Expansion Pack: UK Games Expo 2024 - Part One

It's our biggest UK Games Expo episode yet and there's so much UK Games Expo content we've had to split it into two parts.  Part One is our usual debrief around the table around the show, what we've played, what we've experienced so strap yourself into all of the UKGE goodness.

OUR PLAYERS - Davey, Adrian, Becky & JP

OVERVIEW
In this episode you'll learn:
- that Rob is pretending to be Bilbo Baggins in "There & Back Again: A Rob's Tale" by forgetting his UKGE pass (doh)
- Our debrief from our live episode we presented at the show for the first time
- how JP's first preview of Ironwood went at Mindclash Games
- why Davey keeps going into limos with billionaires in Vampire: The Masquerade - Milan Uprising
- that Becky didn't purchase all of the bring & buy this year...well done Becky
- how Adrian gets excited for more route planning shenanigans in Terminus
- more about the latest hotness and games we've played
- that if we met you at the show it's likely we've given you a shout out and thank you for everyone who came and supported us and said hi, it really means loads to us.

LINKS REFERENCED IN THE SHOW
Find out more about the UK Games Expo here - https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

EPISODE CHAPTERS
0:00 - TURN 1 - Player Count
1:55 - TURN 2 - UK Games Expo 2024: Part One
5:52 - THURSDAY: THE PREVIEW SHOW
6:48 - Rock Hard
9:24 - Kiri-Ai: The Duel
12:44 - The Enchanted Needle - Craft Shop
14:05 - Redwood
16:15 - Necropolis
19:19 - Avant Carde
21:13 - Cheeky Nandos & Kerley Cold Showers
28:13 - FRIDAY: DAY 1
29:59 - Ironwood
39:22 - Manic Minute
41:30 - Whose Turn Is It Anyway LIVE!!!! Round Up
45:03 - Bushido
49:59 - Becky's Encounter with Folded Space
52:46 - Our Bring & Buy experiences
57:30 - Deep Regrets
1:07:39 - SATURDAY: DAY 2
1:09:10 - Time Troopers
1:16:59 - Kutna Hora
1:21:41 - DroPolta & Tinderblox
1:25:45 - Rebirth
1:32:05 - Teburu & Vampire: The Masquerade - Milan Uprising
1:43:26 - Luthier
1:50:41 - Tiny Epic Western
1:51:57 - Our annual Las Iguanas traditional visit
1:54:26 - Civolution
2:08:01 - Bag of Dungeon 2
2:09:12 - SUNDAY: DAY 3
2:11:00 - Stocking up on t-shirts from Lonely Red Planet & Shirts & Merch
2:12:58 - World Order
2:22:54 - Rove
2:28:00 - Terminus
2:34:22 - Wrapping up & shout outs
2:40:25 - TURN 3 - The Final Turn

Transcript

TURN 1 - Player Count
0:00
[Music]
0:07
[Music]
0:19
so you're listening to whose turn is it anyway and we're doing a very special episode about the Expo I'm here with JP
0:28
hello there Becky hi hi and Adrian hello and we're just going to be doing our
0:33
general Expo goodness where we're going to cover the con cover we've actually got quite a nice amount of recordings
0:39
but that's going to come out later at the moment we're just going to talk about our experience and kind of what
0:44
games we got to see and who we got to meet and what fun was had yeah all that
0:50
Shenanigans yeah how's everyone feeling after the con by the way kned today is Wednesday so we came back
0:57
on Sunday and I'm just about feeling human but I'm very tired still cuz I'm old I mean this is late for us right cuz
1:03
normally we record like the day after the day after I don't know how we do it or had done it but this yeah we've given
1:09
ourselves a few days feels like a fever dream I think normally yeah I would have been coughing up a if we did it the day
1:15
after cuz I definitely got con crud like just stuck in the throat and the lungs but I'm going to be coughing up anyway
1:21
cuz I cycled here cuz I was like yeah let's use my bike how about you agent how are you feeling I'm just knackered
1:27
well I'm not I'm okay now Monday I slept a lot of I always take the Monday off after the Expo and I slept a lot of the
1:32
Monday yeah I've started doing that now cuz you I I've seen that you were doing it and I was like that's actually a
1:38
really good idea cuz I always feel like absolute crap afterwards so yeah I did
1:44
not I wish I had but I did not no I used all my annual leave up so I had no annual leave left so sad times sad times
1:53
all right let's get to it [Music]
TURN 2 - UK Games Expo 2024: Part One
2:06
so what a better place to start then our journey into the Expo so we kind of went
2:11
up in drips and dravs didn't we um it was me JP and Rob in one car Adrian Marcus and another yep and then Curley
2:18
team curlyy and team curly you didn't go with Tambo we didn't know so Tambo came with his brother Chris and his nephew
2:24
Josh but we were staying in the same Hotel originally and we'll get later we
2:31
met a little bit of drama guys we all met at the hotel and then got on Uber into the NEC nice uh on our journey up
2:38
it was it was quite uneventful really um not too much happened other than um I dropped JP and Rob off into a car park
2:45
and had to go wait in some other random car park cuz I wasn't allowed to wait at the premier in I don't yeah so me me and
2:51
Robert the premier in and for those that don't know the the car park will allow you 10 minutes of free entry before it
3:00
charging you obscene amounts of money I think1 per day for for just staying
3:05
longer than 10 minutes so you constantly seeing Ubers going in and out quickly yeah um and we thought won't be long
3:11
mate we'll just get dropped off we'll dump the bags and get checked in and the queue was mosive oh coming right out we
3:17
thought oh God here we go so yeah it was uh it took a good 40 odd minutes I'd say to get checked in and bless Davey
3:25
waiting on the sidelines I just found a random car park and parked now hopefully I won't get a ticket for but uh it was
3:31
pretty I think it was all right it was just like one of those ones that wasn't developed so it was fine if any was listen to this and tries to give me a
3:36
ticket it was please don't please don't yeah yeah um but other than that other
3:43
than me losing the bezel of my watch we all got in there safely um was right at the start and we bumped into Adam from
3:49
punch board and we walked in he told us a nice Cornish pasty story he did um about empanadas and the fact it was some
3:55
Cornish guy miners that went over that brought M like what's called an perard over to Spain which is pretty much Spain
4:02
South America which is pretty much just a South American pasty nice Chilean pasty yeah there you go bit too much
4:09
Cornish chat though W there well yeah was a lot py talk wasn't there it's always nice to see Adam though is it
4:15
he's a lovely guy yeah we love Adam he's he's a great guy we spent a good amount of time with him at um full board gaming
4:21
which is really nice to get get some games with him but yeah yeah I trust his
4:26
recommendations oh absolutely I absolutely he's cost me a lot of money that man good man so that's our rather
4:32
uh mundane I guess journey in there's no other exciting stories no no exciting
4:38
stories but we had a lot of uh your music taste Davey of of what was it Soul
4:43
Funk and underground Dutch Dutch Hip-Hop Hip-Hop yeah it great very eclectic very
4:49
very different it's no cheesy bangers though is it it's not cheesy bangers I did say we were going to put some cheesy
4:54
bangers on and then no one wanted we kind of just forgot and just cruised I'm sorry
5:00
fine we didn't have cheesy bangers in the car either cuz curly is not a Cheesy Banger fan he's not he's not team cheesy bangers he not so and I think if you did
5:08
put him in team cheesy bangers it would just ruin it it would sour The Experience what we should do for next
5:14
time is get our listeners to make our playlists that we have to listen to for dve great and then we'll we'll we'll
5:20
feedback what so if any of you are music lovers then give us a playlist our next
5:26
dve in about two and a half hours long it needs to be so do us a mix on maybe Spotify or something can the way we put
5:34
whose turn is it shared mixtape and people just add to it add to it and we'll just listen to it all the way listen everybody has to including Cur
5:40
don't drop our own episodes in there cuz then we'll seem really egotistical driving along the motorway blaring out
5:46
our own voices but not with the old mics right let's get into it preview
THURSDAY: THE PREVIEW SHOW
5:52
show on the Thursday people don't know then on the Thursday they do a little press event where uh content creators
5:58
and uh journalists can go in and speak to some of the developers they also say what Booth they're at and kind of give
6:03
us a little taste of what their game's about so you kind of know before the whole Expo opens where to go and what
6:10
games to play and you know who to talk to about getting interviews and everything else so we talk about some of
6:18
the games that we got to CU even though we spoke to a lot of people we weren't able to get around to a lot of the
6:23
developers we wanted to there just wasn't enough time in the weekend so I'm sorry if you are listening and we
6:28
weren't able to get you give us an email and we'll obviously we're more than happy to expansion episodes we'll come
6:34
to your house yeah J will come to your house invited invited doesn't matter do
6:40
matter we'll do it yeah yeah exactly uh any got any like Stand Out games that they want to talk about which
6:46
we weren't able to play yeah so um I think the one that I saw at the Press
Rock Hard
6:52
event that I didn't see elsewhere because it's not really out yet is the
6:58
um the game called Rock C by D so um they've got a it's about being a rockar
7:06
and it's again D do great sort of production value and it is exactly that
7:11
so each of your little player boards looks like an amp and it's got the four twiddly knobs at the top that track all of your different bits it's like the
7:18
standard old martial amps that you remember that you have the like solo amps yeah and there's kind of a mix
7:23
between getting up early to do better things but you're a rock star so you shouldn't be going to bed and getting up
7:30
early you should be laying in so there's kind of a pushpull mechanic there and one of the other bits and bits that I
7:36
really enjoyed was that you can eat candy as sugar and this gives you extra
7:41
actions but if you eat too much candy you'll crash and so you start losing
7:47
actions is it candy well is it really though it's in like these the the tokens
7:52
are in little like the little pink sweetie wrappers to make it look like candy but I did think I wonder if this
7:58
started off develop as candy or if they kind of went it's a bit much we'll turn it into candy shall we but there's just
8:05
a some didn't really get to chance to talk too much about the game play but just the production value and kind of
8:11
what they're aiming to achieve with the whole you know personal player Board of an amp the idea of you need to be a bit
8:16
rock and roll but you also kind of need to do what you need to do to make it in as a career and then these like little
8:21
candies that emulate the sugar crash if you take if you eat too much candy I just thought it looks like it's going to
8:27
be an awesome game and it's one I'm going to keep my eye on even though it's not going to be like previewed for quite
8:33
a while from what I can see so yes think Essen in time for I'm really hoping
8:39
so keep an eye on the production value was great I went over and I bumped into aent while he was kind of showing it off
8:46
to you and I thought this looks awesome trying not to dribble on the board because it just looks so nice it was right next to sand so obviously sand was
8:52
one of the big ones that was released uh not released but was sort of previewed here at Expo and just right next to it
8:58
but a load of people said seem keep walking past it and it was such a vibrant board with all his production value I was like I know Sand's kind of
9:05
the hotness right now but look at this like it just looked really funky and
9:10
it's one we did want to talk to the D guys as well and they were really Keen to do a a little like segment but we
9:17
never got around to it unfortunately so hopefully keep your ears pricked and we'll be able to get them onto the
9:23
future episode we'll try cool I spoke
Kiri-Ai: The Duel
9:28
well it's kind of the end of the the preview show and went to Lucky Duck
9:33
games that sounded really middle is it lucky duck Lucky Duck lucky dock Lucky Duck yeah you know because I listened to
9:39
my own Voice through these headphones and I realized that actually I do have you are Norther I do the same thing you
9:45
have got a really like Northern ACC all right we the lucky duck um so now we to Lucky Duck games and I spotted a
9:52
familiar face um who was kind of Manning the stand and it was uh Devon from Devon
9:58
talks tabletop has a YouTube channel over in the states and I thought I'll just go and say hello and he was kind of
10:04
in the middle of just chatting with one of his mates behind the table so we had a really good chat and then he instantly
10:10
challenged me to a jewel um not pistols at dawn but ker ey the jewel which is a
10:15
little card game I had no idea what he was talking about but you know Thursday I was really excited to be at the show
10:21
like yeah go for it and um so yeah Ki ey the jewel was just a little little call
10:27
card game um you're too Samurai on a on a cliff Edge jeweling and it's basically
10:33
all all R by about what 13 cards and you program two moves in each time trying to
10:39
kill each other really simple really it's just a cool little card game and uh yeah we had a game and uh I killed him
10:47
you did you killed him pretty quick yes yeah it was really good I he called me a naughty word he did he did yeah I also
10:53
bumped into you at towards the end of this game as well and you guys were like shouting at each other so you're quite easy to find yeah we were quite loud um
11:01
but it was all in good spirits and the fact that I'm British and he's American and he enjoyed calling you that word he
11:07
loved it you could see the glint in his eye yeah I I got him to do it again but with meaning so if you don't know the
11:13
word it's the c word but I'm not saying it we're good on this show aren't we unless it's the bloopers unless it's the
11:20
bloopers but I really enjoyed the game um spoiler picked it up all Becky managed to secure a copy during the show
11:27
so yeah I zipped around to Zat and just saw like about eight of them on the table in the center and I was like
11:32
they're they're not going to stay there for very long I just know it so I picked up two and they were gone the next day
11:37
yeah and the cards are made out of like that plastic so they're like really good quality they'll they'll probably last
11:43
forever and I just thought it'd be quite a nice game to play with Josh and fully enough we were playing it when you walked in yeah and Josh beat him and he
11:50
beat me he's beating me it I'm just crap um main because it's programming I love how you were giving
11:57
it the big in when we walked in as well you're like yeah I'm just to be at the game and then Josh went I win yeah great
12:03
timing B move forward move back oh no I stabbed you and Josh is how old just to remind everybody uh at least 27 yeah
12:09
sure sure yeah nine it's a good game though even I understood it and I liked the look of it I I bought myself a copy
12:16
as well oh did you yeah and it's in a in a very cute little kind of black cottony
12:21
pouch that based on I think it's like an ancient scrolling thing um money pouch
12:27
thing from time period yeah that I don't know Japan feudal Japan or something
12:34
coin yes that sort of thing yeah it's really good yeah cool little game U recommend it for that just got five
12:40
minute takes five minutes and you're done yeah nice yeah the thing I remember most throughout the preview show wasn't
The Enchanted Needle - Craft Shop
12:46
a game particularly although it was fun when I bumped into you playing the kir ey game um there was a a craft kind of
12:53
stall which always kind of I prick my ears up and go and have a little look um and the girl was called Becky so I
13:00
remembered her name um she runs easily to REM for me uh she runs a uh like a
13:05
crossstitch kind of making Enterprise on Etsy it's called the enchanted needle
13:11
well Enchanted needle the if you're looking and they did really great she did some really great designs sort of
13:17
like a gelatinous cube and a poison vial and a mimic chest and all little meeple stuff and it was her first Expo so she
13:24
kind of you could tell she didn't really know what she was going to expect or how it was going to be and you know spoilers ran into her on Friday and bought a
13:30
couple of her bits and she just had a great time it was really nice to see someone realizing how much people like
13:36
their stuff and it was really nice she was yeah really excited and people have bought my stuff people I've sold loads
13:42
and I like us cuz they're really great so uh yeah it was really nice to see her that's cool it's good cuz a lot of
13:48
people they're there it's their first time isn't it they don't really know what to expect and we were there once
13:54
going what the hell is this place all about it's quite dting big noisy hanger and everyone's oh oh my head hurts it's
14:00
only Thursday yeah any other games that caught people's eyes I got to talk to
Redwood
14:06
sit down board games uh about redwood not my type of game but I was really
14:12
impressed with how unique it is it's like it's one Awards and you can see why
14:17
uh it's basically about animal photographers um and it's kind of like this all about this geometric placement
14:23
of where you place your photographer and then you have these little measurements and where that
14:29
measurement goes you then also have like a little um trying to think of the shape it's
14:36
like a lens shape where obviously it's triangle but it slowly gets bigger with a curve so as if it's coming out of a
14:42
camera and you put that down and then everything that's within your image you get to pick up and put into your little
14:48
photograph and then you score points for what's in your photograph and who's got the best photograph so I found it really
14:56
interesting not my type of game probably not not depth there but I really liked
15:01
the visual aspect of it and its uniqueness like I can't think of a ball game that's doing that kind of thing and
15:08
for some people that's going to be really appealing so definitely check out Redwood I was talking to someone in the bring and Bell about that game actually
15:15
doing my normal thing of chitchatting to the people in the bring of by sale um yeah a guy in front of me and and his
15:21
partner I think um he was saying how much he liked the look of Redwood and how good it was and it did sound really
15:27
really interesting just sound what your back I mean animals y That's it
15:33
yeah yeah it's just the uniqueness of the photo you take you then pick up you like take that environment as the
15:40
background and then you take the little animals you've taken a photo of and you put them in those spaces and so it's
15:45
like where your the isometric landscape of where your photographer um kind of was and
15:51
then you take the little photo it's then like a little as if you're viewing it flat on that's your little photo so it
15:58
kind it's a very good visual representation and I I'm really impressed by intivity
16:04
of the um that's a big word I know it took me a while getting it
16:09
out of that design space and so it's definitely worth a mention nice nice the
Necropolis
16:16
the other one I've just thought of is necropolis um which was there there was a guy stood like on one of the corners
16:23
holding a beer half a beer and just chatting to anyone who went past and he
16:29
created a little is that the him drinking it in real time what's that holding a beer half a beer half a beer
16:35
that quick it was time you turn around I never half was gone you're like where' he get all this beer from no not quite
16:40
he just holding half a beer when I got to him and you know you walk up and down the the sort of aisle and kind of look
16:47
and sort of oh that'll that'll suit me that won't and I noticed the Miniatures and noticed that some of them were um
16:53
Games Workshop ones but there were others that weren't and I was quite interested to sort of see what the ones
16:58
that weren't were and it was on this big sort of I think it was like a 16in by
17:04
16in board but the board was like 16 in tall and all very 3D and looked really
17:09
cool and it was all skeletons and and as a game called necropolis might might a
17:15
Hint it was kind of all Gothic and dark and all that kind of stuff and he said oh can I give you my Spiel yeah absolutely not a problem go for it so he
17:23
was saying that the rules are free the stls are cheap I think if you go to his patreon or whatever
17:29
you can get the the stls to 3D print them for quite cheap as well but there's
17:34
a couple of things that caught caught my eye on this game which is that there's no missing in this game you either graze
17:42
or hit and if you graze it's like a single point of damage but at least you're doing something for your attempt where so many war games that you play
17:48
these miniature games it's like hit or miss on one dice so you're like well you might get rolls or whatever but
17:54
sometimes it's kind of it feels a bit like bad luck whereas at least if you're doing a point of damage that's good and the other thing was that you can
18:00
constantly kind of bring waves of skeletons back on and you have a certain level of he did call it something
18:06
specific I'm going to call it Mana for lack of the actual term but as skeletons die they drop little portions of Mana so
18:13
the the Lich can go around and pick these bits up to give them more to try and bring in and some of them do that
18:19
and are running around trying to pick up bits and some are just there to to hit people and stuff it just seemed like a
18:24
seemed like just nice couple of mechanics to put into a into a game and the resource is actually from actually
18:30
playing it and then that's how you then get units in so like a pox nor or a
18:35
theia kind of mechanic sure fine whatever it's just that recycle idea you
18:41
kill you kill two or three and you're going to bring at least one back sort of thing so it's going to keep going
18:46
because you're constantly hitting things and it's 3D so it's all about pushing skeletons off and like off of The Edge
18:52
and stuff like that so it just it just stuck out of me and I know that um
18:57
Marcus was there as well and I know he's talking about starting it so um yeah
19:02
just just really interested me there's not many sort of of the smaller war games that catch my eye anymore but that
19:07
one certainly did and yeah I think it would be interesting I'm interested to see if Marcus takes picks up what it
19:14
actually plays like yeah yeah if you're listen to Marcus pick it up yeah pick it up Marcus pick it up do it I'm going to
Avant Carde
19:20
talk about a game we played afterwards called uh Avon card I love that game it's so good I was
19:27
really impressed I'm so glad I got to to wheel it out yeah I can't believe I didn't see it anywhere for sale the
19:34
whole Expo I asked in most of the you know the big shops nobody had it nobody
19:39
had it at all no one had it it'll have to be a an internet Pur which she spoken about it before so I'm not going to go
19:45
over it but think in either the last episode or one before did an overiew JP
19:50
enjoyed rolling it out onto the table it's it's pretty much and I don't know the other name I think it's called
19:55
Sevens or something like that but it's [ __ ] mixed with you know H where you got your own rules on your on the each
20:02
like numbers of cards but these rules are modular and they're actually written on the cards above um and then you play
20:09
like a Uno hand but only for yourself but with slight [ __ ] rules and I'm going to keep swearing cuz I don't know
20:15
the actual name of the game that's what we called it a college isn't it that's it's called yeah was I think it might be
20:20
sevens or something over cuz seven was the one I can't remember what always shitthead and and the beauty with
20:26
[ __ ] is is that everybody has their own rules of what the poers do in the cards um so again you're right it I
20:33
never thought of aant card being a bit [ __ ] like but it is it is for that
20:39
reason and you could literally make your own power cards as well probably break the game but hey it's a bit fun well
20:45
it's not it's not too long of a game is it so it doesn't really matter no it's good very impressed and I will be
20:51
picking up nice me too me too there we go and I think that's all we kind of got
20:58
done on Thursday we were pretty knackered by the end of that day yeah I mean we saw a lot of games we saw a lot
21:04
of Publishers but a lot of the ones that we saw we'll probably talk about in a minute so because we went to see them in
21:11
the in the boobs in the show so yeah oh we went to nandos before that we went to nandos SP
Cheeky Nandos & Kerley Cold Showers
21:18
chil sauce all down my crotch which looked great before we went into the preview did and my my appetizer fernandos was a
21:26
cheeky Five Guys burger so yeah yeah you did yeah I forgot you did that you had a
21:31
nice appar of a burger I was starving so me and Marcus got there cuz he was setting up the tournament and had to be
21:38
there early so I was there by 12 got to the hotel at like 1:00 an hour
21:44
early and when can I book in and they're like yeah absolutely you can book in not a problem and then after that I was kind of just wandering around waiting for you
21:50
guys turn up I will be there in half an hour we'll be there in half an hour we'll be there in half an hour none of
21:55
you turned up till like close to 4:00 so I was is getting peckish so I stopped another Five Guys Burger and then you
22:01
were like you're joining us for nandos yeah I can have a cheeky Nando as well so yeah I definitely hate on on Thursday
22:09
yeah my um oh I'll get blue light discount was really really pointless was it yeah so I took I took a little
22:16
notebook with me and a pen as is my you know nature so I ordered for me for curly for Tambo for Chris and for Josh
22:23
guess how much and so that came to 91 quid for those for five of us guess how much how much NHS discount I got I'm
22:30
know what yeah is4 which I'm you know4 is still £4 yeah
22:36
but cross five but we could have all just ordered on our phones and made it a lot easier than me writing every everybody's thing down queuing for ages
22:42
doing the thing so quick tip don't bother don't bother just use your app
22:47
yeah but there you go4 no you had £4 that's £4 spent on crocheted board game
22:54
goodness well it is you're right exctly yeah so imagine how that would be if you then had all of that traveling and all
23:00
of the kind of scrum in the in the um press event and then you go back to your hotel and you think oh I have a lovely
23:06
shower and then you don't because there's no hot water oh this is the drama drama's coming out people drama's
23:14
coming out so I'd already had my misgivings about the hotel cuz curly booked it um when we were here basically
23:20
this time last year M and I looked a few reviews sort of last week and was like
23:26
oh oh the is like six 50% five star and 30% one star ooh that is a bad
23:35
percentage and I was like oh someone had mentioned bed bugs and I was like oh no there were no there were no bed bugs I
23:41
saw that was absolutely fine I think you would have taken the bed bugs and a hot shower wouldn't you well it's probably bed bugs cuz no one could shower maybe
23:49
maybe but yeah so by 1:00 in the morning the the very nice hotel staff and they were very very nice had managed to find
23:57
another room that I could shower in but we weren't able to stay in that room because someone was booking into it tomorrow so we could but they had like
24:04
an electric shower so I could have my shower and that was fine and then they heartily promised us on Friday morning
24:10
that it would definitely be fixed and I was like yeah but if it isn't what's our what's the kind of I know it definitely
24:15
will be fixed like yeah okay it cut to the end it wasn't it was not fixed you
24:22
had a very uh frustrated curries yeah I would say and I you know I'm not a princess although some people would
24:28
would argue with that however I don't mind you know bit of a skanky room bit of a you know Iron melted bit of the
24:35
carpet clanky rooms if Tambo or Chris had have farted in the Next Room we would have heard it it was literally the
24:41
wall of paper thin however I can cope with all of that but cold water shower I'm sorry absolutely not no just
24:49
no that isn't that that Swedish guy that like swears by it yeah well fine crack on me I'm Kristoff isn't it Kristoff
24:56
something well done Kristoff on Christoff I am not having a cold shower not in the UK in the cold yeah yeah no
25:04
and it's one of those things that being a sweaty Expo for a day makes you want a shower I mean maybe some of the people
25:10
that were also staying in the hotel didn't notice there was no showers maybe not I don't know but I noticed that I
25:16
did not care for it my shower is lovely I'm really glad oh the the Ard there was
25:21
a power shower you can tell they've got a swim Port there because they've obviously got all the pumps and the heated water enough and oh it was lovely
25:29
mine was a droopy power shower oh really oh yours kept falling down yeah the shower head kept falling down so luckily
25:35
I had a lastic band on me and I jury rigged that thing AER shower so I think it is worth
25:41
if you're going to go to Birmingham and it's far away for you and you're going to stay in a hotel decide whether you're
25:47
going to go for quite a lot of money near the hotel near the NEC or you're just going to accept that you're going
25:53
to get a dog poo room I mean it's still going to be quite expensive that's that's to say that all Hotel tells that
25:58
aren't at the NAC or dog poo well no this the one we stayed in was great in the end we had to get a last minute
26:04
other booking and it was like a uh like a country club somewhere that
26:10
looked said said it was like five miles it was not it it definitely want 5 miles but no it said it was 15 minutes it
26:16
definitely want 15 minutes but it was very nice and there were deer scampering around around the outside in the morning
26:21
when we saw it it was a golf course so think it was the same chain as ours though wasn't it it was one of the Arden
26:27
ones well this was a forest of ardant forest of ardant yeah it was very could very much recommend that hotel but
26:33
you're going to pay about £6 for an Uber yeah so I mean you know or drive in I guess yes you could I guess you
26:40
could there we go hotel hotel chat Hotel chat yeah I didn't get to go for a swim I forgot my swimming stuff so we had a
26:46
swimm pool and a SW and I didn't use any of it bought my swimming stuff just in case but when did you fit I was going
26:52
back to the room early like earlier than you guys and I still wasn't like oh I'll go for a swim now it's just like I'm
26:57
knackered Li down yeah just saer it's not it's not I'm knacked or I couldn't
27:03
go in the saer but I learned that from I learned from last time yeah when when we did the um the T event and I had a big
27:10
dinner and then went in the sauna that was stupid never doing that again night Becky I'm G tired yeah it's true you
27:18
used to be able to get the hotels pre-ordered whilst you Expo without the
27:24
hotel's cutting in on that it was like a popular weekend but all over it now yeah
27:29
they're all over it I bumped into an old Gaming group and they've they get like an Airbnb for nine people and of course
27:36
it works out pretty good but what they actually do is they get it for five nights and then for the two days after
27:41
the convention they sit and play games that's a great idea which is a great idea and as I said it works out still
27:47
cheaper than nine of them even if they got twins like twinned up sort of thing it works out still cheaper than doing
27:53
that like the Hilton or whatever so that's a really good idea there's certainly some some ways to kind of mhm
27:59
save a few P we should look into doing that put it on the list put it on the list sounds like an organizational thing
28:08
JP Rob to do it yeah project manager Rob yeah Rob's Keen speaking of Rob was it
FRIDAY: DAY 1
28:15
Friday morning that Rob went for a very very long walk oh yeah um straight into
28:21
Friday this is great little inter nice yeah so we we we got up showered had
28:28
breakfast usual Shenanigans and decided to walk to the Expo it's a good 20
28:34
minute walk from the premier inim it's actually not that bad I thought it was further than it actually was in my head
28:40
and it's fine so we got pretty much near The Moxy hotel which is right out outside the front of hallan
28:46
and I think I took my my hoodie off and exposed uh my pass that was around my
28:51
neck then he just had this horrid look and went oh crap I've forgot my pass like you joking said no I said well
29:00
off you go then so we had to double double take turn back around and he walk 20 minutes back to get the pass 5
29:08
minutes 10 minutes to get it 20 minutes back to the Expo so basically we called him Frodo for the rest of the day didn't
29:14
we off his his missure back again yeah they won't reissue your
29:21
passes guys so make sure you remember to take them yeah yeah so yeah never took mine off that's the sleep it sleep on
29:28
and it's that moment like I I hate it when you you forget something and you're already nearly where you need to be and
29:34
you've got to go back on yourself and it's just like so frustrating so yeah he was pissed off yeah um you were no s
29:40
wise there you didn't go back with him no I had a I had a demo book so Sun wise yeah I'll call you
29:49
myself no I said no I've got a mine Clash visit I got to do sorry pal yeah
29:55
he was never going to he was never going to win over mine Clash was he not so lead us straight into IR iron wood is
Ironwood
30:01
iron wood yeah so Ironwood is mine clash games is kind of newest um game that
30:08
they're they're promoting and they they were all over Expo they had three three tables of it and they were demo in there
30:14
other kind of back catalog as well all but traron which was a little bit sad for traron because needs a lot more love
30:21
the best I mean it's debatable it's the best but it's bloody good I mean it's it's fantastic old news but it is old
30:28
news it's like old hat in it but come on come on M Clash I think everyone's yeah
30:33
but everyone's kind of heard of traron now yeah who knows about it it's a really amazing game full stop and be
30:40
fair on the next next era yeah they didn't have uh they had sept they had void four and perseverance episode 3 so
30:46
I think they had those and then Ironwood was the was the others so yeah we we um
30:51
were invited for a demo which was fantastic thank you dker for arranging
30:56
that and we pretty much sat down and me and Davey had a little teacher game um of Ironwood
31:05
and S basically uh gave us the teach yeah and I played as the wood Walkers I
31:12
was the iron B the iron clad iron clad iron born he's gone Game of Thrones um
31:19
and for those that don't know what it is Ironwood is a two-player asymmetric card
31:24
driven Duty smashy Skirmish game card SK game yeah and plays in about 60 minutes
31:32
and actually does play in about 60 minutes so you kind of have a um hand a
31:38
cards three of those cards are like your base cards so whenever you play them you'll get them back every time and then
31:43
you got a deck of uh unique cards that do all sorts of cool stuff and then if you play them you don't get those back
31:48
so they're kind of one and done and because they're um the factions are
31:54
asymmetrics the Ironclad is all about you know like Masters of Industry they
31:59
they they produce a lot of gems that they find around they've got this massive drill machine that they they kind of wander around they kind of more
32:05
moving around in a big Clump Clump um The W bands yeah with your main goal
32:12
being trying to get as many gems which is or crystals which is one of the resources you use to buff cards as
32:18
possible to then fuel your endgame Victory condition which is build forges
32:24
they've got to build threee forges and then they win they have more forg but they need to just convert the the
32:30
foundations into for they have to control three forges which means you have to have a unit on it yes um and the
32:37
woodwalkers are very different they live unsurprisingly in the woods remind me of the scel sure from Witcher nerd and
32:46
reminded me of um Avatar and the kind of na'vi you know the kind of yeah that reference I got um yeah go it's fine
32:54
Witcher yeah yeah Witcher got it there you go so yeah so they're like the the tribes people very um shamanistic they
33:02
they have a a vision deck that that they will kind of see where these totems may
33:07
appear in in the world and um they're trying to basically maneuver their troops into the the right place
33:15
hopefully the Ironclad aren't in the certain town that the uh the woodwalkers need to to kind of infiltrate and uh
33:22
basically they they find the totem and then try to bug her off you're doing like a mini game of Capture the Flag every time aren you and it's these
33:29
totems once discovered they end up Wayne they kind of Wayne after time and then they disappear so you've got a limited
33:35
amount of time to get them so usually when they appear the ironclad's like right get the boys in and and kind of
33:41
Duff them up a little bit and because they got less movement the whole tactic is to try and maybe throw the ironcloud
33:48
off the scent and make them go somewhere else switch and a bit of that so so I
33:56
with these games I mean I I really enjoyed it actually um and I think with the with the game you just kind of got
34:02
to go right your first game is a learning game like most of these things um and you know the you're trying to
34:09
learn your faction and learn what the other factions are doing and you're probably going to play sub optimally and
34:14
and you know like the Seesaw in any 1 V one game it's probably just going to tilt one way quite quickly and that's
34:19
the way it's going to go and then you'll go ah switch switch sides play again and
34:25
then figure it out and then you can kind of really lean into to the the depth I would say of of the game that's there um
34:31
because it rules light it literally takes 5 minutes to to Really grasp what's going on the card play is so
34:39
you've got dual uses of the card you've got a card which you play down as an action you have three a three actions or
34:45
was it four three actions um you've got your main ability on the card which US can be boosted with crystals or when
34:52
you're in a combat you'll be playing the card for which you've got a strength value which is basically the things you
34:58
kill which is the sword at the top a shield which will defend it and then you've got your control which is a flag
35:04
which that plus the amount of units you have whoever's got the highest wins so it's quite unique in the way it works
35:10
there but that's pretty much the rule set yeah and you can like damage one
35:15
thing or get you know do a small amount of damage end up with one troop and then still win on dominance and that's it's
35:22
quite it's quite nice and it's clean and it's easy and it's done in seconds and you can move on with the game um so yeah
35:29
we we played that uh had a demo and I think Becky and Curley wanted to kind of
35:35
jump in um as it's a m Clash play title not their their kind of Flagship title
35:40
just like Astra we was trying to understand you know how heavy is this in compared to to other uh games and and I
35:47
think it's definitely heavier than Astra but it's not I would I would agree with that but it's not like in the same
35:53
weight as uh you know the sepamas or anacron or anything like that you can't compare it to
35:58
usually see mechanics like that kind of transfer over between M clashes you can
36:04
see where the designes this you wouldn't know it's a m Clash game in a lot of sense no I don't know the artwork
36:10
immediately I could tell was the same as sep and they've got traron Shar same artist blue so it's got the what I
36:17
really liked about it was the like you mentioned the that kind of easiness of understanding right this is the power of
36:24
my like damage this is how much I'm going to defend mhm but if I can manage to still squeak one little troop still
36:31
there potentially if your dominance is really high and it's very very easy to obviously you don't know what the the person's going to play but it's very
36:37
easy to work out the rules mhm um and I like the fact that you've got those three cards that keep going back to your
36:43
hand so you do play a lot of those cards what I didn't like about it was
36:49
potentially the fact that you can't really it is a bit deterministic because you just got a big deck of cards you
36:55
can't sway what you're going to pick you're just GNA pick the top of the card so you can't kind of spend resources
37:01
crafting a deck yeah to Mill it bit but that said there is a massive amount of
37:07
cards so you know it's not like oh that card I want is at the bottom I'm I'm going to see it you might not see it CU
37:13
there's a whole raft of cards so we managed to to borrow a copy on the Friday evening so basically Friday for
37:20
me was Ironwood no other game I played than Ironwood um so thank you again to
37:26
mine Clash they said look if you want to borrow a copy in the evening make sure you get it back to us the next day cuz
37:32
literally one of their three demo copies so uh yeah we managed to take it and uh
37:37
you and curly had a game and me and Rob had another game and actually by the third game I had in the
37:42
day had having played both sides I started to like get the next layer down
37:48
and understanding I mean to be fair to Robie didn't have a a great game against me cuz I'm like three games in and like
37:54
smash um but I started to kind of really enjoy the play and go this is what I'm
37:59
going to do and kind of seeing all your strategies come together so yeah well I think it's one that's actually going to develop with time the more you learn
38:05
about what cards the other team has and how they play then there's going to be like do I play this or they might have
38:11
this card to counter that I'm going to do this so it's definitely going to be a grower it's one of those games that uh a
38:18
grower no not a shower it's a shower it's quite pretty good production value yeah good production value um it's one
38:25
of those games that I think if there's two players two people that want to kind of get into it at the same time and get that same level of progression and
38:32
you're going to get a lot out of it now my only fear for the game is its
38:37
longevity once you've seen all the cards once you played both factions how much
38:43
you know longevity does that game actually have um six months down the line don't know I've only played it
38:48
three times and it's still fun so just it's one of it's one that they end up uh
38:54
kind of riding with and supporting then it's it's got a lot of potential you could do another faction that as a card
39:01
of One V one you do expansion cards on top of that so it's going to depend on their support as with these card batters
39:07
usually do because a lot of them do have a limited play it's just a way that those kind of that concept and that
39:14
design space is so it just going to depend whether they then support it afterwards hope they do because it's a
39:19
really good game yeah it's good fun so Becky so my first purchase was a
Manic Minute
39:25
superior bag of holding from a company called Crow and Crown which is just basically a really nicely made like a
39:32
linen kind of cottony bag that was like a tote bag isn't it like a tote bik yeah but massive and really cool you looked
39:38
really impressed when you walked over I was I was excited and I was their first customer as well so that have like bags
39:44
within bags and you can pretty much infinitely well store stuff into it it' be cool if it did but it was it was just
39:51
a bag but it was a cool bag my actual my actual first game that I purchased was um one called manic minute by uh Laro
39:59
games which was a really lovely couple um of uh it's like a father and daughter team who basically made this game as
40:07
they played it as kids and they thought you know what this game's got legs we're going to produce it properly and it's
40:13
like a cross between I'd say scatories and just one okay so you have like a
40:19
whole host of cards with a topic on like I don't know the one we had was objects
40:26
on a teacher's desk so then you've got just one minute to write down all those things any amount
40:32
of people can play really but they said it kind of it's good at sort of four five much more than sort of six seven
40:38
eight gets a bit Bott of vodka um we have no one have have
40:44
teachers like that yeah no no not Mr Hamilton so yeah so you write you write all your stuff down in one minute but we
40:51
only played like a little 30 second demo um and then whoever's got the most unique ones gets that many points so
40:57
kind of similar to just warning the way that if you haven't got a unique cancer it's no good do they have to be viable
41:02
unique cancers yes yes you can't a unicorn on my desk yeah exactly yeah that's not going to that's not going to
41:08
watch but it really gave me kind of strong point Vibes that kind of very quick fun easy to play interactive I
41:17
really liked it and it's a really really nicely made produced item it doesn't look homemade it's it's really nice so
41:25
yeah shout out to Laro games and their manic minute really impressed really impressed so we pretty much went on to
Whose Turn Is It Anyway LIVE!!!! Round Up
41:32
the live show um where I had a little bit of butterflies and beer [ __ ] uh so cuz that's what my stomach was feeling
41:38
like a little bit nervous for it but thank you for everyone for supporting us cuz it was a nice turnout and we had fun
41:45
yeah man it was full it was a full pretty much full room right which is more than we could ever H for yeah yeah
41:52
it's it was really it's a humbling experience as well as being just
41:57
kind of a cozy time it was really fun and it was a really nice vibe in the
42:03
room and I think we'll be doing it again I'm definitely up for want to come yeah
42:08
me too I think it was good that it was Friday earlyish because then you could get it done and not be worrying about it
42:14
cuz I'd had a couple of anxiety dreams about it before in the run up so I'm glad it it went really well was really
42:19
pleased so yeah thanks to everyone for turning up but I am glad it was done earlier rather than later so you hadn't got to spend the whole weekend like oh
42:25
God oh God we're going to do this I really sleep the Thursday night so so
42:32
yeah so the episode was due to start at 1:30 yeah we were there just before one
42:37
cuz we knew we were allowed in from sort of oneish the the previous podcast would come out and we would go in and as soon
42:44
as it hit that 1:00 I felt myself go silent JP went silent I could hear like
42:50
DAV and Curley and that quite Panic not panic but you know that nervous chatter that's just I want to say words cuz
42:57
nervous and I was just sort of looking around going oh we're all quite invested and a bit nervous about this and then we
43:03
went in what about 10 1 mhm and we were like right this is going to give us like no one's going to turn up until close
43:09
the time this will give us just sort of 10 15 minutes we get the mic set up get the room set up we'll do a quick sort of go through and everyone turned up at
43:16
like 20 to 20 to the start time and we were all like oh well we'll just chat to the people while they're here and we'll
43:22
do a bit of setup and we'll just go with it I guess so seems to work out all right still no kind of it I think it
43:28
softened the room a little bit in some that sense it kind of broke down any boundaries cuz we we just interacted straight away and we're able to talk to
43:34
everyone and at the end of the day these and some of them weren't some of them just come along for the show but a lot
43:40
of these people had been listening to us so we're just really appreciative I think of the people that did turn up and
43:45
and everyone else obviously but massively massively I mean you you kind of agreed to do this thing and then then
43:53
you're right you have these kind of moments going but what if no one shows up and we're just going to what just record an like this just going to record
44:00
an episode and just release EDI in the canned
44:06
audience that's amazing lots of different versions of me laughing so that with none of it's copyright and
44:12
then you're just going to have me but but as but I think as soon as we walked in there's a guy a Canadian guy who had
44:20
been in the previous show and he just like yeah I've just got to stay here and watch this one yeah and he was really
44:26
loving didn't catch his name so I I hope he's now a listener and I hope he's listening so thank you so much for your support
44:32
right from the start he was he was a really nice guy exactly and got engaged with the show asked a few kind of
44:38
questions and stuff and we will be releasing it so you'll be able to hear kind of what we got up to and how it
44:44
went anyway so next week yeah next week watch this space or listen this to this
44:50
space watch it you can't no space sounds a bit weird well you can
44:55
watch it on YouTube but you're literally just watching our logo with a Time bar going very slowly across the bottom so
45:01
yeah there you go so I I rushed straight from the episode finish um I had managed to kind
Bushido
45:08
of talk Marcus into playing a game that I'd played a long time ago and I'd met up with some people just before the
45:13
episode who I used to game with and they were in a tournament for a game called Bido miniature war game so feudal Japan
45:20
kind of historical is mostly sort of fantasy there's lots of sort of Ki and
45:27
um and like ghostly spirits and stuff like that it's basically it's kind of historical CU it's their own myths and
45:34
everything else as well and so I'd kind of talk Marcus into it and said let's go and have a look at the stall it'd be
45:39
good to to have a look and maybe see what you like and all that kind of stuff and we went there and I'll be honest I
45:46
think I visited them five times in the end because I couldn't decide what faction I wanted and then when I did I couldn't decide which of the models for
45:52
that faction I wanted and every time they must have talked to me for a good 45 minutes and I didn't like maybe they
45:57
just got really good customer service faces but I didn't get any Vibe of could you please sod off so we can serve other
46:02
customers which I kind of would expect after that amount of time but yeah um Mark ended up getting some bits on the
46:08
Friday I got some bits on the Saturday and I think Dave you got some bits on the Sunday I think yeah Sunday and Friday I think I got no it was a Sunday
46:15
yeah it was suay invested we're now all invested in that looking forward to it we started building models and stuff
46:20
that but the guys there were just really friendly and sort of really happy to talk about the game it's been going for
46:26
years it's on Third Edition but it's strange how long it had been going cuz I've never heard of it had you not no um
46:32
but then goon Hammer has done a whole recent article where they're like the best Skirmish game you've never heard of
46:38
and it's been going for I started playing it originally about eight years ago I think it was seven eight years ago I want to say um and really enjoyed it
46:46
but was no good at it I picked the wrong faction for me and then just I just happen when me and Marcus were talking
46:51
about sort of games that we'd like to play but couldn't and yeah it just kind of come around from that so I went
46:57
straight there forced Marcus to buy some bits and pieces talk to the guys and then the rest of the time before the
47:03
next demo I had was I like to scout out the hall on a Friday so most of Friday morning and a bit of Friday afternoon
47:10
I'd been just scouting out just walking up and down getting a feel for who had what games what prices all that kind of
47:15
stuff and sort of okay well this is craft Corner this is for your smaller game studios cuz that's kind of how they
47:22
lay it out they do lay out the halls in a way that makes sense so I'd kind of done that and then worked out that as
47:27
per usual chaos cards were cheapest for a lot of the games and went and bought pretty much all of my games on the
47:32
Friday apart from the Bushido sort of models but everything else I'd bought on the Friday just picking up what was
47:38
cheapest and knowing what I kind of went for I was I was quite well behaved I wasn't really influenced by by people
47:45
showing things off on stands maybe that's really bad of me but I was I was kind of trying to be really well behaved
47:51
this time around so I had my shopping list and I bought my shopping list yeah I tried to buy my shopping list I tried
47:57
to buy mini Euro card sleeves for Septima nobody had card sleeves until
48:02
right at the very end did I find um board game extras I was going to say did you see board game extras cuz they always got made a SLE that's where I got
48:08
it from but everywhere else like told you that well well thanks aent but no I had fun Captain after the fact yeah I
48:15
bought prostitutes and sumos was my faction that was so unrelated to the previous point but yes for bashid you
48:23
walk it's a natural thing is it yeah yeah yeah it's my faction it's a silver light Moon Silver Moon trade syndicat so
48:29
they're all criminals who are somehow doing battle for supremacy of the jair
48:34
Isles which is the name of the semi sort of Fantastical Islands he didn't even
48:40
know it was about Bido though did he just that sounds cool that's no actually I did a lot of research I built my Army
48:46
list for using battle scribe and another thing and came with a whole tactic of what to buy and and play so it just
48:54
ended up it was either Pirates or prostitutes and seus yeah you should obviously have chosen Pirates the
49:00
Pirates were really cool but I I think I made the right choice we'll see we will see got your sleeves I got my sleeves
49:07
yeah I got my sleeves finally and I went back for a second round and bought sleeves for something I had already
49:12
sleeved when I got home to then sleeve and I was like oh but they're Universal they're the regular the most common size
49:18
double SLE them yeah that's it double doubly protected cards three of them I must say board game extras is my normal
49:25
website I go to to buy sleeves and as you know I sleeve every game I own so they have a lot of money out of me I
49:30
have bought sleeves from them myself but I I don't know I find it really irritating paying postage for stuff that
49:36
is really really cheap so I'd much rather buy stuff like that at an expo where you haven't got to pay P&P but
49:42
yeah nobody um I think was it ultr pro weren't there um a lot of the big sleeve
49:48
people weren't there and everybody I asked only had whatever it size Pokémon cards coming there was lots of those but
49:55
I didn't want those but yeah board game board game extras came through so I had
Becky's Encounter with Folded Space
50:00
that on my on my shopping list and didn't buy that until the very very end but bought plenty of other bits and Bobs
50:06
but my best epic moment happened on the Friday this is this made my convention I
50:12
got to meet Milo from folded space Oh did who is the guy who actually designs
50:17
the the inserts and I think he was well he should I was embarrassed when I
50:22
finally walked away I told him he was my hero cuz he is I'm not going to make any joke he's my hero and I had a little
50:29
photo with him C's like do you want me to take a photo I was like yes please yeah so yeah is he on your list what
50:35
list oh I don't have a list I love my husband
50:41
too much Dave so think I think at this point she's on a restraining so but and
50:47
then every time I was walking around I tried yeah I tried not to walk past and catch his eyes so thought he's going to think I'm a mental stalker woman but I
50:53
was just so excited to meet the guy who every time I make one of my folded space inserts I just think oh God I know how
51:01
like I know the level of thought that has to go into when you're designing these things from making my own really
51:06
crap versions so I just appreciate his brain and was really really pleased to
51:11
me I also got some folded space stuff it's cuz they're great yeah cuz they're absolutely brilliant oh and Rob got some
51:17
folded space stuff yeah nice who else did that was it that was it I think I
51:22
think I already have most of their yeah me too I did buy AR over um insert and
51:29
we got Lords of water deep as well cuz I made a Lords of Water Deep one in its pants I would have bought their Imperium
51:35
one if I'd not already bought it directly from folded space a week before Expo cuz I'm that impatient and I was
51:42
worried that they run out of stock they didn't and actually if I'd waited a week I probably would have saved £3 but I was
51:49
like I do now so I just got it I'm tempted by the AR stuff that um Marx has
51:54
got that stuff is like that's next though isn't it that's a lot of money for that antor is it yeah that was
52:00
Raptor stuff or was it laser rocks cuz the noap I still prefer folded space no
52:06
it's folded space is half well it's it's obviously it's it's that market though
52:11
isn't it for for its cost and what it does is like very practical and really good the colored ones for tapestry is
52:17
beautiful it's so nice yeah they're they're they're all like pothane though aren't they but it does make your board
52:23
game like really super heavy it's how I feel with my 3D printed stuff is like you think that the little
52:30
sort of bits of plastic are not going to be that heavy and then like even Concordia with all 3D printed stuff
52:36
inside it is just heavy now yeah so that is one good thing with the folded space stuff is it's really it keeps the game
52:43
really light what else on a Friday I I suppose we should talk about the bring and by as
Our Bring & Buy experiences
52:48
a whole really shouldn't we at this point and we'll just kind of get out of the way so let's face it last year was
52:53
not the best advertisement for the bring and bu for the Expo my first year I
52:59
queued essentially 2 and a half hours by the time I'd walked all my stuff there back got told to turn away on Thursday
53:05
walked back got there queued for an hour and a bit in the morning it was basically two and a half hours worth of queuing everyone else seemed to
53:12
experience this or worse now they've implemented a load of rules some of them controversial some of them less so in my
53:18
opinion and I think that everyone I spoke to got into that bring and by within about half hour to
53:25
put their games in the and I think the downside of that was
53:30
because they also don't weren't allowing people to remark down stuff was if you looked at the queue to get into the
53:36
bring and by on Friday morning it was the longest I think I've ever seen that Quee people were walking out with 78
53:42
games at a time and then by the time we got in there on a Friday afternoon it was already looking a bit bare now I'll
53:49
be honest I think I prefer that over the previous version of it I know that there's detractors and that both sides
53:55
but we all still found something in the bring and buy right because curly bought something I think you bought something
54:01
yeah I only bought it for the artwork that right okay I I found a game I was after in there so and a lot of people
54:07
that were in there still on a Friday afternoon were walking around with a game or two in their hands definely so we still saw quite a lot of games by the
54:14
Friday afternoon still being being bought the massive deals probably were gone because but I didn't fancy queing
54:19
for two hours to get those deals on a Friday morning and that's the thing isn't it if if you're i' I've seen a few comments on some of the social saying oh
54:27
maybe they should kind of limit people to what they want to buy and I I don't know if I agree with that I think well
54:32
if I'm a seller I don't care if one person buys every single thing I own and everybody in the entire fine you want
54:38
you just want to sell your stuff don't you so if you can be bothered and you want to put you know you prioritize
54:43
doing that above doing anything else fine that's the point of it it's like going to buy lots of stuff from a stall
54:48
and buying it all out and then no one else can have it well yeah but it's fine the sellers still sold their stuff haven't they that's kind of the point
54:53
hear me out an online queue you C up online and then it buzzes you in it's your turn to go into the store I guess
55:00
that works if you know what you want to buy no no no as in the queue rather than queuing up to get in me yeah you book in
55:07
like a virtual que a virtual que and then it will just buzz you and then you walk over and go in if you don't turn up
55:13
yeah exactly work for Disney for Disney yeah I'm of the opinion to make people wait um but not waiting but you're
55:20
shopping around the Expo as well and that means double double double bubble baby but if you make them Quee then
55:25
they're not getting in your way while you're looking on the Expo so it's actually nice for Expo goers but not for
55:31
the money makers I would go and check it out if um if I had the online queue as I would normally wouldn't yeah I just let
55:37
the big queue go and then I was like right okay let's go and see what was left and got myself a copy crosa I I think from the selling point of view
55:43
because there's a lot of talk of Friday Saturday Friday afternoon Saturday Sunday sort of shelves were still quite bare but I know at least three of us
55:50
from our group that we spoke to that said after last year we're not taking games mhm if they do the same rules
55:57
again next year I'm taking all my games yeah me too me too right and I spoke to two or three other people who said exactly the same so I think people have
56:03
been massively burnt by last year and what we might see is a bit of a
56:08
Resurgence next year because everyone saw how well it went this year having been you know it's kind might make it
56:14
worse again might make it worse again who knows but at least they've got put the rules in the rules seem to work as
56:19
far as we've seen so far um so let's test it with if there's likely to be
56:24
more people but I think I'm going to bring a trolley this time car me too yeah fair enough only to take
56:30
the games that they're bringing by not like to W around yeah yeah my first my
56:35
first Port is always the shop and drop though in the morning go to the shop and drop put some stuff in a box for three
56:43
quid and then you've got it all day you love that don't you yeah it it's so useful I just don't like carrying stuff around it just gets achy there's so many
56:49
people there what you don't want to do is behold like massive bags of stuff or or worst case like a k like a backpack
56:56
sort thing you just don't want that do you Adrian Lear last year didn't you about the old uh gaming backpack did I
57:02
yeah then you hit someone with it oh yeah was I was but I put it in the shop and drop and it was literally as I was
57:07
walking out the Expo with it on my back that I actually hit someone with it but yeah it bring it up again it had been in
57:14
the shop and drop I know Becky KO
57:19
appear win Becky dodg some cues again I was going to talk about it no I didn't
57:24
dodge any cues I did not no you didn't I CED him like a good girl every time so
Deep Regrets
57:31
anyway so we bring them by right so after that then me and Davey went to go and see deep regrets yeah really good
57:38
game loved it really good good next game then yeah do you want to elaborate on this game this game um if you've ever
57:46
played dredge um then that's kind of the theme behind it if you haven't then
57:51
cthulu fishing I guess is the the kind of the theme
57:57
you I don't know how to describe it cuz it's a very unique take with lots of
58:02
familiar mechanics but Al together it creates a very atic what you do you're
58:08
fisherman yeah you have a rod that has a power and you have a a float was it a
58:14
lure a lure that has a power in front of you is the sea and this is three tiers
58:19
of cards in columns and rows of three so 3x3 your boat starts at the shallows
58:27
which is the top cards and you can spend your dice which is going to be kind of your um energy it's like how much energy
58:34
you go into the day which there's various ways to get more energy but you start off with a set amount dice you
58:40
roll them and they will look like a little float they look amazing the the artwork is phenomenal uh you roll this
58:47
you see how much energy and you have to spend one of those to take your boat a little bit deeper to fish a little bit
58:53
deeper and then you can pick a card and the card you pick you can have a look at first before you try and catch it and
58:59
you'll have a look at it and in the top it'll tell you its fishing value and you need the energy to be able to catch that
59:06
fish and you just spend the dice to be able to catch it but the fish will have a variety of different things ones when
59:11
revealed sometimes stuff will happen and people might get regrets cuz it might be a a foul fish it might be this horrible
59:18
looking thing one of them was like a colon Angel which basically I'm sorry oh what a
59:24
angel yeah um so from from from a distance it look like a little little angel in the water
59:30
when you get closer you see that it's actually just intestines a part of intestines as a foul fish so this is the
59:36
whole kind of love crafting horror aspect of the fishing it's great um
59:41
sounds like there slle room in one of the operating theat but you if you fish these things you start getting regrets
59:48
and these are bad cards that start getting into your hand and sometimes you start dishing them out to other players as well and the regrets have little they
59:55
have great writing on like um took her red head out to seea one regret or it'll
1:00:00
have murdered my best friend three regrets and stuff like this wrting on them I had satin oil one regret and
1:00:07
you're like yeah I'd regret that a little bit like not too much and then yeah there was there was just some
1:00:12
amazing flavor text on all of these cards oh yeah got a bad haircut zero regrets like do really care about it and
1:00:18
and the artwork as well was just fantastic I think while we're sort of talking about just the production value
1:00:23
as you say it's what a lot of the a lot of the foul card you sort of look at and you go that looks a bit rough and then you'd kind of get close to it and you'd
1:00:29
be like oh that looks nasty yeah and then you it just has great little flavor text and all of it as well but you've
1:00:36
also got other powers on the card so once sometimes when you've caught it it will do something sometimes when you
1:00:42
reveal it will do something and then sometimes when you eat it it will do something and why are you think why
1:00:47
would you eat it if you eat it you get some energy back so you can keep fishing for longer or you want to keep it and
1:00:55
basically ways of when you eventually go back to Port you can mount these fish at the top and they give you point
1:01:01
multipliers on the top okay um or you can sell the fish to the market and
1:01:06
depending on how insane or insane you are foul fish get better values when you're insane and fair fish get better
1:01:15
values for being sane so it's got this nice little push pool of like if you want to go for foul fish you keep doing
1:01:22
you know you keep getting the foul fish keep getting regrets and you think oh oh yeah that's fine basically at the end
1:01:28
it's got the um it's got a mechanic where you tot up everyone's regrets cuz they're all different numbers on the
1:01:33
cards you know how many cards everyone's got but not the numbers you tot up everyone's regrets the person with the
1:01:40
most regrets doesn't score one of their columns so that's the the that's the downside for going for these foul
1:01:47
horrible fish they might have big values on them but do you want to be the the most regrets at the end and when you at
1:01:53
the Port you can sell them and buy other rod or other powers you got like one-off cards that you can use while you're
1:01:59
fishing to do certain things like roll dice give you Dice back so it's got real nice kind of dice selection along with
1:02:07
card manipulation along with you got cans of worms where they're used as bait where you can flip a card and go nope
1:02:14
don't want that put it to the bottom fish somewhere else it's a really cool unique game and it'll probably play in
1:02:22
about an hour and a bit I'd say I reckon so yeah there's there's a couple of bit tou I do want to talk about that I think you've missed off that were just really
1:02:29
nice design choices so when you're in the shallows there's a bigger chance of there being fair fish or whatever the
1:02:35
the non- foul version the deeper out you go the more chance there is of of um a foul fish but on the back of every card
1:02:42
is like a little silhouette of how big each fish is okay so whether you're
1:02:48
shallow medium or sort of deep the full depth you have a little cheat sheet that
1:02:53
tells you okay well if it's a small fish then it's going to be like a two to four
1:02:58
to catch if it's a big if it's a medium fish it'll be the depending upon the depth you're fishing at and the size so
1:03:04
on the back of every card is just like this little silhouette that tells you how big that fish is going to be so even
1:03:10
before you flip to see what you're going to catch you kind of have an idea of how much it's going to be to catch it how
1:03:16
much of your energy um which was just a really I don't know I've not really seen enough like that great UI design concept
1:03:24
it makes it so easy just look at and go that's a big fish I need that value do I
1:03:30
risk it do I gamble oh I might as well gamble go I don't know what it is underneath there but I know the size of
1:03:35
B could be foul could be fair could be whatever you don't know what the the abilities are going to be when you flip
1:03:40
it over or anything like that but what you do know is the likelihood of how much roughly how much energy you're going to spend on it yeah um and the
1:03:46
other bit that I quite like was there were only so many regret cards in the game
1:03:52
so when you start handing out regret cards and you've run out you decide
1:03:58
which player to take regrets off of instead so if someone's going F so that
1:04:04
was kind of the the route I was going people knew not to take cards off of me because I wanted as few cards as
1:04:11
possible in my hand so they were like well we know you're going Fair CU that's what all your abilities do I'll take it
1:04:16
off of other people whereas if you're going after someone who's wanting foul
1:04:21
you might take all their cards cuz they're going to score the the lower the regret L foul are going to score so
1:04:28
there's some really manipulation and just say like UI to tell you what you're going to do and where you where you kind
1:04:34
of need to go and I think I've made it pretty clear in the past that I'm not a fan of Mr wibbles and cthulu stuff and
1:04:41
all that but actually this was UN cthulu enough to to feel different but still
1:04:48
had all that grim and gruesome and dark and and again that Insanity versus sanity idea worked really well it's not
1:04:55
just oh you're insane you must be more powerful it was oh you're insane the insane stuff is worth more oh you're
1:05:01
sayane the sane stuff is worth more and the insane stuff is now worth less to you so there I thought there was just a
1:05:07
really nice mix of all those all of those mechanics together um that really told you a lot about what you needed to
1:05:13
do in the game is it available now or is it a no so uh the the sign said coming
1:05:18
in July so I believe they're kickstarting it or crowfunding it of some description yeah so it's uh Tex
1:05:24
games and they're going to be going um they're going to be crowdfunding uh in July uh judson's probably going to be
1:05:31
doing us an episode with us um sorry hot scoop hot scoop yeah you
1:05:36
heard it here so yeah uh if if you this kind of intrigues you there'll be a
1:05:42
future episode where we'll do a little bit more on it because to be honest I was really impressed by it it's a unique
1:05:48
design space it was really fun it's definitely I'm definitely going to be um
1:05:53
backing it cuz it's going to if feels slot on my shelf that no other game kind
1:05:59
of will be able to feel I mean you have me at Rod Powers Yeah to be fair I mean
1:06:05
I I've got no interest in fishing but when you put like an obscure theme in a board game I'm all over it man I'm like
1:06:12
design quality as well these little these little um cylindrical D4 D4 which look like little
1:06:20
floats are amazing to roll as well and then you can buy more dice when you're
1:06:25
at the shop as well so you can kind of get more energy when you go back out it's good it's really good good yeah
1:06:31
there's just some really nice subtle things the Lifeboat as well where you can sink your Lifeboat go back to the
1:06:37
port instantly but you get a load of regret for doing it yeah and and obviously the further you go out the
1:06:44
more dice you're spending to go out so going back to Port put you back in the shallows again so you don't really want
1:06:49
to do that too often whereas if you're going Fair fish you only want to fish in the shallows so you're constantly back and forth to Port and there was just
1:06:56
some really nice mix of stuff that I was really quite impressed with so yeah you know even if even if we don't get a
1:07:03
future episode or or whatever even if they people aren't listening to that it comes out after or whatever just go and
1:07:08
check it out it was just such a such an amazing little sort of collection of thoughts and mechanics
1:07:16
that came together really nicely but yeah I'm hoping we get to talk to him at some point yeah yeah we're in conversation about it I'm 90% sure he
1:07:23
said he W he's he was really really good guy Judson I've got a recording anyway where we do a little bit debrief which
1:07:29
will go on the next episode but you can tell there's a big passion yeah behind him and um yeah check out teic games um
1:07:37
deep regrets uh I think that kind of concludes Friday there's nothing else that really happened it's quite a bit
SATURDAY: DAY 2
1:07:45
other than T were playing we decided was that why everyone was wearing so I asked the question why
1:07:52
is everyone's wearing tul and everyone was like I don't know and then Saturday morning I asked the question why is
1:07:58
everyone wearing Dortmund and someone went well it must be football I thought well I gathered that by all the D brussa dortman merch everywhere but yeah
1:08:05
apparently bruss dortman were like in Wembley or something W I don't know what that is does what
1:08:11
it's a football team from Germany isn't it okay um but sakur Saker but everyone
1:08:17
in the train station as I was walking through the train station was wearing this luminous yellow brussa Dortmund and I was like there's got to be something
1:08:22
going on and when I asked oh I guess there's some football I was like well I gathered that you are asking board
1:08:29
gamers about football it's unlikely but yeah I think that there was a toour concert that um kicked out about the
1:08:35
same time as it did on uh when we left when we left so getting an Uber and getting around was a bit more trixy glad
1:08:41
it didn't happen there cuz then I realized the walk to my hotel wasn't as far as I thought it was no it's not that far it wasn't far at all so I'm glad it
1:08:48
it saved me money in the end of the day and it wasn't a bad walk so I was I was up for doing it the rest of the weekend
1:08:53
but yeah tour playing there you go so Saturday Tim the to Man Taylor Tim the
1:08:59
to man love that show oh dear quality sorry
1:09:07
you're saying about Saturday Saturday Saturday me and Rob spent the first kind
Time Troopers
1:09:13
of meeting that we had with molarius games um met up with Lee um who we we
1:09:18
kind of met at last year's uh Expo and we kind of um checked out one of his
1:09:24
games ocean pods which I think Adrian you did an interview with Lee as well in the last year's Expo as well and I've
1:09:31
been kind of intrigued because they going to release a a game called time Troopers and I was only saying on a
1:09:38
recent episode that we should have more time travel in board games and then Lee had kind of listen he listens to the
1:09:44
show as well so hi Lee and he said here you go there's a game time travel wow
1:09:50
just make another wish JP make another wish what else can we do just yeah so anyway time travel say yeah Jin Davey's
1:09:57
back um and yeah basically we got to have a game of time Troopers with um
1:10:02
Mark who who demoed it for us was great and Mark's got a lot of energy a lot of passion for the game really kind of sold
1:10:09
it well and time Troopers is is basically a card driven uh kind of I say on the lighter
1:10:16
end game solo only um which is you know it's a unique design choice but I
1:10:21
respect it you know there a lot of solo players out there that would absolutely kind of love that style of game and the
1:10:28
fact that a session will take you 40 minutes 45 minutes so it's kind of crunchy enough but not overstate it's
1:10:34
welcome and you can kind of set it up in I don't know a minute and off you go and
1:10:40
and Lee kind of said he he wanted to design a game that you could play if
1:10:45
your partner's not into board games you can play on your own even in the same room they're watching you know an
1:10:50
episode or something you can play it by the time the episode's finished you're done so it's not going to that's a nice kind of thought kind of
1:10:57
pattern of of deciding the kind of type of game you're making isn't it yeah so the the idea is that you are uh a band
1:11:04
of time Troopers this organization that's traveling through time um to basically you know save the world or
1:11:10
something like that and there are eight time periods that you will go through and you have three scenarios in each uh
1:11:17
period with a secret one at the end so 25 scenarios don't ask me what the secret one is I don't know they wouldn't
1:11:22
tell me I did try and ask but they said nope it's a secret um so you're going to go into like um you know feudal to Japan
1:11:30
Viking era Dino era um and like
1:11:36
Egyptian like way back when Cleopatra style stuff like that and each scenario
1:11:41
is kind of unique in the way it plays you know one scenario you might be trying to sneak through you know a set
1:11:48
of guards to find an entrance to a temple another scenario might be kind of defeating a big big bad Viking and and
1:11:55
kind of how it works your deck's got um kind of time cards in which is a resource that you have you spend time to
1:12:02
manipulate uh certain dice rolls that will determine the events that play if you don't don't like I a two crap that's
1:12:09
going to be really bad for me spend some time and then roll go y it's a one which is quite nice because it's like you're
1:12:14
messing around with time but it is a finite resource um but you also spend time to get your your Troopers out onto
1:12:21
the board and you all have different powers so some of these might be more good in stealth so they can sneak in to
1:12:28
to places some of them are just like big brutes that you can put onto the board and and basically beat up the bad guys
1:12:34
and uh yeah some of them just have powers that can kind of sit at the back and uh not be deployed into the combat
1:12:40
zone and and kind of help them manipulate and do all that kind of stuff so what you'd expect in kind of card games and uh yeah Rob play cuz Rob's
1:12:47
like really really into his card games and uh he's actually starting to kind of dabble in more in the solo side and and
1:12:55
I just B I just rolled the dice uh so but it looked really cool
1:13:00
like as a game I could completely see what uh what they're trying to do and you can kind of get side missions that
1:13:06
come out and if you complete them you get access to the armor and you can kind of collect um kind of different cards
1:13:13
that you can put into your deck that you can construct your deck for the next scenario so it might be that you get some weapons from the certain era so it
1:13:19
could be a viking Shield or or big katana blade or or whatever it might be
1:13:25
so every time you go through you know this series of of scenarios what you're
1:13:30
picking up will change so actually makes it kind of replayable and if two people were playing it at the same time you
1:13:36
kind of compare and say want it cool when I got when you got this thing and they're like well I didn't get that thing I got this other thing oh that's
1:13:42
interesting so yeah it's just quite kind of unique in what it's doing but it's not like super complicated either so
1:13:49
it's very quick kind of get to the point and yeah quite like what they're doing it's very different to their other games
1:13:54
you know ocean pods I think the new one they were demoing with sha sha sh yeah I
1:13:59
saw a lot of copies of sha going around and then since since the Expo online
1:14:05
I've noticed quite a few people talking about time Troopers so I think they're doing they're doing right things it's
1:14:11
time Troopers is not my kind of game it's a solo game that lasts more than 15 minutes so it's never going to be my
1:14:16
kind of game but the oh lucky Lucky
1:14:22
Devil Tantra not for Adrian
1:14:27
tantrum it's not it's not like Sting yeah Sting's into his tantri is yeah he was yeah I say is he dead
1:14:35
no his hip can't do it anymore he's more he's more into the quick orgasm do you not know about sting sex life car no I'm
1:14:42
I'm not up to date I'm not up to dat sorry Adrian it's all right so it's
1:14:49
definitely not my kind of game but I've seen a lot of people asking about it and the theme because it covers so many
1:14:55
different periods of history and because it's kind of that time Trav can I am I
1:15:01
to say Stargate is that I was thinking Quantum Leap it has that Stargate sort
1:15:06
of go go back in time and visit an area yeah so it had all those feels and I
1:15:13
just thought I think this is going to do something good cuz you guys look like you're having fun when they talked about the mechanisms that sounded great um and
1:15:20
I just thought because of all those themes in there someone's going to find a couple of eras of history that they want to go and do these Missions at so I
1:15:27
think it's got a lot of potential in there yeah anyway sorry anyway have an anecdote so Lee shared an anecdote with
1:15:33
me which I just found hilarious so he basically said because he listens to the show he says I I blame you guys for
1:15:41
getting a written warning at work and I was like what are you want about I'm really intrigued said what do you mean I
1:15:46
said well I was listening to your podcast whilst at work he's an accountant whilst at work and he he
1:15:53
walked off and I don't know he must have like unplugged his his earphones or something and basically whose turn is it
1:15:59
Anyway podcast was blaring around the office and it might have been a couple maybe Dave and and Curley or someone
1:16:05
debating Arc NOA at the time in the middle of uh you know this um busy yeah
1:16:12
quiet office where talking was like talking about Bloody board games and yeah it kind of outed him as a as a
1:16:17
massive nerd and yeah he got a written warning for it oh that's not fair no no
1:16:24
so we've given him a WR warning so to say nerd yeah yeah nerd alert but we also gave
1:16:31
him a great idea for a game so you know you win some you lose some exactly um but no time Troopers I think is coming
1:16:38
to crowdfund later in the year the idea is that they're trying to get a good um
1:16:43
good old prototype pretty much ready to rock maybe not even a prototype but nearly final production copy for airon
1:16:49
and then basically uh ready to sell uh for the next next Expo so the next Expo
1:16:54
you'll be able to demo it properly and pick it up yeah cool so I think my first
Kutna Hora
1:17:01
game was actually cut Aura on the Saturday bless you bless me yeah um which also I have
1:17:09
an anecdote about work because I took it to well first of all let's talk about
1:17:14
the game and then I'll do the anecdote afterwards so K Ora is set in the town of K AA um first when kind of the
1:17:22
settlers were coming in and they were fighting the The Mining and the silver that was in
1:17:29
canora um and it's we spoke about it before where it's a an action card
1:17:35
placement game but then you then usually will do a thing either build plot so where you want to build um there's
1:17:42
various ways of getting VPS afterwards there's kind of a placement bonus there's a very unique mechanic of
1:17:50
placing VPS into a SL um VP selection into a slot which will then endgame
1:17:55
score but the way you do it is during your income turn you have to slot them in but they have to be available by
1:18:01
paying public houses which usually give you some kind of benefit but not a massive one um but they can give
1:18:08
everyone benefits when they play buildings next to them uh and then there's also mining there's another
1:18:13
action where you go into and mine for this silver which kind of has a area control vibe to it underneath so it's
1:18:20
kind of a a lot of ways to gain VPS which aren't obvious at the start um but
1:18:27
kind of once you've played it you start to understand it a little bit and then it has a very unique stock mechanic as
1:18:34
well with um the stocks fluctuating obviously if you build a a meat building
1:18:41
a food building be a bakery or anything else but it's just got like a nice meat stick on there um a meat stick meat
1:18:49
stick that's a saus it yeah no yeah the stereotypical
1:18:57
um but it means there's more of that production in Supply which means that
1:19:02
you um slide this little slider along the cost of that prod that resource has
1:19:09
gone down but there's population cards you might increase the population from it
1:19:14
which means actually your resources maybe goes up in value as well because there's now more people and there's more
1:19:21
demand so it it's kind of very thetic in the way that these the stock cards work
1:19:28
um and then usually by building that building you'll move your investment in said stock on your little um player
1:19:34
board along when it comes to do income you gain money equal to how much stock
1:19:40
you have of that item and what it's worth now so you've got to really time your actions with everyone else
1:19:46
sometimes other people's actions will completely change what you want to do cuz you're like oh they've just manipulated the market and now Woods
1:19:54
cost me three to build something so this public building is now going to cost me 30 money I can't afford to do that I
1:20:00
need to Pivot and change what I'm doing and there's usually always something to do which is quite nice um but uh cge
1:20:08
games um gave us a copy of this to play so we will be talking about it in a future episode in a bit more detail but
1:20:16
um I took it with me yesterday to work
1:20:22
cuz I've been slowly trying to get my work colleagues to play some ball games of course that's one of us one of us um
1:20:30
and so one of the meeting rooms one of the big glass walled meeting rooms upstairs we started setting up after
1:20:36
work and there were still people like floating around the office and I remember one of our top SL LT members
1:20:42
just went came in and went I thought you guys were doing a cross word at first and I've seen this and I think this is
1:20:49
worse I'm really worried about you guys I really just want to slam the door on you guys it was like okay yeah cheers
1:20:54
for that that um but she was obviously just taking the mech and then I said oh we're breaking stereotypes of the the
1:21:01
like computer geeks cuz we're not playing computer games and my colleague just went we're not breaking any
1:21:07
stereotypes we're solely in the middle of that stereo but they really enjoyed it they really enjoyed it yeah they
1:21:14
thought it was great fun and it's one of those where if you haven't played a lot of modern ball games you don't really
1:21:19
know what the ball game Space is kind of like and it's changed so much compared to you know the ball games you would
1:21:25
have played back in the day so nice yeah yeah um koraa I definitely recommend it
1:21:31
it's a really good game um yeah yeah I can't wait to play thank you CG and um
1:21:37
yeah we'll be talking about it in a future episode thanks guys I bought a couple of sort of dexterity I guess kind
DroPolta & Tinderblox
1:21:43
of games one was called Dro palter I'm sure you say it differently in a different accent it's an oink game um
1:21:51
yeah it's I don't know again like like we say before like theme tacked on I don't know why it's about a ghost but
1:21:58
it's about a ghost you have kind of these tactile little I don't know objects in your hand one's like a big
1:22:05
red Cube one's a ring one's like a little shell one's allegedly a cookie
1:22:10
but it looks more like a waffle to me and like a very small key so you have these held in your hand you turn over
1:22:16
one of the deck of cards and it's got a picture of I don't know let's say the Red Cube and the ring so in regular mode
1:22:23
you then have to open your hand like flick those objects off your hand onto
1:22:28
the table without dropping anything else that isn't one of the selected things and then with the other hand you grab
1:22:34
the ghost like I say why a ghost I don't know because ghosts like objects or
1:22:39
something I don't know when you've grabbed this ghost you then get the reward of a little bell which is like a
1:22:44
tiny little bell that you might find on like I don't know like a cat's collar or something okay so then you put because ghosts like bells or something so you
1:22:50
put this Bell then in your hand with all your other objects and you pick it up and then you put the ghost back down and
1:22:57
then you turn another card over and now you have to drop one thing two things whatever is on the card but you don't
1:23:03
obviously the more stuff you have in your hand the more difficult it is not to drop things that aren't the thing you want so it's just a silly little quick
1:23:11
quick dexterity game but it's fun or you can play advanced mode where you turn your hand Palm face down and you have to
1:23:17
kind of drop the things without so just by sort of feel of oh that feels like the I'm going to try and yeah um and
1:23:24
then I also bought um Tinder blocks yeah but I bought the storm Edition storm
1:23:30
what's the storm Edition well a is waterproof which is not why I bought it but um so when you go camping yeah cuz
1:23:36
or play in the bath or play in the bath yeah I'm more likely to play in the bath and go camping for fairness well Curly's more likely to
1:23:44
play in the bath than go camping CU he is not a happy camper sure he is um and this basically is using a pair
1:23:51
of plastic tweezers yeah um to to add it's a little bit like I don't know uh
1:23:58
men at work or like reverse Buckaroo sort like something like that um so yeah
1:24:04
the card might have a picture of the little wooden stick with a a red fire Cube on it so then using your little
1:24:11
little plastic tweezers you've got to then put the selected items on top of
1:24:16
the fire without knocking anything else off but the storm Edition contains little blue cubes that are shiny like
1:24:22
plastic ones that are ever are slightly smaller than the other objects so you can't really balance anything on top of
1:24:29
those because a they're shiny and B they're smaller so you've got to sort of
1:24:34
be really judicious in where you put your thing thinking right well they're going to have to put something else in a minute but you don't know what it is so
1:24:41
make sure that you've got a little bit more room for your next thing and whoever tumbles it over loses they out
1:24:47
on but I bought the marshmallow Edition as well so it's these little circle just five little five four five little white
1:24:54
circles that are marshmallows that um can't touch fire cubes because nobody wants M burn marshmallows right um but
1:25:01
they''re really difficult to put on cuz they're quite chunky they look like marshmallows yeah you can tell yeah when
1:25:07
you've got when you've got the wooden sticks in danger of eating them as well perhaps not no but when you've got the
1:25:12
little kind of wooden twigs and the red and yellow cubes these little white circles they're 100% marshmallows they
1:25:19
really are so yeah this storm Edition just puts the addition of these little kind of blue cubes in the mix and it's
1:25:24
just really fun iJoy blocks for what it is yeah it's good fun it took all my
1:25:31
willpower to not sing Moana shiny as soon as you said shiny well done mate yeah literally I'm
1:25:38
shaking yeah for you that was an achievement don't say it don't say it Christ say don't say
1:25:44
it well I went off and played rebirth by Mighty boards which is the new rhina
Rebirth
1:25:49
kitzia game so I don't often like the look of a lot of rhina kitzia Gam games because they've got like an auction or a
1:25:56
bidding mechanic and I'm terrible at that kind of mechanic so I tend to avoid them like the plague but rebirth doesn't
1:26:02
have anything like that in it really so I really wanted to give it a go and they
1:26:08
had um they had a preview copy there it's obviously on crowdfunding of some description right
1:26:14
now and they had a they had a demo copy there and we played the Scotland side which I believe is like the sort of
1:26:20
looser sort of nicer side and what you are doing is rebuilding Scotland or Ireland whichever
1:26:27
side you play and how you do that is you've got uh like a table of Chip like
1:26:32
these little chips on them and on the one side they're blank they're just your shape and color and on the other side
1:26:37
they've either got um like an Energy symbol a leaf symbol or like a house
1:26:43
symbol so you Chuck a couple out of the game to start with so that no one's got kind of equal and no one can card count
1:26:50
or chip count or whatever not you're going to count 26 chips or whatever but people are out there that do I'm sure
1:26:55
there are some people that would be able to but that kind of thing and um you're
1:27:01
going to Blind pick one at the end of your previous round basically to look at and you kind of get to have a look and
1:27:06
see where you're going to put it down and if you put it down in a leaf or energy area you get a victory point for
1:27:14
every one of your leaes or Powers it's adjacent to so if it's on its own it's worth one Victory point if you put it
1:27:19
next to another one that becomes worth two if you've got a chain of three that becomes three
1:27:25
Etc and then the housing ones there's little areas that and these are all
1:27:31
designated areas that have a leaf on the board or a lightning bolt that tells you it can go one of these two places and there's some that are blank where you
1:27:37
can put down whatever you like as long as it's next to one of your other colors that's of that type and then you've got
1:27:43
buildings as well which have either two one two three or four little houses on it which is kind of the strength of the
1:27:49
little village you're putting down and there's little village areas and when you
1:27:54
some of them are just one hex some are two or three together and when you fill
1:28:00
up that area it's worth different number of points depending upon if you're first or second in that area based on the size
1:28:07
of it so you're playing this really quite simple game of sort of put a thing
1:28:12
down where it says the environment it says you got to put it on it reminded me a lot of um Kingdom Builder where you
1:28:18
turn over the card and it tells you what kind of terrain you've got to put your little house on and then there are
1:28:24
Cathedrals and Castle spots so whoever's got the biggest number of their um their
1:28:31
little hexes or whatever of of colors around a castle they get to put their Castle on it and if I end up with more
1:28:38
than you do I get to knock your Castle off and put my castle on and castles are worth five points at the end of the game
1:28:44
and then if you put your um little chip around one of the cathedrals you get to
1:28:49
draw an objective card and some of these objective cards are just his three points some are have the most buildings
1:28:56
in a two heex Village or have the most sort of things around the coast and stuff like that really quite simple
1:29:02
stuff but a nice engaging very light teach very fairly quick game we did the
1:29:08
teach and the demo in less than an hour and we got over 2third of the way through the game oh W so I think you
1:29:15
could probably do it in somewhere between 45 minutes an hour and a half somewhere in that range I'm guessing um
1:29:21
but really quite good really quite engaging with that sort of light let say it's like Kingdom Builder with a little
1:29:27
bit more to it a little bit more contention and and stuff going it looks like Babylonia 2.0 I've not played so
1:29:33
yeah Babylonia pretty much you place you have like different symbols on them yeah
1:29:39
you've got zigarette and like just tiles which match the tiles you place and you just put them down and try and build
1:29:46
your majority round and point them um really good game I really enjoy it cuz
1:29:52
there is a lot of there's a lot of um um choice and a lot of uh kind of strategic
1:29:58
moves for such a simple I'm placing that that's it Yep this is this was it
1:30:03
there's like in in the Scotland map there's like a little sort of five or six hex island off the top and they all
1:30:10
surround a castle well if you've got majority you're going to lock it off it doesn't matter who else goes there so it got to a point where me and one of the
1:30:16
other people playing a demo um we're kind of starting to fight over this
1:30:22
little island and then we're like I was just it's like no I'm locking it off there's no you're not having it sort of thing so even though they won the Little
1:30:27
Village that was up there I won the castle and I got some bits and pieces together but yeah Joel from Devon dice
1:30:34
podcast was was playing the demo with me and everyone including the people that we didn't know that demo just he really
1:30:40
enjoyed taking his castles off of him it was just pretty good laugh so and uh so
1:30:46
yeah he did I don't know that he did great um because everyone just seemed to have out for him but he's had great time
1:30:52
I know that he's managed to NAB that prototype copy to to play a few more games of so and it'll be one I'll be
1:30:57
interested in at look looking at as that sort of as you say like for Babylonia by
1:31:03
the sounds of things is very simple choices very simple rules but every Cho
1:31:08
there's quite a few little choices out there and you have to decide oh am I going after locking down this Castle or making this area bigger or an objective
1:31:16
card or all those kind of things in there so no I really enjoyed it there's a lot of depth to a very simple action
1:31:23
yeah yeah absolutely so no had a great time with it um and not to say it's crowdfunding now so you can have a look
1:31:30
at it there yeah I really want to play it that's good one of the things that was quite interesting was the board was very cluttered looking and it got
1:31:36
mentioned by a few people and they went yeah we've already cleaned the board up so the board's not quite as pretty but
1:31:42
it's much easier to read you can really see where the castles and Cathedrals are yeah so they've obviously already
1:31:47
listened to feedback and started working on that part um which I just found quite interesting that even mid crowd funding
1:31:54
they' already produced a prototype Board of his what it's going to look like with the cleaner Aesthetics what was rebirth rebirth by R
1:32:02
kitzia and mighty boards so after that we uh wandered all the way over to um
Teburu & Vampire: The Masquerade - Milan Uprising
1:32:08
the taru booth and for those who haven't heard of what taru is it's not really a
1:32:13
game it's a kodo no it's not a kodo um it's a board game electronic kind of
1:32:21
system where you can put board games on it and it's basically intelligent that
1:32:26
it will know where you're putting your your kind of minis onto certain spaces because of the magnets that are in
1:32:33
basically the board and and the system itself and also has dice that it has kind of little gyros in it so it knows
1:32:39
what faces have been rolled it's like the future it's like the future yeah it's kind of like a cross between
1:32:45
digital um implementation and physical board games and I I've heard about it's
1:32:51
been knocking about for a good 5 years and you I think seon were one of the
1:32:57
first to to announce a game of zombie side Vegas or something for it um but we
1:33:03
managed to kind of jump on a demo of vampire the Masquerade Milan Uprising um
1:33:09
and as an IP I've dabbled with vampire from I don't know old Xbox games I think
1:33:15
Adrian you've actually probably played the RPG or have dabbled dabl in RPG in the system and I think Davey and Rob
1:33:22
play the computer game yeah played the computer game and all never heard of it that was kind of the scale that we we had around there and for those that
1:33:29
don't kind kind of know you have these different vampire factions and Clans and the idea is that you've kind of
1:33:37
got um representation from pretty much all of the Clans that are all coming
1:33:42
together in this kind of U anarch faction to try and overthrow the the prince um of of milanda the vampire
1:33:49
Prince is a bit of a knob sounds like it doesn't he yeah and and it's like an
1:33:54
area control game on the board you got different districts of Milan and you start off in one of the corner in a
1:34:00
Haven quite story driven so's an app that's literally driving kind of what's
1:34:05
going on and you all plays different characters now this is probably the best bit for me CU it's kind of like we all
1:34:11
just who do we want to pick and when you pick your character you like you just take the mini and then you have the phone in front of you so everyone's got
1:34:18
their own phone which is your player board and obviously it's interactive and it's changing things up and you select
1:34:24
your character you know like Street Fighter 2 style and uh and then you put
1:34:29
the mini on say that's me and then it recognize it and off he go so Davey picked um the 70s lothario type
1:34:36
character any way I can describe had a big Tash shade massive stomach massive stomach yeah pot belly yeah you picked
1:34:43
that shades on neck over the a cigar um so you went for
1:34:51
that character Adrian you went for no to highly disfigured sort of not
1:34:57
typically they're not allowed to be seen in public at all where vampires can kind of get away with it because they normally look humanish NOS can't they're
1:35:04
all sort of disfigured and a little bit sort of um they look almost like burnt sort of things buff I was I was the
1:35:12
character that Ked us and then me and Rob went the other direction and we we're going to go sexy so I went for an
1:35:19
a sexy brewha I think as the uh the faction and Rob just went ultra sexy
1:35:24
vampire like what would you imagine a sexy vampire to look like s from bit in
1:35:30
a floaty dress FLIR dress yeah ball gown looking thing yeah and then off we went
1:35:36
into Milan just kind of doing things and investigating and we we come across some dogs and I ended up ripping their head
1:35:42
the stories were pretty funny like basically Adrian ended up chasing a dog
1:35:47
around the park trying to get this dog for the the owner I ended up in a taxi
1:35:53
well limo doing sorted things apparently with this driver well making him think I
1:35:59
was doing sorted things to get [Laughter] money it was I had no choice it was just
1:36:06
like this is this is the scenario that's happening because it's obviously an adult theme he like you you're walking on the street and the limo pulls up with
1:36:13
a very rich billionaire and Rob was meeting up with a homeless guy trying to chase the homeless king or something and
1:36:19
you I can't remember what you went and helped the dog yeah the Reds off yeah and then you guys ended up actually
1:36:25
doing the quest stuff and I just got shipped off to the middle of nowhere just doing nothing apparently just fa
1:36:32
failing to secure resources repeatedly with bad dice rolls yeah yeah but it's
1:36:37
like really immersive it's very thematic wasn't it yeah because of the way it's brought together the music the narration
1:36:44
the fact that when you move around the board you're literally moving it from one District to another and then your apps reacting to that saying that's an
1:36:51
action point that's spent that's an action point that's spent Etc and the background changes so if you move from
1:36:57
one District to another it shows you by changing the background on so you have a central iPad and each individual phones
1:37:02
and on the iPad wherever your character moves it changes the background on the iPad to match where you've just moved to
1:37:09
there's a whole raft of little immersive sort of features on there and our teach was after the setup was okay off you go
1:37:16
press a button CU you don't the game teaches yeah that so would you say it
1:37:21
was the game that was great or the system was great or the marrying of the two made the whole experience good yeah
1:37:30
I think it has to be both doesn't it I think for me it was both and and obviously it's our first time interacting with the system so it's like
1:37:35
ooh this is new rolling a dys and the app goes good look well done you succeeded or no you failed and oh by the
1:37:44
way you have this uh reroll ability that oh yeah yeah don't don't forget you have a roll nice little touches like that to go
1:37:51
okay fine or would you like to spend a swn five resources to get an extra dice
1:37:56
thing all those little things that added in there that in a board game you would knows there but you could forget about quite easily was reminded really simply
1:38:03
on the screen yeah and it's just you know you kind of pick up Allies and ghouls along the way but yeah I I think
1:38:09
I was intrigued by the system anyway I quite like what it's doing it's like any of these things it's how many games are
1:38:15
available on it and actually how much are the games to play what kind of price point are you talking about cuz it sounds like when when you're talking
1:38:21
about it at the actual Expo I was thinking immediately of something like Mansions of Madness could work really
1:38:26
well with that so it it knows where you are it knows what you're doing okay that works pretty well anyway with an iPad
1:38:32
but it'd be super cool on a yeah Bo it's dropped a lot in price cuz I remember I checked it out when it first when we
1:38:39
first saw it which is the very first Expo I think we went to it was there and I think then it was like saying around
1:38:44
300400 whereas now they've obviously be been able to get production down quite a lot and I think it was with a game it
1:38:51
was about 180 Maybe somewhere around that yeah I think it was around there I think each extra game was about 50 Quid
1:38:57
wasn't it which okay that's about the same price as a regular game then isn't it yeah and like there's the the Big
1:39:03
King guy in vampire the Masquerade sits on this sort of um like plinth that's
1:39:09
actually got Electronics in it and each game yeah each game will come with a different miniature to sit in it that
1:39:15
sort of looks off looks at the center of the board and it will do different things depending upon which game you're playing with the bit the for vampire the
1:39:21
Masquerade that got me was Rob was how long does the game last then and he said oh the campaign lasts 40 to 50 hours
1:39:28
yeah but what about the game well it's 40 to 50 hours because like a video game it's like like an RPG video game there's
1:39:35
no start stop act one two you just stop where you stop and pick up again such
1:39:41
one continuous story for 40 to 50 hours which for bit for a board game is unique
1:39:47
really as well there's not often you get it's normally like dungeon one dungeon two or whatever it's not here's a
1:39:52
continuous story that it it will keep track of for you which I think is a quite a unique selling point for it as
1:39:58
well because us it's a nightmare trying to set up if you did it Midway through or or save that point whereas this is
1:40:04
just going to go it's on the app well there's not that many bits is there like you've got the minis you've got the dice
1:40:10
and you've got the board that sits on the system and I can't I'm trying to remember the pl there's that tell you
1:40:16
where the influence was for the different factions and and there are some CBO tokens that's like oh don't
1:40:21
forget you've got an investigation over here here which is a reminder for you but you can actually view it on the map yeah and like like any online RPG it was
1:40:29
like here's all your missions you've got to do just tap on your little phone and it'll bring up your missions so there was loads of like traditional computer
1:40:37
RPG stuff mixed in with wi traditional board game RPG stuff it was I thought it was really well melded yeah yeah I
1:40:44
enjoyed it I would definitely play it yeah I think I would and even though I kind of said I won't do campaigns um on
1:40:51
a previous episode but yeah intrigued me I thought a pretzel game there like the stories that came out in that brief
1:40:59
brief play we had we played for about 40 minutes I think yeah um to an hour um
1:41:04
and already it was just stupidity at the table because it was just like we were obviously trying to roleplay our characters a little bit as well and be
1:41:11
like well what would I do I'd be doing this agent going around trying to fight everyone um that's what I did yeah um so
1:41:18
it was it was it was good fun yeah if Rober rolled better we would have won against last yeah absolute sucked we got
1:41:24
all these positives and then there's some minus numbers and Rob just rolled all the minus ones so I like okay I wasn't even involved I didn't get blamed
1:41:31
so I guess there's no cheating either is there cuz you're R thing and it knows so there is a intentionally or
1:41:37
unintentionally if you take your character off the board and put them back it goes back to the previous screen so you can see what your options are and
1:41:43
then do it but if you do the action there's no going backwards there's no like oh we have a cheeky reverse oh there is he did say there's an undo
1:41:49
feature think there yeah he showed us in the end you can you can do stuff oh that's okay there cuz I didn't realize
1:41:56
where in that space that I was that I kept doing the same thing it was always the same events where I was I needed to
1:42:01
move yeah but I just had to keep doing the same things which were have a go to
1:42:07
a restaurant and have a fist fight and I was just doing absolutely side quests I
1:42:12
was like literally the side NPC in the corner just ran off doing lots of random stuff he took he took an underground
1:42:18
train went to the other side of the map and we never saw him again God knows what he was up to whereas the rest of us all stuck
1:42:24
together tried to do the main quest yeah you were you are on Quest fun I think yeah I think the main selling point for
1:42:30
this is if you're a board gamer but you've got people around the table who don't want to care about remembering
1:42:36
rules or like it's like that D and D thing right so some people play D and D and they'll just roleplay the character
1:42:41
they don't care about any of the rules some will know I've got 60 foot of dark vision and all this kind of stuff that
1:42:47
they'll remember and I think that's the kind of difference the the people who just want to play the game and don't really care too much about the rules
1:42:53
they just want to level up and and hear the story they are going to absolutely love this kind of game because it takes
1:43:00
so much of that bookkeeping out of of board games so I think that's kind of that feels like the the main crowd that
1:43:06
I think this might capture I'd agree yeah it is it is a b impr pretal game it's like that Friday night invite your
1:43:13
mates around have a laugh of it and not have to take it too seriously or as you say remember any rules and there's no
1:43:19
prep work that's needed and like DND D Rock up and play just rock him and play yeah check it out so we went straight
Luthier
1:43:27
from that to luia oh God so yeah it it does deserve
1:43:34
that but I think we need to give bit of context first so luia is a game about um about making instruments so luia
1:43:41
typically made string instruments in this game you're making percussion wind instruments Etc they've just called it a
1:43:46
name to give it a bit of extra I think and it's by pavs or pavon games I asked
1:43:52
him about four times we did an online social post and I asked him again CU I'd forgotten it's one of those two so and
1:43:58
it's coming to Kickstarter soon um and the game I think has a lot of potential
1:44:04
game's good fun the game's good fun my sigh of oh God was nothing to do with the game yeah which which was it was
1:44:11
just we had an unfortunate teach I think where and I'm not even sure it's the teacher's fault in some regards but he
1:44:18
liked to waffle and then we basically there was a lot of going back to the
1:44:23
book for rules and then they did the whole so Nim did a similar thing when
1:44:29
Paul did it but it was fine then because it was a step-by-step run through it gives you a little brief introduction to
1:44:35
the rules what every player's about to do because there's a lot of moving part and then you go but what this guy did
1:44:43
and what Paul didn't do was take so long with each individual step
1:44:50
that by the first when the first hour had gone and it was an hour and a half te what we got to play we hadn't even
1:44:58
had a go that was off the rails yet so it you must have been climbing the walls
1:45:03
D oh I was rubbing my face in I was actually getting angry at some points but I was keep I I was keeping St I was
1:45:10
there just like just I I was basically kept going oh so I'll be doing this and he's like no no no no no we'll be doing
1:45:16
this and it's the exact the same thing that I was just then doing and I was just like oh my God I was I felt the
1:45:22
anger right me but it was fine there a couple things where he said like I don't know why keyboard's a percussion it's
1:45:27
cuz it's a percussion instrument it is a percussion instrument but anyway ADHD just like firing off at all
1:45:35
cylinders just so uncomfortable we eventually got the free reign of the game I think it was actually really it
1:45:41
was really good fun it had a nice like Lera type economy wheel yeah see you've
1:45:47
got that um that flow to the game right you have to go and get patrons and you have to go and get all your materials and then you have to go and get the
1:45:53
design and you can repair some items in between CU if you wait too long to make the instrument your patrons will bug her
1:45:59
off so all of those kind of things made this flow of right you're getting a patron you're getting the raw materials
1:46:04
you're getting the design you're going to make it and then you got like a little area control bit a bit like in lacosa yeah where you kind of got a bit
1:46:11
of area control at the bottom where you're trying to sort of the pit gain benefits by building certain certain
1:46:17
instruments um and there's the usual thing if you've got different strength workers so start off with like a five a
1:46:24
three and a one except for your special power Dave was you start off with a two as well which came to us all by the
1:46:29
second round anyway and then you've got like these additional like I'm going to
1:46:34
call them support workers for that's like apprentices that's that's a better term um that you can add on to it which
1:46:41
adds one to the strength of your worker and different strengths so if you ever had anything over strength for it gave
1:46:48
you a a Brucey bonus um and if you ever when you then got when you then placed
1:46:56
out all your workers each person in turn order selected an area so if you were going first you could select an area
1:47:01
that you wanted but no one else would want to go first and kind of they would lose out a bit of their turn wouldn't they cuz yeah it a unique kind of
1:47:08
bidding action where everyone put their workers out and secret bits secret bits
1:47:14
yeah uh face down and then when the action selected you flip them all over and then the highest value gets to go
1:47:20
first so they get the first choice and none of the none other resources are refreshed but then the other person
1:47:26
who's also there has to then have their action there but there's always a secondary action on each space which is
1:47:32
resources so if you do get caught kind of a bit early then you can always take resources so there's always something
1:47:38
you can do even though it's not the most optimal thing to do so yeah yeah yeah
1:47:44
and I think it's got a nice flow to I think it was their seven turns on the board it had a turn count and I think it was about seven turns and so
1:47:50
unfortunately we only got to the end of turn two um which speaking to other people they got to the end of turn three and I think
1:47:56
that would have given us a little bit more to sort of see yeah um but yeah it's really unfortunate the guy came
1:48:02
across quite nervous and pretty unprepared um and so it was 25 minutes
1:48:08
set up then 45 50 minutes first turn the
1:48:14
two people with us at the table still didn't quite understand some of the rules so I think I don't blame them
1:48:19
which I don't blame them I think we were doing the thing we like we quite often well you can do this or if you went that
1:48:25
maybe you need an instrument or sort of trying to hint as what they could do and oh okay fine and kind of helping them along a little bit but yeah it was just
1:48:32
frustrating because I think there is a really strong game in there with that as you say like that lerik flow of needing
1:48:37
to get things in certain orders and being able to kind of be a little bit mean without being too mean yeah you had
1:48:43
a nice little engine you could build with your patrons um as well as your um
1:48:48
instruments or achievements as well you had little achievements out which would give you set benefits so but the earlier
1:48:55
you go for them you get less Point VPS but you still get the effect uh which is
1:49:00
quite nice so little powers that you can get so it just I really liked what was there and I think getting a full play of
1:49:07
that's going to be really good um and and you have a nice spin on other it's not really CU
1:49:17
it's not really an engine builder it's it's not really a bidding game it's kind of a little bit of everything but not
1:49:22
too much of either yeah I think that's a pretty good summary it certainly interested me um to to want to play the
1:49:28
full game of it so it kind of did some of its job it's just say just a bit unfortunate need a bit more time with it
1:49:35
yeah I say most people seem to that I spoke to afterwards got to turn three so they had the pre-done turn which showed
1:49:42
you all the actions like it like been taken about half an hour whoever wrote the script did a great job of making
1:49:48
sure that every you got to see all the actions without feeling like someone was behind the curve cuz you were all at the
1:49:55
end of the first turn in a place where you could go and do something and but you didn't necessarily want to do the
1:50:00
same thing yeah um I just would have liked to have seen turn three as well personally but yeah I think there's something there that I want to give a go
1:50:07
again for 100% look really pretty it did yeah yeah no that the preview show I was like ooo and he kept there's they had
1:50:13
like a little conductor stick so that you can point a little bat on that you could point at things and he kept taking
1:50:19
it off of me I kept picking it up and he kept taking off of me asked cuz they had like a much posher version than a little
1:50:25
cardboard one and we were like does that come as an extra and they were like well as it's on
1:50:31
crowdfunding maybe we'll see what's on crowdfunding shall we and I was like Yay
1:50:36
get a little yeah no one's going to take it away from you this time so on my Saturday was mostly
Tiny Epic Western
1:50:43
Walking The Halls to start with curly was playing the arkov tournament yeah um
1:50:49
and I played a game with Tambo Chris and uh Josh and we played tiny epic Weston
1:50:55
which I really really liked I was a bit kind of apprehensive to start with because I played tiny epic dinosaurs and
1:51:01
was like but tiny epic Weston really liked it really really liked it um The
1:51:07
Minis are kind of cool there's like a slight sort of poker hand kind of thing
1:51:12
going on and a resource collect some stuff so that you can get something at the end and yeah I really enjoyed it
1:51:19
really enjoyed it didn't buy it haven't bought it but yeah would would consider doing so I didn't think I liked any of
1:51:25
the tiny epic games but actually really really liked this one nice yeah I know tambo's raved about it um talked about
1:51:31
it on the previous episodes as well and what I remember from it and what I've seen because we nearly played it once at
1:51:38
full ball gaming then we packed it away and played something else cuz I think it was a player thing um was the little
1:51:44
bullet dice yeah it six sided little like a like a very very almost fully
1:51:50
sharpened pencil right down to the knob you roll it and it's great yeah I really liked
1:51:56
it yeah it was really good so on Saturday we do our our usual book into
Our annual Las Iguanas traditional visit
1:52:02
lasanas and Resorts World which you need to do pretty early right just yeah I mean we left it a bit late so we had to
1:52:08
go for a half four booking but still worked out quite was quite good actually though I was ready for it yeah I was
1:52:13
ready for it I was knackered yeah and whole like all the Halls were rammed on Saturday so busy I think it was the
1:52:20
busiest it's ever been and yeah we escaped early to get into lasan have a
1:52:25
bit of like you know bit of Mexican style food and and it was always good fun we we ate a lot South America South
1:52:32
America got bit this bit of that yeah yeah um and yeah we we ate a lot we had
1:52:38
a few cocktails Davey went to pretty much sample the entire tap pass menu I
1:52:43
regreted it regret the bill definitely regreted the bill we had a little game going on which is who I spent the most
1:52:50
money at the table Dave one yeah um 60 quid on 60 quid on one M jeez I
1:52:57
know I it was good I enjoyed it I hope it was I'm glad it was he was like a pig and [ __ ] just eating all of these
1:53:04
different meals this is great and then got landed with the bill went whoops um so too easy to do a tap it's like oh
1:53:10
yeah seven quid for this little thing you're oh yeah I have five of those don't think I've ever thought that
1:53:17
I think I thought i' have three of those so that was good fun and then yeah we called ball game Jimmy and his family
1:53:25
on on the way out um and that was just nice catching up with him and that's the first time I S saw him at the the Expo I
1:53:31
mean big place lots of people uh lots of people that you miss right but yeah it's nice catching up with Jimmy getting his
1:53:37
uh get his take on things so yeah there we go there we go and epic churo eating
1:53:42
oh yeah epicur 50 churos we did I mean there's quite a fewers at the table nine
1:53:49
nine yeah yeah I mean you know five churos each is it's quite a lot in it it
1:53:56
was great it's become a bit of a bit of a thing now we did it last year as well I think not everyone quite ordered
1:54:02
churos last year whereas this year everyone was just like yes we're all having five churos brand churos 10 b b
1:54:09
share them and then you just basically like like dogs that eat hot dog sausages and just straight in you some bit of do
1:54:16
deche yeah very sha yeah and yeah and then you kind of go into a bit of a
1:54:22
sugar coma like oh my God uh but no always good fun so yeah we wandered back and we
Civolution
1:54:30
managed to get a very sneaky game of celution which is not even at the show
1:54:37
at all and it's because Paul Grogan has uh basically an advanced copy because he's going to do some work on it on on
1:54:44
his channel and uh we've been trying to play this most of the weekend and for
1:54:50
one reason or another it didn't quite happen because Marcus is the only one that's played it and we kind of wanted
1:54:55
him to do the teach and not kind of play the game from scratch and read a rule book cuz that's just dire and I hate
1:55:01
doing that at conventions so we managed to to basically get uh the game set up and on the Saturday Marcus taught the
1:55:09
game and uh then kind of had to bless him he had to kind of bail on the game and then Paul basically switched seats
1:55:16
with him so we kind half a game with Marcus and half of it with Paul which is kind of kind of worked out in the end
1:55:21
for us yeah cuz we got got to play it bless him um so civil is a game designed
1:55:26
by Stephen Feld and uh published by Deep print games I believe and it's got a
1:55:32
kind of wacky unique theme but I kind of dig it so it's kind of like you are these higher um beings these higher
1:55:41
deities and you are all participating in an exam to develop a civiliz a
1:55:48
civilization from kind of scratch to to get the most uh victory points so that
1:55:54
you pass the exam and then you can actually do it for real okay so in the middle you've got this uh map board
1:56:02
which is all the different territories of like you know the plains the the swamps the mountains some of them
1:56:07
actually have quite nice little jaw layered um SE segments on there which is cool and your player board looks like an
1:56:14
absolute cluster cuz like you're kind of kind of looks like Steps but you kind of
1:56:20
open it up from the midle what in the the band with the music yeah you got H and Lee and uh and other
1:56:25
people in there no but it's like a staircase in terms of how it looks but you open it did you just forget Lisa
1:56:30
Scott Lee I did disgraceful Behavior I know and uh go on who's the other two
1:56:35
then Fay yeah and how do you know any of
1:56:41
these she's the one with the nose that twitches he's got those cemented into the back of his mind love it that's what
1:56:47
the reason why it's like a it's like a trop it's like a teered system isn't it yeah but so so you've got so if you
1:56:53
think when someone stands on a Podium it's like a Podium that's stuck together
1:56:58
you got the teared system either side yeah exactly and then you kind of open it up and and then kind of tears up at
1:57:04
each Edge and then when you look at it and you go oh my God this looks absolute Bonkers like the first time you look at
1:57:10
this player board you're like geez and I was just like in heaven cuz like I love a best player boards I've ever seen love
1:57:16
a player board it's just fantastic got little Jay of bits going on and on the right side you've kind of got not kind
1:57:22
of you you you have all of your actions which correspond to two dice values so
1:57:27
you've got your dice of 1 2 3 4 5 six and each action on there will need a one
1:57:34
and a two or one and a three or a three and a six whatever it might be and there all the things that you can do in the
1:57:39
game and it looks like a control panel in a computer so you know you have a my favorite action
1:57:45
procreate which is a five and a two always remember that and that's how your uh tribes basically get more tribe
1:57:52
members and you can migrate and moving around the map you can research uh different kind of cards that you you
1:57:58
have that you can kind of play into um the player board and and again they kind
1:58:04
of work on a tier system so the first card you play ideally will be in that tier one row and if you fill that entire
1:58:10
row you'll get bonuses and the higher that you can get these cards played the more victory points you'll get from them
1:58:16
but the the limit is if you play like a a brown technology card you can only play technology ol cards on top of it
1:58:23
which then the requirements become harder and harder as the game goes on so yeah you've got all these actions on the
1:58:28
right and on the left you've got some uh basically load of resource pools that you put these generic tokens in again I
1:58:34
don't know how many there are there's there 24 or something maybe even more what's that how many options there are
1:58:40
resources it's three by 3x six six I think there you go yeah math that one
1:58:47
out listeners um and then you got coins 18 thank you it's the Rarity isn't it so
1:58:53
the first tier is the most common the second tier is going to be the rarer and the third tier the rarest it you got
1:58:58
money and you've got food in there as well and and so really that the kind of game has some callbacks to your castles
1:59:06
are buring the fact that you're rolling uh all your dice and you're putting them into the dice pools but you're selecting
1:59:12
two of the dice um of of the values to activate certain actions and you can
1:59:18
spend ideas similar to like workers can nudge the dice values up or down cuz I
1:59:24
really need a five and I haven't got a five so you can kind of do that and then when you kind of get to a certain amount
1:59:30
of of dice left in your pool um you can kind of do a reset action which then allows you to get your dice back and all
1:59:37
sorts of cool Shenanigans but I mean it's there's a lot going on in this game
1:59:42
it's your first your your first play is here's the sandbox off you go and you're
1:59:49
like I have no idea you generally like I have no idea what what the hell is going on there's like very very vague Avenues
1:59:56
where it's like you score some points for this at the end or at the end of the weather event card if you've done this
2:00:03
prerequisite you get this bonus but you might just look at those and go no not doing any of that yeah you you don't
2:00:08
need to necessarily you can try and maybe score points for the later one it's just it's it literally you look
2:00:16
at it you go I don't know what to do luckily we have the star deex where they kind of give you another Avenue as well
2:00:22
and you kind of think well this looks like I need to be doing this so mine was pretty much I looks like I need to be
2:00:28
building Tech and I'm the tech guys didn't even touch the like most of my people were starving on like lying down
2:00:35
on the board yeah you're not Fe but they were super clever and they had computers yes exactly they had detch keeping them
2:00:41
safe but um yours are that mine mine mutated them to have beaks and
2:00:47
humps so they were quite weird so like I say it's really whimsical and that you can mutate your civilization to get
2:00:54
benefits in there so you can just imagine like I think we talked about it as a series um the robots one on Netflix
2:01:01
what love death robots or something one of the episodes is like there's a civilization in the freezer yeah I love that it's kind of like that where you've
2:01:08
got this micro civilization that you're just messing around with and you can take it into different directions some
2:01:14
of it's completely Bonkers and some of it's it's pretty cool M it's why it really reminded me of like black and
2:01:19
white but minus the big monster it's like you have that control over your civilization kind of like yeah you're
2:01:26
pulling and stretching and seeing what happens with yeah is it weird that it reminded me of the civilization that grows on bender and future armor as he
2:01:33
get shot into space that's it they all have wars with each other that was exactly what it reminded me of that's
2:01:39
exactly the the the theme of it in in that that sense um and I think it's fair
2:01:44
to say like me and Davey just enjoyed it like immensely and I think Adrian you
2:01:50
played maybe less so I went on a weird Journey with this game so I'm not the
2:01:56
biggest fan of Civ games or sandbox games but I've liked Stephan Feld so I was like okay I want to give it a go and
2:02:02
then it was like okay here's your workers okay cool they're not workers they're ideas but that's what they are they're cundy workers and here's your 22
2:02:11
combinations of dice that you select from and they all do completely different actions there's not really
2:02:17
much crossover between them and I was like okay fine so I can see from my cards I'm supposed to do migration but
2:02:24
through areas that other people already migrated through so I kind of got to follow people and I've got to do
2:02:29
exploration which seemed a little bit counterintuitive but not a problem I'll go after that I also need Vision
2:02:37
improvements and only had one of them so to get another vision improvement which I needed for like half the cards in the
2:02:42
starting deck I needed another one which is two sixes so first roll of the dice I
2:02:48
roll a single six no problem I'll go and find other stuff to do second roll of the dice no sixes third roll of the dice
2:02:54
no sixes fourth roll of the dice one six again and I was just getting increasingly frustrated by the lack of
2:03:01
ability to roll and it's like okay fine I'm not going to go after these sixes then I won't bother with cards I'll just not do cards I'll do migration instead
2:03:08
but then when you have leaned into that a little bit sudden you stop rolling those Dice and it's we found out about a
2:03:13
third of the way through the game there are more options to mitigate some of this Focus as one um yeah so the focus
2:03:20
thing well my i h for two3 of the game it felt like so cuz if you go to sleep you get a focus which is just a dice so
2:03:27
you spend two dice to get a dice of anything of any of any number there's also planning as well which is the bit
2:03:33
we discovered yeah like a third of the way through the game and I hadn't listened to it as you were explaining to it CU I was nose deep in a six page
2:03:40
Manual of what everything was um and yeah I just felt like everything I tried
2:03:46
to do I didn't roll the dice for and with castles of burgundy I feel like you got an out feel like and and With Merlin
2:03:53
when we've played stepen Feld I feel like there was always an out with this I felt like I've very rarely had an out
2:03:59
that wasn't massively wasteful of the resources of dice I had so I did see also there's that other space where you
2:04:06
get a if you upgrade it a couple times you get a lot of ideas yeah but you've got to be able to get to the upgrade
2:04:13
which is not necessarily easy and quite often to get that upgrade to change your dice more you're sacrificing a lot of
2:04:19
other upgrades that you might need to do your path so to follow and I cuz they orange cards as
2:04:26
well that upgrade spot was orange cards so if it plays into the orange card strategy you're doing which I had a couple of those so it was one of these
2:04:33
things where I can absolutely see this being a massive game but like your sort
2:04:39
of playthrough of barrage I think some people bounce off it hard because they had a really rough time of one game and
2:04:46
it might put them off like it's kind of put me off I'll be honest of playing more of it I keep telling myself I probably should give it another go but
2:04:52
you know when you're like I bounced I was by the end and it and again it happens with these games it's a 3 and a/
2:04:58
half hour game and I was miserable an hour and a half into it and just sat there for two more hours being quite
2:05:04
frankly miserable I don't think I made any bones about it at the time we tell me I was tired and not enjoying a game that kind
2:05:13
of I couldn't I felt like I had no way out of so I think you can see you guys
2:05:18
absolutely loved it I've heard nothing but glowing feedback about it I think I just had a rough game of rolling the
2:05:23
wrong dice I think also because we had the starter decks it was leading you down one Avenue and maybe you didn't
2:05:29
want to go down that Avenue and maybe it's not how you'd want to play the game so in some aspects I think maybe those
2:05:35
starting decks could be a little bit detrimental to the game in some aspects and because
2:05:41
they said otherwise what they do is you deal out two of each of each card and you pick one of each of those L and that
2:05:49
you can tailor your strategy that way instead to me that's more appealing cuz I was stuck I was really enjoying it but
2:05:54
I was stuck down my strategy which seemed quite strong in the end but at the start when you guys were flying off
2:06:00
of VPS and I was kind of really behind I was like uh how how am I meant to then
2:06:05
gain VPS but it was all in the end game for me but I mean you had a strategy I
2:06:11
was just pushing buttons man that's why I came last cuz I was L just I've enjoyed just
2:06:16
mess it's what I was up for doing to start with I was like I'll just push a few buttons and then within like few turns I was okay I've I've I've got some
2:06:23
I don't understand everything on the board I just know know where I need to head now roughly and just couldn't achieve it so again I think it's one of
2:06:31
those things I think I could probably play it again and enjoy it more yeah but I bounced so hard off of it this first
2:06:36
time that it has put me off a little bit from giving it another go but I don't think that should stop anyone from
2:06:41
giving it a try if you like those sandbox it's just you've got to get out your head around those 22 different
2:06:47
options yeah right first playoff kind fairly quickly I think in to make use of
2:06:52
that first game otherwise it just does what I don't like which is here's a first game you got to get to the end of it to understand it I don't think cuz we
2:06:59
got pretty good we were missing a few options here or there but we knew enough to I think get something out of the game
2:07:05
but yeah you've got to have your head in it to understand those 22 actions fairly I think understanding the actions was
2:07:12
kind of the easy part you do this thing that happens that's fine it's understanding why I'm doing this where
2:07:18
am I going from here that was the harder bit and that wasn't until about was half halfway through and then went okay I
2:07:23
know what I'm doing now this is what I want to be doing and pumped that technology thing but I felt the same
2:07:29
about White Castle I was well I was all the way through the end of that game and still didn't really have any understanding of why I was doing any of
2:07:35
it yeah to be honest at least that's was only nine actions yeah it didn't take me three hours no but for me cilu was my my
2:07:43
game of the weekend Oh hands down I'm I'm into buying it yeah I'm I'm probably going to pick it up
2:07:49
but then if you can call it game of Expo when technically it's not really out and we just managed to sneak a Cofe to play
2:07:57
um but I think it's du out in Essen so yeah eyes on that one for me so very
Bag of Dungeon 2
2:08:02
quickly whilst we were playing that Rob had managed to have a nice relaxing game
2:08:08
of Bagger dungeon 2 and he just said if you say anything I know I'm not on the podcast tonight if you say anything just
2:08:16
say thank you to to gunpowder Studios who had uh gifted uh the game and we we
2:08:21
passed it to Rob cuz it's it's basically Rob he loves Dungeon Crawlers so we passed it to him and he managed to get a
2:08:27
game of it he said I bloody loved it and he had a nice relaxing Saturday so I just wanted to highlight that and uh
2:08:33
yeah oh we also we also got to play ashes you did yeah you finally played it yeah we finally playing ashes and I had
2:08:39
some weird smash I had some weird discard deck and it just really just seemed to counter
2:08:45
his deck I was like oh you know that really powerful card you got it's gone and it's like oh you oh that thing and
2:08:50
it's gone you yeah de you're dead but yeah it's really good it's very remnant of magic M um which I played a lot of
2:08:57
and I love um don't play anymore cuz it's bit too convoluted but um but there
2:09:02
you go there you go I just thought I'd throw that in there as well because he always says I never I always take ashes and never get to play we got to play
2:09:08
ashes finally got to play it so um Sunday so very last day of the Expo yeah
SUNDAY: DAY 3
2:09:18
and we're coming to a close of the episode sure got a few games left to talk about
2:09:24
in about s hours time I think with Sunday a lot of people wait till Sunday to buy stuff yeah now I'm just that ter
2:09:30
the idea of that terrifies me because by that point I've really decided what I want and if then you can't have it oh
2:09:37
God doesn't even be thinking about so I if I've decided I want something I'll just buy it then and then maybe regret
2:09:42
it later on but then that's tough isn't it far better doing that than really knowing you want something and then you
2:09:48
can't yeah and some places mark down first thing on a Sund they kind of take stock of what stock they have and
2:09:54
they'll mark down first thing on a Sunday so everyone's whipping around first thing on a Sunday and then the alternative of that is some people leave
2:10:00
it almost to like the last 45 minutes an hour of the Expo and then they start marking down and so if you're wanting
2:10:07
those Bargains you got to keep a real eye out for which one's doing which or you know some places are selling off
2:10:13
like the if they've got a Swanky demo table they're selling that off to to people and like display stock and all
2:10:20
that kind of stuff so there are some Bargains to be had you've just got to keep your head on the swivel to keep
2:10:25
looking for them and ask the questions is this going with you or can I buy it off you all those kind of things um a
2:10:32
lot of the um exhibitors don't want to take the stock back with them no because it cost them to ship it back so and some
2:10:40
are more than like quite a few of people just don't mark down at all so some are really happy to take it back with them
2:10:45
as well so it really is you just got to go around each vendor almost at this point I don't think I was hoping to find
2:10:50
if a bit of a system or something I could see um but there's not you've really just got to wander around them
2:10:56
all and keep a track of who's doing what I think if you're looking for a bargain we bought t-shirts mostly so
Stocking up on t-shirts from Lonely Red Planet & Shirts & Merch
2:11:03
there's a really there's a really good um company called Lonely red planet which is pretty much where all of
2:11:09
Curly's t-shirts are from so this is a guy who does his own kind of designs of kind of fandom so curlyy buys all the
2:11:16
Lord of the Rings ones um yes I think he bought I think he bought seven or eight last year year I think he bought six
2:11:23
this year so he just only wears though yeah col the whole set yeah and and they
2:11:28
bring out new he brings out new kind of designs every time so there's a couple that you might not have got already um
2:11:33
and we also bumped into Matt from um shirts and merch and his t-shirts are
2:11:39
fantastic I can vouch for their quality cuz we bought some at the 24-hour marathon in fact JP's wearing is an
2:11:45
Acron one right now um and he's a really really lovely guy so hi Matt if you're listening um yeah Curly's bought a
2:11:51
really cool beyond the Sun t-shirt from him so he sort of made the order there paid for it and then Matt will ship it
2:11:57
over I caught Matt as well at the show and he had a nice farway T-shirt with
2:12:02
the the little dude on the front I thought that was quite nice yeah yeah yeah he's he e signs all his own shirts
2:12:08
and they're always really they're like I would say like stealth geek yes so if you know you know yeah if you don't know
2:12:14
you wouldn't you wouldn't know yeah you wouldn't think that it's a you know the one I've got the arc NOA one I built a zoo with like little sort of the colored
2:12:22
the tags on it that's not going to make any sense to anybody but it's not like huh what's that about but if you know
2:12:28
like you play UPN NOA like you would totally oh you go oh you like Zoo if I if I wasn't repping our or whose turn is
2:12:34
it Anyway t-shirt I would have been wearing that you're right yeah just I like
2:12:46
zoo I love those so yeah it was really nice catching up with um catching up with man
2:12:51
so yeah strongly recommend his stuff shirts and merch I think he's got an Etsy um I think he does yeah but it's
2:12:57
really good we got to play World Order in the morning and that's the hegemony um expansion right heon sequel hegemony
World Order
2:13:05
hegemony how are we saying hegemonic project games is the company that does it I'm going to use that saying of it CU
2:13:11
I everyone corrects me the wrong way of well I think Americans hegemony and Europeans are hegemony yeah so but so I
2:13:19
like hegemony hij hi who um so we played World Order bibity poity
2:13:28
poo sorry DAV car on um and what a game to be honest uh it's pretty much just an
2:13:35
area control game um but they've really lent into the Thematic still there's
2:13:40
less a symmetry with your kind of with your players so it's easier to teach um
2:13:48
but there's still enough within your deck CU you basically it's kind of like a a pseudo deck builder where you you do
2:13:54
buy Cards and go into your deck and you play it to do actions um and everyone's
2:13:59
a little bit different I played China so I was very my deck seemed to lead towards the trade and the kind of the
2:14:08
more investment side of map control rather than Waring and um and less about
2:14:15
Services um selling a lot of phones uh which was good for money I felt quite
2:14:20
quite rich in that aspect and it I don't know it felt really nice and thematic even though it was kind of quite light
2:14:27
in a lot of aspects it was literally you place a cube on an area you can place a cube in a variety of different ways
2:14:33
either by building bases um which usually meant you had to have some military some tanks to be able to put that out which cost resources or you
2:14:41
could have some influence within that country which you'd have to first buy using um using I want to say favor but
2:14:50
it's not favor is diplomacy diplomacy using diplomacy to buy a said card and then you can use said card later on to
2:14:57
help reduce the cost of diplomacy to put cubes out onto that area um or there was
2:15:04
ways of you just invest into that country you can flip the card put investment token on so you can only do
2:15:09
that once like with your base you could only do that once in that country via that one card um and put a cube out and
2:15:16
then there were scoring rounds I think it was every it was the third or fourth round fourth and seven and seventh round
2:15:22
were scoring rounds where you would score for majority in these areas um there were set placements so the first
2:15:28
there would be locked in but then there were VP placements later on which would rotate and can move and you could knock
2:15:35
people out of it and you wouldn't score until it was was full um you guys were
2:15:40
fighting over the Middle East so there was also Europe um America and and Russia Adrian was playing Russia JP was
2:15:48
playing USA and um Anthony who joined us was playing
2:15:54
um uh Europe yeah EU EU and um yeah it
2:15:59
was you guys were fighting over the Middle East I was just sneaking around just doing trade and investing in in
2:16:05
countries um yeah it was just really thematic it was really strange because it literally sounds like it shouldn't be
2:16:13
but it seems they've tightened the game play up in a certain aspect where one
2:16:19
you also you kind of like well I'm Russia I'm going to go to bellarus and then go to um uh the Middle East and
2:16:28
fight there we should mention this game is set in 2010 so that is the background of it obviously there are some World
2:16:36
things happening um that could affect I suppose people's point of view on the game and and factions and all that lot
2:16:43
so yes I played Russia yes I invaded part of Europe like there's some sort of and but I just said well I'm Russia and
2:16:49
I've clearly got more invade like build bases and move tanks and all that lot so why don't I just leave whether that's
2:16:55
the right thing or do I don't know but it's a demo let's just lean into it so started a fight with Europe and America
2:17:01
basically yeah turn one build a base going into Europe it has a unique threat mechanic you never really fight you
2:17:08
don't lose troops you don't lose anything there's just something called threat and the person with the most tanks in that space can threaten those
2:17:15
other players and you start losing VPS at the end of round only in certain regions because depends on the depend
2:17:21
what countries get allowed to have bases or things there anyway so it's also
2:17:27
America and Europe never threaten each other yeah so you're all safe so Russia and America can never trade yeah all
2:17:34
those all those little things say just make it thematic without I like the idea of hegemony
2:17:40
hegemony whatever we want to call it um I like the idea of that but I was always a little bit put off by how asymmetric
2:17:47
it was and for some people that would be the best thing ever about it right but I think for those like me who are like
2:17:52
it's too asymmetric will enjoy this for being a little bit asymmetric and doing a very similar thing just on a sort of a
2:18:00
grander scale I think yeah it's a heavy teach isn't it so it's hard to get to the table withy but whereas this one I
2:18:06
feel like you could you could put it down I mean they taught us the mechanics in what 15 minutes if if that yeah I
2:18:12
mean it's seven seven was it every every action he was like right do this do that for quite a while it felt like so I
2:18:19
think there is a bit of it was a bit more assisted teach rather than he wasn't a full on was it yeah but yeah
2:18:24
but it's seven actions in the game right apart from the extra cards but they're themed around these seven things you can
2:18:30
do you know some militaristic some economic and some diplomatic yeah so and
2:18:35
then one about growing your country yeah I think you had six cars in your hand you paid four in a round and then the
2:18:42
other two helped buy your over cards will give you some resources yeah so it was it was quite a short round as well
2:18:49
wasn't it really yeah I think said it's going to be like 2 to 3 hours play time which is like a full hour less than hgy
2:18:56
didn't feel too long between turns is it brown it surprised me yeah I really
2:19:02
enjoyed it I thought I don't know if I'm going to enjoy this I I enjoy her gmany and I thought like the thematics I was I'm not
2:19:10
that bothered about but then as soon as I started role play in the USA and start you know I got into it you did seem to
2:19:15
be enjoying it when you walk past your table everyone was like oh this is really good straight away you were Russia invading I not having that so me
2:19:23
and Adrian just that logger heads just trying to put threat against each other throughout the game it's just fun it's
2:19:28
like it it's I'm not saying it's light cuz it's not light but you know it's just a it's more
2:19:33
accessible um and it still has that uh geminy DNA it's got It's got that look
2:19:38
as well like the way the cards are laid out the way the board's laid out I think it feel familiar but I don't want to
2:19:45
call it light but lighter and quicker yeah but it's certainly not light and it's not really quick either I think
2:19:50
it's just an easier teach I wouldn't even say it's lighter in some aspects I would just say it's easier to teach and that's going to be most of your
2:19:57
battle teaching hini was a task and very asymmetric which is what made it the task yeah exactly um but I I really
2:20:04
enjoyed it I I definitely want to play again um and also we got to speak to the
2:20:10
developers and also um their um marketing manager I think and they
2:20:16
seemed really receptive of um feedback as well yeah realize this otherwise I'd
2:20:21
have given them some of the feedback yeah you got to yeah you got to go I think didn't you yeah so I i'
2:20:27
whipped off um just to go and see another stand but I was tired and I'm
2:20:34
dyslexic and the cheat sheet was an A4 piece of paper filled with words yeah
2:20:40
yeah and I was like I'm going to build a base don't forget that's five coins oh it's five coins whereas a lot of other
2:20:46
actions said Pay five or something that but the basic actions which don't think
2:20:51
are that basic had no cost next to them there was no like I just wanted a little
2:20:57
tiny card that said base equals five coins move action equals five coins this
2:21:03
costs diplomacy and some of it was on the board but most of it was on this big A4 sheet and I just as someone again and
2:21:11
if I wasn't tired I'd have probably just read that sheet but I tried twice to start reading that cheat and my brain went no not having any of this
2:21:19
whatsoever so if you want to give feedback they are still taking feedback for their Kickstarter so they were
2:21:25
really nice and inquisitive and yeah like there's a little Tech Deck that you can get from Services above and um we
2:21:32
said everything's got a lot more variability that would be nice if they had like other Tech Deck that you kind
2:21:38
of would choose between each game um so that would be different each time you play which add another nice and they
2:21:43
were very receptive of that think you could get old quick if it's just two options every time and you know what
2:21:49
they are cuz that's the only would wouldn't change right everything else would change like the shops would change
2:21:54
obviously your deck would stay the same and where you start it would stay the same but that's fine that's that's where
2:22:00
the thematics come from with what faction you're playing yeah but having a bit more variability from all of the the
2:22:06
board would be good but whether that happens or not I don't know but they they seem to be very very receptive of
2:22:12
feedback and open to making any changes which is nice from a developer when you've got you know your uh users uh and
2:22:21
you listen to them so that was quite good yeah I still thoroughly enjoyed the game just to say I was feeling tired
2:22:26
that morning and and just wasn't in the mood for reading large Banks of text so um making making images always makes it
2:22:33
easier doesn't it symbology or whatever would just absolutely cleared that up for me but yeah no I enjoyed it
2:22:38
definitely keeping an eye out for it it's due to it says coming 2024 on their website late 2024 so yeah later in the
2:22:46
year check it out I think the kickstarter launches or game found launch watches uh very soon how about
2:22:53
you backs what' you do Sunday basically on Sunday I wandered every single store
Rove
2:22:58
you walked the halls I walked the Halls yeah curly met up with um a friend of
2:23:04
his that lives fairly close by about an hour close by um her and her partner and her two sons so they kind of had a
2:23:11
really good demo of Ro I think they really enjoyed it I think um think they're going to back it and uh her son
2:23:18
had a a demo of Terraria oh yeah and they're definitely back in that one I've heard a lot of Buzz about
2:23:24
terara it was always a very very busy stand they did a raffle um where you
2:23:30
either threw bean bags in a thing for points and I beat curly and that was the best I don't I didn't need play the game
2:23:37
yeah that was fine um or you could do like a like a social media post or whatever and they were calling the
2:23:43
raffle I think it was like maybe Saturday 4:00 or something the amount of people around that you couldn't get
2:23:49
anywhere near and they were calling certain tickets and I think if you didn't claim it straight away you didn't
2:23:55
get it and I think they were doing things like some merch but they were also the top prize was an all-in big fat
2:24:01
pledge like the biggest top level one um yeah so that was quite exciting we didn't win was was it still terrara was
2:24:08
it Terraria yeah yeah yeah yeah chuckle fish good game I played it good computer
2:24:13
game 2D Minecraft more I think cly had played it or or he was interested in anyway yeah so we we had interview with
2:24:20
ro I think it was on the Friday wasn't it they kind of quickly went through it so just as a you can go on to our
2:24:26
socials and see the the interview with the guys from the stand there but it's a big box campaign that is very designed
2:24:33
to be quick set up and tear down you've got a map on one page of a book on the other page is the monster manual
2:24:39
basically that tells you everything you need to know about the monsters you're fighting every C every scenario has a
2:24:45
little box that's got all your tokens in it you just open that box set it up at the end you that box away if you want to
2:24:51
do the next scenario you open the next box up which I thought was really nice touch like a lot of developers are kind
2:24:57
of moving in that direction but it feels like they've gone full in on let's make it quick to set up quick to tear down
2:25:04
you know progression is simple you've got a version that's six games in then you got a version like one to six then
2:25:11
you got a version of your same character that's 6 to 12 sort of thing and so everything is fairly simple but from
2:25:18
what I can make out from curly quite enjoyed that yeah enjoyed that game as what it was doing it's just everything's
2:25:24
there for you there's so much less flicking through manuals by the looks of it so give it a look on our socials if
2:25:29
you're interested and and obviously have a look at their website as well but yeah it I'm I'm not a dungeon caller person
2:25:36
even to me I was like oh this sounds pretty good this sounds quick setup quick tear down yeah yeah that's a bit
2:25:42
that sounded appealing to me I'm not a dungeon crawling person or a person that's interested in games with minis
2:25:47
either don't care about either of those things and I was like well so how was that it's that it looks the same as
2:25:52
Heroes and might of magic to me and apparently that was the wrong thing to say it's nothing like Heroes and might magic 3 apparently fine because that
2:25:59
game takes a thousand years to set up and put back so at least Rover's got one on that I think but yeah curly looked
2:26:04
interested I mean that's where like Publishers and designers are leaning into hard I think now is that usability
2:26:12
yeah the ux of of a game the set up tear down like it's good cuz no one wants a
2:26:18
frost Haven style setup anymore it's the biggest downside to any of those games and I think their designers are finally
2:26:24
listening to everyone going okay everyone's loving the game but the one thing that they hate is set up and tear
2:26:30
down how do we make that easier and that should be what you're thinking of when you're designing these things so it's
2:26:36
it's good good it's really good and I think they've taken sort of cost into into sort of the point of them designing
2:26:42
bits and Bobs I think they're doing a stande version and the minis version which I think is a really really great I
2:26:49
actually the minis looky pretty cool for me to say that though and they are pretty cool must be good yeah but I'm
2:26:56
never ever going to want to spend an extra 100 quid or whatever it is on a game with minis a because it takes all
2:27:01
your calaes and we're we're at Max calx now we've had to do a take upstairs for the be you hit a limit finally well I
2:27:10
mean we've had to put some of the ones upstairs in a CA upstairs that are like the you can start hanging them from the
2:27:16
ceiling be here no we can't hang from the CE anymore because we've got all the empty boxes on the ca not even in the ca
2:27:22
so there is now a a a tertiary well secondary cax which has got the sale
2:27:27
pile and there are some games of mine in there just putting that out there oh you should what you should do is build a bookshelf out of board games and then
2:27:34
put the board games within the board games a c out the Russian system yeah
2:27:40
but um yeah I'm never going to want just to take up more room on the Shelf if I
2:27:46
can avoid it and I'm stingy so spending 100 quid less is always going to be what I'm going to do and then regret it when
2:27:53
everyone's got shiny Min and mind not crab yes fine but nice nice what's next Ro I played Terminus
Terminus
2:28:02
yeah so um inside up games is uh producing a lot of games I like at the
2:28:08
moment so Earth is probably I think their best known game um and have thoroughly enjoyed that and back their
2:28:14
Kickstarter for that and then I rushed there on Friday to get draft and write records in case they ran out they did
2:28:19
not they still had loads left but I was just like I don't want to miss out on this again I felt like I missed out on it once already so I wanted to wanted to
2:28:27
get that and then signed up for Terminus so how to describe Terminus the it's a
2:28:33
root planning game where you are trying to yeah all right I like root planning
2:28:40
games all right calm down is there any buses in this one no it's subway trains oh okay so so you're trying to plan a
2:28:48
route around at the same time the way you do that is by going around this
2:28:53
rondle action selection and someone had previously described it
2:28:59
as Great Western Trail and I was like I don't see it just can't see how this is anything like Great Western Trail but by
2:29:05
the end I kind of could so we got to play and it was we played quick and got one of the sort of Three Ages of this
2:29:13
this game through which is everyone gets three goes around this rondle and then
2:29:18
once those three are done everyone kind of sets up as I'm first player for next round I'm second player I'm third player
2:29:24
and they get a bonus if they get round quicker but you don't necessarily want to get round quicker and all you're doing really is putting buildings out
2:29:32
that are next to your stations you are then collecting loads of resources to allow you to put
2:29:38
stations and uh your Subway links down to get around the board and each
2:29:44
building you put down has a place you want to connect it to and if you get a station in that area you can take off the little um if you go to one of the
2:29:51
areas on the rondle you can take off the little thing and Slot it in your um XP
2:29:56
pile essentially and the more of these you get the more XP they're all worth and the reason why I since started
2:30:03
feeling like Great Western Trail is to start off with you're like right I'll visit the third space the fifth space the seventh space and I'm done the next
2:30:10
time around you probably built a building and that'll say well you might not want to go here for the normal action but you as your owner of this
2:30:16
building can now use it to buy four of this other resource so you're going to stop there as well
2:30:22
kind of and they're normally a much better deal than actually stopping at the place so you're kind of going to stop at a few more places every single
2:30:28
time you go around you're probably going to stop at more and more spaces on this rondle you might just zoom around
2:30:34
because you need to beat someone to it cuz resources get more expensive as you take more and I say at the end of the third
2:30:41
sort of age every thing kind of goes back to the beginning and then they start and do three more loops and you
2:30:47
are just building into each other areas trying to build as many stations to link
2:30:53
up to other buildings and you can kind of everyone gets their own buildings they've built but you can also it can
2:31:00
also house one other person's mle which means you get access to that building and if I link up to your station get a
2:31:06
little bonus but then you kind of get to count as part of my system as well so
2:31:12
you're kind of wanting to do a little bit of joining up of systems but not too
2:31:17
much cuz it starts to make it easier for other people to to do things there's a lot going on I'm not going to say
2:31:23
there's not because there's like four or five different resources you need the resources to build stations to build um
2:31:30
tracks to move up how many stations of in infrastructure you can handle so you have to move up uh up this little track
2:31:37
every time you want to build a station you need to be have more power going to all these stations so you're trying to
2:31:43
build up this kind of interlocking lce of it and yeah I was I was impressed
2:31:48
with it I think it has got that we played a third of the way through the game but I don't think we really played a quarter of the game really because
2:31:56
you're going to slow down as you continue to go down around around this rondle um so yeah no really enjoyed it
2:32:02
hopefully we got a copy on its way to us they've said hopefully we'll get a copy which is good so we can give it a proper
2:32:08
proper review and yeah tell you what the full game is like but yeah thoroughly
2:32:13
impressed with the demo I had um inside up games are kind of known for sort of
2:32:18
being a family company normally that means to me like kids games but these are clearly not
2:32:25
kids games but um the the girl she booked me in for the demos on the Friday
2:32:31
the the little boy came around and was like how's your game going what strategy did you go with all those kind of things
2:32:37
that kind of make you feel like it's a family-owned business but they're producing these fairly big quite hot
2:32:43
games constantly so yeah I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough of it so and I know Stewart sort of yeah
2:32:51
had the slot like the hour after I did and he came back immediately and went yep I'll be looking at that game as well
2:32:57
so that little girl is so cool on that store she was the one that managed to get our copy of Earth
2:33:05
um year what yeah what yeah last year she yeah she remembered she she's got a Fant You Can Tell She's an amazing board
2:33:12
game player she's got an amazing memory she's really friendly and lovely as well and yeah I remembered her really really
2:33:18
well from last time Connor has already drilled those kids in good customer service just saying like already a young
2:33:24
age they're like all over that yeah and they just see it seems like a really nice little family unit doesn't it yeah
2:33:29
seems really friendly we doing well with games this this stb aren't we lots of uh copies of things winging our way yeah
2:33:36
lot chance to talk to different designers different Publishers we hopefully got a few more interviews coming up for expansion
2:33:43
episodes it felt I don't know is Step Up the right word but it felt like a next step up for us as a team to go out there
2:33:50
and have those conversations dance as well next if we had to step up ball game if we had to do a flash mob in the
2:33:57
middle of xar I wouldn't be I wouldn't have a problem with it I'll be honest I quite enjoy doing that um watch out next
2:34:02
year flash mob the whose's turn flash mob um but yes so whose move is it
2:34:09
Anyway mine um yeah so I felt like we got a lot of interviews and a lot of
2:34:14
sort of let's have preview copies and let's talk to developers and designers so yes so really
2:34:20
I had a blast this [Music]
Wrapping up & shout outs
2:34:29
year so that's kind of concluding our Expo it was a long one yeah it was a
2:34:34
long one uh we would like to say a big thank you to a loot of people we met up with um we got to see Nicole and her son
2:34:42
there yeah which was great to see you guys um they K also came to the live
2:34:47
show say thank you for that as well uh for that support saw him a few times over the the weekend nice nice to have a
2:34:53
chat yeah like one at the um Hall three open gaming and then at the show and then just wandering around so it's
2:34:59
always good to bump into people yeah um we got some more honorable mentions yeah we've got uh I think Jesse came and and
2:35:07
kind of tapped on the shoulder and and said hi which was awesome um Neil as
2:35:12
well um one of our supporters just randomly walk past him and we had a little brief chat I think
2:35:17
that was on the Friday so good to see Neil and we had Aiden who came to the
2:35:23
show um and yeah not met Aiden before um I think few of the other guys had kind
2:35:29
of had a conversation at the show and also in the open gaming as well so yeah cool I'm pretty sure he saw it as a
2:35:35
gridon sorus and Sor us in our regalia at gridon thought who on Earth are these people and started listening and then
2:35:41
we're like we're going to go and see them at the live show and they said hello around the hall as well wow so they met us first and they liked us and
2:35:46
that's what made them listen to the show I don't know if they met us they just saw saw our logo across the hall and thought
2:35:52
that might look like it's interesting so hopefully they still like us but yeah it hasn't met me yet and then put them
2:35:59
off chaos chaos um and I'm there's other people I'm sure listener why that a lot
2:36:06
of people kind of just said hi and we didn't probably catch your name so we we need to get better at that um just so we
2:36:11
can give you shout outs shout your name at us when you when you come and greet us just go just yeah go gy and then
2:36:17
that's it resp there's an ask for next time cuz like we we're a bit more prepared with um having more portable
2:36:25
mics um and more than ever uh this year so next year if you want to get on on
2:36:31
the episode and have a little brief recording with us ask well we'll we'll put you in we'll find a little slot
2:36:37
we'll put you in yeah um so yeah definitely do that be nice to give back yeah absolutely but other people met at
2:36:43
the show we've got Mark monk from Ninja geek games he was was around there doing his thing which is always nice to catch
2:36:49
up with and he sold some stuff to Rob did he he sold him Shadows of Gloom of
2:36:55
kill for kill for whatever it was yeah so excited about this game I I think if
2:37:00
Mark had kept talking Rob would have been very poor by the end of the Expo it was just very lucky that Mark was like
2:37:06
here's two or three cuz I think if Mark had just kept going Rob would have spent all his pocket money I we saw Mark at
2:37:13
the con yeah went back to the room and then we listened to mark on his video going on about Gloom of Kil and so yeah
2:37:21
we had Mark in Stereo pretty much most of that day round mark Rob is is like
2:37:27
all over it um Mark dainy as well from knbo gaming always I always seem to
2:37:32
catch up with him at Expo and it's really nice to catch up with Mark um I have badgered him actually he's G hopefully come on the show soon um so
2:37:40
I've been uh knocking on his door so we have so many expansion episodes coming up if we get all these people on but it
2:37:46
be good SCH of them in it's what we it's what we want exactly so but no it's good to C you know our thoughts on expansions
2:37:52
anyway is fine can't have enough it's true yeah more expansions the better got to collect them all um so yeah those are
2:37:59
the people that right Ash hey hey but yeah those are the people we caught up with well I did anyway I'm sure the
2:38:05
there's probably more that I've forgotten but I'm tired we've got post Expo knacked we've been recording for
2:38:11
over three hours at this point I'm sure to get cut down but I think we're all a little bit bit brain fogged but yeah I
2:38:16
definitely spoke to other people we me and Rob were just randomly walking um past uh what was the stand we were
2:38:24
randomly walking past where andromeda's Edge and all that lot
2:38:29
was which I know I know you guys stopped there for a bit and these two guys just
2:38:34
went wait who's turn is it anyway and we kind of went way back to them and then we're like kind of both sort of
2:38:41
naturally wandered off and then thought were they listeners did they just find our t-shirts funny the taking the piss
2:38:47
not a clue but it was just great to have those little weird little interactions with people weird is probably a wrong
2:38:52
word but it's just nice to have interaction with people who might have known us might not have just were in
2:38:58
interested in saying hello um again I think I spoke to someone who were like oh we've seen you here last year and I
2:39:04
was like yeah we came last year again in the t-shirts and all that lot and they were like what have you played today and
2:39:09
all that kind of stuff and just having nice conversation with people yeah electric trollies and ride around on them next
2:39:15
year yeah exactly um but I chat to anyone like the bring a buy sell queue
2:39:21
is my favorite yeah or you know gossip queing for food or whatever I'm always
2:39:27
chitty chatty but you mentioned andromeda's Edge so that was the last thing I did before we had to kind of jet
2:39:33
out there um because dav's parking was running out imminently and uh basically
2:39:38
I um met up with Peter vaugh from cardboard Alchemy who also um published
2:39:45
flamecraft so it's the same publisher and um met with Rosie is the com's
2:39:50
manager but also she has a very very successful Tik Tok and Instagram account which is cozy board games and managed to
2:39:58
have a bit of a chat with her which was lovely and uh got a photo throw it up on the socials and yeah so got to have a
2:40:06
little overview of of um andr Edge and we did a little interview with Peter as well which was nice and game just I mean
2:40:14
the production on that game is looking immense I'm hoping it's good I'm hoping it's really uh fun to play cuz I backed
2:40:20
it um so we'll find out soon enough but yeah that's was good fun so I think it's
TURN 3 - The Final Turn
2:40:26
time to close things up now yeah 3 hours yeah massive thank you to everyone
2:40:31
massive thank you to our listeners um thank you for everyone that showed up and who spoke to us I know we've just
2:40:37
mentioned you all but thank you and if we haven't then we're sorry uh yeah fa
2:40:43
you can catch us on our socials via the show notes um website um you can donate
2:40:49
on on Kofi if you want um that's amazing um for all the people
2:40:54
that have and you don't need to we're we're more than happy obviously if you don't want to but if you do thank you
2:41:01
very much and yeah until next time uh who whose turn is it Anyway I think it's
2:41:09
ours again live episode soon as well next week yeah
2:41:17
[Music]
2:41:25
[Applause]