#369: Take That

[SPEAKER_02]: Hello everyone and welcome to so very wrong about games. [SPEAKER_02]: This is your podcast about board games. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to be talking about games this week and I'm going to be talking about games with the person I know best to talk about games with. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that is a proper sentence in English. [SPEAKER_02]: Michael Walker, how do you do that? [SPEAKER_02]: That's me. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's you. [SPEAKER_00]: Why is that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I said the name that's the best to talk with because you're practiced at talking over me in particular. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's probably the best. [SPEAKER_00]: Really? [SPEAKER_00]: This is how we're going to be leading in. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Starting already. [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty weak. [SPEAKER_00]: I understand. [SPEAKER_00]: It's all I got. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why you complete me. [SPEAKER_02]: I should have been talking over you as what I'm learning.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to be talking about what we reviewed last year in our as yet unnamed retrospective interest segment the Euras. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to be talking about the games we played last week. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to talk about the news and why it doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_02]: And then our topic for the week, which is something that is very, very fraught in the hobby and that is take that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, as yet unnamed of retrospective interest segment, the Uris, what we reviewed last year is interesting when you said Uris, and felt very much like a corporate president at a coal play concert.

[SPEAKER_02]: Take it by surprise. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: What did we review? [SPEAKER_00]: We keep sit, we keep sit current here at that so wrong games. [SPEAKER_00]: I know, obviously, I know what we reviewed exactly year ago. [SPEAKER_00]: But you're so prepared. [SPEAKER_02]: We had stopped the moment I start editing the podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: Walkers already researching for next week's episodes.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's how dedicated the experience has been. [SPEAKER_02]: So, by Matt Leecock and Mattel Manapate, we reviewed daybreak. [SPEAKER_02]: This is the CMYK crowdfunding call-up game. [SPEAKER_02]: about climate change and climate adaptation, exhaustively researched full of citations about a very pressing issue by one of the designers of pandemic.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've played a bunch of times since, and I eager to play it more, it is on board game arena as well, so it's a great way to try it out if you haven't played it already, because you can cycle through solo games very quickly on board game arena. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and especially since the actions that you take,

[SPEAKER_02]: are it's pretty free form it's you know this is the action phase everyone gets to do whatever they want with their cards and so forth and there are cooperative actions of course you can activate abilities to help out your colleagues but at the end of the day much of the time you're just managing your own energy and uh... decarbonization needs and i've said it before a number of times i really appreciate it when uh... well

[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate it when a game is transparent about its political framing. [SPEAKER_02]: But I will say that its political framing is one that accords to my political priors. [SPEAKER_02]: As somebody who obviously regards the threat of climate change being very serious, [SPEAKER_02]: Daybreak is a pro nuclear and b pro adaptation. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying that these are the exclusion of anything else. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying I'm not pooping one power.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not pooping solar power. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not pooping climbing down and energy needs and so forth. [SPEAKER_02]: But as somebody who finds it unfortunate that nuclear and adaptation often are undersold in the context of climate change technologies and tactics, I very much appreciate the daybreak integrated those a lot. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's often, it's one of those things where there's a newness bias, especially with technology.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, the new shiny thing. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, okay, well, there are some over-technologies. [SPEAKER_02]: And there's some things that are not even really technological at all, just about fundamental boring stuff, like painting your roofs and crap like that. [SPEAKER_02]: Which, in a creation, can really matter. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's need to be implied. [SPEAKER_00]: Or apply it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I like how it's packaged as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no plastic. [SPEAKER_00]: It's all environmentally friendly stuff in the box. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice touch. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we enjoyed Daybreak. [SPEAKER_02]: Very, very light, very approachable, a very free form in the sense of table building. [SPEAKER_02]: So, a lot going for it. [SPEAKER_02]: That is Daybreak by Matt Leecock and Mateo. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to pass a published by CMYK, twenty twenty three.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, and that's the game we reviewed exactly one year ago. [SPEAKER_02]: It is. [SPEAKER_02]: And now we're going to move on to the games we played last week. [SPEAKER_02]: Walker, what did you play last week? [SPEAKER_00]: So Mark a new Star Wars and limited set just came out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I decided to pick it up. [SPEAKER_00]: So because we haven't tried it yet. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a CCG as they say in the biz. [SPEAKER_02]: Is it a CCG or an LCG? [SPEAKER_02]: Or an ECG? [SPEAKER_02]: Ooh, so many letters. [SPEAKER_00]: So it would be a CCG because you can buy blisters. [SPEAKER_00]: So boosters, blisters, blind, blind packaging. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, blind, blinds, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's a CCG.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this particular set is Darth Maul and quite, quite on Jen. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's, cause it, what's interesting? [SPEAKER_00]: Unlimited Star Wars Unlimited does nothing new. [SPEAKER_00]: But what it does do is bring in all of the new stuff all into one game. [SPEAKER_00]: So you've got the instead of putting out land, you just put cards face down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: As mana has two different theaters has space and land that you're attacking in. [SPEAKER_00]: It also has a commander in the middle. [SPEAKER_00]: So you, you know, you develop your commander to a point that he comes out to the field. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything else is pretty well standard. [SPEAKER_00]: you get you actually wound the creatures here. [SPEAKER_00]: We were trying to think back.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could have sworn that you had to kill monsters outright magic. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty sure you do, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they heal at the end of everything. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's what I thought. [SPEAKER_00]: I was being not contradicted, but my partner didn't remember either. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty sure. [SPEAKER_00]: That's how magic worked, you know, twenty years ago when I played it last. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a fan of this, you know, here's a game with no rulebook kind of thing, because neither, they came separate boxes. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: And over the actual boxes, or over the large card boxes. [SPEAKER_00]: It was just a single box. [SPEAKER_00]: No, bigger than the deck itself. [SPEAKER_00]: There was also a free booster inside, which we hadn't opened yet, but it was just the cards. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no leaflet, no nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So on the computer, look up, you know, the actual rule. [SPEAKER_02]: If the price is reasonable, I was willing to give the new starter set for netrunner a pass, because of a compact and economic the starter set was. [SPEAKER_02]: It was very inexpensive, given a contemporary hobby market. [SPEAKER_02]: especially given the basically a fan creation that kind of made good. [SPEAKER_02]: And it was just a slipbox with the cards inside.

[SPEAKER_02]: In that context, I'm willing to give them a pass for the rules only being online. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd have to see more about the packaging to judge in the case of Star Wars unlimited though.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can get there are a starter boxes you can [SPEAKER_00]: get but they're always sold out and it's only like the earlier sets it came with the two decks in one box with a play mat and I shouldn't say it came with rules because now that I think of it I'm not sure but did come with play mats and other things so I'm gonna assume that there was a rule book. [SPEAKER_02]: Do you know what actually offensively the most of this model?

[SPEAKER_02]: The ones where they give you a printed and bound version of the quick play rules but for the full rules you have to go go online. [SPEAKER_02]: That is the biggest insult because we know that you could have put a book at there and you could have just put in more pages, but you decided not to. [SPEAKER_00]: So Star Wars on the Middies is done by Jim Kurt Wright, Tyler Perret, Danielle Schaffer and Jeremy Zwin. [SPEAKER_00]: And put it by fantasy flight games.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a ton, there's already like another set announced, more cards coming out. [SPEAKER_00]: My understanding is that it is unlimited. [SPEAKER_00]: completely unlimited. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing about the boxes that they came in is that the only way to get the cards out you'd have to destroy the boxes. [SPEAKER_00]: Really? [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's an antithet thing, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want, they don't want, and they want empty boxes sitting on the shelf. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: So, because not only are they missing cards now, they now they've sold an empty box to someone. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so you have to rip it right open to get the cards out. [SPEAKER_00]: So now we're going to keep it. [SPEAKER_00]: So now now I've had order a deck box for my Star Wars unlimited.

[SPEAKER_00]: So thankfully, those are. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks. [SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, those are dirt cheap now. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, stars limited. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm eager to show it to you. [SPEAKER_00]: It's got some interesting stuff going on. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad I got it. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: It's Star Wars. [SPEAKER_00]: It's Star Wars. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I remember Star Wars. [SPEAKER_02]: Remember? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I remember. [SPEAKER_02]: I remember.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, man. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, on the one hand, like a well-done, competent take seriously the gameplay innovations over the course of the past thirty years of CGGs is usually good for a laugh. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just, it really depends on, it's so seldom that I play something. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, ooh, I really want to go deep into this. [SPEAKER_02]: I want to figure out the meta. [SPEAKER_02]: I want to build a deck.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to consider what, what, yeah, from my one play, that was not there. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: It was more of a here's more of the same but just it's just everything done well like there's none of these like weird Corner cases that you'd fall into magic. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, where's that in the stack mark? [SPEAKER_00]: Did we start the stack yet?

[SPEAKER_02]: None of that stuff but so yeah to be entirely frank what I'd be more interested in doing is trying being the runner in net runner because so far I've only been the corp. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, is it every time you've taught everyone wants to be the the runner? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, pretty much. [SPEAKER_02]: Nice. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, now we've never been the core. [SPEAKER_02]: I've just never been the runner. [SPEAKER_02]: Now we both have sets.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe this will come to pass. [SPEAKER_02]: Sure. [SPEAKER_02]: Sure. [SPEAKER_02]: Now the Star Wars unlimited. [SPEAKER_02]: I got to play Steam Power.

[SPEAKER_02]: Steam Power is I'm going to use the world's train game just descriptively. [SPEAKER_02]: I realize the train gamers start to go into connipions once you start talking about what is and is not a train game. [SPEAKER_02]: That's a game about trains. [SPEAKER_02]: How's that? [SPEAKER_02]: Not necessarily a train game, but a game about trains. [SPEAKER_02]: It is so strange planes play it. [SPEAKER_00]: Is it there for a train game?

[SPEAKER_02]: Walker is a whole bunch of eighteen XX players that have already begun angrily writing replies and now you're on the radar too. [SPEAKER_02]: It's already too late for me, but you can escape Walker. [SPEAKER_02]: It is bizarre to describe the arc of Martin Wallace's career. [SPEAKER_02]: So, Martin Wallace is a longtime hobbyist designer. [SPEAKER_02]: He came from the sort of historical war gaming background.

[SPEAKER_02]: He also came from a bit of the train game or background, and he bursts under the scene with Age of Steam, and a whole bunch of other really sort of dense kinds of things. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, the whole situation regarding Age of Steam is a massive legal [SPEAKER_02]: Cluster. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to touch that with a ten-foot pull.

[SPEAKER_02]: But a lot of Martin Wallace's output about twenty years ago were things that were putting up through either Warfrog or Treefrog later and these were pretty broke edge-case-filled kind of obscure historical stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking about stuff like Liberté, I'm talking about stuff like Byzantium, even the non-historical stuff like a Soviet emerald. [SPEAKER_02]: And he was just known for doing those kinds of things for a long time.

[SPEAKER_02]: He had his devoted audience, not entirely unlike the coal worldly of his day. [SPEAKER_02]: Just in the sense of being somewhat niche, somewhat interesting topic choice, and often somewhat difficult to wrap your head around, especially if you were accustomed to lighter or euro fare. [SPEAKER_02]: They both had different evils, but in that sense, I think there's a strong comparison that can be made to the output of Martin Wallace and the contemporary output of coal worldly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, with Wallace designs, a new company, this is by my county third publishing arm that is essentially the Martin Wallace publishing house.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now he's publishing games that are entirely removed from his original of from twenty to thirty years ago, and he's making very, very high quality components in the contemporary sense, not in the old wooden sense, big light all over the place, linen naps, which I guess aren't necessarily high quality, highest quality would be neoprene, but he likes the little linen naps. [SPEAKER_02]: And we've seen bloodstones and now steam power, steam power is an incredibly simple train game.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is so far removed from the age of steam of it's not railroad tycoon, it's not interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not even cube rails frankly. [SPEAKER_02]: It is a very very very simple sort of connection. [SPEAKER_02]: Is it a cozy train game? [SPEAKER_02]: No, it's not cozy. [SPEAKER_02]: It's definitely a more in-depth and more train-e than something like ticket to ride. [SPEAKER_02]: That is absolutely the case.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if I were to put things on a spectrum, it's roughly the same rules density, roughly as some of your better cube rails games, but much less economical. [SPEAKER_02]: There's not really an economic system. [SPEAKER_02]: in steam power. [SPEAKER_02]: It is mostly about making the connections. [SPEAKER_02]: Whereas in a cuberal scheme, it's more about economic manipulation with the map dynamics serving the economic model in the case of steam power.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is very much the other way around. [SPEAKER_02]: It is the economic model in service of what is going on on the map in terms of connecting the red city with the white city. [SPEAKER_02]: So you can fulfill the red good to white city requirement and that gives you some Benny. [SPEAKER_02]: It was all right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, I found that the luck of the draw was vastly too consequential because it's mostly about completely these contracts that you're dealt out at the start of the game. [SPEAKER_02]: And one of the actions you can do is to get more contracts. [SPEAKER_02]: But one of the benefits that contract sometimes give you is getting more contracts or putting up more rails or putting out a factory, which are the other major things you're going to be doing with your turn.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you have the right things at the right time, [SPEAKER_02]: things really work in your favor and you can get all these efficiencies. [SPEAKER_02]: But honestly, I never really felt as though I was the master of my own destiny. [SPEAKER_02]: I just had these contracts out and it seemed relatively obvious what to go for next.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the winner of the game was the one who effectively just connected to more of victory point cities and other people didn't because there are some cities that don't deliver goods. [SPEAKER_02]: They just give you four or five victory points and it's divided amongst all the people that got there. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the map got pretty crowded. [SPEAKER_02]: with one exception, there was just one arm that happened to be one player went off by themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: Good for them, they made the right call, and that proved to be determinative. [SPEAKER_02]: And so it felt like a pretty unsatisfying dynamic when that many points can be driven either by the sheer luck of the draw from the contract, to when they come out, how they come out, what cities are available, when they come out, et cetera, as well as well are other people gonna make the effort to come develop and connect to these points cities that I've already connected to.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's not great. [SPEAKER_02]: So it was okay, but I will acknowledge that there is a reasonable amount of game for a pretty simple rule set, but when compared to an obvious comparison set, namely Q Braille's games, there's not even close. [SPEAKER_02]: So comparing steam power to something like Wabash Cannonball or Irish gauge, there's just no comparison. [SPEAKER_02]: I would play Irish gauge or Wabash Cannonball.

[SPEAKER_02]: any day of the week over steam power and I didn't really think that it introduced anything really clever or new the components are really pleasant like these bake light train tracks as well as plastic locomotives we played with the box version the plastic was really cool everybody had their own kind of weirdly retrofustristic looking train pieces even though the map we were playing [SPEAKER_02]: on was late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't tell you exactly anyhow. [SPEAKER_02]: I got to say the whole train. [SPEAKER_02]: It's taken on train gaming as I say very much more in the ticket to ride kind of style albeit more in depth. [SPEAKER_02]: That's just not what I'm looking for anymore frankly. [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't find the economic modeling of age of steam particularly enjoyable to interact with but it was fascinating and I don't find steam power very interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: So [SPEAKER_02]: All told it was all right. [SPEAKER_02]: As an intro, weight game is okay. [SPEAKER_02]: You just want to connect cities and do train stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: That's all right. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a next step up from tickets to ride, I guess. [SPEAKER_02]: So steam power, Martin Wallace Wallace designs, twenty- twenty-four. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's true. [SPEAKER_02]: There's definitely an appeal to that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I absolutely liked all the chunky plastic and the chunky bake like that. [SPEAKER_02]: That was great. [SPEAKER_02]: And honestly, if they made a super chunky, super satisfying version of some of the best cube rails games, I would happily make the upgrade frankly. [SPEAKER_02]: Although I do kind of appreciate the sort of ugly minimalism in a lot of cube rails games to be honest. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's steam power.

[SPEAKER_00]: I decided to pick up a version of spot it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So I was shopping on the online, and I saw a blue-y addition. [SPEAKER_00]: I had a feeling I played spot it many years ago, and my granddaughter loves blue-y. [SPEAKER_00]: So there were good things about this blue-y. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I've heard parents talk about how blue-y is surprisingly good. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it doesn't melt your brain like other children's shows do.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, and it's not like that. [SPEAKER_02]: Incredible, anti-Christ Kiu. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And when you place spotted, you always got to remember to step a little bit to the left because then the math vortex won't suck you in because it's because spot it does this weird thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's this giant deck of round cards and somehow they've mastered out that when you flip to them over of the twenty five shapes that are on the cards, only one of the match. [SPEAKER_00]: So no matter what two cards, it's going to have one image on it that matches. [SPEAKER_00]: Huh, and you know, I'm sure we're going to get a message. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, Mike, it's an easy math mate. [SPEAKER_00]: You take that. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Good job, geek.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have Mr. Swirly to introduce to you too. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my goodness. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, right. [SPEAKER_02]: Wow. [SPEAKER_02]: Walker, this hypothetical exchange has brought you full jock. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a forty-year time vortex and you completely reverted to your football playing instinct. [SPEAKER_02]: This is wild. [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, spot it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very much like go splits where you're, you know, you flip a card and you got to, you know, see what's the same between the two cards. [SPEAKER_00]: And whoever points to it first is right, you score your flip, but there's all sorts of other mini games that I haven't looked at yet in the box. [SPEAKER_00]: I was surprised to see that there was like a whole list of variants that you'd play for. [SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned to see what they're about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So spot it, Blueie. [SPEAKER_00]: and you played it with your granddaughter. [SPEAKER_00]: I have not yet. [SPEAKER_00]: I just sort of got it out because I had been so long as I played spotted, it was like, you know, how does this work exactly? [SPEAKER_00]: How have they made it? [SPEAKER_00]: So no matter what two cards come up, there's only going to be one image that is the same on the card.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm sure there's a simple mathematical equation that will explain it, but there it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think your granddaughter would be able to play a spot? [SPEAKER_00]: I think so. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I think even not competitively, but I even think at this age of two, I think I'm going to try. [SPEAKER_00]: Just as a note, understand.

[SPEAKER_02]: Just as a ten-for-size twirl listeners, we are never going to have this podcast devolve into the kind of smug-posting you occasionally see on board giving me about, I just played K-list with my three-year-old daughter, and it was great, and I don't understand why the children... Yeah, why does it say you're five to eight? [SPEAKER_01]: My two-year-old is this game. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: She was able to put down her copy of Warren P. Sloan up to play.

[SPEAKER_01]: He next acts with me, which great? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't understand why. [SPEAKER_00]: We had to stop early because we had to fulfill her college applications. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: That is spotted. [SPEAKER_00]: It is put out by blue orange games and designed by everyone.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm beginning to come around Walker to your perspective that on occasion it could run too long. [SPEAKER_02]: The length is a little bit variable based on where our cards are shuffled into various supplies and this is fundamentally [SPEAKER_02]: a sort of car-driven civilizational thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, there's a map, and it occupies much of the physical space of the game, but in Mosaic, mostly it's about the cards. [SPEAKER_02]: This is a tabloader.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just on the lookout for tabloaders that don't annoy me, the way a lot of the tabloaders of ten years ago felt very cookie cutter and derivative. [SPEAKER_02]: And I expect that it's one of the main reasons why I enjoy Mosaic in the way that I do. [SPEAKER_02]: There's precious little downtime, turns are lightning quick, [SPEAKER_02]: It's the kind of thing where everyone is constantly engaged because you're looking at the different card displays.

[SPEAKER_02]: They rotate through it. [SPEAKER_02]: Roughly the right level. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't see a whole lot of stagnation the way you do in a lot of other card games. [SPEAKER_02]: And you're just constantly engaged. [SPEAKER_02]: This particular session of Mosaic went a little over long. [SPEAKER_02]: It ended up taking around [SPEAKER_02]: Ninety to ninety five minutes, which is probably about fifteen to twenty minutes longer than a game of the zake wants to go.

[SPEAKER_02]: But as I say, the downtime was light and everyone felt engaged, which is very cool. [SPEAKER_02]: Now none of the cards you acquire. [SPEAKER_02]: tend to provide huge effect on the game.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot of that symbol matching and a lot of it getting the very thresholds of symbols because a lot of the points are going to be discouraged based on whoever is the first to get to six symbols of this or whoever's the first to found three port cities or whoever's the first to get to fifteen ideas production or what have you.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for a relatively straightforward strip down rough evocation of some of the sift tropes I find the feeling relatively unobjectionable and the gameplay very engaging and

[SPEAKER_02]: Glenn Drever is one of those designers who ever wants to allow, if he designed something precisely calibrated to my tastes, he's also done some stuff that's rather less successful, but of his recent stuff, I think that Mosaic and Rekun Tycoon are actually quite decent for what they're trying to evoke now. [SPEAKER_02]: Do you need the Deluxe version with the mountains of plastic and the incredibly huge blocks? [SPEAKER_02]: Probably not.

[SPEAKER_02]: Does it have a start player marker that is absolutely part of the recent trend of the start player marker, start player marker arms race, such that it's about eight inches tall? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you don't need that either. [SPEAKER_02]: But I too appreciate a good game of mosaic, and I was happy to get it back to the table. [SPEAKER_02]: That was mosaic, a story of civilization by Glendrover and forbidden games.

[SPEAKER_00]: Play the bunch of games of Tower Bricks. [SPEAKER_00]: This is designed by Simon Thomas and put it by Cosmos. [SPEAKER_00]: It was out in Europe last year and now it was available in North America. [SPEAKER_00]: This is just a weird sort of mix of decorum and the gang. [SPEAKER_00]: You're dealt out cards and you'll say on your card like no yellow brick can be side a red brick or your purple bricks cannot be beside a horizontal brick.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you're dealt this card that has a rule on it. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a bunch of bricks in the middle of the table and everyone can just sort of start building at the same time. [SPEAKER_00]: And when you're satisfied, you sort of put your thumb up and then people might move bricks around and then you have to move them back again. [SPEAKER_00]: And you just keep going until you hopefully finally get to where everyone's card is satisfied.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I suppose you'll get to a point where you just give up. [SPEAKER_00]: because yeah there's no time limit or anything so I guess you just either you make a mistake and you think you you're you're good and you reveal and it's like no you got it wrong there's like this brick is actually touching here and you got it wrong or you just give up it's like I can't figure out when everyone's card is so we'll just stop

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I sort of found that at two players, it doesn't shine as well as it does with more players because you have sort of less rules. [SPEAKER_00]: There's no, I think they don't want you to be overwhelmed with a whole hand of cards that you're trying to keep track of. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So you're even with two players not going to deal with a bunch of cards. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's always, you know, everyone gets one card and it slowly increases.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to win three rounds. [SPEAKER_00]: And I really enjoy it. [SPEAKER_00]: Especially at four, we streamed it. [SPEAKER_00]: If you watch our live stream, you'll see it at the end. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the second game we played. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a great little game. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad I picked it up. [SPEAKER_00]: Would you think of it, Mark? [SPEAKER_02]: I confess with two players I was a little disappointed.

[SPEAKER_02]: There wasn't really an impetus for me to try to make inferences as to what it is you needed. [SPEAKER_02]: I think only during that thorough round was I ever in a position even speculate because I just built something somewhat arbitrarily with my conditions. [SPEAKER_02]: you then added a couple blocks that didn't get in the way of my conditions at all, and that was it. [SPEAKER_02]: And you're done.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, there is the possibility, A, that being more interesting, as you say, with more players. [SPEAKER_02]: And so it happily tried it with more. [SPEAKER_02]: And B, there is a slightly more elaborated scoring system whereby you are incentivized to build more rickety structures that are both taller and less stable. [SPEAKER_02]: We were mostly just clustering things around the table as it were.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you get more points of people, something that's super tall and only has about two blocks at the base. [SPEAKER_02]: And so that might encourage us to engage in slightly more risky behaviors and or more elaborate constructions. [SPEAKER_02]: So as it is, base game only with two players, I didn't really think there was much to be done, but with more players, again, sort of push to try to make a guess as to what other people are messing with.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're always moving a purple block. [SPEAKER_02]: Can I try to guess what that means about what they need for purple blocks to have done? [SPEAKER_02]: or in situations where multiple people have a condition referring to the same kind of component. [SPEAKER_02]: So you have to try to reach a data on to where both of you can get to the right place while you're still messing with the same blocks. [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, I see potential.

[SPEAKER_02]: But with two players, I thought it was not nearly substantial enough. [SPEAKER_02]: Grand, it was only ten to fifty minutes. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's right. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. [SPEAKER_02]: It's about to come back at that. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you can see that there's not much there, but didn't, it's all we were tied into it for a very long. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, when I initially heard the pitch, I erroneously thought that it sounded a little bit like Zendo.

[SPEAKER_02]: The ice house classic, where someone is trying to articulate a rule and other people are trying to guess it. [SPEAKER_02]: But no, this was just a situation where all too often with the two players set up, all our cards were perfectly compatible with each other. [SPEAKER_02]: We just built something and we moved along. [SPEAKER_02]: Tower bricks. [SPEAKER_00]: have four different levels of cards, you mix them up powerly like, and like Mark said there's different ways you can play.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would definitely recommend it. [SPEAKER_00]: Check it out.

[SPEAKER_02]: I got to play Walk the Plank Deluxe Edition. [SPEAKER_02]: This is by Shane Steely and Jared Tinney published by Mayday Games in twenty seventeen. [SPEAKER_02]: This is the Deluxe Edition because it comes in a fancy tin and it has screen printed meatballs. [SPEAKER_02]: There's also an expansion which I'll get to later.

[SPEAKER_02]: Walk the plank is a pirate themed kind of sort of take that ish kind of sort of like bang without the deduction game because you have these action cards. [SPEAKER_02]: Every round you pick three action cards and they can resolve it in order. [SPEAKER_02]: But by the time the cards get to execute, probably the game status sufficiently different that your card will do something potentially unexpected or terrible.

[SPEAKER_02]: So as an example, your goal is to keep your pirates away from the island because the island represents you being dead. [SPEAKER_02]: You want to stay to stay on the safety of the ship. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's this plank between the ship and the island and the plank can vary in length between three and one spaces. [SPEAKER_02]: And you might say, okay, at the top of the round, I don't have anybody on the plank.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can play the card that shortens the plank, bringing it down from three to two, and one of them we find. [SPEAKER_02]: But by the time your card gets executed, all your pirates are on that third state of the plank and congratulations, they're all dead. [SPEAKER_02]: High drinks and wackiness. [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't enjoy this at all. [SPEAKER_02]: It was precisely of the kind of, I'm doing, I'm forced to do a thing and just see what happens.

[SPEAKER_02]: Whereby at least became slightly deterministic and interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: Once the field had been woodled down, which meant that all the other players had been eliminated. [SPEAKER_02]: And so once it's down to two or three players, you might start to be like, okay, well, if they play action, I play Y, then this other thing will happen, and you get a big, leave-a-gly libertolia feel in the sense that you're kind of sort of gas through the chaos.

[SPEAKER_02]: But as it is, I mostly felt the chaos. [SPEAKER_02]: And then the first player who gets eliminated, if you want, they can then play as the ghost, which is the little mini expansion. [SPEAKER_02]: And the ghost can't win, but keeps playing. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's just a spoiler. [SPEAKER_02]: I was the first one who's eliminated. [SPEAKER_02]: And I would say, oh, well, you could play as the ghost.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the ghost is just when I was sufficiently, I was almost disgusted at the structural idea of, yeah, you've lost. [SPEAKER_02]: And you're going to keep playing just as a spoiler. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't. [SPEAKER_00]: You got to play the participation ghost. [SPEAKER_02]: Something like that. [SPEAKER_02]: And not only was I sufficiently displeased with how the game itself worked, that I didn't want to play at all.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was also just, I didn't want to be a part of that particular expansion metric. [SPEAKER_02]: The next person who was eliminated, volunteered to be the ghost, but we just kept going anyway. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's fine. [SPEAKER_02]: Walk the plank is not my kind of game and I don't think it's executed very well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was very happy for it to be over such that I was actually happy that there was player elimination, even the normal way I would think that that would be a detriment. [SPEAKER_00]: Thomas Zoolish would make it a race with mascots or something. [SPEAKER_02]: Very, very, very different kind of game, but yeah, that would make it better, sure. [SPEAKER_02]: That's walk the plank, the lexidition.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the speel, the speel words were announced. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I showed a bunch of people, bomb busters. [SPEAKER_00]: This is designed by Ayashi Ayashi, same designer as Yokohama. [SPEAKER_00]: And it is put by a biggest speel. [SPEAKER_00]: And what you're trying to do is cut wires one through twelve until the person that has the red wires only has red wires left. [SPEAKER_00]: And as they're turned, they say I only have red wires and they reveal them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you've won. [SPEAKER_00]: You've played a lot more Hinabi than I have. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, would you compare this at all with Hinabi? [SPEAKER_02]: It is a little bit like Hinabi only in the sense that it is a cooperative game with deduction elements. [SPEAKER_02]: Gotcha. [SPEAKER_02]: Now the central conceit that really makes Hinabi sing is that you cannot see your cards.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the cards that you play [SPEAKER_02]: You have no idea what they are unless and until such time as players give you hints about them. [SPEAKER_02]: So other people are trying to inform your play as opposed to more conventional setup, which is what bombsters has, which is you know what all your wires are and you're trying to find ways to communicate to the rest of your teammates about what they are through subtle inference and guessing what they have.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, as it is, the way the numbers are set up, I found interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: So we were playing a three player game, and so effectively, though, these yellow wires, which mess with the setup, and there are two of three possible variations. [SPEAKER_02]: She said it up and said, okay, of these numbers, two of them were in play, and then the red numbers, which are super important, they can determine whether you win or lose.

[SPEAKER_02]: you said there are these two possible numbers that might be in play, and you laid them out. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I saw that I had the nine point five, which is one of the red wires. [SPEAKER_02]: And I gave me a whole bunch of information about what the play state was. [SPEAKER_02]: So for one, I knew that nobody else had a red wire. [SPEAKER_02]: I knew that the send point five wasn't in play. [SPEAKER_02]: And I did enjoy using that in a way to communicate.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like for example, the the part that I felt vaguely pleased about was there was a moment where I had to guess what was in chip the third's hand. [SPEAKER_02]: And basically, if I didn't know that the seven point five wasn't in play, it would have been a grossly irresponsible risk. [SPEAKER_02]: But I made it anyway, and I was hoping that that would give people enough information for them to know that I had the nine point five.

[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I very much enjoyed is right up my alley of the deductions. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, well, I have these three numbers. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what they have displayed. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's three, you know, they have three chits left. [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, you know, this must be that. [SPEAKER_00]: And that must be this, which means that is a seven. [SPEAKER_00]: That kind of stuff I love.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was a little unsettled by the frequency with which I had to make basically risky guesses. [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't see, we play another cooperative reduction game, which we'll talk about in just a second. [SPEAKER_02]: And there I feel like in a good cooperative direction game, like Honabe, [SPEAKER_02]: for example, which we didn't play this week.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like when you have to make an educated guess, it's because you have other exogenous reasons for risk acting in the risky behavior, largely due to time constraints, or because there's been a set of mistakes. [SPEAKER_02]: that have taken place often, again, somewhat relatedly because of inefficiency.

[SPEAKER_02]: In bomb busters, I felt like during many terms, whether it was the beginning or the middle of the end game, where I look around and say, okay, I don't think I'm missing anything. [SPEAKER_02]: I think I just have to take a risk. [SPEAKER_00]: Or from the several games I played, that one that we did play today was much different. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: It was a greater frequency of those risky guesses. [SPEAKER_00]: One hundred percent.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: If there were a situation where it was more deduction and less wild gambit, I think I'd be much more positive on bomb musters. [SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was okay. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd much rather play homie or paint the roses. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Spoiler alert. [SPEAKER_00]: We also played paint the roses. [SPEAKER_02]: We'll get to that in a second.

[SPEAKER_00]: So a bomb busters is like legacy or campaign either there's all these little tuck boxes that get to open and you got add stuff to the game. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there'll be I have no idea what's in them. [SPEAKER_00]: So I couldn't tell you I know we opened the first one and I'm guessing some of them have cards some of them might have stickers. [SPEAKER_00]: What those stickers do I will not say. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, there's special though.

[SPEAKER_00]: The stickers is a rule stick. [SPEAKER_00]: They're pretty fancy. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's bomb busters. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, somebody paint the roses.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's also a cooperative direction game. [SPEAKER_02]: This is, I think, a brutally difficult game of cooperative deduction. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I've ever won paint the roses. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't claim to be especially good at cooperative deduction games, but I've definitely won games of honeybee, and I've won more games of bombusters than I've won of paint the roses. [SPEAKER_02]: There you go.

[SPEAKER_02]: In paint the roses, every player has some sort of rule that the, let's be frank, motorously psychotic queen of, of hearts, [SPEAKER_02]: Once the garden to satisfy, it might be something very simple like I want yellow flowers touching purple flowers. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just color to color or it might be slightly more complicated because instead of color to color, it might be shaped shape.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want diamonds to be touching clubs or it could be hard-carn which case who knows all bets are off it could be anything touching anything. [SPEAKER_02]: And so you place a tile and then you just indicate how many times your rule has been satisfied and then you have to guess as to what someone's rules are. [SPEAKER_02]: Most of the time what happens is my natural conservatism causes us to lose, in addition to my being generally thick.

[SPEAKER_02]: because I always want to gravitate towards the easy ones, but the dynamic of Panther roses is every turn the queen is advancing. [SPEAKER_02]: And if Queen overtakes the Gardener pawn, you lose. [SPEAKER_02]: The only way you advance the Gardener pawn is by getting these rules correct with more difficult rules advancing you further. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you satisfy easy rules all day long, you're still gonna lose because the queen is gonna overtake you because she moves too quickly.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's one of the key problems. [SPEAKER_02]: I think one of the issues that we were playing again with Chip III [SPEAKER_02]: And he started off by pulling a hard rule when nobody had taken an easy. [SPEAKER_02]: And I just took it as axiomatically obvious that what you do is you open with one easy rule and everyone else takes mediums. [SPEAKER_02]: And Chip III just shrugged and said it in his inimical silence, like, let's go hard. [SPEAKER_02]: And it worked.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was, it was shockingly successful. [SPEAKER_02]: We made it to the last tile placement. [SPEAKER_00]: We did. [SPEAKER_02]: We had a fifty-fifty guess. [SPEAKER_02]: And we guessed wrong.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, again, [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes, in paint the roses, you make fifty-fifty guesses, but that's largely because time pressure, or you made a mistake because you didn't place a tile to give maximum information to your partners, or your partners didn't draw the maximum universe of inferences from the decision you made.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, well, no, you're sitting there vibrating with rage because they're failing to recognize that if you had had the other possibility on the fifty-fifty chance, [SPEAKER_02]: You would have placed the tile elsewhere giving them better information and they haven't realized that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's what I love about paint the roses.

[SPEAKER_00]: You look at your card and it says pink to pink and it's your turn and so you're looking at this display of four tiles and so you [SPEAKER_00]: You might have to be in trouble because it might not be any pink roses there. [SPEAKER_00]: But let's just pretend there's a pink rose there. [SPEAKER_00]: There might be even two. [SPEAKER_00]: So now you have a choice because now you have to look at the board and match it up with another pink flower that's out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you think, well, that's easy. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there's one or two. [SPEAKER_00]: But you have to look at the shapes as well because you're going to be doing cubes down and you're saying there's two matches. [SPEAKER_00]: But now you might have matched clubs or you might have matched spades.

[SPEAKER_00]: choose the right tile, put it in the right place, and also like Merck just said, give information of why didn't he place it somewhere else, or even take it different tile, or even take a different tile. [SPEAKER_00]: Love everything about it. [SPEAKER_02]: So you place the tile, someone's like, well, it could be pink to pink, that's two matches, but it could also be spade to spade.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, look, if it were spade to spade, I would have taken the other tile in place that they're gotten four matches and made it unambiguous, come on people. [SPEAKER_02]: But, [SPEAKER_02]: It sets into the nature of things. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Panther Rose is extraordinarily well done. [SPEAKER_02]: And it also has very satisfying big leg pieces. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, I think it's second only to Honobie of cooperative deduction games that I've played.

[SPEAKER_02]: I still prefer Honobie Honobie is a classic. [SPEAKER_02]: Honobie is a wonderful designer. [SPEAKER_02]: And I really like how Honobie works. [SPEAKER_02]: And it also has a presentation with big leg pals. [SPEAKER_02]: But Panther Rose is extraordinarily well done. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I wish we played it more because there's all sorts of modules in the box. [SPEAKER_02]: This is, again, this, I get into trouble with this all the time walker modules.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is a module. [SPEAKER_02]: This is a module, you attach the module to your ship over here and it's like, what's this guy talking about? [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'd really like to get into them. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think we tried one once and it seemed interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: But don't all of them make the game more difficult. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure. [SPEAKER_02]: I think over the module, I haven't seen many of the modules.

[SPEAKER_02]: Many of the modules make the game more difficult and given that I've never won the base game and beat the roses, that just seems a little too ambitious. [SPEAKER_02]: True. [SPEAKER_02]: But as I've just said, conservatism is one of my reliable character flaws. [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, who? [SPEAKER_00]: That's our whoop, who publishes pay throws again?

[SPEAKER_02]: If only they had done the helpful indication of putting the name of the publisher on the back of each and every one of the game tiles, so it's in your face the entire time. [SPEAKER_02]: North Star Games don't hide your light under a bushel. [SPEAKER_02]: Walker's more bothered about this than I am. [SPEAKER_02]: Walker has very strong opinions about cardbacks. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's worst card.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mind so much this because I really I had forgotten because you never even see the back of the tiles. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because they're in a bag most of the time. [SPEAKER_00]: In the bag and then you get something. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's not that a bunch of cards. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I hate it so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: On the topic of cardbacks, I don't share Walker's frustration with putting the name of the game or the name of the publisher on the back of the cards, but I do have a high degree of appreciation when a publisher or a designer would have you really put a lot of effort in making the cardbacks look very, very nice. [SPEAKER_02]: So the historical pandemic variance as a rule tended to do this very nicely. [SPEAKER_02]: Like pandemic, I'm Buria has this lovely Bosaic work.

[SPEAKER_02]: Relating to more Spain and all on all the cardbacks lovely different designs fall of Rome does the same thing. [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's a whole deal. [SPEAKER_02]: I played Kinfire Delve Scorns Stockade so Kinfire Delve is a series of solo or cooperative card games and there's a variety of different versions of them and you can mix and match these characters from one

[SPEAKER_02]: in the enemy deck of another, anyway, scoens, stocked as the one I tried. [SPEAKER_02]: These are all designed by Kevin Wilson, part of incredible dream studios. [SPEAKER_02]: Incredible dream studios has done a gentle rain and has had a whole bunch of kindfire stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: There's also the kindfire chronicles cooperative board game, which I've kind of got half in mind to try anyway.

[SPEAKER_02]: Kevin Wilson, not entirely unlike [SPEAKER_02]: Glenn Drummer, or even Martin Wallace, has had a bit of an interesting career arc. [SPEAKER_02]: In terms of now, he's designing much more simple games, much more rules-light compared to his old fantasy flight stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: But Kinfarad Elv has gorgeous cardbacks. [SPEAKER_02]: In point of fact, all the character decks have a beautiful portrait of the character, as well as embossed foil details.

[SPEAKER_02]: In terms of a lot of the elements, every card is a foil card. [SPEAKER_02]: It's really cool. [SPEAKER_02]: It'd be cool even if the art worked really well done, but it is really well done. [SPEAKER_02]: I really appreciate that. [SPEAKER_02]: And the design of the enemy cardbacks is also super cool. [SPEAKER_02]: There's just a lot of really quality graphic design on the cardbacks and in general, for Kinfardell that I appreciate. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it's at its best solo.

[SPEAKER_02]: As a solo experience, I found it very mechanical and not particularly satisfying because at any given moment, you have four challenge cards that you can attempt. [SPEAKER_02]: They could be enemies, they could be traps, they could be puzzles, whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: But they just have a number that you have to get to. [SPEAKER_02]: You're allowed to play a card from your hand. [SPEAKER_02]: That card has to match the color of the thing you're attempting.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so your target number might be something like nine. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I play my two. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you're allowed a couple of boosts, discard other cards to boost the value, then you roll these dice that add a certain value. [SPEAKER_02]: And you either get to the value or you don't. [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a success condition if you meet the value and a failure condition if you don't.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you just do this until you've gone through the entire enemy deck and then you fight the boss. [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of the abilities, a lot of the effects, a lot of the even the damage conditions that apply to your hero, are more interesting with multiple players. [SPEAKER_02]: As the single character playing single, just one character didn't really do much for me. [SPEAKER_02]: It felt very, very dull in terms of hand management and just sort of okay, well, what's in my hand?

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have any greens, okay, so I'm not attending the Green Challenge, okay, here's the right one. [SPEAKER_02]: What's my best value for combat? [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, here we go. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, a dialogue failed. [SPEAKER_02]: I ticked out my life bar one. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let's try it again. [SPEAKER_02]: and just over and over and over again. [SPEAKER_02]: And so even though I found a lot of visually interesting, I didn't find the gameplay particularly compelling.

[SPEAKER_02]: With a partner with somebody else playing, I think it would probably be more interesting in terms of the abilities. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure this is where I'd want to go, but this is at least an interesting counterpoint to another obvious comparison, which is to say one-deck dungeon, which was designed primarily as a solo experience. [SPEAKER_02]: And the multiplayer is kind of the variant version. [SPEAKER_02]: Can't fire Dell if I get the opposite vibe.

[SPEAKER_02]: It seems to have been designed for two player. [SPEAKER_02]: And the solo version, it just kind of deals more like an afterthought, especially in terms of how a lot of the abilities are done. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I might be inclined to try it to player. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a competitive space.

[SPEAKER_02]: and there are lots of things we want to get to, but if there were someone who wanted a very simple dungeon-e type of thing and you're going to be playing with two, then Kinfire Delve is probably okay, but as I say, solo player, I found a pretty repetitive and dull and mechanical in nature, even though I very, very much appreciate the cast and the artwork and the graphic design and a lot of the elements. [SPEAKER_02]: So that is Kinfire Delve, specifically Scorns, Starcade.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, Aboria from last year was pretty psychedelic, and it's color scheme.

[SPEAKER_00]: Enter Trans Galactica. [SPEAKER_00]: Designed by Daniel Thesini and put it by Devye Games. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a very colorful game. [SPEAKER_00]: And it has tracks, lots of tracks. [SPEAKER_00]: So, in Trans Galactica, lots of tracks. [SPEAKER_00]: And all the tracks have it like an action space. [SPEAKER_00]: And then when someone takes that action, everyone gets to go around the table and they decide whether or not they want to follow that action.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're going up political tracks, you're going up technology tracks, you're moving around this galaxy map and populating planets, making your your mining track better. [SPEAKER_00]: and you're improving your income. [SPEAKER_00]: Lots going on. [SPEAKER_00]: This game has already like sort of a predetermined bad rule book. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna have Mark talk about more of that when it's his turn. [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it seems though there might be something there and I'm willing to give it a try. [SPEAKER_00]: And believe it or not, there's one or two stickers that you have to apply first.

[SPEAKER_02]: So almost every component [SPEAKER_02]: is sticker and I will say I don't I don't necessarily agree that the color scheme is particularly psychedelic I just really think that there's a lot of visual inventiveness going on like even really really good space games like I don't know like [SPEAKER_02]: quantum, for example. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you look at the different factions and they all look like pretty standard sci-fi business.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to say that transgalactica burns at it. [SPEAKER_02]: It breaks into a new ground, but Walker was playing the purple faction and they look fabulous. [SPEAKER_02]: They look like they know how to good time. [SPEAKER_02]: And my faction in the other hand looked like a whole bunch of vaguely minion-inspired, weird robot designs. [SPEAKER_02]: And so there's a lot of visual interest to be had in terms of the stickering. [SPEAKER_02]: Although it's purely optional.

[SPEAKER_02]: Walker did even the resources. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, even the resources get stickers. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's definitely you definitely get this is not a small-ish Divier box game. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not like Red Cathedral or like the White Castle or what have you. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a normal-sized box that they crammed to the gills with wood all of which is to be stickered. [SPEAKER_02]: It's wild. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's lots to do. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what's up with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Would you think of gameplay in general? [SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking of your comments not in frequently after certain medium or medium heavy heroes, which is the rhetorical question, what about this is fun? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was going to say that later. [SPEAKER_00]: I was going to ask you the same thing. [SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't really feel any particular. [SPEAKER_02]: This is a standard sort of kitchen sink, hero.

[SPEAKER_02]: you've got a whole bunch of tracks and mission cards to fulfill and text that you can unlock that don't really do anything particularly cool and military track that's entirely abstracted that's just a precondition for something else and a whole bunch of whatever and the core action selection struck me as relatively novel because it is very difficult [SPEAKER_02]: to do anything except by the primary action associated with that track.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you want to increase military, there is one main action that is associated with that. [SPEAKER_02]: So if somebody takes that, you can't go there for the rest of the game. [SPEAKER_02]: Your only option is to follow. [SPEAKER_02]: And you have to do it right then, and it's more expensive, and it's tricky. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I really appreciated how consequential your action choices were, especially at the early parts of every round.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that does help to make the middle of the round flow pretty well. [SPEAKER_02]: but ultimately it felt kind of overlong and unfocused and mechanical and unsatisfying. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, unfocused to the maximum because there's so many like sort of tokens and symbols and everything everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I get a symbol here and if I move up that track that hits a symbol that's printed on the track, which lets me do something else and I can use these symbols once per turn and then income, I get to do other things and yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's odd that [SPEAKER_02]: Just as an indication of the kind of sprawl that you're indicating, one of the fundamental questions that a number of people had at the outset was, how do I get more workers?

[SPEAKER_02]: Which is not an unreasonable question because it's basically a worker placement game with some elaboration. [SPEAKER_02]: And our whole top of a board is covered with our workers that we don't have access to. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: So how do we unlock workers like, well, [SPEAKER_02]: It's this icon, which you can find over here and over there and over here and over there and over there.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then a few rounds in because we had just not clocked it when setting up the game for the first time. [SPEAKER_02]: Someone built an outpost, like, oh, you can unlock more workers by building outposts. [SPEAKER_02]: We all underneath it. [SPEAKER_02]: Look at her. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, look at that. [SPEAKER_02]: Who did that?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is just a graphical representation issue because again, most arrows have figured out that what you're supposed to do when if you're going to be unlocking symbols by placing things, [SPEAKER_02]: You print the icon next to the piece that covers it. [SPEAKER_02]: So you don't have to look under the piece to figure out what it does. [SPEAKER_02]: But by the same token, it's such a core element of your action economy.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just kind of scattered all over the place. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, well, how do I get more work? [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, do stuff and things? [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And how do you get points? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, I'm top of that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a pretty traditional point salad thing. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was reasonably pleased at Dewey's success at leveraging the military track and conjunction with a particular military technology that he unlocked.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was the closest that seemed to me like I have an idea about how to win. [SPEAKER_02]: As opposed to, I'm just going to do a whole bunch of stuff, which is what Trans Galactica seems to encourage you to do. [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, this isn't exactly shock me, because Daniela Tishini's solo work has always been for me very, very hit or miss. [SPEAKER_02]: I very much prefer Tishini's work that he's done with Luciani.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think those are when they're designing games together. [SPEAKER_02]: The only solo Tishini design that I think is is

[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of okay is tale to walk in and I am I have seriesman's giving is about tale to walk in just that how track it is and it's a little more obtuse than it needs to be and a variety of other things but if you thought that tale to walk in is pretty satisfying but you think it's trying to kind of pushing the envelope in terms of being a little unfocused and unscattered stay away from transgalactic because it is absolutely the worst impulses at the heart of those designs without many of the redeeming features of something like tale to walk in so

[SPEAKER_02]: Trans Galatica is very, very tishini at his worst, I think. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and if you want like constantly being on board game geek, just figure out the rulebook and how things work. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, you know, there's endless forums already, already, you know, or new rulebook and it's a mess. [SPEAKER_02]: It's, yeah, much of the time when I read a rulebook and I see online that there's widespread complaints about the quality of the rulebook.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, I see what you're talking about, but it's okay, I figured it out. [SPEAKER_02]: The trans Galatica rulebook is pretty bad. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's too bad because it seems though, I'm not saying Yacada at its core was a good game. [SPEAKER_00]: And the same with Transical later, it seems to have its issues well. [SPEAKER_00]: You can tan, you're a tan, sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just, it's a shame that those games are gonna suffer because of, yeah, bad rule.

[SPEAKER_02]: In a market like this, if you don't have a solid rule set at lunch, you're gonna be in service trouble. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll give more of a past to transgalactica than to you can tan because you can tan was in crowdfunding and it had a long development time. [SPEAKER_02]: And there was time to since that up in a lot of it was translation problems, which quite frankly, you don't really have an excuse for that in a contemporary mark.

[SPEAKER_02]: And both were from major publishers, and it just doesn't make sense. [SPEAKER_02]: It's true. [SPEAKER_02]: Transylactica. [SPEAKER_02]: Transylactica finally, we got to stream a fendon vision on the birthday of Mark Thomas, one of the co-design.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is a production sample we got from the publisher that is on loan for a while, where you have to send it back to them in time for Jencon. [SPEAKER_02]: And I have to say that in terms of leaning in to some of the really, really, really cool stealth and tempo dynamics of CLT influx, I think the Phantom Division has made all the right decisions. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, that having been said, there are a couple of problems.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of them is every mission in Phantom Division. [SPEAKER_02]: I love the way the mission [SPEAKER_02]: Victory conditions get set out. [SPEAKER_02]: You set up some number one to three of primary mission objectives. [SPEAKER_02]: You know what those are, but you don't know where they are on the map. [SPEAKER_02]: And then a whole bunch of hidden secondary objectives, which can some of them are good, some of them are bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like you might reveal a guard or you might reveal a med station or something. [SPEAKER_02]: That's fine. [SPEAKER_02]: That level of variation. [SPEAKER_02]: I really don't mind. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not a huge deal. [SPEAKER_02]: What was a huge deal on the game we played was one of what sort of twists that take place, they're called plot twists in the context of a mission-of-fanted division.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the first one we pulled was, and this is one of those things where it's like, this looks bad. [SPEAKER_02]: We're tempted to bin it, but we're playing it just for the first few times and so we'll let it play out. [SPEAKER_02]: was it said you always get two guard roll spawns regardless of what the threat level is.

[SPEAKER_02]: The threat level is what's influenced by how much noise you're making, how often you're spotted, whether you've been attacked and so forth, and it really drives a lot of the stealth decision making. [SPEAKER_02]: You really have to consider when to go loud, how to go loud, when to pick your spots, when to wait a couple turns to let the heat die down. [SPEAKER_02]: When this plot twist is in play, all of that is gone. [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter how noisy you are.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can be entirely silent. [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to get two guard spawns. [SPEAKER_02]: You can be firing machine guns every turn all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to get two guard spawns. [SPEAKER_02]: I strongly disliked it. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that when we get our production copies, if that card is stolen, the deck we're just going to get rid of it. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't want to play that way. [SPEAKER_02]: Mine was mysteriously missing.

[SPEAKER_02]: in my production copy. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't have a production copy walker. [SPEAKER_02]: It hasn't been published yet. [SPEAKER_02]: That's not. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't. [SPEAKER_02]: You're looking at me like you've just made a joke. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand the S. I'm also going to bin it. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Despite that, I do think that it had a negative effect on the game, but despite that, I had a great time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Walker why don't you talk to us about how you and your shotgun became as one infused to become a single it was started out I just I tuned with the moment it was the people watching they gave me the power shots ricochet down the hallways people that didn't even know something was going on took a shotgun blast to the head yes [SPEAKER_00]: It was magical. [SPEAKER_02]: Walker was banking shotgun pellets off of two walls to hit a hidden security camera.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was shooting through doors all this time. [SPEAKER_02]: We're saying by the way, Walker just doesn't note, be very careful about this objective token because it could be the hostage that we need to rescue and be like, don't worry. [SPEAKER_02]: And then it started aiming for the guard that's standing right next to that objective token and it was perfect. [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't hit every shot, but the shots that he did hit were very impressive. [SPEAKER_02]: It was great.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing that makes these two games amazing, seal team flex and fan division are these mini games. [SPEAKER_00]: So one of your people go down, you get this mini game to revive. [SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna revive anyway with one hit point, but you could play this mini game. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you do well, you're gonna get more hit points, or you're going to unlock a door, or you're going to diffuse a bomb.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's all these different cards that you set up in different ways, either to knock disks off it, or to manipulate this marble around. [SPEAKER_00]: All of them great and keeps the game, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: very interesting and fun. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we haven't really received responses to our set of rulebook concerns. [SPEAKER_02]: They say they're working on it. [SPEAKER_02]: They say they're doing a pass on the cards and a whole bunch of things.

[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, I'm cautiously optimistic that they'll make the right decisions. [SPEAKER_02]: But as it is, it's worth emphasizing once again when playing a co-op game, I'm more than happy. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, even even the game like Trans Galactical I am, but especially in a co-op game, if there's an area of ambiguity, I'm more than happy to just pick something and keep going. [SPEAKER_02]: because, you know, it's a cop game, the balance doesn't have to be perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can just decide and go on in case it rules ambiguity. [SPEAKER_02]: In the context of Phantom Division, the overwhelming majority of the time, if the rules are in ambiguous, we can shrug and do it the way it works in Seal Team Flex, because we've been playing Seal Team Flex for years, and we've got a pretty good grasp on how that game works.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so if the phantom division rulebook is silent on an issue, we can just do it the same way that it works in the sealed complex. [SPEAKER_02]: For example, one of the issues that just isn't covered in the rulebook is if you fire a shot and that shot doesn't destroy crates, but it moves crates around as a result of you flicking disks, what happens to the crate? [SPEAKER_02]: And we assume that because that's the way it works in sealed complex, you put it back to where it started.

[SPEAKER_02]: You reset everything that shouldn't have been affected by the shot back to where it was at the beginning. [SPEAKER_02]: And in this context, [SPEAKER_02]: Mark Thomas, who was on the chat, confirmed that for us. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very concerned, though, very much like it happened when people got sealed to inflicts to their hands for the first time.

[SPEAKER_02]: People who don't have any experience with this rule system, whether they'll be able to make the same accommodations that we can, given our past history. [SPEAKER_02]: So I really, really hope they tighten those things up. [SPEAKER_02]: But, that plot twist notwithstanding and some rules queries notwithstanding, I think the fandom division is a solid improvement on sealed complex, which is already one of our favorite hobbyist things of the past ten years.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's glorious, the mini-games are glorious, the stealth dynamics are glorious. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a fabulous game. [SPEAKER_00]: And they just wrap up the AI, the, you know, in between turns when the enemies move, quick, fast, easy. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't, no downtime and you're on to your own turns again. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, yeah, it's fantastic. [SPEAKER_02]: So those are the games we played last week. [SPEAKER_02]: And now a quick break to pace the bills.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we're back. [SPEAKER_02]: Now onto the news and why it doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_02]: So I come.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I come looking forward to seeing him. [SPEAKER_02]: This weekend. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you're listening. [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be great. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, not all listeners. [SPEAKER_02]: We have some substantially more of this. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the ones at the ones that matter. [SPEAKER_02]: I would like to note that Walker's comments do not reflect the editorial policy of so many around my games. [SPEAKER_02]: It's hosts or the Gibbons that run it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if you start with people that cannot make it, it's going to be a good time a weekend of gaming here in Kingston. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm looking forward to this. [SPEAKER_00]: Good vibes only. [SPEAKER_00]: That's true. [SPEAKER_02]: Now onto our topic, Walker.

[SPEAKER_02]: Take that, Mark. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd rather not. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd really, you know what, I don't want to take that, and I don't want to be the one telling people to take that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it means a different thing to everyone. [SPEAKER_00]: I agree. [SPEAKER_00]: I think if you like ask someone to define it, what take that means, I think you're going to get a plethora of different answers.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have an attempt at the sort of definition that as it applies to our group and what we don't like. [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_02]: That is, take that as the ability to put harm to any player, a little little to no cost or risk. [SPEAKER_02]: Typically, they'll not necessarily via a card play. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, mine's a little, a little different. [SPEAKER_02]: I saw you do me. [SPEAKER_02]: I think I don't have it really.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's mostly just lives, do I have it? [SPEAKER_02]: What, what vibes does my sketch of an definition not account for? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's mostly just random for me. [SPEAKER_00]: If it's just, if you've drawn a card or a tile flips up and it's just a completely random thing, it's more like, you know, when you're playing cooperative games and the event cards come up, it's like a take that from the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: When that kind of mechanism comes out and hits players, I hate it. [SPEAKER_00]: I hate you know me. [SPEAKER_00]: I hate when a particular card or action destroys past turns. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've taken turns to get this resource in order to, and then I have to take another action to turn that resource into this resource, which let me buy this item.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there was four items, and now I'm gonna play this card, my fourth action, [SPEAKER_00]: to use that item and then some plays card note that I'm destroyed now. [SPEAKER_00]: So my four turns that I've just taken to build this thing wasted wasted turns I cannot tell you how angry it makes me. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's getting closer to my definition though, that active intervention by the player.

[SPEAKER_02]: When the game, when playing a co-op, I guess I could accept your definition of a take that inflicted by the system. [SPEAKER_02]: But in the case of a co-op, you're all in it together. [SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, I know it's definitely not a take that in a co-operative thing because it's totally different. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, no, I accept your analogy. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it is kind of like the game system is showing you take that.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in those contexts, I don't think it generates the same sense of feeling. [SPEAKER_02]: Again, because we're all together. [SPEAKER_02]: And any resources you have are by extension resources that the group has. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's shared there. [SPEAKER_00]: If one of your teammates has hurt, then the whole team has hurt, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a shared thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that notion. [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a fundamental element though.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the arbitrariness of the targeting that I really hate. [SPEAKER_02]: Because if I'm gonna do something and I am stopped and I am able to understand why the player did that to me, it makes perfect sense. [SPEAKER_02]: Like we've been locked in a battle. [SPEAKER_02]: Like if I start a fight with somebody and they start playing cards and they're chopping off my knees and they're completely reversing the tides of battle, you gave an example of doing imperium uprising.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right? [SPEAKER_02]: And you got into a fight and the cards [SPEAKER_02]: that came, that hit the table during that fight were stronger than you would have liked. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying that that's an inappropriate preference. [SPEAKER_02]: I completely understand where you're coming from and I might even agree with you. [SPEAKER_02]: That to me isn't take that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's just, you know, arbitrariness from a card deck, whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if you didn't have any choice in starting the fight, [SPEAKER_02]: And suddenly, people are playing cards, and it's not just that they're winning the fight, but they're also taking away the points that you scored last turn, or the worker that you get to play next turn or whatever, that to me is take that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I agree with you, the wasted turns of it all, the fact that you are planning for something and now you can't because of this weird, exogenous thing that happened for no reason, it feels like you just got to have all your work taken out from units terrible. [SPEAKER_02]: I hate that feeling too. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like skip turn.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: We hate it so much that this this have this sensation happened to me very recently actually when we were playing the breach, right? [SPEAKER_02]: We were playing we we still don't really know what we feel about the breach. [SPEAKER_02]: We haven't played a game to completion.

[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody has their own deck of they're called malware cards because they're all hackers and a bunch of them come from the character you've chosen they also come from a support character that that you pick and them so often you read a rule book. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like okay, you have a bunch of action cards and they explain how and why they're played okay fine.

[SPEAKER_02]: But then sometimes when you actually get the cards in your hand, I suddenly start wearing, oh wait, are any of these take that cards? [SPEAKER_02]: Crap, wait, oh no. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's this dread that I feel. [SPEAKER_02]: And fortunately, so far in the breach, I haven't seen any of those. [SPEAKER_02]: Again, there are cards that impede other players, but it's all because you start at the fight with them or they start at the fight with you and you defend yourself or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard in a game like the breach, right? [SPEAKER_00]: That's just like a PVP, where you're supposed to be going around and attacking everybody. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, to sort of define what it take that card is in the particular scenario. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a lot of it is vibes based though. [SPEAKER_02]: And again, the arbitrariness of targeting is something like so, again, to talk another game that's not really take that in my estimation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, for the most part. [SPEAKER_02]: is Black Rose Wars, because there are ranged considerations, there are card considerations, and so forth. [SPEAKER_02]: And you understand why people are doing what they're doing, because another big difference between doing damage to somebody in Black Rose Wars, and your example of stealing of like, oh, you don't have that resource anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: It's destroyed.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm damaging you in Black Rose Wars, it's because I want to score when you're dead. [SPEAKER_02]: And when you're dead, you just show up and keep playing. [SPEAKER_02]: Who cares?

[SPEAKER_02]: as opposed to all that that would destroy did you do that to get the wood that at least make you know if you're stealing resources i'm not going to defend that but that makes the better than just the resource going away yeah then it just feels so incredibly arbitrary and pointless it was a bunch of that in in uh... terraforming marz where you have cards or it says you know whoever has the most

[SPEAKER_02]: plants, destroy the plants, the perfunctory player interaction, a euro tablobalder that has take that elements. [SPEAKER_02]: It's so painful. [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the things that, I mean, everybody, I don't know that anybody, even the people who really really like terraforming Mars, like, yeah, those elements are great.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's so strange and then there's and I I can see what some people like that type of thing right because they did it in Arc Nova where they have the I think it's called venom or something I don't play a lot of arc numbers I can tell can't tell but there's there's a mechanism of the cards and you just choose not to play with that particular mechanism or you can and so there's [SPEAKER_00]: you can just add a take that mechanism to the game.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, again, I think part of that is because ArcNovo is so clearly, I was about to say aping, but then there's an apo joke in there, someone so clearly emulating elements of Terraform and Mars, I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: It is so hard, I would say borderline impossible to do take that or theft or destruction cards like that, well in a euro. [SPEAKER_02]: I remember there's one, this is one of the worst heroes that I remember playing so painful, so over long, a game called Yato.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the classic example of you read the rules. [SPEAKER_02]: And it just says, look, they're these decks. [SPEAKER_02]: Here's how you get the cards. [SPEAKER_02]: Here's how you play the cards. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you start playing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then about some number of minutes into the game, you see that player [SPEAKER_02]: look at the card, scrunch up their face in that skull that says, I'm not gonna like playing this, and you're not gonna like it after I play it. [SPEAKER_02]: That's just a telltale example of this is gonna be a take that card game in a Euro management game, doesn't turn out well.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I mean, in terms of the game you were just talking about today, that the pirate cut through a pirate, what it's called, walk the plank, where you just have no control, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so I started with games like much, much again in, and cut throat caverns, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: where bang is another good example bang like what is the point of me strategizing anything yeah when the game states going to change so much and so much chaos is going on and there's just so much take that what is that point just hop on the the red dragon in bandwagon and just just ride the good time [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it's just, sometimes it's just not a good time for some people. [SPEAKER_00]: That's just not the kind of game experience that they want.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and so frequently, it's, it's telling me that you mentioned Munchkin, that ruins me in another game that basically all you have are take that cards, which is killed, Dr. Lucky. [SPEAKER_02]: Those games tend to end not because of good play, but because of a exhaustion, just nobody has the right card when you're about to win to knock it down a peg.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just not like, look, in Munchkin, one of the events could be, it's like, oh, well, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: There is conscious targeting. [SPEAKER_02]: You're not just targeting someone over Charlie. [SPEAKER_02]: You're targeting them because they're in the lead or they're about to win. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like sure. [SPEAKER_02]: Then the person who wins is just the one who gets lucky when it's when they're on the cost.

[SPEAKER_02]: But nobody has the right cards left anymore because the first person who is about to win who's probably playing better all things be equal. [SPEAKER_02]: He wasted all their cards on them. [SPEAKER_02]: So congratulations to the third place player wins instead. [SPEAKER_02]: There are some exceptions though. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very eager to talk about those. [SPEAKER_02]: I sense you have more complaints to let me first.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just trying to define, get the definition down because when it's known information, like when it's like getting tiles that are shown before other players or getting to action spots when you know it's like, yeah, like in, I had like, [SPEAKER_00]: guy project is just sort of the emphasis of this right it's like getting to those plants before the people do getting to those actions places before the people do [SPEAKER_00]: It's all known.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, it's not sort of take that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a... Well, Gaia Project also doesn't really have any way to harm anyone. [SPEAKER_00]: No. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, but I mean, taking those away from, like, getting there before other people is in a way, harming them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I mean, if you look at the games that we like that involve a lot of direct confrontation, you know, Sanji and Comet are the two of the troops on an app games where you're constantly fighting and those fights do harm the individual. [SPEAKER_02]: But there are two things to keep in mind. [SPEAKER_02]: One, there tend to be compensatory elements [SPEAKER_02]: to having your teeth kicked in, not, you know, so you're not completely knocked out of the game.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's no real, there's not a whole lot of sense of infrastructure that you are losing by virtue, losing a fight. [SPEAKER_02]: And also, you can see broadly speaking, the contours of the fight developing. [SPEAKER_02]: You see bad lines developing. [SPEAKER_02]: You know when there's a valuable target that you're leaving poorly defended, you have time to prepare for the fight. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you end up on the back foot, it's your fault.

[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe, and by your fault, maybe it's okay because you don't care, you're willing to take that loss because you're building towards somewhere else to go do your own thing. [SPEAKER_02]: And so there are ways to have games with direct conflict, with harm inflicted on other players, to don't have that frustration element of take that. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_02]: So some examples that I like to point to, [SPEAKER_02]: I think personally, the designer in the current space who is doing more interesting things with games that are even very structurally similar to take that games is Jennifer Lee. [SPEAKER_02]: So do the lesser houses and Murray the A-hole frog, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Some of it is subtle. [SPEAKER_02]: Murray the A-hole frog is, I guess, Murray isn't really subtle. [SPEAKER_02]: He's a bit of an A-hole that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's just, sometimes it's the framing. [SPEAKER_02]: The way Murray the A-hole frog works is, you know, you're building these sets of bugs to score points. [SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes Murray shows up and just destroys them. [SPEAKER_02]: And the thing is, though, it's bizarre. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a take that element. [SPEAKER_02]: When you pull Murray, you have to decide who's getting hit. [SPEAKER_02]: But there are two things that kind of blunt that.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of them is, Murray is just instantly executed whenever Murray gets run off the top of the deck. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, well, I gotta do it. [SPEAKER_02]: And number two, you blame Murray. [SPEAKER_02]: If Walker pulls Murray, and even if he targets me arbitrarily, like he quote unquote, should have nuked somebody else's said in the nukes mine, like, ah, Walker can [SPEAKER_02]: And inevitably says, that Murray, Murray's going to be that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: We all know Murray's in a hole. [SPEAKER_02]: And you know what? [SPEAKER_02]: It works. [SPEAKER_02]: It's shocking, but it works. [SPEAKER_02]: Door the lesser houses is similar in that. [SPEAKER_02]: All the time you're just playing effectively everything you do endure the lesser houses is to take that card. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like room around your face, scandal on your face, room around your face.

[SPEAKER_02]: And first of all, the fact that that's all you're doing kind of blunts some of the bad feelings, but also it's the case that the diplomatic element, the very, very light somewhat constrained element of negotiation really helps to focus and contextualize why things are happening in the way they're happening.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so like structurally the way that door the lesser houses in Marie the A whole frog work shouldn't [SPEAKER_02]: be in accordance with my settled preferences, especially with respect to take that. [SPEAKER_02]: I have yet to leave a game of Duer or Murray the A whole frog with bad feelings, and that I think is a minor triumph, given the sort of structure that they are, and there's a whole bunch of clever things that GenFelly does.

[SPEAKER_02]: Either deliberately or accidentally to really make those take that game's work. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's obvious that we don't like it, because I [SPEAKER_00]: I was going through a sort of our library and all the games that we play trying to figure which games have any sort of take that elements. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we don't have very many at all. [SPEAKER_00]: It's true. [SPEAKER_02]: It's true. [SPEAKER_02]: They're very rare.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would also like to point out another game that has take that elements in it and that mostly works despite it and that, well, I think it does. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's cosmic encounter, which is very divisive. [SPEAKER_02]: But once again, [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to plug the Destiny deck in cosmic encounter because it is so good at removing the whining and the sense of arbitrariness in so many other games.

[SPEAKER_02]: When it is your turning cosmic encounter, you go attack somebody, but the deck tells you who to attack. [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody has three instances, or, well, varies by player number and expansion, but whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a certain number of instances that you're gonna get attacked over the course of the game. [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, they go through the deck. [SPEAKER_02]: Walker comes and attacks me not because he's picking on me, but because the deck told him to.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is a great way to blunt that sense of bad feeling that take that game's happen. [SPEAKER_02]: And then, once the fight starts, yeah, there might be a whole bunch of flares and artifacts that hit the table. [SPEAKER_02]: But the fight was started, not by anyone's control. [SPEAKER_02]: And once we're in the fight, it's perfectly reasonable for Walker to play that one shot against me. [SPEAKER_02]: But he wasn't the one that pulled the trigger, the deck told him to.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so it doesn't always, like, I've walked away from games of Cosmic and Catta with bad feelings. [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, it happens. [SPEAKER_02]: There's so much chaos and so much, you know, take that elements or take that adjacent elements. [SPEAKER_02]: But the destiny deck serves to blunt and mitigate so much of that. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a work of genius. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm surprised that more games don't use it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm wondering if that's the thing, because I do have an example here, I'm wondering if you have that one resource that everyone needs and therefore all bets are off, in order to get that resource. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking like barrage, right? [SPEAKER_00]: There is, I feel, you know, it's, I think it walks that line of what is taking that. [SPEAKER_00]: What isn't right.

[SPEAKER_00]: I put this damn, and now you're not getting any of this water, but everybody needs that water. [SPEAKER_00]: You know right off the beginning, there's gonna be a fight for that water, and so it is a little take that in a way, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Or is it just really hyper competitive? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just not sure that tight line, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a good example.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that I'd call it take that in part because [SPEAKER_02]: The decision to build in barrage is so transparent. [SPEAKER_02]: It's difficult to do. [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't come out of nowhere and it doesn't affect the water that's there now. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not like there's a whole lot of water stealing right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: It just means that that damn you built or that that what other insulation you built [SPEAKER_02]: You have to make sure that it's useful at least in the short term. [SPEAKER_02]: Whether it's going to be as useful, medium to long term is a function of other people's decisions, absolutely. [SPEAKER_02]: But furthermore, those decisions are not going to be arbitrary and they're going to be expensive. [SPEAKER_02]: So those are two things that I think distance it from take that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say it's just a very, very hyper competitive euro over scarce resources. [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the reasons why we like it, frankly.

[SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was an extreme example like this is it is it not and there might be other games like that where it's that one resource that everyone's going for Yeah, it's it's a little bit like another Similarly competitive hero in the sense of food chain magnet like there's a there's a finite amount of food to be sold and everyone's gonna be fighting over those sounds I did have that up as I don't like it's so brutal it is but again you

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not an arbitrary simplistic thing. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just a hyper-competitive environment where there's a finite amount of resources and you need to make sure that you can protect your interests. [SPEAKER_00]: It's advertising. [SPEAKER_00]: Someone puts an advertising down.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yep. [SPEAKER_02]: completely changes the whole lens or they undercut your price by one or they changed the supply I shouldn't say that there's a finite amount of demand the the market is effectively infinite in food chain magnet if you think about it hard enough but it is the case that there's a finite amount of sales to be sold every turn and you desperately need to worry about that we need to play a food chain maybe

[SPEAKER_02]: Is there enough coming event where we could play food chain right now? [SPEAKER_02]: There is. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a convention coming up, I think. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't say. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's going to do it for this week. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for joining us for so very well about games. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for taking the time. [SPEAKER_02]: You can find all our information online at sowronggames.com and at patreon.com slash svag.

[SPEAKER_02]: We hope to see you again soon. [SPEAKER_02]: Take care, everybody. [SPEAKER_02]: Peace! [SPEAKER_02]: 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_02]: You can find all our information at sowronggames.com. [SPEAKER_02]: Special thanks to what's the city for allowing us to use their most excellent song FLS as our intro. [SPEAKER_02]: You can find them at what's the city.com.

[SPEAKER_02]: We hope to see you again soon and as always. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to be right to but remember you're so very well.