Including their favorite themes, games, hot topics, and much, much more. Hey, and welcome to Episode 70, The Seven Zero, Casual Games, and Casual Conversations. Gareth, how are you? I'm very well. We got through episode 69. We did. We did. Everyone enjoyed the video, The video snippet. Yeah. We'll talk about that later, yeah. Or anyone likes to see us versus just hearing us, but now I'm doing very well. Good, good. Good. So, so what's new? What's hitting your table right now?
Well, we had a games day with our friend Nick yesterday. Really. Yeah, so did that. Play all dexterity games. I don't. Think you played any dexterity games? Oh no, we did. We played Rafter 5, which Nick had talked about. He did. Which was a lot of fun. That was the one from Wink Games where you're like the box opens up, it's the boat, you put like the planks on top and you've got balanced planks around. I think it might land in my collection.
Yeah, it was nice, but that was the only decks Darity game we played. So, so Nick talked. A lot about Ashanti as well. Shanti yeah. Yeah, so I got to play with Nick's smooth and silky balls. It's a pretty game. It does come in a luxurious velvet box. I mean, yeah, it really does look like something you might buy for a different kind of shop, but. Is the mat felt? Is it neoprene? Is it neoprene? But has got a super smooth surface.
It's just, yeah, it's not, yeah. It's not like wet suit kind of neoprene. It's right. It's got definitely like a fluffed up surface. OK. So yeah, I had a lot of fun. I got beaten. I feel like, I feel like photographs don't do that game justice, you know? It looks pretty. But it's yeah, it's really nice. Yeah, the ball's cool. Like they're plastic with liquid in it. So when you spin the ball along it like the inner ball moves around, kind of looks like an
optical illusion. So yeah, that was good. So, so that's yesterday and my favorite game. We paid 11 games yesterday as well. It's a good gaming session. I. Saw that I'm I'm really proud of you. We. Didn't play obsession? That's I'd say I enjoyed the most. Feed the Kraken, which is social deduction, Pirates, sailors and cultists. And I'd been a good sailor, very honourable, until the cultists leader decided that I needed to
be part of the cultist team. So with my honourable sailor side decided that it was time to take captain of the ship and throw the cult leader into the Kraken, which led to a cultist win victory for us. Right, look at you. Yeah, From honourable to yeah. Tossing. Tossing. Coltis. Yeah, stop there before. And then the other game that I thoroughly enjoyed, which I thought I would, was Far Away. The single words not far away, which is a different game that
we talk about, right. Which is like you get to play 8 cards and then you play the cards in reverse order you that you played them to score points. It's really good. Cool. Thoroughly enjoyed that? How about you? What's your table recently? So yeah, before I tell you that, toss it. Reach out to us. They were really excited that Nick talked about their game in last week's.
Tossing. Tossing. And so I said, hey, send me a copy and I'll get play it and we'll talk, you know, try and you know, get you on the show in the future or something like that. They're going to send me a copy. And I was like because that looks cool. So I will be getting a Dexterity. Game What's up? You said a dexterity game Looks cool. I did. I did. How much you've changed in a week? In a week? In a week. A whole look. It's a whole new PJ.
He's embracing, balancing things and tossing things. Yep. So. Proud of you? Oh. Thank you. I think. I I think you can. It'll play well with our group and that'll be fun. And I enjoyed talking with the designer of that, so that'll be cool as far as what hit my table. So yesterday we have returned to Frost Haven. Yay, I have a lot of thoughts about Frost Haven. Oh like, oh, like because like you were a Gloom Haven mega fan. Frost Haven. What? What this?
Good or bad or indifferent or middle of the road. Yes, all of it. Yeah. So, OK, so yesterday we played two scenarios and they were linked. So that means that you have to play the second one immediately after the first. You can't return to Frost Haven and do all the outposts. Could you wait and pause the game and come back next week? Would you? Does it need to be played? No, I mean, you could wait, but like when you come back, you have to play the mission. You can't.
You can't. You can't go to Frost Haven. Try to buy a new one. It's something else, yeah. And it was, it was important for my so I still was playing one of the starting classes. For those of you who play Frost Haven, I was playing the bone shaper. And so it's been a year and I just finally retired my first character. So I'm happy about that, but I'm also kind of annoyed that it took that long.
So the the way that the game is is different from Gloom Haven is they'll they'll invite calendar events, so like a calendar and they'll say put this number three weeks in the future. And when we get to that time, you read that corresponding entry, something happens, you draw a card, you get a new building, various things happen. But it's like, so my character would have to complete a scenario, which would be like, now you got to wait for the calendar event.
So now we're doing other things, we got to the calendar event, a new mission, another calendar event, and it just, it seemed like it took unnecessarily long, right? Is it the other? The other two bloated as it's just too much. Yes, Admin, Admin. The the admin has gotten worse. Here's the other problem behind that is now I have a new character at level 2, whereas I was at level 9. He was fully maxed out.
Now I've got a brand new character and I've got to learn it, and we're in the middle of the story. And everyone's at various levels now because they've gotten used to their second character. And I understand that's the nature of the game. You have to learn a new character. But when you're when you're maxed out with one character for so long, it's it's a difficult adjustment. So you know, that was a little disappointing. I'm beginning to wonder. We are 38% through the entire, yeah.
Epic. Now we're playing every other Saturday. I know some groups burn through Frost Haven in like the first two months after getting their copy last year. Well, some of us don't have the luxury of playing Frost Haven. Have it set up on the table and play it every night. How long do you play it for when you do meet? So the guys come over at noon and we usually play for about 6 hours. OK. Yeah, it's good, solid.
Maybe 7 hours depending upon the mission, and then we'll pack everything up and just to play something else or a bunch of smaller games or whatnot, you know? But we always try to end the night with something else. That way we feel like, hey, you know, OK we did Frost Haven, but we also got to play something else as well. Because the problem with and you've you've critiqued Katie and I for this before we're get into these campaign games. You never have time to play all your games, right?
But I know that's always been a problem. It's like, well, we're going to play Frost Haven all day. Well, we have all these games on our tables, on our shelves and we can't play them. And we want to. And we think about our gaming group when we buy a game, it's like, oh, so and so's going to like this, you know? And if we're not playing it with them, then, but that's what we did. So we retired my character and moving forward trying to get the 40% of Frost Haven complete.
So this rate finished by Christmas. No, no. Gloom haven took two years, 2 1/2 years. For us it's. A big investment, isn't it? In time it is. But again, that's every other Saturday, so we're not playing it weekly or. Does everyone enjoy it? Does everyone go, Yeah, I really can't because can we not play wingspan this week or is it everyone? 'S no no. Invested. Everyone's invested in it now. Sometimes someone can't make it right, like something will come up.
It's like, hey, I can't make it. And they're like, you can go ahead and play without me, that's fine. And Frost even allows you to do that. But when someone cancels, that's when I take the opportunity to, hey, let's play something else because you know, I know you, like, you know Lords of Vegas or Lords of Water deep, Let's play that instead because so and so can't show up or can't make it. So that's the bonus of hosting and having all the games in your collection. Is that you?
Can it does help? You know, yeah, So. So Frost Taymon was our big one. I think my game is I've been thinking about playing War of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings two player. I've heard a lot of things. Yeah, I played it once with our friend George and loved it. And the other day I thought myself, I really want to play that again. But it's a whole, it's like a 7 hour event because you got to remember the rules, which I which is like been two years, right?
But you know, but that's just one game. You know, pack it away, job done. Whereas you're working your way through a epic, you know there's a lot of commitment. The The story is easier. Keeping track of the narrative is easier than in Gloomhaven. In Gloomhaven we were like, I don't even remember what we're doing anymore. In Frost Haven, this the narrative track. That's good. So I guess that's learnings from the first one. The increased administration of the game?
Handicaps. What's the word? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, positive negatives. Yeah, highlights and no notes. Yeah, so. What actually was playing? We are in the middle, so we got we finally got two games that we're play testing. I know you received a copy of one of them. I don't know if the second one has arrived yet. Fate of Antera. Is here yet to be played? We'll be on the podcast. Yeah, we we played it at two players, Yep, just Katie and I, and then last night we played it
at five players. Oh, how was that? It's and it was 2 1/2 hours, five players. It's a bad five players. It's not bad at all. No. No. That's after two scenarios of Frost Haven, So that was a full day. Let's get going. It's a it's a solid game. I've got some detailed notes to give to Zach, who's one of the two designers, and it's all about like the the rules. There's a few like rules. There's some, you know, rule, rule clarifications and certain cars. It says this, but does it really
mean that? Or does it mean? That I saw. It's actually gay. That needs a bit of fine tuning. That's OK. So I think it's I think. It's Venterra. Venterra. Yeah, I think it's really close. Yeah. So we're just waiting for you to play that so that we can have Zach on. Yeah. And then we've got another game, Fluffy Dragons. Did you get your copy? Yet not arrived yet. OK by I think. It's like weeks. Yeah. From wherever, wherever it's coming from, I guess.
Oh, yes. We've Katie and I played it. We only played it at two players. I'm gonna try to play because it plays up to five. So we're gonna play more. It's it's shorter, it's faster. It's cute. The the Dragon miniatures are amazing. It was a little flat at two players, just a little bit, you know, I think it needs more players for interaction, but I won't know that until I play
with more players. So. So that's kind of, yeah, doing some play testing for some friends and getting some designers on the podcast in the future. That's that's what I've been working on. It's kind of exciting. I like that. We're looking through what other thing. I mean we've we played Barcelona finally, so Nick was a hard time because I hadn't played Barcelona. So we got back to table Sunday.
We played it again on Friday. We played it two player, first of all, which I really enjoyed because it was pretty quick and I couldn't. There wasn't much player interaction but there was enough. Where's the three player because you've got that one extra player in the middle. I had to think a little bit more strategic about where I put things. So see, I I still enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it in a different,
in a different kind of way. And then on the reverse of that we played So somebody sent me. I think it's the something game Company Abduction, which you might have seen in my Instagram feed, these little mini ducks, which it looks like it's a pretty successful Kickstarter back in 22. It plays brilliantly at two. We played it at 5 yesterday and it was just a little bit, a little bit too much down time.
It's very simple. You've got it's really cool spaceship with with ducks in it. I mean it's random. You you draw the ducks out of the spaceship, you put them on your quantum flow, whatever it's called, and then you've got these really nice shiny cards that have got different configurations of of a of a 2 by 5 grid. So you might need to have all the same ducks in two by two, then a space two by two or three together, one above and one at 1-2 steps away. So you've got action cards that
you move those ducks around. I mean it's it, it's just fun. I mean it was a like two player and three player. We've played really quick, whereas we played five player, which you need for you need the expansion for. But we didn't add in these wild beautiful, shimmery glitter green ducks. Maybe they should have been added because they're wild And it might Oh yeah, maybe just added it up. But yeah, it's good. That's yeah. So I'll need to some coverage on that game, yeah. I was looking.
I was looking at that because Katie's got a huge rubber ducky collection that we keep in the bathrooms and decorations. And I saw this game. I'm like, Oh my God, this is. Yeah, they're about, yeah. Little tiny. They're they're really cute. I mean, and this the the rubber spaceship is, it's good production. It is good on the table. I like that. And I think that the last game that we've been teaching a lot of people recently is Tiger and Dragon.
Tell me more. So that's an Oink game, and Oink games are famous, are coming in small boxes like Deep Sea Adventure. This is a big wink box game, kind of paperback. Typical paperback book size. OK, maybe slightly larger. It's based on a Japanese game which I can't out now, can't remember, but it comes with 10 different scoring games, so it gives you loads of variety and
they're all different. There are like my young tiles, so there's 11, there's two twos, there's three threes, there's four fours, 556-6077 and eight eights which are either red or blue. Odds are red evens are blue, and then two wild, so one red, 1 blue wild, one dragon, one tiger. And on your turn you you all draw about between 7:00 and 11:00 tiles, putting a number of players as if you left in the middle to give some
randomization. And on my turn I pick one of the tiles I have and I make it an 8, and then I I'm attacking you. So you then if you've got an 8, you can use that to defend yourself. Well, you can't even pretend you haven't got them, but the idea of the game is to get rid of all of your tiles and the last hole that you play when you go out the scoring tab will give you points.
So let's say in the basic game, finishing with A7 and eight which is theirs, the most of will give you like 4 victory points and the first one to ten wins and we have. It's a nice, maybe 1520 minute filler. Again, plays probably best. He plays up to five. It works well at 234. We played it five last night and we finished scoring it to five points. Not ten, just because it started to drag. But yeah, really good, Very tactile, Looks great on the table. Tiger and Dragon, but it's not
quite. It's about 40 lbs. It's not cheap really. Yeah, maybe because it's heavy and I guess it's Japanese. I guess it's import from Wink. Oh, sure. So, but yeah, really good. That's my last one for recent games. Recent games, Yeah, you did a poll. Recently. So what was that?
Two weeks ago maybe, yeah, 2, two or three weeks ago we did a poll on our on our meeble to meeble Instagram and we talked about like here's four things that you, you know what, which of these four things do you want to see more of? What do you want us to talk about? Do you want more designers on like we've had in the past? Do you just want more gamers, more innuendos? Right. He shook his head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More. More top ten lists. I I do enjoy top 10s.
Personally, I enjoy top ten lists. I personally cannot stand top 10. Lists. Well, let's do top five instead then. I don't. Care about that either like. People love listening to you talk about your favorite dexterity games. Come on. Oh sure, but of the people who answered, they said they wanted more gamers featured now. It wasn't overwhelming featuring. Their top ten list, Then we Then we're winning, aren't we? Well, maybe, but it was more gamers.
So it got me to thinking, is, and I don't know, maybe we need to reach back out to our listeners one more time for clarification. But it's like our tagline is uniting players around the world, right? So maybe we need to, I don't know, open up an invitation to folks or, you know, have more guests who are just from the gaming community and they pick the topic and then we talk about it for 30 minutes. Or I don't know. And is that something worth, you know, should we put a post out
and say, hey, what do you want? You know, or I don't know how to work that, but I can. I love we can guests. Well, I love guests and I love top 10s, so it sounds like we're going to have guests with their top ten games. Top five people love sharing it's knowledge. Well, sharing's fine, I guess. This everyone does it though. I don't want to do what everyone does. No, we're. Different already. There we go. OK, an international flavour and. Yes. And people's favorite games, I don't know.
What I'll do is I can put a poll into Spotify questions if you do listen to Spotify. Just. Scroll down slightly. There'll be a poll, obviously if you if you do listen to Spotify, always leave us a comment because that's always good to read. But there'll be a poll and it'll be what kind of content? It'll be similar to the one you posted on Maple to Maple. Channel. OK. Yeah. And we'll see what people say on their poll, I mean to be. Right.
I love it. I mean, I love to have you all on. I think it's great. The I love interviewing and you know, that kind of thing. I really enjoy it and I love getting to know all of the gamers. I think that's what really makes the community. I mean the games don't make the community. Games are useless if there's no one there to play it. So we make up the community and like I said, we want to unite players around the world.
So we want everyone to reach out and, you know, invite you to come on and you pick the topic in your top five games. How about that? How about that? There's my compromise. So we. The guest. Uses the topic and their top five within that theme. It could be mechanic, it could be whatever you want and we'll come on for 30 minutes or more, whatever. And we're just going to, we're going to talk about it, and it'll be all about you, our friends. Around the world, it's.
Good. I love it around the world. I love that. And so Speaking of that, so we're going to have a very special episode next week, right? A very Yeah, I think we are right. Oh, and with you? Yes, we are. It's a very short episode. Next week it's. Going to be short it's. Going to be about 5 minutes. I think it's closer to 10. It's really close to 10 minutes, but it's awesome.
Y'all y'all are going to y'all are going to hear the voice of probably the single greatest guest we ever had on the show. You really are thinking yourself. No, because it's great. If if if it's enjoyed and it's so next week you're you're not you're you're going to play games with gamers like and make something.
I am going to Tennessee Game Days in Nashville, TN Adam from Tabletop Vibes is coming down here and then the two of us are driving down to Nashville where we're going to meet a bunch of people. We're going to meet TJ Plays. We're going to meet Ameri Trash Talk and her husband.
We're going to meet Tabletop, Worldwide Nashville board game guy Dom from Bromide Enthusiast. So many people are going to be in Nashville. It's going to be great, so I won't be available to record, but what I will do is record sound bites for the. Show. Just do a live show. I'm going to have peace now. You could do a live show. Just record it straight from there, finally. The last time I did a live, it was it was just it. Was no the hotel room. Just like, do you know, anyway. Maybe.
Maybe. I could. Possibly do that because PJ is not around and then obviously there can't be a PJ that Gareth and a Gareth that PJ. So we have a special guest filling in for 5 minutes. And it's awesome. Which was recorded at Christmas time and if you would enjoy it, this young man, he's very keen to come on the show more often. So it might become a monthly a monthly 5-10 minutes with this very enthusiastic young man I. Feel like we should have him on every week.
He should close out every episode. I think I'd be exhausted. I'm really excited to hear what everyone thinks we were, you know, we were. You and I were talking about at some point having an episode about organization of the game shelves. And Oh yeah, we were with me. And so Katie and I, we took all of our games off our shelves and did a complete dusting. And everything we did, we did a reorganization.
And I got my inspiration from our friend Bandzinator, who's out in California. She was. She was doing them by vertically, by size. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And she talked about how many cube calyx cubes she managed to free up by doing it according to size. So you fit them in this cubes by size and then for the little spaces you can fill them in with it, whatever and but size is first and then you can do it by
theme or publisher or whatever. We ended up freeing up three whole Calacs cubes, which we subsequently filled up one of them. But but that's always the art. I wonder if anyone's made Sony must have done this because all the dimensions are on Board Game Geek Company. They are mostly. So if you if you took those dimensions with a bit of AI and a little bit of config of that shelf, you could just say to the computer. Here's my games collection from Board Game Geek.
Take those dimensions and please show me optimal. Oh, oh. That that that is not beyond the I need to talk to some data scientists I know. What about you? Why don't you just do it? I need someone you can do some proper data science, but luckily I have one who works for me, so I'll speak to. I'll speak to them and say I've got a really good idea. Here's some data. Can you do some magic? Because I think that could be, I think there's a market for that,
I think. That could you just type in how many callates cubes have you got say say 50 and then it takes all those games. Yeah, yeah, now so. Anyone listening who thinks they could message me? Yeah, yes. Message us and let us know if you have the skill set to help us determine. The thinking here Processing. I think it's quite easy actually. I bet it is. I don't have the skill set for it right, but it is.
That's what we need. That is what I that's what I need it would it would help my. You know. Too much storage. So one of the things I have done in the past and I'm running out of space is I pushed because obviously Calyx are quite deep. There's always a there's always a good 1520 centimeters at the back. That's not optimal. So often I then push the games back and I put a box front on. I hate that. And I hate. A lot of people. But it does mean I can get another 50 games.
It's true. It's no good because I'm but I'm looking for a game. I'm like, OK, I'm putting all these boxes off looking for the game I can't find, right? But then if I had the app that I've just used to structure my game, I just do a quick like, Librarian. Where do I find Pillars of Earth that is in section 6? OK, so my battleship, yeah. I think that's a great topic. I would love to. I would love to get a guest on to talk about. Book in storage.
Yeah, the difference between a library and a collection. And vertical and horizontal. Which I do both vertical and horizontal. You know, we've got that system. So what's your? Yeah, what's your preference? So if you had, if you if you wasn't about space, would you be horizontal or vertical? So honestly, it's about inserts. If I have a folded space, insert let's go vertical. If I don't horizontal because. It's really I'm vertical no matter what. No, I I don't.
No, no, no, no. No. No, no. OK. So if you. Big boxes. And then let's leave this for a for a debate episode. Yeah, what is this thing? Collections versus libraries. Horizontal. Vertical. Vertical inserts versus no inserts, and I guess we may as well throw in sleeving versus not. Sleeves versus non sleeves. Yeah. If anybody wants to talk about those, drop us a message, me or PJ, please, and then we'll get you on the show and we'll talk. Maybe we need a vertical and a horizontal.
We need a bit of a controversy. Yep, to have a debate. I like it because. Clearly, vertical is right. So that's the end of that debate. I mean, I guess I don't know. I don't know. I'm. Just looking at my large ball game storage and they're all horizontal. Because their size, Yeah. That's why you did that, Yeah. Yeah, interesting. So Peter, why did you bring up this subject in the 1st place? The reason is when Katie and I were organizing our shelves, we've got all the they're all
stacked on our table. We're restructuring our shelves. What did we listen to while we were organizing the shows? We listened to the recording of the special guest. Oh. Yeah, and I think we listened to it twice because he's awesome. Y'all. Hopefully he's not listening, he'll just just go to his head. Since since recording the Super Special episode of about 7 Minutes long, he's got his own idea about his own podcast show,
so he's already got a breakaway. So he has not yet been a guest on our show and he is already he already has a a spin off of our show. He He's showing now. He's showing, remember? He's the best show. That's right. That's right. So, so next week we have an episode go out. It's only a short 1, so it's like a bonus episode really. So it'll be maybe, maybe it's the beginning of a new series, maybe Episode 7 C is that series and we'll have a spin off series PJ, Garath and. Friends and friends.
Friends. OK. Well, look, that's, we've done half an hour. Yeah, We've talked about upcoming games. We've talked about what's been hitting our tables. We've talked about future episodes and guests. So please do reach out and then you're off on the holiday. Yeah, we're going to meet some gamers and play some games. So the week after next, we'll do an episode on that. Yes, we will get. Some sound bites. Try to get some sound bites. I'll think about doing a live
recording. I could probably do that. I will be. I will be sharing a room with Tabletop worldwide. He and I. Can they go? Seriously, I'll look into Studio and. Broadcast. We could just do that. Yeah, a whole a whole episode without Gareth. It's on tour. Meatball, Meatball on tour. Live and direct with the meatballs around the world. It's what you want. You want to. You're right. I want to talk to all the meat. Go.
Oh no, I'm. Not going to start singing so anyway, everyone, it's been an absolute pleasure. Oh, that's great. Thanks.