#367: Set Up and Tear Down

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone and welcome to so far to all about games, a board gaming podcast about board games with me as always is Michael Walker Haydon Walker. [SPEAKER_00]: Great, Mark. [SPEAKER_00]: Very good. [SPEAKER_00]: I am indeed your other co-hosts Mark Bigney winner of the three time annual champion of circuit you please keep it down award. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very proud of that. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the defending champion.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to be talking about board games this week. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about the as yet unnamed retrospective interest segment via your is what we reviewed last year. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about the games we played last week. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about the news and why it doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, under our topic, which is going to be set up and tear down as Walker puts it.

[SPEAKER_00]: What goes up must come down the things we like the things we don't like. [SPEAKER_00]: I confess as I was typing up. [SPEAKER_00]: I know it's I have more grievances than I thought. [SPEAKER_00]: I also had to say oh wait. [SPEAKER_00]: They're supposed to be two sides to this coin. [SPEAKER_00]: There are good things now. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got some good things, but it is so easy to do badly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will also have in traditional mark fashion some old men yells cloud moments and I'll talk about how things used to be back in the house the on days of the twentieth century back in the old days. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember the first time I said it around the turn of the century it was probably around twenty years ago and I felt we were doing it and now it's just you know a thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: because it's just like stick stick rock right yeah and you get a pair of stick you put a rock and you're ready to go sometimes other stick yeah sometimes a different shape rock depends on any players yeah and I'm really players so the game we reviewed last year was voidfall it was our game of the year of twenty twenty three

[SPEAKER_00]: And I have had occasion to play it a number of times since, which is a bit of a lift, given that it is a very long, not very long. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a quite long three to four hour game that involves about an hour of set up and about an hour of rules explanation, more or less. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can't do one without the other. [SPEAKER_00]: So the fact that I've had occasion to play it, the two loos are big fans of the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: even though they're not usually into heavier euros. [SPEAKER_00]: And so when playing with Louise sometimes when we're able to block block off two evenings in a row, we leave it set up. [SPEAKER_00]: We play the first half of the game and then we play the second half. [SPEAKER_00]: I am a massive fan of voidfall. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a pretty well. [SPEAKER_00]: seldom is at the case, we talked about this in the context of galactic crews as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the euros in this sort of space and weight are not really calibrated to our preferences, but I remain very enthusiastic about voidfall and I'm even cautiously optimistic about Revenant, which is sort of the pseudo follow-up in the same universe. [SPEAKER_01]: So I was thinking there's like there's two sort of Euroy space games, right? [SPEAKER_01]: We have the clips and we have voidfall. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel something?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking that they feel almost like totally different gameplay, of course. [SPEAKER_01]: But do they sort of fill the same sort of bracket when you go to like, I want to play a Euroy space game? [SPEAKER_01]: Is it? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it depends on how you want to slice it because you're right that there are aspects of a clips that feel very evocative of voidfall.

[SPEAKER_00]: when you are managing your economy, when you're planning out your action efficiency, when you're figuring, okay, can I get A and B done before I get C done, so as to trigger this additional bonus?

[SPEAKER_00]: But everything about the combat and how much it influences the rest of the game is so radically different, and the effect of threats of military violence, have on the players is also so radically different, so it's weird, we complain about [SPEAKER_00]: in eclipse, how everything seems to build up to one huge military, conflict, oration near the end.

[SPEAKER_00]: But part of that is kind of okay, if the threats are internalized or you're making the dance of trying to upgrade your fleet, mostly when I think about eclipse though, the things that it does badly, voidfall does really, really well, but the things that eclipse does well, no other game does. [SPEAKER_00]: That aspect of ship customization of kidding out your fleet to do very specific things to take on specific opponents, no other game comes close.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when it comes to things like exploration, when it comes to things about the bizarre luck of the draw that can completely host you, voidfall doesn't have any of those problems. [SPEAKER_00]: So I agree with you that in one way they're very, very similar, but in terms of overall play experience, I'd say they're pretty far apart. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I mean, like if you just sort of like that bracket of, you know, we're going to play a big four XE type space game.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think they just sort of followed that same category, we're going to play either this or that. [SPEAKER_00]: I would also say that for me, I'm going to be a bit of a controversial take. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they're in the same broad category in terms of playtime. [SPEAKER_00]: You can set up, teach, and tear down a game of eclipse if you're even remotely disciplined in three hours. [SPEAKER_00]: you cannot do that with voidfall.

[SPEAKER_00]: If everybody knows what they're doing, and the game is already set up, and you're playing with discipline, yeah, you might be able to get voidfall done in three hours, but you might be able to get a clip-stun in the same context at about two. [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, there's a huge difference between a two-hour game and a three-hour game.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a big difference between a game that you can get done with discipline in three, and a game that with discipline, minimum, you're talking in four to five. [SPEAKER_00]: That's my overall impression. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's voidfall. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a voidfall. [SPEAKER_00]: We've viewed exactly one year ago. [SPEAKER_00]: You haven't played it as much as I have since, because again, I've been playing with the Louies for the most part.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've played a couple times. [SPEAKER_00]: And even that given our schedule and given how difficult it is is a bit of an accomplishment. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have any regrets about making game of the year? [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not memories and look at, like I said, just you talking about it, I wish we could get to the table more often. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a bit of a life. [SPEAKER_00]: We should make the effort though.

[SPEAKER_00]: True. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's voidfall by Nigel Buckle and Debbie Church say a fabulous design team. [SPEAKER_00]: They're also responsible for the Imperium Civilization deck building games. [SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely love their work. [SPEAKER_00]: I love their design idiom. [SPEAKER_00]: It is exactly what I want crunchy or you're used to look like. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm looking forward to more collaboration going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember back when Imperium before it was published and David Church would give these interviews. [SPEAKER_00]: And at the time I thought it was just hype, he's like, you have no idea how good this Nigel Buckle guy is. [SPEAKER_00]: You just, you have no clue. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, sure. [SPEAKER_00]: You're just, you're being nice to your co-designer slash. [SPEAKER_00]: This is marketing hype. [SPEAKER_00]: I believe him now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently there's some sort of online implementation for avoid fall. [SPEAKER_01]: All right. [SPEAKER_01]: No nothing about it. [SPEAKER_01]: I've just heard. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about it on the discord. [SPEAKER_00]: It's impressive. [SPEAKER_00]: But still very awkward in the way the digital implementations are. [SPEAKER_00]: And I will just say the same thing that I've said a million times in a million different context about digital implementations.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that I find so disorienting is internalizing the game state. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's so much information to process in the context of a game of voidfall. [SPEAKER_00]: How will the access look what your opponents are up to? [SPEAKER_00]: What your own board looks like? [SPEAKER_00]: What your cards have available? [SPEAKER_00]: This, that and the other off. [SPEAKER_00]: So I looked at it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I took a look at the digital invasion extremely impressive, not something I want to spend time with. [SPEAKER_00]: But if you like that kind of stuff, yes, it's very well done. [SPEAKER_00]: I recommend it in that sense. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the Euras. [SPEAKER_00]: Moving on to what we played last week. [SPEAKER_00]: Walker, what did play last week?

[SPEAKER_01]: Park, you know, I got to play Shackleton base again. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a journey to the moon. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a journey to the moon. [SPEAKER_01]: This is done by Fabio Lupiano in the story, Majoni. [SPEAKER_01]: published by Pandasaurus Games here in North America, and we played with some of the new corporations. [SPEAKER_01]: We had the, well, new to us, not, no. [SPEAKER_00]: The, the, the, the base game comes with a set of corporations.

[SPEAKER_01]: We busted out of Babies first, Shackleton. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: And we played with some, the plant green houses. [SPEAKER_00]: The farm people, the tourist people, again, and the robot people. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're not really robot people. [SPEAKER_01]: There's people who make robots. [SPEAKER_01]: They're robots aren't people. [SPEAKER_01]: So robots are like, you build a bunch of factories and they're, and they're men, men. [SPEAKER_01]: Man by robots.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's desperately unfortunate. [SPEAKER_00]: Staffed or crude. [SPEAKER_00]: I crude by a robots. [SPEAKER_00]: I was surprised that that was listed as complexity too. [SPEAKER_00]: True. [SPEAKER_00]: Because it really didn't see many more complicated than the complexity one corporations. [SPEAKER_00]: And frankly, I would make a case that the tourist module is probably closer to complexity too than the robot module is. [SPEAKER_00]: But setting that aside.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So there's three sort of [SPEAKER_01]: levels of a factor you can get for the robots sort of endgame scoring and media bonus or bonus that you get every time you do a particular type of action and you get you get robot you get robots with the robot module who you get robots walker any of these sort of clip into the little factories and so they're now functional and they do what they do and chat with them base continues to be a delight

[SPEAKER_00]: For me, Delight is a bit strong. [SPEAKER_00]: I would say that this second play is revealing that I think the overall play space is not as satisfying to me or as well calibrated as Autobahn was, which was the previous design by those two designers and another medium heavy euro. [SPEAKER_00]: And one that I think is very, very well done. [SPEAKER_00]: probably one of the best medium heavy heroes of the past five years.

[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why I had misgaming is about chocolate and bass. [SPEAKER_00]: I find it perfectly enjoyable. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very good. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very solid. [SPEAKER_00]: But one of my original complaints about chocolate and bass with the original was that there wasn't really a whole lot of player interaction. [SPEAKER_00]: The shared play space wasn't exploited very much because you can build modules and buildings on the shared moon bass.

[SPEAKER_00]: and you can send out workers to activate rows, rows of hexes. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're present in the hex, there's no cost associated, but if somebody else, if you're not there, and someone else is, you pay whoever has the biggest building there. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is not [SPEAKER_00]: This often doesn't matter a whole lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about a small number of payments, the transfer, the change hands over the course of the game, so I was hoping that there's some opportunity for more competition over the board space. [SPEAKER_00]: Enter the farm corporation.

[SPEAKER_00]: The farm corporation adds bonuses to a hex, and at the end of the round, whoever has the most overall presence in that row, [SPEAKER_00]: if there were workers sent there, gets a bonus in terms of points or reputation which often amounts to points. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought this was great. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, finally we're going to have more competition.

[SPEAKER_00]: Someone's going to worry about building a farm there, because you have to build it when there's room, but then that row is immediately more appealing. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you start building buildings to start winning the farm. [SPEAKER_00]: But the thing is, is that all the farms that got built [SPEAKER_00]: were put in rows that were then quickly locked down. [SPEAKER_00]: The period of competition on the board was extremely brief.

[SPEAKER_01]: Truly, this was a second game for most of the players.

[SPEAKER_01]: now we're gonna build a big building we didn't build the big building in the first game right now we're gonna build a big building so like you said in that walk down a row and sort of you know doubled up on on this plant corporation that right introduced and the building restrictions meant that even if there was still room left in the row or column [SPEAKER_00]: We could quickly do the math and figure out that there was no way that anyone was going to be able to take that from us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even if there was a risk that they might in very strange circumstances build the precise configuration buildings to threaten our presence there, we could plug up those holes with more farms. [SPEAKER_00]: So here we are, we're leading in the row, we cement our lead in the row by plugging it up with more farms, and that's just guaranteed income for the rest of the game more or less.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so what I hoped would lead to more competition on the main board and more player interaction led to less player interaction on the main board, and which says to me at least that the bones of Shackleton base aren't as robust as I hoped they would be. [SPEAKER_00]: The different corporations are kind of okay, but frankly, you know, the robot one, I think is a good example.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay, you just buy these things that give you more pennies as opposed to another corporation, which says you can buy these things to give you more pennies, but you buy them with a slightly different currency that it introduces in the game or another corporation that does the same thing, but you buy things slightly differently again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so what I thought was a potentially promising system that might have a configuration that would lead to slightly better exploitation of the sort of dynamics that I want in the game of this ilk. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure the chocolate maze can give that to me. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that when compared, certainly when compared to Autobahn, it is of a lower caliber. [SPEAKER_00]: I enjoy it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's fine. [SPEAKER_00]: It's solid. [SPEAKER_00]: It's pleasant.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's degenerative or anything. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just that mostly it's a more heads down sort of maximizing efficiency engine thing. [SPEAKER_00]: than I would have hoped. [SPEAKER_01]: We got to say that there was some graphic design choices for the farm module that were kind of disappointing as well, because they wanted to make these buildings look like they were little green houses. [SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, they added a little greenery on to the tile.

[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, they used the exact same icon as get grass income. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: So when it looks as though you get all the bonuses on that tile, [SPEAKER_01]: It like any other game it looks as though you get more grass income. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's unfortunately that is not the case. [SPEAKER_00]: We figured it out. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but I just mean it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a bad choice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, I'm curious to see the other corporations, the ones that are complexity three and four look even yet more bizarre. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that will introduce some genuinely new dynamics that will, uh, that will intrigue me. [SPEAKER_00]: But as it is, I, I, this was one of those second plays where it's like, oh, maybe there isn't as much to this as I hoped, which is a bit disappointing, frankly.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is shackled in May, so journey of the moon by Fabio Lopiano in the story of my journey. [SPEAKER_00]: Originally published by, sorry, we are French. [SPEAKER_00]: I got to play Catholic Deathmate die fear of the unknown.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the second kickstarter that was run by Coleman, you're not for Catholic Deathmate die. [SPEAKER_00]: The third one is shall we say kind of lost in time and space. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm now in position to be very self-congratulatory walker just by chance because the third kickstarter launched. [SPEAKER_00]: I had that momentary completionist urge because after all, I'm a big fan of Catholic Deathmate die, but then I thought, you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I have enough to loot at my die. [SPEAKER_00]: And then if you want Slater Seaman says, we are basically a Ponzi scheme borderline criminal operation. [SPEAKER_00]: I think we're done here. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, ooh. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot of projects that are very uncertain now. [SPEAKER_00]: So Kathilu Deathmidai and Fear of the Unknown as well is by Rob Davio Eric Lang and Marco Portugal and it is a cooperative scenario-based game of Kathulu pulp adventure.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I asked, I'm speaking with the Louise and the context of Voidfall, [SPEAKER_00]: I asked one of the two Louise what he felt like playing because the Louise they will reliably play whatever you put in front of their face but every once in a while I like to be like you know you can ask for things I'm more than happy to play whatever you like and he said oh yeah I'd like to play that

[SPEAKER_00]: you know that at intricate where there's sometimes combat uh... it's uh... uh... something uh... could feel the death made iish i'm like oh okay i game like the little of my time when uh... do you remember the theme and he said i just told you it's it's clueless and like oh you didn't mean the game like the little death made iish you meant clueless made i think i couldn't remember the name no you didn't remember the name but you were thinking you didn't remember the name confused the living heck out of it anyway so

[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably one of the scenarios from season three, there are now four seasons of Kthulhu def my dad that had been published. [SPEAKER_00]: They were supposed to be more, but who knows if those will see the light of day. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a weird one where basically we were in Dracula's castle, but disrupting a ritual that he had nothing to do with.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't a big fan of these cultists coming in and wrecking his stuff, so we're like making friends with the vampires so we can eject the cultists to this case. [SPEAKER_00]: We're attempting to summon Naira Lothotep. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is our first experience with Naira Lothotep, who is unique amongst the great old ones in that he starts out on the board, normally in a game of Kthulu Death my Die.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the great things about Kthulu Death my Die is in addition to the scenarios.

[SPEAKER_00]: that really changed things up and offer a really modular experience and entirely new encounter deck, a new mythos deck, a new map set up, a new set of special rules that are very straightforward but nonetheless evocative of what you're trying to do in the context of this particular scenario we were trying to assemble enough explosives to blow up sections of Dracula's castle so that the cultists couldn't proceed.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of missions of accumulating explosives [SPEAKER_00]: I said it was Pulp Adventure. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's Pulp Adventure in the nineteen twetties. [SPEAKER_00]: It's entirely appropriate. [SPEAKER_00]: You got Tommy Guns and Dynamite. [SPEAKER_00]: It's great. [SPEAKER_00]: And the Effective Diarylethotepe is normally the Great Older one shows up on the map either when a certain amount of time is passed or when you've disrupted the ritual.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in the case of Diarylethotepe he's got his human form wandering around setting fires. [SPEAKER_00]: And then when you disrupt the ritual his winged horror version emerges. [SPEAKER_00]: And he's one of the biggest great old-one miniatures in a game of relatively large, great old-one miniatures. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, we're a Huey and I are big fans of Nairla Thotap. [SPEAKER_00]: He's one of the more interesting figures in the Kthulu mythos.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was very happy to see how he worked. [SPEAKER_00]: And it was cool. [SPEAKER_00]: We did not do well. [SPEAKER_00]: I ended up dying very badly. [SPEAKER_00]: uh, the four time was up. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a scenario that introduced that gave a lot of wounds because there were a lot of circumstances when she would get wounded.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so despite the fact that I played as Harry Houdini, who famously was, uh, apocryphly killed by a Canadian boxer, uh, he was not able to escape the fate of dying from too many wounds, so alas, such as the way of things. [SPEAKER_00]: Big fan of Kuhu definitely died immediately after [SPEAKER_00]: finishing playing Louis suggested that we leave the game semi set up and so we can try the same scenario again this week, and so that is what we will be doing, so more reports on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kthulu Deputy Dye specifically the fear of the unknown expansion published in twenty twenty four by, well, whatever's left of Kulmini heard of.

[SPEAKER_01]: This week's stream was Barony, designed by Mark Andre, and published by Madagot, and we played with both expansions. [SPEAKER_01]: There was a Heroes Expansion that just came out with the new edition, which also works with the first edition, which is the one we played, and we also played with the sorcery expansion. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was not a good experience, not only was it a bad experience, Barney, it was just a bad game experience overall.

[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so let's take this Barney, which I love, which is a true, like which is a no luck, open information game. [SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to add these hero cards, everyone is dealt for, and you get to keep two. [SPEAKER_01]: And they're secret. [SPEAKER_01]: So now in this open information game, we now have secret things that are going to suddenly pop up and change things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Could you give me an example of, oh well, one of the main things you do, which progresses the end of the game, it gets you points is [SPEAKER_01]: and is a very vital sort of timing thing. [SPEAKER_01]: When am I going to take a turn to cash in fifteen of my tokens in order to advance my marker? [SPEAKER_01]: One of them says you only need twelve. [SPEAKER_01]: Wild. [SPEAKER_01]: And there's two copies of each card.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you don't, two of the same, you're allowed to keep both. [SPEAKER_01]: So the same player had two of these cards. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: So the game ended very abrupt. [SPEAKER_01]: The sorcery is not too bad. [SPEAKER_01]: I've only played this only the second time. [SPEAKER_01]: I would never play with any of these expansions if I ever play Barney again because I remember this was not a good experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: I remember the last time if I go back and list you the last time I played Barney. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember being a good experience either. [SPEAKER_00]: It is very very hard to make expansions for a game like Barney. [SPEAKER_00]: because it is a very simple rule set, a very tight list of units and what they can do. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's basically it's almost a positional abstract because, as you say, it's open information and no luck.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it's all about timing and positioning. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, either threatening areas because when you put out villages, someone takes your villages, they get to take your scoring tokens. [SPEAKER_01]: So you got to figure out if you have time to cash in those tokens or time to spawn some new nights and protect your areas or spawn nights and get to other people's villages before they have a time to react.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very much knowing exactly what people are able to do and utilizing [SPEAKER_01]: threatening areas and timing. [SPEAKER_01]: And you start playing with that and no bueno. [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, that was the only international now. [SPEAKER_00]: Every time I speak French, you look at me with the stank face and now we can do other languages. [SPEAKER_00]: Is that what we're doing? [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's Barity.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can always check out, it's on stream. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you want to check out our game, you can go to our YouTube Live tab and check it out. [SPEAKER_01]: It is one of my sort of favorite games or was. [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to mess with something so simple. [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes simple as best. [SPEAKER_01]: And the new second edition just came out. [SPEAKER_01]: So you'll be able to check that out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the new second edition has both expansions packed in, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: As far as I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_00]: So here's the deal, Walker. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about net runner. [SPEAKER_00]: System gateway. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about net runner. [SPEAKER_00]: Net runner is one of those games. [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those games where if you play the game and you say you don't like it, the people crawl out of the woodwork. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, to be fair, there are games like this that I enjoy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got the impression that innovation has a similar fan base. [SPEAKER_00]: There are the people who emerge. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing, this time the people were right, because it turns out that I'm gonna set aside the first time I played that run of the first time I played that run of a shortly after the FFG relaunch. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a while ago, my memories are dim, and I was literally playing from a starter set and people had misgimmings about the starter set.

[SPEAKER_00]: The second time I played that run was only a few years ago, and it was being introduced by a huge fan of that runer, and that was actually the downfall of the introductory experience. [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of got the sense of that at the time, but in hindsight, it's now very clear. [SPEAKER_00]: The person who showed it to me [SPEAKER_00]: a very fine human being. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a great deal of affection in regard for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he did a not good job of showing me netrunner. [SPEAKER_01]: I think I think I've had the same experiences. [SPEAKER_01]: They want you to bring you up to speed immediately. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: They enjoy netrunner. [SPEAKER_01]: They have all these cards. [SPEAKER_01]: They would like to use all of these cards. [SPEAKER_00]: They built this cute deck. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of these cool gimmicks.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is neat stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, check out this cool thing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I don't, can I, what? [SPEAKER_00]: What's going it? [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: So here's the thing. [SPEAKER_00]: System Gateway is the new starter set for the third iteration of netrunner.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was netrunner back in the day, then there was fantasy flights netrunner, and now there's netrunner from no signal games, which is basically a fan project to keep netrunner alive. [SPEAKER_01]: I wish they would move that though, because it makes the entry on board game geek very confusing. [SPEAKER_01]: It says if you haven't made expansion, but it's the starter set.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when you're trying to figure out what you need to get to play, and this is an expansion, I don't want that. [SPEAKER_01]: I want a great game anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: It's somewhat badly labeled. [SPEAKER_00]: But despite the labeling, I think the net runner system gateway may be the finest introductory set of anything that I've seen since Warhammer Underworlds.

[SPEAKER_00]: because it does a fabulous job of presenting you with a deck that is sufficiently bone simple, and yet gives you a sense of the dynamics of how netrunner actually works. [SPEAKER_00]: Because for the first time, I understood what my deck worked, how my deck worked.

[SPEAKER_00]: I understood how your deck worked because part of the business of netrunner is that it is a constructed card game with heavy asymmetry, your corporation, or your the runner trying to steal from that corporation. [SPEAKER_00]: And effectively, the fundamental victory dynamics of your sort of basic deck, because of course, you get a little bit of the deck, the new all-man or crazy things. [SPEAKER_00]: That was one of the problems with my past experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was handed a deck that was meant to win by a strange way. [SPEAKER_00]: It was overwhelming and I didn't quite internalize what was going on. [SPEAKER_00]: But here, there's a small variety of cards. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's sufficiently predictable, therefore, that you can get a handle on what's going on after a couple rounds. [SPEAKER_00]: We play two games back to back.

[SPEAKER_00]: The game can end unsatisfyingly because there's a lot of sort of bluff and risk and gamble, but that's okay, that's tolerable. [SPEAKER_00]: So if the first time, for the very first time, I got a sense of how this netrunner thing works. [SPEAKER_00]: As the corporation, what you're doing is you're sometimes laying traps, but you're trying to advance these agendas and score things before the runner can steal things from you. [SPEAKER_00]: And as the runner, you have to take risks.

[SPEAKER_00]: Flip over cards and you may not know what they do. [SPEAKER_00]: Try to head your bets and have some recourse if it goes badly. [SPEAKER_01]: Make sure you have a lot of cards in your head. [SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you have cards in your hand because you can die. [SPEAKER_00]: You can just have your brain be fried by a corporation trap. [SPEAKER_00]: That happened once in our first game and almost happened in our second game. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of luck involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to separate it out into two buckets. [SPEAKER_00]: One bucket I'm kind of okay with, one bucket I'm not okay with. [SPEAKER_00]: The bucket I'm kind of okay with, given how long the game of netrunner takes, at least in our experience with the sort of baby's version. [SPEAKER_00]: As the runner, one of the things you can do is launch a run on your opponent's deck. [SPEAKER_00]: Of course it's not called a deck. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't be silly. [SPEAKER_00]: It's called R&D.

[SPEAKER_00]: because the netrunner loves its silly terminology and do a certain extent. [SPEAKER_00]: No signal games had no ability to change this because they wanted to make sure that everything was consistent with past versions and also the super fans of netrunner will insist that it adds considerably to the play experience. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, corporation deck would have done just fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, if you do a successful run on the corporation deck and as the corporation you can defend your your draw deck just like you defend any other [SPEAKER_00]: thing that the runner might go after. [SPEAKER_00]: They get to look at the top card and if the top card can be trashed, they can pay some resources to trash it, otherwise they just know what it is, but if it's a victory card, they score it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Walker [SPEAKER_00]: effectively top-decked twice and won the game. [SPEAKER_00]: Because that's just happened to be where the cards were. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, should I have defended my deck better? [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Look, I'm not going to say that it's totally random.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a certain amount of arbitrariness because if you do that successful run on the corporation deck at my kid you absolutely nothing, it might give you a substantial portion of the points you need to win the game. [SPEAKER_00]: That part, I'm actually kind of okay with. [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: While things are happening to card game, there's luck in the draw. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the part that I'm not terribly keen on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is fundamental to the constructed deck format. [SPEAKER_00]: When you are building a deck, there are heuristics you can follow. [SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, the fundamental issue of menace screw, which is the term in the context of magic, the gathering, is just endemic to the genre in lots of different ways. [SPEAKER_00]: What do I mean by this? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, as an example, as a corporation, you need to have agendas to advance and score.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you draw too many, that's a huge problem. [SPEAKER_00]: If you draw too few, that's a huge problem. [SPEAKER_00]: As the runner, you need icebreakers in order to be able to defeat the defense of operations of the corporation. [SPEAKER_00]: If you draw too many, that's a huge problem. [SPEAKER_00]: This is just a couple of examples. [SPEAKER_00]: There are like two or three different parameters on which you need to draw them in a reliable basis.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so consequently, [SPEAKER_00]: I have to say, as enthusiastic as I am about our experiences with netrunner system gateway, and I'd happily play again, I might even be willing to tinker with some fundamentals of deck design. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't help but wonder, compared to a game like Airland and C, what am I gaming? [SPEAKER_00]: What am I gaming? [SPEAKER_00]: What am I losing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm losing in terms of, again, far more randomness in terms of various flavors of manuscript. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm losing in terms of the fact that there's a very, very daunting set of [SPEAKER_00]: technical terminology, it's much less accessible, it's much less approachable.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just don't know if it's worth it, frankly, because heirland and sea by John Perry is similarly a fabulous game of bluff of risk of head-to-head confrontation, but unburdened by a lot of these other things. [SPEAKER_00]: Is it as complicated or as in depth or as robust? [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely not. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a universe that has a million and one possible cards. [SPEAKER_00]: But as I say, that's kind of a double-edged sword anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I'm sitting with netrunner system gateway. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel much, much better about netrunner now than I ever have. [SPEAKER_00]: But even as we were playing the second game, I couldn't help but think I wish this weren't a Constructible card game with all of the burdens attached to that. [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if it's popularity is sort of like we play magic all the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's this other game and so magic users sort of gravitate to it because they have, you know, they deck, they're didn't detect building day up time to do this. [SPEAKER_01]: They have two, and now it's only two different games. [SPEAKER_01]: They have to worry about. [SPEAKER_00]: That is an interesting hypothesis. [SPEAKER_00]: I would be surprised because my experience people who are in the magic are really in the magic.

[SPEAKER_00]: True. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't want to play something like magic. [SPEAKER_00]: They just want to play more magic. [SPEAKER_01]: True. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just it's in in the current sort of state of board games where it's a sort of cycle into new stuff and and I just can't see where deck builder fits in there. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I- Yeah, deck construction. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, whatever that's, sorry. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, to be precise.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you're deck builder now is ambiguous between games like the minion and games like magic the other. [SPEAKER_01]: But since I've decided to pick up a set, just so we could, because we're at the same level, like we've both played two games. [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not playing against someone that's been playing it for years. [SPEAKER_01]: And so when we build our decks, we'll, you know, generally in the same area.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it'll be interesting and fun. [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas if it's like I picked this up with somebody that's been playing for years, it would be [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it wouldn't be fun and it would be quickly thrown out the side. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe there's a little bit more latitude than I'm giving you credit for again because of this influx of randomness.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it is the case that because you're fundamentally going to be playing a game of cat and mouse regardless of who plays Corp and who plays Runner, that there's a little bit more room for players of disparate skill level. [SPEAKER_00]: I just got to say though that when it comes to [SPEAKER_00]: Just face-to-face card games I'd rather play Airland and see when it comes to deck construction games I'd much of a play soccer arms or something of that nature, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: There are so many good to play or head to head asymmetric slash limited construction games. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying yeah, there's so many funnels for this netrunner. [SPEAKER_01]: What do you mean funnels? [SPEAKER_01]: I just mean like one. [SPEAKER_01]: It's only two player one. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: One like I said it's you're going to have people at different skill levels.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very difficult to to, you know, a person that's played a lot versus some that's never played. [SPEAKER_00]: That having said there is still the community. [SPEAKER_00]: This game refuses to die. [SPEAKER_00]: It keeps coming back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as I say, I am now in a position where I can kind of understand why you you made the same comment it's like now I finally understand like this this seems to be far more than just another magic knock off the seems far more robust and interesting than a lot of these other combat style deck construction games I just wonder in a hobbyist mindset whether

[SPEAKER_00]: the additional burdens that you're leveraging and the fundamental things about deck construction that I find so unsatisfying like you're building like a forty plus card deck and you know you need a certain ratio to come at the right times in order for your deck to function and at the end of the day you just like okay well that means that I should probably have four of this card in the deck maybe I'll get it at the right rate maybe I'll get them all at the same time who knows and that's the part that I just don't find us satisfying frankly

[SPEAKER_00]: And it gets a lot right. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: I can see why it's survived, but it's got some competition. [SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to make sure people understand that we want to know all the net players out there who want to know your comments, but the only net runner comments were reading are the ones that are sent to aircanner.com. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So you have to send them there else we do not see them. [SPEAKER_00]: It's true.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's true. [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise our ice automatically intercepts. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a huge problem. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's bad. [SPEAKER_00]: But look, this is one of those times where [SPEAKER_00]: In particular, our patrons were saying, look, you know, there's this new, and look, as far as starter sets go, again, system gateway, the starter decks are really, really well calibrated to make it revealing as to the full scope of the game, but at the same time approachable.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a bit of a triumph. [SPEAKER_00]: It's also super economical, because rather than a small box, it's just a tuck box full of cards. [SPEAKER_00]: And they set it up here, your starter decks. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the baby version. [SPEAKER_00]: Here are the cards you add to your starter decks to play the full version. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be it in a somewhat baby deck. [SPEAKER_00]: And now here's about a hundred extra cards you can play with for deck construction.

[SPEAKER_00]: There you go. [SPEAKER_00]: Rubbooks online. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm of two. [SPEAKER_00]: Rubbooks not being in the base game box. [SPEAKER_00]: Really annoys me, but if in the process you can get your card game down to just a tuck box and make it this inexpensive like twenty Canadian bucks. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's a price I'll be willing to pay. [SPEAKER_00]: They've also done for what it's worth as a final note. [SPEAKER_00]: No signal games has made the rulebook very good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's very simple. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel very understand. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a living rule book. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Much like, you know, the blood bowl living rule book. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure it's being updated and tinkered with continuously. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but not changed. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, just worded to make it more clear. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: But the blood bowl living rule book continues to sprawl.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard for a rule book to evolve over the course of almost thirty years, maybe even more than thirty years in the context of netrunner. [SPEAKER_00]: And now they've got it. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, this, this, this, this base presentation in system gateway is so tight that it makes the game so much more approachable and accessible to so many people. [SPEAKER_00]: It is really well done.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm hard breathed like we're hammer under worlds to a great job of having a starter set and need the game, but the game itself of our hammer under worlds is so much easier to do a starter set for because there's no army building. [SPEAKER_00]: And at the time when the, the game is launched, there was no card meta. [SPEAKER_00]: For an evolving system, I think system gateway is a triumph.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're all curious, if you like to play our card games, if you like that construction game, if you're curious about that construction games, I don't think that netrunner system gateway has any serious competition for a great entry point to a large meta card game like this. [SPEAKER_00]: and kudos to null signal games and everyone involved for keeping the game alive, hats off to the netrunner community.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this netrunner system gateway, the list of design credits is very long because this is a very large project based work, but whatever, Zoey Cohen, McGregor Crowley, June Valencia, Quedavo, Max Chippington, Derrick, Gregory Tang and Jade Wesley.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I got a crowdfunding project, they didn't call plain pita, or at least we think it could be plain pita. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's pronounced that way. [SPEAKER_00]: It's Japanese, so I think it's a plan of pita. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what the pita is doing, but it's like planet. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like planet. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a plan of pita, I think. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like an allergy problem, so you keep it plain. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, it's not plain pita.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not spelled plain that way. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, you can't be that way. [SPEAKER_00]: And in Japanese, you wouldn't say plain, you would say planet. [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: This design base. [SPEAKER_00]: I escaped the Fuji Nawa and Kazunori Hori, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: published by Spitslab. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's none of vowels in the company name. [SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not even going to venture a gasist as a company man.

[SPEAKER_01]: And man, is this, is this, did they hear it? [SPEAKER_01]: Do they listen to our showmark? [SPEAKER_01]: We have magnets and we have flicking. [SPEAKER_01]: This is, this is our jam. [SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, it, it, it, it delivered what it promised. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's, it's plain like the pita that's in the box. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's in this walker. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not announced that way. [SPEAKER_00]: I know. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not, what are you doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: I do it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's very, it's nice and straightforward. [SPEAKER_01]: You have your four discs. [SPEAKER_01]: and you're flicking them into this sort of crocodile. [SPEAKER_01]: It's crocodile in space. [SPEAKER_00]: Very skinny, very tiny little circle board. [SPEAKER_01]: Little metal. [SPEAKER_01]: It's got some metal in it because your flicking discs have a magnet in them. [SPEAKER_01]: So you can flick it on whatever side you like.

[SPEAKER_01]: So can either slow down immediately as soon as it enters the board or slide like a regular wooden disc. [SPEAKER_01]: Wooden disc. [SPEAKER_01]: Wooden disc. [SPEAKER_01]: What is that? [SPEAKER_01]: What is the name of the guy in the middle? [SPEAKER_01]: I forgot already. [SPEAKER_01]: there is the evil jammer, the jammer, the evil jammer is put into the middle and he serves multiple purposes, main purposes, on face up your discs, they have your guys are awake.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so anyone that's in his zone, you're not allowed to flip over once, because once you flick, you may flip your disc over, which will sort of walk them in place on the board. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because it's fascinating, the friction, the amount of force exerted means that it is very difficult to move a disc that is magnetically adhered to the board.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you flip them face down or if you flick them face down in the first instance, they're going to stop and pretty much stick there for the rest of there. [SPEAKER_00]: So what you want to do is get your disk in an identity position usually by flicking it face up and then flip it face down so it locks to where you want it to be. [SPEAKER_00]: But you can't do that if you end where the jammer is and the jammer starts in the most valuable scoring position, namely the center.

[SPEAKER_01]: So flip down discs, it's sort of an area majority once everyone's flick their four discs. [SPEAKER_01]: And so face down discs are only worth one power, face up discs are worth two power. [SPEAKER_01]: Whoever has the most will win the points for that particular ring. [SPEAKER_01]: And if it's a tie, it just builds up the victory point stay there and you add another token, it'll be worth double in the next round.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where [SPEAKER_01]: kind of falls apart for me. [SPEAKER_01]: A little bit, yeah, is you know, because we had the, you know, we had one round where the center was worth fifteen points. [SPEAKER_00]: And anyway, overall, the tires are extremely common. [SPEAKER_00]: As a rule, every round, one of the three zones would score and the other two would tie out because scoring is very coarse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And once a disc is flipped face down, it is very difficult, almost impossible to dislodge it, which is cool. [SPEAKER_00]: It leads to an evolving geography. [SPEAKER_00]: It leads to some tactical considerations about [SPEAKER_00]: how to get your discs face down in various parts so that they can be roadblocks and stick their until end of scoring. [SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, I wish that the scoring had been a little bit more robust.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the discs had different values. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe if the board were larger and had more scoring zones, I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: But as it is on first play with three players, I really enjoyed all the conceits about play in planet pita, but the scoring did not leave me satisfied at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Especially since the worst part about it wasn't even just the [SPEAKER_00]: rounds kept escalating and so the only round of consequence might be the last round or even the second round. [SPEAKER_00]: It's that usually about two flicks before the end of a given round, you'd be able to look at the board and figure out how it was going to shake out. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not ideal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the other thing that Jammer does is he clears all disks that are in his zone that are face up. [SPEAKER_01]: So any of your double scoring disks get all everything gets wiped in the zone that he's in unless they're face down. [SPEAKER_00]: So very different game, but this is something you want to play Sonora again. [SPEAKER_00]: Remember? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was not looking right. [SPEAKER_01]: Another pen source game. [SPEAKER_01]: Not that this is pen source.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, they're constantly putting in fantastic games. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm a constantly and I'm a fantastic. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I'm a publisher. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Pipeida was it was certainly very quick. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be interested in trying to get especially with four players or with two, maybe in either of those configurations, it might be more interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I really did like the dynamics of the physicality and the scoring conditions of face up versus face down pieces. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that was exploited very well. [SPEAKER_00]: There is also a module that maybe will help. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, there is a module. [SPEAKER_00]: There is a module. [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, just for those of you that don't find this transparent and in my experience, no one does.

[SPEAKER_00]: Module is how I say module because I have something bordering between a sense of humor and a speech impediment, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And between those two, that's me. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I got. [SPEAKER_01]: So when there was a tie, [SPEAKER_01]: You can give the tide players these timed two tokens. [SPEAKER_01]: And on the next round, when they flick a disk, they're allowed to put this timed two token on the disk, and we'll make it worth twice the power.

[SPEAKER_00]: I see, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that would definitely address one of my other concerns, because in a three-player game, if the tie is prompted by players A and B, then players C just profits, because they didn't devote any of their pieces towards tying up the zone, and none of their opponents scored off of their efforts, so it's just gravy for them. [SPEAKER_00]: I would be interested in trying this module of which you speak.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure we'll play, be playing it multiple times. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'm looking forward to trying it again, seeing if the same degenerate scoring dynamics work out again. [SPEAKER_00]: And frankly, even if they do, I'd be more than happy to play because magnets, fucking magnets. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Fucking magnets.

[SPEAKER_00]: We played Alien Fate of the Nostromo again, and I couldn't really remember the dynamics of Alien Fate of the Nostromo, and I was certainly reminded about why I don't like the game very quickly on into playing it, because Alien Fate of the Nostromo, and when since it's very thematic, it's got lovely pictures of all the crew members of the first movie, and of course it's got plastic minis of the Zeno Morph as well as the crew members.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a very thematic bit about trying to chase down Jonesy the cat, [SPEAKER_00]: and how the cat may indeed cause you to lose because cats are hateful that vicious vindictive creatures who are nonetheless adorable. [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Fundamentally, alien fate of an astronomer was a pickup in the liver game. [SPEAKER_00]: Fine. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not my objection.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't demand that a game about alien be about like combat or something. [SPEAKER_00]: That isn't even in keeping with the movie. [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't even really know how you make victory commissions as soon as it came like alien.

[SPEAKER_00]: But. [SPEAKER_00]: The way that the objective is work, you pull out one objective per player plus one and they take some version of deliver some item that you crafted or some amount of scrap which is the resource to a given room. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the problem. [SPEAKER_00]: At the end of everyone's turn, you pull a card which directs the alien to move or there might be some sort of event. [SPEAKER_00]: Broadly speaking, the way the game operates is.

[SPEAKER_00]: The alien is shunting around in semi-random locations. [SPEAKER_00]: So you end up with these bizarre roadblocks that don't make a whole lot of sense. [SPEAKER_00]: The aliens are there. [SPEAKER_00]: The aliens are there. [SPEAKER_00]: The aliens are there. [SPEAKER_00]: The aliens are my way to the commute. [SPEAKER_00]: The aliens are my way to the toilet. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't go there anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And on top of that, there are events that just flatly say everyone loses a scrap. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay, well, one of the mission objectives that comes up an awful lot. [SPEAKER_00]: There's not a whole lot of objectives is the team meeting, which I would point out could have been an email, but whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: where everyone has it to be able. [SPEAKER_00]: Should have been an email.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has to be in the same place with one scrap each. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, you got one event saying that everyone loses a scrap. [SPEAKER_00]: You've got these other events that's sending the alien here there and everywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the ability to get all, certainly for playing with five, as we were. [SPEAKER_00]: All five players in the same place. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, we did end up winning, which was a shock to almost everyone involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were all pretty convinced that we were done for. [SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, it was largely because when the particularly pernicious events come up, [SPEAKER_00]: It's a question of when they show up. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just really obnoxious to be constantly fighting at this tide of this resource deprivation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this weird arbitrariness where people are just showing up in awkward places and getting from pointed to point B is not particularly satisfied in the subject of random factors. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's my continuing impression of alien fate of an astronomer. [SPEAKER_01]: I kind of enjoyed it only because it seems so everyone but us was really enjoying it. [SPEAKER_01]: I shouldn't say really was it was enjoying it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, Louie got to set the Zeno Morph on fire with the flame thrower. [SPEAKER_00]: That's fine. [SPEAKER_00]: He got to get his yoyas out. [SPEAKER_00]: That's good. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very glad. [SPEAKER_01]: They all seem very excited that we had one at the end. [SPEAKER_01]: So I seemed to just shock. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: They seem to send me enjoy it. [SPEAKER_01]: The request was made. [SPEAKER_01]: We want a science fiction game.

[SPEAKER_01]: a science fiction co-op game for five players and so that the pool was awfully shallow. [SPEAKER_00]: It's true. [SPEAKER_00]: It's true. [SPEAKER_00]: No, it definitely met that condition. [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't over long. [SPEAKER_00]: We played a game that's about as long as it could get because we were one space away from loss on the morale track and we [SPEAKER_00]: got to the final mission and succeeded it and it still wasn't very long.

[SPEAKER_00]: We also had a time constraint. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, given the constraints, Alien Fate of the Nostromo did very very well. [SPEAKER_00]: I still don't want to play it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's ever again. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just it's super arbitrary and unsatisfying. [SPEAKER_00]: I do not appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: And the comment was great. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like if this game came out in nineteen eighty five. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: It would have been amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's true. [SPEAKER_00]: Alien Fate of the Nostromo by Scott Rogers published by Ravensburger in twenty twenty one. [SPEAKER_00]: Finally, we played Endeavor Deep See.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the quasi sort of second edition of Endeavor, designed by Carl DeVisser and Jared Gray, published by Burnt Island Games last year. [SPEAKER_00]: There's an expansion that was recently up on crowdfunding for fifth player, their serious misgivings about Endeavor Deep See at higher player counts. [SPEAKER_00]: And I can certainly understand that because the game doesn't do a whole lot to stagger for different player counts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you end up getting very different experiences. [SPEAKER_00]: based on how you play. [SPEAKER_00]: There's only my second time playing. [SPEAKER_00]: And we were playing with three players both times. [SPEAKER_00]: And then both of those instance, the map kind of sort of fills out in a relatively satisfying way, but there's still more room to explore. [SPEAKER_00]: I have to say that I appreciate what deep sea does to the endeavor formula.

[SPEAKER_00]: But part of me appreciates the very simple streamlined nature of endeavor. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you just one example. [SPEAKER_00]: in ways in which endeavor is a very tight, neatly defined system and deep sea kind of sprawls a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: At any given time, you can always track to see what your resources are in endeavor. [SPEAKER_00]: There's never any stuff that needs to be tracked.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's all just a question of, oh, I've got these tokens that have accumulated. [SPEAKER_00]: This is my status of my cards. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, my building value is seven, for example. [SPEAKER_00]: In the context of deep sea, the universe of possible effects has kind of exploded to a certain extent, [SPEAKER_00]: cards now work very, very differently. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole bunch of different ways to get extra icons through various token placement.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole bunch of ways to get upgrades and track advancements through just moving your submarine around. [SPEAKER_00]: And consequently, it's a much larger system of effects. [SPEAKER_00]: And while I appreciate that, [SPEAKER_00]: Again, part of me really appreciate the sort of stripped down more slightly more confrontational feeling approach that endeavor takes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will say though that I do appreciate that more and more games are looking at their first editions with their unapologetic colonialist trappings and really interrogating them. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Endeavor is not a neat example of that because Endeavor did a very, very good job of trying to grapple with the, with the oles of slavery, which is one of the many, many oles of colonialism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's not quite a straightforward, hegeography of the March of Colonial greatness that many euros of its ilk were, but nonetheless, moving it to a sort of [SPEAKER_00]: Abstracted deep sea exploration thing where you're saving turtles instead of dominating indigenous peoples does seem like a natural choice. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious to try it some more like the fundamental core of endeavor of you're managing these discs and hiring these new people or building buildings in the case of the original endeavor and using that to open up new spots. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very neat and it feels streamlined and a very satisfying way and it has tracks pretty well. [SPEAKER_00]: But part of me wonders which one I prefer, and I think I prefer the original.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm curious to explore more of Endeavority, please, if I still say. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, oh, I like how the actions are very simple. [SPEAKER_01]: So the flow is very good. [SPEAKER_01]: And at the end of the, at the beginning of the round, you just sort of like, work down your board quickly, you know, get discs removed. [SPEAKER_01]: The structures with your pool, pick a new employee.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that you get to upgrade the employees, you upgrade buildings in Endeavority. [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's a neat. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, there's more stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And then the new stuff is generally pretty good. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of it is pretty random to be fair, like a lot of what you'll be doing in deep sea is placing new ocean tiles, which will give you random effects and introduce random elements of the board.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of what you're doing is also, there are these dive tokens, which is flatly random that you pull blindly, and they might give you some amount of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And very often I find myself in a position [SPEAKER_00]: where, you know, I've set up my employees based on what made sense at the time, but then two turn later is the board. [SPEAKER_00]: In its random evolution, leaves me unable to exploit the things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, when I took this employee that gave me dive tokens, there were lots of dive tokens on the board. [SPEAKER_00]: Now that dive tokens are gone, and the employees borderline useless, because all the details that people placed, don't have dive tokens either deliberately or even my accident, who knows it was random. [SPEAKER_00]: I like this system. [SPEAKER_00]: I like what they've done with the system.

[SPEAKER_00]: Part of me, I think prefers the original version of the system, but part of me is also interested in trying out the other scenarios. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't know, I looked at some of the later scenarios. [SPEAKER_00]: I've self-arplated scenario one in scenario three. [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't seem to be playing much with very interesting ideas in terms of how to differentiate themselves from a scenario to a scenario.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I took a glance at scenario like eight and nine. [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't seem to be doing a whole heck of a lot of either, but I'd be interested in seeing whether I could be proven wrong. [SPEAKER_01]: Like how the map sort of gets built as you go. [SPEAKER_01]: And we had some very interesting map tiles here that did different things that mixed up how you interact with the map. [SPEAKER_01]: Not, you know, out of this world things, but, you know, breaks it up a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's maybe the third never game. [SPEAKER_01]: Ever this. [SPEAKER_00]: Normally it's science fiction then deep sea. [SPEAKER_00]: They're going to reverse the trend. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be deep sea then into average ice. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I could get behind a space theme then never. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking myself into it. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: That is a never deep sea.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm going to take a brief break to pay some bills. [SPEAKER_00]: And we're back. [SPEAKER_00]: Now onto the news and why it doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_01]: So Covenant is going to be coming out designed by German P. Malen.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's designed some games that we enjoy, like Sabica and Batucco. [SPEAKER_01]: He's also put out a game recently called Mennefer. [SPEAKER_01]: Let me have him try yet, but soon will. [SPEAKER_01]: And Covenant, the graphic design in the art, looks fantastic. [SPEAKER_01]: Your dwarves. [SPEAKER_01]: Mark loves dwarves. [SPEAKER_01]: And then we're building stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a great deal of affection for human dwarves. [SPEAKER_00]: Fantasy dwarves not so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, I'm looking forward to trying it. [SPEAKER_00]: I've liked all his works of fire. [SPEAKER_00]: Covenant. [SPEAKER_00]: So for years, Eric Lang has been teasing his expansion to blood rage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the blood rage property, along with all of the other Eric Lang properties under Coleman, you're not with specifically, we're talking about rising sun. [SPEAKER_00]: onke and the quest games have been acquired and now there's the announcement that Blood Rage Valhalla, which is the expand the loan to Blood Rage, will see the light of day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eric Lang says it's kind of a pseudo sequel in that you could like play Blood Rage and then play Blood Rage Valhalla immediately thereafter. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I am very enthusiastic about Blood Rage. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a very cool game. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a big fan of it, wish you could hit the table more. [SPEAKER_00]: Locals seem to have sourd on blood rage to a significant extent. [SPEAKER_00]: I am not among them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm very keen to see what Velhalla does. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm cynical. [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm all about this. [SPEAKER_01]: Just about this. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Because we now have this new company that has the rights to blood rage. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: And they look at this. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, it's an expansion. [SPEAKER_01]: And so just the people who are the old blood rage will probably buy this.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's not gonna make us very much money. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's make it a whole different game. [SPEAKER_01]: So even the people that own blood rage will now buy this full priced game and we'll make more money. [SPEAKER_01]: This is how I look at it. [SPEAKER_00]: are they jumping on a cigar? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they do it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man. [SPEAKER_00]: You see? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: These are these are nineteen, twenty's gangsters.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a tycoon games. [SPEAKER_00]: Tycoon games is the company that's acquired the rights from coming. [SPEAKER_00]: They're not. [SPEAKER_00]: Look. [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, did we update that? [SPEAKER_01]: Did we look to make sure because they could have changed their name again? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we've been recording. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's harsh, but fair.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look. [SPEAKER_00]: Eric Lang has been talking about for years how we had these ideas for a very substantial expansion that really fundamentally changed how the game is played. [SPEAKER_00]: I do not blame them for upgrading it into a kind of an expand alone. [SPEAKER_00]: And besides, oh no, I don't blame them. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: They're in this to make money. [SPEAKER_00]: I will start a business with the love of the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought this was their ability to that charitable endeavor to bring joy to the hearts of little children everywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I also respect the fact that given how long it's been since blood rage has been in active circulation, there's kind of a sense of obligation to reprint the base stuff too. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's a significant lift. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope it works out. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I like the product line, I like blood rage.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that blood rage was a good example of cooling or not working at their best because it was a series of functional albeit very attractive minis that added to the table presence considerably. [SPEAKER_00]: And the design was solid. [SPEAKER_00]: This is not something that could always be said for minis heavy stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: We sourd on cooling or not as years went on. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think back in their heyday, they did some good stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even later on, like, I'll stand behind on, going out of percent. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a fabulous game. [SPEAKER_00]: But that was kind of the exception of the rule near the tail end of things. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm less cynical. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm cautiously optimistic. [SPEAKER_00]: And apparently Adrian Smith is back to do the arts. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: That will be good. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're trying to get the band back together.

[SPEAKER_01]: Blood rage, Valhalla. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just like Black Sabbath getting everyone back together.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lastly, for me, there's a game coming out soon called Little Soldiers. [SPEAKER_01]: And you pretty well take your old school, Army Men, set them up on the table with dishes and glasses and fruit bowls, and off they go and fight each other. [SPEAKER_01]: It's, I hope, and it looks like it's more produced than it's not going to be. [SPEAKER_01]: So these are Army Men in a catering business of some kind? [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, he's, yeah, okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it looks like it's produced. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a won't be just this rule book where, you know, you're rolling a bunch of dice. [SPEAKER_01]: It looks like there's a card system. [SPEAKER_01]: It looks like it's a well integrated sort of system. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very much looking forward to it. [SPEAKER_00]: People have been trying to do robust tabletop ministers, rule sets for green plastic army men for a while. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a fertile field.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that anyone's done a really good job of it yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, so I gone. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right, Cohen. [SPEAKER_00]: Come get it. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're hearing about games. [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes good vibes only trends, rights are human rights, board game, jamboree. [SPEAKER_00]: So like, twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven in Kingston, Ontario. [SPEAKER_00]: Good news, bad news. [SPEAKER_00]: It's all that. [SPEAKER_00]: There are no more tickets left available.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you really want to come and you've got a good reason why you haven't bought a ticket yet. [SPEAKER_00]: So far, reach out. [SPEAKER_00]: We may be able to squeeze you in or at least put you on a waiting list in terms of cancelations because event break to the best of my understanding does not allow for waiting lists, but we can maintain one. [SPEAKER_00]: And so let us know. [SPEAKER_00]: But for all of you that have signed up for SwayCon, news to follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've got our codes of conduct coming out, just so you can know what to expect. [SPEAKER_00]: And we are going to be spending a little bit more time considering what games we want to play. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be looking to see whether there are any commissioners overlords or apotheosis of SwayCon that want to call in their favors and have me teach them a game. [SPEAKER_00]: SwayCon. [SPEAKER_00]: SwayCon. [SPEAKER_00]: Kingston, Ontario. [SPEAKER_00]: So that is the news.

[SPEAKER_00]: And why it doesn't matter, we are now moving on to our topic, which is set up and tear down.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm my first question for you Walker. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Which one do you hate more? [SPEAKER_00]: Set up or tear down? [SPEAKER_01]: Set up. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Why? [SPEAKER_01]: Just because it's not done properly. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not written properly in the rule book. [SPEAKER_01]: It puts you in a confusing state or if the other players look as though you're confusing.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_01]: They see it being confusing. [SPEAKER_01]: It already puts them off right right from the beginning. [SPEAKER_00]: I hate tear down more. [SPEAKER_00]: Really? [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, here's why. [SPEAKER_00]: You have nothing to look forward to. [SPEAKER_00]: And at least a badly written setup, you can then look to see how the game works and get some guidance about how to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: Tear it out and usually you're on your own.

[SPEAKER_00]: You start to have to make decisions about how to organize things from a like a top-down perspective. [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes that's easy, but sometimes that's really hard. [SPEAKER_00]: Mostly though it's that you don't have anything to look forward to. [SPEAKER_00]: Enjoy that. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the grunt work. [SPEAKER_00]: There's no game left. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just, oh, now there's all this stuff over.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that makes me the most happy, you know the thrill of bailing, are you familiar with this? [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes there's nothing more pleasurable than just canceling something. [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, on rare occasions, and I talked about this in the context of Kthu-lu-de-me-dai, when Louie's like, oh, you could just leave the game here, and we could play the games, we were great, and then I'm like, already at the door.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't have to, I don't have to put everything away. [SPEAKER_00]: It's also that, [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things we've been talking about over the course of setup is that many hands make for light work. [SPEAKER_00]: In a lot of games, it's so much easier to delegate tasks for setup than it is for tear down. [SPEAKER_00]: It is so much easier to be like here, shuffle the stack of cards than it is to be like, all right, here's how everything is going to be organized.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I vastly prefer setup to tear down. [SPEAKER_00]: I think our group has a down pretty well. [SPEAKER_01]: I think when you tear down comes, we've sort of got a system down and it seems to work fairly well. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's weird how when it comes time to tear down the game, like the final score is announced, you know, like a four or five player game, there was often not always, but there's that one person who's like, that was great thanks and leaps.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is not pro social behavior. [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm talking about? [SPEAKER_00]: You've experienced this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: I can think of a couple people in Kingston that are more prone to this than others, but it's just a thing that recurs. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not good. [SPEAKER_00]: It's bad. [SPEAKER_00]: It's bad. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's part of the game. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have some historical notes.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are not representative, and it's not fair, but I think it might be a bucket of a vibe. [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_00]: because you and I are looking forward to trying a game called Trans Galactica. [SPEAKER_00]: This is by Danielle Tashini, an Italian designer that who's done some good work. [SPEAKER_00]: And looking at Trans Galactica, the rule book struck me as very representative in a number of ways, to your contemporary medium-weight euro.

[SPEAKER_00]: The setup is fourteen steps for general setup and twelve steps for personal setup. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a story. [SPEAKER_01]: This is after you've put all the stickers on, which is ridiculously substantial. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, this is after like, you know, general setup like assembling dials for some games or putting on stickers or punching all the components and sorting them, of course. [SPEAKER_00]: This is an average game.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to assemble these at a different question entirely. [SPEAKER_00]: That's completely exogenous to set up, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I have a strong sense that things weren't always this way. [SPEAKER_00]: So I decided to pick some unfair comparison sets. [SPEAKER_00]: Honsatutonica has five steps for general setup, three steps for personal setup, and the setup instructions constitute two thirds of a page.

[SPEAKER_00]: To be it, even less fair, I looked at the rules for tiger's and new phrase. [SPEAKER_00]: The latest version, the one that was done by Wind River slash fantasy flight slash slash slash three steps for setup, half a page. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's getting worse, I think. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's fair to say it's getting worse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's all, I think it's also getting worse in the sort of Lasserta slash fell slash Italian master's sphere of Euro design because splatter games, although heavy and elaborate, don't tend to be that big on setup conditions sometimes. [SPEAKER_00]: It's weird. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, well, we'll get into this, but like, [SPEAKER_00]: If it is the case that you have some sort of card organizer for a food chain magnet, it's not a big deal. [SPEAKER_00]: It isn't a huge deal.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I have very few specific examples, more just general, sure examples. [SPEAKER_01]: And then mostly just kind of like two games that one that does everything very well, which will be shackled in base. [SPEAKER_01]: And one that does things very badly, which will be [SPEAKER_01]: great Western Trail New Zealand. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, geez, those are two good examples.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, similar weight games, both released in the past few years, similar kind of design EDM in a number of fashions, but yes, yes, so go on. [SPEAKER_01]: So the first one is not every point corresponds to these games. [SPEAKER_01]: My first thing I've written down is just too many decks of cards. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, say if it's a deck builder or whatever it is, you know, you have [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we need fourteen piles of cards and they all need to be shuffled.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great Western Trail New Zealand does do this. [SPEAKER_01]: You have like so many you have to first you have to make they've added deck building into Great Western Trail. [SPEAKER_01]: So now you have to decide which subset of cards you're going to have and then you've got to [SPEAKER_01]: You know, get those star cards out, deal those cards out, get those in their decks. [SPEAKER_01]: Give them give another set of cards, little symbol modifiers.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like a barrel, a wheel and something else about all. [SPEAKER_01]: And then you have to get your your sheep deck ready and then your personal cards ready and [SPEAKER_01]: And not only that in the organizer, they don't really put give you spots for all these. [SPEAKER_01]: They give you spots for cards, but yeah, just sort of get them in there because, you know, they're not gonna line up right.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so now you have to sort all these cards and then get them ready awful. [SPEAKER_00]: I have here written in all caps. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a term that I've invented. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a medical term. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a sense of gloom, angst, and dread associated with the prospect of setting up a game with many, many decks of cards. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: It is my German pronunciation is not great, but it is Dersuchlin. [SPEAKER_00]: to Schuflen.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Schuflen, it is a sensor. [SPEAKER_00]: So the biggest example for me actually, I think of this, is actually a salton domerock. [SPEAKER_00]: I love a salton domerock. [SPEAKER_00]: It has so many decks of cards. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's something about shuffling decks of cards, especially a different sizes of decks of cards, where the first one, okay fine, I'm shuffling, I'm shuffling the second one, so I go, okay, I'm shuffling more cards.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the time I'm shuffling the fifth deck of cards, I am ready to give up. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it seems like one of those things where my enthusiasm just drops off a cliff. [SPEAKER_00]: This is really one of those areas where many hands make for light work. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is like, here, here's nine decks of cards, shuffle them all individually. [SPEAKER_00]: And one of it, this is so strange. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if anybody else experiences this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know if this is something that is evocative to you, listener. [SPEAKER_00]: There's something about shuffling repeated decks of cards where the weight of not knowing when a deck has been shuffled really starts to weigh on me. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not something I ever think about if I'm shuffling a single deck. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think about it a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: But by the time I'm shuffling the third or fourth deck, I'm like, I don't know, how shuffled is a deck?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is this, do I need to keep shuffling? [SPEAKER_00]: I have so many more decks I have to shuffle. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, and then they're shooflin sets in. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole deal. [SPEAKER_01]: Next one is too many modules or too many expansions or too many things. [SPEAKER_01]: When you open up a box, I really wish the rulebook would say, here's how you play the base game. [SPEAKER_01]: This is what you need.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is what we suggest you use as your babies first module. [SPEAKER_01]: And here's a list of modules that don't quite work together, so don't play these together. [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, here's the base game and maybe try these one or two things first. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's one of those things that Chackleton-based does, if exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: If anything, I meant to comment on this before.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think Chackleton-based needed to be a little bit more emphatic about its recommendation for your first play. [SPEAKER_00]: Because we've all been lied to by rollbooks before. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, look, in this incredibly simple-tiling game that can be played by six to eight-year-olds. [SPEAKER_00]: No shade. [SPEAKER_00]: I love a lot of Italian games in six to eight-year-olds.

[SPEAKER_00]: We strongly recommend for your first few games until you really know things not to play with asymmetric boards on my app, forget it, and we do that in our first play, and we don't, and it's all fine. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember in some of a lot of kvoddles games. [SPEAKER_00]: There's an extra level of emphasis that specifically says, look, I know that other games tell you this, but we really mean it for your first play. [SPEAKER_00]: Do it this way, guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they really should have done that in shackled space. [SPEAKER_00]: I think because of you commented on the negative experience you had with your first play at warm boys, merciless hands. [SPEAKER_00]: That was cruel. [SPEAKER_00]: That fierce tyrant from the Maritime's, you know, because [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't play with babies for a shackleton. [SPEAKER_00]: Just another thing that shackleton does really well, though, in terms of managing all the modules.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this, I think, is one of the reasons why you're holding it out as a great example is it has the little tuck boxes. [SPEAKER_00]: Every module comes in its own tuck box. [SPEAKER_00]: So you look at the corporations say, OK, we're playing with corporations A, B, and C, tuck box A, tuck box B, tuck box C. There you go. [SPEAKER_01]: And it doubles down on that because then you, they also have a little sheet for each of those tuck boxes.

[SPEAKER_01]: You hand it out to people and they'll be a setup thing right at the top. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, [SPEAKER_01]: You are going to set up this corporation. [SPEAKER_01]: You'll set up this corporation and you set up that corporation. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's all there. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really, really well done. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember back when introducing empty baggies into a game with some revolutionized. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, they give us spare baggies.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's endemic. [SPEAKER_00]: And now we're seeing more and more games come with talk boxes. [SPEAKER_00]: when it makes sense and to help you with organization. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's wonderful. [SPEAKER_00]: I was very surprised to see that seven empires came with a whole bunch of boxes to hold components.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, they didn't go the extra mile and now you have all these boxes of the lids and so you have to keep the box horizontal if you ever stand it up, everything's going to fall apart. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's still progress. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's very helpful and very useful and more and more games can do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an interesting thing that you may, it's interesting that you pointed out the separate setup sheet because I was always of two lines about this for some games. [SPEAKER_00]: Matt Gertz for a long time and is in all of his games had a separate setup sheet. [SPEAKER_00]: So the rules that didn't talk about setup and there was just the separate setup sheet. [SPEAKER_00]: But his games as a rule are sufficiently simple that you don't really need that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do wish that more complex games would do that more frequently though. [SPEAKER_01]: I wish they had a both. [SPEAKER_01]: It's the exact same sheet that's in the rule of that. [SPEAKER_01]: Fair enough is a sheet so then [SPEAKER_01]: So then while you're looking at rules and or helping set up, someone else has the set up sheet and it's all working together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is especially true if there's information in different sections of the rulebook that relate to set up like the one of the the biggest pains of setting up cerebria the inside world is it's got a very good insert at least in the version that I've got it's got a little lovely plastic tray and that help it's not drowning in different forms of currency, but it's got a couple

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you just set up the tray and there you go that that simplifies three or four different steps. [SPEAKER_00]: But if you're going to play in Seribria, everybody starts with their own starter deck. [SPEAKER_00]: And unless you use the deck construction rules with new players or not in the position to understand, you then have to go to a separate section of the rulebook that lists out the starting decks and there's only one copy of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it just goes around the table one at a time. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, everyone picks out the specific starting cards. [SPEAKER_00]: It's probably my biggest misgiving about the set up of Saribria, which given that it's a really, really complicated game, and the rest of setup is pretty straightforward, is a bit of a sticking point.

[SPEAKER_00]: If they had separate setups information, that at least would give the ability for more people to do it once, and I wouldn't be flipping between page five and page twenty while doing setup, which is obnoxious. [SPEAKER_01]: So I have a bunch of stuff that's going to have to skip it later on, but because I'll put it all in one is the main board. [SPEAKER_01]: When you open up the box, the main board should be on top.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not only that when the main board is double sided, it should be at the top of the setup exactly how they're labeled. [SPEAKER_01]: which side is which side and which side you will need to play. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the number of times when a manual says layout the game board for the appropriate number of players based on what it says on the game board, it's like where on the game board. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, where's Waldo? [SPEAKER_00]: They go something hidden it somewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: You go hunt it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course, then they don't want to make a prominent because you don't need it except for drawing setup, but it's so often the case that it's never shown in the rulebook where the symbol is, it's wild. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: hate it. [SPEAKER_00]: I hate it too. [SPEAKER_00]: I hate it so much. [SPEAKER_00]: I forgot about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everything I hate is when [SPEAKER_01]: They not only like when double listing things, I know you want to save on paper or have the rule book shorter and sometimes redundancy leads to confusion but go on. [SPEAKER_01]: It's true, but I want all of the components that are in the box listed under components and then if you want to list the solo components again separately in the solo area, that's fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be looking at these bags and wondering what they're for [SPEAKER_01]: only to, you know, go to page ninety seven where the solar rules are and say, yeah, all these are solar components. [SPEAKER_00]: So often we just have to engage in process of elimination. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is a piece. [SPEAKER_00]: I've read the the main multiplayer rulebook front to back. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a piece that makes no sense to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I must therefore assume that it is for the solar version, which is easy enough, but it's obnoxious to do exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Like good trays can make all the difference, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So the endeavor, all the the burnt island versions of endeavor have organized all the buildings are all the employees in a [SPEAKER_00]: marvelous tray. [SPEAKER_00]: You made the observation just today that Endeavor Deep See actually has an environmentally friendly tray.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's made at a cardboard, not plastic. [SPEAKER_00]: Great for that. [SPEAKER_00]: The new edition of Comet organizes all the power trays, all the power tiles in trays as opposed to the earlier versions of Comet where we had to buy things like coin sleeves to organize in that way because otherwise it's just a nightmare. [SPEAKER_00]: We're not talking about piles of things that get to be shuffled.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's obnoxious enough when you've got seven different kinds of tiles each of it need to be sorted and shuffled. [SPEAKER_00]: That's bad. [SPEAKER_00]: But when you've got a display of twelve unique things, multiply it off of three or four different types that all need to be laid out. [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, you give me specialized components to organize that. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be in serious trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the same thing with [SPEAKER_00]: Food chain magnet. [SPEAKER_00]: You need, there's a burgingy accessory that you can get, which is just an accordion thing that fits in the box top that allows you to organize all the employee cards. [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, you have to put out like twenty piles of cards. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a pain and eats up so much table space. [SPEAKER_00]: It gives me a headache just thinking about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have set me up player bags properly. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's something I enjoy doing it. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing it right. [SPEAKER_01]: So when, you know, the game set up, this person likes to play these colors. [SPEAKER_01]: I just throw the whole bag. [SPEAKER_01]: Everything they need is in that bag. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they dump it out. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they don't know where it goes, but at least they have it.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're not like opening up several different bags and dividing stuff up. [SPEAKER_01]: And New Zealand does this where they have little spots in the insert where all these different tokens go, but all you're going to do is pull them out and give one to each player, whereas you could have just given them a bag. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and they would have had it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many inserts with a like, well, we'll put all the components of this type together. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, you're gonna give one to each player. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't put them together, lump them together with the other player pieces. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't make me sort it a new time every time it happens, but that's a bigger insert problem. [SPEAKER_00]: Your insert should be focused on setup.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're gonna go to the bother of making custom insert, think about how a game is gonna be set up and let that organize your insert not in the other way. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my bold underlined twice size is insert suck.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I swear it's ninety percent yeah ten percent useful and I think that's being generous like I said an insert should be made so that the rule book and the board are on the top those are the two things that should come out of the box first you're not taking out all the components that fill the table now you can't get the board on the table [SPEAKER_01]: because there's so many components everywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I, I, the one bit of arts and crafts that I've ever done. [SPEAKER_00]: I call it the Dorkman cradle is this is especially useful for games with lots of different bags of minis. [SPEAKER_00]: We want to organize the minis in a lot of different ways. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is, this is what I do with Streetmasters most prominently is every faction is in a, a Ziploc bag. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you can't put the boards on top of minis because it'll crush them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what you do is you take one of those transparent pieces of plastic that is put on top of minis trays. [SPEAKER_01]: The bubbles. [SPEAKER_00]: Invert it. [SPEAKER_00]: Preferably a flat one, but it doesn't have to be flat one. [SPEAKER_00]: Invert it. [SPEAKER_00]: And then using a whole punch and ribbon, give it handles. [SPEAKER_00]: And then put all the minis on the tray.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what you do is you just pull out the tray that has all the bags of minis on it set it aside. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you have access to the bag of the boards and the cards that would otherwise crush the minis [SPEAKER_00]: and relieve indentations there. [SPEAKER_00]: And you go even go one step further, then here's your player color, here's everything you need in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You acquired, and at the time I was dubious, but it's really, really proven it's worth a full set of silicone trays and a whole bunch of different colors. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's really simple, I thought it would just be additional, additionally, burdensome for setup and tear down. [SPEAKER_00]: It's been quite the opposite, because while someone else is doing something, [SPEAKER_00]: You look over there. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, ah, there's a resource that's brown.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you start assembling the brown silicone tray and then it's there. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you don't have to worry about seven piles of things next to the board. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just poured into this lovely silicone tray. [SPEAKER_00]: And then when it comes time for tear down, all you do is you pick up the tray and it pours neatly back into the bag from which it came.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's actually turned out to be a time saver when I thought it was going to be a time sink. [SPEAKER_01]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: That's been your experience. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm more than happy with those. [SPEAKER_01]: They turned out very nice. [SPEAKER_01]: Next up, if there's something to be randomized, then it'll include a way to do that. [SPEAKER_01]: So many times, you'll say, you know, use a subset of this, or randomly do this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes there's a ton of things, or they're giant, and you're like, shuffling things that need to, can't be shuffled, and you're trying to randomize it in a weird way. [SPEAKER_01]: It should be just like, on a set of cards and it's like, okay, you know, shuffle these cards, deal them out, look all the stuff for this particular random setup is there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, you know, so it's got good randomizers, you've got great randomizers for, [SPEAKER_00]: street masters for a to a to a large extent you've got great map randomizers now for the clinic modules yeah absolutely you're right so a dominion is always had good randomizers right from the start they've they've had they've internalized this need for for modularity that way

[SPEAKER_00]: One thing that I find surprisingly difficult, this is something that I don't have a good reason for finding it this way, is when you have to take one card from a whole bunch of different piles. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you a couple of examples. [SPEAKER_00]: So in Spirit Island, when you're setting up the Invader deck, you randomly remove one card from each of the three piles and it's a graduated deck. [SPEAKER_00]: I find that the most burdensome aspect.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why. [SPEAKER_00]: Slightly more plausibly, you do the same thing in innovation. [SPEAKER_00]: Innovation has originally ten decks, now it's got eleven. [SPEAKER_00]: And you, first of all, you have to shuffle each pile so that it's only ten cards each, but it's, I still find it burdensome. [SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's unless you're playing with expansions. [SPEAKER_00]: Every expansion you add adds an entire new set of ten or eleven new decks.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have a shuffle them each and you got to take one card from each of them [SPEAKER_00]: and then later them on to the score track. [SPEAKER_00]: For a simple game to set up, I find innovation shockingly burdensome to set up. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why. [SPEAKER_01]: I really like when everything is on the board. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, this is what I'm talking about when we're talking about games that have lots of [SPEAKER_01]: Decks of cards or piles of cards.

[SPEAKER_01]: I like when it's all on the board and there's designated spaces. [SPEAKER_01]: Then you know everything you need is there and where goes and where you need to look for it later. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sometimes you can't do it. [SPEAKER_01]: But when you can, I very much appreciate it. [SPEAKER_01]: And there'll be a picture of what the back of the card looks like. [SPEAKER_01]: So you know exactly what deck that is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Because that leads into the other thing. [SPEAKER_01]: I really wish in the rule books under the components. [SPEAKER_01]: They had pictures of everything in there. [SPEAKER_01]: Because they'll say, you know, grab X deck. [SPEAKER_01]: with no picture or anything, or have this token, but front they don't back. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Because so often they only show the back or they only show the front.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're like, what deck is this? [SPEAKER_00]: I can't quite place it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I have to bring up that dungeon game. [SPEAKER_00]: Darkest dungeon. [SPEAKER_00]: Darkest dungeon had so many decks of cards. [SPEAKER_00]: The backs looked almost identical. [SPEAKER_00]: And they did a such a bad job of differentiating. [SPEAKER_00]: There were so many problems with that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: But as that was pretty nightmarish.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which, that reminds me of a problem that a number of campaign games don't have. [SPEAKER_00]: They don't tell you either how to track things from a session to session, or because Dungeon did that a little bit better than most, or how to reset it to zero. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in the middle of the campaign, here's a quick description in the book somewhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of, it's kind of like a meta-terradown.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how you reset the campaign. [SPEAKER_00]: These are the cards you need and set them out this way, so. [SPEAKER_01]: I guess I wish they were with board managers. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I was reminded of that. [SPEAKER_01]: And next I have a couple of things for tear down. [SPEAKER_01]: All of that was for setup. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got two things about setup, one that I really, really like and one that I really, really hate.

[SPEAKER_00]: The one that I really, really hate is stuff here, stuff there. [SPEAKER_00]: So like Nostromo, Alien Fate and the Nostromo, you're told that at the start of the game, there are coolant tanks in the following five locations, and there's two pieces of scrap in the following five locations, and you're just hunting and packing through the board in the specific places. [SPEAKER_00]: The worst example of this though is station fall.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's just this list of things that start on the board. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a wrench over here. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a helmet over here. [SPEAKER_00]: That's even before the specific characters introduce specific things, but it's so many little individual things you need to put here there and everywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: The thing that I love and set up and it's completely irrational. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's not a completely rational.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's mostly irrational is when the box is part of the setup. [SPEAKER_00]: When the box is implicated in it, not even just because I appreciate that during the gameplay, it just makes me happy during the setup because I don't have to worry about where to put the bottom of the box. [SPEAKER_00]: So Niagara does this, boop does this, I school does this very well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Iron forest does this as well, although iron forest then runs a file of one of my least favorite aspects of setup, which is that you have to really squint to determine if your oriented things are oriented properly based on the setup anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: So I just love it when the box is implicated in the setup procedure itself. [SPEAKER_00]: So talk to us about tear down. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it brings into what you just said for tear down.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you take the top of the box and use it as a giant scoop and you just like run it along the table and just sort of flip everything in and then close the box and you're done. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't see what the problem is. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that reminds me actually of a very common problem. [SPEAKER_00]: I seem to do it more than most, which is mistaking the box top for the box bottom. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't even want to start off.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you very carefully said everything, everything just fits and you're like, oh, this actually a little bit more room than I remembered in this game with the box a little as well. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you realize that's because you sorted everything into the box top. [SPEAKER_00]: You just lid loaded. [SPEAKER_00]: You just lid loaded and you think you can take the bottom. [SPEAKER_00]: And then kind of smoothing you can't, it doesn't work, you have to start over.

[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, so one thing I have, there's two games I've done this for, and that's actually labeled the bags. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is very much eased the tear down. [SPEAKER_01]: I've got it for black forest, and I've done it for a leans, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Just put the, what's, I've done it more for black forest, even put the number of how many things should be in the bags.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you just throw them on the table, people just can grab a bag, or this is for that, and then you have to be X number of those things there. [SPEAKER_01]: I forgot to put that for setup. [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't listed here, but I forgot to read it. [SPEAKER_01]: I really wish when they said, you know, shuffle this deck and put it out. [SPEAKER_01]: I really wish they would always put the number of cards or whatever number of components that there actually is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just so you double check that you have the right deck. [SPEAKER_01]: And you have all of the hards of that deck or whichever anyway. [SPEAKER_01]: So back to that you list the bags people can just grab the bag and put what they're supposed to put in it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I've resorted to the label maker. [SPEAKER_00]: I think only for street masters.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, like those sprawling Kickstarter games where [SPEAKER_00]: You, they're all in storage solution isn't perfect and you have a whole bunch of expansions and there's just so much stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: You really have to be conscious of those things to facilitate both set up and tear down otherwise it's just going to be burdensome. [SPEAKER_00]: Just as a note, I think people need to know this about you Walker. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it says a lot about who Michael Walker is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Michael Walker is the kind of guy who has put a label that says label maker on his label maker. [SPEAKER_01]: as a joke. [SPEAKER_00]: You know what? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a hundred percent sure that it's a hundred percent a joke. [SPEAKER_00]: I am ninety five percent sure that it is ninety six percent a joke. [SPEAKER_01]: Lastly for tear down. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is what our group does.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it really helps with the process, is that we just tend to put everything in like piles. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like we have a player board. [SPEAKER_01]: We just start grabbing all our components and dumping them on the player board, as the beginning. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, there's a deck of cards. [SPEAKER_01]: We put a few face down. [SPEAKER_01]: Then everyone puts all of those type of cards there. [SPEAKER_01]: All those type of tiles there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, everything gets put in its own pile. [SPEAKER_01]: You dump everything that was on your player board into your player bag. [SPEAKER_01]: And then stuff gets put away. [SPEAKER_00]: I will say that despite the fact that I prefer set up to tear down, I find sorting cards, if anything mildly pleasant, and I find shuffling cards burdensome.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if there's lots of different cards, lots of different piles, I actually kind of enjoy the process if the cards are probably labeled, which most cards are, of just sorting them out, like, fifty-first states, the best example of that. [SPEAKER_01]: Even though it's a little mini print on the bottom, but you've put decks together and you're just like, left-right, left-right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, any deck building game, you know, even Zena Shift, which has a billion different types of cards, it's all laid out. [SPEAKER_00]: There's this tableau with all the cards, just sort them out a lot, put them back in the original bios. [SPEAKER_00]: There you go, easily done. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's one aspect of tear down that I prefer to set up. [SPEAKER_00]: I think mostly I just really hate shuffling cards. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not, I don't enjoy it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a way we need that auto-shuffler. [SPEAKER_00]: If I could find a good auto-shuffler that didn't scuff cards, I would buy seven of them, happily. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's going to do it for this week. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for joining us for so very wrong about games. [SPEAKER_00]: We appreciate you spending the time. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're interested in supporting free and independent board game media, you can find us on patreon.com slash swag.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can also check out our website, so wronggames.com. [SPEAKER_00]: We hope to see we get soon. [SPEAKER_00]: Say it all the time, but I desperately mean to take care of yourselves. [SPEAKER_00]: Take care of your hobby. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you rules, explainer. [SPEAKER_00]: Hope to see you again soon. [SPEAKER_00]: Peace! [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to sober and wrong about games, or gaming podcasts about board games produced by Michael Walker and edited by Mark Bick.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can find all our information at sowronggames.com. [SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to what's the city for allowing us to use their most excellent song FLS as our intro. [SPEAKER_00]: You can find them at what does it eat.com. [SPEAKER_00]: We hope to see you again soon and as always. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to be right to but remember you're so very well.