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Ep 17: All the fallout from Briscon!
69 Plays1 year ago
Join the crew as they re-live all that ws Briscon 2023!
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Transcript
Introduction and Event Overview
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to the World Game Chumwag. You've got the whole crew here today. So we've got Steve, Shane, Dave, and G-Money. Hello. What boys do we want to talk about today? Well, we did a thing. I want to know about your weekend. Yeah. Who's gone? Yeah, we did a thing. I'm just going to say quiet and, well, not ask questions, but tell me about the weekend.
00:00:41
Speaker
So a thing was done. We hosted a board gaming event at Brisbane, which is a miniatures themed plus other stuff, board gaming and nerdy convention in Brisbane over the two days of the weekend. So, which is why we're recording this a day late and that, you know, depending on how caught up we are with our episodes, you may actually hear this one relatively soon afterwards.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, that's really 500. So they didn't put out exact figures working about 500 people there over the weekend doing different activities, a bunch of miniatures, wall gaming, lots of vendors selling products, lots of demos, that's some sword fighting. But for us, the big part, the board game together group came together and facilitated a board gaming weekend. It was fantastic. It was just wonderful. We had easily
00:01:35
Speaker
80 people there each day for Saturday and Sunday. But then also too, we probably had easily another 50 to 80 people wandering through and just checking out board games and seeing what we were doing and taking away our flyers.
Collaboration and Support
00:01:48
Speaker
But what I really liked about it was, you know, we had two other groups in there. So we had, you know, the president of LXG in Eddie assisting us for the weekend. And we had also two, David from the Brisbane Tabletop Gaming Group had Ash Grove there assisting us and just having a good time on the weekend as well. So it was really us coming together for Queensland. It was awesome.
00:02:12
Speaker
So what, just same sort of deal as other game days that you guys have run in the past where there was a library of games, people offering teachers and that sort of thing, or did you have anything different or, because it was a con, was there anything, any surprises or anything there?
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, one of the main things we wanted to do was give you that sort of confierce.
Goodie Bags and Game Demos
00:02:34
Speaker
So you got a goodie bag. So anybody that bought a full weekend ticket got a bag of stuff. So they got drinks vouchers. They got a lanyard. They got a little badge. They got a free game. We shied away from more of the formal set up teaching game. So we just had a whiteboard up on the day where anybody that wanted to get in and learn a game or play a game and specifically teach your brother name up on the board.
00:02:59
Speaker
And we had some demos going on at the day. We had Martin Wallace, an international renowned game designer, come along and do some game testing and also play and soundly defeat a few people playing June 1st. He's very good at that game. But yeah, so otherwise, yeah, standard sort of stuff, you know, board game library, arranged stuff and teachers. What sort of games were in the, in the goodie bags? Yesterday was, I'll leave the good one to last.
00:03:29
Speaker
But there was Fortune by Freedom of Freeze. Llama, the card game. And we also had Cold Express.
00:03:40
Speaker
Super cold express and it works. The original edition, the only good one. We had a few people ask about the fortune, the freedom of freeze game, and I'd never even heard of it before.
00:04:04
Speaker
They're like, what does this game like? And I'm like, oh, three, just don't ask questions. Was it just like, and it just random, if whatever bag you grabbed, that was the game that you got and that was how it works or were there all of those games in each bag?
00:04:18
Speaker
No, no, one game in each bag. And you can actually see the way we'd set it up is you just took the one that you wanted. So that way you didn't get a game that you already had. Yeah, nice. We had six nimps as well. And the lanyards came out really well. The badges came out, you know, when they finally arrived the day before. We had awesome t-shirts that Dave designed up as well. The whole IP and branding just looks spectacular on the day with everyone running around.
Weekend Activities and Lanyards
00:04:46
Speaker
And we actually distinguished your VIG gamers with a burgundy lanyard. And then you had just sat down Sunday, ticket holders there just had a white lanyard. So you could tell.
00:05:02
Speaker
Sorry, just a bit of a callback to the last episode. So did the Burgundy Langons have pictures of bears on them, like the dice do for the, for the colours? Bears for Burgundy. We had coloured maple, Steve. Made it really. Screwed people up a lot. Yeah. Well, and because that episode hasn't been released yet, nobody knows what we're talking about.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, it will be, don't tell me. Yeah, that's right. Also great, the great man, G Money, spent many, many hours teaching scholars to a whole heap of groups that came through. So great work, G Money. Yeah, I got the important lanyard colour, the burgundy colour. The burgundy colour. The burgundy colour.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, so it was a full day on the Saturday. We opened at nine.
Event Schedule and Gameplay
00:06:01
Speaker
There was people in there playing games at 7.30. We sort of let people in a little bit early. Went till 10 till the caretakers kicked out and started again on Sunday morning. Went through till eight. We're packing everything up at three or four o'clock yesterday afternoon. So yeah, very, very solid two days of gaming, which is great. So sorry, I feel like I'm just jumping in with all the questions here because you guys are all there, right?
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I've noticed that Shane, you've got Brave, which is your name. So I'm guessing that there was some broom service being played. Yes, it was probably the last game that I played on Briskon and we occupied the good table. So we were lent a table by the Tipsy Kraken. So we had this really nice table that Martin played on all weekend.
00:06:54
Speaker
We ended up playing Brew. Dave just chucked on the table and said, we're playing this. And so there was four players. And was it four or five? No, it was four. Five. Five. So max player count. And I've never played it before. But you look at the game, you're thinking, oh, it's a bit of a kitty game. And first round, I was like, nah, this ain't no kitty game. This is brilliant. And
00:07:21
Speaker
I think it was, it was classified as, I think we actually said it shouldn't be called broom service. It should be, you know, cool. Take that the board game. So, um, no, no, as in, as in take that. No, there was a lot of cuss words and, and, you know, because it's a kid friendly audience that we're going for here in season two, we can't repeat the words that we used many, many expletives. But, um,
00:07:49
Speaker
I think the game, the way the game was working out, and look, I loved it because I was purposely trying to hold back on some cards because I knew this person next to me was going to be playing it. So I was just on purpose, chucking it down, being brave and stopping him. And he actually counted the amount of times I blocked him. And he's being serious. Because there's four of us that were basically organizing and knew each other quite well. And then one random guy. Oh, nice. Poor random guy. Yeah.
00:08:20
Speaker
He was calling about that random guy in Star Trek. You know, he's going to be in trouble. The red shirt. Yeah. He took the full wrath of Shane every single day. So he's sitting next to Shane. Um, and the way the game works, you, you choose a role. So there's 10 roles and each turn you play four of them and they do different things to interact with the game board to deliver potions. But you choose one of the two variants of the characters. You have a cowardly version where you do a small action immediately, or you have a brave version. If you're the only brave version of that role on the whole table.
00:08:50
Speaker
then you get to do it. But if the person next to you decides that they're a brave version of that role, then they do it and you get nothing. And every single time, I think the first new guy played the brave version of the role, Shane would immediately counter him and play the brave version and he'd get nothing.
00:09:08
Speaker
There was one point there, because, you know, you actually called it out. That's the seventh time you've done that to me. Insert cuss word here. And we're all laughing. But we got down to one point. Yeah, he was. He was. Yeah, it was a little bit. Not really. I'm telling myself he was.
00:09:31
Speaker
We were down to one, it was just me and him, we had one card each, and he played the Brave Witch, or the Brave Garden Witch, I think it was, wasn't it? Is it a garden witch? Forest Witch.
00:09:42
Speaker
I had my only one and only card and I just went oh here's number eight.
Sales and Personal Anecdotes
00:09:48
Speaker
Laid it down and I saw everyone just burst into tears and he was like basically throwing the bloody potions at me almost as I was gathering the potions but thought it was good fun. Because a bit a part of the rule in selecting the brave is you don't actually have to be able to do the
00:10:05
Speaker
Do that to take it away from other people, which is what Shane was doing. I did it three times. I couldn't do the action. I just had to do it. Evil. But look, many, many big games were played and we had some role players that were playing in the part as well. So it was a lot of sort of dual trestle table games that took up a bit of time. A very, very epic game of Nemesis Sunday morning.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, he took his full painted all inversion and just sort of GM'd a game where he helped people through it, which is what he loves doing. I actually got a game of Eclipse in, we had a fair few big games are played, which is what you like to see at those conventions. You don't often get the four or five hours to play those big games.
00:10:54
Speaker
I ended up working out on Sunday that I could stand by the door and also teach a game at the same time. So I ended up setting up two player games of beer and bread. And so anyone that was looking for it, I was setting them up for beer and bread. Sorry, Helen. No, every time I saw beer and bread being played, I thought of you and your wife. I was like, oh, they're playing such a game. It's actually quite funny. It was Ingrid.
00:11:23
Speaker
I went off to go and I think I was dropping off my games or something like that. No, no, so I was dropping. I think I was just checking on my games for the bring and buy. And Ingrid walked up to Lauren in the canteen and said, oh, Lauren, I hear you like beer and bread. Are you okay to come over and teach it? And she started laughing at Ingrid and goes, hell no. There's no way I'm teaching you how to play beer and bread. Yes, I don't mind the game, but no, that's Shane's thing.
00:11:52
Speaker
How did you go with the Bring and Buy? Yeah, good. I ended up selling 19 of my 20 games. Which one didn't sell? Solar Storm, Kickstarter Solar Storm. What did you take? Do you know all 20? No, I don't. Oh, actually, yeah. I took some games that were harder to get rid of than herpes. It was, I took hand of fate.
00:12:23
Speaker
Kid Friendly season two. Maybe let's edit that one out. We've fucked it now. We've got 20 minutes in, sorry everybody. I got rid of Hand of Fate and Champions of Hara. God, I could not even sell them. The amount of times I've tried selling them on Facebook. Now they've gone. But what I liked was I did have the solar storm on my hand, but there was this young
00:12:51
Speaker
Young Lad that came for the first time to a board game event with his mum and they came in on the Sunday and he really liked pandemic and his mum said he loves playing board games. So I ended up gifting him the deluxe copy of Solar Storm. Yeah, nice. Because it's very similar to pandemic. Yeah. And we taught him how to play Ticket to Ride and his mum as well and his mum loved it.
00:13:18
Speaker
What we liked then is I heard a story where Phil was telling me later on that he went up to Phil and asked Phil if he could teach him how to play solar storm.
00:13:28
Speaker
And we were in depth in the game of broom service at that point in time. So Phil said, oh, the guy that probably could teach you is sitting there playing another game. But then David from the Brisbane Tabletop Gaming Group said, why don't you and I sit down with your mum and we'll learn the rules together and we'll play. That's a great story. Yeah, that's awesome. That's the point of it, right? Yeah. So big shout out to David.
00:13:57
Speaker
I actually played that game once at Springfield Gamers Night with Alice and she had a copy of that. And it is very pandemic-y. So yeah, if you liked that, then you'd be fine. Yeah. So I also had a bit of success at the bring and buy. I sold nine out of the 10 games that I took for that as well. We had one left.
00:14:13
Speaker
What's the one left again? I got to ask. Mine was Callie Mahler. Okay. I'm more annoyed that all these games being taken room by and the list wasn't given to me first. Well, no, like I said, it was the one that I showed you guys last time. It was the one I put up on Facebook and you bought something. But yeah, it was a really good, I think,
00:14:35
Speaker
introduction to having the board gamers at Briskon. So I've been involved with previous versions of that and it's very board game and miniature heavy. This time they said there is probably 10 times the amount of board games that would normally come because I think the board gamers bought board games to sell and then they also bought board games to buy. So from Briskon's perspective, this is the best one that they'd ever had. They take at least a 10% cut from all of the sales and they manage it all. So you just walk in in the morning, put your stuff on the shelves, give them a sheet of what it is and how much money you want for it and they'll facilitate all the rest. Yeah, that's cool.
00:15:05
Speaker
When the thing opened at 9.30, there was over 100 people in the line. It's just a very popular way to sell and move things. And I saw a guy walk out with a copy of Chaos in the Old World in shrink for $300. And he said, oh yeah, I'm really excited to play this.
00:15:21
Speaker
So it wasn't a small money stuff either. A full all in Darkest Dungeon sold for I think $400. There's a lot of stuff going on. I remember last year. I'd rage there for like, I want to say it was like $200 or $300. Can you explain why that would be the case? Because the base game's only like $110. Yeah, that was that deluxe.
00:15:42
Speaker
black and gold edition, wasn't it? A Kickstarter. The Kickstarter. Black version. Yeah. But Reg initially came in on Kickstarter with a bunch of exclusive expansions and things that you can't get. I remember, I don't know if it was last year or the year before. I think it was the year before because last year I only went on the Sunday. But yeah, the year before I went on the Saturday morning and I went into that bring and buy section. And there was two, it was the same, it wasn't long after Tom Vassal had announced that the half was his number one game.
00:16:10
Speaker
And there was two copies of Le Havre sitting there and I already owned the game and I'm like, oh wow, that's, that's, and then I think I went and got a drink and I came back and they were both gone. Like it was, they get, they get stepped and that was before the board gamers. So I could imagine it would have been chaos in there because.
00:16:26
Speaker
Board gamers love to buy and sell games, as we have discussed many times on this podcast before. Yeah. And there was a lot in there. So as I walked in to put my stuff in on the Friday and there was two copies of Twilight Struggle there, one for $70 and one that had Shane's name on it for $75. So I got undercut by $5 there knowing about it. Needless to say, it was still sitting there Sunday.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, very successful weekend. I think a lot of people had a lot of fun, which is kind of what we're going for.
Discworld and Scholar Teaching
00:16:58
Speaker
And yeah, introduce some new people. Like Martin got a fair bit of play testing. We also had another demo. Erica Wheeler was demoing her game, Trigger Hex. And I think she, she was selling a few copies as well. So that was quite good. And that was, we were sort of anybody that was interested in having a look because they didn't have tickets because we'd sold out of tickets. We actually just put them with them to play the demo games to check out sort of what it was like.
00:17:22
Speaker
There was a point there on Sunday because the markets were on where people were just filing through to have a look and it literally felt like you were animals in a zoo. You were on display for people to just because they were just filing past the tables and just having a peek in at what you were doing. Phil was standing security by the board game library at that point and
00:17:48
Speaker
there was a guy that lost his shit because he saw Discworld sitting in the cabinet. And he asked Phil, he said, oh, can I buy that game? And Phil said, no, not in your life. You know, there's no way the owner of that will sell it because he's only just got it. But then he pointed out, he said, plus the designer is sitting there on the board game table. And then the guy lost his shit even more because he saw Marv Wallace. And he said, why don't I bring my games? So yeah, it was really cool.
00:18:19
Speaker
Well, I'm talking about fangirling. Like G-Money was fangirling quite a bit over Martin, I have to say. I mentioned it once.
00:18:36
Speaker
GMoney's a common enemy of words. That's probably the equivalent of about five times, I guess. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And GMoney, I don't know who it was. I'll have to actually try and pay attention, but somebody else asked Phil how they were going and he said he was sufficient. I'm like, oh, I think trademarked. I might have to have some words to feel about that one. Yes, I invented the word sufficient.
00:19:01
Speaker
As a response to how are you going? Yeah, no, you can, you can use it on a kid. I have very easy weekend because no, no teaching was required. Um, but I played a really epic game of tapestry with all three expansions. Um, yeah, that was probably my highlight of the weekend, but I got a lot of big games on. We played blood rage. I played brass Birmingham for the first time.
00:19:30
Speaker
Um, and then, uh, meadow. Ah, cool. Yeah. Which was really nice and nice little game. And then we just played some little games, played a Sagrada, you know, we played trigger hex, uh, coral reef, fairy lights. So just a few quick, intermediate games between big games. Did you crush them in blood rage? I did. I could have crushed them all, but I was teaching them. And so I'm like, I better not. So yeah, I got like.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think I was 50 points ahead or something. So the three tapestry expansions, is that including the new one that's just landed? How does that go? Because I've only played the first one. I haven't even got Arts and Architecture or whatever it is yet. Well, Arts and Architecture is really good because it's a whole other track. So it means you have five tracks. And especially if you're playing with five people, it just gives a little bit more, you know,
00:20:24
Speaker
freedom. I played the Arts and Architecture track. It's interesting. It can help. I mean, I lost. But yeah, it's a good little track. Planes employees, the new expansion is just more again. So it's more of all of the different types. So you get
00:20:46
Speaker
And I actually don't know because I actually went from base game to all three expansions. So I don't actually can't break it down to what was what. But with the with one of the expansions, you get like a green board and a brown board to decide which of your, you know, your little cities you're going to do. And they've got different things. So instead of just being got to ignore them.
00:21:08
Speaker
red dots, you've got, you might have Tetris pieces that you have to fill in and they're your zones, or you might have lines that you've got to go along, or you might be able to include a red dot for the purposes of filling a square, but to fit like by the end of the game, if you don't cover your red dots, you lose points. And then they've got new, like new tapestry cards, new,
00:21:32
Speaker
civilizations. So the civilizations, they've got aliens and things like that. So they've got really cool, different things. The best thing that came with the third expansion is it came with an updated rules book that just is the complete game now. You just need to look at the one rule book and it's got everything you need in it to the point of when they've obviously done some fire testing and gone
00:21:54
Speaker
this card's a bit too strong so they've got some back of the page rules that says when you're doing this card do this instead so they've just done some adjustments to some cards that were too too easy to win on so yeah so i think that's the best thing and now that we've integrated it you just you just play the whole game it's not like most stonemaia the um expansions just add you don't have to go oh i just want to play the base you wouldn't you just play the game yeah yeah fair
00:22:23
Speaker
but they all just fold into each other. You don't have to like separate them out or anything. No, no. I've never played a game of side with the wind writers in it. The wind gamut. The wind gamut, yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Obviously I've played a few games with them and it's a weird thing.
00:22:42
Speaker
It really is dependent on the two tiles you draft, like you draw, because like when you play that, you flip over two tiles and one of them will be how many things it can take, which will either be workers or resources. And then the other one is how many spaces they can move.
00:22:57
Speaker
And it's so dependent on what those two things are. They can be super important or they can be literally just left on your home base and never used. And it really depends on those two cards. So a little bit like your TI4 games, Dave, if we're going to use them, I will veto a whole bunch of cards until we get a combination that makes them useful. Because they look amazing and they just most, if you don't do that, sometimes they can just sit on the home base for the whole game.
00:23:24
Speaker
And I think that's a good point. There is a lot of games with a lot of expansions that do add to it and sort of make it unplayable almost without them. But things like Terraforming Mars, we think and play and pick out and choose a lot of stuff. So like the few times that we played with the Venus expansion, nobody's really enjoyed it.
00:23:42
Speaker
So we'll often try and pair that back a fair bit. And same with the turmoil one, like it's great. And it adds a bit of interest if you played it heaps, but to just sit and play the game occasionally, it doesn't really add anything to the experience. So we'll often cut it back from a full expansion game, but I still haven't actually played with my version of Alchemists for Quacks either. I've only played with the Herbs. Yeah, same here.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah see and I'm I'm sure that's right and I don't disagree with you I think that for Tavish I just can't be bothered going through the cards and figuring out which ones are which and separating them that just seems like too much effort so I'll just say like eh it's a full game now that's the game. So Grant I've been really keen to hear your impression of scholars mate. So I managed to teach it twice
00:24:32
Speaker
Both times it went for about five hours, I would say. So it was kind of like three hours in the morning, break for lunch. And then we finished by about two, both days. Um, the first teach Christie was there and helped me a lot sort of get it through. Uh, by the second day, the teacher was a lot smoother that day because I didn't really focus too much on the rules. I just kind of gave the concepts and then let everyone sort of like ask questions and sort of figure it out for themselves.
00:25:00
Speaker
So the second day went really well. Everyone played it. I mentioned it to them that, you know, we would probably have to finish it. Like if people were doing other things, there was no way this was going to finish. Um, but everyone like by about 11 30 was like, no, no, we'll keep, we want to keep playing this and finish it. Like, you know, um, the two people there who were kind of like, I guess a bit more like into board games and played a bit more, they, they were like fully into it. And, um, everyone finished the scores were.
00:25:30
Speaker
relatively close and I felt like it went pretty smooth on the second the second teach so it was really good it was a positive experience we all had a lot of fun no pressure or anything like that and the games I reckon the games terrific it's just another success in the long line of Garfield game successes that I don't think they're capable of making a bad game it doesn't it's just trying to evolve and change and change like change systems and stuff like that so
00:26:00
Speaker
So out of curiosity, max player count then, four players? Four players, yep, in line as usual. So out of curiosity then, is that the five hours? Is that because it's a first play and sort of feeling your way through it? Yeah. What do you feel like? So if all four players knew what they were doing, what kind of time would you estimate a game? I would say two, two and a half.
00:26:22
Speaker
And do you think it's like paladins where it might be better at two or three player than the full player count? I think two players would be really fun because there's not going to be any real blocking of what you want to do. It's like your game. Four player, there was the slight, there's a slight amount of that. They took that scroll and I wanted it. Right.
00:26:43
Speaker
But it's not like targeted. It's not like I'm going to take that because I know you want it. It's just by accident. Yeah. Okay. And the thing I was over hearing, I didn't actually see yours or talk to you too much about it, but it's not known game length. Like there's cards that come through. Yeah. As wayfarers is like, you know, you can, you choose when you end the game, like someone has the choice.
00:27:06
Speaker
This is very similar to Pandemic with the cards that do the Epidemic. Is that what it is? You shuffle them into the deck so that they're spread evenly throughout the deck. Once you draw one, you do one of the four main actions. Once that last card is drawn out of the deck, that triggers the end of the game.
00:27:27
Speaker
So it's kind of like when the third one's drawn, if you've got options, do something. Don't do everything. Don't half-arse two things, whole-arse one thing at the end of the game. And you can actually limit, you can actually reduce your time of play as well by stacking the cards. So there's a little card in the how-to where you can actually make it a shorter game or you can go legend status and make it a really long game.
00:27:53
Speaker
We played the casual mode just because obviously people are learning. But it feels like, you know, sometimes when you play Terraforming Mars, you want to play with Prelude because you just want to like expediate the process. But sometimes you want to play like from absolute base. So like certain cards that give you bonuses early on are better throughout the whole game. This kind of feels like that because some bonuses you get early on will play out really well over the whole game.
00:28:22
Speaker
So you want a longer game to sort of get those bonuses, but it was fantastic. Um, super happy. Shane was kind enough to allow me to teach it and stuff. And yeah, wholeheartedly recommend. Yeah. And thank you, mate. You did an awesome job.
00:28:39
Speaker
Everyone was raving about it that you taught and everyone was raving about the game. Christie ended up walking away and teaching it later on on the Saturday night to another player. And then he said to me afterwards, without a doubt, it's his favorite of the Garfield games.
00:28:56
Speaker
That's just ridiculous. How is this right there? When I was doing our top 10 games, I'm like, there's three of them in my top 10, and that's not including Wayfarers, which would probably be in my top 10 now. It's not possible. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know if you saw the, I'm sure you guys all saw the announcement last week where that bloody Ezra Nehemiah looks like a T-game crossed with the Shem Phillips game.
00:29:26
Speaker
I don't know how I can react to these things anymore because they just, they can't just keep getting better, but it appears as though they are. It's like they're, it's like their greatest hits album, this one. So. Yeah. They sell their souls too, to be able to create such amazing board games.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, I just don't know. And I feel like sometimes maybe I'm being biased because I've got such a they've had such a great track record and I love their games and they're awesome people. But no, they're just like we I had a game group over of a bunch of new people the other week and we played architects and then we had had them go over again on Wednesday night and like what game do I play? Like we really want to play architects again.
00:30:04
Speaker
So we played it with the variable setups and then they're like, this is awesome. Can you show us? Cause I've got the, the play map. Um, and we only play with the arts, the, um, artisans, age of artisans expansion. We didn't play with the works of wonder. Um, but that's on the board. So they're like, well, next, next week, can we play it again? But can we use this, this expansion now? And I'm like, so it's not just me. They're just awesome games. Like, yeah. I don't know that I've ever played one. What?
00:30:31
Speaker
I don't know if I've ever played a game at all. It's okay. Relax, everybody. I'm excited. I wish I could... No. I'm now loading up your next game, David. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I just want to come around and be like, all right, weekend, let's go. When I played Brass, that was my first Martin Wallace game. Yeah. Great game. What did you think? Actually, that's a great question because I didn't like it after my first play. What did you think of Brass?
00:31:04
Speaker
We had an interesting teach. I think that it would have been a better experience had we just read the rules. It's not a long rule book. I think that it would have made more sense to us to just read the rules from front to back and then play it. We just made some errors early on that sort of really tainted the game. And then there was a couple of times where I just, yeah, I did a Helen and
00:31:29
Speaker
had opinions on other people's games, which G-Money saw some firsthand of when we played a very quick game of Land First Sea at the end of the chat. I'm like, no, don't do that there, put that there, you get more points. I did that classicness, which is really frustrating for people, especially the person who isn't getting the benefit, the person that's getting the loss from the fact that you told them to go there and that's where they were going, so. They're only lost by a point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:31:54
Speaker
I think in your defence, Helen, we did ask Martin to come over and maybe do the teach for you. And he was like, oh, no. No, it's fine. I really think that it's just I love a quick rule book.
00:32:08
Speaker
I think the four pages, I think it's actually six, but you know, most of it's just literally talking about the different things. I just think it's not a long rule book, which I think is great. And anybody should just read it and then play it. In terms of the game, it was lovely. I wouldn't put it over tapestry. So, you know, it's got a place for sure. It's a, I would say a better version of Ticket to Ride.
00:32:35
Speaker
because it's a similar thing, right? You're doing train tracks, but there's just things you're doing at the end of the train tracks. So, I know it's not ticket to ride. It's a ticket to ride. The number one board game on board game geek is getting compared to ticket to ride. Love it.
00:32:56
Speaker
Translation seems hot garbage. That's what I like. No, it wasn't. It was a great game. It was a great game. I would play it again. I wouldn't buy it. It's not something I'd play all the time. But if it was on offer and someone was playing it, I would absolutely get in and play it. It definitely rewards multiple plays like that. Play it a few more times.
Brass Game Analysis
00:33:15
Speaker
You'll enjoy it more. Yeah, I think that's it.
00:33:17
Speaker
I'm similar to Steve, and I didn't like the game at all. And I played it a few times. But it's also, again, back to Dave, it's like, you know, it's always who you're playing the game with, is you're going to enjoy it more. And so I played brass with Dave and a few others one night, and that was it. I enjoyed it. It actually, I got it about, I think Dave might have saw it. I mean, I did get some help near the end, but Dave might have saw my head click where I was actually going, okay, now I get this game. I was about three floors away through it.
00:33:46
Speaker
It's a funny thing. It's interesting you make the comparison, Ticket to Ride, because my mother was visiting and we played Ticket to Ride Europe a couple times over the weekend and there is no way in hell I'd put brass on the table for my mother. It would never happen. But it's funny though, because I'm very much, I wouldn't say it's shallow, but a game needs to grab me.
00:34:08
Speaker
first time. I'm not one of these people who like go we've talked a lot about pipeline in the past and pipeline is a game where it's not going to grab many people on the first play. It's going to it's going to be like things are going to because most of the time you sit there going how on earth do you get more than 200 points and then all of a sudden things click and you start getting 900 and 1000 points or whatever else and I get that but I'm not someone who looks for that. I need the game to grab me on play one that's very hard to get me get back for a game too. So
00:34:36
Speaker
with brass it was a bit of a surprise that i did give it another go and i've then bought it for a second time because i'd sold it after the first time um and and now love it and just can't get it to the bloody table to play anymore um but yeah it's it is one game that is second chance save for me for sure it was yeah
00:34:56
Speaker
And I'm putting out there, you're right, it's absolutely nothing like Ticket to Ride. I apologize, it's really not. No, no, no, it's a resource basically, but I just, you know, I didn't, I decided very early on and I did this with Tapestry as well. I wanted to play a new track on Tapestry, so I knew I wasn't going to win that game, but I was going to learn something different.
00:35:17
Speaker
So Wooster is on the board. It's one of the locations in Brass Bangham. I lived there. So my entire game was just about owning Wooster. And so I stayed on one side of the board, then I couldn't get pottery and fire digger, obviously gives you extra points. So I got one pottery out, one lot. And yeah, I just, yeah, I did a lot of money. I got lots of money.
00:35:38
Speaker
But I just, yeah. My hot tip for brass is to never go into the game thinking, all right, I'm going to try this really bizarre strategy. And I just need all of these things to work in my favor because that never happens. And you end up on negative points because you spend it to get taking too many loans off the bank. I also just didn't want to connect with everybody else because then they can steal all my spots. Because that's the thing I didn't understand. So you can use somebody else's track to get
00:36:07
Speaker
Do you know what I mean? To go and buy stuff in a section of place. Like it doesn't have to be, you don't have to get there. Somebody just- Connecting the networks to the markets, you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then if you connect your network to someone else's network, you can then use the market through their network. Yeah. Getting the coal you need to build things in other places, basically. Yeah. For me, it was one of those really interesting ones, because I have a bit of an interesting love-hate with brass as well.
00:36:36
Speaker
It was one of the first games that I got after I got into board gaming in that next step after the initial sort of Puerto Rico and ticket to ride stuff. And so I bought it because it was highly ranked on BGG and I love the look of it and it looked really pretty. Went and played it with a friend who just blitzed and obliterated everybody. And so it was, again, it was the first game that I'd played and he crushed us all while teaching us. I'm like, oh, I didn't really like this game.
00:37:01
Speaker
It's rare that, that I have that experience. Like I'm not like you, Steve, I'll, I'll play a game five times before I sort of make the call to Turford. Um, but for me, that was definitely one, I didn't touch it again for another two years after that. That was, that was gross. It is an easy game to do that. And it was a very light teacher. He said, make sure you put your level twos out in the first stage. Okay. And go. And if you don't hear that and you don't do that, the game is very hard. Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:28
Speaker
There's actually a game that he brought out even well before brass. I think it was actually in between brass, Lancanshire and Birmingham, and it's called Age of Industry. And that is kind of like a brass light version, so similar to Steam Rail So Riches, which is like a light version of Age of Steam. And so I've played that a couple of times in the Age of Industry and enjoyed that.
00:37:54
Speaker
which then helped me click and grasp a little more on brass. Do you see, I wouldn't have classified brass as a heavy game. Oh, it is. Like it's a long game, but it's not a difficult game. They have like tournaments, like massive worldwide tournaments for it. I understand what you mean, Helen. That where it gets difficulties when you play against someone who knows what they're doing, you go, oh, I don't know how to play this game.
00:38:23
Speaker
It's very much, there's like a level. You can do all the things without, but that doesn't mean you know how to play the game, I guess. And I'm not putting myself in that category either. My wife and I get a lot of enjoyment out of it because we generally, whoever wins, wins by like one to five points, which is awesome. You know, like 131 to 134 is an awesome game. But if I went and played it against someone who plays in the loads, I'd probably get beaten by 60 and not really understand why.
00:38:53
Speaker
Um, because it is, there's a lot, there's a lot of nuance to that game that I think, like Dave said, rewards extra plays. If you play that a lot. Yeah. That's where we were, by the way. We were like 135, 138 and 147. Yeah, right.
00:39:13
Speaker
I also love, it's one of those games and almost all of my favorite games are like this where there's not a points track that's telling you the exact situation of the game. Like you, you really don't know where you stand. You've got to try and really think about am I, am I winning this game and where am I placed? Um, I love that in games and that's definitely one of those games where you're doing all the count up at the end and you're going, oh shit, I'm going to win this game or I'm just going to lose or yeah.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah. So we had a, we had a great game of June Imperium with Martin and it was almost to that. June's got a little bit of that where there's some enough hidden information. You don't actually know who's going to win. There's a victory point trigger. As soon as someone gets to 10, you do the counter, but there's enough hidden ways that it doesn't actually matter. So we played on the weekend. I ended up on nine. Michael was on 11. Martin Wallace got 15 points. Holy.
00:40:06
Speaker
which in June is the end game trigger is 10. And so he got six points, six victory points in the last four out, which was phenomenal. And that was it. He just he was able to combo enough cards together with enough tech with enough spice cards that he just had, I can do this, which gives me this. Hmm.
00:40:29
Speaker
Bless you. Thank you. Yeah, no, it's glorious, but it was a really good. We're all sort of pegging up the same and you could just see him sort of take one step too far and go, actually, you know, he's going to win this game. Yeah. Yeah. So. Hidden win information is the best way to do it.
00:40:54
Speaker
Any other highlights? Did, um, did we have the, um, I think you mentioned at the start, the, uh, live action role play people doing their medieval battles out the front. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. It was, it was a good, um, sort of side. And so they were right next to the food truck. So you could just go and like, get a hot dog and sit at a table and watch these people whacking each other with swords. My only note for next year would be that they should have different food trucks on each day.
00:41:24
Speaker
Cause I had the same two food trucks on both days. I'm like, nah. It's my only, only side. More choice. More choice. Although breakfast, cheese, greensky was pretty good. Did you have, do you know, I saw that and thought of your Dave. I was like, I hope I went to come back and tell you about it. Oh no, I got it. First name basis. Did you, did you eat all those Oreos I gave you, Dave? Yeah, I did.
00:41:54
Speaker
Everything's shut today, I think, is it? My RGA's never shut. My daughter just went to work at RGA and that's an emerald, so there's definitely something down your way open. RGA's open. We've got games tonight to sort of back it up. Sydney, after playing a fair few bigger games and lengthy, complex games, we're trying to figure out what we need to play today. Dune, we're playing Dune Imperium. Are you playing that in person?
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Monday night. Yeah, game on. But we did get a pipeline game in. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. I was like, damn, you did that when I left. Yeah. Yeah, bloody hell, that was tough. I got stuck. Yeah. I couldn't try and get out of it neither. I'm just going to keep refining and selling. I'm selling back to the market. And I did do too bad in the end, really.
00:42:44
Speaker
So, you know, pipeline is a game that stresses you mentally. It is, there's so much variety and the more, as I said to someone who's playing, the more time and energy you can invest with your brain to figure out what to do, you will play better. This is 12 hours into the game day and we had sort of an hour and a half spare at the end of the evening. So I convinced a couple of people to play pipeline and we played pipeline.
00:43:08
Speaker
But yeah, it worked out. We got the game in. It wasn't a long version of Pipeline, which that can also happen. Scores are really close, but everyone didn't hate it, which is a massive win in Pipeline. I still hate it. In it if you love that game, you hate it, right? I love that game so much, and I despise it. He's doing a new one. I think it's Planting.
00:43:35
Speaker
It's like they're doing the root system of something. I think it's like a pipeline style, but I'm sure he's jumped into the nature of the nature bandwagon. Trailblazers? Could be an imposter though. Maybe. Because it's a plant. Because he did Curious Cargo, which sort of refined it down with a little bit of, you know, moving things around through the networks. Apparently that's more stressful that game. Yeah, because it takes away any of the economic and the other parts. And then so some trailblazers now, which is literally just that networking building aspect.
00:44:05
Speaker
Yeah, right. Maybe that's it, yeah. But yeah, because it was like a nature-themed one that looked very similar. Yeah, building hiking trails. Hiking trails, yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, cool, cool. Becoming to kiss that as anything.
00:44:24
Speaker
So I've got a game night on tonight too. We've got our Friday family game night. They got moved to Monday because Heidi's been doing her Rock of Ages performances. So we're playing bad company tonight. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, not played it yet. So I've learned the rules and got all punched and ready to go. So it should be fun. I think I saw that on the table this weekend, actually. Yeah, it was a few times. I spent the time teaching it. It was good.
00:44:54
Speaker
What else is everybody else up to this week to come down from gaming? I've got an April family game night on.
00:45:02
Speaker
So there's no board games. I've actually got a, I've got a pile of board games in the shed at the moment that I need to now stack back into the shelves. So I thought this afternoon, I'm just going to take them all out of the shelves, give it a good dust, put them all back in in a whole new, different way instead of the way I was doing it previously. Then we have our eight ball night to win the Bugs Bunny Warner Brothers movie world trophy as a family. And then Wednesday night we have the fugitive ferret.
00:45:32
Speaker
ball game night and Friday night we have Friday nights at the community place at Kalinga. So, ball games, ball games, more ball games. Nice. Yeah, I've got ball games Friday night as well. Friend's birthday. So, looking forward to that.
Board Game Donations
00:45:49
Speaker
Um, so I actually bought him Meadow. So I'm hoping that in the week between now and his birthday that he doesn't buy it for himself. Um, but yeah, other than that, I too, I'm gonna re reorganize my board games, clean the shelves, put them back on and stuff.
00:46:10
Speaker
I did something pretty cool this week. I shared the photo with you guys, but I bought a whole bunch of games to give to the Bohemia Library, which is a, it's like a locality. It's not even a place. There's just a town hall. That's it. And that's also doubles as a library. But I'm actually going down there to run a board game night for that for mental health.
00:46:30
Speaker
Um, so I bought all these games, but it's like, it's funny because some of the games I'd played and moved on and hadn't played in a long time. So I'm, um, I'm also sometime this week going to reteach myself, Everdell. Uh, cause that's one of the games and, um, just re familiarize myself with a couple of the other ones that I hadn't played in a while. Like, like it's been, I'm sure I could pick up to pandemic and just play it without thinking, but I haven't played pandemic for like three years.
00:46:54
Speaker
So games like that. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to print out QR codes and stick them on the inside of the box, which will be like a link to a YouTube video of how to play the game. So if ever someone's looking. That's a clever idea. Yeah. So I'm going to do that this week. What day is that? What day is the Bahiniya game thing? It is the weekend of Saturday, 20th of May.
00:47:23
Speaker
Because I was going to say you should do Star Wars, Clone Wars, if it was on a Thursday night for May the 4th. Yeah, no, unfortunately, I don't know whether it'd be the audience for Star Wars, but you mean the pandemic version? Pandemic version. Yeah, the new pandemic version. Oh, for a second there, Shane, I thought you were going to say, oh, I'll come up to Bohemia. I'm like, would you really?
00:47:43
Speaker
I'll come up and teach broom service. That sounds sure to help with people's mental health. Everyone had a good time except that one guy. My friend mentioned that board games, board game geek has
00:48:07
Speaker
like cheat sheets almost, like a one page rule set up. So even if you put it off some of those and put them in the box too. So once they have read those, just a quick reference guide. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to also do like a, uh, eliminated, um, components list. So that's like a tick and flick. So when you take the gains back, you can double check that you've got everything that should be there and that sort of stuff. Yeah. Should be good. So how are you going to recommend YouTube? Is he going to mix it around or are you going to go favorite that you're going to queue our code to?
00:48:38
Speaker
Depending on the game, I'll choose all the options. There'll be a lot of Rodney, I imagine, and John Gates games will get a good run. I think because of the types of games they are too, I think every game will be covered by those too. Because the heaviest game is probably Wingspan. Wingspan, Everdell, and then everything else is like Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, like Six Nipped.
00:49:04
Speaker
code names. There's nothing like, I deliberately haven't gone heavy with anything. Um, the heavier, like heaviest two games are also the most beautiful games. So they're going to want to get played. So therefore they're the ones I've got to focus on the most. And Rodney does a wingspan teach and I don't know if he doesn't ever Dell teach, but I'm guessing he probably does. Sounds like a game he would have done a teach for. So yeah, I'm sure he does. Well, does anybody have a topic that we're going to talk about next time?
00:49:39
Speaker
I did have one during the week, but it wasn't a board game related one, but I thought, oh, but I can't remember what that was now. No, I'll edit it in. Atlanta Falcons. Into that dead end that we were just talking about. Top 10 romantic comedies. Just say yourself up for it. Here's my idea. I've got a brilliant idea. It is.
00:50:04
Speaker
Do we want to do our nominations for the board game Geek Awards? Just pick out all the ones that are doing all the gaming ones and do what we think might win it, maybe. That sounds like research. Yeah, it does sound like this. We'll just turn up. If you put them in the chat, I will guarantee look at them once.
00:50:34
Speaker
as we're deciding who wins. They also just put them into an automated simulator and let it pick fourth. And we'll just edit it a bit where we're all going, oh yes, that's a very much deserving winner of this category. That was one of the most awkward bits on the whole BRIScon weekend, just sort of come back to me. So we didn't plan on how to do the giveaways in advance. So
00:51:03
Speaker
on my phone while we're there I'm getting some tech advice from a friend on how to export the attendees list into a spreadsheet which I've then put into a phone version so I could see it which I've then assigned a number to and then I've gone to a website and just doing random number generators and then going back to the list so I'm sitting there with this megaphone in my hand with two windows open on my phone going random number scroll okay it's that number yay congratulations this person you won
00:51:31
Speaker
Oh, would not do again. When all you needed to do is put them in to draw your names. Yeah, we could have done that. There's a whole bunch of ways that we could do it. Just the fact that it was one of those little things that we probably should have thought about in advance that we didn't. That's why you learn, right? The first event that we did in this way, it was good to pick out some of those things. Is your intention to do another event this year? I don't know.
00:52:00
Speaker
We're going to have a debrief for the first event. We'll come back to you, Helen. Sounds good. We're certainly locked in. We're going to hear what your committee comes up with. Nominations are open for the committee, by the way. We are. We're certainly open and we're locked in for 2024, 2025 and 2026 with the Briskong guys.
00:52:20
Speaker
Looking forward to that. I'll be there next year. We do have an event with the Community Place coming up on June 24th. So we're looking at advertising that in the next few days. And that will be under the board game together, Queensland banner with the TCB. Awesome. Well, I am going to go and start putting all my board games away.
00:52:48
Speaker
I'm going to go and find out why my little baby boy is crying. I'm going to load up in the last episode 14 of the podcast. Season two, episode one, you mean. If you're a fan of the podcast and you're listening to this, I hope the last week's been fun because you've had more episodes in the last week than potentially
00:53:11
Speaker
any other three month span previous. Fun's a strong word. Yeah. And happy May. Yeah. All right. All right. Thanks friends. Pleasure again. Great to hear about the weekend. Yes. Not jealous at all. It was great. Just some good moments. Like I really, there was a lot of good memories coming out of it.
00:53:38
Speaker
I think there was a recording. I will say thank you to everyone. Like Dave, you know, your work was amazing. Grant, another stellar effort. Helen, you on the day has been brilliant as well.
00:53:52
Speaker
And, uh, and then also to our, you know, Tristan did an awesome job in teaching. Ben Todd as well was brilliant. And, um, Dave crew was teaching as well. It was just fantastic. So, and your lovely family for manning the, yes. Lauren and max did an awesome job. Max was a trooper. And, um, it was hilarious sleep on the book on the job. God, it was hilarious. We saw him there. Lauren called me over.
00:54:20
Speaker
And there he was, slouched in the chair, head on the stove, fast asleep. He's got two camp chairs and he's put them next to the stove and he stuck his arm inside his hoodie and he's got to sleep. That's a great one. That was hilarious. It's going to be an engineer with those sort of skills, making stuff out of nothing. Yeah. Well, good. I'll thank you again, folks.
00:54:48
Speaker
Catch you everyone on the next episode. Bye guys.