Vantage

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome everyone to so very wrong about games, a board gaming podcast about board games. [SPEAKER_00]: You're a board gaming podcast about board games. [SPEAKER_00]: We try to personalize it here. [SPEAKER_00]: It's so very wrong about games. [SPEAKER_00]: This is your board game. [SPEAKER_00]: This is not just anyone's board games podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: You people that are listening. [SPEAKER_01]: We make this for you. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Personalized.

[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely bespoke. [SPEAKER_01]: Artisanal. [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk about some games we played this week. [SPEAKER_01]: Then we're going to have some news and why it doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_01]: Then we're going to talk about our feature game. [SPEAKER_01]: which this week is Vantage by Stone Myer Games. [SPEAKER_01]: Mark, what did you play this week?

[SPEAKER_00]: Playing a couple games actually of through the desert, through the desert appears to be enjoying something of a local Renaissance in that

[SPEAKER_00]: People who've entered the hobby say in the teens, so who've been in the hobby for about ten years or maybe even as many as fifteen, through the desert might have passed them by because it might have already been out of print when they started the hobby. [SPEAKER_00]: And now that there's the new addition from all play, there's been increased demand to get into the table.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually played with my older or fantasy flight version, which is the same components, the same chunky pastel camels. [SPEAKER_00]: as the Cosmos original published in nineteen ninety nine. [SPEAKER_00]: Now the new plastic camels are still delightful.

[SPEAKER_00]: You still have the sweet tart shades and I do very much appreciate the smaller box and the option in the new all play edition of playing with various modules that having been said [SPEAKER_00]: A portion of me will always miss the chunkier fully formed pastel camels to say nothing of the fact that in my printing of the Fantasy V version the rule book is in eight different languages.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you've ever wondered your listener, how does one say pastel camel in Dutch or various other languages? [SPEAKER_00]: You can find out these are important things. [SPEAKER_00]: This crucial knowledge. [SPEAKER_00]: That's probably why it comes in the bigger box. [SPEAKER_00]: So the rulebook will fit. [SPEAKER_00]: The rulebook actually still isn't very big. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's through the desert. [SPEAKER_00]: It takes a couple pages.

[SPEAKER_00]: The all-play edition of the All-Mindon is not a book. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a folded sheet of paper. [SPEAKER_00]: And unlike some games that try to get away with that, either because of a QR code, a link to the full rulebook, or rules that are a little too tense.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking in particular of some [SPEAKER_00]: Small box games that where they really worked too hard to get it get it down there, but at any rate through the desert remains a masterwork and it has the the common reaction of is that it and then about halfway through the game people saying oh, this is it and it's it was it was a marvel of simplicity and greatness at the time this time after playing one of the

[SPEAKER_00]: players commented independently that it reminded them very much of go in a number of ways. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll repeat to you what I said to him. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's that I don't say that anymore ever since that backfired in my face. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a very, very memorable instance, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, later it's the traditional wisdom through the desert is evocative of a race similar to multiplayer go.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I played that to somebody who's a big go player. [SPEAKER_00]: and her immediate reaction after play in the game was, it's nothing like going all. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, really? [SPEAKER_00]: Why? [SPEAKER_00]: Pieces never get removed. [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, it's nothing like go. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, I'm ever since then, I'm much more moved to make comparisons broadly and about through the desert in particular.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, through the desert is part of the so-called Reiner-Conancia-tiling trilogy. [SPEAKER_00]: consisting of three games published right after each other, all-tiling games, granted through the deserts, plus the camels, but same principle applies.

[SPEAKER_00]: That being through the desert, Tigers and Euphrates, which has done it in that print and is currently out of print, and Samurai, which has been out of print for a while, but it's going to be reprinted soon with a new theme about flower viewing. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm very much a fan of all the tiling trilogy games being in print.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there are all works of a past master designer working in [SPEAKER_00]: an idiom and an over where he is at his best that is to say run a currency doing tiling, but I'm not a huge fan of the visuals of the new samurai edition. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, re-thiming a run a cryptocurrency tiling game is fine. [SPEAKER_00]: You can do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would argue with the possible exception of tigers' new fradies because I do get a sort of civilizational vibe from what's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, I'm looking forward to samurai being imprint again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Showing it to a new generation of gamers the way I've been able to with through the desert I don't think samurai is equal to through the desert through the desert is just such a work of minimalist genius that I I don't think I've seen its equal in terms of minimalism and quantity of decision space in the hobby gaming space frankly [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm very glad that people have been enjoying it. [SPEAKER_00]: It got played a lot at SwideCon as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was frequently a table of through the desert going on. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I actually taught it twice without playing the game anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: Very much in the band. [SPEAKER_00]: Blue Lagoon is a good follow-up to it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very similar in weight. [SPEAKER_00]: I agree. [SPEAKER_00]: Blue Lagoon though, it's weird. [SPEAKER_00]: Blue Lagoon not entirely unlike whale riders.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are games for which we both have a great degree of personal enthusiasm. [SPEAKER_00]: And sure enough, a number of people are big fans of whale riders and then a number of people are big fans of Blue Lagoon, but I've had much less success. [SPEAKER_00]: with the people to whom I've shown those games. [SPEAKER_00]: It makes me a little sad, but it is what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Through the desert as a much better hit ratio, and for what it's worth, it also has about half the rules of Blue Lagoon, and Blue Lagoon is already a very, very simple game. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've been trying to get Blue Lagoon back to the table for a while, and I haven't had any pickup, so. [SPEAKER_00]: There you go. [SPEAKER_00]: There you go. [SPEAKER_00]: That's through the desert.

[SPEAKER_00]: Designed by Reiner Kinesi at originally published by Cosmos in nineteen ninety-eight.

[SPEAKER_01]: This week's streaming game was Teletum, or Tile Tum. [SPEAKER_01]: however you'd like to pronounce it we played with the new expansion that just came out you know it's kind of nice that it all when I say older game it's not that old but by the standards of contemporary expansion processes yeah especially for games that are not crowdfunded it's true [SPEAKER_01]: And this expansion is called Prospect for Silver.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was told that this expansion was made to fix some problems. [SPEAKER_01]: And there was a little few problems with to let them. [SPEAKER_01]: They had this King's track and, you know, the further down the King's track, where you'd lose points and whoever's highest on the King's track would gain points. [SPEAKER_01]: They thought a little swingy. [SPEAKER_01]: So instead of just using stuff already in the game, [SPEAKER_01]: They've decided to make this whole side board.

[SPEAKER_01]: So more game. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's increased the length of the game. [SPEAKER_01]: So now you're in these mines and you're moving around the mines and you're also moving around on the map. [SPEAKER_01]: You're moving around, you're merchant and you're architect and now you're moving around a minor and you're new resources. [SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, more stuff, more time.

[SPEAKER_00]: If one of the difficulties was the track, couldn't they have just had an expansion board that covered the track? [SPEAKER_01]: They do have that. [SPEAKER_01]: They have that too. [SPEAKER_01]: They have that on top of them, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, they cover the track. [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of saying, OK, instead of getting these bonuses for the track, we're going to need a whole new sideboard and whole new mechanisms. [SPEAKER_01]: So you get bonuses for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, boy. [SPEAKER_01]: Not for stuff that we already have in the game. [SPEAKER_00]: OK. [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, here we are. [SPEAKER_01]: I did enjoy it. [SPEAKER_01]: I have always enjoyed tile to him. [SPEAKER_01]: and this, like I said, just adds more stuff, extra people, more tiles, more, you need underground cathedrals. [SPEAKER_00]: Underground cathedrals.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't have underground cathedrals, then how you cathedrily, and if you're not underground cathedrals, are these cathedrals to the millipede death cult? [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: It's in the back of the book in the small print. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Try to tell me I'm wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've gotta ask you, because I have not played to let him personally. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be happy to.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's co-design by Simone Lichiani and didn't yell at Tashini and they're pretty, they're two of the Italian masters and I'm happy to play anything by the Italian masters. [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything that differentiates to let them from many, many other medium-weight euro management games? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it has a very unique and interesting sort of action mechanism. [SPEAKER_01]: you choosing a die and either you're getting a bunch of resources.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen this in other games, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Either you take a die and it gives you a bunch of resources and only a few action points of the particular column. [SPEAKER_01]: So each column is sort of broken up into the type of action and the die color is the type of resource you're getting. [SPEAKER_01]: I want this five pink, that'll get me five food, but because it's five, it means I'm only going to get two action points towards the action column.

[SPEAKER_00]: I see where I should two would give you two food and five action points? [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting thing, and the dials move around every turn. [SPEAKER_01]: So you take the dial, you do the things, and there's all sorts of [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, you're moving around an architect building churches and columns, you're moving around a merchant that you have to get to certain cities at the end of every round, where else you don't get typical euro.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's big scoring at the end of each of the four rounds, but you either have to have a house or the merchant in particular cities in order to even qualify for those scoring things. [SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes the race to get there also is a different combo. [SPEAKER_01]: As you can use to do that, I'd be happy to play it again. [SPEAKER_00]: It's weird. [SPEAKER_00]: Dice drafting didn't quite. [SPEAKER_00]: It was very trendy for about five-ish years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there were a large number of euros that took advantage of it. [SPEAKER_00]: But it never really became as dominant to some of the other trends, like the big worker placement trend, like the big table building trend or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: And so consequently, I didn't ever get burned out of it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying it's my favorite action selection mechanism in the world, but I'm always happy to try a dice drafting design.

[SPEAKER_00]: And sure enough, you know, so tell it to a lot of them was published in twenty twenty two. [SPEAKER_00]: You're right that it is someone unusual for a three-year-old game absent crowdfunding to be getting a new expansion. [SPEAKER_00]: And so good for boarden dice for supporting it. [SPEAKER_00]: Tell them or tell them or tell them or telly-tum, I don't know, telly-tum. [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds cute. [SPEAKER_00]: It does.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe redeem it with some telly-tabies and call it telly-tum.

[SPEAKER_00]: And playing more games of endeavor deep sea, this is the sort of riff on endeavor, which was a relatively straightforward action selection disc management game about imperialism and colonialism that actually did a halfway decent job of grappling with colonialism. [SPEAKER_00]: How successful it is, as a matter of some opinion, but at least adjusted toward that direction at a time when a lot of other euros weren't doing even that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now we've got the deep sea version. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a very common ref. [SPEAKER_00]: Typically one goes from a science fiction to deep sea, but I guess now you can go from colonialism to deep sea. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the next endeavor game will be the science fiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in endeavor deep sea, what it does is it keeps this fundamental action structure that we had in endeavor, which is a very fixed, you start at the top of your board and you just go down and that determines how much income you get in terms of actions, broadly speaking, and it also determines, I quite like how stripped down the way that endeavor deals with buildings. [SPEAKER_00]: Here, there are personnel. [SPEAKER_00]: but probably speaking they have the same function.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every round everyone's going to build a building. [SPEAKER_00]: But what level of building you can get to is a function of how far you've progressed on the track. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not an especially track track. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just more of a throughput consideration. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a little three on the building track, you can build a level one, two or three building.

[SPEAKER_00]: You build one every round, and so every time, every time Walker, we play an endeavor game. [SPEAKER_00]: You ask the same question. [SPEAKER_00]: How many rounds are we playing to with the answer six? [SPEAKER_00]: And you say, how do we keep track of the number of rounds? [SPEAKER_00]: So what's the answer is how many buildings have you built? [SPEAKER_00]: There you go.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you built your six building, you know that's the end of the, that we're about to hit the end of the game. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really quite cute. [SPEAKER_00]: I like it. [SPEAKER_00]: I like how, how stripped down and straight forward that is. [SPEAKER_00]: What endeavor do you see? [SPEAKER_00]: Has done though? [SPEAKER_00]: Is it blown up the space? [SPEAKER_00]: It's plunged the game into deeper waters with respect to the action space. [SPEAKER_00]: How's that?

[SPEAKER_00]: We like that. [SPEAKER_00]: We like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas Endeavor had a fixed board with some degree of variation about what was happening on various spaces of that board. [SPEAKER_00]: Endeavor DPC has a whole bunch of tiles with which you are going to establish the ocean. [SPEAKER_00]: the further the deeper down you go, you're dealing with different kinds of tiles. [SPEAKER_00]: And so there's more variety. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the variety that I dislike.

[SPEAKER_00]: I dislike as a strong word. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm unnerved a little bit by Endeavor Deep See, and I'm trying to put my finger on it. [SPEAKER_00]: I think part of it is [SPEAKER_00]: that the additional variety from the tiles I think is fine. [SPEAKER_00]: There's also every scenario has a special mat where you're just sucking tokens that broadly speaking give you a point at the end of the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: That part feels a little bit exogenous to what you're actually doing, so it feels like a little bit of sprawl that's [SPEAKER_00]: mechanically functional, but thematically kind of incoherent, and a little bit more just random stuff that you're doing, so I feel like the game doesn't go here as well. [SPEAKER_00]: The part that I find very unsatisfying, and I'm heart-pressed to explain why, is that in endeavor, you always knew where all of your bonuses were coming from.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a fixed pool. [SPEAKER_00]: You acquire a token, and that token just gives you a new symbol, so you can always check to see what your total value was in any given thing. [SPEAKER_00]: In Diver Deep See, though, you're going to be bonuses from this. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be bonuses from that. [SPEAKER_00]: You're triggering this one with this one time thing that leaves the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: You land your sub in a place that gives you something a symbol of events and so forth. [SPEAKER_00]: So it feels like you're losing a lot of the tightness, a lot of the constraint that I very much appreciated about in Diver. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the process, you're losing a lot of the focus. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know whether I just need to get over myself. [SPEAKER_00]: And I accept in Diver Deep See on its own terms.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that aspect of it is indeed part and parcel. [SPEAKER_00]: of the stuff that I acknowledge is good, which is to say the variety of the tiles, the additional space to be able to move around the fact that the board evolves in a way that basically never doesn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, not only are the different sort of tiles that sort of progress for the game and build out, but a lot of them have like a special sort of ability on them and you look it up and they do something that's different and quirky about each one. [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of neat.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, like the additional details I know objective is that I wonder whether in the process, it's taking the system that I very much appreciated for being titan-focused and turning it into something that's slightly more generic in terms of, well, now I'm just climbing up tracks and accruing bonuses, where it's before. [SPEAKER_00]: One thing that has also just been frankly lost from endeavor, this is not the hero there, this is just one of those ways, which is different.

[SPEAKER_00]: is in endeavor, there's very difficult balancing act about which cards you can keep in your supply, because that was a track that existed in endeavor that does not exist in endeavor deep sea. [SPEAKER_00]: In endeavor deep sea, there's not really any constraint on anything in terms of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: You can always just get more stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: You're a little bit of currency, obviously.

[SPEAKER_01]: And mostly the movement, I think, is where they throw in the restraint, right? [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to move so far and so deep, depending on the track.

[SPEAKER_00]: I agree that is perhaps the best analog for the constraint on how many cards you can keep and that challenge to be able to if you need to get to a certain tile that's at a certain depth and you're just not able to get there is a little bit frustrating I guess that that helps to explain one of the reasons why I might feel most good about this so [SPEAKER_00]: There's this increasing universe of effects increasing universe of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not as tight, but if you desperately need a particular kind of advancement, like a blue advancement, like you see a tile that's a depth three. [SPEAKER_00]: But you can't get to depth three yet. [SPEAKER_00]: You're limited to depth one and two.

[SPEAKER_00]: very often it is the case that you look around and say okay how do I get more how do I get an advancement on the blue track and the answer might be you can't you have to wait until the next building phase and then hope your building is good enough to get you somebody that gives you blue advancement phase

[SPEAKER_00]: Generally speaking, if you're going to blow up the variety and blow up the details and blow up the other addition of stuff, I don't necessarily know that you then want to be in a position of telling somebody how do I get more of this track to say it doesn't look like there's any options for you right now. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there are quite a few.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying that like you said, depending on the occupation that might get you there and then there's building the map out a lot of times you get bonuses for putting out tiles and a lot of times it's just sort of [SPEAKER_01]: to get you up the tracks that you need. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very random. [SPEAKER_01]: It might not get what you want, but. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there are things you can try. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm not saying that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying if it's not that exact track, then it's put you up the employee track, which lets you get a higher level employee, which then will actually. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying it's always the fix, but I mean. [SPEAKER_00]: You make a good point. [SPEAKER_00]: I have been enjoying endeavor deep sea fine. [SPEAKER_00]: I just mostly my concerns are whether this system is able to accommodate the additional stuff that it wants a different deep sea to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it improvement? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm a little torn. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where I'm sitting, but you know, [SPEAKER_00]: It's still a very quick and snappy game. [SPEAKER_00]: The flow is very good. [SPEAKER_00]: The round structure takes care of itself. [SPEAKER_00]: There's no real upkeep to do. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a relatively rules-light, even though it's more complicated and broke than the first endeavor. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's a lot to like about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just haunted by the sense that maybe I prefer the original and wondering whether these concerns or legitimate. [SPEAKER_00]: But suffice to say,

[SPEAKER_00]: ship the third in particular is a big big fan of endeavor to see so we'll have more opportunities to check it out and also more opportunities to see whether the quote unquote scenario structure which is a bit of a it's not it's a bit of an exaggeration to call them scenarios it's mostly just a variable board set up and even then not very variable most of the variation comes and exploring the board by the players but we'll say either you put a token or you put a tokens oh really yes oh wow okay

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big game. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess I should just say I'm looking forward to the sci-fi version. [SPEAKER_00]: I like sci-fi. [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully there's boarding parties that would be fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was lucky enough to get through ice and snow back to the table. [SPEAKER_01]: This is designed by Fernando Eduardo Sanchez and put up by two tomato games. [SPEAKER_01]: And what you're doing in this game is that you're taking a fleet of ships to find the northwest passage. [SPEAKER_01]: That's a northern Canada. [SPEAKER_01]: That's good because for now you won't waste time going up and down the southern border looking for the northwest passage.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it is a worker placement game. [SPEAKER_01]: And you're constantly getting kicked in the face. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's one of these games where you're sort of trying to eco little tiny advancements while trying to maintain everything that's going on between mutiny, scurvy, cannibalism, you know, you're taking your dog's leds out to go hunting, you're never working in a problem. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're trying to keep your weapons high. [SPEAKER_00]: Classic HR meter.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you work in a HR office, this is just what you're used to. [SPEAKER_01]: You're hiring in you it to guide you through or to help you hunt and lots of things going on. [SPEAKER_01]: I do very much enjoy it. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it does semi-cooperative well because you have to keep track of your fuel, your fuel is constantly going down. [SPEAKER_01]: You're ripping your ship apart, trying to get fuel to keep your fires going.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't have enough fuel to move, all ships must [SPEAKER_01]: state together so that means the other players are towing you which is good for the other players as long as they have enough fuel as well because you lose points they gain those points and now you're all being towed through [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't happen in the last game, which is odd. [SPEAKER_01]: We all sort of kept everything going, but it's this constant fight to get to those spots.

[SPEAKER_01]: Very few and far between to get fuel and or morale. [SPEAKER_01]: And so you're constantly trying to get those while trying to upgrade your ship at the same time and and procure more crew members and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: It really feels like it's a game where, in through essence though, there's three things you need to do during the round in order to [SPEAKER_00]: tread water.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is going to be blocked by another player just by virtue of the worker placement and another thing you can't do because of the worker composition you have and so you just constantly feel like you're just bleeding out all these essential resources. [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's quite agonizing. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love the placement too. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just like place a worker at the spot and you get the thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have three different kinds of officers, red, yellow and green, certain worker placement. [SPEAKER_01]: You need them and you can boost up those actions with your other sailors and your Inuit and trying to get a good gauge of what you're going to do and your turn is always very interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: So you said that the telling dynamic didn't enter into play, or at least nobody actually had to be told whether that motivated people's decisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think it's the kind of thing where, because we discussed this the last time we played through, I since now, where people are overvaluing the benefit of being able to sell another own steam, or do you think that it's the case that people are spending too much effort to avoid this consequence?

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe too much effort or realize that it's a problem in [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, rip parts of their ship up, got the wood and got the fuel that they needed to stay going. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's also the very much to do with the events you get as well. [SPEAKER_01]: We were lucky enough that I got this odd event that made it that I could explore the coastline from

[SPEAKER_01]: out in the ocean so we didn't have to go along this the short time I could put out explor tokens even if we went deep sea so the captain gets gets to decide the direction they go and then they get to side if they're going along the coastline or staying out in the middle of the ocean and that will determine how much fuel you're spending and you want to put these explor tokens out because there's endgame scoring right there's a lot of points at the end of the game so I remember being unsatisfied with the jocking for turn order just to be able to lay out these tokens because they were just so valuable

[SPEAKER_00]: It's true. [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty rough. [SPEAKER_01]: That particular part. [SPEAKER_01]: And it could be just determined because of depending on what you choose to do, either along the coast or out to see, will determine either two fuel or one fuel and then you flip the card and then you might even lose more fuel. [SPEAKER_01]: So we might have just got lucky with the events that we got. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we didn't lose as much fuel as you would normally through those.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone seemed to enjoy it, teaches a little long, just because it's sort of all sorts of new systems. [SPEAKER_01]: But once you start going, there's hardly any questions. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good flow game. [SPEAKER_01]: Through ice and snow. [SPEAKER_01]: Locker, lose two fuel. [SPEAKER_00]: Damn it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Got to play hot streak. [SPEAKER_00]: Game of the year, twenty, twenty five. [SPEAKER_00]: Is this still your game of the year, twenty, twenty, twenty, five locker? [SPEAKER_00]: So far. [SPEAKER_00]: So far. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's weird. [SPEAKER_00]: Every time I say this to people, [SPEAKER_00]: There's this amongst hardcore hobbyists, certainly ones that take themselves rather seriously.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's this dismissive attitude and it's like, yeah, did you have a great time playing it? [SPEAKER_00]: Then the arguments tend to cease at that point. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to have a lot more to say this in the context of bloke because that's where I tend to get a little more self-referential about [SPEAKER_00]: reviewing editorial standards, but games broadly speaking, whether they're explicit about it or not, have a sort of social state that they're trying to induce. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a certain vibe or a certain mood or a certain kind of experience that they're trying to evoke in the context of their design.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the more successful designs are more successful at evoking that kind of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not going to say that that mood necessarily has to be a positive one. [SPEAKER_00]: It helps. [SPEAKER_00]: But it doesn't have to be. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, melt water, square example, melt water tries to make you sad and does a great job of making you sad, but in a satisfying way. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyhow, let me set the stage.

[SPEAKER_00]: The primary concern we had, or I had anyway, at SwagCon, was broadly speaking noise concerns because it was plenty of room, but there was concrete floor and large windows and everything. [SPEAKER_00]: We just wanted to make sure that everyone could hear each other and not have to scream all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: The only time there was ever a problem was anyone was playing Hotstrike.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because it is not possible, or at least I have yet to see a game of Hotstrike that did not generate into loud shouting. [SPEAKER_00]: Even people who are relatively quiet, I saw people at SwayCon, who are very soft spoken. [SPEAKER_00]: Incredibly soft spoken individuals, reticent to make much noise, shout at the top of their lungs for a hot dog mascot who is running a race. [SPEAKER_00]: That is Hotstrike. [SPEAKER_00]: That is hot street.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand why do we every time we play says needs an expansion. [SPEAKER_00]: I think he's completely out to lunch. [SPEAKER_00]: The four mascots for hot streak are perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: The packaging is perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: The board that rolls up into the box is perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: The little boards about what happens to you after you end the game and what you do with your winnings are perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: Hot streak is a marvelous game.

[SPEAKER_00]: A tremendous experience, I've yet to have anything other than a rocket'sly excellent time while playing it, and I've yet to see anyone fail to have a rocket'sly good time while playing it. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if I'm not the one teaching them if they're just learning from the box, this is not one of those things where it's like you have to set the mood as the game explainer to evoke the right tone. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_00]: Hot streak executes on itself perfectly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a marvelous experience, and I also find it satisfying it mechanically as a game. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the deepest thing in the world. [SPEAKER_00]: If there's a fair degree of randomness, [SPEAKER_00]: But nonetheless, I do think there's a fair amount of control if you take a step back, try to figure out how the race is going to go, try to get a sense about what people are going to do to the race deck based on how they're better.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over the course of the round, my only mechanical complaint about hot streak frankly is that sometimes in some configurations and with some race decks, the side bets become sure of things. [SPEAKER_00]: It can be the case that a side bit comes up and you can be like, oh yeah, that's definitely going to happen based on what we've had before.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it is so far gone, the race deck is so heavily skewed to make that side-back come true, or failed to come true, that even if the table desperately tries to scupper that bat, and they spend all their efforts to try to change the race deck, it just can't be done, it's almost a sure thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And so consequently, the smart bet is often to focus on the side bets, but that's a minor complaint. [SPEAKER_00]: Other than that, I think Constrake is incredibly delightful.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a review copy we got from the publishers and out, designed by John Perry, who [SPEAKER_00]: Completely continues to amaze me with all his designs. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a huge fan of John Perry's games. [SPEAKER_00]: Hot streak. [SPEAKER_01]: I think of my favorite part about it is that I'm nine nine percent sure at the end when it says the game is over. [SPEAKER_01]: It does not say whoever has the most money win. [SPEAKER_01]: That is true. [SPEAKER_01]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: You just simply look at your little passage of how much money you made. [SPEAKER_01]: It'll tell you. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's, and that just pleases everyone I think. [SPEAKER_01]: The people that are, I don't want to say try hard. [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, care about those things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they can see who has the most money and they can consider that person the winner or themselves the winner or the people that you know can they they can just gauge on on the outcome of the of the phrase or the little story blurb who actually won. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, part of me wishes that they'd been explicit and and because the the role book is clear. [SPEAKER_00]: And the box is clear that the players are degenerate gamblers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that certainly sets up a situation where it can be difficult to necessarily win because, you know, if you end a game of hot streak with say, fifty bucks in your pocket, you're degenerate gambler, you're probably find a way to lose it. [SPEAKER_00]: But that having been said, I would have appreciated perhaps, or at least the game would have lent itself open to some sort of open declaration that's like, hey, you made money. [SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, parlay that into a big score or something in an effect. [SPEAKER_00]: Hot streak. [SPEAKER_00]: Hot streak.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mark U and I also got to play this week, Lord of the Rings, Fate of the Fellowship. [SPEAKER_01]: So this is the new Bat, Leicoc, Pandemic, Lord of the Rings game, by Z-Man games. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to sort of mechanically nod it all like War of the Ring. [SPEAKER_01]: Does it give me the feel of War of the Ring, but in half the time? [SPEAKER_01]: I think today's day and age, even though it's not short, [SPEAKER_01]: It's still about half as long as a word the ring is.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it gives you one of the rings a three hour game for you. [SPEAKER_01]: Probably. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Only played it. [SPEAKER_01]: I literally played it half half a matter of time, but just the teach alone is going to run you close to an hour. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because we had set up rules explanation and play in I would say about a hundred minutes or so. [SPEAKER_01]: terrible. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, considering.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it does give you that whole presence like were the ring where you have the choke points on the map.

[SPEAKER_01]: and you have the armies rushing out you have the you have Frodo and Sam starting in the shire and they have to make their way all the way to Mount Doom and drop the ring in because you're always given the mission of destroy the ring and then you're given three other missions which will bring in more flavor right they'll they'll use actual book points big missions that happen in the book and you'll have to accomplish those first

[SPEAKER_01]: before you accomplish the final destroying of the ring. [SPEAKER_01]: And they're going to use a few pandemic tropes. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's very least pandemicy of the game so far. [SPEAKER_00]: That's probably true, but it is very pandemicy. [SPEAKER_01]: It's true. [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, there's no blowing up. [SPEAKER_01]: There's no troops that are going to blow up around the map. [SPEAKER_01]: There. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the equivalent is sacking a stronghold.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So the fact that the troops don't then disperse outside is kind of relevant. [SPEAKER_00]: The net effect is the same. [SPEAKER_01]: True. [SPEAKER_01]: The biggest part is is passing the cards to get symbols that you need. [SPEAKER_01]: And in order to pass those cards, you have to be in certain territories. [SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of territories, same problem as war of the ring.

[SPEAKER_01]: You need to have a geography course in middle-earth in order to understand where everything is. [SPEAKER_01]: Man, oh man. [SPEAKER_01]: The cards will tell you this area and you're like scanning this board that has writing everywhere or trying to find certain areas. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're not totally up to like the story, like that's how I usually do it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, I know that this place attack this place. [SPEAKER_01]: So it must be just stay inside of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, [SPEAKER_01]: It's like I know Helms deep is just so must be rising guard. [SPEAKER_01]: They left ice and guard to attack Helms deep. [SPEAKER_01]: So if I started ice and guard Helms deep must be somewhere around there and it usually got me close to it. [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the cards help as well. [SPEAKER_01]: They'll be a dot. [SPEAKER_01]: in this, you know, one inch by one inch. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's a teeny tiny little amount of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then so you go to the map, that is about, you know, four feet by three feet and try to spatially. [SPEAKER_00]: Not nearly that big, come on. [SPEAKER_00]: The board, honestly, I wish the board were that big. [SPEAKER_00]: The board is really one of the biggest barriers to enjoying fate of the fellowship for two reasons. [SPEAKER_00]: Number one, there's literally not enough room for all the things there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Player pieces, armies, a token or two, [SPEAKER_00]: We were knocking things over all the time and asking is this in that thing or whatever and that's on top of the pieces covering the place names of these places that are so hard to figure out. [SPEAKER_00]: And number two, so many lines going everywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: pink lines going this way with an arrow in this direction of bi-directional cyan line coming out of the same place. [SPEAKER_00]: Leave it all my goodness.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a mess. [SPEAKER_00]: I would, I'm not in a position to recommend buying add-on neoprene match that are bigger. [SPEAKER_00]: But if there were one, I could see the legitimate functional use for it because extra real estate would have at least helped a little bit. [SPEAKER_01]: So it follows a little bit of follow-room. [SPEAKER_01]: They say that he took inspiration from follow-room. [SPEAKER_01]: Is it glory to room or follow-room? [SPEAKER_00]: Follow-room.

[SPEAKER_01]: Follow-room. [SPEAKER_01]: where the evil troops are following all these sort of battle lines. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, barbarians, they were barbarians at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's not, let's not call them evil. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, orcs and goblins. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, I'm a, oh sorry, sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought you were talking about the Visigoths. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not comfortable calling the Visigoths evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm talking to the Lord of the Rings. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we know goblins and orcs are evil because Jerra Tolkien tells us so, because he describes them in heavily racialized terms. [SPEAKER_01]: So you follow the lines. [SPEAKER_01]: I like the card system as well. [SPEAKER_01]: You flip over the card. [SPEAKER_01]: Lots of systems have done this before. [SPEAKER_01]: Even minute work at does this. [SPEAKER_01]: We flip over the card then use the back of the other card.

[SPEAKER_01]: The next card that I'll tell you if you're doing the top or bottom of this card. [SPEAKER_01]: either add more troops or move troops along certain battle lines. [SPEAKER_01]: And lots of times at the same one, depending on the troops from this stronghold are attacking this good stronghold. [SPEAKER_01]: And so you follow the lines, you'll tell you which color move all the troops along, fight the fights. [SPEAKER_01]: Comes with them. [SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic dice tower.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: The production is through the roof, right? [SPEAKER_01]: You have all these very high-quality flying rafes that are going on. [SPEAKER_01]: I really like how they did the rafes system. [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of tedious. [SPEAKER_01]: Now they move here. [SPEAKER_01]: Now they move over here. [SPEAKER_01]: Now they're grouping here, but still I like how they worked. [SPEAKER_01]: They felt dynamic.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're flying wherever they needed to fly and they modified the search result to try to find Frodo. [SPEAKER_00]: about halfway through the game, I turned to our resident Lord of the Rings stand at the table, who was Huey.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I say to Huey, is Sorn on as much a micromanager in the books as he appears to be in the board game, because it really, I started doing my very, very bad impression of the boss in office space, because of how the, the, the rates were moving around, it's like, yeah, [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to need you to fly over to Eisenguard and check things out there. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you could fill out the TPS report on the way, that'd be great.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for those over here, yeah, I'm going to need you to go over to Eisenguard on Saturday. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you turn over the next [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm gonna need you to fly back over south. [SPEAKER_00]: I was just there and I told you, and if you could make sure that the headers and the TPS reports are going back and forth and back and forth, and you said tedious, I think that's a great way to describe far too much of what goes on in favor of the fellowship.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where I sit overall. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna be paying very close attention to my future place because the things that you're doing are kind of cool. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit difficult to keep track of all of the missions it wants to be maximally efficient, but at least it is deviating from the core pandemic formula of weight until you generate enough cards. [SPEAKER_00]: The ring bearer needed to worry about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ring bearer needs five ring results, and that felt very, very classic pandemic. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we need to get a whole bunch of cards at the same color in the hand of the right person, and then they have to be at the right place. [SPEAKER_00]: That was very, very straightforward pandemic victory conditions. [SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of the other ones were much less about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was much more about leveraging the unique elements of mustering, of manipulating tokens, of the unique card effects. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, cards have specific effects other than travel effects, but they do another case of pandemic. [SPEAKER_00]: All that I thought was really cool. [SPEAKER_01]: And I really liked the fact that you controlled two characters. [SPEAKER_01]: And you did four and one.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was one action from one character, four actions from another and you could switch those back and forth that you pleased. [SPEAKER_01]: And they all had these [SPEAKER_01]: all sorts of very useful special ability. [SPEAKER_01]: So leveraging which one to do, I thought was kind of interesting as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Part of me thinks that the special ability is should have taken about twenty percent off the top because we're talking about, you know, two to four very verbose special abilities of their particular instances. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the virtue of that is that quarterbacking is borderline impossible, but it was so broke that sometimes people had difficulty remembering how their own abilities worked. [SPEAKER_00]: And we went way past not being able to quarterback.

[SPEAKER_00]: We couldn't even effectively consult with each other because it's like, it's because of an ability. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, okay, fine. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing this thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me do this thing. [SPEAKER_00]: How do you do that? [SPEAKER_00]: It's an ability. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, fine. [SPEAKER_00]: So we couldn't even give helpful advice as a consequence.

[SPEAKER_00]: The biggest problem for me about fate of the fellowship was everything about how the game system itself was working in terms of the AI because it was tedious. [SPEAKER_00]: It was involved. [SPEAKER_00]: Once you're flipping three cards, it takes a long time. [SPEAKER_00]: You flip over a card. [SPEAKER_00]: You find out which effect you're doing. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have to find the thing on the map. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you have to go do the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And all of this is a pretty time consuming process. [SPEAKER_00]: You create that three times. [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it's one of those incredibly long invasion paths in fall of Rome. [SPEAKER_01]: Just as a quick note, it's not even at the end of a round. [SPEAKER_01]: It's at the end of every turn. [SPEAKER_00]: And every turn. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: In fall of Rome, there were far fewer invasion paths.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were far fewer cities and they were more predictable and much more straightforward, easy to find and easy to execute. [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't have to go through the entire, all it did was it added a single cube. [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't cause you to go all the way back through an entire invasion chain because everyone's a shuffle up one space.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now that you're saying it I've not understand because we had the problem we were talking about that there's no way in pandemic you see the cards [SPEAKER_01]: that's like, that was my other major concern, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: And this, there's no way you can remember because one, you're doing top and bottom and there's so many paths, there's no way you're going to remember. [SPEAKER_00]: There's an epidemic.

[SPEAKER_00]: When there's the equivalent in pretty much any other pandemic game, you take all the AI cards, you shuffle them and you put them back on the top. [SPEAKER_00]: What that means is, is that there are reliable trouble spots. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, real, it tends to accumulate a lot of disease. [SPEAKER_00]: Toronto is a problem area. [SPEAKER_00]: and it accumulates lots of disease. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you see what I did? [SPEAKER_00]: That was a think of trying people.

[SPEAKER_00]: People outside Toronto appreciate takes a Toronto. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not one of those, but I feel dirty, but anyway moving on. [SPEAKER_00]: And so when that reshuffle happens, you look at the board and say, OK, that's got three disease cubes. [SPEAKER_00]: That's an issue. [SPEAKER_00]: We have to deal with that. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, over the course of the game, new threats emerge. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's this sort of pattern.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's great balance between unpredictability and reliability in terms of where the threats are going to emerge. [SPEAKER_00]: Infaith of the fellowship, it was all like, [SPEAKER_00]: Purely random from my understanding of things. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the fact that he's and then what I was going is the fact that there's so many different battle paths. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it just doubles down on that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I'm trying to I'm gonna I'm gonna think about why there's so many next time I play like why did they do it this way? [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I think possibly just to accommodate for a whole bunch of things that happen in the books. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that, you know, in terms of noise on the board, probably the player power is definitely in terms of the effect of the AI current could have.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would have appreciated it appearing down. [SPEAKER_00]: I would have appreciated if there was a little bit more focus. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a little bit more constrained. [SPEAKER_00]: So I could just have a better sense of what was going on and so that I didn't feel like [SPEAKER_00]: as much as half of the game was just executing the game's AI. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not great.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the geniuses of pandemic, the reason why the formula has been copied so successfully by other designs, and iterated so successfully by so many other pandemic designs, is because it's got this great ebb and flow, this great sense of evolution, this great sense of repetition, of a problem areas recurring, and it's so easy to execute an emuzon on such a great pace.

[SPEAKER_01]: I did feel that it hit all the points that other Lord of the Rings games have focused on because it's sort of those points in the book. [SPEAKER_01]: It is the getting Frodo from point A to point B was a thing, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I did appreciate [SPEAKER_00]: trying to outsmart Sauron's attention in the process of moving Frodo.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was very much unlike anything I've done in any other pandemic game and it was dissimilar to what I've done in a lot of other cooperative games and that felt really cool. [SPEAKER_00]: That part I appreciate. [SPEAKER_01]: And in sort of getting all the other races on board.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like there's the elves and the dwarves and the two different humans that you need to muster them up and get them on board and start moving around to deal with these different outbreaks and that sort of took place as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I should repeat for the record that I actually have a dislike for the license. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not even that it doesn't do anything for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It actually makes me less inclined to appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That having been said as I just said I think that the the best innovation or the best novelty to the pandemic formula that fate of the fellowship offered was this idea that there are these rates hunting don't know not double sorry Frodo these rates held hunting Frodo and there were ways to divert their attention and it was during those moments to be like a billbow hit the road quickly sorry Frodo sorry whatever ring bear the person with the ring

[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to hit the road, there are tensions they've heard, and then there's the dynamic of them swarming on that location, then you have to peel them off, and so on and so on. [SPEAKER_00]: That part was, it was challenging, it was difficult. [SPEAKER_00]: Here we go, I think almost on the frustrating, but I found it really cool, because there are these brief windows.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you think that this is a problem, you can solve once and then you're done with no. [SPEAKER_00]: You have a brief window respite. [SPEAKER_00]: That's when you move a photo as far as you can, and the next step, the fact that the rest of the time you just need to take advantage of those rare winter moments. [SPEAKER_00]: Lord of the Rings, Fate of the Fellowship, Matt Leecock, Zeeman Games.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the games we played last week, now a brief break to pay some bills. [SPEAKER_00]: And we're back. [SPEAKER_00]: Now one of the news and why it mostly doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_00]: So first off, the stuff that doesn't matter, there's gonna be a new doom by Modipius.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the third board game in sensation of doom, Kevin Wilson's two thousand four, which later on became descent. [SPEAKER_00]: The twenty-sixteen doom by Jonathan Eang, which for what it's worth, I thought was an underappreciated game of dice chucking and running around. [SPEAKER_00]: It captured the emphasis on mobility and a bias for action that some of the new doom video games have. [SPEAKER_00]: But now we're gonna have a new one.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are going to be two additions, sort of classic doom and doom the Dark Ages.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh,

[SPEAKER_00]: that you subscribe to her feed on blue skies. [SPEAKER_00]: She's got some very interesting things to say, but her new game, high tide sold out at Jencon. [SPEAKER_00]: So congratulations to Marceline Lyman. [SPEAKER_00]: High tide is aesthetically vaguely reminiscent of some of the aspects of hive in that there are these hexagonical pieces that you move around on an abstract tabletop and they kind of connect and stack on top of each other in different ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious to give it a try.

[SPEAKER_00]: But also one of the reasons why Marceline Lyman is in the news is because she circulated a zine called Blacklist CGE, which was widely distributed at Jen Con and I highly recommend you check it out. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to include a link to it in the episode notes below, which leads to the unfortunate news. [SPEAKER_00]: I can definitely tell you that after running [SPEAKER_00]: SwideCon, aka Kung Da, so very wrong about games.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes good vibes only transwrites a human rights board game jamboree. [SPEAKER_00]: The last thing that I wanted to see was that there are some publishers that are engaged in some anti-transsonant games. [SPEAKER_00]: And so check games edition has decided to release a Harry Potter themed edition of codemes, despite the fact that Harry Potter's author and intellectual rights holder, JK Rowling, has committed to using her platform and income to further anti-transgender hate.

[SPEAKER_00]: CGE's reaction to calls for them to drop the franchise have been to issue what we take to be nearly mouthed non-statements, which do not address the very real harms that their actions are causing to the trans and non-binary communities. [SPEAKER_00]: Our position, swag, is simple. [SPEAKER_00]: This hobby is not so much about the products that we enjoy. [SPEAKER_00]: It is about the people that come together to enjoy them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we have long been explicit in our commitment to growing the hobby, bringing new people and making a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. [SPEAKER_00]: CGE has made its commitment similarly clear in that they are willing to harm marginalized people in their pursuit of profits. [SPEAKER_00]: We stand with trends and non-binary people and any association with JK Rowling and her campaign of harm and exclusion is a threat to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thus, unless and until CGE changes its policies, we will cease any adult coverage of CGE products going forward. [SPEAKER_00]: I encourage you to go check out Marceline Lyman's Blacklist CGE Zene for more information as it is an excellent document with lots of good insight to offer. [SPEAKER_01]: And that is the news and why it matters.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, with our feature game, which is Vantage, or as we say in French Canada, Lou, Vantage. [SPEAKER_00]: This is designed by Jamie Stagmire, published by Stillmire Games in twenty twenty five. [SPEAKER_00]: Jamie Stagmire has been a fixture in the hobby ever since he published a future culture in twenty eleven.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was an early adopter of Kickstarter crowd fund board games until he eventually abandoned the platform having decided that the company Stillmire had reached the era of sustainability has been very very transparent about company practices and [SPEAKER_00]: that we very much appreciate. [SPEAKER_00]: He's designed a number of games that we hear at Swagwood consider to be functional at best.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like Vitticulture, you Fourier, Charterstone tapestries, various levels of functional. [SPEAKER_00]: We're very big fans of the influential, twenty-six teams as I sighed. [SPEAKER_00]: And we thought that expeditions in twenty-twenty-twenty was kind of okay. [SPEAKER_00]: So Walker, why don't you give us an unhelpful summary about what one does in Levantage? [SPEAKER_01]: Inventage, I'm constantly trying to figure out [SPEAKER_01]: how the designer wants me to play this game.

[SPEAKER_01]: Am I just blindly working on this mission? [SPEAKER_01]: Or is there some hidden story going on in the background that I'm tempting to uncover? [SPEAKER_01]: There's this traveler. [SPEAKER_01]: Is he going to show me something? [SPEAKER_01]: Is something going on? [SPEAKER_01]: Am I supposed to remember where I went in my past games? [SPEAKER_01]: Am I supposed to remember each choice on each card?

[SPEAKER_01]: And when I go back to it, Am I supposed to choose something different this time? [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's a certificate. [SPEAKER_01]: I can tell everyone at the table what is exactly on my vantage card. [SPEAKER_01]: I can read it word for word. [SPEAKER_01]: I can explain the entire picture. [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not allowed to show it to them. [SPEAKER_01]: They can't see this really cool art. [SPEAKER_01]: Is it because there's some sort of code or hidden clues in the picture?

[SPEAKER_01]: Who knows? [SPEAKER_01]: As soon as you decide, I'm what kind of test you're going to take. [SPEAKER_01]: You've already passed the test. [SPEAKER_01]: There's no failing these tests. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a matter of [SPEAKER_01]: how much it's going to cost you. [SPEAKER_01]: And I can see why they've sort of broken it up and steps. [SPEAKER_01]: You're told how hard the test is going to be. [SPEAKER_01]: Then you take the test.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then you're told what you get as, you know, how you pass the test. [SPEAKER_01]: And because on very few tests, [SPEAKER_01]: Like I would say, two percent of the tests that we've taken, you get some tokens back or some of the things that you spend in order to take the test. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's why you have to wait till the end because you might spend more knowing you might get something back. [SPEAKER_01]: But other than that, it's oddly broken up.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is two percent. [SPEAKER_00]: Walker, Walker, Walker. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: You're not studying for the LSATS. [SPEAKER_00]: I know. [SPEAKER_00]: You're not applying for parole. [SPEAKER_00]: Chill out, man. [SPEAKER_01]: But it just feels like there's this overarching thing going on. [SPEAKER_01]: And I can't try and to get on the right path. [SPEAKER_01]: Did you just chill out? [SPEAKER_01]: No, there's conspiracies going on in advantage.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I must hunt them down. [SPEAKER_01]: The traveler is trying to take over this planet, Mark. [SPEAKER_01]: And we must stop. [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: That's it. [SPEAKER_01]: Who knows. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think, okay, typically I have to resort to the chill out to people who are taking a game too competitively.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I've never won this game or I need to win this game or what have you to chill out. [SPEAKER_00]: Because we take games very seriously. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously we wouldn't shut into a can for hundreds of hours about games if we didn't take them seriously. [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, we're here to have fun, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: just like that might might just like the tagline just because games are fun doesn't mean we can't take them seriously and just because we take them seriously doesn't mean we can't have fun. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a notion as to why advantage is stressing you out I do not I don't know okay maybe some people say you need to remember they also say [SPEAKER_01]: that you can travel to where other players were.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And then you get to take because and then then the fact that once you pick one of there's usually like eight different things, sorry, six, six core options every card. [SPEAKER_01]: And once you take one, then you're done with the car. [SPEAKER_01]: You're not allowed to choose usually. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: You can't do anything else in that card. [SPEAKER_01]: But if someone else goes to that card, they are open to doing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But they can't choose something that doesn't make sense. [SPEAKER_01]: So the example that's always given is, if the first person is burnt to bridge, you can't then go to that location across the bridge. [SPEAKER_01]: So somehow you need to remember some things that are going on the game.

[SPEAKER_01]: It seems to hint around that, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: you build on plays like once you you know your next play you're supposed to remember things and do things in a certain way and I just can't see how you're supposed to be able to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: So what you're referring to is something that some games haven't, it's been mentioned all cost, generally.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's what my engineering friends call state, which is to say, a thing that you have to track and you have no ability to track. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm definitely in a state. [SPEAKER_00]: You're definitely in a state. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're almost getting the vapors, frankly. [SPEAKER_00]: Just so people know, because we haven't really talked about this. [SPEAKER_00]: We just find you a shazelange onto which you may swoon if you become overwhelmed. [SPEAKER_01]: It's true.

[SPEAKER_01]: This game is very much like seventh C. You're flipping up numbered map tiles and you're sort of... Yeah, seventh continent. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, seventh continent, yes. [SPEAKER_01]: And it tells me the Raven Knight little bit lighted grail. [SPEAKER_01]: Farm below. [SPEAKER_01]: Yep. [SPEAKER_01]: Constantly looking through. [SPEAKER_01]: As above subalope. [SPEAKER_01]: You're doing, you're doing map cards, and you're also looking through. [SPEAKER_00]: Care graph.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look up narrative stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Just so. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was just trying to get to the root of your psychological issues, before getting too much further under the game. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, this is very much the genre. [SPEAKER_00]: It's an adventure game. [SPEAKER_00]: It is co-op, but and every play is by the rule book technically. [SPEAKER_00]: New and self-contained exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a campaign, it's not a campaign. [SPEAKER_00]: And here, okay, here's the thing. [SPEAKER_00]: This sense of, I don't know, dread, stress, preoccupation that you have. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's fear of missing phone. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, phone mode. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, phone mode. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, phone mode. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's far as phone mode. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I would contrast your phone mode.

[SPEAKER_00]: with my sense of borderline dread that I get when playing almost all other paragraph-based look-up adventure games, which is a sense of tedium and gameplay mechanisms that are there mostly just a stained-in-the-way. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's take as an example. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, geez, I can't even remember what it was. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sleeping gods. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: You knew exactly where I was going. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So sleeping gods, I think, is a pretty good paradigmatic example of how a lot of these games work because you early on have been commenting on how strange it is to automatically succeed in all the tests.

[SPEAKER_00]: The alternative is what almost all the other games of the genre do, which say you have health or stamina or some combination of the two, [SPEAKER_00]: and every time you fail something, or sometimes just when the game decides to be mean to you, you lose some of this, and then there's some tedious process by which you go and you get more of this thing back.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, not only does this emphasize the extent to which the game feels arbitrary, whenever it hands it to you, not as a result of a loss, but it also just pads on time. [SPEAKER_00]: And my temptation is always just, can we just get on with it? [SPEAKER_00]: Why are you keeping my ability to experience whatever it is that you've got to show me? [SPEAKER_00]: Behind some weird unsatisfying dice-check mechanisms, and the need to go back and refresh my resources.

[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, I don't know if this was, I have to assume this was consciously. [SPEAKER_00]: Jamie Steckbier is like, [SPEAKER_00]: Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. [SPEAKER_00]: Every game is going to be self-contained. [SPEAKER_00]: The limits on resources that you have, there's no real way to reset them. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're trying in such a way to sort of give some kind of gameplay structure, like a session-based structure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's another thing that a lot of these other narrative games like play as long as you want. [SPEAKER_00]: Pack it in when you think you're done for the day, right? [SPEAKER_00]: As opposed to Vantage, which is this is a session. [SPEAKER_00]: This is what a session is going to look like. [SPEAKER_00]: In the other win-and-loss conditions, those aren't really important, but this is what a session looks like. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the structure we come off of.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I for one think that the structure and the overall framing, the fact that it's not a campaign, and the time limits that have been posed are just about perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: And consequently, for that reason alone, I like vantage way more than I thought I would, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because I was ready for another, all right, fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Seven of the continent kind of, yeah, great, great, great, great.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like three hours of flipping stuff around and going this that the other and we're tests that you fail and let's let's introduce some, we need mechanisms for our game. [SPEAKER_00]: There you go. [SPEAKER_00]: And those mechanisms just serving as a way to to serve as speed bumps. [SPEAKER_00]: The vintage, yeah, the mechanisms aren't brilliant, but they're relatively minimalist.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they do doubt tail with your character progression [SPEAKER_00]: Slightly better than I would have expected. [SPEAKER_00]: Not on this tremendous way, but slightly better than I would have expected. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very random [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, character progression, but it's there. [SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, the flow is great. [SPEAKER_01]: You pick, you pick. [SPEAKER_01]: It's your turn. [SPEAKER_01]: You look at your card.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't done anything on it, you pick the action you want. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, I see certain things. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to craft something they're saying. [SPEAKER_01]: Crafts green. [SPEAKER_01]: So you tell someone that I'm doing the green action on card. [SPEAKER_01]: One fifty three. [SPEAKER_01]: So they grab the green book.

[SPEAKER_01]: If they look at one fifty three, they tell you the difficulty of that action and you have a pool of dice for everyone to use. [SPEAKER_01]: You grab that many dice and you roll them. [SPEAKER_01]: and you have to sock them away or you're going to lose what's on the dice. [SPEAKER_01]: See they're going to be time, morale, or health.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you have all sorts of cards that you can sock dice in and there are some like non dice that you automatically pass or another result that lets you put it back in the pool because there's also a need to drain the pool of all dice so you can [SPEAKER_01]: clear the dice off your cards and start using them again. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, building this grid of nine cards, three by three grid that, you know, overtime will let you sock more dice that, you know, helps you do tasks.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's the next player's turn. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's seemed like a lot, but it's not. [SPEAKER_01]: It's read the passage. [SPEAKER_01]: Grab your dice, roll them, sock them away. [SPEAKER_01]: Next player's turn. [SPEAKER_01]: Go on. [SPEAKER_00]: I also want to flag something that is recurrent in a lot of design elements advantage that differentiated from the other ones of a genre positively.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, it's almost impossible to lose where you are because all the tests are keyed off of the location advantage that you're currently occupying. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just got this big that number. [SPEAKER_00]: You're on location card one sixty four. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you forgot where you are. [SPEAKER_00]: Look down. [SPEAKER_00]: It's your vantage card. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I can't remember what test I was doing. [SPEAKER_00]: You're doing the green one on one sixty four.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's one sixty four. [SPEAKER_00]: Other games if you put a card back prematurely, if you're not super careful, sometimes you can just get completely lost if to reconstruct what paragraph you were at. [SPEAKER_00]: Vantage, like you might forget what item card you were told to pull. [SPEAKER_00]: Like the result of your tests says, go pull item card ten eighty one and someone might forget that. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's like, oh, is the result of my yellow test on card one sixty four.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an entry one sixty four in the yellow book, you're fine. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I just find it mechanically, just smoother and more difficult to mess up. [SPEAKER_00]: Inventage, when compared to other paragraph games, even ones that I really like, I loved legacy of Dragonhold. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's fabulous. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the writing is really good. [SPEAKER_00]: The characters are really cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it did a really, really good job of being mechanism light. [SPEAKER_00]: And the way that it dealt with stamina wasn't nearly as tedious as things get, sometimes in Tated Grail or Sleeping Gods or Tales of the Rabi Knights or other games like that. [SPEAKER_00]: But you could lose where you were. [SPEAKER_00]: So you constantly had to be writing down every paragraph every time in case you got distracted or looked away from the page and couldn't remember the number anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then to generate that problem. [SPEAKER_01]: The thing I find a little bit odd is that how odd but still [SPEAKER_01]: fun, because you can help each other out. [SPEAKER_01]: There's ways to get tokens. [SPEAKER_01]: The same as the skills in your card. [SPEAKER_01]: You can just spend it at any time to help out your friends, even though you're not at the same spot. [SPEAKER_01]: They say you have a radio, so you sort of say, hey, I see this creature.

[SPEAKER_01]: How can I deal with this and so you're helping them out? [SPEAKER_01]: And there's also spots on your cards. [SPEAKER_01]: They're very few in far between, but if there's a lightning bolt on a particular place to socket die, then you can take dice from other players as well. [SPEAKER_01]: So there is this sort of cooperative system in the game. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, very minimal. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is. [SPEAKER_00]: I think Vantage is best at one or two players.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't suffer when we first sat down to play a three player game. [SPEAKER_00]: I was very nervous, but it turns out that I was overly nervous. [SPEAKER_00]: It worked fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I thought it was fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it doesn't add too too much to the proceedings. [SPEAKER_00]: But frankly, it is a much smoother than a lot of other similar games.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's just enough ability to kibbutts a little bit about what it is that somebody wants to do. [SPEAKER_00]: And just a tiny little bit of dis manipulation of your friends, it works out okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I find playing with players is a lot more rewarding than playing by yourself. [SPEAKER_01]: like bouncing off ideas or things that you found and sharing the experience, I find it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I suppose that's the same with every game, but a little bit more so in vantage, I feel. [SPEAKER_00]: So with respect to whether or not there's any kind of overarching story, we have, I've played vantage now, have it as in times. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot that I haven't touched.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, constantly new discoveries we made, both in terms of the world that you're exploring, [SPEAKER_00]: in terms of ways to leverage built-in actions on either the character card you start with, or the mission you start with, or a destiny that the might get discord. [SPEAKER_00]: You've observed that, okay, so let's talk about pursuing the mission objectives. [SPEAKER_00]: No, let's let's assume that you care about wins and losses.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think this is necessarily a sign of misunderstanding what Vantage is about. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not primarily about the W or the L, but you know, there's enough structure there again to give you something to shoot for. [SPEAKER_00]: And the extent to which it's, let me contrast this with tells me or maybe nights, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So the original tells me or maybe nights, you might be subjected to some kind of curse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know that there are ways to undo the curse. [SPEAKER_00]: The problem is there's no area of the board or there's no kind of thing that is more apt to produce curse alleviating results than not. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it is a purely random experience of wandering around and things happening to you. [SPEAKER_00]: Vantage on the other hand, one of your vision conditions might be something along the lines of acquire animals.

[SPEAKER_00]: In which case, if your Vantage has visible animals, you be like, oh, let's do something with them. [SPEAKER_00]: And that might help us get towards that. [SPEAKER_00]: Are there no animals? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe you leave and go to try to go find a place where there are animals. [SPEAKER_00]: And so consequently, there's a sense of connective tissue but the locations that other games don't have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I found that that's one of those areas where the eponymous gimmick of the game, namely Vantage, [SPEAKER_00]: serve as well like you look at the card, you know, you know that this expedition cares about animals, others know animals here, okay? [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this isn't a priority, but maybe something on the vantage catches your eye. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe something looks cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's a reason to go off on a side tangent and go do your own thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, go for it. [SPEAKER_01]: There's no wrong way to play. [SPEAKER_01]: It happens several times and especially in the game that we just played where it's like [SPEAKER_01]: This cool little element on your vantage card.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like that looks like it could be this so I'm gonna choose this even though it makes no sense and it turned out to be that or you see a city in the distance or Or it looks like if I go west something will happen all of those things very interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: I think the art on the card is very interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah [SPEAKER_00]: So the question becomes, without doing a full campaign experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you're doing a full campaign, you can always just add stuff that happens later. [SPEAKER_00]: And that will prevent there being repetition, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The way vintage avoids repetition, while still always starting off normally from the same spot, is from a randomized landing spot, and there's a fair number of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are some moments of awkwardness, though, because the actions that are listed on the side of the card that you can pursue are one work. [SPEAKER_00]: And the context is sometimes clear, but the context sometimes is utterly unknown or downright misleading. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me start with the unknown one. [SPEAKER_00]: You had an encounter with some people. [SPEAKER_00]: There was like a merchant and his friend or something. [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the options was console.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like console. [SPEAKER_00]: What? [SPEAKER_00]: It was just out of left field. [SPEAKER_00]: There was no context basis to believe that anyone would be consoling other than that prompt. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the action opportunity itself was telling us something weird. [SPEAKER_00]: So I thought you were smuggling information in. [SPEAKER_00]: And then sometimes not frequently, but often enough. [SPEAKER_00]: The context can be misleading.

[SPEAKER_00]: This happens in video games all the time, like you pick a dialogue option, but the tone is completely off from what you expected from the text. [SPEAKER_00]: I had, for example, I was in an area of dense forest, and there was a tower in the distance that looks like it would made out entirely out of wood. [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the options was hack, and I thought it was to hack my way through the forest or something.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, it was turns out that there was a tiny, tiny, tiny little dish, radar dish at the top of the tower that I couldn't see that I could barely make connections to even after I knew that hack was to hack into a some sort of electronics system. [SPEAKER_00]: Like what? [SPEAKER_00]: That's weird. [SPEAKER_00]: That happens to me, I think. [SPEAKER_00]: That kind of thing, I encounter that about once every game or so.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody does an action and it turns out, well, apparently, I'm doing something completely different for what I thought I was doing. [SPEAKER_00]: That breaks the immersion a fair bit, but I find it overall forgivable. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not ideal, but it's workable. [SPEAKER_01]: And a little bit with, they seem to, it seems to want you to understand the directions you're going in.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it says to the north or something or to the east or that's you go to another book where you could see a map or, and then you start specifically following the directions, but it's not taking you to where [SPEAKER_01]: It claims you can go and that's very frustrating as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It vantage defies your ability much of the time to have a kind of strategic overall goal for what's going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it does tend to give you enough short-term threads that you can pull on for somewhat predictable consequences. [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you see on the card [SPEAKER_00]: that there are animals flying around and one of the actions is catch. [SPEAKER_00]: You're probably not going to catch a cold or you're not going to be playing a game of catch with someone off the obviously of the card. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be trying to catch that animal, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And do you care about animals? [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, no. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you just want to do things to do things and that's fine. [SPEAKER_00]: But yes, very often there have been instances where the game tells you far off and the distance to the north you see a thing and it's like, oh, okay, well, keep going north and I'll hit it right. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you will. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you won't.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think to a certain extent, vantage demands a degree of surrender to the system. [SPEAKER_00]: that is very much smaller than most other adventure games, but is very much larger than your traditional board game from whatever design idiom, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So in many ways, as I say, there's more structure than your average adventure game. [SPEAKER_00]: It is more board gamey than a lot of these paragraph pole games.

[SPEAKER_00]: But nonetheless, you do have to accept that [SPEAKER_00]: to sort of accept your here for the ambience, the art, the story, the development, strange occurrences, fantastic encounters, things of that nature. [SPEAKER_01]: Feel the entry point is very low as well, because it's very difficult to build your table the way you want it to. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: It's sort of just evolves by itself. [SPEAKER_01]: So that means that anyone can sort of do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're not going to [SPEAKER_01]: feel bad for the way their table was progressing because they really had no control over it. [SPEAKER_01]: And because it's this cooperative game you can sort of, you know, walk them through what their cards can do and what they can do with their dice when they roll them. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's fairly low bar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: in terms of mechanisms, in terms of barrier to entry, in terms of setup, the fact that it's not a campaign means all of these things are super quick, super low barrier to entry. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have a question for you Walker, and this is about the overall presentation of the world, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I said that vantage works, if you give it that rope, that clearly you have some difficulty giving it.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you give a certain sense of surrender, a certain sense of abandon, again, less than other adventure games, but more than traditional heroes, to be able to explore what the world has to offer. [SPEAKER_00]: Someone narrative light, heavy on atmosphere, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I find the world advantage a pleasant place to wander around in, and I enjoy seeing what comes out of it. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, what a hundred percent. [SPEAKER_00]: And is this true for you as well?

[SPEAKER_00]: For sure. [SPEAKER_00]: So for you, it's a balance between that joy of discovery and this vague sense of unease that you're missing something. [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's like cities that you get to wander around in. [SPEAKER_01]: There's coal cave systems. [SPEAKER_01]: There's very interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really enjoyed some of the things that have happened. [SPEAKER_00]: There's been some cool memorable stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's, you know, not nothing particularly epic or intricate. [SPEAKER_00]: But again, because it's not a campaign system and because you have this lovely structure, I'm all right with that. [SPEAKER_00]: And sure, could there have been more context offered if it was a campaign system? [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Like the very first time we played, one of the very first things that happens was I made first contact with an alien race.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt that the game unsatisfiantly kind of played that off as just a casual thing. [SPEAKER_00]: But the game doesn't know whether that's the first conversation I've had with an alien or the hundredth conversation I've had with an alien. [SPEAKER_00]: So whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: And the moment I made that realization, that was a really good way to make me give up, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The way to give it that rope to give that surrender, to cease worrying about this overall architecture. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not telling an epic space fantasy story where there's all these alien races and you're learning their cultures and so forth. [SPEAKER_00]: You're a tourist, you're wandering around and things happen. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're okay with that, then Vantage has a lot to offer you. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not, then, well, it'll be a bouncing act.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the one disadvantage of that, because when you're doing a campaign, you just sort of put your cards in a pile, and then you get to put the back of it again next time you play. [SPEAKER_01]: This one, you get to take all of the cards, and then you now have to put them all back on the box and the right order. [SPEAKER_01]: So there is something there is a little tedium to put it away, but other than that, I enjoy everything about Vantage.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think Vantage is a very, very, very well-executed evolution of the adventure game format. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it is, other than, like I said, I would put it on a par with, like I said, Dragonhold is different. [SPEAKER_00]: It is more mechanical. [SPEAKER_00]: It is more innovative, but the writing is less compelling. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm less compelled of the characters.

[SPEAKER_00]: But again, that's partially by virtue of the structure, which I very, very much appreciate as well. [SPEAKER_00]: And it is exactly what I'm looking for. [SPEAKER_00]: in the context of an adventure game at the stage in my hobbyist career. [SPEAKER_00]: I came into vintage with a very, very low expectations and I'm completely impressed. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thoroughly pleased and I think it is a tremendous step forward for this kind of game. [SPEAKER_01]: I agree.

[SPEAKER_01]: They've taken everything that's good, gotten rid of the chaff and the grindingists and giving us what we want. [SPEAKER_00]: All the other adventure games at various times have felt like work. [SPEAKER_01]: I've never had vantage feeling like work. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like do this task, okay? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you're going to, you're going to take a penalty, but here's this other action that gets you that back. [SPEAKER_01]: There's none of that advantage.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, advantage. [SPEAKER_01]: You have this slow, you know, if you fail very badly, you're going to slowly go down this, to get it back, there's no actual mechanism. [SPEAKER_01]: There's just once in a while you might, you'll creep back up a little bit, but you just need to, these are the resources you have. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the time you have for the session. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: The time runs out, your session's done.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Try to get next time, maybe. [SPEAKER_01]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: Roll better. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's going to do it for this episode of Silver and Rama Games. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so so much for joining us. [SPEAKER_00]: You can find all our information at sowronggames.com. [SPEAKER_00]: You can support us on patreon.com slash fag if you're so inclined or not. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for spending the time with us. [SPEAKER_00]: We hope to see you again soon.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take care of yourselves. [SPEAKER_00]: Take care of your hobby. [SPEAKER_00]: Peace! [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to sobering it wrong about games, or gaming podcasts about board games produced by Michael Walker and edited by Mark Bick. [SPEAKER_00]: You can find all our information at sowronggames.com. [SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to what's the city for allowing us to use their most excellent song FLS as our interview and find them at what's the unique.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: We hope to see you again soon and as always. [SPEAKER_00]: Try to be right to but remember you're so very well.