Welcome to Meeple to Meeple uniting players around the world, a 30 minute exploration of PJ and Gareth's four-game experiences from across both sides of the Atlantic. Each episode, they share their thoughts and opinions on the World of War games, including their favorite themes, games, hot topics, and much, much more. Merry Christmas everyone, and welcome to Episode 63, Jingle Bells.
Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way, and we are going to talk about games that we've recently played and what we're going to play this upcoming Christmas weekend. As always, I'm. PJ I'm Gareth. And we are so happy to be with you. It's been a few weeks off. Gareth, how are you? It's. Like an early Christmas holiday, didn't we? Hi, I know. And and and now we're back before Christmas with It's like a countdown to Christmas, I mean.
Countdown to Christmas. If you're listening this week, it's only a few days to go. That's. Right. Until Santa arrives with his sleigh, hopefully bringing all our listeners all the games they could possibly not need. But unfortunately, I've been a bad boy and Santa will not be bringing me any games this year. Why I was I did not watch my PS and QS this year. PJ. Yeah, I know.
Luckily I have a wife who's also a gamer and we just bought a bunch of games and just kind of put a bow on them and put them under the tree. And that's what we're playing Christmas. Weekend. Yeah, I must admit I kind of just went shopping online and bought some games I needed and went Happy Christmas. But anyway, I thought we should just. I mean, we haven't talked. We just do like what we're up to. What's hitting the games table
kind of show so? I want to tell you what happened, what hit my table yesterday? Go. And it totally fits this theme. So yesterday our gaming group got back together and we visited an outpost to the far north Frost Haven. Oh, how long has that been? Was that? That's been a couple, actually, a couple of months, because life's been in the way. I think it was before Halloween that our group played Frost Haven. But here's the beauty, here's the twist.
We played Christmas Frost Haven. OK, is that oh, this is of some DJ? Yes, so. House Rule. Well, I mean, not really a house rule. OK. So we took the crocheted Santa hats that my wife from Nemesis. From Nemesis from last year. Yeah, yeah. And we put them on our miniatures and we went to Frost Haven and all the scenarios our characters were wearing Santa hats. We tried to wrap the scarf but the scarf was too long, like my miniature was completely wrapped
in a scarf. But this is warm, yeah? But the Algox looks amazing because he's already he already looks like he looks like Snow Miser, right? For those of you who know here without Santa Claus, the you know what is it? Rankin and Bass from the 70s. Heat Miser and Snow Miser. He looks like Snow Miser and you put a Santa had on him, just really cute.
We played two really intense scenarios and it was really cool and I think we were successful because the spirit of Christmas is so. That's how far through you, how is that? Man, we. Even even dented it, it's still just a. So I don't know, different people judge their progress in Frost Haven differently. Yeah, we're about 25 or 26 scenarios completed and we have six of the 18 characters left to unlock. So it's 25 to 30%, let's say
maybe? Yeah, but we only get together typically every other Saturday when we play. And so you got a. Goodyear. Yeah. Oh, we've got longer than that, maybe. So. So yeah, Christmas Frost Haven was yesterday, so that was fun. How about you? Would you hit what you've been playing recently? Oh, where do we start? I only played this once, but I really enjoyed it was Raising Robots, which was Raising Robots, which is a Kickstarter that shipped, I think maybe even shipped early.
It's see a mixture of so it's got a bit of wingspan feel to it and other good space engine, an engine builder tableau up to six players, everyone plays at the same time. You're going to play a board a bit like Wingspan which is why I think about it and you're like an inventor trying to build robots and as you add the robots to your boards they basically build your engine. When you go through an action you can trigger everything. All the robots help you.
So your resource gathering it's got a clever mechanic that you get these two energy cards to begin the game. They might have four energy or two energy and sometimes you add energy cubes to the the overall board and then you add up your energy and then that's how much you can use to activate. But there's I think there's five different actions but you can obviously only do two of them a turn unless other people power it up and you can use their power.
So it's just kind of like what are they going to do, what am I going to do in a two player game? There's a there's the third player, which I've got to say works really well, Low Admin. Really. Really good two player I thought. Wasn't sure Oh no there's a third. There's a third player bolt on but but it was easy and it worked really well. So yeah we played last night for the first time. I'm itching the player a game about 3.25 production is amazing.
The art is fantastic and you know I love an engine it's on a tablet builder so it's just ticking the boxes. So yeah that that's that's, that's very recent. Worth checking out. I think it's going to be popular
for next year. So that's that's kind of our recent plays and keeping with the theme of this episode, a countdown to Christmas. So we want to talk about just a few games that we're going to play this week leading up to and really the highlight, at least for me, is this weekend, the Christmas weekend, the 22nd to the 25th, maybe beyond, but definitely over Christmas weekend is what are we going to play and what's going to hit your table?
Do you have anything planned that you're definitely going to play? And say definitely want to play, need to play. So if anybody is on Board Game Geek every year they do a Secret Santa, which is like one of my favorite parts of Board Game Geek. So I was very lucky this year to somebody. Send me the Ticket A Ride. Legacy Legend. No. Happy days. So I'm going to try and play my way through that this week.
So I'm trying to get Carrie and our youngest, so I don't think we're going to get 5 players all the time. So I'm just going to go for the family and play my way through it. I hear really good reviews, so I hear some not so good views on the game, but I think we're kind of medium fans of ticket to rides.
Like we like a good game. I think the way it starts small and builds, so that's Ticket to Ride and then the other game that I don't know when we're going to get this in, but it's become the tradition is we need a game of Twilight Imperium. Oh yeah, the dates are loose because everyone's so busy with work. I am now on holiday for two weeks so I have time to play games. So anyone in the Southampton crew, anybody else wants to hang out, just shout. Yeah, So what I'm hearing is you
have time to come and visit. Me. Time to not fly to America, but maybe we could get a gaming online. We do. We need to do that. Have you got all the new Rolling Realms packs? All of them, OK, just. They just. Came in, even opened them, so maybe we should work through some of. Those I opened to look at them. But I haven't. I haven't. Played them yet? We can definitely do that. Yeah, we we've got some other friends in the UK that maybe we can get a bigger.
We could do a rolling realms right. I've just not in that down to plan and what have you got planned for Christmas? So we also, my wife and I picked up Ticket to Ride Legacy. Oh yeah, we bought it. And rather than wrap it, we put a bow on it, put it under the tree. We might try to start playing it this Christmas. Weekend two player or you can play it, yeah. No, we're just playing two player because our group has Frost Haven and that's a big
campaign. We don't want to take away from that And so we're just going to play take it to Ride Legacy and see what's what. Although the other one is we did pick up after listening to you news about this game for so long and I was salivating at trying to find a copy of it and that is Darwin's journey. Oh, and we bought it. We bought it in November at a game store in Bloomington, IN and we got the expansion as well.
Or. Finance. Yes, OK, put it under the tree and we might, we might give that a go this this time of the weekend. It just sounds amazing. Yeah, we played it last week. It was last Friday again. It's so good. It's we went back to the the the base game which to me is the lighter version OK if you're really going to play it. The I think the full game is with Firelands. OK. It feels that that that was the IT but it's there's so much going on they scaled it back
into what is the core box but. I think we're going to try just the core get well because we've never played it. Just. But you're like a pro gamer. You're funny. Easy. All right, You give me more credit than I deserve, I. Think. No, seriously, no. Start. Start with the base game. Start with the base game. And then go all the way. Yeah, yeah. The base game is Yeah. If no one, no one has tried out Darwin's journey. It's a bit of a beast to teach. Yep.
But it just sings, flies along. It's so well connected. Oh, you can't do anything perfect. Game and then I guess the immediately the week, the week of Christmas. So the 25th between Christmas and New Year's we're going to be in Ohio visiting the in laws. We've arranged to drive down to Cincinnati which is not far. We're going to meet with our friend Ben. It's games with Ben on Instagram and we're going to meet up with him at the Capstone games store. So they were brick and mortar
store. They're based out of Cincinnati and hopefully we'll get in a game with him and it will probably be something from Capstone, maybe Arc Nova, which would be. Great. He played Arc Nova camp, not a campaign, A tournament at Gen. Con this year. I think he got knocked out in the first or the second round, but we'll try to play some Arc Nova with the Marine worlds. And that would be nice. That would be cool. So that's kind of, that's kind of our immediate Christmas plans.
Right now I've just got. Anything else, just just. Back a lot of games over the last month and we haven't, we haven't seen our gaming group. I think for two months. Work's been really heavy. I mean away every week. So there's a pile of games in Shrink before Christmas that I need to work through. And then there's the whatever people decide to, you know, add to the collection over Christmas. Absolutely. What are the games we've been playing? Oh, I tell you my favorite. Flip and write.
You know, flip and write, roll and write. This year is Flip Town. Flip. Town Town so you're a cowboy. In the West it's like you know in the Wild West you it's you've got a standard deck of cards and then some nice player boards and plays across 3 rounds, 5 turns per round. So 1515, I guess overall turns.
Each round you flip over three playing cards and then one of the cards it is where well, so when the suits, you'll choose to send you to one of the four locations, maybe to the mine or to the trail or to go and rob chickens and hold up trains or you're going to visit a town and then the other cards is a
numbered. So you might use that number to decide whether it's a chicken, whether you're going to go down the mine, and the remaining cards you write down into your hands at the end of the first round. There's five cards to build, like a Texas Holdem kind of hand, but it it has this element of the teacher. You go, wow, this is overwhelming because there's 13 locations in town. They're all unique, but actually as soon as you start playing people just settle in.
There's obviously the more things you do at robbing, the more sheriff badges you get, Sheriff wanted posters you get. She has a bit of mitigation to make sure you don't get caught by the sheriff at the end of the rounds. Right. But I'm looking, I'm looking at this right now. So you've got like a little player board in front of you that's dry erase, Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really nice. High production is a Kickstarter that that I just went. I mean, I do like the world.
W Sub, you know? W Legends. I've always been a fan of, you know, Western films and I thought, now this looks good and I have to say I am those Kickstarters. I was like, now this one has been an absolute. That's that one I got right. I love it. So check it out. Yeah, I think you can buy it from their website. I don't think it's not in retail in the UK yet anyway.
But Flip Town, if you're a fan and roll and write, flip and write games, there's it might be a bit late for Christmas stocking time, but it's, it's a lovely, lovely game. Anything else you've been, you've been recently 14? Looking forward to no I pretty much what I've named is what we're ready to, We're ready to tackle. We've got 233 games in our collection. We've played 94.6%. That is, that is. I'm sure I've got some. And we've we've picked up a lot
of new games. Maple Valley and Diced Veggies just came in. Oh, I got a text from John Try win Games when he was at Essen, a game called Captains of the Gulf. It's about the Gulf of Mexico. It's set from in in my home, my home state of Louisiana, where you're you're going in the Gulf of Mexico to get fish, shrimp and crabs and oysters. And so I picked up a used copy. Geekway had a used game sale in Saint Louis. I picked up a copy real cheap, played that.
That was interesting. And then we got a copy of Empire's End that we demoed at Gen. Con. So yeah, our collection grew, and yet we've managed to. It's incredible. Honestly, I think if I play 95% of my games every single year, I feel really good about that and as long as we keep that pace. We. Should be. It's. Oh dear. Yeah, yeah, what? I'm on, but because more games have arrived we're on 2020%. It might. I mean, I've seen you say we, we went to see Nick Ball Game
Review UK, yeah. I saw you were. There last last weekend so we were just comparing stats and this has been a pretty unless we have a Christmas miracle and I play about 120 games, this is not going to be the worst on record, but certainly since COVID. So we've. Played the least, but then I take the year into account, it's been a busy one. So what I need to do and is take my entire vacation, 180 hours or whatever it is, 110 hours, and come visit you.
So if you're going to put me up and you're going to feed me, we're going to play. All these games we're just going to go through games we've where's, what's the unplayed pile where? That's at 80. Yep. You give me free food and lodging, I'll come see you stay with. You baked beans on toast. I don't know. Sure, OK. No idea what you just signed up for. That's a low, that's a low cost meal. Thanks. It feeds you every day. Yeah.
So yeah, that that's what I'm hearing is that we have to come and stay. With you and I need help. I need help. You do. You do so. OK, that's. Great. So I think, I think we should, I think we'll, so I think we're going to take next week off now help me. Yeah, Christmas and we'll be back just New Year's Eve, I think is the plan and we're going to talk about the games we've got through at Christmas and then we'll get back into normal rhythm.
We've got we've got a design publisher due the first week of January, as long as all the dates line up. An. Imminent Kickstarter we should be talking to. That's correct. Otherwise, I think we should just wish each other had Merry Christmas. Yeah, Happy Christmas. And our listeners, thank you for listening. It's been. A. Thank you so much. It's been a brilliant year for
for growth. Thanks for all the comments, thanks for the encouragement and I hope everyone enjoys Christmas. You get all the gifts you wanted and you have time, your friends and family. Absolutely. Play some games. Happy Christmas and get those games played all right. Happy Christmas, mate. Thanks everyone for listening. Please subscribe. And as always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so make sure to leave those in the
comments. And don't forget, you can also chat with us both on Instagram at Meekle to Meekle.