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Episode 2: The Origins Report
108 Plays1 year ago
The Board Members discuss 2023 Origins Game Fair, deluxification in games, and what they are looking forward to playing over the July 4th holiday. Andrew discusses his cheapness, Josh admits to his Acquisition Disorder, Heather confesses to being Boardgame Famous, and Drew laments the cross one must bear reviewing free games that people keep sending him.
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Transcript
Introduction to Corner Game Table
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome back to the Corner Game Table, the podcast about board games, the people who play them, and the amazing experiences that are just waiting to be had when you sit down with other people around the game table.
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm joined here around this magnificent game table before us with the other board members. Andrew, say hello, Andrew. Hello, Andrew. Do we or is it still mahogany? We previously established it was a mahogany table. I believe so. Yeah. I mean, it hasn't it hasn't adjusted itself since the last time you said it's still made out of the same principle materials. Right. Hello, everybody. I'm here. I'm happy.
00:00:54
Speaker
We're having a great time already. And Heather. Hello. Hello. We didn't even mean we didn't like upgrade to the gaming mats or anything. Maybe some like coasters on the table now. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's the second show, right? We get there. We got to get some coasters as like a Kickstarter reward or something. And then we'll be all set. Yeah. Stretch goal. Stretch goal. Four or five in the can, at least. And then we'll talk. All right. And last but not least, Drew.
00:01:23
Speaker
I'm actually not here. This is an AI-generated voice. Oh, completely AI-generated. And hello, everyone. I'm glad that you all are here. Thank you for tuning in. At Origins, I actually got about three or four people that were following us on whatever streaming platform that they have. Fantastic. I love it. It was more forced than anything, but it's OK.
00:01:52
Speaker
They were following us after you threw them to the ground and said, I won't let you off until you follow this. You grabbed their phone and purposefully took care of it. That's OK. It works. It works for me. Wow. Y'all took it way dark. Y'all think I'm that bad. I just looked at it. I go for emotional. That's more of my thing. I was like, are you really my friend? You should be following this podcast. That's right. He's not going to give away his trade secrets. I just did. That was it.
00:02:20
Speaker
There's nothing like a little, you know, emotional blackmail to get people to pay attention to what you're creating. It's too close to home. I have a 14 year old girl in high school right now. The emotional blackmail thing is a little too close. All right. I've triggered Andrew. We're going to calm down. I'm going to throw the ball back. Okay. All right.
Origins Game Fair Highlights
00:02:40
Speaker
Alright, but anyways, speaking of Origins, I think we're gonna talk about that today. I'm excited. Yeah, so that's our first topic today, Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio. It's two of the four of us got to go and I'm excited to hear about your experiences.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, Drew and I got to go. We had a nice fun time. Drew finally got to meet my husband. Oh yeah. They became best friends. Immediately, instantly. I remember we were sitting at dinner. I looked at Heather and I said, be very glad that I met you first. Otherwise, you wouldn't have changed a friendship. Oh my gosh. Yeah, he did. He did say that. That's funny. The audacity. That's so funny.
00:03:22
Speaker
No, we had a great time. It was my first time going. Drew, it was your first time, too, right? It was. It was my very first time going, and it was a lot bigger than expected, but also it just felt busier than the other ones that Heather and I have been to so far. That's what I was saying. I felt like it was, because I kept telling people, I felt like it was bigger than PAX Unplugged. Everyone was pretty surprised to hear that, but I just think the convention center was so much bigger. It was more spread out.
00:03:52
Speaker
Oh, I'd agree with that. And there was also a lot more stuff that was going on there than it was at PAX Unplugged. And I'm thinking, you know, we've, we've been to a variety of different, different other ones, probably the largest that I've been to so far this year has been PAX East. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. But I kind of stayed in this little small corner because that's where the board gaming area was and where the tabletop games were.
00:04:17
Speaker
So it was and I don't know it's because maybe because the place was so massive it didn't feel like you know you were in the way of people or you know anything like that and I definitely didn't feel that way at Origins. That's the one thing I laugh about is because
00:04:34
Speaker
Goodness gracious, those walkways were incredibly wide and I appreciated that so much. Oh, they were,
Comparisons with Other Conventions
00:04:43
Speaker
yeah. I heard that when we go to Gen Con, it's just going to be shoulder to shoulder, people. This is what people keep warning me about.
00:04:50
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Have you never been to GenCon before? No. Oh yeah. This will be our first time. If you could pick two consumer facing shows with significant exhibitor halls that were more opposite, I challenge you between Origins and GenCon because Origins has always been a much more laid back show. Like they really
00:05:13
Speaker
They've always kind of appreciated creature comforts. Like they actually have like a quiet room that you can go and just be like, yeah, they did. They don't do that stuff at Gen Con. They even had like a family room like for like kids and things like that. There were a lot of kids there. Right. I got a good taste of what Gen Con is probably going to be like because I went to UK games earlier in the
00:05:38
Speaker
in the month. And that was their largest expo they ever had. And I was like, yes, I'm definitely sure that is very true. And so I, it was hard to just like, walk, move around, things like that. And I was like, this is probably what is going to be like a Gen Con more than likely. So yeah, watching some of those videos that people have made of like the doors opening at Gen Con to the
00:06:02
Speaker
you know, to the expo hall. Thank you. And it's just this rush of people like the rest of the building is on fire and everyone's trying to get through those doors. Yeah. I don't know if I could I don't know if I could exist in that. Well, if you want to talk about a large place, I have been to Essen and in order to give my kids like a flavor of what Essen was like, because my my older two have been to packs unplugged, I started at the like one end of Hall one.
00:06:32
Speaker
and I turned my phone on video and I just like held it in front of my chest. And I walked through hall one, through hall two and across, there's like kind of this like open area where they have like food and stuff, which is super awesome. And I think I didn't go through hall three because two and three are like parallel to each other. And then through hall four, through hall five, and then through hall six, because it's huge.
00:06:58
Speaker
And I was going to say, that's already a lot. It was it was just walking through. I didn't stop at any booths. It was a 13 minute video on my phone just walking through the halls. That's why it's it is insanely large.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, I will be going to that one this year. And Drew, we don't know if Drew's going yet or not. You got to get that spiral potato thing. Spiral potato. Have you never seen the pictures of the spiral potato thing? I have not. There's this spiral potato thing. If you ask people about it, they'll know what you're talking about. You have to get it. It's like four euro, and it's totally worth it. It's so delicious. Just imagine eating a single potato, but it's a curly fry.
00:07:38
Speaker
I think I have seen that. I could get into that. Best I can get is a potato pancake. If you said that, I knew exactly what you were talking about. I'm just excited for the German food. Yeah, although I did have... What the heck is that thing? It's like...
00:07:55
Speaker
Something, I don't remember. It's some German something word, currywurst. Oh, don't do it. No, it's disgusting. No, I love currywurst. You know what? I love you, Heather. I love you a little bit less right now. I'm sorry. I can't help it. I lived there for a while. Oh, all right. So you were indoctrinated. OK, that's a different. Yeah, that's a different thing. But it's like street food. Yeah, but it was gross.
00:08:21
Speaker
Well, was it at the convention center then? No, I got it at a restaurant because they were like, it's currywurst. I have to get it. And I did. And I was very disappointed. Yeah, well, maybe there's a show. And the guy next to me was like, this food's amazing. He had something else. I was like, well, I got the crap into the stick on this one. Oh, no. Yeah, it was not good. But the beer is excellent.
00:08:39
Speaker
Oh, yes, of course. Speaking of German food, that's what we did our first night at Origins. We went and ate at this place called Schmitz in Columbus, Ohio, which is apparently pretty famous. Yes. Lots of people were like, you got to go eat at Schmitz. It was really, really good. Cool. Made some great beer.
00:08:59
Speaker
Oh, it was so good. Great conversations to pump us up for the convention. That was your husband's birthday. It was. He turned 40 the first day of Origins. So we were able to celebrate with beers and yummy food. It's the best way to have it. Yeah, that's the way to do it. But I'm trying to think, I mean, for my, let's see, Drew, what was your favorite game that you saw at Origins?
Game Spotlights: Black Hole Rainbows & More
00:09:26
Speaker
That I saw. I think I know mine.
00:09:29
Speaker
I want to know what yours is. Just because of work, I didn't get the opportunity to play test a lot of games. If I was to name off any games, they would be just games that are in creation right now, and I would feel bad to... Well, I guess I could. They're not published yet, but I don't know. Whatever we say here, I'll describe them. You got a sneak peek.
00:09:54
Speaker
I got, yeah, so at the end of the convention, I just had to simply walk over.
00:10:03
Speaker
Go to the own pub room because I said I need to make my quota of meetings But I was like this is gonna be the best place and opportunity for me to have that Yeah And I was like but I also get to actually sit down and play the games and not just sit here and talk to These people and let them tell me about their games which you know, that's fine. Yeah, it sounds lovely whenever I'm at a booth and they say that but I
00:10:26
Speaker
It's different when you're able to sit down and play it. I do like that they have that Unpub room. I think that's a really cool thing. The Unpub room was fantastic. Now that I'm sitting here thinking about it, I actually got to play a lot more than I thought of. Heather, I'm going to let you go first. What was your favorite game? Well, I actually have it right here.
00:10:50
Speaker
And I ordered it and it was thanks to Drew that I went over to their booth. But it's black hole rainbows. And I knew you were going to pick that. Yeah. It's almost a sound garden game. This Drew actually was like, you got to go check out this game. It's amazing. Like he had checked it out. And so my husband and I went over there and demoed it the second day. And immediately I was like, oh, this game is going to be like a hot ticket game.
00:11:19
Speaker
Like this is a really good gateway game. It's easy to learn. It's quick to play. It can get real chaotic real fast, but it's just fun. Just a fun game. What's the premise? Nice quality component. So essentially you are trying to collect light stones to put into your black hole. They have this like rubber mat, this rubber circular mat. And you have to get light stones in different colors. It's seven light stones.
00:11:43
Speaker
And you're collecting them from this galaxy mat, but you're also you can steal them from other players using action cards. And you roll this scatter die. The first thing on your turn is you roll a scatter die and that determines if you're passing lightstones to another player.
00:11:59
Speaker
or you're taking one from the center, and then your second thing you do on your turn is you place light stones from your supply into your black hole. If you're able to place all seven, then you dump your black hole out into the galaxy mat in the center of the table, and you get a coin. And the whole goal is to get coins. Depending on how many people are playing,
00:12:20
Speaker
We just played it with five people. You had first person of six coins wins. So once you've done that, step three is optional. You can spend a lightstone in front of you and your supply. Basically sacrifice it to roll this super nova dark like glittery die.
00:12:38
Speaker
That's a d20, I believe, and it has on maybe four of the different sides. It's got like a sun symbol on it, which is the same symbol on the coins. It was three. It was a very low percentage. Yeah, you can spend a light stone to roll that. So you're basically gambling to try to roll that sun symbol, and that's another way to get a coin.
00:12:58
Speaker
And then the last thing you do, and that's optional, the last thing you do is mine two Lightstones from the Galaxy mat and then draw a card. The cards you can play any time. So you can play them on any person's turn. It gets really chaotic. It basically just pauses whoever's turn it is and then you can resolve the cards. Then you just pick up with whoever's turn. It got paused on. But we played it and I was immediately like, this is going to be a really hot ticket game.
00:13:24
Speaker
And we didn't. We made the mistake of not buying it like right then, because Saturday evening, I was like, we got to go buy it like before the expo hall closes, sold out like sold out on Saturday. Wow. And they still had one more day to go. So they were giving away like coupon codes so you could order it. So we just ordered it right then.
00:13:44
Speaker
Well, they were also having a deal on it too. So, I mean, that thing was going to go quick anyways. Yeah. Yeah. It's normally $60, but they were, the convention deal was 40 bucks. Yeah. And with the coupon code that you could get at the convention afterwards when it sold out, it was like 48 online. That's not bad.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's super quick to play, plays up to six players. I would say it maybe takes 30 minutes to play. Even younger gamers can play it and it's self-published. The guy self-published it. Yeah. And they were just about to ask who that's from. I didn't see the logo. Yeah. The logo says June Dune, like June the month and Dune, like the novel. The novel. The movie. The movie. That's it.
00:14:33
Speaker
They made a novel based on that movie? They did. Oh goodness. So surprisingly I was going to say the exact same thing as Heather with Black Hole Rainbows. It was a lot of fun and if you know in a busy day of where everything was going out it was nice to just kind of like tune
00:14:56
Speaker
everything out and play this. And it was nice because it wasn't anything that made my brain sit there and I didn't think so hard on the strategy, things like that. Because it is very much luck and strategy. And I think the guy told me that it was 60% luck
00:15:16
Speaker
40% strategy or the other way around. I don't remember. And it's good for all ages. Like that was the thing that surprised me as I was like, my son could definitely play this game. And we, we literally right before this podcast, I was like, I gotta go. I got a podcast to record. Like, but we taught it to my husband's grandma who's like 84 came over with her sister who's 80 and we sat them down and they learned to play it and they picked it up very quickly.
00:15:43
Speaker
Awesome. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And so if we're talking the exhibit, exhibitor hall, that one was probably the favorite, my favorite new game that I was able to pick out and see out of that.
00:15:57
Speaker
were a lot of other interesting ones that I didn't get the chance to play but I did see and there were so many of them that I thought wow this is this is very entertaining this is very cool to look at and to see one of the games that I do recall was you are
00:16:14
Speaker
trying to solve a mystery and It was your on the chase for a serial killer. So that one was very entertaining to kind of see small Independent self-published. It was a very Interesting game a lot of the components and pieces were very beautiful. Could I tell you how it is? No, I didn't get the chance to play because it was just display So that was one that intrigued me quite you know the name of that was
00:16:38
Speaker
I have the card and so i would have to go through that to be specific and i apologize but i'm trying to think of other things outside of black hole rainbow because i should have thought heather was going to say that but she didn't okay i'll tell you and she produced a copy of it right there.
00:16:57
Speaker
I mean, I'll tell you one that surprised me that has been out for a while that I got to play that I didn't know if I was going to like it or not. And I purely signed up for it for my husband because he's a fan was Star Wars X-Wing. I had never played it. I didn't know anything about it and walked up to a table with like.
00:17:19
Speaker
six other guys and my husband to play the game. And I just didn't know. And everyone was like super welcoming. And honestly, it was very easy to learn. And I actually really liked it. I was that was one that like surprised me. I really like X-wing. I haven't pivoted from the first edition to the second edition yet. But everybody says that the second edition is just that much easier.
00:17:44
Speaker
I didn't really feel like the first one was really all that difficult to pick up but I'm sure there's things that they found a streamline. Have you guys seen the there's a webcomic which is like a guy and his son and they picked up like the first like little starter set for X-wing and the wife comes along and is like Star Wars X-wing this looks like a collectible game.
00:18:02
Speaker
And the husband's like, no, it's not a big deal. And then in the next panel, it's just like he's wearing a rebel helmet. And the room is covered. And he's just like, Hunter, mistakes were made. They're shoulder deep in minis and excellent minis. Because he has to buy all the different shifts and everything, right? Yeah. So I mean, first of all, I hate that characterization of men in the hobby. But I digress. That's a different topic. But that's my fear. And that's why I don't touch any of those games.
00:18:32
Speaker
There. That's why I don't I can't say I don't know any fans if like games like I do have Marvel champions, but there's no chance I'm touching one of those games. Yeah. Yeah. And.
00:18:43
Speaker
Yeah, I eventually want to get there to that point just because I can't.
Upcoming and Anticipated Games
00:18:48
Speaker
I'm going to sit back and people are going to tell me, oh, you're not a real Star Wars fan if you haven't played this board game yet. And I'm like, God. Gamekeepers can get out of my house. Yeah. Right. I know. I'm all set with that. I'm like, cool, you raise children. And you'll figure out real quick that you don't have the space and the money for that stuff. Oh, of course. Of course. So here are the other games kind of pivoting in the
00:19:10
Speaker
the conversation. One of the things that I did remember when it came to the Unpub room and some of the games that I saw, one of the games that is getting self-published within like the next month or so, and I don't know how much longer it is until they actually get the Kickstarter out, but the game is called Cretaceous, such as the Cretaceous period. So the idea is you are a hunter going back in time, established with scientists,
00:19:40
Speaker
You've made this base and you're walking out and you're going out and collecting dinosaurs. Now I like it because of the aesthetic in the fact that it has that eight bit type of art to it. And so that's kind of what that is. That's a little holographic card that they gave there with the, uh, with that, whenever you do play the game and it's, um, it's a lot of dice rolling. Yeah. You're losing life trying to collect as many dinosaurs as possible. First one to 30.
00:20:08
Speaker
five victory points is the winner. It was fairly quick too. It was played in about 30, 35 minutes. Is it just cards and dice? It has meeple and there are honeycomb shaped cards, which I thought was really interesting, honeycomb shaped cards. You have to actually leave the base and go discover place to place.
00:20:33
Speaker
And so as you're leaving, you go, you flip over the card, encounter a dinosaur, and you roll dice, and to see if you beat that particular dinosaur. You have to get a certain color of the dye on the pips in order to get it.
00:20:49
Speaker
So for example, if the card says you gotta have three green pips, or three dice with green or yellow, that's what you have to do. Same thing with if the card says you have to have five red. So it's a lot of dice and dice rolling, but as long as you have yellow is kind of the middle of it, and then whatever particular color the card says. So yellow counts as whatever you are supposed to get.
00:21:19
Speaker
So it is a very interesting thing where you collect the dinosaur, then you have to go back to the base and you might have to fight other dinosaurs on the way and encounter them and collect them. But you also try your best not to lose life.
00:21:32
Speaker
because if you lose all your lives, you go back to the medical center and you put the cards, you lose all the dinosaurs that you've collected. So it's a very simple, like I described it way too much in detail than what it actually is and supposed to be because that's my personality and who I am, but it is incredibly, and I mean incredibly,
00:21:56
Speaker
simple and easy. I thought it was really cool. So just kind of sticking out for that as well. It is pretty good. You can actually find them on Facebook and Instagram. Cretaceous Board Game is where you can find them at. So I recommended it. It was pretty cool. And they were very receptive to feedback. And I told them, I said, this is a really, really cool game.
00:22:21
Speaker
I was like, there's maybe one or two things that possibly need to be tweaked, but it wasn't anything major. Nothing major. It was just like, hey, this is an idea. Why not try this? So, yeah. Well, and there might be people listening, Drew, that don't know what the unpub room is. Oh, okay. All right.
00:22:39
Speaker
So, Heather, do you want to eloquently explain that? Since I went into so much detail, took up so much time. Well, I mean, it basically just stands for unpublished. So I know like there was one at PAX Unplugged, I believe, had an unpublished.
00:22:55
Speaker
Um, yeah, I know more conventions are trying to have the unpub room. Um, and I think it's just a, it's a great spot for designers and people who don't have their games published yet to reserve spots in the room where people can come play their games and demo them and give feedback. And yeah, it's a great place to try out games that aren't even out yet and maybe help someone curate their game, you know, even in the direction to get published. It's just a really cool place to make connections.
00:23:23
Speaker
On the other side, the MPUB room is really, really helpful if you are a board game designer. Because here's the problem. I say this because my daughter is designing games, and I'm designing a game. You're going to play that game with your family and your friends, and those are the only people who are going to see it the first 20 times you play test it.
00:23:41
Speaker
Right. It's incredibly valuable to get lots of people to come in. So when you go in, you're not like taking advantage of the fact that there's all these games that you can sit down and play for free. You're actually helping all of those people get unbiased opinions because like.
00:23:57
Speaker
My wife is going to, you know, rip my game to pieces, but also she loves me and she's not like she's, you know, I think I'm pretty sure. She'll stop when you start crying. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Mine would have kept going. But no, I mean, it's just like it's just a little bit more honest of an opinion sometimes if you don't know the person. You know what I mean? And it's not like a first hand or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's incredibly valuable on people's faces, too, when they play games.
00:24:24
Speaker
I've always, in the couple of times that I've done that, I've found it very useful to be able to observe people's responses as they're trying to digest the rules, right? Because you can see where your blind spots are and your rules where it makes total sense to you because you made it up, right? But if somebody's asking a lot of questions about how something works or they're just not getting it, those are good opportunities as a designer to go, oh, well, maybe that's too fiddly or too complicated
00:24:54
Speaker
Is there a way to manipulate that and make it easier to understand? Yeah. There's an incredible designer out there named Jay Cormier. Any of you recognize him? So he did Mind Management. He did Harrow County. He's got another game coming to Kickstarter soon, which I just got a preview copy of in today. I don't remember the name of it.
00:25:13
Speaker
Basically, the premise of the game is each round is a board game with broken mechanics that you have to fix to advance the story. It's really, really cool. But anyway, he made a journal called The Fail Faster Journal. And you can go to GameCrafter and you can buy it. And the whole point of the journal is that it's got room for 30 or 40 plays of a game. And you would buy a journal for a game that you're developing.
00:25:40
Speaker
And it has prompts in it, like, what are people's body language? Like, how did they react to this? Oh, that's cool. All sorts of stuff. It's explicitly designed for this kind of purpose. Yeah, that's really helpful. So anyway, all of that to say, the community around the Unpub movement in general is growing a lot. Like, there's proto spiel, which is an entire convention of basically Unpub stuff. But anyway, so in the Unpub room, so now we all know what the Unpub is. Yeah, yeah. I think there's probably people out there
00:26:09
Speaker
We're like, what are they talking about? Where was Drew? I was in the un-pub room. The un-pub room was actually a whole lot nicer than I expected. It was really good because I walked in there and I actually got to meet some people who are my mutuals on social media.
00:26:30
Speaker
and i thought that's super cool they said hey we would love for you to play our game i said absolutely so i got to got the chance to sit down give him some honest feedback but as well uh be able to catch up as friends and be able to talk and actually have uh interactions outside of tiktok and instagram and all the other places that we followed each other so it was very nice and i felt like
00:26:54
Speaker
I felt like this game could be really cool. And if you're not following them on social media, feel free to give them a follow. I might as well give them a shout out. Their account is called Trash Cult Game. That's their game. It's a card game about you're building a cult with your woodland critters and you are trying to collect a certain item of food as well as game followers.
00:27:23
Speaker
And so once you gain the certain item of food that your cult worships and you build your cult, you are the winner. I was like, that is such a cool idea. Because I was sitting there, I was like, I was playing as a mouse that was trying to collect donuts from the trash. And so it was it was it was fantastic. It was a really, really good game. And I'm very excited for what they're going to do. They showed me the art, they gave me some behind the scenes local stuff. And I'm very excited. And then
00:27:53
Speaker
now then they had to go and post a video today so i'm like i was not really a secret anymore so i was like it was like a free secret for like a week you know but i think that is the cool thing about origins is getting to see they i i felt like there were a lot of um publishers they are showing off games that weren't quite out yet that they were going to maybe have ready at gen con or you know coming up soon so there were lots of those types of things that i was going around looking at which is
00:28:22
Speaker
need to get the sneak peeks before things are available to buy. Yeah, it sounds like from some of the games that you two have already talked about, that there was a pretty good mix of presence between the larger, more established publishers and some of the smaller, many publishers. Yeah, it definitely felt like it was a good mix. There were lots of smaller publishers and then alongside the bigger ones. Yeah, it was a great experience. I mean, for my first Origins, I really enjoyed it.
00:28:51
Speaker
I had a blast. It was so much fun to be able to see all the people that I interact with on social media kind of all together in one place and then go out and play board games.
00:29:01
Speaker
But I got to go out and got to experience so many different things where we got to play games, even when we would go out and go to the parties and everything like that. It was always, you know, we could have fun, get together, sit, talk, laugh, have a good time, decompress from the show as well, get to play games, play test games, things like that. There was so much that we were able to do.
00:29:22
Speaker
In that, one of the cool things, if Heather, you remember, I'm not gonna spill the beans too much on anything, but there is a social media friend that is mutual to Heather and I, and they are creating a series of games, and it was super exciting to get to play that. We got to play that at the tavern, if you remember that, Heather.
00:29:48
Speaker
It was a fun party game. I feel bad. I'm not going to go into much detail just because it's still at work. Well, again, it's a cool place to gather and get to see games that aren't out yet. Exactly. I mean, that kind of wraps it all around. I feel like, and I know Andrew and Josh, they'll probably feel the same way about conventions. It's just a nice place to get to see people. We see our families all the time, but it's nice to just be among people that are like-minded, getting to see your mutuals from social media, coming together. It's just really nice.
Convention Experiences and Connections
00:30:18
Speaker
The first night of any convention is basically like a family reunion. Yeah. Absolutely. It's so great. Absolutely. I love have you ever I remember during the pandemic. Did you ever use any of those like proxy chat services where like it kind of looks like you're walking around in like a town in like an NES video game? Right.
00:30:39
Speaker
So I did a couple conventions like that and I would walk by people whose handles I would recognize because they were the same handles as their social media and and they were proxy chats and so you could like bump into someone randomly and like actually have a video chat with them and it had a little bit of that but man I tell you what nothing like actually seeing people like from across the room and you're like
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah. You do the slow run towards each other with your arms open, you know, like it's awesome. It's ugly. Cry as you're going. Oh, yeah. Trip and fall because I don't run. So that's my case. You had the rainbows are shooting out of the floor. Right. Right. Fireworks in the background. You know, how it goes. Definitely. Definitely. My friends like to make fun of me when we go to conventions because I I see people that are what I call board game famous. Right.
00:31:27
Speaker
Oh, I know who that is. I will say I felt like this was the first convention where people came up to me.
00:31:40
Speaker
Like, people knew who I was. You are board game famous, Heather. Come on. Yeah, absolutely. You are. It was exciting. And my husband was like, we can't walk anywhere without you, like, running into someone every, like, two steps. I remember the first time that happened to me, I was so confused. I was like, what? Who are you? I was like, oh. You see muscles on the internet. It's rare.
00:32:04
Speaker
And, Andrew, I got to play Castles of Mad King Ludwig with Lindsay from Bezier Games. So she was like, no, I'm just saying it because she was so excited. She was like, I just wanted to play this with you because it's like my favorite game. She was like, let's sit and let's just play a quick game, a fast play, a fast game of Castles. And we just do both know the rules so well. We just like busted it out in like 30 minutes.
00:32:29
Speaker
I'm all for it. That's fantastic. That's great. Beautiful, beautiful. So moments like that, like I just love having moments like that at conventions. I've had a couple of experiences where I was like at a convention and I was sitting eating somewhere and you hear a voice in the room and you're like,
00:32:45
Speaker
I know that voice. That's from a podcast, right? Spinning around, trying to figure out where that voice is coming from. Wait a minute. Hold on. Let me close my eyes. Okay. Say something. Yes, it's you. It's the person sitting three tables behind me. That's the other fun thing about conventions though, is not only are you like, you get to see your friends that you already know or people that you're mutuals, you're getting to meet for the first time in person.
00:33:05
Speaker
But like, anytime you sit down to eat, those tables are so big that like someone will be like, can I, can I come sit with you? And then you're like making new friends. Or like when you join the gaming tables, you know, you're just making some new friends for a fun gaming experience.
00:33:22
Speaker
That's one of my favorite things about conventions is that if you're open to it, if you're open to talking to people you don't know, you can meet all kinds of people in all different places where you're eating, when you're walking around, when you're waiting for an elevator. I love it. I actually ran into a guy at Origins.
00:33:41
Speaker
He came up and we were both looking at a booth together and the person at the booth was like, oh, do you know, like trying to introduce us? And he was like, actually, he's like, I think we shared a cab to the airport after a gamma. And I was like, we did share a cab. It's like him and his wife had the cab and I was going to have to wait longer and they were like, you can just join our cab. And I was like, thanks, because I had to like get to the airport. They were so sweet, but I didn't like catch their names or anything. So.
00:34:09
Speaker
it was cool to like run into him at origins so cool so cool it was it was weird it was weird for me whenever i went to packs unplugged now packs unplugged was my very first convention that i ever went to before i was going there to work for what's that was actually my very first convention just to go and enjoy and i myself thought
00:34:32
Speaker
thought, ah, you know, nobody's gonna know me, anything like that. But then someone told me, said, you stick out because I wear the plaid in all of my videos. And so that was one of the things that did make me laugh is somebody actually going, oh, it's because nobody else here is wearing plaid except you. I got that again in Origins. I got that thing, right? Everybody's got a stick, man. Yeah, he has a distinct look.
00:35:01
Speaker
What's the wrong with that? So I've been told. Way to say that I'm ugly, y'all. Right? Why do you think I joined this podcast? Heather, I want to know, what did you bring home from Origins? Oh my gosh. That's a good question. Not black hole rainbows, we know that. I know, right? That's true, sadly, but then it arrived two days later. Yeah, right. It was waiting for me.
00:35:30
Speaker
No, I got Mother Frankenstein from Arcane Wonders, which is very like puzzle-y narrative. Like you uncovered all these letters from Mary Shelley to her son and it's going to have like a cool story that kind of like
00:35:46
Speaker
spins around her creating Frankenstein. Um, and I'm very excited because I'm all about the puzzles. Um, and got to see Robert and arcane wonders is super, super sweet, super kind. And I love all their games, honestly. Um, so that was the big ticket thing I wanted to get. I got that one. Um, I also came home with Kabuto Sumo. Great game.
00:36:09
Speaker
which is such a fun one, and I think it's just gonna be great for our kids. Like, that's just a really fun dexterity one. Have you played that with kids before? I have played it with my son so far. Okay, because it does, it can run a little long with kids. Yeah, yeah, he did pretty good with it, but the six-year-old, it'll be interesting. Yeah, we reviewed the total mayhem expansion, I think it is, which has a lot of, like,
00:36:35
Speaker
like full-on like WWE like tables and all this crazy stuff. Full-in chairs. Yes, it does. It has chairs. But it also offers like alternate wind conditions. So it really helps with that. If the game is starting to feel a little long in the tooth, that expansion is a good way to go.
00:36:52
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that that one was we demoed that pretty early on at origins And I was just like this is just gonna be a fun one for my son to play like he'll just enjoy this one And it's just a fun. I love any games that are like dexterity like tactile anything You know that you're really like pushing pieces around or and that was just a great one What else did we come home with? space explorers
00:37:20
Speaker
I just want to say that I have yet to find an all-play game that's just been bad. I know. Some of their stuff's not amazing, but none of it's bad. I'm always impressed by the look of all of their games.
00:37:37
Speaker
I love the fact that every single one of their game comes in the same size box. Can we get every publisher on board with this? Right, I know. True, true. I love it. I think that's a fine idea. And they all line up. They're the same freaking size. It looks so nice. Please.
00:37:54
Speaker
Another one that we came home with was and it was the first game we demoed was jungle ball by or two games and Essentially, you're just it's like dodgeball and you have these jungle characters and the jungle characters are on card So you pick three characters that you're gonna be playing and three characters that the other person is gonna be playing so it's a two-player game you're sitting across from each other and
00:38:18
Speaker
you have this little ring in the center kind of like a gym it's got the like circle and the lines where you're supposed to stay in and each turn you just move a character forward pick one of your characters to move forward and then they have these little red discs like the dodge balls and you have to put it above the card that you're choosing to throw the ball from and you just toss it
00:38:40
Speaker
like across the table to the other person's card. So you're just trying to get it to land on one of the opponent's cards. And nice. Some of them get knocked out with one. Like they've all got numbers on them. And that's how much, you know, hit points they can take. And just super simple, super easy. We're like, this is a great one for our kids to like pull out and play easily. So we immediately grab that one. Super cool. That's such an equalizing force to to play dexterity games like that with your kids, because
00:39:10
Speaker
you're not necessarily the best person at being able to flip something or knock something across the table. I don't have to worry about any dodge balls hitting my glasses that I know of. I mean, I don't know. Drew, what about you?
Games Acquired at Origins
00:39:30
Speaker
All right, so Black Hole Rainbows. I was one of the last five people. Lucky few. Lucky few to get it. No, did you hear about that though with Earth? They sold out Inside Up Games and Earth. Oh, I'm not surprised. They sold out the first day, and then they had to overnight ship quickly some more, and they had to do it
00:39:55
Speaker
like you can only buy this amount this day this amount this day it was like I think it was they sold out Thursday they ordered a ton more but then on Friday they were like we only have 50 copies that were selling Saturday was we have only they were like on Saturday that we only have
00:40:18
Speaker
40 Sunday is 30 or something of that sort so it was something like that and it was it was really interesting and it was just funny because actually I bought a game from inside of games and
00:40:31
Speaker
And it was just it was kind of funny. One of my followers was actually there and They told me they said hey drew. I've been really big part of your stuff for a while and I just wanted to say that I think it's really cool. Come on. Let me show you earth. Let's look at the components of earth I was like that suit so cool so cool and I was like I'm not gonna buy it today cuz y'all are already sold out then and then he goes
00:41:01
Speaker
He goes, well, let me show you this other one. So anyways, he, uh, anyways, he showed me this other game called Goros Maximus. Ah, I played that. That's awesome. And I've heard a lot about that game. The artwork of it is just so funny and weird and it's right up my alley where it's both mixed with cute and
00:41:24
Speaker
Everything, I didn't even get to play it. He just gave me the rundown of it. But it's still wrapped up right now. And you were sold. I was like, oh, I get it. You buttered me up. You buttered me up. And you wanted me to be over here to buy Earth. But no, I'm going to buy Gorius Maximus anyway. They have an aquatic-themed version of the same game called Sea Change, which we have reviewed on our website.
00:41:54
Speaker
Okay. All right. All right. I will check that out. It's basically the same game. So yeah, if I, if it's the exact same game that I definitely want to check out and see what you say, cause I value your opinion, Andrew. Well, I appreciate that very much.
00:42:12
Speaker
Oh goodness. I came away with a very, uh, light load of games just because I had a lot sitting on my doorstep when I got back. So I said, I need to come home with as light as possible. So black hole, rainbows, uh, Gorris Maximus. And then this other one, this publisher, blue Rondo games has been a supporter of mine and we've interacted and supported each other for an incredibly long time when it came to content. But.
00:42:40
Speaker
I had this opportunity to be able to buy their game actually in person and that's what I wanted to do. The game is called crabs in a bucket. I love it. And just basically put, it plays up to four players or up to six players, my bad. But what it is, is there are four crab kingdoms that are at war.
00:43:02
Speaker
And you're just in time to help out whichever one you side with. So it's a really cute card game where it's silly, but it's also got some really cute art. I didn't really get a chance to learn fully how to play, but it's just because I've known him for so long. I said, I want to help you out in whatever way that I can. And I'm very excited to actually play it. I really am.
00:43:31
Speaker
Uh, it's a good, it's, I've had people tell me that it's really fun. It's really quick. It only goes five to 15 minutes. So I've had a few friends recommend that game to me. So I said, I definitely need to give that a try.
00:43:44
Speaker
So I just found out that crabs in a bucket is, I mean, this goes to show how old I am. It's apparently a term. And I went to search for the game and I found an urban dictionary hit instead. Looks like rebrandings in the future. It's not bad. Crabs in a bucket is used to deter, is used to describe a person or subculture that does everything in its power to destroy the ambitions of those among them who wish to improve themselves.
00:44:11
Speaker
It comes from the story of catching crabs in a bucket. When you catch a crab and place him in a bucket, the first thing he'll do is try to escape. Yeah. I'm going to have to read up in the rule book and see if that's actually what it's based off of. Oh, yeah, that would be interesting. Yeah, so next time when you get on here and talk, I'll let you know. Yeah, let us know if that's the mechanic. You have homework. You have homework now, man. I'm sorry. That's what happens when you join a board gaming podcast. You have homework.
00:44:37
Speaker
off to play the games again. I got to go have fun for a living. Oh, horrible. So, Josh, do you want to talk about something that we did? I don't know what that thing is, but it's not origins. That's all I know. I don't think anyone wants to hear about how I worked all week and watched my kids who were on summer break.
00:45:06
Speaker
Have y'all been playing anything? I've been playing my game that I've been prototyping. Hey, there you go. I don't know how much I want to talk about, because it's still pretty far away from anything. But I've played it now at two players, three players, and four players. And it's definitely going through some game revisions. But I feel good enough about it that I ordered $50 worth of parts from the game crafter today.
00:45:32
Speaker
So like I didn't order it as like a put together box like thing for my game, but like I ordered all the pieces. And so I'm getting to the point now where I'll actually show it to people I'm not related to, which is pretty exciting.
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah, that is exciting. I'll have it with me at PAX Unplugged if you guys want to play it. Oh, yes. Let's do it. Yeah. It's a date. All right. All right. And on our show, we had Clarence Simpson. Does anybody know who Clarence Simpson is? He's not a huge name in board games, but he did Merchants of Magic, which was a rolling right game that's based in the set of Watch universe from Rock Manor. He did The Wolves from Pandasaurus.
00:46:11
Speaker
Yup, yup, I do know who you're talking about. We had him on our show, and I had sent him a picture of me playtesting with my 12-year-old, our game, or whatever, our game, my game, whatever. And you can read some of the cards in the picture. And so we started talking about it a little bit. He's like, I've never seen that theme before. And I feel like when a game designer who's got multiple published games and even more games signed says, oh, that's an interesting theme I've never seen before, I'm starting to feel OK.
00:46:39
Speaker
Yeah, so that's great. So unless it's like, I've never seen that before. No, no, I think it's pretty sweet. So nice. That's a pun. And you'll find out more later. I'm still laughing at Josh's quick read right there. I'm sorry. It's all good. It's all good. Josh, have you been playing anything? So I got a chance to finally get to the table. The deluxe Kickstarter edition of Castle Panic.
00:47:09
Speaker
I broke my front doorstep a couple of weeks ago and I broke my front doorstep. This is it right here. It's a monstrosity. Yeah. So so does that also include all the expansions like the big box does? Yeah. So it's it's basically it's it's all of the expansions up to current plus a new one that was actually the
00:47:30
Speaker
So the Kickstarter, you could just get the expansion if you didn't want the I mean, if you had all the other stuff, right? That's the quest expansion, right? Yes. Yeah. Crowns and quests, I think is what it was called. Sounds right. And so, of course, because of the addiction problem that I had with board games, I had to go get all the deluxified minis version. Right. And I will say that's the first Kickstarter that.
00:47:54
Speaker
I looked at the image of the box that it was coming in, which was surrounded by white space and had nothing in the frame for context. And it didn't occur to me exactly how big that box was gonna be until I opened my door to receive it on my front doorstep. And I was like, who ordered this coffin, right? I was like, this can't be a, oh my God, that's a board game.
00:48:18
Speaker
See, the listeners cannot imagine what it looks like in that, except for what you just said. But whenever you pulled it up, I was like, Oh, God, a Josh. So yeah, it is the entire frame. Josh is gone. Yeah, you could put six cats in there and still get the box closed. So I mean, it's it's humongous. And I will say they did break a rule that I don't think any game publishing company should ever break. It doesn't fit in a Cal X.
00:48:47
Speaker
So I don't know what I'm going to do with it. That's why I'm sitting here on my office floor. Look, let me move my camera. Look up there. See those games up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, that's that row has already been taken with some other people that have broken that. You know, I see. So so with what size calyx do you have? Serious question. Oh, boy. I've actually got a mishmash of
00:49:10
Speaker
I've got several. What's your biggest one? I've got a four by four. OK. Two by four on top of it. And I've got like three of those. OK. Well, the two by four on top of that stuff, because like the verticals are not actually like you can knock a couple out and it's not the end of the world. Right. So if you knock one out, you could fit it. I have seen people do that where they've taken one of the sections out and articles, a two. Yep. A two unit thing. And that might work, but.
00:49:37
Speaker
Um, but anyway, it's a fun game. I played Castle Panic before. I hadn't played it with any of the expansions. I've never actually played that. Oh, it's so good. You should get how old is your oldest? 10. Yeah, you should absolutely get cast panic 100%. Yeah, they were there at Origins. I saw their their booth. Also, Anne Marie is the nicest like she's one of the nicest people ever. She's the sweetest. It's super easy to learn. And since you're all playing, you know, cooperatively,
00:50:05
Speaker
You know, it's easy to teach kids and and and my kids really got into, you know, I was letting them manage all of the the minis for the the monsters that were attacking us. And and they were really digging that and drawn out of the bag as new monsters came to the table and stuff. Now, I will say that's one of those games. I don't know that I have to after having played it with minis and having played the original that just has markers. I don't know that it needs minis, but, you know, I'll just send you my address. It's fine.
00:50:36
Speaker
So I can't afford I can't afford to ship this to you, man. All right. I'll pay for shipping. So so I have I have the basically non-deluxified version of what you have. They were kind enough to send the family gamers the big box, which has the so it's got all new art. All the art has been redone, which is phenomenal. Plus, it's so good. Yeah, there's a lot of like quality of life improvements, like very small things. We're actually planning like a four or five article like
00:51:05
Speaker
spread of this whole game and all the stuff that's in the box and everything. So that'll come out later this summer. Because the only thing that's actually new is that Quest expansion, but everything has been touched.
00:51:20
Speaker
Like I literally have like the reason why it's taking so long is because I'm literally going through the old rule book and the new rule book because I have almost all of the old stuff. I'm missing one of the old expansions and I'm like, OK, what have they changed? Right. Just so I can really explain to people why it's worth upgrading. Right. Yeah. Even if you're not going to get the deluxe with all the crazy stuff. So if nothing else, I felt like, you know, it's been a while since I played the original.
00:51:45
Speaker
And so I remember the rules more or less, but I definitely remember having a harder time digesting the rules initially with the first rule book than with this one. I feel like they put it together better. I mean, it was a very easy read through and I picked it up right away.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to literally go through the rule book, like two of them on the table at the same time. Part of it, I think, is just the maturation of the industry. Like the first Castle Panic came out, I mean, maybe 10 years ago, like it's been out for a long time. Yeah. So like it's been out for long enough that I have the broken token insert for the game.
00:52:20
Speaker
Nice. You know, we eat. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know. Whatever. But it also might just be that we've played so many board games at this point that like all the jargon, we just get it like that. Right. So I don't know. Anyway, that'll be coming if you go to the family gamers dot com later this summer. Nice. Nice.
00:52:39
Speaker
Now, have you played any of the other variants of that? I played Dead Panic and then there's a Star Trek version. Yeah, there is. No, I haven't played any of those. I have played with some of the expansions. I really like the engines of war expansion. I really like what they do with that because they introduce vehicles that goblins are inside of. So you have to destroy the vehicle and then destroy the goblins. It's like this whole extra thing. The Wizards Tower is probably the most like involved from a mechanic standpoint. I haven't played the
00:53:08
Speaker
crowns and quests one yet. So I really like the expansion. I think they give a lot of interesting and different flavors like the Agamemnon one or whatever it is like the Dark Titan. The Dark Titan. That's pretty much just like one extra guy and a couple of like that's a pretty small expansion.
00:53:25
Speaker
But no, I've never felt the need to go, like, I'm not a zombie guy. I don't care about that stuff. And then I think with Star Trek, I was like, I have the original. Why do I need a Star Trek version? Oh, you know what? Speaking of zombies, Grant Lyon had a stand up. He did stand up at Orton's. He's so funny. I love him. Hilarious. Fantastic. And he made this whole joke about how there's going to always be different versions of Zombicide coming out.
00:53:54
Speaker
and then no joke, they released that Monty Python one. Like a day or two after Origins. I was like, Grant was correct. He was like, next, you're going to see the iterations of so many years is going to be like, Zombicide, Stepdad's edition.
00:54:15
Speaker
Yeah, they dropped the announcement. What was that last week? Yeah, it was like right after. My goodness, that feels like such a like April Fool's kind of joke. I had to read through it several times like it's June, right? It's not April. Yes, it made me laugh so hard because he made that joke in Origins and I was like.
00:54:33
Speaker
Oh, they just released his Monty Python one. It looks like it's time to get into Zombicide. I thought more than my share of Zombicide. I have never played it. I have no idea. I just got an idea of it. I don't. I don't know if it would be for me, though.
00:54:53
Speaker
It's just a fun laid back dice check. It would be for you. It's a dungeon crawl, basically, but you're just walking around trying to, you know, just the the the AI of the game just keeps putting more on the board and more on the board and more on the board and you're just trying to mitigate that.
00:55:10
Speaker
And it can be fun, but they definitely have a lot of a lot of. I do have a Facebook friend who ordered the Marvel Zombicide one with the Galactus trophy like that. It's it's so big. He put a picture of like, oh, you have you ordered it to.
00:55:28
Speaker
But he probably he's going to be right back there. Yeah, he got he got the galactic and he put it on the table next to his son and they're like almost the same size. It is enormous. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it's it's it's you know, for the for the figures in the game, it's sized accordingly. So if you read Marvel Comics, you kind of understand what that means. Right. Right. And
00:55:53
Speaker
Yeah, when I when I saw that, I was like, well, I'm not not going to get that. See, I think like I think like 100 bucks is pretty much my board game threshold. Like I like the perfect example, the the ticket ride legacy game. It's like it retails at like 130 and I'm like, ah, gamers had it on sale for $99.99. I was like, oh, great.
00:56:23
Speaker
Like somehow that made a big difference. I didn't end up ordering it, but like that, that's just, that's for me, that's the threshold. Right. Wow. I must have low standards then. I go way cheaper than that. I mean, I don't look, I don't spend a hundred bucks on a board game regularly. Let me be clear with you. Right. But like, that's like big money. Not even. Yeah. I'm not the one who bought
00:56:50
Speaker
Marvel zombies with Galactus. How much did that run? Yeah, let's not talk about. Yeah, I think the shipping on that was one hundred dollars. The shipping was more than one hundred dollars. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's a beast. And honestly, I mean, that is a problem, right? I mean, I see that on I see that mounting on Kickstarter, that fatigue of, you know, when you start cranking out your project after project that are one hundred and fifty two hundred dollars by the time you get somebody gets at home.
00:57:18
Speaker
You know, I mean, you can see people are getting worn out by that. Yeah. I mean, people can do what they want. It's just not for me. Plus, I have so many review games I have to play like I never get right. I want to play anyway. Like the shelf of shame keeps growing. Oh, my gosh. That shelf right there that see that whole column right there. Yeah. All of those games are my shelf of opportunity. All of them. Yeah.
00:57:41
Speaker
Such a positive spin. Shelf of opportunity. Shelf of opportunity. I'm shameful that I haven't played mine. So there we go. That's why I call it Shelf of Shame. See, I had to start taking all the cellophane off of those games and mixing them in with the other ones because my wife figured out which ones I hadn't played. Oh, no. Oh, no. You know, Josh, you're on to something there. I might have to stay using that strategy.
00:58:10
Speaker
Now only I know which ones I haven't played. Right, right. But then you might forget and then you'll be like, oh, yeah, I played it and then you won't play the game. Break it out. Oh, God, I don't. Oh, I don't. I never played this. Or you have this problem. Not that long ago, I saw a game that was on sale. I think it was a mini market. It was like the Daily Deal.
00:58:31
Speaker
I've looked into it and tried to figure out, oh, is that a good price? Is that something I want? I've probably spent like an hour trying to make this decision of whether or not to order it. And then I walked past my game shelves. I had to be doing something else. I'm like, I already own it. What am I doing? It was on you. That's no good. Sadly, that only gets worse as you get older. Right. I have bought the same game on the Xbox 360 like five times because I was like,
00:58:57
Speaker
Oh, I need Dead Space 2. I'm like, oh, I already had this four copies of this. That's Nintendo's entire business model. That's true. They keep putting things together in different collections and then putting them out again.
00:59:28
Speaker
All right, so another question for the table here. And this kind of dovetails into what we were just talking about. Is deluxification of board gaming a thing that you are interested
Debating Deluxified Board Games
00:59:40
Speaker
in? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
00:59:42
Speaker
I think it has to be something that I really, really want in order for me to really buy into it. And I think the only time I've ever spent, like we were talking about the amount of money we've spent on a game before, the most expensive thing I have is that deluxe edition of Castles of Mad King Ludwig. And it's just because I really like the game and I wanted the deluxe edition. And that's that's the only way I would
01:00:11
Speaker
spend that kind of money, I think. For me, I just believe eventually it's going to go on sale and it's eventually going to be cheaper anyway. You just wait long enough. That's true because I bought the 60th anniversary of Risk and it's a $225 game, I think is what it is. Everything's made of wood, including the board. I got it for $18 at like
01:00:36
Speaker
a marshals or something, whatever stores those are. So I thought, you know, that's great to have. I just, I can't justify buying deluxe virgin games. I'm sorry. I have no, I already spend a lot of money on
01:00:52
Speaker
Regular versions of games. Why do I want to spend more money on the deluxe versions for shiny toys and things like that? And don't get me wrong. I'm a sucker for metal coins. Like I, if it's got metal coins, I will sit there and debate on it. But at the end of the day, more than likely, I will say probably not.
01:01:09
Speaker
Anybody want to guess what I'm going to say? I can guess. Go ahead. Guess. What do you think I'm going to say? I'm going to guess that you probably could could leave could leave that on the table. You know, you don't need deluxification in the game. Yes and no. So I am 100 percent for deluxification of games as an option as an option. I absolutely think that there is a place for it in the industry. I 100 percent think that people have the right to spend their money where they want to spend their money.
01:01:37
Speaker
Just because something's not for me doesn't mean it's not for someone else. I see all that Marvel United you have behind you. I have one box of Marvel United, and it's fine. And that's all I have, and that's it. Similarly, I have so many deluxified components in Quacks of Kwedlenburg and in Role Player.
01:02:00
Speaker
Like I have custom printed inserts and I have metal coins. I love metal coins. I love metal coins. Metal coins are fantastic. I love them so much. I have all the promo cards. I have the extra boards because that's a game that I love. And a lot of other people are like, hey man, role player is fine. Like I'll play it if you have it. And that's the end of their relationship with it. And that's cool. So I am 100% behind them existing
01:02:26
Speaker
But if that is the only way that a game is available, it's probably not going to be for me. I really, really like the trend that actually I think was restoration started when Fireball Island came out.
01:02:40
Speaker
Actually, Downforce was a retail release, but it was a more deluxe-ified retail release. But then they repackaged Fireball Island, took a little bit of the stuff out, and put it on shelves at Target. And then they did the same thing with Downforce. They took a couple pieces out. They simplified some stuff. They made it cardboard instead of plastic. They put it on the shelf at Target.
01:02:59
Speaker
I think if you are really, honestly, truly going to grow this industry, it's not getting whales to spend more and more and more and more money. It's getting a game to be more affordable and getting it on the shelves in front of faces at a store that someone's going to go to. The buyers at Barnes and Noble are gamers.
01:03:18
Speaker
But those games are 60, 70, $80. When you can put a game on a shelf and a target for 25, 30 bucks, someone's going to buy that game on a lark. Here's another perfect example of a game that isn't even expensive to start with. Green Team Wins. I talk about this game all the time. If you haven't played Green Team Wins, go to Target tomorrow and buy Green Team Wins. It's $25. It wasn't $25 on Kickstarter.
01:03:42
Speaker
But also the Kickstarter version of the game supported 12 people out of the box, not six people out of the box. But Chad and 25th Century, they figured out a way to take a little bit out and support six people out of the box. The deck of cards is a little bit smaller. They put it on the shelf for 25 bucks at Target.
01:04:03
Speaker
And now I can say to anybody in the entire country, hey, trust me, if you pick this game up and you don't like it, I will buy it for you. I will pay you the $25 because I know you're gonna love this game. Because I've taken this game to people who don't play games and I've said, if you will give me 10 minutes, you will wanna buy this game.
01:04:21
Speaker
And it's worked because the game is just fantastic. People say, board game, oh, I don't want rules, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you play Green Team Wind and you're like, oh, this is awesome. I'm just making fun of my friends the whole time. It's fantastic. But that model, that model that gets the game available for cheaper while people can elect to upcharge if they want to, has been working in McDonald's and Wendy's and Burger King for decades.
01:04:45
Speaker
And so it works in board games, too. If you really want to grow the industry, you do it through penetration, not by driving all of the costs to the whales who are going to spend the money. Right. Yeah.
01:04:54
Speaker
No, I agree. I think having the option to upgrade to the deluxe if you want to is a great option because then there are those people, like you said, that that might be their favorite game and they're like, I want to pay for the deluxe. I want the better components. I want the metal coins. I want, you know, the trays and all the things, you know, and that's great. That's great for them because then they get to experience their favorite game or their game that they love the most at the best it could be.
01:05:22
Speaker
And I even think that, like, one of the things I love about Geek Bits is that they are an incredible gift-giving tool, essentially, right? So I have Quacks. I have the Board Game Geek Geek Bits, or Quacks. If you don't have them,
01:05:38
Speaker
think about it, right? But I couldn't buy them for myself because they were the cost of the game to buy the bits. I was like, I already spent 60 bucks on this game. I'm not going to spend 60 bucks on these bits. But you know what? People who want to buy you a present and don't really know what you want, but they know you love Quacks.
01:05:53
Speaker
those Geek Bits are an easy buy, an easy buy, right? And the perfect gift is the gift that you want that you wouldn't buy yourself. That is the perfect gift, right? So the fact that these things are available on option or even like Etsy stores or a lot of these places that have these, we talked about. Yeah, the levity games. Levity games last time. That has the stickers, yeah. Like all of that stuff, I mean, there's a huge market.
01:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's a nice way to upgrade your components in like a much more affordable way. Yeah. Yeah. But all those things are organizing, too. Mm hmm. Yep. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Tower Rex is the one I saw. Yeah, that's exactly who I was thinking of. On TikTok, I've seen all their and I'm like, you know, this is I might think about doing that for Betrayal. Yeah. Yeah. Folded space is another one. They they're interterral foam core, so they're a little bit less expensive.
01:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, there's a ton of those. But man, are they. Yeah, they are. They're super nice for what you get, right? They're super. Yeah, I I had my first experience with one of those not that long ago. I bought the one for Lords of Waterdeep, which anyone who owns Lords of Waterdeep knows, you know, turn it over on its side because everything falls out of the insert and it's just a horrible mess. And so I, you know,
01:07:07
Speaker
happened to I happened to be at a convention and saw it there and I picked it up. And I tell you what, it was those were not hard to put together. And I mean, I got it done in an evening and everything fits in the box perfectly. You can turn it. I mean, you can shake it like this and nothing falls out of where it's supposed to be. It's can you put scoundrels in the sandbox? Yes. Yeah.
01:07:26
Speaker
Because I have the broken token insert for Lord's Waterdeep, which was a gift that a friend of mine bought for me because he knew that I loved the game. And same deal. You get both of them in there and it's really good.
01:07:42
Speaker
Well, just to go off of that, I absolutely agree with you, Andrew. Just because I'm a cheapskate doesn't mean that it should not be there. There are people that are out there that would like that. And as well, if someone was to come up to me and say, hey, I'm going to get you a copy of whatever the game may be, and it's going to be the deluxe version, am I really going to say no? No, right. Honestly, that's how it was at UK Games Expo.
01:08:07
Speaker
Uh, someone, you know, someone offered me the deluxe, uh, version of oak by game brewer games. Oh, that game looks so great. And it is the, it is beautiful. So beautiful. And I, what was I going to say? Like, no, you know, I sure, I felt a little bad because I was getting it for free, but I was like,
01:08:28
Speaker
No, it'll be okay. Yeah, I'll take it, you know? I'll figure out how to ship this home, right? Yeah, well, I found a way, trust me. Yeah, I bet you did. It got a little dinged up, but it wasn't that bad. I can live with that. So as long as none of the components are awful.
01:08:44
Speaker
I have a mental picture of you going through like airport customs and they're like, what are all these strange metal coins in your pocket? Don't ask questions. I want I want I can say this because I've now given it to him. I stayed at a friend's house.
01:09:02
Speaker
This person's actually come up on the show already, so I'm not gonna name names. I stayed at his house and I asked him, okay, show off. I asked him why he didn't store his knives nicely. He had expensive knives. And he's like,
01:09:19
Speaker
Well, I want I wanted to pay for the quality, but I'm not going to pay for a knife block. It's a chunk of wood. Why would I waste money on that? Right. This guy's like a man after my own heart. So I was I was flying to to his to where he lives because he was getting married. And I'm like, I know what to get him. So I bought him a knife block for his wedding gift.
01:09:43
Speaker
But I didn't check luggage, because I don't check luggage anymore unless I absolutely have to. By the way, that was a defense mechanism. I went to Essen without checking luggage, because I knew if I checked luggage, I wasn't going to bring my clothes home. I was going to be full of board games. But anyway, that's a different story. But I tell you what, putting that thing on the belt and having it go through the x-ray, and they're like, what the heck is this? Because it was a big chunk of wood. Yeah.
01:10:06
Speaker
So they sure enough, they pulled it off, they opened it up and she's like looking through all the slits to make sure it wasn't like hiding blades in it or anything like it's just a knife block like really. It was even in a gift bag like that was the funny part, but whatever. Well, I think I mean, obviously I can tell based on everybody's responses that I'm the one with the acquisition disorder because I'm probably of everybody here the most prone to buying
01:10:33
Speaker
You know, either a deluxe version of a game or the deluxe bits for something simply for the table presence. I am a sucker when I walk by a game and it's, you know, it's all laid out. Other people are playing it. It's all, you know, shiny and cool. But I totally agree that I think that the
01:10:53
Speaker
as we were talking about a little bit earlier, I think there's a little bit of fatigue in the market, particularly on the crowdfunding side of things, because there's so many deluxified versions of games out there that people are starting to... The people like me who tend to go for those are like,
01:11:11
Speaker
I love getting those, but I can't buy them every month. There's only so much depth to the well before I have to back off on that. It really does seem like it almost creates more of an interest in
01:11:27
Speaker
Oh man, that game's only $25. That's fantastic, right? Because it's so much less of a buying decision to pick up something that's $30 or less. Instead of, oh, it's $180. Am I going to, do I really want to, am I really going to pick this up?
01:11:45
Speaker
But it just seems like it seems like there's a lot of fatigue out there I feel like you know when it comes to that and it's it's I mean obviously you don't have to have those things we all know that right, but it's you know it's That's that fear of missing out right particularly I think with crowdfunding because there's kind of that that reality of if I passed on it now you're gonna be able to get a copy of this now to Drew's point
Crowdfunding and Game Acquisition Challenges
01:12:08
Speaker
I probably can pick that up from one of those suckers. I mean, one of those people like me that bought it, right? You know, there's going to be copies of it out there in the world. Yeah, down the line. And you can usually pick those up for cheaper than what they, you know, back the project for. But I mean, the reality is that sometimes that's not true. Sometimes they just, you know, they it's a good enough game. It doesn't. A lot of other copies don't change hands and it's really hard to find.
01:12:32
Speaker
Well, anything's going to be available. Like you can always find a copy of something. And, you know, I don't I really don't crowdfund that much. Usually it's stuff from established publishers that I know and I'm friendly with them and I want to support them and things like that. I'm usually more likely to crowdfund something to support the person than to get the game. I mean, I'll get the game too. And that's great.
01:12:52
Speaker
But there have been so many times when something will go into crowdfunding, and the buzz is so, so big. And then the game comes, and it's just kind of a dud of a game. And the way I look at it is if you crowdfund a game a month, or let's say a game every other month. That's six games. If two of those are duds,
01:13:13
Speaker
that you're never gonna play again, you've spent X amount of dollars, right? Like if you took those two games off and you just paid a mild premium to get things after the fact that you know that you want based on reviews and all this other stuff, I think you probably end up net positive anyway, that's my take. But I don't know, I'm just super pragmatic because I'm cheap.
01:13:38
Speaker
level headed to a fault really. Well and I think kind of like bringing it back to conventions I think that's another reason why I love them because I get to play these games that I'm like do I want it and then I get to see if I like it like I'll get to demo it or see it up close or even get a full playthrough of it
01:13:59
Speaker
in and then realize, oh, I do like that game. OK, I want that one. Like, I know I want to buy it. You know, it gives me a good opportunity to really check them out and make sure I want to buy them. Further, you you actually make the publisher so much more money when you buy directly from them.
01:14:14
Speaker
Right, because they're not selling into distribution. So they're not selling on half of MSRP. So even if they sell a game at 25% off, they're still making more than if they put that game in distribution. So it's still a great way to support publishers while sitting at their table because they're getting, you know, functionally press. Right. I mean, even they just take a picture of their booth and there's people sitting there playing their game. Nobody wants a picture of an empty booth. Right. So you're helping them by playing their games. Then you're helping them
01:14:41
Speaker
by buying their games, and you're helping yourself, because you know that that's a game that you actually want to buy. Right. Unless you're Drew, and you just randomly buy games. Right. For Marvels.
01:14:51
Speaker
Hey, you see him in the wild. There you go. Look, that's the closest thing to thrifting I got. So leave me be, okay? It's fine. You know what's funny? Every time I go to, like, I go to savers up here instead of Goodwill, whatever. But every time I go there and I drop stuff off, I always take a walk through to see how that copies of Cranium. I mean, to see if there's any good things.
01:15:13
Speaker
Once in a while, I did once find a copy of Pandemic Legacy season one where the person got like halfway through the setup of the first month and was like, nope, done. Right. And so like you could like you could literally see the the one flap that they half ripped off before they were like, I can't do it. They're like, not for me. So and it was like twelve dollars. Yeah, I did buy that. Beautiful.
01:15:38
Speaker
Oh, gosh, I love that. I actually was scrolling. My phone hears me so much, and Facebook hears me so much whenever I talk about buying board games cheap, because I talk about that a lot, apparently. But there was, somebody took a picture in one of the Facebook groups that I'm in, and they said it was at an Ollie's, and there was like 50 units of terraforming Mars at an Ollie's for $8, and I was like, good god.
01:16:07
Speaker
Good. Those posts on Facebook keep me energized when I go into those stores because there's always those, you know, you see them time after time, right? Like, oh, this is my haul from the Goodwill store. And there's 11 awesome games and they spent $9 for all of them. Yeah. Well, we got it for two bucks.
01:16:23
Speaker
Exactly. That's the one that kills me because like it's like two hundred fifty dollars a copy right now. But I remember when that game was seventy five percent off at Barnes and Noble and they just couldn't get rid of them. And I'm like, oh, if only I knew. Right. Oh, well.
Review Plans and Backlog
01:16:41
Speaker
All right. Well, very good. Well, that's probably about time, don't you think? Yeah.
01:16:47
Speaker
What are we playing this weekend? Anybody have any games they're playing this weekend? That's a good question. That is a great question. We are getting ready for our review for Illiterati from Gap Closer Games. This is a great game. Heather's nodding her head. Josh. I haven't played it yet, but we're going to play that too. So that is a game you should play with your 10-year-old. So with Illiterati, you can kind of think of it as like a cooperative banana grams.
01:17:13
Speaker
Everybody has books and you need to make words that fulfill the requirements that are in the book. So it might be like, oh, the word has to have two of this symbol in it, or it can only have three vowels or like whatever, it has to be six plus letters, whatever, it doesn't matter. But there's a timer, so it's real time. So kind of your primary goal is to just make words with all of your tiles, because if you have too many tiles left over that you didn't make words with, bad stuff happens.
01:17:41
Speaker
So you make words with all the tiles. Those words might not solve the binding requirements of your books, but you just need to get the words out there. And then you kind of figure out, OK, I got the words taken care of. How can I rejigger this so it fulfills some of the requirements of these books? And so you bind some books, and then the bad guys come. That's the illiterate. They're like the Illuminati. It's like a book joke.
01:18:05
Speaker
And so you're trying to bind all of your books and then finish the grand finale in this cooperative like banana grams kind of kind of way, you know, to finish the game. And there's different ways that you can kind of up the difficulty. So you start on an easy one.
01:18:22
Speaker
But it's great because it's Bananagrams, but you're looking over and you're like, hey, buddy, what if you put this thing over there? And oh, you can make a word with it. So you're really helping each other. And your kids are learning vocabulary. The art is super fun. I don't know who Gap Closer uses, but Rival Restaurants had great art. Illuminati has great art. So whoever they use is really good. And I think the game is a really great home run game for families.
01:18:51
Speaker
So we're going to play that. And I and I have the the deluxified version because it was nice. Do you have the deluxe version, Heather? Do you? I do not. I don't think so. So it's got like so instead of like a normal like you pull the top off the box.
01:19:09
Speaker
It's kind of like- Oh, you pull it out? You pull it out. Oh, it's so nice. I do have that. I do have that. Oh, it feels so good. I do have that. We haven't played it yet, but I am excited to play that way. Yeah, you should get that to the table on the easy mode with your tenderloaf, for sure. Yeah. My husband and I are definitely going to get into Mother of Frankenstein this weekend, volume one. Nice. And start reading that and doing that one.
01:19:35
Speaker
I'm very excited to solve the puzzles and we just haven't had this week's been so busy. We haven't had time to really do anything and other than black hole rainbows a couple of times. But yeah, I'm excited. That's just a nice one for us. That's like we talked about before, like that's just a nice like just me and him kind of ourselves, like once the kids are in bed, like just, you know, have some drinks, you know, and do some mother Frankenstein reading and puzzle solving. That's great. Yeah.
01:20:05
Speaker
We're loading up our family and going to Michigan to visit some extended family for the holiday and a wedding that's happening after. And so I'm already trying to figure out what games I can
01:20:17
Speaker
stick in the car, that they don't take up so much room that everybody notices and is like, why did you bring those? Can I recommend a podcast that has episodes on travel games? Hey, what podcast might that be? Well, I can't say anything. Drew's got to go with the game. Oh, OK. Yeah, not invited. I know how it is, guys. Thanks. What are you playing, Drew? Come on.
01:20:37
Speaker
Oh goodness, okay, I'm gonna make this quick. I actually have quite a few things that I'm gonna try to attempt to play this weekend because I have a lot of games that I have to review and I'm way behind. So I'm gonna try to play Not So Neighborly again by Fan BAM Games.
01:20:57
Speaker
It's a really cute game. I've played it once, but I would like to play it again just to kind of get a feel of it. That's a great one for kids, too. Right, yeah. And that's going to be something that's going to be quick, too. It's going to be pretty quick. I'm going to try to break out something heavy and try to get that done, whether that's I'm playing Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lion by myself and going through that campaign. My wife looked at the component and said, no, I'm good. And that was kind of how that conversation went.
01:21:24
Speaker
Does she, is she like my wife? Does she have like a three wizard limit to games? If there's more than three wizards in it, she doesn't like to play it. That reference though. Anyways, no, it is. It is. No, she's like, it can be a little nerdy, but a lot nerdy. I'm out. She's like, nope. Her limit was, I do believe it was like viticulture. Now it's really funny because I will tell her games that I've played.
01:21:52
Speaker
are that i have to play for reviews and i'll say i won't take that long and then i'll hide how long that it plays for example uh... eschaton that by arc on games that one was a deck building game took about
01:22:05
Speaker
two to four hours to play it. Oh my gosh. It was interesting, but I'm playing, I got a- Poor wife. You don't have anything going on tonight, do you? Right? You're free, I think. I think you're all right, you know? Would you care for more mimosa? Right. I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to get Archon Games other game in Nexus Infernum. I've been saying that for about,
01:22:33
Speaker
Three months now that I'm going to eventually get that to the table, but we'll see. I do have a lot of other ones that I do want to try out, test out, things like that, and be able to play. Of course, I got to get her to finally play, like, execution by No Mitch Games. That's a good one. Played that at Gamma. It was a really quick, easy, cute game where it's just a cute game about capital punishment. How much fun is that? Yeah, I know.
01:23:01
Speaker
And how many of those have you ever played? Also great for kids, though. And great for kids. They don't know what the words mean. You just have to tell them. My son loved it. He enjoyed it. The artwork is adorable. It is. The let's see, what is it? Buried alive and the carrots underground. It's like a really happy carrot in the crab. Yeah, happy to be there. So really dark in that. But I got it. I got to get Miss Boredom to play that. I got to get her on board with that. That would be an easy one to commence, I think. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:23:31
Speaker
And then she'll read what it is and say, oh, but I have a lot of catching up to do with the games that I have to do reviews for and everything. And that's those are the games that I have to do for reviews. Gloom Haven draws a line that might be one that'll just be fun to do by myself. I want to get a few of the games eventually in like the next two weeks that Funko Games had sent to me.
01:23:58
Speaker
and that I got from Funko Games. And there's like Cranium, the 25th anniversary. 25th anniversary edition. Yep. There's that one. There's so many others that I have to do. And now y'all also. Disney animated one is really fun. I want to play that game so bad.
01:24:14
Speaker
It's so good. I played it at, I played it at Gamma. I sat down at a table and played it at one of those smoky game nights. Smoky, very loud over stability game nights. That was so weird. But I sat down and I committed to playing it, but it was really good. It's very good. It's very collaborative. Yeah, really, really good. I'm excited. I have that one too that I need to bust out and play with my husband and my son.
01:24:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think that one is going to be really cool. I just did an unboxing video of that just the other day. And I was like, these components look really cool because I've saved all of those games that I've received. I've saved them for that. And I just like, I'm probably not going to do a review over this for a long time, but I do want to play it.
Content Creation and Community Engagement
01:25:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm, and that's one that has room to grow because they could add more Disney movies and and Yeah, I was and not too many wizards Josh. So yeah Magic Mountain has more than three wizards, but that's true And so oh Goodness, but this is gonna be a lot on your plate drew. I know I'm so behind I just I
01:25:26
Speaker
Heavy as the head that wears the crown. I know, that's right. I gotta learn to say no. That's my biggest thing. Correction, it's where's the flannel? Okay, that's it. That's all they want to see. That's all they care about.
01:25:44
Speaker
Don't worry. Once you have, you know, kids that are old enough to ask her things, you'll learn how to say no. Yeah. OK. All right. Well, maybe then you go to some timeshare presentations and you're good to go. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Yeah. This has nothing to do with board games, but y'all were telling the story as I was trying to set up my mic and I didn't get the opportunity to. But I do want to say I actually had one of those people look at me before for one of those presentations and asked me how much money I made per year. And I told them.
01:26:11
Speaker
This was years ago when I worked at the Amazon factory and then they looked at my wife said, well, what are you doing? She said, I'm a student in school and they literally looked at me and said, I'm sorry, you don't make enough money. You can't. All right, there's the door. Yeah, you didn't get the opportunity to say no. And that's your origin story on not being able to say no. That was it. That was you didn't have the practice.
01:26:40
Speaker
Well, with that, I think that's a podcast. So why don't we start with Andrew? Andrew, tell everybody where they can get ahold of you and find you on the internet. Yeah. The best place to go is on all of the social media at FamilyGamersAA. It stands for Andrew and my wife, Anitra, who helps me with the familygamers.com.
01:27:02
Speaker
So you know that's what the double A's were for. Yeah, it's not alcohol. It's anonymous. It's Andrew and Anitra. Yeah. So we you know, I've mentioned a couple of things. We just recorded episode 349. Nice. Which actually by the time this comes out, probably will already be out.
01:27:21
Speaker
So that's pretty exciting. And yeah, just keep going. We're reviewing games, over 500 games at TheFamilyGamers.com. Great community on Facebook. You can just search for the Family Gamers community. Heather is in the community now. So Heather was on the show. Heather came on the Family Gamers podcast. I was 347. 347 was my episode. What was the fact? So I come up with a dumb fact for every episode. I've already forgotten that was like three episodes ago. What was the fact?
01:27:51
Speaker
All right, if you don't remember either, I was better about it was probably dumb. It was the thing with Bamboo and oh, what was it? See, Andrew's even struggling with that. I'm going to the family here's website to find out. Yeah, it was something with Bamboo. Oh, right. Oh, the the earliest evidence of an oil well was 347 AD.
01:28:14
Speaker
Yeah. And that far back in China, they drilled oil wells over 200 meters deep with bamboo with bamboo, which is insane. That's two football fields for everybody playing. It's pretty wild. So anyway, you learn all sorts of interesting stuff on the family gamers podcast. But yeah, you can find us on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube, on Facebook at family gamers. Fantastic. How about you, Drew?
01:28:43
Speaker
yes of course you may be able to find me on all of the social medias as welcome to boredom and that is boredom as in board games so b o a r d o m that is welcome to boredom that's where you can find me my my primary areas of where i focus in is in just short form
01:29:01
Speaker
content videos and whatnot and you'll be able to see me do reviews unboxings as well silly skits and act like a doofus on the entire internet to see and it's just a beautiful thing and not really but hey i appreciate your support so you can find me on tiktok instagram youtube whatever fill in the blank you'll be able to find me there
01:29:24
Speaker
Drew does all the web challenges, right? Put cinnamon in your mouth and all the crazy challenges. I do. I'm a decent dancer, okay? Big guy who's light on his feet. Twinkle toes is what they call me.
01:29:41
Speaker
I am very excited. I have about six unboxings that are going to come out in the next two weeks. I have a couple reviews that are coming up as well. I've got all these games that I have to play. As well, I'm coming up with silly skits and things like that that will be pretty fun.
01:29:59
Speaker
Little inside to it on tiktok there's this weird thing where they're doing this trend now where they're making fun of mcdonald's grimace shakes so basically people drink it and then people will have some sort of negative reaction to it just as jokes and
01:30:17
Speaker
What? Because it's a McDonald's grimace. That's exactly what it is. And that's the only milkshake they can make because their shake machine is always down. You know, I hear that all the time, but the ones near me, they're always fine. Yeah, I don't know. You must have a little weird double. They don't they don't even have one where I'm at. So it's OK. Way too broke for that round here anyway.
01:30:42
Speaker
uh... and i'm the state that i'm doing is is just a slow comedy state of board gamers will do anything in order to make sure that people stay and play board games with them so it's just going to be it's going to be pretty interesting and with that as well as other things that'll be going on on my channel so be sure to check it out actually as well i do give a ways quite often actually got done with three giveaways this past month so be sure to check out and see all the stuff that i can
01:31:10
Speaker
be able to do and help out. Get some free things. Of course. Of course. We're here to help each other out. You're a gamer. I'm a gamer. We're all gamers. Let's be able to help each other out and get free stuff. Everyone understands cheap people. I do. I do. I do. The final thing that I'll say is I'm signing off. I'm sorry. This goodbye has been way too long. Don't read your rule books. There we go. Too long didn't read. Nice. How about you, Miss Heather?
01:31:40
Speaker
So you can find me all over social media, Board Gaming Mama, all one word, all together, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, I do short form videos, I post reviews, unboxings as well, over a few videos. I'm gonna put up my list of the top 10 things I saw at Origins that'll be coming up soon.
01:32:05
Speaker
And then I also stream on Twitch, Wednesday and Saturday nights at 8pm. So you can see board games and digital content and then also on YouTube. So all board gaming mama, follow and check it out.
01:32:20
Speaker
and on the Family Gamers podcast. I was waiting for that. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Family Gamers podcast number 347. It was a good time. We had a great time. I also just guest starred. Actually, you can find I have an episode that will probably come out next month on sovereignty's YouTube channel. I just guest starred and played wizard kittens. Oh, that is a cute game. Which is adorable. But there might be too many wizards, but they're kittens, Josh. So they should be OK.
01:32:50
Speaker
If if you anthropomorphize a cute animal, right, that takes away some of the adorable adorable. So I got to play that with Danny. And they're also Danny in the board game industry. Yeah, there's a lot of them. There's Danny Lowe, Danny Sandring. Yeah. So many. So that that episode should be coming out next month as well. That'll be on sovereignty's YouTube channel. So keep an eye out. Very good.
01:33:13
Speaker
Well, you can find me on most of the social media platforms as Play Salamander. That's our Salamander Games content that's out there. I've also been hard at work at getting our new CornerGameTable.com website put together. There's still some content we need to fill in, but I was trying to make a suitable presence out there for us, so that's ongoing. You can also find the podcast on Twitter and
01:33:41
Speaker
Instagram and Facebook at Corner Game Table. So we encourage you to come out and connect with us. Send us questions, issues, concerns. Tell Drew what he's doing wrong. Anything you feel like talking about, we will gladly listen. I'm just making the game better. That's all I want. Right. Right.
01:34:07
Speaker
All right. Very good. Well, we don't have, we still don't have a, uh, uh, an outro phrase to end the podcast. Uh, we decided last time that it's going to be organic. So, uh, I guess we'll sign off with play games and stuff, play games and things, try to attend your local gaming convention.
01:34:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good one. About Deluxe versions of games. There we go.
Podcast Wrap-Up and Farewell
01:34:32
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. Buy your friends Deluxe versions of games. There you go. There you go. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Until next time. Bye. Take care.