Crazy. after Davey's crazy two late nights and he thought let's go for the hattick.
2:48:10
Let's go for the hat trick and I've I've I've played heavy games all day as well, didn't I? Exactly. You just come out of on Mars
2:48:16
and then Mr. Dirty said I really want to play your the astronomical clock
2:48:22
in Prague. Oh god, this game. And this uh basically
2:48:28
it was one of the ones in Essen. It's a release in Essen that we we missed. Yeah. Um, and I had to get the game out
2:48:35
of the main room before 11 before the the the room shut. Mhm. So, I literally had to do the thing that
2:48:41
was I hate doing is literally just put my arm on the table and just drag all the components into a box cuz time I
2:48:47
didn't have time to bag it all up properly. Oh god. So, we literally got that out the room
2:48:53
and we went to the uh the restaurant area and then set it up on a much smaller table. Um, and literally had to
2:49:00
piece this thing apart and we we set it up and it's like, "Oh my god, there's just so many bits and bits. It's too busy. The board's too busy for
2:49:07
me." And it's Yeah. Which is Periloco Games who did Sattorii, which was just a white
2:49:12
board. So it feels like they've gone from white with minimal design to all the design.
2:49:18
Yeah. It's for me it was like I'm sorry for interrupting
2:49:24
it. It was just way too busy UX. Like it for what it was once you actually got to
2:49:30
the core of the euro, it's not bad what you're doing. But it took my brain way.
2:49:37
One, maybe cuz I've been playing since it's 11:00 p.m. 11:00 p.m. and I've been playing heavy games all day, but and two, I just it it
2:49:45
I like games that when you look at the board, you can work out kind of from the
2:49:54
symbology how to play the game. Um, and this it took me way too long for my
2:50:00
brain to work out like this bit over here is linked inter to this bit over here is interlink to this bit over here
2:50:07
to and it's not the the symbology of what stuff does was easy. Yeah.
2:50:12
For re like this is a resource. This is your this is how to get your engine. This is this is do this. But how it all
2:50:19
interlin did not make sense to me for so long because it there's no there was no kind of
2:50:27
coherence as to why this did this like why is this clock going backwards when
2:50:33
we're doing this? Why is this moving? Like yeah, it was for me just
2:50:40
way too busy board. Yeah. So, it's one of these games where if you love a rondelle,
2:50:46
you're you're in your element because there's about 17 rondell's in this game. I'm surprised we didn't have a rondelle
2:50:52
on our playerboards. That was the one thing I was like, "Oh, no rondelle." Instead, we got a bingo card of Jesus on
2:50:57
the Rondo player board. You've got a rondelle um of of actions
2:51:02
on an outer ring. You got a rondelle of actions on an inner ring. You got another one a rondelle of uh moon spaces
2:51:08
on another ring. You've got a build rondelle on the bottom left where you're building these big windows and you got a
2:51:14
build rondelle on the bottom right which is little windows that goes into the and you got a clock that goes backwards on the
2:51:19
Yeah. And then you got two clocks that rotate around seven rondell so far. And yeah, I think there's seven seven
2:51:26
rondelli kind of. And why was the middle clock backwards? I don't know. Don't get it. Um, but you
2:51:32
kind of basically the crux of the game is you activate the uh the kind of main
2:51:39
disc at the top and you can go forward one space unless you power up on these tracks to get more movement. And you've
2:51:45
got um these break tokens on your playerboard. So you can literally break as many times as you can up to five to
2:51:52
push this clock further um to get an action you want or rotate the inner disc
2:51:57
back anticlockwise to create a pairing of actions. So you got like an outer
2:52:03
action and an inner action. So you kind of like me messing with this thing and then you do the actions and do a thing. Um and
2:52:11
that's the pretty much the core mechanic. You put a worker down, Bosch. And once you kind of run out of workers,
2:52:17
you do like a reset where you get your workers back. This moves um one
2:52:22
space, which is kind of a timer for the round. Four rounds in the game. And uh then you activate your moon um which is
2:52:30
basically you move this in the in the rondelle. You move this token around that many spaces and get resources.
2:52:36
Do you move your GIA counter to another GIA project? Literally. Oh, he had it earlier with
2:52:41
whatever it was the expansion for voidfall. He said the word renegade or whatever
2:52:46
resurgence. No, your person you get a this vanguard. Vanguard a vanguard does a vanguard with
2:52:52
which vanguards and then the vanguard and I was like oh guy
2:52:58
no this the moon like what the hell? Yeah. And it fixes your clock. Does this moon have to do with anything?
2:53:05
This moon annoyed me cuz I was like why does the moon fix your clock? Yeah, it
2:53:10
powers. Come on. Yeah, it really maybe there's some story I don't know about um or how you or
2:53:20
is that the proper pronunciation? I don't know. So, I think someone corrected me when I was there and I was like, "Okay, I'm should be silent if
2:53:26
it's Czech cuz it's a Czech Republic, isn't it? Should be silent." Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
2:53:31
or or um but yeah and I can see there's
2:53:37
a good Euro game there but for me too busy too much like it just didn't make
2:53:44
sense to me like why does the moon fix the clock like sometimes you can get away with this these kind of things in a
2:53:50
Euro game if it's not pragmatic sense because it works in so many other levels
2:53:56
but yeah it it wasn't and maybe I would have had a different experience if we didn't play at 11, we definitely would
2:54:02
as well. Um, but well, before you guys played, so I this was one I was keen to look at cuz again,
2:54:09
I enjoyed Sattorii. I thought it was limited like it had limited shelf life cuz there's only really two base routes.
2:54:15
But when I heard Perilo was having some a game that was going into like the hotness sort of boards and all that, I
2:54:21
was like, good. Okay. I like them as a publisher. Like had a good chat with them in essence. Good to see them getting a game out. Since it's come out,
2:54:29
I've not heard the greatest things about it. So, I'm like, "Okay, well, where's the hype difference?" So, I spoke to
2:54:35
Mark Ellis and his lot were playing just earlier in the day than you. And he sort of I said, "Oh, how's it going?
2:54:40
Like, what's it like?" And he said, "It's too busy." And he said, "And this worker, I'd love to have used this one worker, but I've been locked out of it
2:54:46
for the whole game." And I thought, "That's rubbish if you've got a piece you actually want to use."
2:54:51
I thought, "Oh, that doesn't sound like a great game." And then you guys came back the next morning and went and I
2:54:57
thought ah it's such a disappointment because I was really hoping that I love the idea of it and I think
2:55:02
there's some good kind of uniqueness in in the game. Um and I think if we didn't play it overnight till 2:00 a.m.
2:55:10
probably had a better experience. Would have had a better experience for sure. And I do see a good game in there. Um there is a good I just don't see a
2:55:16
great game in there. Yeah. And I think we was having this conversation during the weekend and it's like there's so many good games,
2:55:23
but the trouble is our sh our shelf wants great games, not good games and
2:55:28
good isn't good enough. Yeah. To to hit the shelf now and that's just the the the fact of the market and where
2:55:34
we are. Um so so yeah. So I enjoyed the experience. It was fun. I mean, you know, David T asks you to play games at
2:55:41
2 a.m. sod it, you know, sleep with your dad, Tambo, don't we? And uh that's what
2:55:46
we do. his ships back to his room. Nice. He did. We didn't know if we'd return, but he came out.
2:55:51
He came back. Yeah. Yeah. We just said night, Dave. Yeah. I was going to watch Star Trek in his bathtub till whatever time.
2:55:58
So, so yeah, it's uh I I would play it again. Yeah. Um but I'd play in the morning.
2:56:05
Yeah. I don't The thing is I'm not even sure if I'd play again. Yeah. I think there's
2:56:10
there's just other better Euros I would prefer to play. And then we went to bed. Finally. And then we went to bed. And
2:56:17
then uh I didn't wake up again. Yeah, that was Davey's gon. That was my And that was my GCON. So I
2:56:24
will catch you all later. So Sunday morning, did we have breakfast
TURN 5 - GRIDCON 6: SUNDAY
2:56:30
again? Can't remember. I did. Yes, we did have breakfast again. And we then played Nemesis Retaliation.
Nemesis: Retaliation - Awaken Realms
2:56:36
Oh, you did? I still need to get a game of that. Yeah, really liked it. Um it was me,
2:56:41
Curly, Tambbo, and Josh. Um Stew's done. So yeah, it's enough like the original
2:56:48
version that I've played, which I think might have been Nemesis, just standard Nemesis. Okay.
2:56:53
So you're you're moving from room to room via these corridors, but it's more modular. So every time you go to explore
2:57:00
down a corridor, you're going to flip a tile. It's going to tell you what kind of room to put. Either pile A, pile B,
2:57:06
pile C, or rando pile. And from that room, it's going to tell you where the corridors lead. So Curley got really
2:57:14
really irritated because he was trying to then backtrack to get to another room and he he had to go literally all the
2:57:19
way around the ship because none of the corridors would go the correct direction he needed. So you roll for noise to see if you're
2:57:26
going to get any of the aliens coming at you. Um and each corridor's got a different number. So you might pull as
2:57:34
you pull them out the box. They're all just random order. So you might have a a room surrounded by number of fours. So if you roll a four, that's just going to
2:57:40
be bad times. but it might be all ones. So it you might not get any noise at all. So that was quite interesting. Um
2:57:48
it still had that kind of ob sort of your own objective mixed with uh a basic
2:57:54
objective. So you got to decide is everyone being nice or is everyone going to try and backstab you at the last
2:57:59
minute. Guess what happened? But actually, you know, shenanigans. Yeah, shenanigans. But right at the end,
2:58:05
everyone did ditch their dodgy objective. So, we did all win, which was which was nice cuz you didn't achieve your dodgy
2:58:11
objectives. Yeah, this is it. I didn't really understand what it was. I didn't really understand my dodgy
2:58:16
objective cuz it was to do with something that was different this version, which is there's a ship coming
2:58:21
down. Yeah, you need to arm you need to arm the machine gun or Yeah. And the machine gun's going to I
2:58:27
can't remember. I I I couldn't figure out what my version of the And it's like, well, doesn't appear to be moving
2:58:32
very much and it doesn't appear like anyone else is moving it. If I start moving it, that's going to You can pick this much later than the
2:58:38
original. Now, you stay you hold on to it until the end. You hold both objectives. The first person to ditch one of them gets to pick
2:58:44
another three action cards. The second person to ditch another one gets two action cards.
2:58:50
Yeah. And if you're the last person to ditch that Yeah, that is quite interesting. Yeah,
2:58:55
that is quite interesting. Um it was all going nice and simple. Nice
2:59:01
and simple. Then like like happens in Nemesis, suddenly the board is full full
2:59:06
of aliens and it's all, you know, you've got a little bit more firepower now though, don't you? With retaliation. I was playing as the medic. So
2:59:13
Okay. Me not really. Yeah. Your marines generally like a lot. Yeah. There was a lot of more, you know,
2:59:20
grenade throwing. I think I don't know if it's the same with the original one cuz I can't remember, but your um
2:59:25
fighting in your corridors is very different from fighting in the rooms. So this is new for this edition. This what I like is that because you're in a
2:59:31
corridor, firing down a corridor means you're sort of firing more and hitting. It's a lot more effective than trying is
2:59:38
harder cuz he could be anywhere. Makes makes sense. I like I like the idea. That's quite nice. You at the start to
2:59:44
do make Shench. That's why corner. Yes. So at the start you can pick um four
2:59:52
like like bonuses. So that might be Oh, you got oxygen in this as well. And if you don't in each segment in each sort
2:59:59
of section of the ship A or C section, you've got to find the oxygen life support area because if you don't,
3:00:05
you're just going to die. And that could be someone else's like dodgy objective like turn off or affect the oxygen
3:00:14
um capabilities of the ship. So that is quite funny. So every time you move, you got to turn your oxygen down one. So you
3:00:20
need to find oxygen tanks or have some kind of way of being able to affect that. I quite liked the grenades that
3:00:26
you could pick because if you lobbed them down a corridor, you could have tons of aliens in that corridor. You're just going to nerf them all. It was
3:00:32
really good. Cool. Really, really enjoyed it. Yeah, I do want to play it. Yeah, I need to give this one a go.
3:00:38
The I think when we went to Essen, it was the the hotness in one of the Yeah, you could they booked up on like
3:00:45
30 seconds on day one and no one could get in. I'd say combat is fairly easy just like regular Nemesis like it's it's quite
3:00:51
simple. You're rolling different kind of dice. So if you've got a grenade, you're rolling story though, isn't it? It is. Yeah. And everyone was be not I
3:00:58
don't behaving that's that's going way too far. But it it was it was fairly it was fairly sensible. Like it wasn't
3:01:06
people weren't just running around with grenades chucking them at each other like can be the case with Nemesis. Yeah. You mean Oh yeah. You
3:01:11
mean Adrian? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You mean lovely stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Lovely stuff. Yeah. Locking me in an airlock and chugging a
3:01:17
grenade in. Thanks Alan Partridge over there. Lovely stuff. There wasn't there wasn't too much contagion happening which was
3:01:24
quite nice. Well, I mean to other people I was fine and T was fine. You're the medic. Yeah, I was fine but I didn't get
3:01:31
anywhere really even near anything that was that could have given me contagion. Maybe I was just lucky or cuz I was
3:01:36
following Curley and he was scouting out the room so I didn't need to do as many noise checks. So yeah, it it was fine.
3:01:42
But yeah, definitely would play again. Really good game. Yeah. Nice. Cool. Yeah. So basically you
EVE: War for New Eden - Titan Forge Games
3:01:48
you nearly had a fifth player, didn't you, Stuart? Nearly. Yeah. And um at this point we were we were a
3:01:53
man down because of him going to the DMV
3:01:59
and don't forget my license. Yeah. And uh we agreed to play Eve
3:02:06
War for New Eden on on the Sunday morning with uh Jimmy and Mark and uh
3:02:11
yeah, we needed a fourth player. So we went wandering around see managed to just nab Stuart. So, we kind
3:02:18
of ended up nicking him and dragged him over to play a Forex game and uh yeah,
3:02:23
we had a lot of fun. So, the the reason why I'm doing Alan Partridgey kind of quotes is it's Mark's fault because we
3:02:29
literally spent most of that game just doing Alan Alan Partridge quotes to each other zombies, you know, cuz what's
3:02:37
realized he likes Alan Partridge and he realized that I liked it. That was it was a quote. It's a quote fest. Um, so
3:02:44
yeah, that was fun. And but anyway, the game, you don't want to hear me doing all the nonsense, but yeah, the g the
3:02:50
game itself, we played at Essen, we played a demo. Um, so I was quite excited to see uh how this full game
3:02:56
experience kind of worked. Um, it's pretty much a race to 10 victory points. So, this game's quite tight. So, June,
3:03:03
yeah, when you get when you get a VP, it's a big deal. It's like boom, I'm I'm nearly there. I'm on the way. Um, but
3:03:09
it's very streamlined and very quick and snappy and how this this game works. Turns were rapid apart from combat,
3:03:15
which you can expect combat to to be a bit more dragged out. But you were literally going I'm putting a cube on my
3:03:21
playerboard and I'm either going to move like um exploit or extract and uh
3:03:27
research and different things like seven different actions that you can do and claim and whatever. Um so you put a cube
3:03:33
in a thing and you're like I'm doing a thing. Right, you'll go. Right, I'm doing this thing. Put in a cube. Done. You'll go done. You'll go. It's very
3:03:41
much flying around and around and around, which is what I really liked about it. Um, and the the map's kind of
3:03:47
set out. Lots of face down tiles, 4X, you can, you know, space stuff. Um, the
3:03:53
production on this is brilliant. Like the ships and the stands look great. They're all different molds for the
3:03:58
different factions that you're playing. Um, and and away you go. Um, what I
3:04:05
really like about this game is you get a technology deck that's massive, right? So, it's like I don't know how many
3:04:11
cards are in this technology deck. It's it's huge. It's ridiculous. Uh, and you start with four on your map and you can
3:04:17
assign in the upkeep phase research points on them as if you research the technology and then you get the the
3:04:23
tech. Are these asymmetric? Cuz I thought they were, but then Jimmy said that they weren't.
3:04:28
I don't think they are. They're not. No. Oh, okay. Um, I think the ships might be the ships are asymmetric. Yeah. I don't
3:04:35
think the the technology is technologies are the same, but there's so many technologies the paths through that it's not really a
3:04:41
path through it because it's not like there's some that has prerequisites. You need this before that, but it's not like a massive tech tree. It's like it's
3:04:48
quite flat, isn't it? You can go Yeah. really wide and pick what you want. And actually to combo
3:04:53
this with this and this gives you certain abilities and etc. And I really like that because I just scratched the
3:04:58
surface. See with one game I scratched the surface on that technology deck and I could probably thumb through it and and do more. Um, so you're kind of doing
3:05:06
all that kind of stuff and uh you're exploring, you're claiming territory,
3:05:11
and you're doing all this stuff. And Stuart, little sneaky git, he he started to expand quite quickly. And I didn't
3:05:18
realize this was a rule, but there's like a a domination thing at the end of the the round when you all pass, which
3:05:25
is if you've got five or more territories, you end up getting um victory point, and if you control the
3:05:31
center, you get a victory point. It's like, ah, right. and we let him get a bit too big and we didn't really have
3:05:37
many wars or combats and then that's it. It all just went into chaos when we started learning he was getting victory points every round. Um so we weren't
3:05:45
having that. Um but what's quite nice is like if you go into combat and you win, you get a victory point providing you blow up a ship. Um but you can also do
3:05:52
victory points through non combat actions as well. So you can kind of trade um uh or or buy victory points
3:06:00
using a combination of the market, isn't there? You put the resources in and that can buy you a VP.
3:06:05
Yeah, it's like uh you just trade it in. It's not really any trade. I forget what it is. It's um Yeah, it's
3:06:11
is it federation thing or no? No, it's one of the actions. Doesn't matter. It is a marketplace down the bottom
3:06:18
though. Yeah. Yeah. You you have a trade action which allows you to convert something to something else. But then yeah, it is
3:06:24
buy a victory point. You can buy victory points. Um, and you can buy uh other cards, but you get
3:06:30
mission cards as well, which are quite fun. Um, which is that if you do this thing, I have one called harasser. Um,
3:06:35
which means if I'm next to someone's home system, uh, with one of my ships,
3:06:41
basically, I'm just annoying them, I get VP. Uh, or if I do this particular thing where I hunker down, build this citadel,
3:06:48
um, and have a large, medium, and a light ship in one place, I get a victory point. Um, so I kind of rushed my large
3:06:55
ship production. I went up to a medium hall to get my large hall, built that ship, moved it in, and that was quite
3:07:01
good cuz I was the only one with a large ship. And then I started kicking everyone's ass, which was fun. Uh, the
3:07:06
combat is quite cool actually. And and it's quite simple to do, and normally in these kind of games that can be a bit
3:07:13
complex and fiddly or massive dice rolling or it does have a bit of dice rolling in it, but it is
3:07:19
limited to three rounds, so it does end. Yeah. So sometimes like keep going, you go, you go, I go, you go, I go. Yeah.
3:07:24
And it's you do it three times and then it is what it is. So it does finish. Um, and the dice are uh basically got white
3:07:32
dice and black dice. White ones have more targets on and black dice have more hits on. And the idea is that you have
3:07:38
to roll enough targets to the difficulty of the ship. So if the difficulty is two, I need to roll at least two targets
3:07:44
and then I need to roll hits in order to penetrate damage through it through the damage damage. So, but it's all on one
3:07:51
dice and it it's quite fairly straightforward. But what I didn't realize in combat cuz in the demo we
3:07:56
didn't really do it. You have three orbits. So, you have like a um a light light, medium, and and heavy orbit where
3:08:04
you can put a leader ship in there and you can put supports behind it which will help boost its die rolling. Or you
3:08:09
can put them in their respective orbits. And everything resolves from light, medium to to heavy. And you also have
3:08:15
these uh deck of strategy cards that you can play before you have your combat. um
3:08:20
face down to your opponents, you go, "How this is pretty much what I'm going to do." And that might modify certain rules in combat. So, you might get an
3:08:26
extra defense or you might get some more uh evasive things. Makes ships more harder to hit.
3:08:33
Twilight Imperium. It's kind of Yeah, but once you spend that strategy, it's gone. Yeah. It's done. So, you you kind of reminds
3:08:39
me of Star Wars Rebellion, but you don't get your cards back. So, when you have combats with that, it's kind of similar.
3:08:45
Um but yeah, we have we have fun. And Stuart kind of got to the point where uh he did the Mario Kart effect and I was
3:08:51
just behind him. So he got his he got too too big for his boots. Everyone picked on him and then I just piked my
3:08:58
way into into the victory place. So someone blue shelled him. Right. Basically. Yeah. And I just went,
3:09:04
"Yeah." It's quite funny cuz Mark said, "Oh, I've got this." Um and he he said, "I'm going to do some epic combat." And
3:09:10
he tried to do something clever and then he forgot that cuz he put this ship behind another ship to support it. He
3:09:17
forgot that people just attacked his support ship instead of his leadership and he went, "Oh yeah, I forgot he could do that." And he completely nullified
3:09:23
his ter. And he just kept going on about going, "Yeah, it was crap, wasn't it?"
3:09:29
And it was just quite funny. But it was a fun experience, fun game. Um, it's it
3:09:34
I'll be honest, it's not my favorite Forex game, okay? But I like the fact it's quick and I think once you know the
3:09:41
rules with it, I think you can get that down fairly quick and away you go. That's the that was their big selling point, wasn't it? It was the 4x for two
3:09:47
in two hours. That was the I think you could like if you get on with it and we we had a bit of stop start with the raffle and things like
3:09:54
that which I'm sure Adrian will talk about in a sec. God dominated dominated the raffle. Um, but yeah, so
3:10:01
it it was cool and that was kind of my last game. I got to the point where I was knackered from Alloy. I I managed to
3:10:07
drag my ass out of bed, play this game. I thought, I'm done now. I'm going back to the sofa. And I had a great concert.
3:10:14
So that's that's pretty much what I got to. But that's me. That's my Sunday. Should we talk about the raffle then?
Not Once, Not Twice, But Thrice...GridCon Raffle
3:10:20
If you want to. So let's do the raffle or domination? I don't know. What was it?
3:10:25
Or was it the Adrian giveaway? The Adrian giveaway. Yeah. As a collection, I hadn't won for a couple of years. I
3:10:31
was due something at least. So, anyway, but I hadn't won. I've never won. What do you mean? The only thing I've won is a
3:10:38
Spanish game that you donated. That was in the 24-hour marathon that you won that. Yeah, I know. But that's the only thing
3:10:43
out of any raffle ever. It's the only thing I've won, which I haven't won for
3:10:48
a couple of years. So, I played Railway Boom in the morning
3:10:53
with um Punchboard Adam again because we got to mention his name for 23rd time I think this episode. So,
3:10:59
who's sponsoring this episode? Taking it off Mark Monk. Yeah. Done now.
3:11:06
Who? Who? Yeah. Who's that guy? Um did anyone play a game with Mark then? No. No. This year we don't like him
3:11:12
anymore. We don't like him anymore. I was He's chopped livery. I was sat behind him. He was playing um
3:11:19
and I was we were playing Nemesis. Ah, we joke. We like Mark. Anyway, yeah,
3:11:24
Ninja games. That's the one. The raffle then happened and as always,
3:11:29
I'd spent somewhere between 80 and £100 on raffle tickets. Yeah, I always do it. I It's one of those where it's like, well, it goes to
3:11:35
charity, so that's cool. If I win something, that's cool. So, £6,100 they raise. It's really good.
3:11:41
Yeah. Phenomenal. again because I know Paul said this wasn't as much as the year before but he always there's always
3:11:48
a massive amount of money that's raised. Yeah, that's really good and I think I think it's good. So
3:11:53
So yeah, so I kind of afterwards I did the math and I was on about 70% chance to win one prize.
3:11:59
So get to about I think it was about the sixth or seventh and I win one and I'm like brilliant. That's cool. That's
3:12:06
awesome. Have a look at the stack. Yeah, there's some stuff on there I like. Um, take photo with Paul, go back to the
3:12:14
table. Literally, I think two lots later, Adrian come to the front. So, I do the
3:12:20
whole like comedy, oh, like, oh, embarrassed. Oh, isn't it this and this terrible sort of thing? And each
3:12:27
time you had to hand your your ticket in to sort of prove that you've done it. Oh, okay. Fine. Take a photo with it.
3:12:33
Get back to the table. four lots later. So, we're not even halfway through it at this point.
3:12:40
Adrian, you better come back to the front again. You've won another one. At this point, I'm genuinely embarrassed. Like, the the fakery of the person.
3:12:47
So, I get to the front and and I can't find my ticket. It's scrolled up somewhere. So, it felt to me like I
3:12:53
spent 2 hours searching for a ticket. I'm sure it wasn't that long, but it felt like I spent an eternity.
3:12:59
Oh god, I missed this. searching for I could feel myself getting redder and redder and redder and all that lot and
3:13:04
find it and all that lot. So by the time I've taken my photo which can I say is an epic photo
3:13:11
Mark Ellis's comment on it in Slack is amazing. What did he say? He just said you can see the the amount
3:13:17
of embarrassment I was feeling every cringe photo cuz the funny thing was I thought I know he's going to be really
3:13:22
pleased to win but every subs can win he's going to be an nth more embarrassed.
3:13:27
I say the second one was like what great luck. sort of thing like I'll do the comedy by the third one I was genuinely like this is actually embarrassing I
3:13:34
can't find my ticket like everyone will hate me like again and I was just like oh no so it was lovely to win three lots
3:13:43
if like usually Jimmy though isn't usually ball game Jimmy that wins though there's a so there was a someone who
3:13:49
he did win there's someone he did win yeah he did there was someone like two years ago I think dropped like£700 or something
3:13:54
ridiculous at once saying he he won like half of the lots that year So, but
3:14:00
either way, so I go up and get those and and come back. And that was sort of looked through the pile and there's only a couple of games I was like, I'm not
3:14:06
going to play those. So, can bring and buy them or whatever or I sold Galaxy Trucker to Becky. Um cuz I knew she'd
3:14:14
you'd asked for it and all that kind of stuff. But there was genuine. There was Sanctuary, there was Ember Heart, which was great cuz obviously having just
3:14:20
played a good game of that. There was Flamecraft, Australas. I've never played Code Names before that was in the stack.
3:14:26
So, there was a good stacker. It was Project Galilea as well. No, I didn't win that. Did you? I thought you did win that. Oh,
3:14:32
okay. Sorry. That was one of the ones he didn't win. There was a There was a couple of Freeman Freeze in there. So, Free Rail,
3:14:39
I think it's called, or something like that. I don't know. But I've been wanting to play Freeman Freeze for a while. So, I was like, "Okay, that's all
3:14:45
cool." Like, so genuinely really happy with the stack of games I won as well cuz at least twothirds of it I was like,
3:14:51
"That's actually going in the collection." So, again, phenomenal. And thanks to Paul for organizing and all
3:14:57
that. And just again also lucky I didn't win one of the games that I'd put into
3:15:02
the raffle cuz I did that at 24-hour board game. My favorite got told off by you for
3:15:09
looking annoyed at winning my own game back at the 24-hour board game raffle.
3:15:15
One of my favorite lots on there was there's a big box of Primal and then there's the Taunted Monopoly set on top
3:15:21
of it. I was like that. I like how that was the kind of the we'll balance off this epic prize by by a
3:15:28
boo on the top. But Monopoly did maybe kind of like Yeah, you're never going to get played.
3:15:34
It be maybe put up somewhere, right? But yeah, I So yeah, so I made out like a bandit on that if I'm honest. But as
3:15:40
I'd won the third lot, a someone spilled a drink which nearly like made it onto
3:15:45
all three lots at once. Yeah. So I was like, "Oh my god, all of
3:15:50
my new games." But luckily it it just missed. I wasn't there as well. So I know it wasn't it wasn't rum or
3:15:56
anything. And then um Louisa Bry came over and said, "Look, what are you going to do
3:16:02
with this like little dragon oxalottle toy?" Cuz I know someone who their kid is going to really appreciate it.
3:16:08
And she was like, "So what can we do?" And I was like, "What am I going to do with this toy? It's going to sit on a shelf or whatever. Absolutely just have
3:16:14
it." And then um was lovely to read, but Emma put on Slack like sort of a little picture and
3:16:20
a little sort of story of of what happened and all that lot and just a big thank you and all that lot was like, "Oh, it was it was very lovely." Very
3:16:27
nice. So So glad it the oxalottle, not oxalottle, whatever it is. I'm glad it
3:16:32
went to a You won a lot. Yeah, I did win a lot. So um no, I'm just grateful that went to
3:16:37
a good home as well and and it was a nice for me. It was a nice sort of finish cuz I think she posted up on the Tuesday
3:16:44
or something like that and it was just a nice like touch base afterwards. So, it's hard to maintain a grumpy demeanor
3:16:50
when that sort of happens as a persona. So, but no. So, yeah.
3:16:56
Why are you grumpy about winning? I wasn't grumpy about winning. I was I was awkward about winning. I just like to be grumpy in general. It's a nice
3:17:02
It's a nice day. Yeah. I have to try and balance him, but it's impossible.
3:17:07
Yeah. Yeah. I think the last thing I did on Sunday was nearly have to rage quit temp.
3:17:12
Oh, that was a good Oh, really? Yeah. It's just the book end of the of the weekend. Is this the 10th
3:17:18
play of 10? It probably was. Maybe not 10th, but not far not far off. But, you know, when you're at that point where you you just
3:17:24
you're done. You're tired. You're done. This game is this game is by no means rage quitable. Like like it's it's
3:17:31
everything that is lovely and calm and nice. You kind of flipped the table with one hand. There was one purple house and all
3:17:38
of us were trying to fit it in our thing and I thought, you know, you do that thing where like, right, well, if I do that and do that and do that, then yes,
3:17:43
it'll fit in there. So, you do all those things. You're like, oh, that doesn't bloody fit. Oh, no. I can earthquake it, but you
3:17:50
can't put it on the end of your street to begin. No. I think everyone was genuinely like I
3:17:56
think Adrian said, I don't think I've ever seen you as angry as that. She she actually screamed like proper scream
3:18:03
shouted and about 12 tables all went sort of real quick neck turns like head
3:18:08
turns and I was like oh my gosh like Becky are you actually all right and we made a joke about it and I saw a few
3:18:15
tables sort of smile and all that and it was funny because then when I was like we I couldn't fit the purple house
3:18:20
it whatever totally fine totally fine and I was only cross that I I thought that purple house basically
3:18:25
I thought I'd figured it out and then I I Uh, no. And then like at the end of
3:18:30
every round, you like discard all. So I was like, "All right, we'll discard." I was like, "No, no, we'll do it. We'll do it." I was like, "Well, it's all right." It's like they didn't want to make me
3:18:37
cross anymore cuz it was like, "Come on. Come on." Yeah. It was like JP and Barrage.
3:18:42
Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it was just it you have a moment. Or me and me and Game of Thrones.
3:18:49
Yeah. We all had a moment. We've all had a game. I was just I was I thought I'd figured out the No, it's not going to work. Yes,
3:18:55
I've figured out the way to do it. And I hadn't and it was like Yeah. of rage.
Adrian's Light Games Round-Up
3:19:00
I played a couple more light games and I'm gonna quickly run down. So I played a lot of like filler light games. It
3:19:06
felt like at this grid gone. Is that all the ones you won or No, no, no. Just just genuinely like
3:19:11
people were like I've got 15 20 or like half hour or 45 minutes gaps and do you want to play? Yeah. Go on then. I'll sort of sit down and learn stuff. So I'm
3:19:18
going to do a quick rundown of the ones we've not mentioned. So mentioned TMBBI, Lord of the Rings, Shaw we've mentioned a load of times. Viking seesaw and
3:19:24
Kabanga played those. Um, Leopardy, which is the study of birds,
3:19:31
of butterflies. I was going to say that's not it's not birds. Yeah, Leopard. Leopardy. Okay, nice. I like that.
3:19:36
If I said to you, it's a game about card shedding that's combined with Connect 4.
3:19:44
How do we feel about that? No. Card shedding and connect. So what
3:19:50
as in like so similar to the gloom card shedding or so card shedding as in you've got a hand
3:19:55
of cards and you just need to get rid of them. Okay, fine. I thought you meant because of for some reason with butterflies and shedding.
3:20:02
Yeah, I was. Yeah, I was going down that route. So card shedding is general mechanic. It's a bit like scouting that where you're just trying to get rid of
3:20:07
everything. Mhm. So there's a connect four style 2D board
3:20:13
and and a bit like with ice and idols, you want to get your like the counter slides to the bottom of whatever row you've played. And each row on this
3:20:20
connect four board has like three of a kind, two of a kind, three, three run, a
3:20:26
single, all this kind of stuff. And I get it. You've got to kind of work up through runs. So you have to play either a run
3:20:33
or a multiple that's higher than what's on the table already. Um, so someone puts a one down, you can put a two down
3:20:39
or two twos or Oh, wait. We played this a two three. That was Odin.
3:20:45
Oh, yeah. Sorry. So, you play those and then it's just the first one to get rid of your cards.
3:20:50
Now, if you can't play that person has to reset, which allows them, you've got like a wild card. So, it allows you to
3:20:56
they can reset their wild card, but everyone draws back up their hand size. So,
3:21:02
me and um Punchboard Adam um drink. So me and Munchboard Adam played this and I
3:21:07
was really thinking what I'm gonna do is get him to shed get him to reset all the
3:21:13
time. So I'm gonna push the board when I want to push the sort of the stack of cards when I want to and hold back when
3:21:19
I want to to force him to reset all the time. And he he did I managed to make it work. So we didn't get the connect four
3:21:25
thing. We were sort of building it up and you could see like connect four does. No one was really going to out edge each
3:21:31
other. We were quite good at kind of blocking each other's connect four route, but by making him do all of the
3:21:37
resets and stuff like that, I was able to force. So, I did get the connect four in the end. Um, but managed to sort of
3:21:44
set him so he was having to do the resets, which is he's losing a turn every single time he has to do that. And
3:21:49
it's actually quite a I don't think it's anything particularly special, but it's a little box game and it's doing something cool and unique that I didn't
3:21:56
expect. So yeah, when I was given the sales pitch of its card shedding and connect four, I was like, you're not
3:22:02
selling it to me, I'll be honest. Like, so that was that one. I thought that was pretty good. Cool.
3:22:07
I played a uh Sachin, another Sachi Sachi called 1 a.m. Jailbreak. This I bought that.
3:22:12
I've heard of this. This is another card shedding game. Um where you're just trying to get rid of everything. Then again, it's playing
3:22:18
runs or multiples of a kind. The difference with this is what you're trying to do is you can only play within
3:22:24
one card difference of what's currently out. So if you've got three of a kind, you can play two cards, three cards, or
3:22:30
four cards. You can't play a single card. You can't play five cards in your run.
3:22:36
And at the same time, what you're allowed to do is you're allowed to so if someone had three threes, you're allowed
3:22:41
to add a fourth three before you play your run, but you're not allowed to deduct any cards off of it. So, you're kind of
3:22:47
doing that thing where if you think someone's got like nine cards in a run, you're going to try and keep that number
3:22:53
as long as possible to make them spend it two or three at a time and break up that run. Cuz of course, again, as soon
3:22:58
as they've got rid of all their cards out of their hand, that's that round over and you play best of three. And basically, it's it's whoever's got the
3:23:05
most cards in their hand, that's minus figures. And it's just it's like golf. No, it's not like golf. You want to be
3:23:10
on closest to zero. Minus points is not good sort of thing. Mhm. And there's a real sort of push pull of
3:23:16
okay, well, I want to I've got several fours. So, I've got four in a run and three fours and all this kind of stuff
3:23:23
or four four sixes or whatever it is. I want to keep it about that number. So, you're trying to force the other people
3:23:28
around the table to keep it at the number of the card runs or Mhm. So, you can still play around
3:23:33
so you can keep playing as much as possible. And at the end of each round, you pull a card into your hand. Um, so
3:23:39
you can again you can manipulate it's a bit card drafting. You can manipulate what you've got. And again, it it's
3:23:45
doing the the usual sort of trick takey and sort of card shedding thing of there's nothing particularly special about it, but it does exactly what it
3:23:51
needs to. And that's fun. Well, yeah. And it's a good laugh. And Sachi and Sachi artwork is notoriously
3:23:57
bad. Um, simplistic and stylized things, but it's just no, it looks like a like a
3:24:02
sort of childish scribble sort of thing, and it just kind of makes that game a little bit more of what it is. Um, and
Tag Team - Scorpion Masqué
3:24:10
then finally, the surprise, which was the last game I played, was tag team.
3:24:15
Mhm. So, I saw a lot of that about. Yeah. So, Marcus has been playing this on BGA. Apparently, it's quite good on
3:24:22
there. And he's finally he picked up a version. He said, "Do you want to play this?" And I was like, "You told me it's a basically a memory game and my memory
3:24:28
is shot at the best of times." So, there's multiple different characters. You played two of them at the same time
3:24:34
and you like tag team wrestlers. Yes. So he had like Morpheus and uh some
3:24:40
other underworld demon as part of his I had cowboys and fairies at one point on
3:24:46
my the fay whatever it's called on my and each set is completely different. So
3:24:51
what you do is you put down their basic card to start with of the both people and you just sort of shuffle the two of
3:24:57
them up and you put it down and then you each turn over that card and you do whatever it says and it typically is
3:25:03
here's a special power, here's an attack or here's a defense.
3:25:09
So if you attack, you just take the amount off of one player and as soon as one of your players eliminated the game
3:25:14
is over. And I thought I can't see what's here to this game at all. and if I've got memor memorized 20 cards in a
3:25:20
stack, you're having a laugh. You normally get about seven cards into a stack and the game is over. So, that's all you're kind of having to memorize
3:25:26
and work out. But, let's say the first card in Marcus' stack is an attack card
3:25:32
and I draw you then draw three cards out of the combined deck of everything and you look at them and you add one to your
3:25:38
deck in secret to where it's going to be. doesn't have to go on top or bottom. But if I know his first card is an attack card, I might make my first card
3:25:45
the defense card and hope that he hasn't made his first card something different to push the stack
3:25:50
sort of differently, you know, so that what you're trying to do is maintain all your defenses against their attacks and
3:25:56
trying to dodge all of their defenses against the attacks. And it works. Now, I ended up playing these
3:26:03
two really complex characters, which was the cowboys and the fay. So the the cowboys only doesn't matter how much
3:26:09
damage they do, they only go down one space. Doesn't matter how much you heal, you only go up one space. So he was
3:26:14
doing like 12 damage, which would two shot a normal character, but it was like one one
3:26:19
do a lot of chest damage like but again if he if he' sort it out so it hit my fay. My fay was like three. My f
3:26:25
is like a three people and you need you can wipe out you kind of wipe out one then the next turn you wipe out the next
3:26:31
one. And then the next turn you'd wipe out the next one and then you have to wait for the card that says like if all
3:26:37
your fairy spirits you now lose out of the deck. And it was like okay fair enough. And it just made it's just
3:26:45
really clean thinky puzzle of I'm trying to match my
3:26:51
card versus their card in a certain in a certain set and remember what they've
3:26:56
got. And sometimes I was like, you know what, I can't can't figure this out. I'm just going to stick it in here and hope
3:27:01
that it works out. I was just like, you know what? I'll put the card in fourth and hope that that's now worked out in
3:27:07
the right order. And pleasantly surprised. I don't know that it's a game I would buy myself or that I would
3:27:15
copy of the game. I was I've never even heard of it. Very popular. But it is clever. It is clever in what it's doing. And it's a little bit of
3:27:21
bluffing and a little bit of memory and kind of working things out and trying to make things to your advantage because
3:27:27
you want to attack the right person repeatedly. So you attack whatever card they turned over out of the two people.
3:27:34
So if they turned over the demon or whatever it was, I'm attacking that one. That's the one I'm attacking. Or I had a
3:27:40
I had a character that always said attack the other one. Yeah. For instance. And so you're trying to then match that up to be right cuz what
3:27:46
you don't want to do is spread all your damage over both characters cuz you want to just knock out longer, right? Yeah. So really clever idea. Worked really
3:27:53
well. I could understand why it got a lot of hype. Nice. And that's the rundown of all of my random little fillers that I played
3:27:59
across the weekend. But I just thought bunch them up and yeah, bunch them up and just
TURN 6 - GRIDCON Debrief & Final Turn
3:28:09
[Music] Anyway, I think that kind of sums up our
3:28:16
weekend. So, as always, a massive thank you to Paul, Vicky, and the whole team that helps
3:28:24
out. Um, again, I'm always there to set up and and tear down and there's always like at least another six or seven
3:28:29
people there supporting that as well as, you know, demoers and people just
3:28:34
putting together the raffle was just someone's job on Thursday was was sorting out all that lot. So, massive thank you to that. We know how
3:28:41
much goes into it. Each year we hear about something that's not worked or feedback that they have to deal with and
3:28:47
all of that kind of stuff goes a little bit unseen to some extent and it's just we appreciate the amount of work that
3:28:52
they put into to making a thing. Yeah, it's just it's like I said, it's
3:28:58
it's pretty much one of my favorite conventions if not if not my favorite convention. And this particular one
3:29:04
I've enjoyed the most. This has been my favorite Greek one. I really enjoyed this one. Just I don't know, just gaming with
3:29:11
different people, interacting with different people. And I'll just say a quick shout out to Sofia who
3:29:17
ripped me mercif mercilessly while I won. Yes, she was brutal. Yeah, she's brutal. She's great. So, we
3:29:23
like her. Um, but no, she she was chatting to me and Rob at games law. We had a good 10-minute chat about games
3:29:29
and stuff, and she listens. She's also in our Discord. So, she is. So, thank you. Um, Sophia, awesome to
3:29:35
talk to you. Also, Alex, um, Alex Thorne, who recently had a kid. Um, not board gaming
3:29:42
as much as he used to, but also a listener. And, yeah, we had a nice nice little chat about stuff, life, games,
3:29:49
babies, and uh, all all sorts of stuff. had a catch up with him as well. Yeah, just lots of little people.
3:29:55
I've got a shout out to Scott as well. He came over um and had a chat um which was really nice. Um but I didn't get to
3:30:02
chat to him as much as I would have liked cuz we're kind of in the middle of a on Mars and we Paul had done the
3:30:08
10-minute timer or something or well not in the middle of but towards the end so we're kind of tailing up. So sorry Scott
3:30:15
I didn't get to chat to you as much as I would have liked but it's always nice to say hello said he listens to the pod so
3:30:22
thank you for that Scott I think it's just nice to meet listeners so many people now like and so many
3:30:27
familiar faces again this is the event where I might see this person once a
3:30:32
year and I have played one game with them three or four years ago and yet you can still pick up and have a good chat about
3:30:37
what's been going on and all that kind of stuff and between that and the number of people are like oh I listen to your podcast you
3:30:42
think there's only like x number of hundred people here. I know we do turn up on the gaming rules channel every now
3:30:47
and again which helps sort of that cross player b cross listener base sort of thing but it's always just I still have
3:30:53
to kind of pinch myself slightly when I think where how have we got here compared to where we were 3 years ago
3:30:58
where people are constantly sort of coming over and saying hi and and just sort of it's good to game with you and
3:31:03
all that kind of stuff and great to listen to the podcast so through bloody perseverance that's yeah always always blows my mind but always
3:31:11
grateful that people do come every day didn't It is. Yeah. And I don't mean the dinosaurs.
3:31:16
Yeah. But no, great great convention. Loved it. Can't wait for next year.
3:31:23
Awesome. It's the people, isn't it? Yep. People always convention. The family.
3:31:28
Yeah. Yeah. And it's the convention where I actively don't play with our gaming
3:31:33
group. I do play, but actively try. Yeah. You want to You want to mix it up. You The whole point is to to get out
3:31:39
there, isn't it? Yeah. Gridcon is that for me. I'm going to play with those guys and those guys. I don't see them. I didn't get to do it as much this year.
3:31:46
Shame. I did demo for a full day which didn't help. I did think to myself, I didn't do as good a job of spreading myself about as much as I do in normal.
3:31:54
Yeah. Whereas I think I saw I only played two games with you all. Covenant with you.
3:32:00
Yeah, I played Covenant and Or
3:32:06
Yeah. So three. Yeah. Yeah. Me and JB played three. Yeah, I kind of just mingled which was
3:32:12
nice. Yeah, lovely, lovely, lovely stuff. Lovely stuff.
3:32:17
Yeah, back of the net. As always, thank you very much for listening to our lovely little podcast. We always appreciate if
3:32:23
people interact with us on our socials. We've now got Discord, so come and join us there and have a chat with us there.
3:32:28
If you have a few clammy pennies you want to chuck our way, then please do. We always appreciate it through coffee. Until the next GridCon,
3:32:36
whose turn is it anyway? Heat.
3:32:42
[Music]