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Episode 28 - Forgotten and maybe with good reason
48 Plays7 months ago
So I need to apologise, I didn't realise this episode hadn't been uploaded. It took a while to stitch together as we had lots of dropouts during the recording. So get ready for a very disjointed episode! Hooray!
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Transcript
Recent Game Experiences
00:00:17
Speaker
All right, welcome to the chinwag, everyone. You know who we are. Let's move on. I just wanted to ask what's everyone been playing? I don't think we've played a game altogether for a long while, apart from BGA, but has anyone been playing any live games? All right, I'll go. I guess. Has anyone, I think Dave and G-Money, you've already played Dune Imperium Uprising?
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah, I played that for the first time this weekend. And it was really good. It was frustratingly good. It was so good that I felt like I just bought an expansion to Dunimperium for a premium price because it's a whole game. So after I played it, I put it all back into the upgraded box with all the components in there. And it's got a little bit of a lid lift, but it all fits in there.
00:01:12
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, it's I really like what they changed to the point where like Dune Imperium was like a top five game for me. But similarly to the crew when I played Quest for Planet Nine, I loved it. Then I played Mission Deep Sea and I never played Planet Nine again. I feel like that could happen with Dune Imperium Uprising because like the sandworms are cool.
00:01:36
Speaker
I found it easier to get persuasion to buy cards. I found the cards more interesting. There's heaps of ways to get victory points on cards. Does it seem like, and even just the way that like you don't get as many points in combat and you've got to try and match the two symbols up to get a victory point, which means some of those where they used to be. There was always those couple of battles in the first version where
00:02:00
Speaker
Like you might have been fighting for Solari and everyone was like, nah, don't care. Um, where there's, there's still a reason that someone wants that so they can match the symbol with something else. So I found it more, I found the battles more engaging and I found the card play more exciting. Um, yeah, it's just, I think it's just a better version of the game. Um, so yeah, I was to the point where I don't know whether I'll play standard in Imperium again.
00:02:27
Speaker
Oh, wow. I guess that's a good thing, but it kind of feels like I wish I could have just bought an upgrade pack because I've got this whole box and all of these components that I already have.
00:02:40
Speaker
And now I've got them all again. So I've got extra resources and all that, but like the standard starting, the 10 starting cards are the same as the 10 starting cards from the first version. Yeah. So that, I mean, it's cool that they've done it that way. I love the fact that all of the expansions work with it. So you don't have to go and rebuy expansions and all that. That's excellent. And it makes sense, but I'm like,
Dune Imperium: Six Players Dilemma
00:03:04
Speaker
Now what, like network now, now I've got this huge big Dunian period box and I'm about to throw out my uprising box cause it's all, it's all in there. Yeah. It's just a bit of a strange one. Yeah. So we, we played a fair few times. So we played the six player version with that sort of puppet mastery type thing. Um, probably wasn't as fun as we were hoping for. So I played the puppet master role, the emperor one.
00:03:30
Speaker
Um, yeah, it sort of worked, but the fifth and sixth player really, it's not the same game. So the other players are playing the game and you're kind of playing around the edges a little bit. It was interesting to play with six. I don't think we'd regularly do that.
Custom Dune Imperium Variants
00:03:43
Speaker
And then we played the base game a few times and we found that.
00:03:46
Speaker
The sandworms with the double points going just too swingy right at the end. Like once you've got a couple of plays and you know, that's what you need to do. Everyone sort of runs for it. And then one person gets it wins the game because they get like four victory points in one go tied in with something else. So we, I think we played a half a dozen games and then we've gone down to the point where Troy's actually cut up his old board. And so we keep the shipping track.
00:04:12
Speaker
So he's a combo version of the uprising board with the shipping track with the spies and the sandworms and the maker hooks. But we actually took out that matchy element from the victory points. So he's mixed together most of the game. So the deck of cards is actually huge, but it's a combo of both versions of it. And so we've modified, we don't do the double points for sandworms. So we've now got dreadnough and sandworms.
00:04:41
Speaker
and spies with the new board, but a combo of both lots of the games. So we've played that Oregon five or six times as well, like the mashed together version. And it's fantastic. It's always super close and super tight.
00:04:57
Speaker
the shipping track from the base game is pretty strong anyway so if you put like someone goes that someone goes sandworm someone goes spiced and you can do a whole bunch of different things but it makes it all very strong but really really lacking water i think that's one of the main things we've found with uprising it's really hard to get water and so that one where you need for water to get the sandworms is actually very very hard to get
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think without the CHOM module, because we used the CHOM module from the start, that seemed like the best way to get water, because a lot of those tiles, water was the reward for completing that objective.
Dune Imperium Strategies and Sandworms
00:05:35
Speaker
But it's funny that you mentioned the swinginess of the sandworms. I actually ended up winning the game. I think I ended up on 11.
00:05:44
Speaker
points so he was 1198 and I only won two combats and I never won I never got a sandworm once but in my last turn I scored three or four victory points because by that point it had so many cards in my hand
00:05:59
Speaker
that and I had so much had so much spice and so much Solari that I was playing cards where if I play the card I can buy a victory point for four spice and then I can play another card I can buy a victory point for six Solari and then I went up on another track and got a victory point and I just seemed to accumulate all these victory points in the last round I think one of them I had to discard two cards and spend five Solari and get another victory point and and Helen's just like Helen and Raf are both like we've just put everything into this fight to win and and
00:06:29
Speaker
like you've just run away with it. I didn't even have any soldiers in the last fight and it was worth a victory point, an area, and you could pay more to get another victory point or whatever else. And as it turns out, if Helen won that combat and a few other things went away, she could have probably got to 11, but Raf ended up winning it, which means
00:06:51
Speaker
I won the game outright. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was so I guess, you know, we already played it once, so I can't really comment on overall, but it didn't seem. Another thing, too, with the sandworms is it felt like because there's only those two spots to get them from.
00:07:07
Speaker
that if you know that someone's going for it, you can just go to that space. And then they've got to muck around trying to get a spy there to go there again, and they don't have enough workers for that. So you can block people in different ways too. You can. And the spies help a lot with that. And so it really depends on what leader you've got as well, because there's a lot more leader combinations. And some very good with spies, some give you water. The Fremen ones are quite strong.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah it definitely, I think it was three or four games in until we started going well obviously if you've got sandworms in that fight you can shut people down from getting the water spots throughout most of the game so they can't stop you and you get that and you win four victory points and you probably win.
00:07:50
Speaker
So there was a couple of key strategies I think we saw pretty early on. It could have just been our playing group, but made it a bit sort of obvious with the double benefits. And even then, if you're putting sandworms in and you're not getting first place, you're still getting just a heap of stuff. You're getting like eight spies rather than four spies. I did notice I felt like the second place in battles was much stronger than it was in Dude Imperium 2.
00:08:17
Speaker
So yeah, getting double that again is huge. It also made it very clear that you had to be, you had to have two influence with the Fremen. Otherwise, because there's that one spot was the only place you can get the hooks. Yeah. So yeah.
00:08:36
Speaker
But it's interesting, knocking up some house rules has been good, and as the lad just played it, I reckon we'd be up to 15 plays incorporating.
Dune Imperium Online Skirmish Mode
00:08:46
Speaker
Something I saw on the online, the Steam version the other day, they've got a season-y, skirmish mode that you can play with the rules change up a little bit each month. And the one at the moment, it's a tiny little thing, but it made it so much more fun. The Imperium row just gets wiped at the end of every turn.
00:09:03
Speaker
So every card that's there gets discarded and you just refresh it. So the card doesn't sit there that you've got to save up for. And if you don't mind that turn, it's gone. Well, we noticed that I reckon we didn't go through the whole deck, so I wouldn't know for sure. But it felt like the average price for a card is higher in uprising as well.
00:09:23
Speaker
There will seem to be a lot of fives and sixes and a few fours and a lot less of the ones, twos and threes. But at the same time, we never really had an issue getting them where in, again, I don't know why that is, but in doing Imperium, quite often you'd sit there and go, I just can't buy anything off that row because I don't have enough. That didn't seem to be as much of a problem. And there's no mechanism, get rid of them. Like the atomics that came in at least helped a little bit. You can take it out and try and get some better, cheaper cards. But yeah.
00:09:56
Speaker
Definitely when we play a lot and we'll play a lot for the rest of the year for sure.
Comparing Dune Movies
00:10:01
Speaker
I was going to ask, yeah, that was my next question as well, Helen. That's the extent of my input.
00:10:15
Speaker
Everybody haven't watched the movie. No, I haven't. I haven't. No. So I was able to follow along with everything you were talking about because I've watched the movies. I'm like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. That makes sense. But you watched it for Shalom and Zendaya, didn't you? Yeah, I would have watched the other one years ago. The what's his name? Sting. No, it's not Sting. It's the David Mings one.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, what's his name? Wasn't that dude Adam? He was Adam. Tom McLaughlin. Tom McLaughlin. Thank you. And Desperate Housewives. Wasn't he also? Yeah. And Sting was in it. Sting was Fade. Fade's a router. Yeah. Patrick Stewart was good. Was the second one good? Because I've seen the first one. I yet to see the second one. I want to get there to go and see it. It depends who you ask. I think Shane. Okay.
00:11:08
Speaker
to yes for me. I wouldn't say it was like groundbreaking and amazing. It was just really cool.
00:11:17
Speaker
There's a lot of sand. No, it was great. My husband wants to go see it. He wanted to go see it again like a couple of days later. He loved it. Yeah. He thought it was really good. Look, it's a lot. It's intense. It's just that I know, and we've had conversations about this previously, about how weird it's now about to get in the books. So it's going to be interesting to see what they do and how they continue it. Oh, let's finish off this main story part pretty normally, I think. The next one will be around.
00:11:46
Speaker
But are these two the end of the original David Lynch one? Yes. So he stopped there? A little bit. Like they didn't do the baby sister. Right. So like she gets she's not in the movie, which she definitely is in the first book and she's actually a fairly major character towards the end and then into the second book. Yeah, no, I've seen that. Liam explained the story going forward to me.
00:12:14
Speaker
So yeah, it's a spectacle of the movie, Shane. You really got to get it and watch it at the movies. It's not going to be the same if you don't watch it at home. But like we went with Troy, who was a massive fan to the point that his business is named Raccus after Raccus and he's a June mega fan. And right at the end, when Charlie goes to catch the sandworm, he stood up and he went, fuck that, and walked out. He was the first person at the cinema. He said, fuck that, why? He was unhappy with the changes that were made to that movie.
00:12:45
Speaker
Oh, I'm so curious. We'll have to talk about what they changed. I don't want to speak with other people, but. Yeah. Helen, you're asking. What really happened with Chani though? Oh, she, she doesn't leave. She stays with him. So look, there's a, there's a lot of little tweaks. If you have a conversation with Troy, he will talk you here often. He may get very agitated.
00:13:08
Speaker
It was one of the funniest moments. Helen and I went in Emerald and we've rocked up. And you know how I mentioned that there was a game group here that only plays Dune and Blood in the Clock Tower? So that whole game group was there, right? And we've walked in and there's probably about another 15 other people there.
00:13:25
Speaker
And like it looked like we're all ready to sit down at a board game day. Like they just, it's just a bunch of nerds. It's just a massive bunch of nerds. And Helen was the only female and to the point where one of the guys quite oddly came up and was like, Oh, Helen, like I'm sitting right next to Helen. This guy doesn't know me from a bar of soap. He knows Helen because he's a teacher. And he's like,
00:13:47
Speaker
oh I didn't realize you were so into this Helen but like just accepted that I was because I was a male. I only talked to her about this and Helen's like well I'm like yeah I guess but I'm just going to see the movie like I'm not wearing a dune shirt holding a flag like from the Fremen or whatever else and um and then so he's talking to her about that and I was just going yeah yeah I did my usual joke I'm like oh it's so great that they've made all these movies and these books about that board game I think it's fantastic and
00:14:16
Speaker
because I didn't know anything about the Dune universe until I played Dune Imperium. But it was something that was off my radar. So yeah, here he is thinking that it's so bizarre that Helen's a fan. And meanwhile, I'm the biggest pretend person there.
00:14:33
Speaker
And poor Helen, the only female
Cinema Adventures with Dune
00:14:35
Speaker
in a group of males. Oh, God. Well, it was funny. A few other people started to come in later. But yeah, when we walked in, it was just a massive sausage fest. It was very awkward. You know, I didn't count the females when I went to see it. I have to say, I don't know how many there were. Well, I'm guessing probably more than one because she stood out like a sore thumb, like it was. Yeah. How many people in the Emerald Cinema stage?
00:15:03
Speaker
Well, there's three. And we watched it in cinema one, which is the bigger one. It's actually not too bad. Like it's the sound quality is really good. The screen size is big enough for the size of the theater. It's like, yeah, it's not IMAX or anything, but it's worth it. The sound quality comes out of stereo.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, helping surrounds here. You just got to tune the speaker to the AM. You're right, you're good to go. We went to VMAX at Jamzone and it was like...
00:15:41
Speaker
teeth grunts, like, shakingly loud. Just did not mess around. There was a few times where Raphael put his hands over his ears because it was, like, there is a lot of times where there's noise coming from all around you in that one. It is loud. Yeah. We did be, Max. Cool. All right. I'll definitely go. I'll go and see this week. Yeah, you have to see it in the cinema. I completely agree. I'll do it this week. I think Max has watched the first one, so I think I'll drag him out with me.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, good. It was all right. If you like, obviously I could understand how people could get like pretty attached to the original. I think they did a pretty good job putting it into a format that people who weren't just hardcore book fanatics would go and watch and actually could enjoy. Yeah, for sure. So I didn't really have any strong feelings either way. It happened. Wasn't disappointed. Wouldn't watch it again, probably.
00:16:36
Speaker
It's funny, my old boss was there. She came in just before the movie started. And not because she was a female, but I was like, wow, I can't believe you're here. I hope you realize this is a sequel. Only because when I worked with her, I discussed Dune, both board game and movie, and she was just like, I don't get into any of that stuff.
00:17:01
Speaker
And then she turned up at the cinema. I'm like, are you just out for a night and gone, let's go watch a movie, whatever's on, because it's going to get really confusing really quick if you haven't seen the first one or don't know nothing of the story. But I didn't get a chance to speak to her afterwards, but she, you know, maybe in between me leaving and her going to that movie, they watched the first one and really enjoyed it. I hope so anyway.
00:17:23
Speaker
You're not convinced that's true. Both are confusing. If you watch the first one and you don't know what's going on, it's fucking confusing. And then you watch the second one, it's still confusing. But at least they vaguely introduced the characters in the first one. Yeah. They say they're names and things. Yeah, that's true. They don't just start in the middle of a fight. Well, you know, Helen, who's so into Dune, as we
00:17:47
Speaker
She hadn't really seen anything, read anything or done anything other than see the first movie. And she loved the first movie way more than I did. She watched it like three or four times. And I was actually a bit disappointed with the first one because I felt like I didn't go into it knowing it was a trilogy or a
00:18:04
Speaker
I just thought it was a movie and they might make another movie. I thought it was going to be a story that had a beginning, a middle and an end. And it just, we walked out of that cinema and I'm like, Oh no, that was just three hours of setup. All right. Cool. Yeah. And I felt that with this one, I'm like, wait, that didn't finish anything. Like there's still so much to go. So I didn't realize it was the three-parter. I thought it was going to be a six-part Star Wars thing. Is it bloody hell? No, no, it's Empire. I think of it as Empire.
00:18:33
Speaker
It leaves it hanging at the end. It does actually finish the story. So like largely that is the end of the book. Largely it does. But yeah, there's way more. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Great way to link it for me, mate. Yeah. Link it to Empire. It's done. DG, have you seen the meme Paul Atreides? So he's like, got a high vis vest and a monster can. It's like, sins everywhere. Shit's fucked, mate.
Pax Pamir Review
00:19:03
Speaker
Paul Atreides. That's great. Paul, comma, Atreides. It's everywhere. Shit's fucked, mate. Take him to the beach. Get him on the beach. I had to take that one. Anyway, any other non-June related games people we've played? I am.
00:19:26
Speaker
Is there someone else going to go there? Excuse you. He'll do that one. I think there was a chair moving in the kitchen, at least I hope it was. You'll know in a minute. When your nostrils start to flare out, we'll know. Smoke detector goes off. The joys of not having a dedicated office. Mate, I can't wait to hear that on the podcast.
00:19:55
Speaker
No, Steve will edit that out just slightly. Yeah. How quick was I pretending it was a noise from out there? You were looking around. You were looking around. What was that? Where's my dog? I'll cover it. I'll cover it up. I love it.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yes, so actually G-Money taught us packs for me last week. Wow. Yeah, so we play that for the first time, which I enjoyed. Best teach ever, by the way. It was so good. It was satisfactory. He's about the best that I could go there, G. Yeah, I did not explain key parts of the game to you in particular.
00:20:39
Speaker
Turn 2, I do this. Okay, that means you lose. Oh, really? Why? Because when that happens, I didn't tell you that, did I? Yeah, that was devastating for you. I would not have made that move. Yeah. But very enjoyable game though. Yeah. And we backed it up with a second player, which is excellent. And that was a cracker that last, that second game was an absolute cracker. It's really good. So yeah, I mean, and I tried to explain to my wife, so it's set in like 1800s Afghanistan. So it's, you know,
00:21:07
Speaker
really engaging subject material but if you haven't played PAX for me it's a very small area control game with changing allegiances and
00:21:18
Speaker
you sort of buy cards off the market, which will let you take actions on the board and you've got to work around and with your other loyal fellows. So there's three factions, so you get to choose who you support and you can switch at any time to try and be the biggest empire at the time that the scoring cards come out. It's an hour game, if that, which- Oh, really? Only an hour.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, for the size of the box and the quality of it, I'd always thought it'd be quite big, but yeah, we knocked out two games from 10 o'clock, so including the teach, it's a quick one. Well, the teach was 10 minutes, yeah. Left a bit too tired, but... Could have been 15, I reckon, if you'd fleshed it out a little bit. Could have focused on two other critical parts of the game, yeah. In the board game, Matt itself is like a big toily, isn't it, really? It is, yes, a piece of canvas.
00:22:11
Speaker
you can dry yourself up with it you can dry your dishes up with it yeah and the pieces look like little soap cubes or like lollies yeah really pretty cold cold early yeah it's a cold early game
00:22:23
Speaker
And playing something like John Company, you can sort of see how it works. Like the card mechanics are similar to a bunch of other games you played. You start at the left and as you go right, it costs you a coin. So if you want to buy the fourth card, it costs you three coins. You put the coins on the first three cards and take the fourth one. It's a lot of mechanics that you've all seen before, but there's the three factions and the neutral cards. And so if you're playing a neutral or one of your factions, you put your pieces down.
00:22:52
Speaker
But if you buy another faction's cards and put those pieces down, you've actually got to switch to supporting that faction. So you're kind of monitoring and managing who's loyal to who and who's actually controlling an area. And I think one of the most interesting things about it is the game can just end as soon as someone gets five points in front. So it doesn't matter how well you're going or how well other people are going, as soon as someone's five points above everybody, game's over.
00:23:16
Speaker
And that can be quite quick and quite rapid. So you've always got to try and watch and see where everybody is at the same time. I haven't played it yet. I'm dead keen to play it though. Someone have to have a G-mini teach. Maybe skip that one. I think you'd almost be better off going to BGA, just following the prompts at this stage. It would be better to just know nothing about it and do random things and you'd learn more.
00:23:48
Speaker
You can play a different game and learn more about Pax from me than I could teach you about it. Well, funny you mentioned that. That sounds very similar to my first and only play of that game because Deaf taught it to me once. And similar sort of deal. He taught us the game. It was me. I can't remember who else was at the table.
00:24:11
Speaker
You know when you want to do something, but you're like, it's the right thing, but because you're teaching a game, you don't know whether you should. And you kind of like you put the piece out, take it back, piece out, take it back. Like, what are you doing, Deaf? He's like, oh, there's a move that I kind of have to take, but I really don't want to take it. But like, I want to take it. It's like, because it'll end the game, like now.
00:24:30
Speaker
And we're like, Oh, this is about seven minutes in. Like it just seemed like it might not have been seven minutes, but it felt like seven minutes. I haven't even got a drink yet. Honestly, I just was like, Oh, I haven't, I don't even quite understand what I'm doing yet. And you're ending the game because it seemed like one of those games where if you know what you're doing, you've got an instant advantage. Like there's no luck. There's no, yeah. So if you understand the game, it's all, it's hard to play bad.
00:24:58
Speaker
because you know what you're doing, I guess. Yeah. And then it becomes more about playing that optimally or playing against the other people. And so there's little mechanics that you can use to mess around with people and to interrupt what they're trying to achieve. But it's a very tight game in a very short amount of time. I'm very keen to play it more. So that was a good one. Got another game off my shelf, which was never been played. So that was good.
00:25:27
Speaker
And then last weekend I had two game days with different family groups that don't usually play games.
Family Party Games
00:25:34
Speaker
So it's been a lot of heavy intro party style games. So I played a bunch of skull, played a bunch of code names, had a really good time playing games with non-board gamers.
00:25:46
Speaker
and got the family we played a bit of deception murder in hong kong as well no yeah just loads of that it was there was two solid days of playing those type of games which don't do very often myself and really enjoyed it and i think skull and camel up were kind of the hits i think it's hard to not enjoy camel up
00:26:08
Speaker
But yeah, Codenames is pretty standard classic. I think a good intro to people that are playing Ticket to Ride and Scrabble, then you can go to something like that. So I've played a ton of games in the last couple of weeks. Awesome. Playing Scull with you is always fun. Because it's the only time I've ever played it. It's when you bring it out. It's a good game. It's so much fun.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah, I still I'm yet to play it as a full drinking game. I think that's got to be on the cards at some stage, like lose the card, take a shot.
00:26:40
Speaker
Well, isn't that like, I just assumed that was the origins of the game because you're playing on bar coasters and I just figured that if you, if you grab the skull, that means you had to skull your drink. Like, that's where I thought it must have come from. Oh, it sounds very plausible, Steve. If not, they should write that on the back of the box. They've got legacy skull. You know, you get a skull, you got to throw in the fire. Yeah.
00:27:08
Speaker
It's actually a game that I've started playing at lunch times at work. The guys at work figured out, found out that I'm a board game nerd and they were like, oh, you should bring some games to play at lunch. And I brought skull and six nymphs and they're getting both getting a solid run at work, which is good. That's awesome. I played a couple of games.
00:27:28
Speaker
Um, what did I play? I played, how do you pronounce it? Is it a nuke, a nuke or a nukai? A nuna kai. That game. I was in a naki. I thought it was in a naki. I have no idea how to pronounce it. We played that twice. That seemed to be really good, but really hard. I couldn't figure out how to play it very well. Um, I'd like to play it a bit more though, cause I kind of figured it out a little bit more as I played. Um,
00:27:55
Speaker
And then we played a whole bunch of trick-taking games like Lunar and Bacon and Pies. They're little tiny box games that this one person must have made a whole series of them. And they were all really good. And then at work, I ran cartographers for four weeks with the lunch group thing. And by the end of it, they were really into it, but it was pretty hard to solve.
00:28:21
Speaker
Nice.
Barrage Factions Playtest
00:28:22
Speaker
At 1.05 on a Tuesday, people do not feel like playing board games. But we struggled through and that worked out pretty good. Maybe try it at two o'clock on a Friday, mate. That's what we were... And a cup of drinks. The problem is that everyone doesn't work on Fridays. So it didn't really work out that great, so we had to change it. And then just the usual diet of board game, BGA stuff.
00:28:50
Speaker
Oh, I did get to play test the new, um, the two new factions for barrage too. That'll be coming out later in the year. That was pretty cool. Cool. They were great.
Carnegie Live Play
00:29:03
Speaker
Thin. Thin. Thin? As in finished. That was a faction thin. Sorry. I've had a few games this week. Um, we had the, uh,
00:29:17
Speaker
Fugitive Fair at night, Wednesday night, and I watched a game of, what was it, the Shem Phillips' Shelfy Stacker getting played and getting taught. So I watched that one. And why I had some food, because I got there a bit late after finishing work. And then I taught Splendor to the table. To something easy, quick. It didn't end up being quick, but it was still a good game. And then that was the end of that night.
00:29:47
Speaker
Then on Friday night at Lucky Fuels with Andy, we played Nanti Naki, which is a Martin Wallace game, all-card play. Everyone has their own end game condition that they've got to try and achieve on the board, and it might be area majority, it might be
00:30:09
Speaker
have control of nine areas in a three-player game. It might be waiting until all the deck cards are finished. So you're trying to run out the deck of cards. Everyone's got their own endgame condition. So that game can actually finish within about 15 or 20 minutes, or it can go for a couple of hours.
00:30:33
Speaker
And God, it was fun. It's really me. It's super mean. You're playing cards where you're dicking over everyone else. You're taking off people off their board, because they might be going for area majority. But you play a card where you're killing off their players, putting it back on their deck. And it's super, super mean. Again, you have to have the right group to play it with, and it's lucky feeling the Andy. But I did not do the vassal rule.
00:31:04
Speaker
I had to have one of my agents in nine of the areas. And none of the guys picked up on it. And we got down, we literally got down to the last card in the deck. And it got around to my turn. I said, I flipped over my end game winning card. I said, I've won. And they all looked at me and went,
00:31:30
Speaker
I said, I have to have nine of my agents in those zones. And they're looking, they're going, oh shit, he's got it. But what I did, when I taught the game though, I took everyone through in-game conditions. So I made sure everyone knew
00:31:51
Speaker
to look out for, but also to the player, the player, the player aid has the end game conditions as well on it. So you can look at what trying, what everyone's trying to go for. Such a good game, but man, you have to have the right group because it is, you know, next level mean. It's, it's a, it's a revamp of Uncle Morpok. So Uncle Morpok is another one of his games that he's done.
00:32:20
Speaker
What's this? Terry... Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett. Discworld. Discworld. And I played that with Shane and Ingrid one night at a game night. Again, very mean. We played it really mean. But it's a little bit more quirky and more fun. Whereas this one, anti-narking, it's not quirky and fun. It's brutal. And the components in anti-narking are much more nicer than the components in anti-nark Molpok.
00:32:51
Speaker
And we finished the game. It took us about just over an hour to play it. And everyone just went, they loved it. Three guys really enjoyed the game. And then after that, we moved into Dave's blinged out copy of Carnegie. And it was my first play of Carnegie.
00:33:16
Speaker
It was Phil's fifth play and Andy's fifth play in a week. So apparently they've been playing nuts on BGA. I think it was one of their second times playing it live together as a group. And I must thank Andy and Phil because they really helped me learn the game. So, you know, I'd be thinking of a move because Andy did a teach. He did about 15 minutes.
00:33:45
Speaker
But I was like, there's so much going on in that board. It is ridiculous. And I would come to my garden and go, this is what I'm thinking of doing. Andy would check that and go, yeah, that's good. Do that. So I'd do that. But I really enjoyed it. I mean, Dave, your copy is amazing.
00:34:11
Speaker
I know you said that before, I didn't want to go too much into it, but the only thing that's upgraded in that is the cubes. That game is the retail Kickstarter version of the game, the base game. It came, and it's one of the only games I've ever seen, fully laid out like that. No punching required. Everything was pre-punched, pre-stacked in the little boxes. It was an amazing production. So even the retail version has your own individual game trays? Yep.
00:34:42
Speaker
They come pre-assembled. It blew me away. When I first got that game, I'm like, I don't have to do anything. I'll just open the lid and I can use it. I just trucked out the wood cubes and put in the metal cubes. That was it. Even the dual layer boards where you're pulling those little tiles to go on the side of the board. Little cutouts. Brilliant. I thought it was excellent.
00:35:05
Speaker
and really enjoyed it. So I said to the guys, I want to play it again very soon. So they've invited me on BGA for another game. I don't know how I'm going to go with BGA. It's actually not too bad. And it can sort of help because I don't know, I played it a few times on BGA, but it limits you in what you can't do.
00:35:25
Speaker
a little bit. So as long as you understand what you want to kind of do, you won't be able to do stuff you can't do, which I think helps. And the whole thing that really confuses a lot of people is that action selection of the 20 actions that you can choose. What happens if you want to take one that's already been taken? Yeah, just fix it a little bit. Yeah, jam it up. I thought, like as I said, when I first started talking about the game,
00:35:52
Speaker
It looked really hard and complex, but it actually is pretty simple. Your actions are pretty simple throughout the game, so I really enjoyed it. And I didn't do too bad. I think I got 102 points with my score, but I didn't include my points that I already scored on the game board. So, you know, 121 I think I ended up with. I came second.
00:36:21
Speaker
and really enjoyed it. For my first play, I want to go again really soon. If you need a fourth, flick us a thing. Yeah, we'll do, mate. I will. I will. If you do catch up on Easter, I'd love to be taught that game too, because I haven't had a chance to even look at it. Honestly, I really enjoy... I like BGA. I do.
00:36:46
Speaker
But playing those games live is so much better. So, I'll play it on BGA and I'll just see it, but I don't think I'll enjoy it as much as I do playing it live. So, it's just, you know, it was the enjoyment of seeing Phil doing his move, Andy doing his move, and it comes to me. And, you know, it was my first play, so they'll coach me, they both coached me in what I was trying to do, so. And I had some tile that,
00:37:17
Speaker
I built it up, I built up, I can't remember what it was now, it's not construction, it was next to construction where you could go, I went up one, and then I had the seven tile, where I pretty much had 21,
00:37:30
Speaker
movements that I could do. Or people moves. Like pulling tiles out and moving your thing along the cities. Yes. Yeah. To get more research. Yeah. I had 21 research where I could just go, I was just doing all this. I had this really good engine going and both the guys said, you know, well done. I want to get in that going because that helped me throughout the game. So no, so Carnegie rate it. I looked at it.
00:37:59
Speaker
But I think when it came out a couple of years ago, Dave? Yeah, a couple of years. It didn't interest me at all. But now I'm dead keen on even getting a retail copy for myself. And it's a really cool story about Carnegie. The game does a really good job trying to explain what he tried to do. So that's pretty cool.
00:38:24
Speaker
Happy to do a teach on BGA if you want to, Steve. It's straightforward enough. BGA obviously is strange. It doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to the quality of that game. It is a poor cousin of an experience, but the game itself is a really good
Live Play vs. BGA
00:38:38
Speaker
implementation. It's very easy to play on BGA. There we go. There's the invite right there. Five of us. Carnegie. I think it's only four.
00:38:48
Speaker
It's all right. You can just leave that out. I'm bringing nothing tonight as it is. It's fine. I was about to ask, have you been playing games? I haven't. Honestly, work's been kicking my ass. So yeah. It's a pretty good game of Winx band we had, though. I know. I just kept getting like eight to nine. So I'm like, oh, I guess that's what I'm doing. So I discovered I'm not very good at that game.
00:39:17
Speaker
Do you know what's funny? I didn't even mean to pick it. I meant to pick Art Nova. And then it loaded and I'm like, oh shit. I'm like, oh well, we can do this. It's fine. So do you have a worm flap? Do you have a worm span yet? I do. I've played it. I lost. Talked about it in the last extension. Yeah, shame. Yeah. I did hear that. Where were you? You said you listened to that. I did listen.
00:39:42
Speaker
But we did complete Hogwarts, so we managed to get through year seven and completed. So we're moving on to the expansions now. Stay on track.
Ticket to Ride Legacy Review
00:39:51
Speaker
Ticket ride legacy. OK, so ticket ride legacy. Yeah, I think we're about seven or eight missions in now, and it looks like there's 12. And they go up in every three years. And it's every time at the end of a round, I think after the second or the third play, you get to uncover
00:40:09
Speaker
something new. I'm not going to say too much because, you know, I don't want to give anything away, but you get to uncover something new. And each time we've discovered something new, we've gone like, oh, this is super cool. You know, like we're going to we're going to fiddle with this. And it's just it's because we've now played seven or eight. We've uncovered so much new stuff that we're like, like games are taking three hours.
00:40:30
Speaker
Like, for a game of Ticket to Ride, you know? But it's, oh gosh, it's so good. Every now and again, at some point, one of the four of us will just go, how good is this? Like, just have our own little moment of, this is, they've done a really good job. If you are, if you like Ticket to Ride at all, if you like legacy games at all, it's just a slam dunk. You can't go wrong. Is it still competitive?
00:40:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, super competitive. And it's really good in the sense that if you come last, you immediately become the president because you've got these roles and you become the president in the next round, which means you go first and you get to choose another employee that gives you another benefit. So it's like you can't get left behind.
00:41:14
Speaker
too much either. Most people, if they lose, they'll either win or come second in the next game. The only person who successfully lost twice in a row was Helen, and unfortunately that was in the last game. But she's won a couple previous to that as well. The thing is, we're playing it, and we don't really know what we need to do to win the whole thing. Like you said, it is a competitive game. It's not a cooperative game. But it's like,
00:41:44
Speaker
Does winning a scenario mean that you're better off? Or is it a cumulative thing? Or if you do certain things out on the board, is that going to help you? And none of that has been revealed yet. So we're all just doing what we think we should be doing in order to win the game at the end. And I just keep thinking, anyone who's played Pandemic Legacy, in the back of my mind, I've got something huge is going to happen, which is going to mess all of this up.
00:42:09
Speaker
And that hasn't happened yet. So it was just like I'm on tender hook seeking. It's going to be the next mission. It's going to be the next thing. And there is this cool little story that they create about this money hungry
00:42:22
Speaker
trained mogul that you're competing against and she's had some impact but not a lot yet and I feel like they built her story up enough now that something huge is going to happen with her and so it's just it's so good and because you get to choose the area you reveal
00:42:39
Speaker
even like you can't even talk to it about it with people who are playing it because you might have discovered different areas of the board that they haven't yet and it's it's like at least in pandemic legacy if you'd said to someone no how far along are you and they said oh june you could speak about everything that's happened till june but you don't even have that option with this it's so good we're just thoroughly enjoying it it's um
00:43:03
Speaker
It's meant a couple of nights at home for my kids where they've had to do everything themselves because we were there for way too long playing the game. And I have to give a shout out. They probably don't listen, but hey, I'll give a shout out to Joe and Shannon. They are just the most awesome couple. And Shannon, irrespective of every single time we say you don't have to feed us, she just puts on some sort of food. Like we had cheese and biscuits and olives and dips and
00:43:30
Speaker
two different types of salami and all this kind of stuff last time. And then the time before that, it was like one time they asked me in passing, what do you like to drink? And I said, oh, probably Pepsi Max is probably my favorite drink. So the next time we rocked up, they had a whole fridge full of Pepsi Max, like super awesome hosts. And yeah, it's just, it's been really cool. So if you, if you, like I said, if you're a ticket to ride fan, if you're a legacy fan, it's just, it's, it's a slam dunk. You got to get it. Where is it locationally based?
00:43:58
Speaker
So you start on the Eastern seaboard. Of America? Of America, and the rest is up to you.
00:44:05
Speaker
OK, but it's it's America. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's called Legends of the West and it starts in the east. So that should give you a little bit of a clue of what you can do. But you don't know that coming. You just yeah. And the first couple of games, they went really quick because you started with you started with 18 trains in the first game and then you get an increasing amount of trains. So I think the last game we've had 44 trains and I think in the next game we got like 50 or something. So
00:44:32
Speaker
We're cracking through the first couple of scenarios, but that worked really cool too because you need those scenarios to build the story.
00:44:40
Speaker
But they go pretty quick because you've only got a short amount of trains. So you're getting into the cool, meaty content quicker. But then you get more time with the cool, meaty content because you've got more trains and you've got more space and there's other things to do. So it's been a really good mix of when you want the game to slow down so you can press all the buttons of the new stuff. It does. And when you knew what you were doing because you played Ticket to Ride 150 times before, the game was quick. So, yeah, really well done. Excellent. Well,
Board Gaming in the News
00:45:10
Speaker
All right. Well, I guess we can finish it up there then. Sounds good. Anyone else got anything to add before we finish? Excellent. Happy board gaming, folks. Catch on the next one. Oh, hang on. Before we do, it was so cool to see an Australian news tonight. I don't know if anyone else saw it. Seven news. At the end of the seven news report, they talked about board gaming.
00:45:33
Speaker
They had this piece on how kids nowadays, it used to be in the video games and it went through the 90s and the 2000s and they said, what's seeing a revamp now is board gaming. So then they had this person that owns the store at Caloundra, I think they called Presence of Mind or something like that, there's a board game store in Caloundra.
00:46:02
Speaker
And she was in there talking about board games and how popular they've become. And then it went straight back to the 7News reporter who said, then Board Game Geek flashed up like the actual logo for Board Game Geek. And they were like, you know, games like Pandemic, Gloomhaven, you know, what everyone's involved with now. And then it went back. They are not.
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah, no, no. Well, you're not now. You've done it. That's a start. But I thought, how cool to see in Australia tonight on 7 News that board gaming is hitting the heights it should be. That's amazing. Yeah, it was really good. Cool. More of that.
00:46:45
Speaker
I did want to announce that before we end the episode tonight because it was good to see. Even Lauren was sitting me going, oh my God. Like we literally turned off the, we were watching something on Netflix, go to the news, there it was right at the end of the news, board gaming. So good. It was really, it was like, you know, meant to be. So now we can film. Awesome.