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Episode 4: Gen Con Highlights
167 Plays1 year ago
The Board Members discuss Gen Con as an experience and several games they got to check out. Drew admits to passing on free Lorcana cards. Games discussed include Junk Drawer, Fromage, Sushi Boat, Paleovet, and Panic in Gotham City.
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Banter
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome once again to the Corner Game Table, a podcast about all things board games and the people who play them. This show is being broadcasted from the executive gaming lounge of Cloud City, high above the tabana gas mines of Bespin. I am Josh, one of your co-hosts here at the Corner Game Table, and I'm joined here tonight, this lavish, hollow table by the other board members, Andrew, Heather, and Chewbacca. I mean, Drew, how is everybody doing tonight?
00:00:46
Speaker
Good, good. Wow. It's really fancy now. Can I be Lando? Right. Yeah. All right, awesome. You should have put your cape on tonight for that. I know, I know, I know. Oh, but it looks so good. Oh, man. Missed opportunity. Right, next time. Yeah.
Heather's Game Experiences: Mother of Frankenstein
00:01:04
Speaker
So how's everybody been? Good, good. I didn't go to a show or anything fancy like that. I've been. Yeah, I have also not been to 37 shows since the last time we recorded. Some people can't say that. Right. Not only that, they got paid to go to shows, which is even better, which is the best way to do it, really. Whatever.
00:01:27
Speaker
That's what we keep telling ourselves. It gets me through the day, so. Right. All right. That's excellent. So what's everybody been playing? Oh, man. Ladies first. Heather. Heather, what do you got on? What's on your thing, Heather? Come on. Come on. OK. Well, I'll start off with what we finally finished last night, which was Mother of Frankenstein, volume three. There are three volumes in that game. Nice.
00:01:55
Speaker
Oh, we finally finished it. It ended with us building a 3D version of Berg Frankenstein. And I have to say, now that I've played all three, I think it is a wonderful experience for someone who likes storytelling. I think the story is really well made and really well put together.
00:02:17
Speaker
I think volume one is the best one to get your foot in the door with the game. Volume two has the fun jigsaw puzzle element to it. But the final puzzle volume two nearly killed me. I feel like
00:02:34
Speaker
The hint system wasn't as great as I wanted it to be. And then volume three honestly felt like we were just model making at that point. We were building the 3D castle and then you have to model make all the like roofs that go on the castle. Yeah. And there's this story part of the end where you're unlocking doors. I kind of wish there was more puzzle to volume three than there was.
00:02:57
Speaker
Um, but overall, I feel like the whole story that they continued through all volumes were great. Like we had a really fun time like reading that. Doing that together. I thought that was really good. My favorite would just be volume one. I think that was the best one that combined story and the right amount of puzzles. Um, so we finally finished that one.
Exploring Grandpa Beck's Games
00:03:18
Speaker
That's my arcane wonders. Um, and then another one that we got to the table that I really, really enjoyed.
00:03:25
Speaker
was The Bears and the Bees by Grandpa Beck. I hadn't played any of those games before, and I got to see the booth at Gen Con. Our good friend Josh Meeplehouse Games walked me over there and introduced me to them. And I got the spiel on all the different games that they had at the table, and they had to buy one, get one half off deal. And I was like, OK, well, which two am I taking home?
00:03:50
Speaker
And the minute he flipped over the bears and the bees and I saw this like the hexagon shapes that you're laying on the table, tile laying hexagon shapes with color matching patterns, I was like sold. You don't even have to tell me how you play this game. I'm buying it and I'm taking it home.
00:04:09
Speaker
And I love it. I think it's great. I think it's puzzling. It's fun. My son loved it. It's great for the kids to play to. And it has advanced variants that make it a little more challenging. And I have to say, I really like their whole like mantra because it's all like the whole families like involved in making the games. They've got the recipe in each of the boxes. Like nice. It's really cute. Like I like the company and I wish I had discovered them like before, before, you know, two days ago when I started playing the games.
00:04:39
Speaker
What was what was the other game you got? So we got the Bears and the Bees and we got Nuts for Mutts because that one's like an Uno style game. So I thought that one would be easier for my six year old to play with. We did on our side. We did a review for Cover Your Kingdom. Yeah, it's a kind of a re-theme of Cover Your Assets. It is very silly and there is a lot of puns in it and I appreciate Grandpa Beck's humor a lot.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was I was really, really impressed with just how fun the game is. And they have the whole story in the back about like, especially like the bears and bees was like about his grandpa who kept bees like I mean, there's a whole like story behind it. And then having grandma Beck's recipe in there like it's just a really cute
00:05:27
Speaker
package all together. So I'm definitely going to be getting more of their games. I know they've got the one with crumble cookies as well. And then everyone told me about Skull King. So there's like a lot that a lot more I want to check out. So good. Like you owe it to yourself to buy Skull King and just throw it in your bag when you go to a convention and then just be like, I don't know how to play this game, but we're all going to figure it out and get like 10. It's it's just really good.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, I was just so pleasantly surprised, and I really, really liked it a lot. So I'm excited to check out more of those games in the future.
Drew's Gaming Adventures and Underdog Games
00:06:01
Speaker
That's excellent. How about you Drew? Awesome possum. So before I, I'll go ahead and let you know, just going straight forward into it, we played a couple of underdog games, tabletop games, this past weekend.
00:06:17
Speaker
Let me just clarify on the story. We're kind of at a point as we are going throughout life, my wife and I, and throughout the pregnancy and whatnot. The one way that I can now convince her to play a game with me is to leave it out.
00:06:34
Speaker
I leave it out on the dining room table just right there. That's where we play our games. And I'll leave, I'll lay it out there probably around Sunday, Monday, somewhere around that timeframe. And come by Saturday, she's really ticked off at me because I've left it there. And she says, all right, I want to play. All right. I just want to beat you so you can put it up, get it out of the way.
00:06:56
Speaker
So that's my strategy for the last like month and a half now. And I really wanted to play these games that I got from underdog games. And it was her story, which we've already played before. I was like, let's play this, get warmed up as well. I know Danielle, who designed the game and it was really cool to get to know her, hang out with her at these conventions, things like that.
00:07:23
Speaker
And then the other one is trekking through history. So those are the couple of games that I was able to play very, very easy to learn and go with. You have to combination of what I believe, personally, I might be wrong in this and might have to look at board game geek about it, but the way, because this was the first time playing trekking through history.
00:07:46
Speaker
Um, I felt like it was a bit of a resource management type of game because you're also traveling through history and every card that you pick up, you receive that resource, but you also have to move your, um, little timer with each one. So you have to kind of be managing what cards that you pick up.
00:08:09
Speaker
Now I might have that completely wrong with what resource management is, but there is some sort of management that goes throughout the game and that is being sure to say, hey, I have to be careful with what I'm going to pick up because.
00:08:26
Speaker
you only get a certain amount per round. It's three rounds. It was a super quick game, probably played it in maybe 25 minutes or so, trekking through history. And her story is, I just, I love the whole setup of both of those games. The mat's very nice. The cards are very slick. Everything about those, both of those games are just absolutely wonderful. But those are the two games that I've actually played this past weekend. And so, Josh, thank you for asking.
00:08:58
Speaker
Danielle was actually the guest on our show last week. I actually saw that. Yeah, I saw that, too. I was like, hey, I know these two. Yeah, she shared some stories that I had to cut out of the recording. They were not quite family appropriate stories, but we laughed. So that's great. Yeah.
Josh's Game Highlights and QSCON
00:09:22
Speaker
Josh, you want to go or do you want me to go? How about you? All right. I played a lot. So we've been getting ready for QSCON, which is coming up in a couple of weeks out in Syracuse. It's hosted by Mike Giuliano of Third World Studios. He's got a whole kind of convention scene out there in Syracuse, and this is kind of the big convention of the year.
00:09:48
Speaker
This is just a playing con. There are there's a couple of like super small vendors, but it's mostly just for hanging out and playing games the whole family's going out. The family gamers is kind of like sponsoring and hosting like the kids area at the convention so it'll be a good time. So we've been boxing up games that we're going to put on the for sale table.
00:10:07
Speaker
And I have four sealed boxes behind me and at least two more that are filled with games that we just have to kind of process. But as part of that, we're doing our goodbye plays. Like we'll play it one last time. So we played a goodbye play of Tidal Blade's Heroes of the Reef.
00:10:26
Speaker
Super fun game. I don't know if you played title blades. It's just really big. And it's just a commitment. And you can see behind me, I have a lot of commitments on my Kallax. And at the end of the day, title blades was a commitment that we felt like we were kind of done making in order to play that game. So we did our final play of that. My 12 year old obliterated us.
00:10:49
Speaker
Um, which was great. I don't, I don't, you know, I mean, um, Ken Franklin from, you know, Calliope and some other things always says, I don't play the win. I played a grin. And, uh, I definitely feel that way when I'm playing games with my kids. So, um, yeah, we got crushed at that.
00:11:06
Speaker
Some other stuff we got in for review. I'll kind of talk about them super quick. We got a box from Hachette. This was Danny Lowe's pardon gift to us. Put this through the process right before she ran over to Flat River, which that was a total surprise. Although I guess it shouldn't be, but anyway. So we opened the box. There were four games in the box. It was Zombie Kids Flashback, Koala, CDSK, and Nautilus Island.
00:11:35
Speaker
We haven't played Don because flashback yet, but we have played Koala, CDSK and not all silent. I will talk about one of those for the sake of time. Which one do you guys want to hear about? Whichever one tickles your fancy.
00:11:50
Speaker
Josh, which one would you play again? I actually liked all three of them. I will say in the family community, the biggest questions were around Nautilus Island, so I'll talk about that. But I figured I would open it up to the hosts to see if there was something they were curious about. So Nautilus Island is this game where it's basically it's like a set collection game where you are trying to more or less play sets of colored cards. And so the Nautilus is a submarine.
00:12:20
Speaker
And I think it's a submarine. So it's on the board. And you lay cards out. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, maybe eight columns. The first two columns have one card and then stacks of cards, one stack. And then the second two have two stacks next to each other. So it's getting, and then the rest of them have three. So I guess it's only six, whatever.
00:12:47
Speaker
So every column has like more stacks of cards in it. And so what you do is you you will put your your little guy on let's say your everybody's placing on the top side of of the Nautilus. So you place your guy at the top side and then you can either play cards from your hand into your tableau equal to or less than the number of cards stacks in your column or you can pick up the top card of each card in the stack.
00:13:16
Speaker
And so everybody puts their guy down. You can't go to the same column as somebody else. Everybody does their stuff for a round, and then it switches to the other side, and then everybody does their stuff at the bottom. The game ends when, I think, two stacks run out.
00:13:32
Speaker
And the scoring conditions of the game are when you place your cards down, you can only create one set of each color in your Tableau. And so at some point, you're going to say, okay, I'm done with this color. I'm never going to play this color again into my Tableau. You take the porthole token that kind of
00:13:52
Speaker
finishes that color and you put that on your stack and it's like the top portal token is for a set of five is worth more than the second portal token for a set of five is worth more than the third token for a set of five, et cetera. So you're kind of incentivized to complete your sets faster than other people because as those tokens come off, it's like Baron Park or one of those games, as the tokens come off, they're going to be worth progressively less.
00:14:17
Speaker
And that's pretty much the game. It's a kind of cute little relatively simple set collection game. We played it my entire family, I think. I don't think my 14-year-old played, but like my 9-year-old played with us and, you know, he lost and that's okay. But, you know, it's a pretty easy to understand, cute.
00:14:36
Speaker
You know, cute little set collection game. The other game that we played that was not part of that Hachette thing was junk drawer from 25th century. This game, I want to play that one. It's so good. I love this game. We played that. I've seen it on. I've seen it on tables a couple of times, man. Excited about it. We were like, you know what? This looks pretty easy. Like it was the end of the night. We're like, the kids are finally in bed. My wife, we were both super sick this past week. I think we had covid. We're not really sure.
00:15:06
Speaker
But we're just like, does anyone know anymore? I know. Right. We were just like, but I but we also hadn't played a game in like a week and a half. And we're like, I just got to go get some do something. Right. So we we pull that junk drawer and we're like, this looks kind of easy. And then we played it three times in a row. That's awesome.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah, so the way Junk Drawer works is there are four, you have four different colored like quadrants and each one has kind of like a goal. Like you're going to get, you know, points for every like you're, I think it's a five, each one is a five by five grid. And so each one has their own different goal. And one of them might be like, you get two points for every one of the inner squares that's covered.
00:15:54
Speaker
That's the goal. So you kind of incentivize wherever you place things to put them in the middle. Or it could be one point for everything on the exterior, whatever. But the way the game works is Karuba-like. So you flip a card, and everybody has to place that item into one of their four things.
00:16:17
Speaker
You're going to go through four cards and you have to put one in each of the four. It's not like you can pile stuff into one of them and get it all set and then go on to the next one. You're forced to distribute. You just keep going through it. As soon as somebody cannot place a tile in their thing, because if you can place it, you have to. As soon as someone can't, the game instantly ends.
00:16:43
Speaker
It's just a fun simultaneous puzzle game. It goes super quick. The rulebook has a bunch of different... So there's a ton of these like goal cards, but the rulebook has certain things like end of the game as fast as possible. And here's the four goal cards you put out and basically you're kind of deliberately putting these polyominoes into these squares in a way that makes it
00:17:06
Speaker
impossible to put something in them later, right? So you're actually trying to end the game as fast as possible because you're getting points for empty space, not points for filled space. So it kind of like flips the normal kind of thing. But it's just, it's super smart. I mean, it's an inexpensive game. It's really fast. It's easy to understand. Big fan junk drawer, 25th century, good stuff. Very cool. Yeah, the game's good.
00:17:34
Speaker
Well, I have been going through a little bit of a culling process in our house.
Simple Dice Games: Tenzi and Strike
00:17:41
Speaker
It was suggested to be it was suggested to me by my wife not long ago that I start trying to figure out what games to get rid of suggested. So it was it was aggressively suggested I started figuring out which games I can live without.
00:17:58
Speaker
um she suggests things to you wow i get told so uh so what i've undertaken is uh i've started kind of stacking the deck when it comes to uh putting games out to play with my family and so what i'll do is i'll put a few games out that we legitimately are excited to play and i'll
00:18:21
Speaker
put a few games in that pile that are things that I think probably aren't going to be winners. But I feel like we need to at least get him to the table long enough to know that before I push it out the door. Right. And and so to that end, we've we've been playing some some games that we liked and then we played some games that we all agreed were we were happy to to send along their their merry way. So
00:18:45
Speaker
One of the games we played here recently was actually one that we picked up while we were on our summer vacation in Michigan and Wisconsin. We happened to stop at a little game store and we were looking around in there and
00:18:59
Speaker
There was a tube of brightly colored dice and my wife very uncharacteristically said, hey, that looks like a fun game. Why don't we get that? And I was like, well, now I have to buy it. So so I picked up the game. It was called Tenzi by Karma Games. OK, OK.
00:19:19
Speaker
And I see some heads shaking that I have experienced said game. I have looked at that game so many times. So just looked. Yeah, I have. I have played it and repurposed the dates from that game so many times. So I will say that it did surprise me a little bit when I when I finally cracked it open and went to read the instructions, I was like, no, no, this is this is it. This is really the instructions because it was literally like two paragraphs on a little slip of paper.
00:19:48
Speaker
Essentially, the way the game plays, it's literally there's four sets of colored, or four sets of 10 colored six-siders in the tube. And so it can be played by two to four people. And the premise, quite literally, is that you start with a handful of all 10 dice, and everybody starts at the same time, and you begin rolling dice, and you pick a number that you want to start rolling, and then you just
00:20:17
Speaker
As you start rolling dice, I'm going to take threes because I just rolled a bunch of threes. And you set those off to the side. And you keep rolling the other ones, trying to get threes. And the first person to get them all on the same numbered side wins the game. And that's literally all there is to it. And when I read the instructions, I was like, well, I don't think this is going to go over well. But I will say that that was a game that seemed to be more than the sum of its parts because I was surprised at how much my family had fun playing it.
00:20:47
Speaker
just the, you know, the frenetic pace of just rolling dice, trying to beat everybody else. I think it was just kind of a winner. There's not any strategy to it, obviously. But if you've got particularly younger kids that just like throwing dice on the table, it was actually kind of fun. We played it with my my four year old and my eight year old and my wife and I. And the little kids had a blast with it. And, you know, it wasn't anything I would ever.
00:21:15
Speaker
You know, jump to pull out and bring to the table, but it was exciting to it was exciting to play with with the little kids. And like Andrew mentioned a minute ago, you know, sometimes that's good enough, right? Sometimes I get enough excitement out of just seeing them excited. So to that end, it was you know, it was it was probably worth the 12 bucks I spent on it. So.
00:21:35
Speaker
But like but games like that, like Strike is a perfect example of an incredibly simple dice trucker that is super just like high energy, super fun, you know, easy to get in, easy to get out. So those I mean, roll for it. Another great example of that kind of a game. Those things are awesome. Those things are fine. People who say that aren't those aren't real board games.
00:21:55
Speaker
Well, and it even sounds like it would be a game. I mean, that would be a game I would put into a category of like my kids could pull that game out by themselves and play against each other. Like they they wouldn't need us. They could go ahead and play a game together.
00:22:07
Speaker
That is one of the best things like in the summertime when you walk out into the living room and like your kids are sitting on the floor playing a board game together. And they're like, mom and dad, you don't want to wake up mom and dad. But they're playing a board game. It's like, mm hmm. I've arrived. Yeah. Yeah. I have achieved my goal. It's going to take more than one, Drew. You're going to need more than one for that, though. Yeah. OK. OK. Or get them into solo games early. Right. Whatever it takes, man.
00:22:36
Speaker
And, you know, and Tinsley has a couple of variant rules where you can like there's one that we did kind of play there for a while where instead of just trying to roll the same number on all 10 dice as you roll this, the number that you're trying to get, you have to stack them one on top of each other. And if your pile of D6 is falls, then you have to start over again. That was kind of that was kind of fun with the older kids because there was a you know, there was a piece of dexterity added to
Review: Heroes of Metro City
00:23:03
Speaker
that. Right. And it was frustrating when you'd get
00:23:05
Speaker
eight of them stacked up and then they'd fall to the table. But yeah, that one was interesting. Another game that we got to the table that I've actually had for I don't know how long on my shelves was Heroes of Metro City. It was designed by David Bostrom and James H. Waller and published by Threesome Games.
00:23:28
Speaker
I believe it was Kickstarter only. I don't know that I've ever seen it in a store. I purchased it second hand at a some kind of a big trade day that I went to and it had been sitting on my shelf for several years and I decided I'd better get into the table once and decide if it needs to stay or go. Heroes of Metro City is a it's an interesting game. It's got a superhero theme and it is very much
00:23:58
Speaker
akin to the likes of Dominion and other first generation deck builders. The idea is that you take you take a number of piles of essentially superpowers and put them out on the table. You start with some very basic like I don't remember exactly what they were punches and kicks, that kind of kind of thing.
00:24:22
Speaker
And then as you start playing through the rounds, the basic cards that you start with, one type of them attacks and one type of them is your
00:24:32
Speaker
your currency that you use to buy the powers that are in the middle of the table. And so as the game progresses, you're collecting those cards and building your deck. And then there are three piles of villains. There's the overall boss that you're trying to beat. And then there's kind of a second tier villain. And then there's kind of the throwaway henchmen. And so as you play from round to round, if you have enough
00:24:58
Speaker
attack points to be able to take down one of those one of those guys then you can take them down and they actually
00:25:05
Speaker
rather than leaving the table, they go into your deck and they end up giving you some additional things to work with when that card comes back up, which was kind of interesting. The other thing that made it a little different was the three different types of villains attack every turn unless you're able to do something to negate their attack, right? And so you were able to, obviously, if you attack them in
00:25:32
Speaker
and hit them for a greater point value than their total hit points then they leave the table and don't get to counter attack but but there was also some things that you could do to work the system so that you blocked one of the particular types of villains that turns their attack didn't hit and what what kind of made it interesting is their attacks
00:25:53
Speaker
typically didn't do anything directly to you. What they did is they acted to whittle down the the piles in the middle of the table faster. And you lost the game if if a certain number of those power decks in the middle of the table got zeroed out and you couldn't continue. And so there was a little bit of an internal clock built to it, which was kind of interesting, was kind of an interesting next step onward from the typical Dominion deck builder style that you see.
00:26:23
Speaker
Having said that, we played through the game and kind of felt like it maybe outstayed its welcome a little bit. It it took every bit of, I think, an hour and a half to play, which was pretty long for a deck builder. And by the time we got to the end of it, we were just kind of wishing that the villain would kill us. Well, that's not good. Yeah, maybe maybe not the feeling that you're supposed to get out of it. But where'd the fun go? Yeah, exactly.
00:26:53
Speaker
So I don't know that I could put it up there with other better deck builders that have come along, but certainly the theme was there. And if you're interested in superhero games, it might be worth a try if you can find it.
00:27:05
Speaker
The last thing I want to talk about, we actually had a lock-in with the Boy Scout troop that I'm part of this weekend, and we got a chance to play a couple of simple games.
Dexterity Games: Garbage Day and Tumble Tree
00:27:19
Speaker
Garbage Day being one of them, published by Mayfair Games.
00:27:22
Speaker
It's a little game that comes in a trash can that you may have seen, a little plastic trash can. What makes it really interesting is it's literally what's inside the can is just a deck of cards. But the each of the cards has two small pilot holes drilled about two thirds of the way up the card.
00:27:41
Speaker
and so the idea is that the the theme of the game is that you are you're all slovenly kids basically who who continue to let garbage you know pile up in your rooms and
00:27:55
Speaker
And as you draw cards out of the main draw deck, one of the things that you have to do is play a card out to the trash can, put something in the trash. And that's accomplished by taking one of the cards in your hand, and you have to play it to the stack of cards that are on top of this open face trash can.
00:28:18
Speaker
in such a way that you can see down through those two little two holes and see the table on the outside of the trash can. So what that forces you to do is continue to put the cards just a little further out than the ones you're stacking them on. And it creates this big fanned out circle as you get going and.
00:28:36
Speaker
you're trying to basically not be the one that puts the card on there that makes half the cards fall onto the table, right? And so it's kind of a fun little dexterity game. And there's some back and forth with some strategy cards that are built in there where I can, you know, I can force Drew to take five or six cards that I've got into his, into his room. And if you're so messy, well, you know, I mean, as you would, right? And then I expect nothing less.
00:29:02
Speaker
All those things that I forced Drew to take might make his room so dirty that he had to then clean his room, which means he has to take everything that's in his room pile and stack them one at a time onto that trash can. And that usually ends up with more cards falling off of it. So it's a lot of fun, particularly if there's some kids involved. Just the dexterity element of it makes it a lot of fun. Man, love me a good dexterity game.
00:29:28
Speaker
Reminds me of we reviewed. I'm looking back. This is six years ago. Oh, my gosh. We reviewed a game called Tumble Tree from Blue Orange Games, which is very similar. It's it comes in a in a can. And basically you take the can and you put the cover on and then you have these these like
00:29:48
Speaker
almost circle ish kind of looking cards that you have to play on it and you're trying to create the canopy of a tree and you don't want, you know, you don't want it to fall off. So similar kind of idea. Interesting. Hmm.
GenCon Experiences and Insights
00:30:00
Speaker
Yeah, it has a fun light theme and, you know, all of the different things that you're trying to stack into the garbage are all like, you know, and, you know, moldy lunch meat or, you know, a dirty sweat sock. And so there was some there's some fun things there that, you know, kids like dirty gross things. And so that was fun.
00:30:29
Speaker
All right, so with that, we're going to talk a little bit about GenCon, which happened here recently, and several of us were there to experience it firsthand. So I'm getting a sad, dejected look from Andrew. I'm going to share that dejected look. So how was GenCon, guys?
00:30:52
Speaker
Oh my God. Um, so. Oh my God. I'm really going to go next year. Like I've been saying that for a decade. I'm really going to go next year.
00:31:02
Speaker
It was my it was my first time. I think it was yours, too, right? Yes, it was. Yes. Yeah, I a lot of people warned me about it and a lot of people were correct. It is very there were so many people. I think they said I at one point heard close to 90000 people. Like I heard it was like pre covid levels and beyond like. And of course, the fact that Lorkana was there didn't help anything.
00:31:31
Speaker
So, like, everyone was there for that and it was just, it was very overwhelming for me. Overwhelming, overstimulating. And I spent a good amount of time going back into the first exposure room where Wet's Games had a table where Drew and Josh and I would retreat to
00:31:55
Speaker
to get a breather because the vendor hall was just shoulder to shoulder people. One aisle going one way, the other side of the aisle with the people head in the opposite direction, and everyone's just shuffling along. That's what it felt like. That was my initial reaction to the entire thing. But I did like being able to see everyone. I feel like there were a lot of people there, like creators.
00:32:24
Speaker
all the publishers, of course, like it was cool to reconnect with everybody and get to meet people in person I still hadn't met yet in person from social media and different platforms like that. And of course, just get to see different games that were coming out because that's the place that a lot of games are finally like premiering or we could go and purchase them finally. So I mean, that was that was really cool being able to do that.
00:32:52
Speaker
But Drew, what was your initial reaction to Gen Con? It was exactly what I was just kind of expecting. I, you know, kicked a couple of those wagons that people would carry. I'd kept on trying my best to knock over anybody who wore an all play backpack. I tried to be really, really mean about it because I'm like, you're there's little space and you're taking up way too much with this, like just.
00:33:18
Speaker
Get a normal book bag, you'll be okay. Go home, order it online. You can do this. Anyways, but it was exactly what I expected. My experience was most of my meetings that I had was during the afternoon. Heather and Josh would come and relieve me from the table in the morning.
00:33:41
Speaker
And I would go and complete my meetings and go throughout the whole hall. And it was, it was a wild experience in itself, but I met so many wonderful people through the experience of it. There was just so much that could be done throughout the whole entire process. I thought, I thought, wow, there is just way too much to do. That's why, that's why I go into these things and I don't really plan anything.
00:34:08
Speaker
There might be two or three things that I plan at most, but I think it was, somebody told me, oh yeah, I've got something scheduled every single hour. And I said, I can't do that. I'm sorry. I can't attend these conventions and just be overbooking myself into just every single way. I just, I can't do that. And so I was able to enjoy a whole lot more time
00:34:34
Speaker
just being able to attend my meetings as well, get to see what's out there, get to see the cool things that I could see and see all the fun creative boots that people were able to put out there. I wish I could have gotten to play more games, but overall, it was a great experience.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely heard that this was the convention. People were like, you're not going to be playing any games, really, because it is more about like, go, go, go. There's people have lots of meetings. So there's really not a lot of gameplay, especially if you're there for work, especially or like a content creator or anything like that.
00:35:14
Speaker
You're just too busy kind of like going around and there's just too much going on. I think I only played two games total the entire time. And they were both on the very last day. And Heather also eventually forgave me, too. That's and that's another thing. She forgave me. She sat there and watched. I had a friend of friend of a mutual friend of ours. He sat there, pulled it out of his backpack and said, hey, do you want this whole box of Lord Lorkana cards? And I was like, no, I'm good.
00:35:44
Speaker
And Heather was sitting there the whole time and was like, what is wrong with you? Why are you not taking this? This is an opportunity to make some money, because clearly everyone else was a Genkana. Right? I have morals, okay? I'm not going to scalp it and sell it on eBay. I'm sorry. All that Lorkana stuff is just gross. It is. It is. Wild. Not the game, the people acting in a gross way. I have no opinion about the game at all.
00:36:12
Speaker
Agreed. Yeah, completely agreed. Well, and just watching some of the videos that were coming out from from Gen Con, you know, just the length of that line just to stand in line to spend your money. You know, it's not like it was on sale. It was for sale. It was not on sale. Right. And people stood in line for hours just to get whatever they could get out of it. And then, yeah, I just out of curiosity, I got on eBay the
00:36:39
Speaker
The first day Gen Con was over just to see what Lorkana stuff was on there. And I mean, that's the promo cards. Those promo cards were were way up there in price. It's just I don't know. Yeah, it was it was wild. I was kind of glad that. Yeah, I really didn't care about that going into. Oh, absolutely. Because people people were lining up like the night before.
00:37:01
Speaker
Um, just to get in the line. Uh, for me, the highlights, I mean, I had games that I definitely wanted to go check out and I still missed some like junk drawer was there, but I totally completely missed that one. I made sure I got diced veggies, you know, went by KTVG and got that. I was like, I had, that's a must buy. Um, I didn't get wild tiled West. That was one that I really wanted to grab from dire. I'm excited about that.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, I heard a lot about that game a lot of people such a cool-looking game. I mean if you just say polyamino, I'm like, here's my money And then you put Cowboys on top of that I Have have any of you total aside have you any of you played the magnificent I
00:37:46
Speaker
I cannot say that I have. That is another polyomino game that people have talked about. And a friend of mine just messaged me earlier today and was like, hey, want to come over on Friday and play The Magnificent?
00:37:56
Speaker
See, there's another one I need to add to my list. No, I think, but for me, I think my highlights probably of Gen Con were I got to meet Matthew Lillard, which was very exciting for me. Yeah, it was super exciting. The first day I had my I did have a meeting right in early in the morning before the doors even opened.
00:38:21
Speaker
to the vendor hall, and so they were able to kind of get me in with an exhibitor badge, the booth, so I could get in before the rush, because that was just also another wild thing to see. They're like crowds of people just waiting to get into the vendor hall in the morning. I got shoved. I got a box. I got knocked with a box at one point, like someone just not even carrying a walking on through the crowd.
00:38:42
Speaker
But I got in, I had my meeting first thing, and then I just walked around a corner and, um, Beatle and Grimm's is his company with his friends. They make high-end RPG accessories. Oh, I didn't know he was involved in that. Yeah. Um, it's like him and his friends created it a while back, um, cause they all play together and they wanted to create their own company. And I've been talking to them anyway and have meeting meetings with them before. But when I walked over there, I just want to say hi. And then he's like standing right there.
00:39:12
Speaker
I was like, Matthew Lillard. Oh, my God. I was so excited and totally like fangirled on him. It was like, I love 13 ghosts. But he's super nice and super chill. And he was like just helping to sell the products at their booth. And I didn't ask for a photo because I didn't want to be extra weird.
00:39:33
Speaker
Did either of you go to that Clark Gregg, what's that YouTube channel? Corey Thompson's from the Dice Tower, his above board TV. They did like some kind of a show and they had a bunch of like famous people including Clark Gregg. Yeah, there were a lot of like different events going on during the week. I mean, there was so much happening that I really,
00:40:00
Speaker
couldn't even find the time to fit everything in. And the tickets for all the things we're selling out to you for all the different like shows and live events because Matthew was there because and not only because he was there for Beatle and Grimm's but then they did like a live RPG thing like showing off a Beatle and Grimm's content that they
Infinite Rabbit Holes: AR Escape Room
00:40:19
Speaker
have.
00:40:19
Speaker
But then another thing I got to do, which was really exciting, my highlights were checking out the Infinite Rabbit Holes game, which is that Arkham, Panic in Gotham, Panic in Gotham City. It's like an escape room in a box with puzzles and board game and storytelling, and it's got the AR, like augmented reality bit to it.
00:40:44
Speaker
And it was really, really cool. Yeah, it's designed by magicians and ex-imagineers and people in the film and TV industry. And so I got to kind of go over there and preview that and check it out. And they showed me that, you know, holding the iPad, like looking at these. They had a spot on the table where they had the board game out. And then there's a whole bunch of puzzles and things that you're kind of cycling through. Basically, Harley is back at Arkham as a doctor, as a psychiatrist.
00:41:12
Speaker
And Joker is leading you down this path and you're opening all these different files and papers and documents and solving puzzles and and you hold the iPad up to this like 3D model of the city and there's a couple of buildings on the board, but then all these other buildings appear and you've got like helicopters.
00:41:29
Speaker
flying around in like train cars going through the city in front of you. And at one point you like set this document on the ground on the floor. It prompts you to set this document on the ground from Gotham Police Department. And in front of you, this whole like telephone booth just like pops up from the ground and you can walk inside the telephone booth, like put gears on the wall of the telephone booth. Like it's just wild what you could do in a game. Sounds like it.
00:41:58
Speaker
I was so excited. I'm a huge Batman nerd anyway. So like the whole thing, escape room puzzles Batman. I'm like, I love this already. So that was like my favorite thing, I think I got to see. And they're just really great people as well. So who published that?
00:42:15
Speaker
Infinite Rabbit Holes is the company. They had it on Kickstarter for a little while. Yeah, I was just about to say, you know, I when that was on Kickstarter, my wallet was jumping onto the key. Right. And I talked myself out of getting it because I was like, you don't need another Batman game. You own most of them. Right. And and I was thinking, you know, that one may be real hard to get to the table and I don't know who I'm I'm going to play it with. But after you talked about it just now,
00:42:42
Speaker
My my FOMO now is way better. It is so cool. There's like 50 percent. Yeah, it's like 10. I think they said it's like 10 to 12 hours of gameplay. Like it's a huge thing. It's from what I gather. There is some one play element to it, but they're also creating more stuff that can be added on to it because the AR allows them to, you know, once you've solved it. OK, maybe now something else you've uncovered and now you're using the AR and the box looks different, you know.
00:43:11
Speaker
in a different way or the files you can scan in a different way and they'll trigger different things to happen. So like there is room for them to add more to it, which I think is cool.
00:43:19
Speaker
I'm looking it up now. I remember this. I also remember the price tag and the reason why I forgot about this. That was the reason I passed on it. I was looking at the price tag too and it does have a payment plan, which is always like a, okay. Yeah, my board gave me the payment plan. I am going in a different direction and it's not a commentary on the quality of the game in any way, shape, or form. Right. It's my election to do things like put food on the table.
00:43:43
Speaker
Right, right. Well, I will, I will be, I will let y'all know. I will be getting a copy of it because I will be collabing with them. Awesome. You lucky dog. I will let y'all know. Boo, boo this woman, boo. No, no, man. I'm joking. Go you, girl, go you. You got to let us know if it's good, if it is. I will. Chase it down. I'm so, I mean, I'm definitely like puzzles and all that is definitely my forte. So I'm very excited to see
00:44:13
Speaker
how it all works. I'm seriously, I was joking. I am very excited to hear what you have to say about it.
Queen by Midnight: Deck-Building with a Twist
00:44:21
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, that was my number one thing that I saw at Gen Con. I also got to see Queen by midnight, which was very popular by Darington Press. That was another thing that surprised me was so many games at Gen Con were just like selling out. And a lot of companies kind of pasted out like they'd have so many copies per day and they'd sell out. So you have to come back the next day to try to get it.
00:44:46
Speaker
Um, but there were a lot of them that didn't do that and just like sold out like day one. And I know a couple of them had distributors, I think in Atlanta and like warehouses and were able to get stuff on trucks and truck them down overnight, Friday night to like, wow, have more on Saturday.
00:45:03
Speaker
Yeah, there was a whole thing from, was it PSI? Where they got a whole bunch of their customers together and was like, who wants what? And they're like, that's cool. That's the feel good stories, right? I know that one's all business, but still. But still. Yeah. It's getting more games in the gamer's hand, right? Of course. Great.
00:45:22
Speaker
But yeah, Queen of my Midnight is like a deck building game because you were talking about like deck. It's deck building style and you're all competing. You're princesses of the 12 lands competing to be the queen by midnight because the queen is dead. And so there's all out battle to kind of battle each other using your different tactics and your cards.
00:45:41
Speaker
to be the last one standing. So I almost was like, this is like pretty, pretty princess, but like adults. The dark side. Yeah, it's like beefed up, you know. And it has this really cool like clock tower that is the turn tracker. The clock on it is the turn tracker, but it's also a dice tower and it holds the cards for the marketplace. You like build it and construct it.
00:46:06
Speaker
Um, but it's, yeah, it's a critical roles board game through Darington press. Um, so I got a sneak peek at that as well. Um, and that one just looked really cool. Cause I do like deck building games as well. So I thought that would, the art was gorgeous too. Um, so I'm very interested to see how that one plays. Hmm.
GenCon Game Purchases and Booth Highlights
00:46:24
Speaker
So for those games you wanted, I assume you just, uh, made drew go stand in line overnight so that he was first one in the door so you could get all that stuff. That was it. That was the deal. So.
00:46:34
Speaker
That's how I'm treated around here, so it's all right. Right. You're the you're the line holder. I didn't actually get any games that like sold out. I wanted wizard kittens and I never got it because it sold out so fast. Hmm. I didn't get many games from my hall at Gen Con. I think I probably got at most maybe five, about three of them I got for free just because I won contests or somebody knew me, wanted to collaborate with me.
00:47:02
Speaker
and then two of them I bought myself. And so I was like, hey, that's how that goes. The one that I was excited about was Sushi Boat by Japanime Games. I'm very excited. Oh, it's so cool. And so it's like the little, what am I trying to think of? It's just like a little, you know, you're at a- Like a revolving sushi. Yes, revolving sushi bar, I guess is the word I'm looking for. And so the conveyor belt. I've never been to one of those. I've wanted to go to those. I've never been to one. They're so fun. And so it's so cool how they got the pieces together to make it look like that.
00:47:32
Speaker
wood, plastic, sold me on it. The guy just said, hey, look, watch this, and then just pushed it. And I said, yeah, I want it. Give it here. I'm a simple man, but that was really it for me. The one that I eyeballed and I said, my wallet will not allow for such a thing was kingdom death monster.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's a pretty high ticket item, isn't it? I know. I saw I saw it and I said, oh, this looks beautiful. Oh, that price is pretty hefty. Never mind. It can be as pretty as it wants to from over there. And so that's how that kind of worked. But Heather, here's an interesting question I have for you. Yeah.
00:48:17
Speaker
Who had the best booth at Gen Con? That's a good question. Because people spent some money on those booths. I saw the lay of the land on a couple of people's videos and there were some pretty impressive ones. The one that you could see from everywhere was the eBay booth. Wasn't it eBay that had the giant dragon at the top? Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
00:48:41
Speaker
I was like, what are they doing here? That one was the, that wasn't the tallest one. It had this giant dragon at the top of it, which I thought was really cool. Gosh, I think Cosmos had the one I could walk around in the most without feeling kind of like cramped with everybody. They had a lot of space in their booth.
00:49:03
Speaker
What were they featuring? Because I I used to do a ton of work with Cosmos and then Tom left for. So they had all the advent calendars there. I did go over there because I had a meeting with court because they keep me in exit games. But they yeah, they had the advent calendars they had. Oh, they had the Lord of the Rings game and my island. So there's a Lord of the Rings game. I did get both of those. When you say the Lord of the Rings game, you don't mean the exit box.
00:49:33
Speaker
No, no, I know. There's a Lord of the Rings. I think it's like adventure to Mount Doom in which you're starting in Rivendell with the characters and you're rolling dice. And there's there's different color dice. Each color represents one of the members of the fellowship. And then you have these two black dice that you roll. And those determine there's like cards at the bottom of the board. So depending on what location you're currently, your fellowship is currently at like you start in Rivendell. So there's a Rivendell deck.
00:50:02
Speaker
you divide it out into like, I think there's like six or seven cards at the bottom of the board and those black dice will trigger two of those cards in the bottom and they're either allies or they're foes that you have to fight. The allies give you like one use things that you can do but you're just trying to make your journey to Mount Doom and you start in Rivendell and then each location you get to
00:50:26
Speaker
Once everybody gets there and the ring bearers get there, you get to clean out the deck on the bottom, pick up the new location deck, spread it out. It's really, really creative in the gameplay and the mechanics of it. And my husband and I got to try it out at Origins. And so we finally got a copy of it in the mail along with my island. So I know those are the two like big ones. And then they had like their up and coming advent, big advent calendar out.
00:50:56
Speaker
Super cool. Super cool. What about you, Drew? What was the booth that you thought was the most interesting? Oh, gosh. I didn't know that question was going to get turned around on me. Okay.
00:51:10
Speaker
Well, it really depends on which one that you want to talk about with that had the most people at it had this or that. It just really depends on what it was. The there were several of them that I thought were very interesting. The Doomlings one was very interesting. I don't know if you saw that. So they have an actual wheel that you can spin with lights and sounds and all this fancy stuff.
00:51:35
Speaker
where you had like a scavenger hunt they had that too yeah yeah they had that too i heard about that they were very creative with their marketing on that the next one i would say is kess entertainment uh and so uh or is it kesco um i apologize i'm maybe wrong in that but um they do a lot of games that are based around
00:52:00
Speaker
Older nostalgic video games, TV shows, things like that. One comes to mind is a board game about Mega Man.
00:52:09
Speaker
So I think that's pretty cool. But their booth was, you know, had all of their games that were laid out and how they're all packaged just like an old Nintendo cartilage game. It's super cool. Right. Super cool. That's cool. The the final one, I'll say, was just simple. And that's just because he's a he's he's a friend of mine. He has to two of his games right there and showed all the stuff right there. And I loved.
00:52:36
Speaker
How open and wide that it was, just spacious. You could walk around in the booth, everything of that sort. And that would have to be Pine Island games. Jasper and his games were there. He had just got Sigil out as well.
00:52:51
Speaker
uh he was showing off nut hunt too so these are all super cool uh publishers and games for people to just kind of check out but also the booths were just so nice and that's the word i'm just going to use they were so nice and so catchy and quick for people to be able to
00:53:10
Speaker
go up to be able to have a good conversation have some fun all types of different things as well get to see the games on display so that was yeah that was my takeaway with the people who had some of the best boots of course i i didn't stay too long to look at the boots and things like that because you had to move with the crowd whether you liked it or not you couldn't linger very long trying to swim upstream yeah
00:53:37
Speaker
I think by like 11 a.m. the first day, I was like, oh, no, because I was thinking I'm not going to be able to make as much content as I thought I was going to. No, no. Did you guys get over to Lucas Oil at all?
00:53:49
Speaker
I did not. I like never made it over there because apparently it was kind of a trek to get over there. But I saw a lot of pictures and videos of it and it looked so cool. We had some friends over there that were demoing their games. Like one first games was over there. Sparky was over there with his game, Drew, I know. Yes. Apothecary.
00:54:12
Speaker
I couldn't find a way to get over there. They were all like, hey, come on, come on. How do I get over there? I would love to go, but how do I get there? You have to go Batman style across the rooftop. I think it was the last show I was in Indianapolis, which was two weeks before Gen Con.
00:54:31
Speaker
or a week before Gen Con. And so I saw, I drove by Lucas while I was like, bye. You're gonna be really busy in a week and a half. I was surprised too at how many babies there were at Gen Con, like baby babies.
00:54:50
Speaker
This has gotta be so overstimulating for these babies. They have a rule, I think it unplugged, where you're not supposed to have a stroller in the actual area. Did they have that at all? I don't remember seeing a lot of strollers. I did see some strollers, but not a lot. A lot of people were just wearing the babies. I'm just gonna be honest, I didn't notice. I'd get tunnel vision and be like, I gotta get inside to the vendor hall.
00:55:20
Speaker
Well, I described it. I felt like the vendor hall, I kept describing it like especially to my husband. I said it felt like walking in there. I had to have a plan as to who I was going to see. And then I was getting out because it felt like going to the grocery store without a list walking around in there. That is the best way to describe it. I would get so distracted. Yeah.
00:55:42
Speaker
And I was like, nope, I just need to look for the numbers.
Navigating GenCon: Challenges and Strategies
00:55:45
Speaker
And I'm like, I got to go way over there and then see who I got to see. And I'm getting out. For every show, that's like my saving grace is I only care about like games that I could play with my family. Like they're not necessarily family games. I say this all the time. But it's like there is almost nothing from Japan to make games that I'm going to play with my kids, for example. So I just like I respect them as a publisher. They do their thing. But like.
00:56:09
Speaker
Nope. Right. Like, I just don't. Right. You know, so I can skirt a lot of plays, a lot of publishers just just because of what we choose to cover. I mean, you were you were really moving with the crowd and I felt like there were so many times that I go by someone's booth with the crowd and I like couldn't make it over there. And we just lock eyes and I'd wave and just keep going because I couldn't like.
00:56:38
Speaker
I'll try to come back. I don't know. There's probably no such thing as stopping in the aisle and talking. No.
00:56:49
Speaker
Oh, I gave those people, whoever stopped in the middle, I'd always give them the dirty looks. I'd just be like, get out of there. I would assume if you did that, Drew would be right behind you, just pushing you and telling you to keep going, right? Come on, get on. I do want to know, Drew, what were the games that you got to play? All right. I only played two. What were the ones you got? You go first. Okay.
00:57:10
Speaker
Uh, oh, wow. I am going to have to look up what that game was. Our European team, one of the members over there brought a game back from Pegasus from Pegasus. And the thing is, is it's a game that they're hiding because they're quietly ashamed of it and they don't want to say it, but they are because there's so much wrong with the box.
00:57:36
Speaker
but the game itself was actually really fun. So I'm going to have to go back and look that one up. I just totally lost that one. No, it's not. It's not. It's, it's, it's just one that they're like, Oh yeah, we have that game. Yeah, it's there. Um, let's see. That was one of them. The other one was, uh, I got to play, I'm pretty sure I got to play sirens again, either that, or I watched Matt with envy born games.
00:58:03
Speaker
play it cuz that was that was it the other thing was if you if heather if you remember west uh-huh he is helping out and helping create this game called i think it's claw i think is the game yeah that's the game
00:58:19
Speaker
Uh, I didn't get to technically play that, but I watched and looked at how he described how to play it. And it looked so good. And the one game that I am very upset that I didn't get the chance to play was with wonder boat games and it was kelp. And what the thing is, is they were right beside the what's their table was like right beside the what's games table. So
00:58:42
Speaker
I got the I missed the chance to play it, but I got to watch and see how it is played, how it goes down. And I thought that was super cool was seeing how that was played. So again, I don't feel like I got to play a lot of games, like I said, but I learned a lot of games and it's made me interested. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to check out claw. Yeah, I'm going to check out kelp. I'm going to.
00:59:04
Speaker
Definitely try to back that, but Heather, you go ahead with yours. I'm going to look up this game that I played with me. I only got to play two. I got to play test. R2i wrote to Infamy who did Canvas, the Canvas games. They're coming out with a new one called Fromage.
00:59:23
Speaker
and I got to play that. It's like a mid-weight. Yeah, it's like a mid-weight euro worker placement and the board in the middle is four quadrants like a cheese. It's round and it like rotates. It spins like Planet Unknown.
00:59:40
Speaker
like a big wheel of cheese. Yeah. And you get to play on your so whatever quadrant is facing you is the one you play with on your turn and everybody plays simultaneously. You play your little cheese, your little cheese pieces and then they have these little
00:59:57
Speaker
quadrant little cheese triangle things with little meeples on top of them that you place over your cheese that you place. And then once you're done, God, I have to own this. It's really cool. Once you're done placing your your workers, then you spend the entire board. So then you're working in the next quadrant. But you also have like your creamery in front of you. So you can like earn resources as well. You can earn, you know, cows, you can earn milk, you can earn fruit.
01:00:25
Speaker
to then get more points in the game. So it's very thematic. It has a lot of moving parts. And at first, I was thinking, oh, this is going to be kind of a lot. But you really are just concentrated on that one quadrant that's in front of you, which I think really helps for decision making. And so you're not having to think about the other ones. And as you're spinning, the little like,
01:00:51
Speaker
pieces that are the triangles that had the little meeple people on top of them. Whenever you spin the board, you look and if any of your player pieces are pointed towards you, you get to collect them and then you get to use them on the on your next turn. So the placement of it, the mechanics are really cool. So I get to play test that. I'll also be doing that one on my Twitch stream next month. It'll be launching on Kickstarter. And then I finally got to play
01:01:19
Speaker
What's the the Tokyo train roll it flippin right? With Tokyo. OK, OK. There's a London one and then this is the Tokyo one. But it's like a flippin right game.
01:01:35
Speaker
And I can't think of what it's called. I don't know if it's next station, London. Yes. Yeah, that's what it is. Yes. Next station, Tokyo. I got to play that one. And that one was actually really cool. It was I think I I played it at a point in the evening where my brain didn't want to work anymore. But
01:01:53
Speaker
That's me at like 7 p.m. every night. But I was like just trying to grab onto what I could like understand. And then apparently, because I haven't played the London one, apparently the London one is much easier. So like people were like, now that you played the Tokyo one, London's going to be so easy for you to play.
01:02:13
Speaker
So I but I I really like flipping rights. I like rolling rights. I like flipping rights. And I had been wanting to try one of those because that's on BGA as well as the London one. So I wanted to be able to know how to play them. And so I did get to play that one, which was pretty fun. All right, Drew. All right. I got it. I found it. I got it. It is called Pray Another Day now.
01:02:38
Speaker
It is about, it's a bluffing card game about animals coming out of hibernation and hunting those who are still hibernating. So it's a really fun game where you just basically place your cards face down and then it goes into a sequence of who wakes up and who's going to eat slash hunt who. So for example, the animals are a bear, a wolf, a lynx, an owl, and a mouse.
01:03:09
Speaker
Now each of those animals has a certain point to it, but first off it'll be the bear that wakes up and whoever plays the bear, they flip their card over and then they're asked, okay, what animal are you hunting? And then they'll name off an animal and anyone who's played that, they're going to get points from that person that played that animal.
01:03:34
Speaker
So the mouse is going to be the highest. Of course, the bears zero points, but so the lowest will probably be either the bear or the wolf. So that was a really fun game. It was played really quickly. Fifteen minutes. The reason why they're not really pushing it from what I remember looking at it, the art is very strange on it. The box had a lot of misspelled words on this and everything. There was so much.
01:04:02
Speaker
that you could visually look at and say that's something there's something wrong here but you could also sit back and say the game is pretty good so if you enjoy bluffing games that that one is a really good one that I enjoyed it was quick simple and it just kind of went from there first one that I think it was 10 15 points was the winner so it was a very quick game and just simply a lot of bluffing and social deductions and the stuff that I enjoyed the stuff that I
01:04:31
Speaker
like to do because lying's fun, kids. Do it more. And I assume that's pray another day, P-R-E-Y, right? It depends on what side of the box you're looking at. That was a good joke. That was a good joke, Drew. You're welcome.
Upcoming Games and Content Plans
01:05:07
Speaker
All right, well, with that, I think we're going to talk a little bit about what we've got in front of us the next couple of weeks. What's going to be coming to your table, Heather?
01:05:16
Speaker
Well, we got a bunch of different games, obviously still Gen Con trying to work through our Gen Con games. We're going to try to get Wild Realms to the table. That's my Daywalker Syndicate. It just fulfilled. It was on Kickstarter, just got fulfilled.
01:05:39
Speaker
But they, it's a beautiful, beautiful card game in which you are trying to lock your playing animal cards to different realms. There's like an air realm, a water realm. You have four realms at the top of your board, you have an alliance of animals at the bottom. And you're playing cards either to the realms or to your alliances.
01:05:59
Speaker
and your animals in your alliance can attack other people's realms. It's one that I didn't think I was going to enjoy as much as I did and I got to play at a Dice Tower East and really enjoyed it and I got a copy of it at Gen Con and I'm excited to get it to the table to show my husband because I think he'll really enjoy that one. I think it'll be a fun one for him and my son actually really liked it at Dice Tower East too.
01:06:25
Speaker
I think that'll be a good one for the three of us to play together. Um, yeah. How about you, Andrew? Oh, so much. Um, so we, uh, why I mentioned we've got a convention coming up in a couple of weeks, a little small convention. So I'm really looking forward to getting a lot of, um, shelf of opportunity stuff to the table at that one. Cause it's just playing games all weekend, right? So we're just going to abandon responsibilities for three days and you know, be kind of stupid. But, um,
01:06:55
Speaker
So, Fireside Games sent us the Castle Panic big box. I might have talked about it on the show a little bit ago. I don't remember. It's not the deluxe crazy one, but it's the big box. Not the one that I'm using as an ottoman right now, because it's okay.
01:07:12
Speaker
But so it's it's coming up in a couple of weeks. We're going to do our kind of big content release for that. So I've got three pieces of content that are coming out that week on the website. Plus, we're actually going to be doing an interview show with Justin and Amory Dewitt.
01:07:28
Speaker
So that's pretty exciting. So there's going to be a lot of castle panic in our future, including the crowns and quests or quest and crowns expansion, which is the latest expansion. I can never get the name right. So I'm really excited for that because that you know, the first three expansions add stuff to the game, but don't really change the primary dynamics of the game. And this one really does. And so I'm really excited to get that to the table.
01:07:51
Speaker
We just released a review for Unmatched Marvel Team Spirit with Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel, which is super, super fun. So we're pivoting to Ra from 25th Century Games. We're going to be playing the heck out of that one. Nice. Yeah. And then there's another game that's hitting Kickstarter soon called Running Out of Time. Again, another thing I might have mentioned on the show, this is from Jay Cormier, who
01:08:17
Speaker
He did mine management, he did Harrow County, Harrow County. Belfort. He does all the fail faster stuff if you're into Borgian creation stuff and all, that's his thing.
01:08:33
Speaker
Running Out of Time is a board game in which the metagame of the game is working on game design stuff. So the first chapter is a basic roll and move game. And then it's like a book that you literally read through. So you're reading a plot. And then there's a game. And then there's a bunch of stuff that kind of walks you through how do you modify this game to add decision space for players? Because right now all you do is roll or die and then do what it says.
01:09:01
Speaker
And so you're playing a game while you're making a game or designing a game or editing the game that's in the book. So there's going to be hitting Kickstarter in probably like four to six weeks. I think the preview links already kind of floating out there. So we're playing a bit of that as well.
01:09:16
Speaker
these days and definitely going to be playing some more of that. I'm playing that with my 12 year old. Star Trek Cryptic, another one that we're two missions into. We've got one more to go. I think I see the Indiana Jones version on Heather's shelf.
01:09:32
Speaker
Have you played any of that yet? We have not yet what we're getting what we're planning on doing is That'll be coming up when I get back from PAX West. We're gonna watch the movies Okay, and then play cuz there's like one in there for each of the movies. Okay. So yeah, we're gonna watch the movie then solve work on the one for that movie and then okay Yeah, the Star Trek that way one is I mean, it's very Star Trek, but it's not
01:09:56
Speaker
tied to a specific plot in that way. I'd say anything bad about Indiana Jones, because I love Indiana Jones, but the world is a bit richer in the Star Trek universe. So there's a little bit more scaffolding to build, to kind of put on that. But yeah, so we've got another scenario of that that we're playing as well. And you know what is on our shelf that we got that we still haven't gotten to the table as Disney animated?
01:10:20
Speaker
I was so excited to get it, and it's other stuff. Same. Same. It's crazy. But I expect a lot more junk drawer as well. A game is just so easy to play. So yeah, kind of a lot, I guess. But I actually took a day off of work this week, and my kids are going back to school. So the first day that they're in school, I'm going to let my wife have the day. And then the second day, Thursday, I took the day off, and just the two of us are just going to sit around and do nothing.
01:10:51
Speaker
But hopefully play some games. That'll be nice. That's a that's a great place to play some games. Yeah. How about you, Drew?
01:11:00
Speaker
The two that I have to play for both reviews and just because I want to, it's going to have to be Sushi boat by Japan to make games. And I'm looking forward to that one just because I have no idea how to play. It just has some really cool looking pieces to it. And I'm very excited that that's all that gets me again. I'm a simple man. The next one is going to be token tears battleground by terrible games.
01:11:29
Speaker
independent publisher and very very intrigued by this because it's a two-player game where you are drafting an army of 10 token terrors and you're compiling it together
01:11:46
Speaker
to battle each other in a seven by seven battleground grid. There's a lot of stuff that's gonna be mixed into it. There's gonna be decisive choices, action point management, area control, pressure lock. There's a lot of stuff that's gonna actually be looking into that. And I'm just looking back at what
01:12:05
Speaker
what I was told it was like. And I'm very excited because all of those mixed together is going to be super cool. And I look forward to it. I did an unboxing of it last month and this I'm going to finally get it to the table. It's just been an absolutely rough month.
01:12:23
Speaker
to try and get some games in. And so I am just so excited to have at least some sort of normalcy, normal, something normal going forward somewhat, somewhat. So I say that with baby going to be here at any point in time. Right. Yeah. Your life is about to be thrown into some turmoil.
01:12:47
Speaker
Oh this is such a great encouraging podcast so there we go. No it rules man. Do you know if you're having a boy or a girl? Have we asked you that question? Yeah we're having a boy. Alright. Yeah, yeah we are. Congrats. Thank you, thank you. It took a, we were, I was actually hoping that it would be a girl because I was like, we've got like
01:13:09
Speaker
four generations of my family where the first born is always a boy. And so I thought this is going to be it. I'm going to break it. Uh, no, didn't happen. So we spent about six months trying to figure out a name and fighting over a name. So very, very excited. We finally came up with a name, uh, about, you know, two, three months ago. So very excited.
01:13:33
Speaker
I will tell you that newborns do sleep a lot. So you're going to have a lot of time where you guys are just going to kind of be able to hang out and like you could play stuff while the newborn sleep. My husband and I always pick. We always picked up. We pick TV shows when our kids were all newborns. We would pick a TV show and we'd start. We'd binge something from the very beginning. You know, that's how we made it through like all, you know,
01:14:00
Speaker
were currently caught up on SVU. We watched every single one of them. Wow, that's a lot of TV. That is. That's an investment. Well, that was our son. He's 10 now, and we started that when he was born. So like. Yeah. Holy cow. I will say that until your kid can walk or crawl, you got time, man. You do have time. This is encouraging. OK, that was a sincere comment. No, they do. Yeah, I mean, they sleep a lot when they're newborns.
01:14:29
Speaker
I look forward to it. Look forward to it. Drew's going to call Heather at two in the morning. What am I doing? Who said I was going to do that, Andrew? I might call you, so. You don't know my phone number. That's true.
01:14:50
Speaker
It is, hold on Heather, what's your phone number now? Right, yeah, he already has my number. I bet. He already calls me on a regular basis.
Family Gaming and Future Releases
01:14:58
Speaker
All right, Drew, what are you getting to the table? Or you mean me? I mean... That's true. Whoa. Who's right there? I mean... I'm sorry. All right, Josh, what are you getting to the table?
01:15:09
Speaker
Well actually I'm kind of excited so I had a box show up yesterday that has the new Stranger Things Upside Down game by CMON in it. And that was a purchase that my son requested when we saw the advertising for it. We've all been watching
01:15:28
Speaker
I had originally watched Stranger Things and my sons are catching up on that now. And so they're right in the middle of enjoying that. And they were excited that there was a board game based on that. And I'd seen some good reviews. So I'm excited to get that to the table and see if it if it's a hit with everybody. Hmm. That'll be cool.
01:15:47
Speaker
The the other game that I'm excited about and I have to I have to do some promotional advertising for friends of mine here. I just got my Kickstarter of paleo vet, which is a game about being a veterinarian for dinosaurs. And it's it's by the fine gentleman at Absurdus Productions who are friends of mine, Will and David.
01:16:13
Speaker
Uh, they're great guys and, uh, I always enjoy spending time with them, but they just got their Kickstarter fulfilled. And it's, uh, it's a, it's a fun little game where you, um, you're taking in new dinosaurs into your, uh, into your clinic, I guess you could say. Uh, and, and it's got a dice rolling mechanic where you're trying to roll a different sets of dice to try to treat what's wrong with them. Uh, and you've got to keep them anesthetized, you know, cause you really don't want that dinosaur waking up while you're trying to treat them.
01:16:41
Speaker
So it really fits the theme well, and it's got it's got some really great artwork. And I got to play a couple of rounds of it early on while we were at a convention together. And so I'm really excited to get that to the table with my family and see if they all enjoy it. Is it story based?
01:17:00
Speaker
No, it's not. It's it's it's a relatively simple game. It's it's it's basically everybody's trying to. I mean, it's a points collection game, right? You're just trying to outscore everybody else. But as as you pull in dinosaurs, treat them all at the same time. And the more that you've got going concurrently, the you know, the bigger risk you run and stuff. So like I say, I've I've only just kind of scratched the surface on it, but I'm excited to to get that to the table.
01:17:45
Speaker
All right, so it's about that time to wrap it up. Why don't we go across the why don't we go around the table and have everybody let our listeners know where you can be found on the Internet? We'll start with Andrew. Oh, sure. You can find me pretty much everywhere at Family Gamers AA.
01:18:08
Speaker
Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it. Threads, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. There's a family gamers community, the family gamers dot com slash community or just search for the family gamers community on Facebook and you'll find it. All of our reviews were around like almost 600 reviews at this point at the family gamers dot com. Or you can find all of them on board GameGeek again at Family Gamers AA.
01:18:32
Speaker
Also, there's a podcast search for the family every podcast. You know, I think I've heard of that before. Yeah. Yep. How about you do good stuff? You can find me at welcome to boredom. That's the name of my account. You can find where I'll be doing reviews, unboxing, silly skits, relatable things in the board gaming industry here about how I almost got scammed in a board game website. All sorts of silly things that are going to be happening and coming up. But that is welcome to boredom. You can find me on TikTok, YouTube,
01:19:03
Speaker
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, threads, you name it, I'm on it. So be sure to find me over there on that as well. Be sure to not read your rule books. And Heather.
01:19:21
Speaker
You can find me at Board Gaming Mama on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter slash X, threads, TikTok. And I stream on Twitch. I do learn and play streams. I have a lot coming up in September.
01:19:41
Speaker
I'm going to be doing ummy bunnies. I'm going to be doing diatomes, um, fromage. Um, I have lots of, I'm going to learn wingspan finally, learn and play stream. So all that's kind of coming up. My schedules are posted online and I normally post my streaming schedules on Twitter. Um, and as well in my discord, if you go to my Twitch channel, there's a link for that there as well. But yeah, board gave me mama all social media. I love to see y'all there.
01:20:10
Speaker
excellent well you can find me and my publishing company salamander games at salamandergames.com we're also out on all the major social media elements as at play salamander
01:20:22
Speaker
We're working on some new game design ideas, and we should have our next one coming to Kickstarter as soon as I can get off my duff and finish the stuff that we need to get it on Kickstarter. You can find more information about this podcast at CornerGameTable.com. We are also out on, well, we're at least on threads and X and Instagram as CornerGameTable.
01:20:51
Speaker
I was actually looking at our listener stats the other day. We are a monster hit in Germany compared to everywhere else in the world. I can only assume it is Andrew's David Hasselhoffian appeal. It is driving driving our listeners from from Germany to tune in. So that is the hottest anybody has ever called me.
01:21:20
Speaker
So, you know, Danka, I guess. Yeah, right. But hopefully, you know, we're picking up some listeners here and there. And I'm hoping I'm hoping more and people are tuning in. If any of you listeners out there want to
01:21:38
Speaker
Ask us questions, make a comment, talk about something that we've mentioned on the show. There are ways to contact us on CornerGameTable.com, or you can send us a message on one of the social media platforms, and we would gladly like to include that in what we talk about. So with that, I think we're going to wind up the show, and I will simply say, go out and find somebody, get a game, get it to the table.
01:22:27
Speaker
Bye, everybody. Bye. Y'all take care now.