Episode 7: Cult of the OLD, with W. Eric Martin

In this episode, I kick it with W. Eric Martin to catch up on life beyond BGG, Board Game Beat, and to discuss our grand plan to get old games to the table more often.

• 00:00:00 Introduction
  • 00:00:44 Catching up with WEM [Con Crawl + Board Game Beat]
• 00:27:16 Fresh Plays
  • 00:28:09 Symbiosis
  • 00:37:16 Ortus Regni
  • 00:50:46 DNUP (Revolve!)
  • 01:01:35 Mayor of Chicago
• 01:12:47 Cult of the OLD Games of the Month
  • 01:14:07 Venedig
  • 01:16:24 Seasons
  • 01:18:45 Planet Steam
  • 01:21:51 Wabanti
  • 01:27:54 Ginkgopolis
  • 01:30:22 Aztlán
  • 01:38:07 Galaxy Trucker
• 01:53:36 Sign-off

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello and welcome to episode 7 of the Kicking It Creative Podcast, where we geek out about board games, the mechanisms behind them, and the people who create them. I'm your host, Candace Harris, and I am super duper pumped to be here today, kicking it with my good friend W. Eric Martin from Board Game Beat. How's it going, Eric?

SPEAKER_03 0:37

Awesome.

unknown 0:38

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Yeah, yeah. You've been busy and starting a whole new chapter of your life, huh?

SPEAKER_03 0:46

Yes. It's been a little too much, even over the past six weeks. I went to Germany. I went to New York. I went to Louisville, Kentucky to see three shows, and that was at least one show too many.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

That is what I call a con crawl.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

It is. I used to do this regularly, and it was interesting because we record video, and you can't do as much when you're recording video. You got to set up, you talk with all this stuff. So it takes time. But when I'm not doing video, which is my preferred way of doing things, then I see lots of people. And I went to Jama and I kept seeing, like, I saw these people at Toy Fair. I saw these people at Shrovar and Mesa. I already know about this. And I felt like I'm just like, I'm seeing these people again, even people that I might not have covered because it's very mainstream or just something I don't think of interest to the to my audience. And I just see them again. I'm like, oh, okay. How about that? Next year, don't do all this. Do less. Do less. Do less. Also because I took so many photos, took so many notes, and I didn't even get to write about everything from Spielvar and Mesa before I went to Toy Fair. I didn't get to write all about Toy Fair before I went to Gamma. So why am I doing that much?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

I yeah, I I I totally hear you. I feel like it's like a meta game with people who are doing board game content, like just figuring out because I'm the same way. Like right now, I have recorded footage for probably like five or six videos that I'm like have stuff for that I just need to like kind of wrap up and you know publish them, but then I'm like still recording other stuff, still, you know, talking about other games, playing other games. It's yeah, it's a lot of great.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

You have you have the opportunity to record something, and you're like, well, I'm gonna talk with this person, I'm gonna do this. So other stuff gets put on hold. I can get back to this later, I can finish writing this, but maybe you do, maybe you don't. I when I left Board Game Geek, I had many things that were sort of in progress. And many of them were some of them had sat around for years, right? You know, things you would never see anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

And then I was like, oh, those from 2021. Just delete, just delete it, whatever. Doesn't matter. Let's move on.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, I have that right now with right after S in last year, 2025, I recorded an a like show and tell video of my game haul. And I just like I was like, I didn't want to, like when I started looking at the footage, I was like, I don't want to put a video out that's like an hour. And so I've been wanting to take snippets of it and like insert future Candace talking about the games that I've played more since then. And I still need to do it, and I'm still gonna do it because a lot of the games that I picked up and that I want to talk about, I still don't see many people talking about them.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

So maybe you can do it this coming October. You'd be like, what have I actually played since last year? Here's the pile that I started with, and I played these, and all the rest of it is just sitting there.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

You know, that's not a bad idea, especially now that we're in March. But we'll see, we'll see.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

We're halfway to Spiel. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Uh so out of the shows you went to on your little tour here, did you like enjoy one versus another? Or it's like what was the atmosphere at these shows like?

SPEAKER_03 4:35

I think gamma would be the one that's most useful to go to because it kind of combines both of them. Spielfar and Mesa, you see tons of European publishers, and that's fantastic. You're also in Europe, so that's awesome. New York Toy Fire is much more mainstream, and it's great to get a sense of what's on the market, and you look around and you're just like, I can't believe people are doing this. My goodness, I did not know that Squishhmallows made so much money because you look at the size of their booth and it's just enormous.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

And those booths are not cheap.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

No, you're looking at a lot of things, and just you get a sense of what's on the market that's actually selling and what the trends are, not just in games, but everything looking around. And it's great to see, but maybe not that much to talk about. Gotcha. Because then I also see some of them at Gamma.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

The main drawback of Gamma is that it was in Louisville, Kentucky, which next year it'll be in Baltimore. Louisville, I don't know if you've been, but there's a lot of closed businesses. I I love to walk around towns whenever I'm at a convention late at night, go find restaurants, eat on my own, do all that. And I walked for 35 minutes to this one place, and it was just one closed business after another.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Bummer.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Yeah, it was very strange. And I show up at what I thought was a little market, and it was really just like a convenience store, and that was also a bummer.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Is it more desolate there than like Niagara Falls where the the gathering is on the US side?

SPEAKER_03 6:12

It is in the sense that there is no Indian food within walking distance. Ah, Niagara Falls has bad Indian food within walking distance. So I mean, I maybe that's better. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

There's no Thai food in walking distance. I was looking for gluten-free options. Those are always standards that are reliable.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

And no.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

How does gamma in Louisville Louisville compare to gamma in Reno when it was in Reno?

SPEAKER_03 6:47

Gosh, I'm trying to, I mean, Reno, did we even walk anywhere?

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Because you're like in the casino, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:54

In a casino. I don't remember going outside the casino for the most part.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

I remember in that 2020 infamous 2020 year, the only year that I went to Gamma, that I think at some point I went out for burgers with Lincoln and a couple people.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

Yeah. Maybe. I know I know I've been out, I forget whether it was in Vegas or we know, where we went to a not a Wolfgang puck. It was the Gordon Ramsay place.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

We went there, and there was also another place we went where they had$15 milkshakes. And they were so good. They were fantastic. It was like as much for the milkshake as for the burger.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

What worth it?

SPEAKER_03 7:35

It was probably also the same calorie count as well, just like stacked with all this weird stuff. And that's what I remember.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah.

unknown 7:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Apparently, I forget the food or I forget the games, but I remember the food more.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Well, I guess we should also say because there are still people out there who might not know, but neither one of us work for a board game geek anymore, and we're both doing our own thing.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

That is true. Yeah. You left in September?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

End of September, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

End of September. And never, there's no announcements. There wasn't anything there.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

It was just sort of kind of weird.

SPEAKER_03 8:16

Candace like turned into a ninja and just like I just disappeared. Yes. A little unfortunate.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

I mean, I posted a good buy note. You were much more just like, I'm out.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Well, it it also was Eric just did the what is it, the dab.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

Yes, Candace dipped out.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

It's just like it's kind of like, you know, when I talked to Aldi about like transitioning me out of the company and everything, he mentioned we'll announce it after Essen. And so I was kind of just, you know, sitting back and waiting for that to happen. And I don't know if the expectation was for me to announce it on my own or if he was initially planning to do something, but then they released a new BGG podcast with no context. And then that made things kind of like weird. So I I don't know. Yeah, it's just it's such a weird thing to me because yeah, you have this mix of people out there who's some like maybe don't even know that I left. I think more people know that you did because you were like, you know, communicated to all the publishers and everything like that.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

That's right. I told them multiple times. I posted a big note just to make it clear.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

And yeah. Well, of course, that also serves as marketing. I gotta market what I'm doing next.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

A little more time to plan. I talked with Scott about leaving in early October.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

And it was very much like, well, you can figure out what you want to do. This is I'm gonna leave.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Just want to be on my own and do my own thing, be my own boss. And uh get back to writing and not all the other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Right, right. So you you so you have a new blog site called Board Game Beat, and of course I love it because anything beat related and drums, like our our our our channels, our new brands are like meshed together.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

They are. They are. I mean Linda, my wife Linda and I talked about all sorts of different names. We're stuck for a long time on turn zero. Like you're gonna before you start playing, you gotta be ready. Yeah. Turn zero, kind of like in Dominion, where you lay out the cards and you look at all the cards there before you start playing to make up a plan for what you're gonna do. And in theory, that's a good name, but of course it doesn't actually say anything about games.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

Or board games or anything like that, or kicking around a lot of different things, yeah. And suddenly thought of newsbeat and was like, oh, board game beat. There we go, it's done.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

I I I love it. And I think I'm like, I have I'm having the same thing right now where I have probably I think since I got my new website up, have kind of come up with a tagline of board games, beats, and buddies because I want to like collaborate with people like you, like, you know, on a recurring basis whenever we feel like it and stuff like that. I I am a musician and I'm gonna be doing some fun things music-wise. But what I realize is anytime right now, as I'm like growing my my channel and my new world, anytime I just have the kicking it creative text, I'm like, it's not obvious enough to people. So I'm gonna, I actually just asked the guy who did my logo. I was like, yeah, can you put Board Games Beats and Buddies underneath so that when I like have that on t-shirts or whatever, it's a little more obvious. Whereas the main logo piece that he did has so many references to games and everything. Either people are gonna notice like the drum set or something, but I do like when people notice that the symbols are 18XX tiles. That was a proud little bit of artistic direction that I was like, I think that would be cool.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Yes, it's trying to find that line between expressive on a personal basis, but also something that resonates and is somewhat obvious.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so the kicking it creative with board game beat. Love it, love it.

unknown 12:41

There we go.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Cool, cool, cool. Any other like personal updates or updates with your blog? I mean, you're you're kind of doing like daily posts, and you can I know, I know I'm subscribed, and I think I have the like the weekly recap email coming in. I like the way you have it set up though.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

Yes, that is all thanks to Linda. Linda did a marketing, she was doing website design, she's doing all this. She is incredibly talented and has time because she's pulling back from her own writing a bit.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

Like, I'm gonna spend time to set you up and then I'm going to let you go. Yeah. See you again. So she was very good at doing that with the sign up where you can get every post immediately by email, or you can get a weekly roundup. And the idea is you can do it as you wish. Or don't subscribe to any of that and just go to the site every so often. And we took a very simple approach with a lot of white space, not too busy.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

And well, figure out figure out whether it works in a few months. Uh we did a survey, we got 400 people responding in the survey. Oh, that's great. What they're interested in seeing, what they think they have enough of, what they want to know more of, and all that.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

And yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

Uh make adjustments because, like I said, going to all three of those conventions was too much. Okay, I know that for next year.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

What else is going on?

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

Part of it is people saying, I don't know if I need every single game being announced. And of course, I don't cover every game anyway, but maybe we need even fewer game announcements. Like I already have more possibilities than I could try.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Maybe it's better just do like industry news. I want to know what's going on. I want to do this. And I'm kind of transitioning where maybe it'll be like an industry news post or an article post that will include game announcements, but it's more talking about a topic in general. Well, doing game announcements. Because, for example, at Toy Fair and Gamma, I kept seeing publishers doing smaller and smaller games. And they might be smaller versions of existing games.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Right.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Or they're just doing smaller games as well. And a lot of companies have talked about how it's hard to put out anything over$40. Now, of course, this excludes a lot of you know more. Yeah, more like established hobby publishers, like publishers like Capstone is still doing this. They're gonna have$60,$70 games. Yeah, there's tons of crowdfunded stuff that will be$100 plus. But for the most part, retailers are just more hesitant about anything over$40. And so they they want smaller games, cheaper games. Yeah. Just because I don't know whether there's a general sense of a recession coming. People are just more reluctant, a little tighter with money. There's questions of birth with tariffs impacting everything else.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

Everything's more expensive. Maybe we just we're gonna get smaller games.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, it it is definitely. I feel like you're on the the cutting edge of like what's going on out there just because you've been in the industry so long, and you're like a walking-talking board game encyclopedia practically.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Sometimes, yes, to my detriment, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

But but I think that's a great segue into like what we're gonna talk about today. I know like you and I was it last year at Essen or two years ago.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

2024.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah, and in 2024, we went to some like used game booth, like a German retailer's used game booth. We made a video just kind of checking out games, and like I would pick something up that looked neat, and you'd be like, Oh, well, let me tell you, Candace.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

It's from this year, and here's the publisher, and here's a new edition of this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, yeah. Reiner Kenizia was on his honeymoon when this one was designed. Like, all just the like rare facts that probably no one else knows. You somehow have that all in your head. And, you know, when I when I was in Germany last year, someone was saying, She's like, I still watch that video. Like, and I personally, because of when I came into the hobby in 2018, you know, I missed a lot of games that, you know, most, I'm not gonna say most people, but like a lot of people like started playing like Katan and then they moved on to other stuff after playing that so much, or Ticket to Ride, or they're all these games, but like a lot of them I kind of missed out on. And so now I'm enjoying kind of going back in time and and trying either stuff that was popular or it probably still is, or even like some of those like rare hidden gems. So today we're gonna talk about something we're gonna try this year to basically revisit older games and explore them and tell people about them. We have the cult of the new, and it's exciting. Like, I do get excited by all the new games coming out, but there's some good ones out there that are older.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Yes, yes, that's right. I love the tagline cult of the old with W Eric Martin. That is your like, I was like, oh man.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

We're talking about old games. I'm not calling Eric Martin. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

This much. Wow, that's harsh. I mean, this is a mantra that I have that I try to keep in mind. Whenever I'm writing about games, where it's like new games are for new gamers. All this stuff comes out of the market, and sometimes you I look at it and I'm just like, I've seen this, I've seen this, I've seen this, I've seen this. But people are coming into the the market all the time. They're just learning about games in 2018, like you, or whenever, later, earlier, and so on. And whatever is on the market at that time is new to you. And then, yes, there's still this incredible catalog of older games that you can discover or never see just because people have been like, I already played that.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Whatever.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

And it's also interesting to kind of I think because of the timing of me getting into modern board games, like I remember when Teotihuacan came out, and it was it was almost like that was the new heavy euro game that everybody was playing. And you know, it could have been my perspective, my limited view at the time, but nowadays I feel like a lot of publishers like Bord and Dice, they'll have like so many Teotihuacans with released within a year, and it's just they're probably a lot of them are probably great, but it yeah, you you can't play them all, but I guess they're catching some of the new people who are just getting into games and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Yes, and that's uh what I try to keep in mind, and then so because there's the personal thing, what do I want to play personally? So what do I also think people would be interested in as novel or as some sort of difference? It I I hit on this really early because I started going to Toy Fair in 2012, and you'd go every year, and it just here's the companies, and they sort of have the same lineup all the time. So Game Right would have a fixed lineup where here's a tiny word game, and then here's a kid's game that's dexterity, and here's this, here's this, here's blue orange games that has a real-time dexterity game, and then this, this, this. Every year it'd be like the same thing, sort of hitting those slots. And deciding you're like, oh, we're doing this again. Except for most people, they're just they aren't aware of that past.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

All the previous real-time dexterity games. They're going to the store. I see this one, seems cool, I get it.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, before we start getting into cult of the old games that we're gonna try to play and keep keep on our our, I guess, menus, whatever. Get into actually before we do that, and this might be offensive too, but speaking cult of the old, my mom, I remember I'm not calling her old. I'm not calling her old. But on episode six, I had my mom on, and it was an absolute joy for me because I knew she was very nervous about it. And I'm like, I will, you know, I will ease you in. I will like explain the games and just like, you know, set you up to like. Chime in with your thoughts and whatnot. And she warmed up and she did great and it was super fun. I've had people message me like saying, Oh my gosh. But the thing I wanted to bring up about my mom is that I guess like maybe a month or two ago, I got her into playing async asynchronously, like turn-based on board game arena, by playing super mega lucky box. I always want to say like super mega ultra. I always want to like add another word, but super mega lucky box. And she loves it. And so like we would just kind of have games going with Matt Knight and another friend of ours, who knows my mom. And the other night, we ended up, because I think she was kind of like missing being in town with us playing games just about every day. So I was like, hey, let's let's fire up a quick game, you know? And we ended up having Can't Stop. I think we had two different games of Can't Stop going. And then also like another super mega lucky box. And it was just so fun to see how excited she was. You know, you know those people out there who play board game arena and they have like 20 games going at once. Like I can see her like kind of working up to that because she was so excited to like bounce between the tables and she was trash talking. I might, I might have to get her on video with some people to to to witness this, but it was just fun. And I'm like, I could see her like going deep with you know, learning some new games and like having multiple games going, and yeah, so cult of the old there.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Yeah, yeah. So that so that was fun. And yeah, can't stop is just a hit with most people I know, but my mom loves like any push your luck kind of games, is her jam.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

I mean, we we had taught as well with the old games. I mean, can't stop comes up as classic old game.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

But uh, I mean, that's one that maybe everyone knows already that you've experienced, that I've experienced. Like, you gotta do something a little more obscure, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Absolutely. I I definitely want to do stuff more obscure personally, but I still like thinking about it, like some of my friends who are getting into board games and who have maybe even picked up stuff like Wingspan, I don't think they've ever played Can't Stop. So I I I think there's still this world of people who don't know about some of these family-friendly, fun, classic bangers. How's that for a description?

SPEAKER_03 24:42

That's right. I mean, right, because when are they gonna run across can't stop?

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

It's on board game arena. There are versions available from Korean publisher Plate, from German publisher Frenos, from Eagle Griffin too, right? Eagle Griffin, yes. And it's out there, but it's not like you're gonna see it that often.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Right. Right. Yeah. So people out there, if you've never played Can't Stop, check it out. Official recommendation.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

I'd still recommend playing it in person rather than BGA.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Oh yeah, you want to roll those bones yourself.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

It's fine on BGA, but uh it's like BGA is a great tool for certain games. And then other games you're just like, why would you ever play that? Like Flip 7 on BGA?

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

Just any sort of press your luck game on there. You you kind of want to be at the table with the people so you can better. Well, I had my fortune on it.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah, well, in this case, I had my mom on speakerphone as I'm like sitting here on my computer. Matt's in the other room, and we're like, take your turn. So it ended up being quite a little experimental game, you know, but she had a good time, and it was like nice to connect with her since we live across the country from her.

SPEAKER_03 26:08

So well, I mean, it's also different playing with people you know than with strangers.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Yeah. If you're doing can't stop with strangers, then it's kind of just like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Oh, yeah. That would be actually that is yeah. I think I think it works because you we're doing it with people we know, and right, and we've also played with her in person before. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:35

But otherwise it's just more analytical and you're just more playing, and it's not like you're connecting with them as much.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Just playing a game rather than playing with other people.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Yeah, so speaking of playing games, before we start talking about Cult of the Old and the games we're gonna try to hone in on in, you know, over the next month, I'd love to hear what you've been playing lately, Eric. So let's jump into Fresh Play. And that is, of course, if you've actually played games. I know sometimes you're you're running around and so busy that you're like, I haven't played a game in a month.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

Yeah, telling people about games. December January, I played almost nothing because I was still working at BGG and I was prepping for the beat, and there's a lot of other stuff. But I have played a few things at Gamma. I can talk about some of those. And unsurprisingly, what I was mostly playing was relatively quick, yeah. Because that's what I love playing. I got to play multiple times for most of them, which gives you more experience. You can see what it's like. So one of those games was Symbiosis, a game from Jeremy and Christelle Protonico, who are from French publisher Subverti. And this game is being distributed in the United States by HighShat Board Games. I got a review copy. I played twice. And Symbiosis is a very simple card game. You have cards that show one of four creatures in one of four colors, with each card showing either a value or a scoring condition. Similar to Castle Combo.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

And you start with eight cards face down in a four by two grid. That's your pond. You turn over one card of your choice, and then you take turns drafting from the four cards in the central river that are all face up. You take a river card, replace it with a face down card, turn that face down card face up into the river.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Or you can replace a face-up card with a face-up card, and then you just turn over one of your face down cards at random. So the whole game is seven turns per player. It's like 10 or 15 minutes. But what's neat about it, similar to Castle Combo, and far away to a large degree, is that you are setting up your own scoring conditions.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

That's cool.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

It's not an external thing, is you decide what you're going to score for. But in those eight cards, the central four, you're going to set up scoring conditions for your entire eight cards. So if I have something that says score three points for every green card, then I look at all the green cards and all eight, and I score three points for each of those. On the side, though, the two cards on my left side are gonna score based on what my player to the left is doing in their pawn.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Oh similarly to the right.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

So you're trying to set up yourself to score well, but you also have to set up to score based on what your opponents are doing next to you. Ah, similar to other games like Between Two Cities, you know, you where you're scoring collectively with the other player. You're sort of cooperating with them because you want to give them something that ideally is going to help you. Right? Maybe you're gonna discard something and they get to take it. But you of course want to score more than them. And they're scoring based on what you do. So sometimes you might hurt yourself a little to hurt them more. Just depends. Again, only seven turns. So it's quick, it's it's luck-based because of course you don't know what you're turning over into the river a lot of times. You're discarding a face-down card and maybe it's perfect for them. Well, maybe it's garbage.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

So so with the cards that you're score you're scoring with your neighbor, your neighbors, it's just something that you'll both score individually, or do you compare? Like, did I get more of something than them?

SPEAKER_03 31:03

It's similar to Castle Combo, where you're going to score points for each card in your array. Gotcha, gotcha. In the upper left corner, I score two points per dragonfly on this player's board. How many points did I get?

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

Doesn't matter what they like, all that matters is dragonflies.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

Just has a number six on it, so I get six points. Doesn't matter what they have. So you're scoring for each of those cards. They all like the maximum that we scored for any card was 15 points. And you're just trying to get as much as you can across all of eight of your cards. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Very nice. And it's called Symbiosis. Symbiosis. I like that that green box cover you just showed.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

That's right. The French one is actually pink. Symbiose. But apparently for the US market, they're just like pink? No.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

I would be happy with either, honestly. I would be happy with either of those.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Yeah, that's how that worked out. So there you go. Quick playing game, played twice. Very cool. And you know, again, it's it's interactive. You play quickly, you play again immediately. Yeah. People were talking like, oh, this is what I'm gonna do. Like, even in that 10-15 minutes, you're still like trying to make plans or trying to respond to what other people are doing and building to take advantage of that.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

So very cool, very cool. Yeah, well, I got a very fresh play from last night that is a slightly more complex card game. And it's a game called Ortis Regney. It's designed by John Sudbury, and it came out back in 2014, and it's self-published, and it's this like very unique package of a game. You know, you could tell it's like a labor of love, and I think I have suspicions why I know, like, you know, why why many people aren't talking about this game, but I have a funny kind of acquisition story. Like when I originally discovered it, it was from my local conventions virtual flea market. I, you know, sometimes I'll go through like at the end before the auctions close, and I'll see if if there's something I don't recognize, I would like click on it and just say, What is this all about? And this one like grabbed my attention immediately. And then, of course, I I saw reviews from Dan Thoreau, from Space Biff, and Cole Worley as well that were praising it and making it sound really interesting. So I was like, I'm getting this game. Gotta get it, gotta get it. So I got it. But this was like two or three years ago at this point. I I don't even, yeah, it had to have been like two at least two years ago. And so I picked it up, got all excited, like sleeved some of the cards, opened it up. Like the rule book is so nice. It's like linen, everything has this like very like medieval vibe to it, but there are like card trays in it that are wooden that are like carved, like very premium packaging.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

I remember seeing this game. I remember I think it was at Origins where he had bought display booths, like you get those sponsored glass booths with a spin in there, and he had that, and clearly, yes, he sank a lot of money into this because the production's pretty luxe. There was a lot of self-promotion for it. Yes, he just more wanted to do this special thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Yeah, yeah. And so I picked it up and I like opened it, and I was like, this is so cool, I can't wait to play this. Oh, you know, I know I have people who who I knew would like love it, like my friends who like card games like that, where you're kind of it's it's multiplayer, so you you can play if you buy just the core set, the base game box, you can play with two players, but there are also two expansion boxes, which just literally give you more components to be able to add up to six players if you get it all. And so on a future virtual flea market, I saw someone was selling the base game with both expansions in shrink. So I was like, I guess I'm buying another copy of the base game so I can get these expansions because it's a deal. So now I have two copies of the base game, the expansions, and still have not played it. And then this recent uh virtual flea market of Strategicon in February, my friend Jordan saw someone posted a copy, and he's like, Yeah, should I get it? And and and he couldn't go to the convention, so I picked it up for him. So you couldn't give him your extra one. Oh, I I eventually sold my extra one, my extra base game. But long story short, we ended up finally playing it and we recorded a couple games just last night on Jordan's new channel, which is called Play It Again. I'm not exactly sure when the videos are gonna drop, but basically, I got over, I went over there, we broke it out, like he was kind of refreshing the rules. I was not refreshed, so we kind of like learned it together, and then we were like, let's just play, and we were like, let's not record the first game because it's like one of those weird games, you gotta kind of get familiar with it.

SPEAKER_04 36:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

So we ended up playing it twice, and then we recorded two games, and so Ordis Regni is a card game where each player is an earl, and you're using cards to build up your like earldom, and and basically you're putting out like castle cards and you're you're establishing these thieves. So, in the two-player, like if you bought the the base game, you have cards for two players to be able to play, and part of this game is that you are it's intended for players to do like a deck building phase beforehand because you're gonna play with a 24-card deck, and they have pre-constructed like sample decks that you can play with. Like there's one called like Lands and Army, one was the first one I tried was Church and Emissary, and then there was I really wanted to try the the politics and intrigue initially, and I eventually did, but it's a strange game. We learned it, we played it, we're like, huh, huh, huh? And then, but by the end of the night after we played four times, I was like, this is kind of easy. Like, I I actually like it quite a bit. So, what happens is you get your deck, whether you use one of these pre-constructed decks, or if you build your own, and you're gonna draw five shuffle your deck, you're gonna draw five cards from it, and on your turn, you're just like playing one of those cards to take an action. Usually you're like playing a card, but there are some actions you can do where you're doing like something else, and there's some free actions. The wild thing about this game is that none of the cards have any text on them, they're just yeah, they're just beautiful pieces of art, and I think that's like kind of intimidating. And I was I truth be told, I was a little worried about it, but they have these cloth player aid mats that tell you what every card does. And actually, like by the time we finished our first game, each game is like just like 30 minutes, you know, it's it's not it doesn't take long to play, but like we were familiar with the cards, you know, some of the effects I needed to like say, like, oh yeah, what can I do with that? But for the most part, it became very intuitive quickly. And everybody starts with a palace, so you'll have a palace card on the table, and then you're gonna have a deck of cards that is a mix of properties. You could have there are churches, there are cathedrals, there are lands. Basically, the way you win the game is to be the last player standing, and so you are trying to either make your opponent run out of cards, because if you need to draw a card and you cannot, you're you're done. Or you need to take out all of their uh fiefs, their fiefdoms. And so there's this like balance of trying to make sure you have enough castles out there, but then you want to put lords in there because those are characters that are gonna help you fight because there's some combat in there as well. So meanwhile, you're like kind of like building up, deciding if you want to attack. For example, the land and army deck, you have lands, and when you play a land card, you get to recruit an army card, which is like a separate deck that becomes part of your reserve. If you happen to also have a market town in the same thief with the with the land, you can recruit two army cards and stuff like that. Then you can like attack your opponent. And when you attack, you decide if you want to attack their towers. Oh, yeah, I didn't mention that. You can play as a free action, you can play cards face down, as many as you want on your turn, to be towers, because the back of each card is a tower, and that's gonna give you some defense. And really, the only way to take down the towers is to directly attack those. So you can attack towers, you can attack a particular like castle or palace, or you could attack people's properties, and then there's a whole thing where people can defend, and if they defend, then you draw a card from this battle deck, and some so that it there's this like mix of randomness, but also like strategy and and there are also Vikings, so there's a so there's a a I'll I'll say quotes neutral force out there in the game, and there's like a timer you're gonna take down, and at some point the Vikings are gonna arrive, and the first time the Vikings arrive, you're gonna flip over three cards from the Viking deck, and all the cards are like super simple, like there's one that does one point of damage, and then there's another type that does two points of damage. But the slick thing is when it's the Vikings' time to take their turn, the person that gets to decide who they attack and what they attack is drawn randomly from this bag. And at the beginning of the game, in a two-player game, each of us put one little cube in in this bag. And so, you know, initially you have this like 50-50 shot of being the one that gets to control the Vikings, and of course, you could choose not to have them attack, but that's no fun. That's no fun. But the cool thing is in the game, there are ways where you can play cards, like basically get rid of them, give them to the Vikings as emissaries, which lets you put more of your cubes in the bag to increase your odds of being the one that gets to control what they do. And so, like when I played my first deck as like the church, I had all these monk cards. And when you give a monk to the Vikings as an emissary, you get to put two of your cubes in. So, like, I would say, I would say every game we played, I somehow had more influence over the Vikings, and it was great. It was it was great, but there are ways to like stall them, their arrival and stuff like that. But once they come, they're gonna reveal a new card every every turn. So like they go after the second player, and when they have three cards, they're gonna do something. And again, you're drawing the cube to see who does who gets to control what they do. But then one other thing is you can joust in this game. So you have banner cards that you can put in your deck, and let's say I play a banner on the table. And I'm saying I'm starting a joust. And if my opponent, like Jordan, has a joust card, he could cancel it and by playing, or I'm sorry, if he has a banner card, he can cancel it. Or he could say, Okay, let's joust. Or sometimes he might be forced to say that if he can't cancel it. And the joust becomes like kind of like a poker game because each player will get an opportunity to play one of their lords or their characters to like be the jouster. And then you're gonna draw two cards from the joust deck, and whoever has the best hand between the card you put in and the two from the joust deck will win. And the joust deck has like some cards that are vassals, which is one kind of character. I'm realizing as I'm telling you about this, it sounds insane.

SPEAKER_03 44:51

Well, as you mentioned, it is a passion project, clearly.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

I have forgotten about the the cards being textless. Yes. And we're seeing that, and people just be like, Well, what am I supposed to do with this? And it's like, look, this is for people who want to devote themselves and really enmesh themselves in the game. So maybe it's just not for you.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Exactly, exactly. So it's like it's a card battle game where you are building up little areas. Almost that that almost reminds me of Imperium Classics and Legends. Like, did you ever get a chance to play any of those?

SPEAKER_03 45:34

I have played Imperium Horizons. Is that the Yeah, that's the newer one.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Yeah, but you know how you can kind of like when you get certain cards, you're like building out your lands and stuff like that. This game has that kind of feel, but it's like abstract, but also thematic, and like some of the like little random elements just made it so fun. We will have to shout out one little moment that we had because in our last game, we actually did the deck building, and part of what Jordan's doing on his channel is these like confessionals. So he recorded, like after we built our decks secretly, he recorded a few minutes and talked about like, hey, like this is what I'm doing with my deck. And then I went in and I recorded, like, oh, I'm doing this. And then we sit down and we played the game, not knowing what was gonna be in each other's decks. And it turns out he built a deck around like being a joust heavy force. I went with a lot of like the intrigue cards. There are these awesome intrigue cards that let you potentially attempt to like steal cards, like steal properties from another player or make them discard cards from their hand. There's also the your deck is your life, and there's a way you can bequeath, and like basically means you died, but your son is taking over your earldom. And uh, but in order to do that, you need to have like a prince tucked in one of the cards, and I think you need either a cathedral or something, you know, there's some so he was able to do it in our four games. We only had what we only saw one bequeathing, but the problem is when he did it, he only had one card left. Then at some point, he decides to joust me. Oh, and I didn't mention when you joust, you have to Annie up a property. So he decides to Annie up his cathedral. He's the only one that put a cathedral in his deck, and I put in like maybe one of my castles or something. I end up winning the joust. I take his cathedral, because that's what happens, and after taking the cathedral, the literally the next time I was controlling the Vikings attacking, we drew the card, the battle card that says the church decides. So he literally like antied up his cathedral, and then I got to control the Vikings, and we flipped a card that said the church decides who wins. So, of course, I made the Vikings win, and it was just like a hilarious thing. So I'm excited to like get that video out.

SPEAKER_03 48:13

But yeah, that sounds like a wild mess. Yeah, but I mean it's sort of I mean, innovation is a wild mess too.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

So yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, you might like this.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

That and the other, and so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

You you might like this one, actually. I'm I'm definitely curious to try it with more players too, because I think then you have like some like politicking, like, oh, I think you should attack Eric's castle over there because if we take that down, yada yada yada. So I am just so excited to have finally played Ortis Regni after all these years and already like thirsty to play it more, and I'm glad I have the whole set now. So, yeah, so I might try to do a six-player game or at least a four-player game at some point.

SPEAKER_03 49:03

But yeah. It's already cult of the old.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Yeah, just naturally, just naturally. What else have you played recently?

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Not old at all.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Oh, wait, sorry, Eric. Yes, oh, one last thing to say about Ortis Regni is because the the art is so prominent in it and it's such an important part of the game because the cards are just art. I looked up to see who the artist is, and it's Benoit Billion. How do you use that? Benoit? Benoit?

SPEAKER_03 49:38

Benoit, probably.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Benoit Billion, who did the art for the King is dead. And I literally, when we were playing, I was like, oh, this could like thematically fit in with like the King is dead in terms of the medieval style and everything. So I thought that was a fun little discovery to see those same artists.

SPEAKER_03 49:56

Okay, which came out first. No, the King is dead, those osprey is 2015.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

I'm gonna look it up, but I I cannot believe you actually know that.

SPEAKER_03 50:08

I'm pretty sure it's 2015. It's it it could be wrong.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

2015. Wow, they're there. You're like uh you're like an AI bot for like game data.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Thank you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

Okay, anyways, what else have you been playing?

SPEAKER_03 50:28

Other one, the other card game was called Denup. D-U-N-U-P or Down Up. This is the English language version of Revolve from designer Kay Kajino, who designed Scout, and this is being brought onto the market by Asmode. I forget which studio in particular is doing it. One of them. It's always a studio, and then it's always just well, it's published by Asmoday.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

I forgot too. I forgot also.

SPEAKER_03 50:59

Yes. It has, similar to Scout, a deck of cards that have numbers on both corners that are different. So if you hold a card one way, it's a seven, and you turn it upside down, it's a two. There you go. So you have a whole bunch of cards like that. Your goal is to shed all your cards first, and if you were the first player to do so, you get two points. If you're the second, you get one point, and you play multiple rounds until someone gets four points. Unless you're doing a two-player game in which there's special rules, and I'm gonna ignore all that. Two to five player game and let's stick to three to five. So on a turn, you you however your the cards are dealt to you, you just pick them up and you can't rotate your hand, you just take it like that. And on a turn, you can play one or more cards of the same value onto the table, but only if the value is higher than a similarly sized set. So if I put down if someone has two fours on the table, I can only pay a pair if it's fives or higher. But if I can put down any three of a kind if there's no three of a kind on the table. Okay. You can add a card from your hand to a set that's already been played, mahjong style, right? Or rummy style. You're taking one card from your hand and adding it there. You can pick up someone's set that they have played and you put it upside down into your hand. So they played a pair of ones and you pick it up, and actually now it's a six and seven.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:39

Or you can just rotate your hand. Flip it over. There you go. When you overplay someone, so if someone has that pair of fours on the table and you play a higher pair, they have to rotate their pair of fours and put it back in their hand. So sometimes you want that, kind of like with Panda Spin, where if you overplay someone, you're sometimes giving them better things. It was a pair of ones before, and now I'm flipping it over with a six and seven, and now I've got a pair of six, I've got three sevens, whatever it is. You don't know what they have. But sometimes you're just hosing them because maybe they played a pair of eights and you overplay with a pair of nines, and now they got a two and a three. Random singles that they possibly can never play again. So very simple, very straightforward. It's nice strategy, similar to a lot of trick-ticking games, even though it's a shedding game, where you have to evaluate your hand where you've got like the losers that you can only play when you effectively have the lead. There's no single card on the table. You can play any single card you want, ditch your one, ditch the two, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

Or add it to somebody's melody.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

Or add it to somebody's thing, because either it's going to get discarded, although then you're only discarding one card per play, or it'll end up going into someone's hand. You add it to their pair, and now it's three of a kind, and then they have to pick it up. So you made it worse for them. Yeah. So very nice. Very nice game. I mean, I played it once, so I don't have a ton of experience with it, but it flows smoothly.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

Yeah. Had you played Revolve before?

SPEAKER_03 54:23

I had not played Revolve. I mean, as I mentioned, it's similar to Panda Spin in the sense of how the cards are flipping around. Scout has an element as well of doing things like that, but not quite the same. And I like this better than Scout because it feels more dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:42

Scout, there's often if you can't play, you pick up one card from someone set and you put it in the orientation you wish. So that's still on the table. Here it's more like all or nothing.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:53

Well, funny is I was talking, we're we're both name-dropping Cole Whirley here because you mentioned him before. I was talking with him about it, and he's like, Yeah, it's a very nice game, but I would just prefer Linko over it if you played Linko.

SPEAKER_00 55:10

Oh, I remember, yeah, you got me into Linko.

SPEAKER_03 55:13

Yes, Linko, also known as a Bluxon, it's a Wolfgang Crommer, Michael Keisling game. And that also has things where if you overplay someone, the cards go back in their hand.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:23

And so it's similar in that nature, but here you have revolving values as you put the cards back in differently. And he was just like, Why would I ever pick up this when I could play Linko? He was very see, this is like the the the new games are for new player thing.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:42

He's set. He's got his shedding game, he doesn't need anything else.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:46

Most people don't know Linko slash obluxen. And so they're they might try this and be like, this is fantastic. Nothing is ever gonna top this. And for them, it might be right.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Yeah, so I I've played this one probably a handful of times, maybe a half a dozen now, but it and it actually was one of my mom's favorite games that I showed her when she was in town. So that's cool. But I I'm kind of curious if Scout and Down Up Flash Revolve were like both coming out right now, which one I would like more. Because I I feel the same way. I I'm pretty sure I like this one better than Scout at this point because I like I I don't know. I I just like all the options you have. And I love the feeling of putting a card adding a card to someone else's set to then make someone else have to pick up their cards. Like there's so many like cool moments, but you do get to a point sometimes where it's like, oh, you're just flipping your hand, you're flipping your hand and waiting.

SPEAKER_03 56:50

I did have one hand like that where yes, I had done my hand poorly, and I just ended up rotating a single card back and forth, back and forth, because I couldn't play that single card, it would never beat whatever was on the table.

SPEAKER_01 57:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:07

And so, and I couldn't play it on anyone else's either.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

Right.

SPEAKER_03 57:11

So you're just like, which again, this is a lesson I remember a long time ago when I was first learning to Tiju, and someone was like, if you end up with a single two in your hand, you have not grasped the garlic. That is you have missed the whole point. That again, there are losers that you only play when you're in the lead. Yeah, sure winners, yeah. There's this middle ground of stuff. And so you gotta balance that and make sure you don't end up with one of those losers.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

Yes, yeah. And that's kind of what I that's kind of what I like about it is that when you because I'm picky when it comes to climbing and shedding games, but I I do like this one quite a bit. And I like that you can even like Odin, where you you can strategically pass and like knowing when to put out a certain set that's a certain size or whatever, versus like and and trying not to get stuck with something that you can't go out with, is you know, you you have to kind of like work to work towards that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 58:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

You'll get better, you'll get better, Eric.

SPEAKER_03 58:20

I'll get better. I mean, right, you're still I'm still drawing on past game experience. I got to a certain point, and I was just like, oh, I'm just dead. I can't do a single thing here. Except if we had we were only doing a three-player game. If we had more players, there'd be more cards in play because you modify the oh yeah, yeah. And then there'd probably be opportunities to play on top of other people just because of more cards being out. I could have ditched my two somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

Right, right. Yeah, that's a good point, too. That the the player count, like having more players at the table, you'll have more cards to be able to manipulate and do stuff with. And also sometimes it's like don't sleep on picking up somebody's cards. Like if you can pick up somebody's cards and flip them and make your hand cooler, even though you're gaining more cards, it's sometimes worth it, you know?

SPEAKER_03 59:11

Yeah. I want one of the hands, I had five of a kind, which is just like, okay, no one's beating like whatever. No one's beating that. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

Cool, cool. And uh did they tell you if it's you've if you is it supposed to be called like din up or down up?

SPEAKER_03 59:29

Like I don't one asthma person said dun up and another said down up. So yeah, it's got little letters on the box that say down up. Oh so it's made as an ambigram, so you whichever way you turn the box, it looks the same.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Is that the finished version?

SPEAKER_03 59:49

That is the finished version.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Okay, okay, yeah, because I have a pre-production copy.

SPEAKER_03 59:54

Yeah, it's it's clever, right? This goes back to turn zero and this goes back to other things. We're like, it's clever, but it's maybe it's a little too clever because you look at it and you're kind of just like, I don't know how to pronounce this name.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

Yeah, I I really yeah, I that's probably my biggest complaint is that I don't know how to pronounce it. And it's like you want to tell people, hey, pick up this game. It's a green box. It's a green box.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

And you gotta spell it. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:23

I know, I know. So another game that I played recently for the first time, it kind of came out of my solo gaming challenge. So I don't know if I told you about this, but I am doing a solo gaming challenge with my friend Ken Kuhn. We're both trying to play 26 games solo at least five times. But we're also, along with that, though, we're doing a solo variety challenge where we're also just keeping track of how many different games we can play solo. And I feel like I'm not committing to the games that are gonna be the ones that I play five. So sometimes I'll try something and say, ooh, like, will I want to play this five times? And so I think my next candidate is a game called Mare of Chicago. And this is a brand new game from Impatience, Shadi Torby's publishing company that focuses on small box solo games that or can be co-op also, but I think most people probably play them as solo games. But the crazy thing is, this is designed by Xavier Georges, who I'm I'm starting to realize is like quickly kind of becoming one of my favorite designers. Or not even quickly becoming, like he has been like every game that I've played uh from Xavier, like Twa and Black Angel, Ginkopolis, Carson City, I love, they just all seem to resonate with me. So I was kind of excited to see that there's a solo game that he he worked on. And this came about because I actually reached out to Shoddy about English rules for Urbion, the new edition of Urbion that I picked up at Essen whenever that dropped, didn't have English rules in my copy, and I didn't see them on BGG, so I reached out and then Shadi mentioned two games. Another one I haven't tried yet is a Reiner Kenizia solo game. Yeah, yeah. And so I haven't tried that one yet, but I did get to play Mayor of Chicago, and this game is really cool. Like it's it's puzzly, it's thematic for you know, as thematic as you can get with a card, a small box card game. But the premise is you are trying to collect votes, and you're playing against this AI opponent, and they have a bunch, like they have, I don't know, like eight different opponents you can play against that have different stats and they have different difficulty levels. And also something that I thought was a nice touch is they all, these are all animals too, and they all have, yeah, and they they all have a slogan on the the back of the cards, like the opponents. And now I'm just gonna, because I have the game with me right now, I will just tell you a couple of them. So there's a there's a bear that says bite the future, there's a a a lady elephant that says a heavy vote. There's a like a rooster that says time to wake up. So they have all these characters, and you're gonna pick one to play against. And then you have this deck of cards that are double-sided. They have a neighborhood grid on one side, and on the other side, they have assistance. And you're basically gonna be drawing a card every turn and deciding whether you want to take the neighborhood card and put it in your city grid. So you're gonna be like building a what is it, four by seven or four by six or seven or something like that grid of cards as you play to develop the city. So you can play the neighborhood card as a city, but you'll want to connect these different resource icons that appear. So it's kind of puzzly. Or you can decide to take the card and hire the assistant on the back where you have to pay money to do that. And if you have resources, popularity, and power, a lot. I think all of the assistants have like a discount. So, like maybe what one assistant might say, Hey, if you have at least six popularity, you only have to pay this price to hire me. Or, you know, another one might say, if you have eight power, which is one of the resources, then you get a discount. And the each of these assistants, when you hire them, you just set them to the side. Eventually, you're gonna put it into the city as you build out your city. Uh, you can put them in, which is gonna like trigger effects based on what you're covering up on the city grid, and the the icons around it usually trigger some kind of effect. So you have other resources in the game like booze. Booze you can use to to reduce the price of hiring assistance as well, but you will gain corruption.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:38

So, it was a prohibition era game. Is that the idea? They just happen to have booze.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

I think it's just like, hey, I'm gonna get the masses exactly, exactly. Like, hey, I'm gonna wine and dine you, and you're gonna be cheaper for me to hire.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:55

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

Okay, and if you don't want to hire the assistant or you don't want to play. The neighborhood, you can discard it now. When you discard it, if you discard it, neighborhood side up, you just put it in a discard pile, just no effect, right? If you decide to discard it to your opponent as an assistant, it's gonna be a vote against you at the end of the game, but you get some money immediately. So sometimes you might need money, and each each opponent card has like an amount of money that you'll get if you discard an assistant to them. But you have that whole like, oh, I don't want to, I want to make sure I have more votes than this opponent by the end. So you gotta be careful. Also, there's a penalty if you don't finish filling out your grid. So you can't just like discard every card. You know, you have to kind of make a choice. And then the neighborhood cards have icons that relate to the resources like money. I think there's a wild one, there's the power, popularity, booze. And I think that's I think that's it. And it comes with this little track where you can keep track of how many of each resource you have. You're also managing corruption because sometimes, like, if you place one of your neighborhood cards further, if you don't put it in the leftmost empty slot of whichever column is leftmost and empty, you will have to take a corruption. So they're kind of like making you make some tough choices. Really, I could, if in my top row of my grid, I could just build out all those cards from left to right. But if I'm not also building the other, the other rows in the column, it's gonna start catching up to me with corruption. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the grid, you have these event cards, and you always play with all of the event cards in the game, maybe. I think so. But they're double-sided and you randomly put them out. And the the event cards have two effects. One is an endgame effect, and the other is when you fill a column and the that event card is in that column, it's gonna trigger some effect. And it's usually like comparing your resources to your the opponents, because they have these stats. So it might be like, oh, when you know, by the time this event card goes off, if your popularity is greater than the opponents, then you get something. Otherwise, there's a penalty or something. But I think it's just very well done. This is the type of solo game where I'm thinking anybody who's ever been like, oh, Candace talks about solo games a lot, like maybe I should try one of those. I think this is fantastic, but I also think people who play a lot of solo games will like really enjoy the puzzle and the complexity, like, or the ramping of complexity of the different opponents is really cool. So, anyways, that was Mayor of Chicago. It is a new release, and I guess it's just is it out now, Eric?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:13

I believe it is out in Europe. I don't know if it's yet in distribution in the US. I don't think so. Because In Patience had four of these small box games, and originally Shoddy was gonna release them all together, and then he split it up. So two came out, I think, at the end of last year, and two are this year, and I don't think they're in distribution yet. But Asmine A distributes inpatient stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:36

Well, be patient and it'll be out there, and it's gotta be it's a half hour or so.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

Yeah, just like a half hour. It does take up a decent amount of table space. Like, you know, it's a small box, but because you're building a grid of whatever it is, uh five by six, six, I don't remember, you're gonna be putting a lot of cards down. And I probably should say too, like, you know, after you have these assistants you've hired on your turn, it you can choose to put place the assistant in the city. And when you do that, you look at the four icons of the city, like the square, the block that you're dropping this card on, and you choose one of the icons, this one resource. And however many of those icons are present, you'll get a number of that resource. So, like if I and that's why you want to synergize the icons when you're placing neighborhood cards, so you can you can optimize gaining those resources when you put assistance there.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:40

Yeah. Okay. And it makes sense as well for a five-game challenge if it's only a half hour. Yes, also like, isn't it Mr. President as well as so that's like four to five hours?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:53

Oh my god, four to five hours? That's nice. That's nice. That's probably if you know it.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:59

I know it's massive, but uh, don't aspire to be president yet, just mayor. The simpler, a lot easier.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:06

That's funny that you bring up Mr. President because I actually just recorded a video that I'm gonna be posting on GMT's YouTube channel. I recorded with Ananda Gupta, he's one of the designers of Twilight Struggle, Imperial Struggle, lots of games. But he walked me through the digital adaptation of Mr. President, and it's so cool. And I love that that exists because I think that's gonna be extremely helpful for like understanding the rules and and because you know you hover over something and it tells you your options. But I do have the physical board game in Shrink that I will one day bust out. It's huge. I probably will get to play the physical version once before the end of the year, but that's definitely not going to be in my five. It'll be my variety challenge.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:01

But maybe the digital one is ideal and you don't have to, you know, he just manages all the rules. You can just click random things and see what happens. And there you go. That's the whole game.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:11

Yeah, it's it's a really like fascinating design. But yes, this one, we're starting small. We're just trying to be the mayor of Chicago. Let's talk about some cult of the old thoughts and games. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:29

I know we we talked about this initially, the idea of doing sort of an old game of the month club where it was like, let's pick one game and we'll all focus on it together, and maybe we can have listeners or readers, whatever, get other people interested as well. But it is a little harder to coordinate. It's not like we're in the same town where we could play with one another. We can organize it all.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:52

And we might not have the same games, too.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:55

That is true. I know. How much do we want to like coordinate to try to organize that? Unlike an Oprah thing where clearly they're organizing it with you know retail chains. Everyone will know this book is gonna be chosen. We're gonna pre-print tons of copies. Yeah, but yeah, we can just pick our own games and then do it ourselves and talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:18

Yes, and whoever wants to do it also, that you know, that's awesome. You can comment on uh this episode or wherever we post these things, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:32

Yes, and give a little focus there. I mean, I I did like doing a video for the Amigo game Vinedic, Claus Jogan Veda game, who is the designer of Carcassonne, everyone knows her from Carcassonne. The game came out from Amigo, where you were essentially building Venice. It's three to five players, and it's fascinating. I did a video, it came out in 2007, there was no other edition, and no one talks about it. And it's just a fine Euro game that has disappeared into closets and you know been.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:11

Yeah, I've never heard of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:12

Yeah. I mean, why would you? It's but but that's the problem with a lot of these, is you have it at what I feel is a very solid Euro game, and whatever. No one's gonna talk about it these days. It's not gonna come up unless someone gets devoted to doing projects like these.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:30

Yeah. When we're thinking about the games that would be eligible for our old game of the month, that's not what we'll call it, but something that's probably like what, 10 years old at least?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:45

10 years old seems like a good hallmark just to say it possibly had its time. Maybe it even was very successful, but you just haven't tried it yet. Yeah. As you mentioned earlier, you really got in the hobby in 2018.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:59

So everything was before that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:04

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:05

You know, a mystery to you, or at least you're you're discovering it much later than you have.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:11

Yeah, yeah. I know we were saying, like, you know, that it's probably not necessary to talk about the the super popular games like Ticket to Ride and Katan. But I feel like I'm going to try to focus on some games that are like still available and in print, and maybe even tons of people have played, but there's still this like huge audience of people who have never tried them, and I certainly like haven't played them enough, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:44

What was the idea to play something you've never played before, or just something you've might played once and then Yeah, I think it's a little of both because I I have games like we'll say seasons. Seasons I got pretty early on, played it maybe once or twice, loved it, like bought expansions for it. I got the geek up bits now, and and I've like I've wanted to revisit it because I love games that have cool card effects and stuff, and I always thought the dice with the seasons was like kind of clever, and I like those chunky components, but I just haven't played it enough, and I I want to play it more, especially since I you know liked it enough to get all the expansions.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:33

Yes, and that is a game that definitely rewards play, multiple plays, because right, you have to know the card combinations and what's good early game, late game, how to respond to opponents, so forth, all sorts of stuff. I mean, I forget how many times I played it, but you definitely get better as you were playing. Because you might be digging for particular cards through the deck, trying to get get things together. It's all about knowing the deck and then seeing what's possible and how to respond to what other people have since you have a draft initially. You know what's out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:07

Yeah, so I think while there are probably tons of people out there listening to this podcast who who have played seasons probably many times or one time or whatever, there are so many people out there who have never even heard of seasons. So that's definitely a game that's gonna come up at some point. But I'm also mixing in some dusty old Euros that I've I've been like picking up that I've been picking up over like the past few years, and I haven't either played them or maybe I played them once that I want to like play a bit more.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:50

Yes, because really playing once is almost like playing not at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:56

It's like you don't know what you're doing, you're just figuring out like, oh, is this legal? Is this the rule? Like, I don't know. There's so much focus on how to play rather than how to play well that like that first game is just you know training wheels time.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:12

Another game that I want to try as part of this at some point, not in my first batch, but is Planet Steam. Planet Steam had a second edition that was or yeah, it was a new edition of it from I think Fantasy Flight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the original edition is in this super long, weird shaped box. It has this like bald guy on the front with this crazy art, it's got crazy components, and I got this from someone at the at my local game convention virtual flea market for I think five dollars or something. What? And I was yeah, and the cards were in shrink, and I I to me it's just been this almost like a family heirloom or something sitting, but I want to play it. I want to play it because I I was you know intrigued by the mechanisms that are read about in the game because I like like market manipulation and everything. So I think it's a game beyond just the like wacky look of it that I'm gonna like really dig.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:24

It captured a lot of people's attention when it came out. It was a treasured thing that a lot of people hunted down. And maybe this is a lesson for those of us who have those treasured things you want to hunt down. Maybe don't stress about it so much. Just be like, maybe someday, and then you'll find it at five dollars on a convention sale and just be like, now is the time. I don't have to like hunt down a copy far away, have it shipped to me. Yeah, that was that like it was definitely the size of a box. Like, I was assistant manager at a toy store for a while, and it was very much like a doll-sized box where you have the doll staring at you through the plastic front. Yes, yes, it's like two feet tall. I forget exactly how how tall. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. And people still got it at Spiel being like, ah, I gotta figure out how to get this home. This is sort of the size of my suitcase already. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:26

And it's got some cool components. So, yeah, so that's one that I've had for a couple years now that is like one of these days I'm gonna play it, but that's not on your list now. It's not on my list now. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:38

We we said we would each choose two to start small. Because in theory, I could just go on my shelf and just pull off like 20 or 30 games because I got in the hobby initially in 2003.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:54

And at that time, there were still number, well, I went on German eBay a lot, and I'd find people who are selling things off, and often they'd have multiple listings. I would look for those in particular and just bid on a whole bunch of stuff to get a whole box at once. And then many of those things I've still not touched in 20 years. So that's one of the choices I have. Maybe I should just reveal it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:18

Yeah, yeah. Let's let's go.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:20

That's right. So uh I've had this game, Wabanti. I've had it for at least 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:25

Oh, whoa, I have never seen that's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:30

It's a game by Reinhold who published a lot of games on his own. He would release them. Where I don't know, geez, now I'm forgetting the Edition Pirohun was a company he would do, and he would do lots of games where it was like you know, handmade wooden components, or it'd just be metal bits, or whatever. It's all this sort of randomish stuff, and he would sell them in red tubes with a sticker on the front, and that was it. And you would just, if you saw someone who had a bunch of these games, it's just a pile of tubes. Like when I went to a game archive in Nuremberg, and you go into shelves and you see that, and it's just like tubes all over the place. And he would just do small print runs. Like this is when we talk about the appeal of going to Tokyo Game Market and you find someone who'd make 50 copies of something, this is the same thing, but it was Reinhold Wittig doing this in like the 70s and 80s and beyond. So this game originally came out in 1974 in his edition. This copy that I have from uh Frank Cosmos, because originally the company was called Frank, and then it was Frank Cosmos, and then it became Cosmos. So this is the Frank edition from 1986. So it's a 40-year-old game that I have had at least 20 years and have not played. And yes, you're looking at the box as we're recording here on the camera. It's a giant box, but what's funny is people did not complain as much about shelf space back then, or it just wasn't a thing that people went nuts over. So I opened up the box, we got rules on the pages, and then it has a roll-up foam game board.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:16

Foam. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:18

Yeah, those foam game boards, just a hex grid, but the hexes are specifically drawn like bolts. Sorry, nuts that you put on bolts.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:31

Because the rest of the box just has them and dice.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:37

Wow!

SPEAKER_03 1:23:38

And that's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:39

In this box, most of this they look hefty, those bolts. But they are the wait, the nuts.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:46

The nuts, but that's it. There's nothing underneath this. This is a giant empty box which has bolts in it. I could definitely cut this thing down to nothing if I would meant to. I want to keep it.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:57

Can't do it now, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:58

That's right. It's got 18 antique. 18 nuts, it's got six dice, it's got this sheet, and that's it. And I have owned it for 20 years, and now I'm finally gonna play it. I've talked with Hoko Drude, who who knows Reinhold Wittig and plays games with him and has talked about his designs, and he just does a lot of stuff where it's playing around, and it's it is the style where maybe it's for you and maybe not, but it's probably not like something else that you've ever played. At least that's the idea. You go back to the autour theory where someone is just like doing stuff, and there's a whole bunch of his designs that were then picked up by Frank and published in boxes of this size. But Frank did other boxes of this size too. So there's a Brahmer game, there's a Keniti game, all in this lineup, and it's so interesting to compare this size versus today's games where everything has to be as compact as possible.

unknown 1:24:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:03

Getting eyes on the store.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:05

So that so that was wait, what is it called again?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:08

Wabanti. W-A-B-A-N-T-I. And I don't know anything about it other than it being an abstract strategy game.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:17

Okay, and and and so after you play it this month or for a month or whatever, you know, the time frame is, you'll write do a write-up about it? Sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:30

I'll do a write-up, figure it out. I mean, ideally I can find some people, it's a two-player only game. Sorry, actually, it's two to six player game. I kept thinking it's two player only because it's abstract strategy, but it's not two to six. Although actually it's two, three, four, or six because you need people to sit evenly around the textboard. Interesting. And um give it a try.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:51

Uh we'll see.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:53

See if people are game for this.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:55

And I know we're we're kind of figuring this out as we go, but I don't know if you would want to maybe just do a recap video after like versus writing a post. Like, I don't I don't know what if you prefer to like hop on and we can make a video and like talk about our experiences playing, or what we could do possibly is just like do stuff individually and then maybe end of the year talk about like our favorite ones or something, and I don't know, whatever. We'll we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:29

Was this a value, or should I have never touched this game? Should I just have been like, yes, old Eric got that a long time ago, and I don't have to worry about the choices he made and then it's move on. Although I have been finding that old Eric made great choices with a lot of the books that he bought because I also have carried books with me from house to house to house to house. A lot of them that I got in California when I worked at a used bookstore and bought so, so, so many things. And I've read a bunch of those now, and it's just like, no, this is fabulous. This is good stuff here. I'm glad I finally got to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:06

Cool. Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:08

Maybe the games will be the same.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:11

All right.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:12

I haven't changed that much getting older, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:15

I can't find my box for the game that I was gonna talk about first, but I already mentioned it just a little bit ago, and it's Ginkkopolis.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:25

Ginkopolis, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:26

Not seasoned. Yeah, Ginkopolis is one of those games that when I first discovered it, it was super out of print, and I could not get my hands on it. I knew it was like Steph's favorite game. I read about it, watched videos. I'm like, oh, I really want this. Because this this one originally came out in 2012 uh from Pearl Games, and it's designed by Xavier Georges and who also designed Mare of Chicago. And I got it when they, you know, whenever. Whatever year there was a reprint of it, like maybe five, four, five years ago, I, you know, I pre-ordered it, was so excited to get it. And I think I played it once and I thought it was really cool. And then I haven't played it since, but like I really, really, really want to. So, so that's why I like I have this on my kind of focus list, but I like that you there's like card drafting, right? You're like building, you're building up tiles. I don't remember exactly how everything works, but you're simultaneously picking a card and then doing something, either like building stuff on the board. You tell me, Eric, you remember, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:43

I will confess that I have not played it. This could be on my list as well, but okay, okay, okay. Yeah, we'll get to my Detroits, but not that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. So Ginkopolis is one. I have the now I have the nice geek up bits from the BGG store. And yeah, and I I've just been wanting to. I also have the expansion too, the experts expansion. Yeah, but it's it's my kind of game. I can't remember how it goes. All I know is it's my kind of game.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:15

That's yeah, see, and that's sort of the point of doing this, too. It's like, you know you liked it, but what did I like about it? What was the appeal? And how does it hold up? Right. Because there's some games, right? You play once and you're just like, this is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:30

Never does. Yeah.

unknown 1:29:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:33

Okay, what's your second game?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:36

My second game, very coincidentally, also a 2012 release. Also a game that I have played once, just uh like you have played Gingopolis once, and the game is Azatlan. A video Colovini that was published by Aries Games, and uh I interviewed someone about it in 2012, I believe it Origins, and this is still, I think, the worst interview I've ever done. Mostly because the woman who was talking about the game, she did not know she was gonna be on camera talking about this game. Oh all of her boothmates kind of pushed her into being the one. They're like, Yeah, you should definitely do this, mostly because they didn't want to do it. And she did not know the game well. And this is unfortunate because she talked about it. I I could not follow a thing that she was saying. Oh, it was very confusing. And we we went around in circles for a while and we sort of ended up talking about it. And it was just like, all right, thanks. And then we published the video anyway on PGG. Uh, I don't know why. I guess it was just like, we did this thing, let's publish it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:56

Even if it's not great.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:58

It was not helpful at all. But we still did it. I think again, this is part of the problem, too, is like you feel you did something and you're like, all right, gotta publish. Gotta publish. Put that content out there, even though we didn't talk about content in 2012.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:15

Um, and I played it once in 2013, and I remember nothing about this game other than I think it being area control. But I love Leo Colavini designs. So many of his designs, Masons, Familian Banda, Alexandros, Cartagena.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:34

I don't know any of these games.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:37

Yeah. So many of his games I love. And yet this one just didn't come back. And part of it, of course, is as I was working at BGG, the owner, Scott, is very much into videos and would like me to do more videos, which means you gotta play new stuff. And somehow I'd start playing new stuff and just like forgetting the old gems.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:00

I'd play one thing and then just be like, ah, I don't have time. I gotta do a video and I don't know if this is appropriate. I haven't I haven't played this enough to talk about it, and then so I'll just play something else. And things would just fall away. So here's a game from a designer I love. Like you're talking about Xavier George's. You played other divines of his, really like him.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:21

Why would I not play this? It's kind of the way that I've been doing this with authors as well, where I read eight Stanislaw Limb books in a row because I loved a couple of his books.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:34

And I bought tons at Used Game Stores. And I just read, read, read, read until I got to a point where I'm like, I think I need a different authorial style now. I think I've I've got I've had enough limb for the moment. And out of those eight, I think I kept two.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:50

I was really trying to refine more to be like, what am I going to read again?

unknown 1:32:55

Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:55

Am I really going to get back to this and try to pare down what I have?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:00

Yeah, I have that same. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:03

No, I was going to say, at least in books. Not quite doing that in games, I do it somewhat, but you have to well, you don't have to, but I feel like in I need to play them more to really understand it.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:16

Getting enough out of it. And is there more to discover? Although sometimes it's not about more to discover because I played Quirkle 150 times. I think I know all that I'm going to get out of Quirkle in terms of strategy and nuance, all that sort of things, but it's still enjoyable, so I still play it.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:35

Yeah. Cool. I don't think I've ever played Quirkle. So maybe that's gotta be, maybe that'll be one that I walk out. I bet.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:47

Well, kind of the way I talk about Leo Colovini and uh we played Cartagena when the next move came out a new with a new edition. And we played with you and Isabel.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:59

Yes. Next move. And I that was like, were we going up a river or something? Or what was the Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:05

Well, you're you're trying to get all your pirates to safety, moving them down effectively a river. And I promised at the start of the game that I was gonna kick both of your asses, and I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:14

And you did you did that game?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:17

You if you don't know what you're doing initially, yes, it's very much just like I'm doing kind of random things.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:23

And then you play more and you can see how stuff gels together and take advantage of us. That's right. You can anticipate what other people are doing and use their moves to help you jump far ahead. But it's all from experience.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:39

So that's now what I should try to get to with this particular game. At least a few times. Get a sense of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:48

Yeah. So I I couldn't help as you're talking about books and like games and how you know you you feel like you or or how you like kind of deep dive with certain authors that you like. I feel the same way about music because often I will like Mars Volta is like one of my favorite bands. And when I got into Mars Volta, I would go and say, you know, I really love the drummers that played in Mars Volta on Mars Volta albums. I love the whole package, but Omar Rodriguez Lopez, uh the guitarist, is just like really, really special to me. So I started looking at everything he was working on. And old collector Candace would just like try to buy it all. Just, you know, I gotta, I gotta have it all. But then when you when you start to listen, like let's say I listen to eight albums, yeah. Probably there are like three that I that I like really, really love, even though I love this musician, but I'm trying, I've been trying to do that with vinyl more and not let my vinyl collection get out of control like my C D collection was because I'm realizing, yeah, like I don't need to have every album from every artist that I love, you know. Some of them, Bjork, I do. I need to have them all, and in some cases I have two versions. But but but for most, I don't like I don't need to own the vinyl for every album. I just need my favorites. So yeah, it works for books, games, and music.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:39

Probably TV D. Yeah. TV's paintings. I don't know. You can't really do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:46

But print maybe for some people.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:48

If you're buying prints, you know, reproductions of artwork, and in theory, you're like, this is fabulous. I want to do this, but you have a limited amount of wall space as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:58

What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:59

You gotta make some choices.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:00

Yeah, we got this friend in New Hampshire who does fabulous paintings. My wife really digs, and she's bought a few things from him, and it's like, well, where else are we gonna put the next one? So you're running to the limits there.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:13

Yes, yes. All right, well, my second game of the month. It's funny, I I went more with slightly more mainstream games than you, even though I do have some weird hidden gems that I'll bust out at some point this year. But I picked Galaxy Trucker.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:34

And specifically, I have so well, I'll just say my journey with Galaxy Trucker. I played it, I think my friend Brandon's at some point, and was like, whoa, this game is so cool. You know, it's real time. You're you're getting components for your spaceship, you're building a spaceship, and then you're going through like cards, I think, to see what happens, and it's wacky, silly, just very unique. And so I instantly like bought a copy, and I don't I never played my copy. Then I eventually sold it, and then Galaxy Trucker 2nd edition came out, and now I have a a review copy from CGE, and I I really want to play it more. Yeah, yeah. I I really want to play it more, like because I there there were there was some joy and spark I got from it. It's it's something that I think you can play with, you know, newer gamers that could be fun. And I, you know, Vlada is just a a beast of a designer. Like, I love the variety of games he produces, and I like I love Dungeon Pets, I love Tosh Kalar, like I like code names.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:57

Right, wearing a codenames hoodie.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:59

Yeah, we're in a code names hoodie. But so yeah, so so this one is just something I've been kind of dying to get back into, and I often have groups of people who haven't played as many games as you and I, but they like games, and I think this would be a fun one to break out. And I think I also have one of the new expansions for it as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:27

Right. It's interesting with stuff like this because right, we have we play with different groups, people with varying levels of experience, and something like Galaxy Tricker, you can run into the problem where you bring it to a group and people are like, Yeah, I've already played that. And you're like, Yes, but I want to play, I want to play a bunch. I want to really get into it, and they're like, Well, I'll play it once. And then you're just like, Okay, so how do that's what the problem in quotes here of how to do this sometimes is you need the willing participants who are also just like, I want to go on this journey with Candace, and we're gonna like dive in and do this.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:05

Yes, finding those people sometimes is yeah, sometimes challenging.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:09

Yeah, and I think like with Galaxy Trucker, how much have you played it?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:13

I do not know. I could go look at my record on PGD because I record stats, which is how I knew that I played Astlan once in 2013, but I do not recall Galaxy Trucker. I do recall that was a game I featured in this article, Hidden Depth, which I still love and reference, where I taught it to two people because I'd played before. And we finished the game and they did terribly. And they were just like, ah, you should change the game and do this, blah, blah, and this, you know, it's not right that blah, blah, blah. Whatever, all this sort of stuff. And you're like, Yeah, dudes, you played it once. Once.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:50

Like you're changing the game rather than saying, like, okay, well, now it's a couple of things. Let me try again.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:57

They didn't look at the cards in advance because you can do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:01

Right? You can spend time rather than constructing your ship. You can be like, oh, let me peek at this group of cards. And that gives you an idea. Like, are there lots of pirates? Are there meteor showers? What do I need when I'm building my ship? And they didn't do that. And so they built yeah, they built things, their ship was torn apart.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:18

And then they're saying the game's busted.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:21

Yeah. It's like, this is weird. And it's like, well, or you can try again.

unknown 1:41:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:28

You know what to expect.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:30

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:31

You know. Or you just, if you don't like it, cool. But don't say the game needs to be redone because you didn't get an ideal play experience out of it. I mean, Galaxy Trucker is definitely one of those games where you can end up with negative score because your ship just is blasted apart completely, and there's nothing there. You don't get any cargo. Like you can have a terrible result in terms of the score, and you could blame the game, or you could be like, maybe I don't know how to play this.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:04

Yeah, and it only takes like 45 minutes, if I recall. So it's like, just play it again, you know?

unknown 1:42:11

Play it again.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:12

Play it again. So, do you have any thoughts on like how many times you're going to try to get to play the two games you picked?

SPEAKER_03 1:42:24

Not yet. I haven't really thought about that. I mean I always feel like I want at least five. Just to I mean just put a number on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:35

Try some different player counts.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:37

Yeah. That's that's often the main thing, too, is try a different player count. And also the first time you those people are playing, they're also not going to know what they're doing. So play again with the same people.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:48

With the player, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:49

So that they know what they're doing in addition to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:53

And that takes a while. I mean, it was kind of neat. So at Gamma Expo, we played Canal Houses, which is a game where you're building buildings and we played three times in a row. And it was really good to just play it three times in a row because you got enough variety. We already knew the rules. We could just shuffle up, dive in again. It's only like, you know, 10-15-minute game, so it's not a huge time investment. It's much easier to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:19

Right. But it's nice, yeah, to be able to get those back-to-back plays in. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:25

And then see what other people do and try to respond. Like, yeah, you want to see that more.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:30

I have a famous story, well, famous for me, where the very first time that I played Anachrony, you know, the big mind clash game where you jump back and forth and back in time to get resources, and it's big, it's heavy. And on a Wednesday night, I think I'm trying to think if the people who I played with, I think it was my friend AJ, Joe, and Matt. And I know Matt and I hadn't played at that time, but they might have. But either way, we set up the game, we played, and then we were like, let's play this again. Like, and it was on a Wednesday night. And, you know, since it was already out to reset it, it didn't take that long. We already knew the rules. And that was just so fun. And I definitely want to do that more. And that's how I played Ordis Regni with Jordan. Like, we kind of had this bumpy first game where we're like, oh, I don't know if this like, okay, let's just see. Play it again, play it again. Ironically, his channel's called Play It Again. And and honestly, like that last game where we actually did the deck building was like so fun. And I, if it wasn't so late at night, like I would have wanted to play it again with deck building because now we have this whole metagame going that, like, oh, he built a joust deck last time, and I did this, like, all these political intrigue in my, you know, in my deck. But like, is he going to think that I'm gonna build the same deck this time, or is he gonna think I'm gonna, you know, I'm all about those repeat plays when you can. And I'll probably strive for five plays also, but but you're right, like getting a mix of people who know how to play, the game is gonna feel different when everybody knows what they're doing, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:45:21

Yes. Very much so. I mean, I had the sort of similar experience. I was trying to look up, remember the name of the game here. Tribune.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:33

So Oh, Tribune.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:35

Yeah. So back in 2008-9, we had exchange students regularly, and that year we had a Korean exchange student in Sung Chan who knew how to play Go. And that was it. That was all he played. He had played hundreds of games of Go. And I played against him, and he just demolished me. He was like, this isn't interesting. We gotta play something else. And so I pull a game off the shelf and we would play usually two or three times a day, every day, just repeatedly until he was just like, okay, we should move on to something else now. So we played Tribune, I think it was roughly 30 times in like two weeks or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:16

As two players? Or did that work?

SPEAKER_03 1:46:19

Two players. Just play again, again, again, again. We played the Hav. We would play it twice a day, and we did that regularly, just like for a couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:27

Wow, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:29

You really get into a game when you do it that way. You're just so second nature at that point. It's a great way to do it. And I wish there was a sunshine around all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:43

Yeah. Yeah. Wait, Linda won't play with Lav with you twice a day?

SPEAKER_03 1:46:49

She will not.

unknown 1:46:50

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:52

No, that's not anything. So it was just, it was such a fantastic experience to be able to just get it down that much. Because, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:05

Yeah. I used to have that with my friend Dan with Sequence. One of my former co-workers slash friends, uh, my friend Galena taught me Sequence at some point, and I was like, this game's so cool. And I got that blue, like quote unquote deluxe version. And Sequence is like one of those games, if you've never heard of it, that it could be in anybody's household. Like it's a very like family-friendly game, and you're trying to make sequences of these your little chips, your colored chips, based on cards you're playing. That they're like regular poker cards, but there's a special set, like I don't know, the breakdown.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:47

Some duplicates, I think. Yeah, and yeah, it's a very straightforward game.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:52

Yeah. But like I would play with Dan, and we'd just be like, one more game. And we'd reset it up, play again. One more game. One more game. And we would just like binge that probably while watching like 30 rock or something. I'm trying to think at the time.

unknown 1:48:10

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:10

But you know, that's part of the memory, too. I definitely want to kind of prioritize playing things more. Yeah, I try to talk to people about that too. Because, like, for example, when I played Fire in the Lake a couple weeks ago for the first time, which is one of the GMT coin games, one of the heaviest ones, complexity-wise, it's covering the Vietnam War, which is also complex. And none of us had played it before, even though we've played some coin games and some other like war games and conflict simulations and stuff like that. But as we're playing, like I loved it, but I knew it wasn't the like premium experience because none of us knew what we're doing, you know? And it's very much a game where everybody, like, you know, it felt like you are on a team with one player sometimes, and then it feels like somewhat semi-cooperative, then you're like, okay, no, I can't help this person anymore. And there are all these really cool dynamics between the different factions and how they work. But if you've never played the game and we're playing it for the first time, like, you know, referring to rules as we're doing certain things to make sure we're doing it right, we're not like really getting it. So I'm I'm very, very excited to revisit Fire in the Lake and hopefully uh with the same group, or at least mostly experienced players, even though I'd be happy to teach anyone to. But but that's like I see that in so many games when people play for the first time and they're like, oh, this something wasn't working, or this, this. And it's like, don't forget, we're all new. And we're all like not playing optimally and you know it's this is probably not what it's how it's meant to feel, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:50:09

Yeah, yeah. That's one of the comments I hear people make sometimes. I didn't even know what I was doing, and I won. And you're like, Well, how often has everyone else played? I mean, the game is gonna most games are going to have a winner. That could be you. You just did the right things. You might not know what you're doing, or other people don't know how to respond to what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:32

I mean, again, this is a lesson from a long time ago, again with Sun Chan, where you played modern art. And the general lesson with modern art is you never buy your own artwork because you want someone else to buy it and give you money. If you buy it, the money goes out of the game. You want to earn money for that. But we played four players, he kept buying his own stuff. The other three of us were just like, What are you doing? This is the like, no, this is not how you play the game. And he just demolished us. And so it's the one's gonna be like, Oh, maybe we don't actually know how to play, right? Because we're all kind of doing the same thing, and I guess he was he had lucked onto or glommed onto some strategy that was counter to what all of us were doing, and it just worked perfectly for him.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:24

So that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:25

Okay, maybe uh yeah, maybe there's a reason why you won the first time, even though you didn't know what you're doing, you were doing counter to what everyone else was. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:37

Fascinating, fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:39

Yeah, could also Eric.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:42

Well, I'm excited. I'm excited to have more conversations with you about old games too, and you know, hopefully collaborate on some more content together throughout the year to either just catch up or talk about some of these dusty old games we're that's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:02

Ideally, playing these enough that then we can pick our next two before too long.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:07

Yeah, I don't want to be in a couple of months and be like, I still haven't played this.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:13

Yeah, yeah, we'll make it happen. We'll make it happen. Uh well, thanks again for taking the time. I know, I know you're busy or or maybe recovering from your big con crawl, but uh thanks for taking time to kick it with me. And uh we will do stuff again soon. You've been listening to the Kickin' It Creative podcast, produced and edited by Candace Harris. Special thanks to Matt Fonda for editing and mixing our music. Be sure to visit us on the web at kickin' itcreative.com and on YouTube for even more kickin' it creative content crafted by Candace. Thanks for listening and happy gaming!