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Episode 26: Steve's tales of games on the ocean
43 Plays17 days ago
Join us as Steve lists off the myriad of games he got played while on board the BGG at Sea cruise.
Shane gets the number one game of all time to the table twice, just to break up the barrage of Steve talking.
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Transcript
Welcome Back and Catch-Up
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Mate Let's Play. I almost forgot the name of our podcast because we've done one episode this year. But we're so back. this is This is like back to normality now. No more cruises, no more Christmas holidays for a while. How are you doing, Shane?
00:00:33
Speaker
I am a great, thank you. i am great. But yes, I think I've even forgotten the name of our podcast. it was amazing of a couple of weeks ago. I get this, you know, up up it comes in my thread. I'm like, what's this podcast? Oh, that's ours. haven't seen that for a while.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, and apologies for the last episode too because I didn't get a chance to edit it before I went. So I thought I'll just edit it while I'm um away and then realise that I didn't have the software that also and I didn't also have any of the audio files. So it's just the raw recording last episode. So it didn't sound the greatest. let's hey It was there. It was content.
Board Game Geek Cruise Overview
00:01:12
Speaker
ah You can change the title of that that podcast then, you know, call it Mate Let's Play, the raw edition or something. The raw, yeah, yeah. But, yes, so we're going talk a lot about board games because we haven't chatted for a month. And obviously for myself, I've been on a board game geek cruise for two weeks of that time.
00:01:33
Speaker
So I played a ton of games and I'm sure you've hopefully managed is to play some games. Shane, I know you're a busy man, but you so seem to have been able to get some games to the table. I've played a game.
00:01:45
Speaker
Wow, okay. Well, played that A game twice. So this episode is going to be really all about you and your
Surprise Hit: Panda Royale
00:01:54
Speaker
two-week cruising. But um look, it that I'm sure I can come up with some filler.
00:01:59
Speaker
Well, there is you've actually got one thing I do want to talk to you about, but um we'll leave that until a bit later and i'll I'll quiz you on that. But yeah, look, I'm happy to just kick it off and and start going through some of the games.
00:02:10
Speaker
Over to you, my friend. So do you want to start with my favorite game or the biggest surprise game? for my I think you've got to leave it leave your favorite to the end.
00:02:21
Speaker
Let's do it. Let's face it, we've got not much content from me coming from me, so we're not good as we're building with you. So, yeah. So, biggest surprise then? They are at the same game, so that's fine. So, the biggest surprise by far was this little game that I looked at and I went, oh, that looks like a kid's game.
00:02:39
Speaker
And I guess to an extent it is. It's a game called Panda Royale. ah In Panda Royale, there is 10 rounds and in round one, you you draft one dice.
00:02:53
Speaker
it'll be yellow. Everyone's dice is yellow. You roll it and you score as many points as it says says on that dice. Whoever scores the least amount of points gets the pink sympathy die. So in the next round, they'll be rolling an additional die. And whoever wins the round, you draw out as many dice plus one, I think, as there are players in the game and you draft an additional dice.
00:03:15
Speaker
So everyone will have two dice in the second round, except the person who came last in the first round who will have the sympathy die. um Now, that dice could be at one of many different colors. And they all, it's a little bit like Nid of a Lear. They all score differently based on the color of the dice.
00:03:30
Speaker
So whatever purple dice you get, whatever value is on there, you multiply it by two. Blue dice, you just score the value it's on there, unless you've got a glittery blue dice, in which case it multiplies all the values of your blue dice by two.
00:03:43
Speaker
The red dice, which I went down that rabbit hole numerous times and with limited levels of success, but the red dice is my favorite because it's if it's a D8, the top four numbers are white and the bottom four numbers are black. If it's a D6, top three and bottom three, right? So the white numbers are good, the black numbers are bad.
00:04:03
Speaker
ah You total up the total value of your dice and you multiply them by the amount of that colored dice you have. So if you roll a five and an eight, you would score 13 times two is 26. If you had four dice and you rolled a total of 25, would go 25 times four.
00:04:20
Speaker
But if you are unlucky and rolled black numbers, they're negatives. So then you might be scoring negative 12 or negative 20 or something like that. So they're really like up and down. There's a green die, which are all D20s. So they're just high numbered dice.
00:04:34
Speaker
And then they're clear dice, which you roll, you get the value for, but then you get to trade that with someone else's dice that you're playing the game with. So it's just this really cool game where every round the progression gets more and more until the end where
Cruise Gaming Highlights
00:04:47
Speaker
you're yeah around 10, you're rolling 10 dice.
00:04:49
Speaker
um And everything scores differently. like It's a great game to play with kids to help them like think about maths because you've got to do a lot of different editions and whatnot. um But also just a really like a fairly good strategy game when you're just chucking dice because...
00:05:05
Speaker
You know, you don't want to you don't want to diversify too much because otherwise those big multipliers aren't going to kick in. Maybe you just avoid reds altogether because there's too much risk there, but maybe you go all in reds because there's still a more it's still more likely that you're going to score positive than negative because all the higher numbers are positive.
00:05:23
Speaker
So even if you roll two negative numbers and one high number not one to white number, that white number will knock out the the negative numbers, if you know what I mean. So it just, we and and the game goes for like 10, 15 minutes. Like it's 10 rounds of rolling dice and scoring. That's it.
00:05:40
Speaker
And I think I played it like eight or nine times on the cruise, like maybe more. It was just a game that when you had like a little bit of time to spare before dinner was getting served or whatever, you just pull it out and have a game. And we even took it out of the library and took it down to one of the other areas on the ship and just played it.
00:05:57
Speaker
um just when we, when, when, because we came up to play a game in the room and it was pretty packed. So we're like, oh, let's just grab that and go and play that somewhere else on the ship. ah So, yeah, just just a real surprise. And have to shout out Lucy, who is from so Washington near Seattle.
00:06:13
Speaker
um She is eight years old and she was the one who taught me that game. Wow. And she did a great job. And her and her family, we actually became pretty chummy with throughout the cruise. We played a lot of games with them and this was one that continually hit the table. So, yeah, Panda Royale. Unfortunately, can't find it, um but it would definitely be a game I'd buy if I could because I could just see it coming out.
00:06:35
Speaker
So often, in in like on a game night or with a family or with people who've never played board games before, it it ticks all those boxes. So, yeah, definitely a surprise. Yeah, I just ah looked it up on Board Game Oracle got a purple caped panda on the cover.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yep, that's it. And the theme stretches about as far as the name of the box. um if yeah The first player token is a little panda. And yeah, that's it. that's um Yeah, but it doesn't matter. It's it's a lot of fun.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, good. um Yeah, so I'll go to a completely... output Before we do jump off this one, because coloured dice, how did you go? Yeah, pretty good. Blue and purple were a bit close. um But what I thought was purple and what I thought was blue was right pretty much all the time.
00:07:31
Speaker
um So the green is very distinct from the yellow. The pink just looks like a clear dice to me, but it's live with a slightly different hue. And all and and all the the pink dice is a D12 or all the white clear dice are D6s. So I was able to decipher it that way. Yeah. Yeah, it was easier than you'd think, that's for sure.
00:07:52
Speaker
We also played Hughes for here's and Cues on the cruise again. And that's that's like a guaranteed last position for me whenever I play that game. But I actually, ah oddly enough, I enjoy it even though I know I'm going to fail. that' um But, yeah, that's that's a story for another day. But, um yeah, so Panda Raila, definitely. If you find a copy, let me know because I will i will take it.
00:08:15
Speaker
I think I could buy one on eBay for like $80 and it was $110 shipping. And I don't know if I liked it that much. I wait until it comes back in print.
00:08:27
Speaker
ah Now, the other two games I'll quickly mention were the two that i actually requested. So that was Ostia and Cretaceous Rail. So very different to Pandora.
00:08:38
Speaker
And I actually didn't get a chance to play these until right towards the end of the cruise. So how the cruise worked is we had three days at sea, the third of which being the day that we went through the sounds. Then we had five straight days in ports.
00:08:52
Speaker
And then we had another three days at sea. And the first couple of days, everyone's kind of feeling each other out. And it's like, you know, it's there's not a lot of... um There's also the ship to discover, so there's not a lot of bigger games getting played.
00:09:05
Speaker
Then you're at you're at your port for five days, so you're doing the port stuff. You're not in the board game room anywhere near as much, so not a lot of big games got played. And then it was quite hilarious because by the end of those five days, we had the three days at sea, and everyone had the same idea, time to play the big games. Yeah. Every table was like, you know, these big, you know, the Foundations of Rome or Aridia or Vantage got played a lot, like all these big games or Speakeasy was getting played. But we played, first one i we played was Cretaceous Rails. So not sure if you're familiar with that, but it's basically a game about, it's some set in the future
00:09:47
Speaker
but you're traveling back in time and to the only timeline that hasn't been ruined by humans, which is the Cretaceous period. And you are building a train service to take tourists around and see all of the dinosaurs that they're interested in.
00:10:03
Speaker
Bizarre, like super bizarre thing, but it actually kind of works. And you do this thing where you you've got a ah train that can only fit so many things. So youve you've either got to go out and capture dinosaurs to attract people, or you've got to um clear areas so when you take people on your train route, they can actually see the creatures rather than have to look through a jungle.
00:10:25
Speaker
um Or maybe you've just got to um you know collect different type of tourists. and I don't know how that works thing-wise, but anyway, that's what you do. Yeah. but you're limited by the space on your train. um But what makes this game stand out for me, and it that stamp stood out so much that I've now backed the reprint Kickstarter, which was live while we were on on board, is the action selection set up is phenomenal. Like, it's such a clever way to play a game. It reminds me a little bit of Targi, but not...
00:10:57
Speaker
Not in the way that you'd think, but more in the way that you start with multiple options that you can choose from. And by the time you're taking your last action, you are literally just taking whatever's left because nothing that you actually want is still around. like well you still get It's still a good action, but it's not...
00:11:15
Speaker
It's not optimal at that point. So how it works is you've got like... navaroma Like the Nova Roma action. Yeah, kind of, yeah. That that sort of style. So there's 16 spaces, 16 actions you can choose and they get randomised every round. So the the the layout changes. And you've got this little token that you sit in between two actions which allows you to do both of those actions.
00:11:36
Speaker
So if you can imagine a 4x4 grid, I take the left side of one tile on right side of another tile. You might go on the same tile as that but on the top side. and the bottom side of another tile. So there's four opportunities to have access to each tile, based on the, edge unless you're on the edge.
00:11:51
Speaker
um But you get to choose two actions. So placing it and doing both is really cool. But like if there's, we had one round where all the train, all the building track actions were all in the one spot. So we all just hammered that spot early and then no one could build trains for the rest of the round because we filled up all those spots.
00:12:07
Speaker
ah But you get these cards that allow you to move someone's token or or flip ah flip a ah tile to suddenly open up more activation for you. It's super clever. But we played it at a four-player game, so you can imagine it's four-by-four grid.
00:12:21
Speaker
That's 16 tiles, 32. thirty two So you get four you get four markers, which gives you eight different actions per round. eight different actions per round times four is 32 actions and a 16 by 16 grid. So it does get quite full quite quickly.
00:12:39
Speaker
um But yeah, just the action selection made the game. It was like, it was such an enjoyable mechanism. And then the rest of the game was great. It was collecting particular things in order to get,
00:12:51
Speaker
objective cards that then change how you score at the end of the game. Like all these things that just sort of cascaded. it was And we played that with Helen and I and our friends from Seattle, the the parents of Lucy who taught me me Panda Royale. And ah both Helen and Felicia, they both were, they're not, that they'll openly admit they're not the biggest board games. And we learned that game from the rule book and it took us less than two hours and everyone loved it. Everyone enjoyed it. So Yeah, it was ah it was a solid game. I can see I was, the reason I wanted to have that game was because I looked at it and I went, I don't understand why everyone's saying this game is so amazing. It looks like someone went to the toy shop and bought a $2 box of um the dinosaurs. But it on the table, table presents, so many people when we played it were walking past just going, what is this? Like, what is this game you are playing? um
00:13:48
Speaker
And then when I was looking at the Kickstarter, you could choose to either get the plastic dyno dinosaur minis or wooden versions of the dinosaurs. And I looked at that for a while and i'm like I was like, I'll probably prefer the wooden ones. And I'm like, nah, I want the pretend, the cheap looking toys from Crazy Clarks. It's crazy, but it just works so much better. Yeah.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was a win. I would definitely recommend if you get a chance to play it, give me a go. It's lighter than you'd think um and it's far more enjoyable than I was expecting. So, yeah, Cretaceous Rails was a winner.
00:14:26
Speaker
I'll look it up on Kickstarter after this. So, if it's still there. Yeah, I had a few fair few days to go, over but that was a while ago now, so I'm not 100%. We'll see.
00:14:37
Speaker
the other one would It would be funny because it just reminds me of those dinosaurs you get in that plastic bag that you get from Target or BW. I was getting massive Triassic Terror vibes. you know It's the same sort of dinosaurs that's in Triassic Terror.
00:14:51
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, those dinosaurs. We're saying that Triassic Terror needs a massive upgrade in modernised dinosaurs. Obviously, it doesn't. Yeah, apparently not. So, ah yeah, know' it's and then it's quite funny because in order for the mechanisms to work, all the dinosaurs of one type need to be the same colour. So they don't even look like real dinosaurs because they're purple and bright yellow and bright red. It doesn't make sense, but it works. That's good.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, so and and another winner. And then Ostia, which was probably the game that was i was I was most keen to learn on the cruise. It was the one that I had heard so many good things about and, again, left it until I think the second last day of the cruise. And um Mark, who is, again, i said of mentioned the yeah I've mentioned him three times now, but the family from Washington, ah Mark was the father and we played a heap of games together.
00:15:45
Speaker
And we decided we both wanted to learn Austria. So we sat down again and learned learned it from the rule book, just the two of us. The teach that says on the box, it's 100 to 120 minutes.
00:15:56
Speaker
And I had another friend come over while I was playing Eric from onboard games. He came over and he's like, what a game are you playing? We're like oh we're just about to start Ostia. We don't know much about it. We've read the rules. You can join in if you want. says it's about a two hour game. and he's like, oh, I don't have two hours. like, no dramas.
00:16:12
Speaker
We were done in under an hour. It was one of those things where we we had to go back and check that we hadn't accidentally done something wrong. Because it's it's such a, i mean, again, playing two players, I'm sure at four players it probably would take yeah two hours. But at two player, the game flows really nicely and the end game is triggered by you kind of maxing out one of the four or five different things you can max out.
00:16:40
Speaker
So I wouldn't say it's a race game, but it kind of is. You've kind of got to be ready for the game to end. If your your opponent can do a couple of actions in a turn, they could potentially end the game. So you're very ultra aware of that. Like one of the game ending conditions is getting all your ships out.
00:16:57
Speaker
Well, by turn like three, I had all but two of my ships out. And I'm like, well, hang on, I could end the game like now. But at that point, I hadn't hadn't um figured a ah system out to score myself any victory points at the end of the game. So it would have made no sense to trigger the game at that but end the game at that point. And that's kind of the way it is with everything. All the things that can trigger the end game, they're great, but they're only great if you've got the cards that multiply your scoring by x y or Z. or It's almost got like a population, not a population, a popularity track in Scythe.
00:17:31
Speaker
it's so It's got a similar thing to that where you' it's your reputation. The more your reputation goes up, the more the things that you get will multiply by. in in victory points. So I appreciated that. felt that was a bit of a nod to Scythe. But the Mankala system, i haven't played a lot of Mankala games, but I've never played a bad one.
00:17:51
Speaker
And this is another one. So the amount of ships you've got in one area of your port, there's six areas of your port. You take that amount of ships and that's how many goods you get for that section. So that might get you, you've got three ships there, it'll get you three wood or three papyrus or three stone or whatever. And then you drop them one at a time around and where you end is the action that you take.
00:18:11
Speaker
yeah So it's just this great puzzle of where do you want to leave all of your ships so that you've got a big resource gaining action, but also where does that then leave you for the action that you're wanting to take for that round? So a lot of little nifty decisions in in that space, as well as this...
00:18:30
Speaker
Like when you take your ships out of the harbour, there's four distinct tracks to go. do you want to go and compete with your opponent on one track or do you want to like kind of let them have it? There is definitely a reward for getting in first into each of the ports. So it's a bit of a race out to the ports.
00:18:45
Speaker
But if you're going one way, your opponent can just go the other way and have free reign. But then you're giving them that yeah that the reward that's something you might want to chase after. So lots of cool decisions. We played it. We went on two totally different strategies.
00:18:59
Speaker
Like very, very different strategies. And I won the game 232 to 230. So like super tight, even though we were doing totally opposite things. So yeah, really again, really outstanding game. i' Everyone talks about how beautiful it is. And I kind of looked at it and went, I don't think it looks that great.
00:19:19
Speaker
It just doesn't hit my art style. And even like setting it up, I'm like, it looks a bit bland. ah But, you know, it is about Ostia, which is the Roman port from, you know many moons ago. So I guess it fits with that theme. and it But once you start playing, all of that just goes to the to the back of the queue because the mechanism is really cool. The Mancala system is really cool.
00:19:43
Speaker
um How the game end triggers, how you boost up your scoring, all that sort of stuff was just really cool. So it was another winner. So... Yeah, it's costia I haven't been able to get a hold of that one, unfortunately. That's a little bit hard to get a hold It's nowhere.
00:20:00
Speaker
Well, hopefully one day it'll come back in. I'm sure it will come back in print because it's getting a lot of buzz. um Do you think, though, given that you played at two players, it probably seem better at three or four because a lot of, you know, if you did decide to go two ways, someone someone's going to be going the same way you're going. so there's going to be a bit of a race to get there.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, it'd be really interesting to see how it plays out because four there's four distinct tracks and it's ah up to four-player game. So it it turned out that both Mark and I were the first to two of each of the tracks, yeah which is what you'd expect, I guess. Yeah.
00:20:35
Speaker
But in a four-player game, does that mean everyone gets to one track first? Or do you does diversify and just go, I'm happy to come second in three tracks and not win any of the tracks? and Yeah, those those sort of things. It it would be different ah definitely a different game at at four players.
00:20:52
Speaker
So, yeah, but i'd I'd love to give it another go. So, again, if any if you find a copy down in Brisbane, let me know. Yeah, look, it's probably something you're to probably find now on those Facebook sites, isn't it? Yeah.
00:21:05
Speaker
I have definitely been watching them and I haven't seen it come up. So I did find one guy who had it, but... um I haven't played the expansion nor have I heard good things about the expansion. And he had he had the all-in bundle with all the expansion content.
00:21:20
Speaker
And I'm like, I don't know if I want that. I just kind of want the game. And he was selling it for over $300. I'm like, I just... like That's actually, know, that's worth it if you were wanting to go the all-in off that expansion. But I don't. I just i just want the base game.
00:21:36
Speaker
It's plenty for what I want. but Yeah. Yeah. They're chick more than meeples. I thought they had a copy, but maybe it's gone. I remember seeing it a while back.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, if they did, they don't anymore, unfortunately. Yeah, okay. Sorry. it'll ah It'll pop up again because, I mean, I'm sure Ijubicoya likes money and they've got know, they just released Sweetlands.
00:22:00
Speaker
So there might be a few copies out there because I think you could order it with Sweetlands. So maybe, yeah. Okay. Well, do you want a little break and I'll talk about my one game and then we can come back to you? Sure.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, so I need to allow some fluid back into my mouth after talking for that long. Yeah, yeah, A sip of coffee and...
Upcoming Board Game Kickstarters
00:22:20
Speaker
So we now pause Steve's two weeks of Wargang Geek Cruise and bundles and bundles of games to listen to Shane's one game that he's played in that whole time, which he has played twice.
00:22:33
Speaker
So... So yeah, look, most of my games, as you know, are played on a Thursday night now. um It's where I find I've got the most time where you know people can come around and I've got my regular gaming group.
00:22:47
Speaker
So out of the blue, one had ah I had a Thursday night free, so it's a game night's on. And anyway, yeah we ended up playing Brass Birmingham.
00:23:01
Speaker
I've playing brass at Birmingham for ages. So I kind of needed a bit of a helping hand as you went through the game. And indian Andy and Pastor Nick played quite a bit.
00:23:14
Speaker
So they were very generous. You know, they were just helping me out. Then it started to click with me. And God, i love that game. It's so good.
00:23:25
Speaker
Once i started getting into it and, yep, do this, do this, do this, Andy was so so generous. He said, oh, Shane, this is probably a better spot where you want to lay this track because you're going to get more points.
00:23:36
Speaker
And I said, oh, thanks, mate. this This is the game group we have, right? We help each other out. And especially if someone hasn't played it for a while. Or, you know, the other two people have played it a lot and someone is green. You don't want to go out and smash them. Yeah. yeah at So...
00:23:54
Speaker
I ended up winning that game. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think it was 143 points too. So it was a decent score. ah And anyway, so this Thursday night came around.
00:24:09
Speaker
I put the message out again. Game night on. This time we did four players. So Phil available come along. So we did four player brass. Nice. And the rule was we're not helping Shane.
00:24:23
Speaker
yeah Yes, he has to do it on his own. And anyway, we we thought it was going to go for a long time, and it didn't. It was about probably three hours.
00:24:35
Speaker
But we went through the first stage, the first era, so quick. It was like over in no time. And the second era took a little bit longer. um But there was no analysis paralysis. It was all very, know, got to Phil's go, got to Nick's go, got back to me. It was just really free-flowing. Everyone knew what they were doing.
00:24:55
Speaker
And um at one point, I was way ah way ahead in in the points. i was thinking, well, not a bad game here. and I had the whole centre just built up around tracks and and and resources that I'd flipped.
00:25:10
Speaker
I had a great pathway. had beer going. So I had everything. And people would, but you know, take them my beer, so I'd flip my tiles quicker. And I was thinking, oh, might be in for a chance here, winning. And now can't say it.
00:25:25
Speaker
yeah But such such a great game. like We all will just really enjoyed it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. i'm done I have got some really nice upgraded trays for the game.
00:25:38
Speaker
I've got upgraded pieces as well. um But now I've found I can upgrade. can get boats and I can get trains.
00:25:49
Speaker
well in the colours. Yeah, nice. That's I'm doing this weekend. And I've just printed all new coal, so I've got coal for it. Now I've got to get the iron.
00:26:00
Speaker
And the only thing with the iron is that, yeah you know, you're going to have to print the iron in orange because that's the colour flow of the game. So I'm just going to just... Yeah, it is a bit weird. So just going to do the the iron in orange. I don't care.
00:26:12
Speaker
But, yeah, just going to upgrade it a bit more, just bling it out. I mean, I've got the... the Kickstarter version as it is with all the poker chips. And i thought it's it's just so clever. Like, we have four players. We never run out of poker chips. Like, they don't have that. It's not a full set of iron plays.
00:26:28
Speaker
It's like a personally perfectly mapped out um a number of chips for four players. Like, you don't get you do not lose it. You don't run out of any chips at any point in time.
00:26:40
Speaker
um Yeah. So it's ah just such a really good game. And again, a lot going on, but I think at one point I had ah took two loans straight up.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, right. And then right near the end of the game, I took another loan. Because I thought, don't care, going to get income the next round. So take another loan. so I've got cash in my cash to do what I want in the last round. And I've got about four or five cards left.
00:27:08
Speaker
So six cards left. So really enjoyed the game. Really enjoyed it. i' not you I think we've all talked about, you know no wonder it's the number one ballgame.
00:27:20
Speaker
it Yeah, it it is so good. It's hard to... Other than the first time I played it, no, second time I played it, I've never had a bad game. And that second time was was was a clear anomaly. i'd I'd clearly made big errors and that ruined it for me.
00:27:36
Speaker
But every other time I'd played it, it's just it's such a good game. It's so tight. It's... lots of thinkiness about your turns, kind of a positive game because like you mentioned, you you put something down and yes, other people can use it and that could help them, but it also in turn helps you. so Yeah. ah if you If you know people out there need iron and you you've got the ability to to make it, get it out there, make it.
00:28:03
Speaker
You'll flip it pretty quick. If not, you can flip it and then refill the iron stock as well. So if the iron stock's running away, he is going to get in cash. so yeah But it's funny when you say about a bad game because Pastor Nick was having a shocker.
00:28:16
Speaker
Okay. that He's sitting back in his seat, arms folded, total negative pose, and you knew he was done. actually said at one point, I'm done with this game tonight.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah. I don't think I've ever played it at four either. Like, because at four you've got the full board and every town, every card. I don't think I've ever done that. I don't think I've ever played it three or two. There's a couple of tight spots that you kind of need to be the first there because no one else can go around it.
00:28:47
Speaker
um And there's one spot where it kind of branches off. So if you get the track, that one track, you get the branch off as well. And that branch off is to feel the ability to either build... Oh, it's build beer.
00:29:03
Speaker
So you potentially got... You're laying down one track, but you've got another track that goes off the other side. so on which is Which is quite beneficial. But no, mate.
00:29:16
Speaker
Brass Birmingham. No wonder it's number one. It is excellent. And ah love to have a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a side wager with you. Brass Pittsburgh.
00:29:28
Speaker
What do we think it's going to hit on GameFound? On BoardGameGeek? No, no, no, no. Oh, you mean don Dollar Figure? Oh, like Dollar Figure. yeah Dollar Figure. What do you think it's going to hit?
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. If I look at Old King's Crown at the moment, Old King's Crown is over $3 million for the reprint. I never got a chance to play that. and i should have That was one of the games I wanted to play on the cruise, but I never got a chance to play it.
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah. Look, I think it'll do well. I don't think it'll reach the lofty heights of some other games. I'm thinking probably about 8 million, which is certainly not nothing, but it's not record-breaking.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking around 7. Okay. There we go. Yeah. It'll be interesting. I'm very keen, very keen to play it, just to see what the differences are and whatnot. So, yeah.
00:30:24
Speaker
No brain back for me. I'll be backing up. Yeah.
Game Reviews and Personal Evaluations
00:30:27
Speaker
Well, it's got that that ah guy's name on the box that you have to learn every game of. Of course.
00:30:36
Speaker
And he lives life even better. Yeah, yeah, that's right. All right. Well, I guess I'll jump back in this I'll do some rapid fire games because I played a lot of little games. So um Rebel Princess, which is a ah play on hearts, the old trick-taking game hearts.
00:30:55
Speaker
ah Really, really cool. The problem with hearts was always that it just went for too long because you had to go until someone got to 200 points and it's a game about trying not to score points. So that was always always made it drag drag on and drag on. This one fixes that five rounds. There's all these weird things that happen each round. So the the theme of the game is that you're a princess and the princes are trying to propose to you, but unlike any of the princes.
00:31:20
Speaker
So if a prince proposes to you, that's a point and points are bad. And that so one one suit of the deck is princes. And you can't, you know, similar to hearts, you can't play a prince until someone's used it as a offsuit, like offu like ah and then the the princes have been, have broken into the into the castle and then you can lead with princes after that and whatnot.
00:31:44
Speaker
And then there is a six of... Animals, which is a frog card, and that's worth five. That's like the frog proposing to the princess, which they definitely don't want. So that's five points, which is the worst card. That's like the queen of spades in in hearts. so really cool. Just fun way to play fun way to play hearts. And each round there's also these weird things where it's like suddenly for this whole round um the order of operations is flipped. So the lowest card will win the trick and the highest card won't or Or maybe you have to lead you have to play your highest or lowest of whatever suit is led and all these little things that mess up how um you play the game. So, yeah, definitely definitely a good little ah it so game I ended up buying, so it's always a good sign.
00:32:32
Speaker
ah We played another game called 3-2-1 Countdown. This is probably Helen's pick. ah So are you for familiar with Grandpa Beck? No, no. Are you familiar with Skull King?
00:32:46
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, so Grandpa Beck's most popular game is Skull King. But he makes a heap of little card games. And Eric, a friend of the show, Eric from Onboard Games, bought over a heap of his just smaller card games that I've never heard of.
00:33:02
Speaker
And 3-2-1 Countdown was this card-shedding game where you get dealt a whole deck of cards. They're numbered from 0 to 10. There's multiples of each number.
00:33:13
Speaker
And on your turn, you throw out a value card and you pick up another card. But if you have four nines, you can throw out all four of your nines and you only have to pick up one card. And you keep going until someone has five or less in total value across their cards and they call out 3-2-1 countdown and then everyone reveals their hand. And if they have the least value in their hand, then they win and also get a bonus point for calling countdown. But if someone else has less than that,
00:33:43
Speaker
they get nothing. So you can sit on like a ah low score and wait for someone else to fall into the trap of calling for it and then you can jam them. But then you could also just call it, in which case you would get the bonus.
00:33:55
Speaker
So that's like it's like a bit of a risk. Similar, not not the same, but a similar kind of risk you take when you play broom service and you choose to go, i what is it? It's not um cowardly, it's brave. If you choose to go brave and there's an opportunity for someone else to go brave behind you, it's kind of got that kind of feel.
00:34:13
Speaker
It sounds it sounds a a little bit like um that salt salt and pepper card game. how yeah A little bit, yeah, I guess. Yeah. um I guess the like the way you get rid of the cards, I guess the difference is you can get rid of multiple. So no one wants nines or eights or sevens, right, because they're big or tens because they're big scoring cards. But if you've got a handful in your hand and someone throws out a 10, you're like, oh, okay, well, I'll throw something else out and I'll get that 10 because later I can throw them all out at once, sort thing.
00:34:39
Speaker
um And the other thing is if you have an entire hand of the same value, You call blast off and you instantly win that round and you get like four points or something. which So if you don't score the points that you have left. You score based on whoever has the lowest score gets four points, the second lowest gets three, third lowest gets two sort of thing. So you could have 30 points. doesn't mean you're going to score 30 points because then the game gets stupid.
00:35:06
Speaker
But yeah, now that was really cool game, little card game. Xylotar, which is this, there's lots of trick-taking games got played. But are you for familiar with Xylotar? No, but i did see it. I think it was on, it might have been on the Dice Tower because it's ah it's a re-implementation of another game.
00:35:24
Speaker
Chris Yu did top 10 card games or something like that, and that was that was um on it. it's It's bizarre because you get a hand of cards and you order them from highest to lowest.
00:35:38
Speaker
And it's not like a normal deck of cards where the yellow cards are like 10 to 8 or 10 to 7 or something. And then the blue cards are like 9 to 6 or something like that. So you're never going to get more than a 4 pink because 4 is the highest pink card or whatever. So you separate these cards in order from lot highest to lowest.
00:35:58
Speaker
Then you give them to your opponent who can't change the order of them. but they play them face down in front of them. So they can only guess the value of a card based on the color coordination and the order that it's in.
00:36:13
Speaker
So they might think they've got an eight, but it's actually a five. It just so happens that they, know, you've you got to, so you've got to play a card almost to give you a bit of an idea of what's around it to try and win tricks and stuff. And you've got to,
00:36:25
Speaker
At one point in the round, you've got to decide to give up to flip two cards, look at them, and decide which one of those is the card you're going to play as the amount of tricks you're going to win this round.
00:36:37
Speaker
i yeah So that's also a bit of a concern because you could pick up two cards thinking going pick up like a three and a two and end up picking up like a six and a one. You're like, oh, shit, I've got to make a decision now. Like, how many am I going to win? So, yeah, just a bizarre little trick-taking game. It was i quite quite good, I thought, and has the bit advantage of being an X game. You don't get many X games played. So I haven't bought that one yet, but probably would if I saw it because I imagine it be pretty cheap.
00:37:04
Speaker
um What other small games I'll quickly just mention? are quickly I played Sagrada for the first time and that's really good. I can't believe I've never played Sagrada. Yeah. yeah Great game. I'm tossing out whether to buy the new one or the or look just get a cheap version of the old one. Get a cheap version of the old one, mate.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah. One and the same. ah Soda Jerk. chris Speaking of Chris Yee. Chris Yee's game Soda Jerk. That... is That's sort of a hilarious game because the the the concept is you play a card to a one of the five flavors of sodas that you can make.
00:37:41
Speaker
You play it face down and if you play a card to an area like let's say the watermelon soda but you play a banana, then it'll be negative. It'll subtract from the total value of that ah drink.
00:37:56
Speaker
So it's one of those weird things where if you've got like six cards of, well, four cards, four banana cards, you're like, well, I want to score bananas because I've got four of them and it's four times whatever the value is.
00:38:08
Speaker
But then if you've got all the banana cards and no one else has got banana cards, which means no one's playing banana cards to the banana drink They're playing all other kinds of shit cards you don't want there. So it's not going to score well.
00:38:20
Speaker
So then you're like, okay, well, I'll i'll play a couple of banana cards there to boost up the score. But then you've got less cards to score. So it's a tricky old game. And we played one time we played and it was kind everyone kind of did the, you know, most people put the things where they went and then it kind of all clicked in all of our heads at once. And the second game... You've got to be a jerk.
00:38:38
Speaker
ah Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The second game, Amy won with a negative score. So she had the lowest score, the best score, but it was still in the negatives. So we were all jerks the whole game. So, yeah, but it was quite entertaining. It was a little bit like for sale, but... Or Botswana, sorry, more like Botswana, but in a much more aggressive kind of way. That's good. Did you get that you buy that I haven't yet, but again, it will be. oh actually, no, Soda Joke. Yes, I did. Sorry, I do i did have a Soda Joke.
00:39:12
Speaker
Sorry, I was looking at the next game. was going to talk about that I haven't bought yet. I'll be very quick because I am running out time and I'm doing a lot talking. But I played Magical Athlete. which I'd never played before.
00:39:24
Speaker
And a lot of people compare Magical Athlete to Hot Streak. Magical Athlete's been around for like 30 years. it's just It's just a roll and move race game that Tom Vassell has championed for 30 years. And in the last year, CMYK brought out a new version of it.
00:39:40
Speaker
And we played a seven-player game, which technically only goes to six. And apparently six is super chaotic. Well, seven was uber chaotic. didnt the The player powers are nuts. Like, we had I had one player that ah if I – no, it wasn't me. It was um one that Henry, the kid that was we were playing with.
00:40:00
Speaker
If he landed on your space, he just ate you and you went back to the start. Like if you were one spot from the end and you land on he lands on your space, then you go. Like um another guy had a power that um every time someone else used their power, they got to move ahead. Or the hare. The hare is cool because it's like, you know you know, you think of the tortoise of the hare. In the first half of the game, it gets plus two movement on every dice roll.
00:40:25
Speaker
But in the second half of game, it gets minus two. So it gets out to a big lead, then gets cocky and gets caught up by everybody else. Yeah. But there's some more way more bizarre powers than that. I can't just can't remember all of them off the top of my head. But just you think you think i had ah extrara i had an ability that I could I sucked people into me. So if I i could choose one person and I would bring them to my space.
00:40:49
Speaker
So like if someone's nearly winning, i could suck them back into my space. And I had this great point where I was on a spot that was, I can't remember how it worked, but it was basically I was giving everyone negative force. So they would suck in to where I was and then go back four spaces. And it just kept happening. And it just meant that the round went forever, but it was hilarious. Like it was just wild fun. So um i don't know, in the comparison to Hot Streak, they are different.
00:41:15
Speaker
There's definitely a place for both of them in a collection, that's for sure. Okay. So, um look, there's so many more. I just want to probably talk about two more, mainly because one of them you mentioned.
00:41:27
Speaker
um Yeah, one of them you mentioned in the last episode as a Kickstarter that you were interested in, which was Jaisogi. Yes. The anime studio tycoon game. We played that, Helen, Raph and I played that and Raph didn't like it.
00:41:41
Speaker
no he He didn't mind it, but he thought it was you're making one whole anime where it's actually about a studio creating multiple. And i I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think you'd probably get around it, Shane, because it's clever, it's funny. It reminds me a lot of the networks.
00:42:00
Speaker
Okay, yeah. ah In a similar vein, you're trying to get your, you know, where that's TV shows and the right slots and get viewers and stuff. It's kind of a similar vein to that. But I love the idea, the theme where you're taking over this anime studio and the previous boss was an absolute ass.
00:42:17
Speaker
So your employees are literally dead inside. That's what they call. They're dead inside. And they're they've got like, they're black and white, like they're all kind of gray sort of color where all the other characters are really bright and vibrant and they're just dead inside. So they they don't work as hard. You've got to really motivate them to to work hard. But if you're good and you can you can then upgrade them and they turn into good workers because they appreciate you. So some of the cards have really cool text. It's essentially a game where there's this um trend section where certain trends are hitting at the moment and you've got to try and develop enemies that would match what the current trends are.
00:42:57
Speaker
And then the trend trends change. So you've got to like, you can't really, yeah you can do a bit of forward planning, but not a lot. Yep. Yeah, and and the the actions that you can do are tied to the workers that you have. So you can go hard in one type of worker, but then that limits the amount of actions you can do with other workers.
00:43:15
Speaker
Just, yeah, it was it was it was really clever. And it was one of those games where we played it. We just upgraded our Dead Inside characters. Right up until the last round, no one had hired a new worker. And a new worker means a new action.
00:43:28
Speaker
So I actually hired two workers in the second to last round. So in the last round, I had six workers where everyone else had four. And we all kind of went, oh, we should have done this way earlier. Yeah, okay. hi But still, yeah, really cool. You get to keep your little on the side, you get to keep your little tile of the anime that you've made and tell the little story of what it does. So, yeah, it was it was really good. i I didn't back the Kickstarter, however, ah because that was a game that I would have backed if Raph loved. And because he kind of bounced off it, I'm like, I'll leave it be. But if I came across it again at a game night or something like that, I'd definitely jump in and have a game. So,
00:44:08
Speaker
That was Jisogi. Sounds good. sounds good I never backed it, but I'm sure i can jump on if I wanted to.
00:44:19
Speaker
Which I guess just leads me to what my favourite game was. And this again is a game that I have, I'm waiting for it to arrive. i have ordered it I had to order it from Japan, which might be a bit of a hint.
00:44:30
Speaker
ah It is a game that does not look great, has some colour blindness issues with it. ah But over all of that, it was just so good, and that is Eternal Dex.
00:44:44
Speaker
Ah, yes. ye So Eternal Dex is a game about... trying to ah awaken these Eternals who don't want to be awoken in order to give you more cards so you can continue playing the game.
00:44:58
Speaker
That might not make a lot of sense, but that's essentially what you're doing. You start off with a hand of cards. There's three sections on the board that you can play your cards to. You've got to follow some pretty basic rules, which is essentially you can't play a same color card next to itself, so you can't play a red, then a red, and you can't play the same number, so you can't play a four, then a four, for example.
00:45:18
Speaker
And each each zone has on top of that its own stipulation, like one row you have to go from low to high. On the next row you've got to go, um you've got to do it the colors in a particular order, for example, or the other one you can only play even numbers to, whatever it is, you've you've got to also meet that criteria.
00:45:36
Speaker
But you only start with like eight cards and the only way to get more cards, every time you play a card, it's gone. You never see it again. um So in order to get more cards, you've got to get to the end of a row to awaken an Eternal, which will give you a new deck and it gives you a whole bunch of new cards.
00:45:53
Speaker
But it also, the Eternals, like, I didn't want to be Awoken, so now I'm going to curse you with something, which might be you can no longer play red cards or you can't play um five or a nine of value or you can't play this or that or the other.
00:46:07
Speaker
Sounds easy enough to manage, except that if you're playing a four-player game, all four people in need new cards. So all of a sudden you've got four curses that you're dealing with really early on in the game. And the only way to get rid of curses is to play cards to this other zone to in order to appease the Eternals by giving them a gem.
00:46:26
Speaker
Because in the end, they're pretty material. They just want gems. comment So once you give them a gem, that curse is lifted. But then you're getting you rid of more cards. And the whole point is you've got to keep cards. So it's it's a it's it's a cooperative game and it's a continual battle.
00:46:42
Speaker
And I've never played a cooperative game where you need to pay attention to everything so much. Like you take an Eternal and it shows you all the cards in that deck. So when the next person goes to take an Eternal, they might have a choice of two or three different Eternals to take.
00:46:58
Speaker
They can look at what you've got in your deck because it shows it on the Eternals card. And maybe their their curse says that we can't play sixes and they'll look at your deck and go, oh, well you didn't get any new sixes.
00:47:09
Speaker
So this won't actually hurt us if I take this curse. so oh Or you didn't get any red or green. Well, this one won't hurt because it's blocking out red. So you've you've really got to try and work together and really think about, okay, what's in what deck? And it's ah it's just ah it's a brain melt, but in a fun way. It's not like a super crunchy long game. it's It runs pretty quick, but every decision is very critical.
00:47:32
Speaker
And end that Like we played the base game with a slightly a few variants towards the end after we played it a few times. But there is that's the introductory phase.
00:47:44
Speaker
There's like five more phases after that that you can delve delve into once you know the game. But it's a bit like it's got that Planet Unknown feel of it. Like I don't know how long. It's going to take me multiple games before I even consider moving on from the base game.
00:48:00
Speaker
yeah i eat So like it's so much variability because even in the base game, those every time you achieve an objective, like you run one of the rows out, you change what the objective for that row is for the next round. And you've got to go one card further because one of the one of the Eternals has moved.
00:48:16
Speaker
So it gets progressively harder. The the stakes change. Yeah, just so solid. it was it The only downside, the only negative I have is that it came with a cloth mat.
00:48:28
Speaker
And I don't have a problem with cloth mats in general. Like I like the cloth mats in Steam in um steam Power, for example. yeah But in a card game where you're playing cards out all the time, it does kind of clump up a little bit. I'd rather i'd rather pay and get a neoprene mat or something, which I'm sure I'll probably do eventually. But, yeah, solid game. It it was just – it blew my mind. The first time we played it, we played it again straight away. i taught it to Helen the next day because I was like, Helen, if you like this game, I'm buying it. And she loved it.
00:48:58
Speaker
And then I taught it to Mark, the other guy that I played a lot of games with. And, yeah, for a game to be that – I wouldn't say heavy, but that involved on a cruise where you've got 300 different games to play and I played it four or five times.
00:49:14
Speaker
that's like That's a standout for me. Yeah, that's a standout. And i've I've heard of the game and i've everyone that I've heard rave about it. A lot of them have put it as their game of the year.
00:49:27
Speaker
And then i um what sucked was during the Christmas sales, There were Eternal Dex on sale and Old King's Crown as well.
00:49:41
Speaker
I didn't get both of them during the sales and now I'm kicking myself because now I actually want both of those games and you can't get them. um no you cannot. You've got to go on the game counter with Old King's Crown.
00:49:53
Speaker
to If I want that's it at the moment. But ah Eternal Dex, I could have got it for like 60 bucks, I think it was. 60 bucks in the sales. Jeez. Well, I tried everywhere. um and I even got in touch with Portland Game Collective because they're doing a pre-order for it, um which is this little production company out of Portland, Oregon. And I said, look, kate I went to pre-order and it says you won't ship to Australia. and they're like, no, we don't. I'm like, okay, well, I'm coming to America at the end of the year.
00:50:24
Speaker
So can I pre-order it? And then you guys just not send it until I get to America. And they're like, we literally work out of our house. We can't do that. um but they did say that AllPlay are picking it up at the end of the year.
00:50:36
Speaker
So then it'll get a bit more of a worldwide release. yeah So hopefully by 2027, you'll be able to pick it up a bit more
Cruise Reflections and Community Spirit
00:50:45
Speaker
comfortably. ended up buying it off ebay.co.jp. So the Japanese eBay.
00:50:51
Speaker
So whatever worked, i wanted that game. ah So that would be the place I'd look for it if you were really chasing it. I may have paid a little bit of for it. found it.
00:51:04
Speaker
And Amazon on Amazon, on Australian Amazon. um now it's not No, it's not. It's 93 bucks on Amazon.
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah. It sounds via Japan. I imagine. Yeah. Oh, from Germany. Okay. There you go. And yeah, either way, I get it by the Saturday, 21st
00:51:33
Speaker
Well, if you ordered that from Germany, you'd probably still get it before I get mine, which I ordered two weeks ago because it's coming to Bemika. So I was really hoping it arrived on yesterday so I could play it this weekend again because it's like not only is it the fact that I've ordered it, but also like since the cruise, it's the game I've been thinking about wanting to play more than any other game. Like I've just been like, I really want to get that back to the table.
00:51:57
Speaker
It would be a perfect game for you because it it you'd be running off the symbols, wouldn't you? Instead of the colours of the cards. Yeah, yeah. it was It was quite easy to, like I shouldn't say quite easy. There were were some moments where the blue and the purple is really close for me.
00:52:10
Speaker
And when I, but the the first time I played it, I was really struggling with that until someone, their symbols are actually kind of similar to the blue and the purple symbols, but they are different. And once I could define them as that one's purple, that one's blue, I was fine. But it took me a bit of time to get used to what their symbols were.
00:52:29
Speaker
But yeah, the blue and the purple was a major issue I had, but. not enough to deter me from the game on any level. so I get a free bottle opener with it if i buy it.
00:52:41
Speaker
that That's random. ah So, yeah, look, in the end 73 games, about 24 different games. There's still so many. Like, Kokeshi was excellent. Zenith was excellent.
00:52:54
Speaker
Lightspeed Arena was a bizarre game that I really enjoyed, but mainly for how it worked, not necessarily for the game. It's a game where you set up the board and then you get your camera out and the camera looks at the board And then it's like an auto battler. It then plays out the actions from there in numerical order, which was really weird.
00:53:13
Speaker
I played Nemesis. I finally got to play Nemesis. which was really cool. And I can understand why everyone loves that game. It's very thematic. And Raph and I got taught it by Steph Hodge and Michael Aldridge and they did a great job. Michael basically ran the game. And just like I think what you talk about when you played that and play that game with Troy, how he – yeah, and that was it. I just – I felt so immersed because Michael's running it, so much so that I don't think I would be able to recreate that myself.
00:53:44
Speaker
ah And it was a great game where everybody except me won. But I thought I was going to win for sure um because my job was just to make sure that one person didn't get out. And when with five rounds to go, he's the only one left on the board. The mother is out. He's surrounded by the mother and two other um parents.
00:54:04
Speaker
But he goes and throws a smoke bomb over to the right and they all run that way. and Then he runs in and he gets out. i'm like, you bastard. There was no chance you were getting out of that. uh so everyone else won in raf one with four uh what is it for disease or four um four of them in his hand not one of them got drawn out so um he was infected but none of them got drawn out so he um which is pretty bizarre in a hand of 14 cards and you're drawing four out none of them are they bad cards so Yeah, just that was really cool.
00:54:36
Speaker
Played a couple of Blood and the Clock Tower games. Raph fell in love with Blood and the Clock Tower. He played that a heap. War Chests, Raph and I played that like probably three or four times and I've since been playing it on BGA because it's a great game.
00:54:47
Speaker
Ticket to Ride Markland, that was Helen's choice. We played that. It was the first game we played. And really cool, different way to play Ticket to Ride. and i was My main concern with the whole trip was that the games that we had selected didn't get played.
00:55:01
Speaker
And of all the games, Cretaceous Rails was the one I saw move the least. It was the one that I don't even know if I saw anyone else play it. Every other game I saw everyone else playing, I saw Ticket to Ride Marklin get played more than any other game.
00:55:14
Speaker
So I was very surprised by that. So we played it a couple of times, but it was always out. Someone was always playing. And I guess it's just because it's a version of Ticket to Ride you can't get anymore. So everyone's like, oh, we've got an hour to kill. What's this Ticket to Ride version? Yeah, we've never seen it.
00:55:27
Speaker
We've never seen it from me never see it again. Yeah. done Just before we do, you know, how how was all the celebrities on the cruise? ah Look, to be honest...
00:55:39
Speaker
The one thing this hobby has shown me over the last few years, and I've been lucky enough to do a bit of travel and meet some people that are big in the hobby, is that there is no such thing as a board game celebrity. Like they are just, they're just quality people. Like we had, we had Bonacore and Paula and Jeff and Christine over and Eric and and and Amy, we had them over for dinner the night before the cruise. And it was, it'd be like having, you know, you and Loz over. They were just people that love to hang out and chat and,
00:56:06
Speaker
um we had ah an amazing argument between Jeff and Bonacore about the which version of the Hobbit movies was better with Jeff believing the 1970s animated movie was better than the three Hobbit movies put out um recently.
00:56:22
Speaker
um And like they were it was heated. And and I'm like, i haven't watched any of these. I mean, I've watched the Lord of the Rings movies, but not the Hobbit movies. But it was just, it was, i was so into it. And then, ah but like, yeah.
00:56:35
Speaker
And on the cruise, like so everyone was great. It was probably about, I'd probably say 60% U.S., probably 30% Australian and 10% elsewhere. um So it was good to you hear some other Aussie voices around.
00:56:48
Speaker
i didn't actually know any other Aussies that went, um but I got to know a few of them obviously on the ship. But, yeah, like it's such a great environment. And I got to give got to pay credit to Jeff Anderson from BGG because he was the one who runs it. He was also the one who ran the Podfather cruise that went on in 24th.
00:57:07
Speaker
And if it's it's actually got me wondering whether I want to go on the Dice Tower cruise anymore because it was it's so good. He does such a good job of confining it to a smaller number.
00:57:21
Speaker
Like the Podfather cruise was like 45 people. This was 120, right? Tower cruise is like 800. Yeah, And 120 was probably 20 more than what I would have been comfortable with myself.
00:57:36
Speaker
yeah So i wonder whether I'm going to enjoy Dice Tower Cruise anywhere near as much because you it just ah but the thing that I missed in this one compared to the last one was that I got to know everyone on the last one.
00:57:50
Speaker
This one I got to know a handful of people because there's too many people. Yeah, and so I think the Dice Tower Cruise would be gone far beyond that, where where Dice Tower Retreat was only like 100 to 200 people. So it was more intimate than any of the other Dice Tower events. And I'm wondering whether I was assuming that, like I said, I'm kind of interested to know what my opinion, it's a different type of event. it's there's game There's shows and there's other things as well. I'd be interested to compare them. But I really like the way that Jeff organises it. Really, really small, really intimate, really...
00:58:22
Speaker
uh well organized he does he organizes his own tours and some of the places that we visit we didn't do any of them because it's new zealand we'll we'll go there on our own holiday one time for yeah we're gonna waste a day traveling out to something that we want to spend three days at but if you're from overseas it's perfect you know So it's just, yeah, not not a bad word to be said. um Really liked the people that we we met, the people that we had previously met on other cruises, on the other cruise, and got to see them again. You know, we had people by the end of it
00:58:57
Speaker
Raf's got a new friend on Messenger Kids, two new friends on Messenger Kids, which were two kids of the family that we had dinner with every night. And we're we're we're catching up on WhatsApp ah what's it whatsapp or whatever.
00:59:13
Speaker
yeah I got invited to someone's to stay in someone's house if i ever if I'm ever in Dallas. you know just You really get to know these people over the period of time because it's great. You play board games with them. You see them in the board game room. You may not.
00:59:25
Speaker
yeah you'll You'll see them on the flow rider or you'll see them climbing the rock climbing wall or something else on the ship. And then you catch up at dinner and it's kind of like, Well, how was your day? What did you do today? And so just, yeah, I love it. it's it's a i know I know you're not a big fan of cruising, but and the cruises the cruises are great. you could You could go on this if you love cruising and forget about the board games.
00:59:47
Speaker
You could go on this if you don't if you love board games and forget about the cruise. Like it really really is just a convention at sea. And there were some people who, one one guy in particular, we get to Dunedin after three days of being at sea.
00:59:59
Speaker
And Dunedin's a kind of cool town, offers quite a lot to do. And he decided to stay on the ship and play board games. And he was the only one. He took a photo of him at a table with a player's wanted sign and an empty room.
01:00:14
Speaker
So you could have just treated it like an 11 day, 12 day board gaming convention, but you also had the opportunity to get off the ship and go and visit a beautiful country. And yeah, it's, is it was bad. The wonderful thing about our hobby is that you're connecting with people you'd never really connect with.
01:00:31
Speaker
Everyone's so welcoming. yeah Yeah, it's great. And like yeah I've often been asked um by people who haven't met, and I'll talk about Stephen Bonnaker a bit here, but people who haven't met him,
01:00:43
Speaker
so a lot of people have a negative opinion of him because he has this persona that he he carries in, especially when he's on the Dice Tower, he's always the anti-Tom, you know? and And that's all smoke and mirrors. Like him and Tom are good mates.
01:00:56
Speaker
ah But it's hard to meet a more genuine person. He is such a nice guy and he's very keen just to teach games, to talk about games. Paula, his partner, Tortoise Animal Rescue Team, the new Matt Leacock game,
01:01:13
Speaker
We played with them. i got to play a game of Thunder Road with with him, which was just mental. um yeah and And like I always joke, oh, you've got to make the propeller sounds when you play it when you play the chopper.
01:01:24
Speaker
And he was like, someone went to play their chopper and didn't make the propeller. and he was like, wait. I explained in the rules, you need to make the chopper sense. Like just very, yeah, yeah. It's just, yeah, he he's just a pleasure to be around. Same with Jeff and Christine and and Eric, you know, obviously I've made good friends with Eric before and you've met Eric through our podcast. Just Eric and Amy are just a lovely people and,
01:01:49
Speaker
You know, it sounds soppy, but we were ah we were trying to organise games. And it's always, you don't know how much, you you don't want to interject into people's lives and be like, hey, you know, um we're playing this, do you want to join? But it almost got to the point where we just walk up and if we saw Eric and Amy, we'd just sit down and go, well, let's let's play a game. Like, you don't even bother. You just go, yeah they're almost like family. It was it was it was sign to us so Yeah, Sounds great, mate. Sounds great.
01:02:17
Speaker
But we're bang on an hour. Yeah, look at that. I feel like I did 55 minutes of that hour, so think I need a drink of water and a break. Yeah. But thank you for indulging me and i hope everyone enjoyed hearing about all the games. But, yeah, next time, Jeff did say that they are going to do more down here. They are doing one out of Asia next year and they're doing two in Alaska. They're doing them all over the place, but they will come back to Australia. So if you're an Australian listening to this thinking it's a little bit too far to travel to go to some of those other ones, sit tight.
01:02:48
Speaker
It'll happen again here and I will be the first person to buy ticket get when it does. Yeah, nice, mate.
01:02:54
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, I guess we just go back to normal order next next episode. We'll come up with a theme. Yeah. Sounds good. I ran out of time to ask, so I'll leave that for the next one. Yeah, leave it the next one.
01:03:08
Speaker
A little birdie tells me you've got a project on the way, so we'll talk about that on the next one. Do you have something to know? What I can tell you, I'll be able to tell you. Yeah, sounds good. Righto, mate. Well, thank you again for indulging me. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode.
01:03:23
Speaker
Have an amazing week. Take care.