Transcript
Shane: all about the magic, mate. It's all about the magic.
Steven Chivers: I haven't even checked my levels. Oh, they look all right. Okay, very good. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the comeback episode of Mate Let's Play. It's been a couple of months since we've last done an episode. Well, you because of Christmas and many other things. So welcome, Shane, back to the Mate Let's Play pod.
Shane: Yeah, no, thank you. It's great to be back and it has been a while. It's... um I missed the last holiday game episode with you, wasn't feeling the best, but but also too, you know, flat out busy with um finishing my previous job to now starting my new career, which is great.
Steven Chivers: Congrats, yeah.
Shane: Which is great. Yeah, no, thank you. And had five weeks off in between, which had been spent not board gaming, mate, at all, but doing a lot of house renovations.
Shane: But it's nice to ask be back on the pod.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, the concept of having five weeks off and not board gaming just doesn't sound right. But um yeah i know you feel I know you filled it with plenty of more, i wouldn't say more important things, but important things.
Shane: No.
Shane: Well, you know, yeah had I had this window to get so to get shit done, right, GSD, and I had to get it done in that time frame because it's it's not going to get done now because I'll be too busy with work.
Shane: and um But I did manage to get a board game day in, which I can talk about at least, which will be nice.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, cool.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: And you mentioned that you missed the last one. We'll we'll recount your ah top 10 holiday games. It was a weird list to do by myself. Just a weird to do a podcast by yourself. And it was one of those things, because I edited, I listened back in double speed and I've just gone, man,
Steven Chivers: I'm not very good at this. just You really need banter. it's Just one person talking to a mic is is kind of boring. So apologies for the last episode if you found it a little bit mundane, but we'll try not to do that again.
Shane: Oh, no, that's great. I'm glad you did that, though. yeah It would have been good because I did want to wish everyone a you know lovely Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. So to everyone that's our one listener, it's a belated Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all the best for FY26.
Steven Chivers: Excellent. FY26.
Shane: Yeah, sorry. That's the bank speech.
Steven Chivers: So so we will we'll hold on to this episode until July.
Shane: Financial year.
Steven Chivers: Is that what we're doing?
Shane: see you next time.
Steven Chivers: ah Very good. So we just thought we'd talk about all the games or some of the games or whatever games we played over the break, but also we'll catch up with Shane's list a little bit later on. I might kick it off because I have not been renovating a house and I've also been on leave. So I got a lot of games played over the holidays, but I'm going to start with a little tiny party game, which kind of became, wouldn't say became the game of the holidays, but it definitely was a game where my two older kids who aren't really keen on playing games were both very keen to sit down and play.
Steven Chivers: And it's because it's not even really a game, but it's cool. And it's game called Add add to Playlist. So I'm not sure if you've heard of it, but it's ah basically it what it is.
Shane: All
Steven Chivers: There's this whole scoring mechanism. You can throw that out. No one cares. What it is is ah it's these cards that you put out, and they have, like, a song that makes you look out the window and contemplate or a song that you wouldn't play to your parents, yeah a song you'd walk down the aisle to, a song blah, blah, blah, all these little prompts.
Steven Chivers: And what you you literally grab a phone in Teams and you make a playlist of five songs. So if you and I are on a team, we can look at any of the five prompts and go, I'm going to put this song on the playlist, which is my answer to this prompt.
Steven Chivers: And so out of the five options and the two people, you make a playlist of five. So there's a variation you could have. it We could both have one prompt. doesn't matter. um And then you play your playlist. And the other team has to guess who put the song on the playlist and what um question it links to.
Steven Chivers: It was so, was such a simple game and it was so cool. Cause you just like, and all all that happened is we just, we played it against each other and then we just changed the rules so that we put out like 10 of them and we all individually made a playlist and then you had to guess which one.
Steven Chivers: And and and it was like four hours. We just kept playing music and and having a great time. And i
Shane: actually are playing music.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, you you literally make the pay the playlist, press shuffle, and then the other team listens to the song and tries to figure out. And it was just awesome. it was like it's such a simple concept. like You don't even need the game if you can come up with your own prompts, I guess. But and the prompts are good. There's a heap of them. There's like 300 cards in the box.
Steven Chivers: And yeah, it's just, we just pulled it out. And like we even did it when we visited our parents and that was interesting. So like one of the topics was a song that makes you feel proud of your country.
Steven Chivers: um And, like, so my dad put on, like, I Still Call Australia Home and Raph did the national anthem and and I did, um what's the like what's the name?
Shane: Yeah, yes.
Steven Chivers: um Kate Miller-Heidke, Zero Gravity because she nearly won Eurovision with that. But no one was thinking that. So when that song played, they were all like, oh, this must be a song that makes you think of a time in your 20s or something else. I'm like, no, no, this is my Proud of Australia song. They're just like, what?
Steven Chivers: So... ah Yeah, no, it was so such a good little game. And it's like, I think it's mass market. I think like Big W, Kmart, you can pick it up. So um yeah, definitely if you, it's a good.
Shane: Okay.
Shane: and I reckon, yeah, know it would be a good game and I think my family would actually like playing it. So, I'm heading to Kmart.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: I'll head to Kmart and see if it's there.
Steven Chivers: Yeah. Well, your family's a music family.
Shane: big
Steven Chivers: I'm sure they'd get around it. So yeah.
Shane: Mate, they've all got their own Spotify playlists. Were you using Spotify to create a paylet playlist or?
Steven Chivers: Yeah, yeah. That's probably the only negative is that now I've got like 60 playlists of five songs Spotify. ah so But that other than that, yeah, it's all good.
Shane: Oh no, they...
Steven Chivers: So Add to Playlist is ah is a great little holiday party game for your family, for sure.
Shane: Head to playlist, okay. Well, I'll look out for that one. it's um Yeah, that song that makes you feel proud to be at home. It'd have to be like a Peter Coombe song, you know. um
Steven Chivers: Yeah, okay.
Shane: The old spaghetti bolognese song or something.
Steven Chivers: a
Shane: Takes me back to my childhood.
Steven Chivers: I mean, you could you could go you could go bad and do like ah a Rodney Root or a Kevin Bloody Wilson song.
Shane: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Steven Chivers: But ah ah but we will we'll keep it PG.
Shane: Oh, especially at Christmas time. Santa Claus. Great one.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: ah So, yeah, tell me tell me tell me about Mr Feld.
Shane: Anyway.
Shane: Yeah, so we had a game day at my house and did some smash burgers on the new Blackstone grill that I've got. And it was really nice day with um with the crew. And we grabbed out Sivolution.
Shane: i So there was myself, there was five, four four of us. Yeah, four of us. So there was myself, Shane Ingrid and Kevin. katy And so it was
Shane: big, sprawling Euro. Point salad, table hog.
Shane: Massively, definitely his heaviest game he's ever put out. But if you can imagine, I kind of likened it to Castles of Burgundy meets Feast for Oden.
Steven Chivers: OK, now you've got me interested.
Shane: So you've got so much going on. And when you read, like the rulebook's fantastic by the way, probably the best rulebook I've come across, along with the player aids that everyone gets. Everyone has their own player aid and it's fantastic.
Shane: And it's played over four eras. Each era has roughly around eight or nine actions. or stages that you go through and there's some resets along the way but everyone has their own main player board and the main bulk of the game is you're doing these actions from dice so you you have some dice that you roll and then on your own player board you have
Shane: your actions that you can take and each action is like a technology all right so So if you want to do of the technologies, you've got to spend dice to do that, and it might cost you a three and a four dice. So you spend that, you go out and do that action.
Shane: And then you can upgrade those actions, so be the actions and technologies become better and better throughout the game. So you can upgrade them to a three-stage action.
Shane: And the whole bulk of the game is you basically, then you've got your main board where you putting out all your workers and your population. You try to grow your population, bring back resources. um Your population grows, so you move and settle different parts on the maps, which then uncovers, and you can do exploration, which uncovers other parts of the map, opening up more points, more resources for you, more technology that you could you know mine and keep upgrading your player board.
Shane: And there's also cards that you're getting throughout the game that help you. know So there's bonus actions. And then you know that bonus action leads to this action, leads to this. There's a bit of a trigger from other actions that come from it.
Shane: But it's a massive point-seller game. Four of us, we had four players learning it for the first time, including he myself.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, it's crazy.
Shane: So... Well, we made a big boo-boo, but that's okay. It was it was for the way the scoring worked. and But either way, it wouldn't have made much difference, right? Roughly, we would have went up the same amount of points.
Shane: But um the game itself, when you open up the rule book and it actually tells you the dimensions of the table that you need to play this game,
Steven Chivers: ah
Shane: you know... It's a table hog.
Steven Chivers: So an up an optional upgrade is a new table, is what you're saying.
Shane: You need a new table. So it did fit on my table. And for those that don't know, of my board game table is my pool table. So I use my pool table as my board game table and it fits on that.
Shane: Just.
Shane: What rule book has the dimension of the table you need to play this game? I don't think I've ever seen that.
Steven Chivers: No, it's a great idea. um I'm guessing they won't put it on in the back of the box next to the play account because then people might just go, oh, no, don't have that. I'll move on.
Shane: Like if you've got a four-player table and you know there's one by and a half metre squared tables, forget it. It won't fit.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, right.
Shane: It's a table hog.
Steven Chivers: Yeah. right
Shane: But we really enjoyed it. Each one of us enjoyed it. We we definitely want to play it again. We had it booked to play it again, but um it just life happens and things got the way, so that didn't happen again. But the solo variant looks very simple.
Shane: as well Nice and easy to use, so I'm looking forward to eventually finding some time to solo it. um I enjoyed it as much to say that after one play, definitely one of the best games I've played all year in 2025.
Steven Chivers: Yeah. Wow. Okay.
Shane: and But it did take a long time because we were all learning it for the first time. Like the first couple of rounds took almost two hours.
Steven Chivers: Yeah. Yeah.
Shane: and But then once we got into the pace of things, it was going around the table quicker and quicker. So I figure for the players, next time we play, I reckon two and a half hours we could probably knock it off in the next time we play.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, OK. That's pretty fair for a Civilization game. like Yeah.
Shane: But this this four of us playing it was almost ti i four time frames.
Shane: It took all day.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: It took all day to play it. But we all enjoyed it. So there wasn't one of us that said, no, didn't like it at all.
Steven Chivers: yeah
Steven Chivers: Yeah, okay.
Shane: We all want to play it again. And, yes, I totally recommend Civilution. If you see it on a board game cruise, mate, it's it's definitely up your alley.
Steven Chivers: yeah, because i to be honest, I hadn't been interested in it because i like Feld games.
Shane: We gotta go.
Steven Chivers: I haven't played a bad Feld game, but I'm not like not like ignorant who loves Feld games. You know, like that that's Castles Burgundy is my favourite his,
Steven Chivers: then it's a fair drop down to what my second favourite would be, right? um And the Civilisation theme just didn't seem, doesn't in my head, didn't seem to meld with a Feld game. Oh, pardon the rhyming. And then finally, the fact that it is so large, I just looked at that and went, well, I'm never going to play that. So i sort of I've kind of avoided it, but...
Steven Chivers: Like you made my ears stand up when you said it was a sort of like a Castles and Burgundy Feast for Odin crossover. that's we I don't know whether that was intentional.
Steven Chivers: youre like, I'll get his attention. I'm going to say this. ah
Shane: No, no, no, because we did actually, we did actually say it when we were playing the game.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, right.
Shane: it It had a face for Odin to heal for it.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, okay.
Shane: So, yeah, because you know in face for Odin, you've got all those actions that you can do.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: Similar here, you've got a lot of actions you can do. And you've also got to, you know, get food to feed your population. That's threat. So, it was pretty good, mate.
Steven Chivers: Fair enough.
Shane: And I think you'll like it. There's so much you can do in the game, though. so um I just need to find time to play it again.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, yeah.
Shane: And I know that I haven't had a Thursday night game night for a long time either, you know, because of life getting in the way. And we we've got it scheduled for a Thursday night game night to play.
Shane: Everyone's watched a video of how to play it.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, OK.
Shane: And now I know it, I can at least teach it. And, you know, I don't think it will take that long to play it before that's my Thursday night.
Steven Chivers: well speaking of games that were pretty uh hot in the last year or two um and game a game i'm talking about a game that you thought i was like in like flint on and i wasn't which but i don't know how that came across but you were always like oh steve we we got to talk about seti and and i was i was like oh okay and you're like yeah this this you you were keen for this and i'm like I don't think I was, but anyway, I must have mentioned something somewhere, but I do own it and I hadn't played it.
Shane: Oh,
Steven Chivers: About six months ago, I got it all out and I started playing a two-headed solo game to kind of teach myself the rules. And after a while, i'm like, I'm just going to go to bed. I'll leave this. And I never got back to it. But friends of ours here, shout out to Suzanne and Dave.
Steven Chivers: Suzanne listens to our podcast. So yeah, yeah, that's right.
Shane: we have two.
Steven Chivers: So we just, and Ingrid, how you doing?
Shane: Thanks, Suzanne.
Steven Chivers: That's it. There's one else. So, Anyway, where I went around to their house a couple of nights ago, actually, and got them to teach me SETI. it was Suzanne put it quite nicely. She said, you can invite yourself around to our house anytime you like. And I'm like, yeah, kind of was like that. I was like, said, hey, what are you guys doing on saturday and they're like on on Friday? And they're like, oh, not much. Why? i'm like, oh, I was hoping you could teach me SETI.
Steven Chivers: and they're like, yeah, cool. My place or yours. i'm like, oh, I can go to your house. So I've basically just...
Shane: Uh-huh.
Steven Chivers: I turned up and said, teach me this. um But what was funny is i I said to him, look, I do understand some of the rules because i did get it out and do a bit of a teach, but I would need a refresher. And boy, did I need that refresher. I didn't remember pretty much anything from my six-month-earlier attempt. So ah SETI, if you're not familiar, is a game about searching for extraterrestrial intelligence is what it what it stands for. So it's a space game where you're going ah onto planets and you're dropping down on those planets, either on either orbiting or dropping onto the planets to get things you're doing you're finding out about other races of of beings aliens in this case and then once you found out enough about a different race they reveal themselves and then they have their own bunch of rules that go along with them and there's you only really feel two in the game or up to two in a game but there is i think six or eight in the box so it's it does variable setup uh and
Steven Chivers: then It's another there's a lot going on game, there's no doubt. So um it's one of those things where it's he's like on your turn you have eight options and then there's six free free actions.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: I'm like, cool. So I've just got to get in my head around 14 things. Excellent. But ah you mentioned the rule book. The player aid for SETI is excellent. It's it's like a little A5 size, not even A5 size, four pages, so front, middle, and back.
Steven Chivers: But it has all the iconography, all of what the endgame scoring tiles do, all of what you'll find on the game, with a few exceptions but not many, um like a few edge case examples where like a card will have a symbol on it you've got to go and look for because it's specific to that card. Aside of that, it has pretty much everything you need to know to play the game.
Steven Chivers: And on the front page has all of your actions and it very clearly states what they all do. And similar to games I've talked about in the past, and Feast for Odin is a good example, right? Here I am saying you've got eight eight example eight actions and and six free actions.
Steven Chivers: It's not really that... full on because half of those actions require you to have already done other actions previously. So you you can't you can't land on a planet if you haven't sent out one of your probes.
Steven Chivers: So until you send out a probe, you you don't have half the options.
Shane: Like this?
Steven Chivers: And and then once you send out your probe, you can't send another probe out until you've gotten rid of the probe you've got.
Shane: Okay.
Steven Chivers: So you can forget the action. is like so So it's not as crazy as that set makes it sound. But it's got all the things that you know that I like in games. So you've got your player board.
Shane: Okay.
Steven Chivers: as you do As you get technologies, your actions get stronger. It's got this cool thing where you run technology along this track of six things. And when you get to the end, you get um you find technology about and an alien race. But you can upgrade that that run of six so you can get yourself better things as you go along. Yeah.
Steven Chivers: everything is changeable. Like you can get a technology that allows you to put out two probes at a time or you're not, not pay as much to land on planets. Or when you do, when you send out your beams to um different sectors of the, of the galaxy, you can send out beams to three sectors at once instead of one. And so all these things that just make the game flow a lot easier and you're doing a lot more with your turns, even though the turn itself doesn't cost anymore. Yeah.
Steven Chivers: And we haven't even talked about the cards and the card play. My gosh. ah So have you haven't played SETI, have you? No. So the card play, they are triple use cards.
Steven Chivers: So, or maybe even quadruple use cards. So the first thing you can do with them is play them, which costs money and you do what it says on the white section of the card. Most of them are just like, get this or do that.
Steven Chivers: But some of them are like, oh, if you have this, then you'll get this. And they're like ongoing benefits or score two victory points when you achieve this, or there'll be end of game scoring.
Shane: Yes.
Steven Chivers: So there's already a lot of variability just on what's on the white section of the card. In the top right section, they've got a symbol which matches some of the planets you're looking at. And if if it's on the the the game, like the game display, the three cards that sit on the game display, you can actually, when you do that action, you you discard a card from the display to research in that area.
Steven Chivers: It also in the top left corner counts as a resource. So if you're one resource short, you can discard a card to get the resource. And I think I'm forgetting something, but it's like multi-use cards.
Steven Chivers: And most of my time in this game was spent looking at these cards going, oh, I really want to play this card. And then working out that in order to play this card, I would ah basically need to discard this card.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: So that lovely in a board game, when you' when you've got that moment where you're looking at a card and it can do multiple things and you want to do all of them. And you've got to make really hard choices on what you do with your cards. I love that in games. So, yeah, this one. Oh, that's the other thing you can do You can tuck it um under your income. So when you have an income turn, your income gets stronger.
Steven Chivers: ah So you want to keep the card in your hand so you can tuck it so you can get extra credits per round. But then you're like, but look at what it does. Like, it's so, yeah, so... A bit like Ark Nova. I know you don't love Ark Nova, but in Ark Nova, you've you've got options that will give you an ongoing benefit or a bigger right now benefit. And this is kind of the same thing. Yeah. ah So, yeah, that was really cool. The game itself was a little bit hard to grasp.
Steven Chivers: It probably took me a good half hour to an hour before I was like, okay, I actually have a bit of a plan here. And then I quite hilariously in the fifth round, there's only five rounds,
Steven Chivers: went, I might start running to my tech engine. And I was halfway through round five. I'm like, maybe deciding to do this at the start of round five wasn't a smart idea. so But it was still cool. It was like, even though I got i came so kind of solid third place, I picked up the bronze medal out of three. ah It was still a very enjoyable experience.
Shane: you
Steven Chivers: and And one that I said to the guys, I'm like, this is the sort of game that I want to play another four times this month. because I fear that if I don't, it may not come back off the shelf. Like it might be one of those games where I just, every time I look at it, I go oh, I've got to remember how to do all that. But if you could get it, if you played enough times to sink in, I think it would just pay off in spades over time. So really enjoyed it. Really keen to play it again. I'm going to try and play that on the cruise as well. I do own it so I can play it again and they do it in solo mode. So...
Steven Chivers: Lots of ways to play it. And it wasn't terribly long either for a teach. Three-player game was about two to two and a half hours. So you'd imagine you'd shave at least half an hour off that without a teach.
Steven Chivers: um yeah The only downside is we didn't find out what the second race was. we didn't We just smashed the first race so much that we never actually revealed the second race. But, term yeah, really cool.
Steven Chivers: So that is SETI, well worth checking out. Deserves all the hotness and praise that it's been getting over the last year and a half. So, yeah. Yeah.
Shane: I look forward to playing it because
Shane: sounds good. sounds really good. I like the multi-use card player.
Steven Chivers: Yeah. Yeah, that was really good. And and and surprisingly, like multi-use card play is fine when you're discarding a card for a resource, but you know you're going to get a bunch of crappy cards in your hand. But I never felt that. Every time I was like, oh, but I want this to do that. Oh, but it also does this and I want it for that. Like every card was a tough decision.
Steven Chivers: So, yeah.
Shane: Well, I know that do ah do believe we do have that in our group. In our Thursday night group. I do believe think Lucky Fuel's got SETI. So, hopefully I'll be playing it very soon.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, cool.
Shane: But you'll like Civilution, mate.
Steven Chivers: We actually played another game straight.
Shane: If you like SETI, sorry. If you like SETI, you're going to love Civilution.
Steven Chivers: Oh, you're right.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, okay.
Shane: It's... As you're talking I'm going yep, it's in Evolution. Yep, it's in Evolution.
Steven Chivers: shit What i was going to say is after we did that, I played a game I'm pretty sure you played and you quite enjoyed or I could be making that up. um Origin story.
Shane: Nah, you're making that one
Steven Chivers: i'm Making it up.
Shane: That's the new, that's the new Stonemaier game isn't it?
Steven Chivers: Yeah, the trick taker.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: And and i'm I'm partial to a trick taker. I grew up on trick takers. So i um i they they pulled that out. And what a cool game. Like,
Shane: Yep, getting rave reviews.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, it's so it's just a basic trick taker at the start and you have one special ability, but then every round you gain you'd start telling your superhero story. So you add another element to your story on your board, which then adds something else that you can break the game with.
Steven Chivers: And you end up doing that four times. so And then the last thing you do is your superhero trait. So you play five rounds and every round you compound what you can do. So you're not losing any abilities, but you're gaining more abilities to trigger.
Steven Chivers: And then things like I had a card that said, if I if i use this card, ah low low cards win tricks this round rather than high cards.
Shane: Yep.
Steven Chivers: So if you're sitting there with a one, you play that, then you're guaranteed, like it's a guaranteed win. um Someone might say that trumps no longer count or if you pick the amount of um tricks you win, you're going to get eight victory points this round instead of one per trick. and um Just lots of different things. Like um it was I had the ability to um trade a card with somebody else or discard a card. and um There was some other... there was One, Suzanne had an ability where whenever she played a card of a particular suit, she just got a victory point.
Steven Chivers: So you're like, well, you can't let her lead because she's just going to be racking up the victory points. Even if she doesn't win the hand, she's going to get the victory points. So it was, yeah, it was really cool. And it was pretty close. Like I, again, picked up a bronze, um but you score points as you go through. there is You can play as ah as a hero or a villain, and a villain just means you're not going to win any tricks.
Steven Chivers: And I did that once and I didn't win any tricks. So that was good. that was You get more victory points. So, yeah, it's just a clever game of... just ah like simple enough trick taker that is not, i love I'm loving this trick taker revolution, but I'm also having bought in particularly
Shane: There's so many.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, like I haven't bought in particularly much. There's a few that I ah really like that Lord of the Rings trick-taking game. Obviously, I'm a big fan of The Crew. And I've played like Nikosu Dice and Schadenfreude and all these ones that are getting rave reviews, Minnow Dice.
Steven Chivers: And they're all good. They're all really good. And if ah if you're sitting down a table and pulling a card game out, be like, yep, sweet, 20 minutes of my life. This is going to be fun. But I think this one is a bit like those other ones I mentioned, like the crew, like Lord of the Rings, where I feel like it stands out a little bit from the group and does something that you don't you don't come across in Trick Takers um well pretty much ever.
Shane: Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Chivers: And in fact, it made me want to play the Rebel Princess because apparently that's ah that's a spin on hearts that feels a little bit similar with special powers and changing changing the game. But um I haven't tried that yet. But it was I would say if you don't like trick takers, I wouldn't steer clear of this one.
Steven Chivers: where With pretty much all the other ones I mentioned, if you don't like trick takers, not going to like it. This one feels like it breaks out. And even Suzanne said that she's not a trick taking fan, but she really likes this game. So, yeah, that was a bit of a surprise for me, that one.
Shane: I don't think it's in the stores yet though, is it? So you must only be able to get it through the Stonema's site.
Steven Chivers: To be honest, yeah, I couldn't tell you. I feel like I saw it when I was in Melbourne on the holidays, but I don't, yeah, I'm not sure.
Shane: Yeah, have to have look around and see Because I do like trick takers and... Fishing is my favourite one.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: Have you played that one yet?
Steven Chivers: No, I haven't played fishing yet, but again, I've heard a lot of good things. So I want to try that and want to try Rebel Princess.
Shane: You can get the fishing app.
Steven Chivers: Oh, yeah.
Shane: They have an app so you can learn it on the app.
Steven Chivers: Okay.
Shane: a great way playing it. But I do have the physical copy of the game now, thanks to the great man Nick, who brought it back from the US for me.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, nice.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Excellent.
Shane: Well, it kind of leads me into, you want me to quickly do my top 10 holiday game list now?
Steven Chivers: Yeah, let's hear
Shane: Let's hear it.
Steven Chivers: feel like I should see if I can bring up my list because I can't remember it. I can't remember it. It's okay. I think I did 12 because I did 12 days of Christmas kind of theory, but that's it.
Shane: Oh, did you? Okay, well, I'm not doing 12. I'm 10. do ten So out of here.
Steven Chivers: Okay.
Shane: Because I did have it there, and so I'll start with my number 10.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: And this is kind of like a lead-in from trick-taking. It's not a trick-taking, but a game I used to play as a young fella. My grandmother taught it to us and we played as a family all the time.
Shane: We'd ever go to my grandma's house, out come the deck of cards, and we would play You ever heard of May I?
Steven Chivers: Okay. No, ah not enough to talk about it, but it rings a bell.
Shane: Yeah, it's it's a Rummy style game, right? So you had to play it over a number of rounds and each of those rounds you are competing to complete contracts. So contracts might be you've got to get two, three of a kinds.
Shane: or you've got to get straight and a three of a kind, a full card, or you're to get four of a kind.
Steven Chivers: Mm-hmm.
Shane: And so when you complete your contracts, you've also then got to clear all your cards out of your hand. And how you're doing that is, As soon as you complete a contract, you can lay it down on the table. But as soon as you lay that down on the table, other players can add their cards to your completed contracts so that they like can get rid of their discard pile.
Shane: No, sorry, discard from their hand.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: And the first person to get rid of all their cards out of their hand... um when that the round ends and everyone else that's got cards in their hand, they have to then add up their points. So like most of your face cards, like from 10 down to 1, it's worth 10 points.
Shane: 9, 8, 7 points, right?
Steven Chivers: Yep.
Shane: If you've got jacks, queens and kings, they're worth 15 points each. and 20 points for an ace. And basically after all the rounds have got played through, the person with the lowest points wins game.
Steven Chivers: Right. Okay.
Shane: It's a really good fun game. um can You can Google it and it comes up with the rules, but it's just a simple family card game. May I?
Steven Chivers: Yeah, cool.
Shane: Number nine was cockroach poker, where you're just basically lying.
Steven Chivers: Uh, yeah. Yeah. yeah
Shane: That's a great party game. Taught that to my nieces nieces and nephews. Basically teach them how to lie. Yeah, number
Steven Chivers: It's important skill.
Shane: eight, roll for it. It's an awesome dice chucker.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, okay.
Shane: Seven, this is no, this is no ball. I did have it here. Seven, flip seven.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, yeah.
Shane: Six was...
Steven Chivers: Belongs on list. i think i think that I think I had a mine at seven too. I think we both did the thing.
Shane: Is it?
Steven Chivers: Oh,
Shane: Yeah.
Shane: Six was a Splendor.
Steven Chivers: okay. Yep. Yeah, that's true.
Shane: Just a nice easy holiday game. It's not hard, it's pretty simple. In my family it's downforce, it's number five.
Shane: We've got to get downforce out all the time.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, cool.
Shane: Although I think Heat will take over that once I teach the boys how play Heat. Although I'm doing terrible at moment I'm beating.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: ah Number four, Ticket to Ride.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: Just an easy game to teach anyone. And number three was, for me, Azul. Again, actually... Unbeknownst to me, but my sister-in-law's becoming a bit of a board gamer because I've got her son into playing board games.
Shane: Now she's playing the board games with me.
Steven Chivers: All right.
Shane: And so when they were up here recently in Queensland...
Shane: I taught her how to play a Zool. And she loved it.
Steven Chivers: Nice.
Shane: So, she goes, I'm actually a bit of a ballgame nerd now, Shane, I think. Because I actually don't mind it.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: She goes, I kind of get how you like playing.
Shane: And Lauren just scoffed at her.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: Number two, Just One. We're loving playing that the family.
Steven Chivers: yeah
Shane: Such a good game. Especially with the with the new the new version of it. With the...
Steven Chivers: The wax pencils.
Shane: data Whack pencils.
Steven Chivers: yeah
Shane: ah Number one in our house is King of Tokyo. We are always playing that.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, OK. Yeah, it makes sense.
Shane: And did you know there's, don't know if you've seen it, there's a new King of Tokyo coming out. It's a Godzilla version King of Tokyo. And it's like a blinged out wooden version. Everything's wood.
Shane: And it's got all the the monsters are all from, you know, like Belfra, um...
Steven Chivers: Oh, no.
Steven Chivers: OK.
Shane: Mega Godzilla and yeah know all the the monsters in the Godzilla franchise are coming out and everything's wood. But they're also making it look like an old Japanese-style board game, so it looks very ancient as well.
Shane: So you're going to have Japanese writing in the board.
Steven Chivers: OK.
Shane: and yeah It looks really cool. So apparently it's coming out at Gen Con.
Steven Chivers: There you go
Shane: Might be one that I might have purchase, given that like it so much. There you There's my top 10 holiday games.
Steven Chivers: There's some good games in that list.
Shane: There's some good games in that list. Nice and quick and easy for you, mate.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: Some that missed out was Century Golem Edition. It's a nice, easy one. So that could be my number 11.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, always makes me think of...
Shane: And none of those got none of those got played in the holidays, so...
Steven Chivers: yeah just civilization, number one holiday. Yeah.
Shane: Oh, no, Azul did get played. Azul did get played with my sister-in-law.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: And Lauren played as well. So... Um, first one she doesn't mind playing. ah I'd recommend playing Mayite.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, fair enough.
Shane: And to our board game designer friends out there, trick-taking's a big player at the moment. Someone bring out a new version of Mayite, like a... Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, yeah. was a board game designer version of, like, that's what that's all the rage at the moment, right? Like like I mentioned, Rebel Princess is basically a ah take on hearts and Zombie Princess a take on spades.
Steven Chivers: And yeah, so why not?
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: Why not?
Steven Chivers: Well, speaking of what thing what people may do this year, what a great segue into what we're hoping to do this year in the board game hobby, whether that's just play more games or go to events or who knows.
Steven Chivers: Maybe you're maybe you're about to tell me that you're starting your own publishing company and you've picked up, I don't know, but with all your free time.
Shane: Yeah, I'm going to build my own vision, may I?
Steven Chivers: yeah ah But, yeah, thought we we just thought we'd talk about this being that this is our first episode of the year. ah Just quickly, probably a few weeks until the next episode, because one thing I was hoping to achieve this year is to get to some board game events, and I literally fly out in three days to go on the BGT at Sea Cruise. So I'm achieving an objective straightaway. And i do I do thoroughly recommend any of these events specifically.
Steven Chivers: Any event, really, but these cruise events, this is the second one I've been on with BGG, even though the last one wasn't technically a BGG cruise. It was run by the same guy. Super well put together. Lots of fun.
Steven Chivers: I've met so many awesome people and you just get to play games while you go between destinations on a ship. It's like kind of perfect. ah But I'm also, i know that some people, present company included, aren't big cruisers. So there's plenty of other events out there. So I guess for me, being where I live is quite remote.
Steven Chivers: I'm really trying to make it possible to get to a few more events, whether they be game days, conventions, events. big things like this cruise that I'm going on, um just an attempt to get to more things. when whenever i'm Whenever I'm away from home, i need only to find something, somewhere to go and play games.
Steven Chivers: So there you go.
Shane: Excellent. I'm looking forward to hearing all about the crews and all the games you're going to play. I hear your list list is around about 87, so give it a good hard cracker record.
Steven Chivers: Very keen, yes.
Steven Chivers: yes And I'd say of those 87, maybe 50 of them are like two to three hour games. Like it'd be cool if it was 87 trick takers. I'll smash that out in day two. But yeah, no, it's not that. It's Ostia and Luthier and Civilution and yeah, um Cretaceous Rails. Yes, it's not going to be short.
Shane: Don't forget to send me a quick photo snap pickck when you do play Civilution, just so I can you know say well done.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, hopefully they got big enough tables.
Shane: and
Shane: well look For me, my goal for this year is just to play more board games and attend some events. and I don't want to host any events this year.
Shane: I just want to attend and enjoy it enjoy the hobby. um But, you know, i've got to find time to attend it. um I think there's one in February that's coming up.
Shane: I would love to get to it, but I think I'm going to be away for it. So I just want want to attend more events this year. I would love, would love to go to a Dice Tower event.
Shane: I'd love to do it this year. If not, it will be booked this year.
Steven Chivers: yeah like to I like to hear it. I like to hear it. um
Shane: Alright, so, I wanna lock myself in to get to one.
Steven Chivers: Well,
Steven Chivers: yeah.
Shane: I've got the passport that's never been used.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, that's crazy.
Shane: So, it'll be, yeah, it'll be good to just get out of the country and go to a board game event.
Steven Chivers: Got to get that passport stamped bad. Oh, they don't stamp anymore.
Shane: I know Lauren's a big fan for me to to attend one as well, because she's always said, you know, you need to get to a Dice Tower event. And that's the one I'd love to get to.
Steven Chivers: Yep.
Shane: and and then take it from there. But it's my goal is to either go to one this year or have it booked this year for next year.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, cool. Yeah. I don't want to rub it in, but um I am booked on Dice Tower Cruise, but that's next year. So that's January 9th next year. So it's basically this year. But yes, I am i and i did mention it. know you're not a big cruise fan, but yeah maybe, maybe. But um yeah, what a lucky turn of events. i just um My family and I were going on a ski holiday to America.
Steven Chivers: And I said to Helen, if it works out, I'd love to finish it with a Dice Tower Cruise, but they always run it too late. Like it runs in late January and I'm starting as a teacher at the start of next year, which means i need to be back by like the 20th of January. So was just not possible.
Steven Chivers: And then they announced the dates and it's the 9th to the 16th of January. So I'm like, hang on. That's like not only doable, that's doable with some spare time. So changed our entire end of our holiday so that we're now, instead of spending the whole time on the West Coast of America, we're now doing three weeks on the West Coast and flying to the East Coast and rearranged everything so that we can do the Dice Tower Cruise at the end of the holiday.
Shane: Mm-hmm.
Steven Chivers: So Very keen. And it's also like I've been lucky enough to go to a Dice Tower event before and it was excellent. That was the retreat. um But the cruise, me being a cruise fan, the Dice Tower cruise was always the one I wanted to do. So um super keen. And it's on Icon of the Seas. So if you if you're a cruise nerd like me, going on the biggest ship in the world is exciting. To someone who's not a cruise fan, that might be the worst thing. But for me, it's like, yes, i biggest ship in the world, sign me up. So ah Yeah, very keen for that. And, hey, you know, if the two of us can go there, we could we could do a live pod from from the other side of the world in the Caribbean.
Steven Chivers: That would be great.
Shane: I'll have a think. I'm not a cruise fan, but let's see. You never know. You never know.
Steven Chivers: Well, there are plenty of other Dice Tower events, I guess, if you don't want to cruise.
Shane: Stranger things happen. Yeah.
Steven Chivers: But, yeah, that's the one I'm going to be doing next year, which is exciting.
Shane: Nice, nice. That's the plan. Get to more board game events this year here locally and support it support the local events that happen.
Shane: and you know And that's getting to the community place. They have one every Friday night. I'd love to get there one Friday night. That's hosting my own events here the house with the Thursday night crew and getting back into a rhythm there with them.
Shane: going to a board game barbecue event with Shane and Ingrid. I know they love to go to those. So it'd good to get along to those this year.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, cool. I guess the only other thing that I would like to achieve this year is we did it last year and it was awesome. And that is that between Helen, Raphael and I, we want to do another legacy game.
Steven Chivers: So last year we played and finished Clank Legacy 2, which was awesome. ah So we're just deciding what we're going to do. We've got you got Legacy of Gravehold there, the Aeon's End one. We've got i mean, Sleeping Gods isn't necessarily a legacy game, but it's a campaign game. It'll still work. We could do that.
Steven Chivers: What was the other one we were looking at that we were thinking about? I can't remember. Mind Management. I think that's ah like a campaign game. So, yeah, there's a few that we've got sitting on the shelf that haven't been touched. So we would like to begin and finish a campaign game or a legacy game this year again.
Steven Chivers: Oh, we also did Ticket to Ride Legacy last year too, actually. but That was the whole family. So, yeah, we did a couple last year.
Shane: I'll add one move to us. This will be to keep up keep you and I honest. And that is that every podcast, we're going to go back to the old roots of we're going to be nominating a game are going play the next week.
Steven Chivers: OK, I'm fine with that.
Shane: Because I think that'll get me back into board gaming as well. Like getting setting aside some time.
Steven Chivers: Yep.
Shane: to do it. um So, I'll kick it off.
Shane: I will play Sivolution Solo and talk about it next week. Or the next pod. So, Sivolution Solo talked about next pod.
Steven Chivers: OK.
Steven Chivers: um Gee, I've got to pick one off my list of games that I'm desperate to play on this trip. I will choose... Actually, the one i the one I'm actually really keen to play, which I didn't mention before, and I'm really keen to play because I think Raphael will love it, and that's Warchest.
Steven Chivers: So Warchest was the game that we put aside for Raphael for the cruise, and he's a massive chess fan, and apparently Warchest... has some chess feels about it. Never played the game.
Shane: It's great.
Steven Chivers: haven't even don't even Haven't even started looking at a how to play or anything, but I've got to do that because I can't rely on someone else to teach him if it's a two-player game. But very keen to see whether that works for us and whether he likes it because it's a big investment to buy that game.
Steven Chivers: So i want to make sure that it's it's a winner first before we go ahead. So I will play War Chess on the cruise and chat about it the next pod.
Shane: Lovely lie. own it. I have all the expansions and it's good. Really simple as well, mate. So...
Steven Chivers: Excellent. Well, that might do us. 43 minutes. it's ah It's an express pod, unless we've got something else to chat about.
Shane: That's it. Oh, I just, um, I did see a Kickstarter that i thought I'd just quickly mention if anyone's seen it out there.
Steven Chivers: Hiya.
Shane: There's a a lot of hype on it, but it's sold out really fast and it's called Jai Sogi. and
Steven Chivers: That's the other game that Raphael has added for the cruise because it's about the NMA production studio. Yeah, yeah.
Shane: Yeah, you are you are making an anime cartoon. um
Steven Chivers: ah So that's back on game on Kickstarter, is it?
Shane: It is, mate. There
Steven Chivers: That's interesting. When does it close? we' have to play that early.
Shane: you go.
Steven Chivers: but
Shane: 25 days at the moment.
Steven Chivers: ah sweet.
Shane: And it's version 1.5, so because it's sold out so quick, they've updated the rule book and updated a few few of the other mechanics, so it's a lot more streamlined. But, I mean, everyone's raving about it um when you look out there on the YouTube world, you know, all the top is not our top YouTube channels are raving about this game, saying it's brilliant.
Shane: I think Mike Deleuze called it one of his favourite games of the year.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: I think Athena said it was their game in 2025. Shut Up and Sit Down said it's a great game. So I am looking at backing it. I like, I've got another game where you are basically similar. It's a worker placement where you're building comics, where you're making comics.
Shane: And I really enjoyed played that one playing that one. So this is very similar again. You are making anime cartoon so with storylines.
Steven Chivers: That's interesting. I didn't know it was on Kickstarter and it closes after we get back from the cruise. So if if it does go down well, then that's that's going to be an easy back.
Shane: Yeah, I think it's pretty cheap, only 71 bucks.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, OK.
Shane: Australia, shipping from Japan, so we probably would get it pretty quick. Okay.
Steven Chivers: ah There is another game on GameFound that is launching in 23 days, which is a bit early to talk about now, but it's also another game that someone is bringing on the cruise that I'm keen to learn, and that's the old King's Crown.
Steven Chivers: So that's another one that if I play it and it's good, I can get it, which is nice because a lot of the games that are coming over are like, if I play it and it's good, I get to wait 11 months before I see it in a shop.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: that's So, yeah. Yeah.
Shane: And speaking of shops, did you buy anything in the sales? Christmas sales, Boxing Day sales?
Steven Chivers: Not really, actually. i didn't I didn't do a lot of board game shopping. I think the fact that we've got a big overseas holiday is and we've got this cruise coming up like in in a week is very much like you got to i gotta to I can't just go nuts and spend a whole bunch of money.
Steven Chivers: But I did i was down in Melbourne and I did go to Gameology. I picked up your copy of Nanatoridori. Yeah.
Shane: Oh yes, thank you for that.
Steven Chivers: ah But I also got, um actually, I got Jewel for Cardia, which I've just been playing a bit. That's a cool card game. it's And it's small enough that you could play it on a plane or at an airport or at a coffee table.
Steven Chivers: ah ah that Helen and I played it last night on a stable table. So it's it's this cool card game where it's a dueling game. You both reveal a card. Whoever has the highest number wins that round. Whoever has the lowest number gets to do the special ability on their card.
Steven Chivers: As Raphael sticks his head in, he's played that game. Yep, but yeah, so it's just a and it's a clever game because whoever has won five rounds first wins, but you can, the special abilities can sometimes change the result of previous rounds. So it's this continual up and down. So that was really cool.
Steven Chivers: What else did I get? i got I got given tag team for Christmas, but we still haven't played that yet. um Yeah, I didn't really buy anything big in the sales. What about you?
Shane: I just completed my Power Grid collection and I've got...
Steven Chivers: did see that.
Shane: I went nuts. went absolutely nuts with the Power Grid. Pretty much purchased every single map, all the upgraded cards, and the only map I now don't do not have is the Australian map.
Shane: So it's the only I miss.
Steven Chivers: How do you not have the Australia map of all the ones?
Shane: Well, it's the one that goes really quick. Oh.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, OK.
Shane: But I need Freedom Freeze to come out with a big box now for me to keep everything in.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, right.
Shane: And
Steven Chivers: Yeah, that's true.
Shane: I've got the Carl Chuddock game, Panda Spin. But I'm yet to play that.
Steven Chivers: Ah, cool. Yeah. Yeah, nice.
Shane: Big Carl Chuddock fan. Speaking of that chess game, I'm still hanging out for that chess game that he's doing.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, yeah. i'm I'm still keen for a game of innovation. I've got to learn that game.
Shane: Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll do that.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: That's it for me.
Steven Chivers: Fair enough. All right. Well, that might finish us up again, like a pretty yeah short one for the first one back, but I think we covered a lot. We didn't have a topic, so we kind of, well, yeah, actually, that's not true.
Shane: Yeah, we winged it.
Steven Chivers: We had topics, but you know what i mean. Normally we have some big deep dive thing that we didn't really do. It's just good to catch up again. I guess the one thing we should try and say is that we will attempt to be putting out episodes somewhat regularly this year.
Shane: Always good to catch it.
Steven Chivers: We did all right last year, but it gets harder the December, January times a year, obviously, but that's fine. We're not doing it for, we're doing it for ourselves. So yes, there might be periods of time throughout the year that we yeah we don't get many done, but yeah.
Steven Chivers: Bear with us. We still love talking about board games. And more importantly, we just like catching up because we didn't get a chance to see each other over the break this year, which was disappointing.
Shane: That's right.
Steven Chivers: but
Shane: yeah And, um you know, this is the whole reason why you and I do did create this this podcast was so that you and I can catch up. So, sorry, listeners, we're being a little bit selfish, but, you know, this is making Steve and I ensure that we're catching up.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, absolutely.
Shane: And, you know, we always say that's how we come up with the name of our podcast, mate, let's play. Only
Steven Chivers: Yeah, if only we could. We probably wouldn't.
Shane: we could.
Steven Chivers: If we were neighbours, we probably wouldn't do a podcast. We'd just be playing board games.
Shane: Yeah.
Steven Chivers: Yeah. All right, well, Shane, um have a great couple of weeks. We'll we'll we'll pick it up when upon my return. Although I am taking my mic with me, my um small mic, because um Eric is also coming on the cruise and he said that we'll do one we'll do an episode for his podcast on the cruise.
Steven Chivers: So theoretically, we could do an episode over the next couple of weeks if you're interested.
Shane: Dom, Dom, Dom. Say hello to Bonacore for me. I'm looking forward to meeting him one day.
Steven Chivers: Yeah.
Shane: He's a nice guy.
Steven Chivers: Yeah, he's a top bloke. He's in Brisbane at the moment, actually. So, yeah, he's they came out two weeks earlier. They did Sydney. They're up in Brisbane at the moment heading back to Sydney or other places. So, yeah.
Steven Chivers: You never know. You might pass him down the street. ah that that
Shane: You never know.
Steven Chivers: Not if you're working from home.
Steven Chivers: All right. Cheers, Shane.
Shane: Take care, mate.
Steven Chivers: Thanks. Thank you to everyone who's stuck it out and waited three months for our next episode. i hope you enjoy it and we'll catch you on the next one.
Steven Chivers: Yeehaw.
