Welcome to Meeple to Meeple uniting players around the
world, a 30 minute exploration of PJ and Gareth's four-game
experiences from across both sides of the Atlantic.
Each episode, they share their thoughts and opinions on the
World of War games, including their favorite themes, games,
hot topics, and much, much more. Hey guys, and welcome to Episode
81 Board Game Conventions. A preview, As always, I am PJ
and I'm happy. Happy to report that our good
friend Gareth is back. How?
Are you? I'm good.
Where's John? He was a good replacement
though, mind you. He was good.
He did a sterling job of covering my tardiness, but I was
a bit busy. You are work life.
He's taken a little bit too much at the moment, but it is ball
game convention season. That's right.
You've just been spent some time somewhere.
We've got the UKGE 11 days away. I think it's a countdown I saw.
That's crazy. That it's a year, another year
has gone by and and we'll be there for sure.
And then you're going, you've got some other stuff coming up,
you've got a few other origins, is it?
Yeah. So I I just got back from Geek
Way to the West, which is still going on at the time of this
recording and then I'm going to Origins and then I'm going to
Gen. Con this summer.
So. So we're just going to kind of
talk about what our plans are, who we're going to see, what
we're looking forward to getting.
Gaming, yeah, that's the plan. Housing.
So you did a day at Kikui? I did a day so.
How was that? What did you see?
It was great. Did you see?
Yep. What do you do?
I did a lot. What did you buy?
I bought one game. I bought one game.
So, all right, you know, this is great.
OK, so this is a really good story and this is a great way to
start. I don't know if you noticed, but
hopefully everyone has noticed. We post.
I posted a reel on Meeble to Meeble on Instagram and it was
about wandering towers. It was kind of a reel with all
these little pictures and everything.
So one of our friend, one of Happy Meeble's friends from
Nebraska who I had never met before, they 3D printed me the
towers for the game Wandering Towers.
And so I meet Jared and he's like, hey man, it's great to
meet you. I'm really excited.
And he presents me this, you know, this grocery bag with
these beautiful 3D printed tower components.
And I'm like, are you serious? I thought he was joking because
in the chat we were talking about it a week ago.
And I was like, I thought he was just kidding with me, you know?
And I was like, Jared, I don't even own this game, so I didn't.
That's what you owned it. No.
Oh yeah. Oh, I see now I see where this
is going. So I ran to the vendor hall as
soon as it opened and I bought a copy of Wandering Tower so that
we could, you know, we could play with the fancy beautiful
tower pieces and it hit our table yesterday with our our
game group and it was pretty fantastic.
Everyone had a had a good time. It feels like it feels like that
the game Wandering Towers is in the same universe as Quacks of
Quedlingberg. So it's kind of like you're
Wizards and you're trying to move your Wizards in the circle,
and then you can move the towers right?
By using your magic, you're trying to get all of your
Wizards into the Dark Tower. I feel like that's the magic
training school. And then you pack up all your
ingredients and you go to the local village of Quedlenburg and
you try to sell your potions, right?
So that's kind of how those two games in my mind work, but.
So that was that. Was good.
No, you do. It's really good.
Yeah, we, I think it was in my hand in we were in.
I think it was Christmas time we were in Manchester, Tomboy
Fanboy 3 and I picked it up and Gary wasn't sure, but I thought
he looked so good for the gaming group and those 3D printed
minis. I'm just going to watch the I've
been watched the the real game. They are lovely.
They're really cool. They're really awesome.
But so I went down to Saint Louis for a day and I visited
with Obsessed with Board Games and her with Obsession.
Obsessed with Board Game. Mr. Obsessed with Board Games.
It's Lauren Ryan. Beautiful people love them so
much. I met so many folks.
Happy Meebles was there, both Nick and Mandy.
I got a chance to visit with Danielle Reynolds, the designer
of Her Story and her new game that's coming out next month at
Origin. So that's caution signs you
would probably see her play, testing it everywhere.
Got to see some friends who work for wise wizard games.
Saw Jamie Stegmeyer? Got to say hello.
Let's see some. The friends Jared and Susie that
are friends with happy Meebles that they came down met Aaron.
I don't remember Aaron's last name, but he's bring your own
dice. On.
Instagram. So he's got a game in progress
right now that he's working on called Raising Rabbits.
I got to play that. I got to spend a good bit of
time with him. He'll hopefully he'll be sending
us both copies of his game and then we're going to have him on
in the future. He'll be releasing his game
hopefully in July or August or sometime this summer, is what he
said. So that was a lot of fun playing
that and God, I mean who else did I meet?
For those of you I forgot, don't get mad.
Of course Adri was in from Costa Rica.
Wanderer, Wanderer, meeple. She was in town.
We got to visit and hang out. Wow, let me look at my list.
Who else did I meet? I met a lot of people and play
tested a lot of games. Heather was there.
Heather Dixon, She's just she is killing it on Kickstarter.
Yeah. Apostock.
She has very little. Yeah.
Let's see. Megan from board games, paint
and hand stands. That's a mouthful.
That's that's a long name. Board games, paint and hand
stands. I met her.
Hand stands. I met her and her husband.
Her and her. Her husband and I had this great
conversation about Star Trek for like 20 minutes, which is kind
of awesome. Kristen Mott, designer of
Dinosaur Exhibit Sharks. She's got another game coming
she's working on right now. Got to play test that Thea, who
is perpetually bored on Instagram.
Thea is so delightful. I don't know, she's just
incredible. She's local to Saint Louis,
just, you know, a gamer. She's kind of fantastic, really
fun, very positive person. So it was great to add her to
the the group of people that we can go visit.
Follow him. Yep.
So that's that's pretty good.
Yeah, we're a lot of folks. Did you see any new games?
Nothing that's used, nothing. Nothing has been released yet.
Yeah, it's, but it's more the gaming and the.
Yeah, Geekway's got a huge it's it's a big a big play to win
library. So and then an open gaming area.
The the vendor Hall's really small like 12.
Yeah yeah, 12 or 13 vendors. If you're interested, go to
Happy Meeples. She posted a bunch of reels
where she did videos where she let all the members talk about
their stuff. Yeah, she did a really good job
of that. I was there for the one day, so
I was doing a lot of meeting greeting of game designers, play
testing games and scheduling them to come on our podcast.
What was? The high What was the highlight
of the games? What was your Oh, that was a
great game moment. I gotta tell you, raising
rabbits was fantastic. Raising rabbits.
Yes, I'm I'm ready to play that again.
Mostly because it uses my favorite word in the English
language. Which is?
Poop. Poop.
Yeah, it's quite a it's quite a fun word.
It's a it's this cool game because like you get you get 14
actions over six rounds, right? Which is 6 months.
So you have these little action cubes.
Every time you take an action, you put it down.
One of the actions, because you're raising rabbits, is that
you can collect their poop. Poop.
And you sell it for money, for fertilizer, for farms.
So I'm like, all right, yeah. Is it?
Is it poop shaped or is it cubes?
It's cubes. The cubes, yeah.
Painful. Yeah.
Painful poop. Painful poop.
But yeah, that's so be looking forward to that.
We'll have Aaron on. I've noted it down.
Raising raising rabbits this year.
Sometimes this summer. OK, so Kickstarter or.
Kickstarter, he's he's he's really close to finishing.
I like to think we gave him some constructive criticism that's
just going to improve the game ever so slightly.
Nice. Yeah.
You know, you can only hear so many times.
Oh, that was fun. Well, I need more as creators,
right? As creatives, we need real
feedback. That's what.
That's what makes us better, right.
So yeah, so that was Geekway. I got to see everybody, visit
with everyone, play some games, plan some things out.
Yeah, Heather says hello. She was, she was busy.
She's. Not got long to go, she how many
days? It's nearly over, isn't?
It I think, I think of the Stacy has like a week left maybe five
days just. Kind of.
Look my it's not even loading. You may be faster than me.
Maybe. Three days, three days 3.
Days. Three days.
So y'all better hurry up.
Apostocracy is coming to an end and you need a copy.
It is the quintessential defining board game that you
play right before playing Obsession.
Those two games fit so well together.
I'm telling you, I'm yeah, I can't wait for to get my copy.
It's just a warm up. It is.
It's a total warm up. That was the disappointment as
everyone wanted to play obsession with me, especially
after I think it was episode 79 where we talked about teaching
tips and I said the one game that I could play just
out-of-the-box is Obsession. And so there were people who
wanted to, but schedules didn't end because I was only there for
the day. So this is a this is an
interesting at least for me anyway.
It's an interesting convention season because of our two weeks
jaunt in England. All my all my convention visits
are abbreviated. So one day at Geek Way, I'll be
one day at Origins. I'll be at one day at Gen.
Con too. So yeah, but.
In UKGE in between, yes. In what, 11 days?
11 days. If you're not going or not heard
of UKGE, I'm I'm sure most listeners have it's UK Games
Expo. It's probably the biggest trade
stroke open gaming. There are other session other
cons which focus more on the gaming element but it's you know
2 trade, two huge trade alls at the NEC in Birmingham starts on
the Friday the 31st of May which are most people in in the UK.
That's half term holidays, runs till the Sunday 2nd of June.
We'll be there Thursday, mid afternoon.
There's a press event on Thursday night, so our Thursday
late afternoon which we will go and attend.
Plenty of people emailing in and asking us to go and look at
their wares. I'll be honest, I have not done
enough research yet. Work is too busy, so much that I
have Thursday off. But now I'm going to go and do a
pitch Thursday morning on the route to the UK games net.
So we'll leave my daughter in the car or in reception as I
drive to Coventry to do some work and then head to the UKGE
in the afternoon, which is I think it actually works.
OK, I only had the morning off. Only had the afternoon off
anyway, so but I wasn't planning to do a pitch that's snuck in.
There's bound to be like a board game cafe or just some sort of
coffee shop for her to go hang out.
Not where, not where. This place is.
OK, yeah, it's like it's like an industrial site.
So, so yeah, so we've got, so we've got that to look forward
to. Lots of people chatting away
like in the Instagram UKG chat group.
I can't keep up with the constant barrage of information.
I know there's a bingo Instagrammer hunt hunt the
Instagrammer bingo game. So keep an eye out for that and
then people are starting to write their top ten lists, a bit
like Geek Way. It's not really a big release
show. So there's I was reading earlier
someone's done some work about maybe a 250 games, but some of
the games that are new are actually being released like
2019. So I'm not quite what sure
what's classed as new, but there'll be lots of things to
see, lots of things to test or test or you know, preview.
I haven't got much to buy, which is good news.
I think the only given is is Rats of Rats of Worcester,
Worcester. OK.
All right. That's on my list.
Maybe you could get a copy of Wandering Towers while you're
there too? Well, maybe.
Maybe. That's not a bad shout.
Only me and Kira, Only me and Kira are going.
There's no Mrs. Ball game, people.
She's got to work, so we'll be there.
I have my mics with me, so if you were around last year and
you want to get involved, we will mic you up, Let me, you
know, 30 seconds of your time. Tell me what you think of the
show, what you've seen and what's the best thing about, you
know, that that kind of stuff. So that worked quite well last
year. Yeah, I didn't get to do any
recording a geek way that I was too busy play testing games.
It is. It is remembering it.
It's so easy to to forget and chat.
It is, I think. Last year I did a few things and
went I've forgotten to turn the mic on or I've not taken the
mics with me. So I'm going to give you, I'm
going to give you an assignment. There are two people that you
absolutely must find. Pen.
My pen is in hand. You must find.
They're on the bingo card. They probably are.
You have to tell them that I said hello.
You have to give them a hug for me and just get a sound bite
from them both and then one of them is Pink Meeple.
Our good friend Alex, she's going to her first convention
ever and this is going to be it, so.
Yeah, she she did a really nice video of all the people.
She did. She's she's she's nervous, so
y'all got to make her feel at home.
She'll get me Grandma UKG. Welcome.
And then the other one is Hannah Hand Hand plays games hand.
Yeah. Right.
You know who I'm. Talking about Yeah, I know,
yeah. Her too.
Neither one of them, neither one of them could make it to Cajun
Con. Just scheduling didn't work out.
So you're going to meet them at UKGE and it's going to be great.
We do the sound bites, yeah, yeah, there's there's a lot of
new Instagramers or either to UK Games Expo in the group, so lots
of new voices to hear. There are, yeah, there really
are. So, So that's exciting.
That's cool. Yeah, it's yeah, I can't believe
it's come round again. I just it's kind of blinked and
boom, we're in conventions. Do this.
Didn't we do this last year? I think so we did and then we
were like, I think I was a bit a bit more planned.
I should do my planning over the weekend ready for next week.
Because you had a whole list of recordings from designers and
then you had a whole list recording from boomers, so.
I've got three appointments lined up that I've replied to so
far, but yeah, work is just taking a minority moment.
Gaming is second. Well, game is about fifth
currently. Yeah, So what?
Wow. Maybe even last.
It's not good. That is not good.
Yeah. What's But we're lucky.
We're lucky that we have friends like John to step in when you're
busy. We need like a whole cast.
We yeah, we definitely need to do that.
We should, we should definitely have like substitutes and.
Stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Anyone wants to get involved, just message us.
Yep, do it. Variety is always good, so so on
to UK GS out the way. Is it origins?
It's usually a couple of weeks later, 3 weeks later?
What date is Origins? So Origins Game Fair It's June
19th to the 23rd. Yeah, so, like, yeah, like, just
like the shot. Weeks last year I've worked the
whole convention for wise wizard games.
We were about to say that was wise, Wizard, wasn't it?
Yeah. So just through a stroke of
unfortunate events, they didn't need me this year.
OK, no worries. So we're going to go to see
Katie's parents and we're going to only go down to Origins for a
day, so. What day are you going?
On it is going to be the Friday the.
Friday, which I? Think is.
That a better day? Like, I always think that Friday
is the best at UKGE because it's it's not insanely busy because
Saturday's a write off. I think for Origins, Friday is
the better day. Yeah, absolutely.
I don't know what day that is, though.
Come on. I'm looking that up right now in
the calendar. That's the 21st, the 21st. 21st.
So Friday the 21st, our friends are going to be there.
I know that I'm going to see Adam tabletop vibes.
We're going to, we're going to, We've got to meet up.
We're doing a board game swap. I've got a game that he wants
and he's got a game that I want. Well, he has a lot of games I
want, but, but we're going to do a swap and so yeah, that'll be
fun. It's just going to be a day for
us to explore. Katie's never been to Origins
so. Hasn't she?
No, she's never. Been I didn't know that.
I've been. It's always.
It's really gentle that you guys go together.
Yeah, so the vendor, the the vendor hall or the trade hall,
the events area and the open gaming and the games lobby,
they're all in the they're all in the same physical space,
right? They might be divided by walls,
but they're in the same space. Whereas like in Gen.
Con you can go from building to building, 'cause it's so big,
which I imagine there's some similarity to a UKGE.
Yes, Origins is all compact, which is great.
So we'll, we'll walk around, hopefully we'll meet up with
Shelley. Michiana Board Gamery, We
usually see her every year. We'll definitely see.
Adam obsessed with board games will be there.
Jerry from Tabletop Worldwide is going to be there.
It's going to be his first Origins.
So for all of you listening, you're just hearing this for the
first time. I'm going to have a chance to
tell everybody I will not be working Origins.
I'm only going for the day. That's not better.
Than Friday. It will be his origins got game
releases I've seen. Remember, sometimes there are
some releases. There's usually a few.
It's really minor because they wait for Gen.
Con, but you get a couple, you get a couple of them.
So I don't it's it's it's a much more chill experience.
The other thing is that it's in Columbus, OH and just a very
short walk away from the Convention Center is North
Market, which has lots of restaurants, places to eat.
I think it's an old train station or fish market or
something that's been converted. So that's really convenient.
Indianapolis, for Gen. Con, you, you've got to do the
Gen. Con thing or you've got to go,
you got to walk aways. So Columbus is a little bit more
convenient. It is also Columbus.
OH, is my second favorite city in the entire United States.
For. Everything.
From it's just because. So it's it's it's large enough.
I would I would move there. It is large enough that there
are things to do. There are always events.
It's it's got a rich culture. It has amazing food.
There's so many, so many high quality restaurants, dining.
I love Columbus. I eat so well.
There's only one other city in in the United States where I eat
better than I do in Columbus. And conveniently, that's my
favorite city in the United States.
So there you have it. I'm looking on the map.
Because I'm in the West. I'm not.
I know you don't. OK, You found it.
And do you do you drive to all these places?
Yeah. So what's the drive to Geekway?
So, oh, an hour. What's a drive to Columbus, OH?
Six hours. I do cross the time zone, so the
time changes, so it's a six hour drive, but seven hours pass
because I got you going to another time zone and.
Then what's What's Gencom? Gencom's three hours You drive
through Indianapolis to get to Columbus, so.
Is that the furthest you've driven to to a con?
Would you drive, would you? That feels like a long way.
And do you drive on one go? Would you?
Do you take a break? I'd rather I mean you.
I don't think I can make it on one tank of gas, so I do have.
To yeah, you do stop. And rest stop the.
Rest. Yeah, but Oh yeah, that's the
farthest I've driven for a convention.
It's a long way. I agree, and it's probably the
furthest I'm willing to drive for a commit.
I drove six hours for Nashville, TN game days.
You did? Well, let's be honest, Adam
drove. I rode in the driver, I rode in
the past. That's right.
Even better. Well, that's six hours you've
got. You've got a lot of What do you
do? Do you listen to podcasts or do
you talk called music? Or do you sing in APJ style?
So I typically what we do is so, so Katie's very detail oriented.
So she's already mapped out what vendors do we want to see, What
games do we want to see, What games do we want to buy, What
games do we want to demo, right. And so we kind of map that out
while we're on the drive. That is the beauty of us going
together to everything. So it's like, I mean I'm not
talking about like it's tyrannical how at 8 we're doing
this and at 9:00. Spreadsheet.
There is a spreadsheet, but should be like, OK, we're going
to do these things and I think if we do these on Friday then we
could do these on Saturday blah blah blah blah, right?
So, so we'll do that and then I will remind her we need to see
Shelly and we need to see Laura and we need to make sure we see
Adam and we got to see Jerry and and and then the list goes on.
So we both have different priorities, but we want to do it
all so. That sounds really good, yeah.
So once Orange is out of the way, then you've got Django
then. We've got, yeah.
So then we have July, which is like all work.
Like I've got work conventions. I've got work conventions.
Where are we going this time? Oh yeah, we're going up to
Mundelein, which is just north of Chicago, for a work week, a
whole week work convention. And then there's other big
things going on at work as well. And then the very first week of
August 1st to the 5th is Gen. Con, but we're only going to be
there on Sunday. Usually do the whole thing.
So what changed? Oh, budget, budget concerns and
scheduling again. Two weeks in England took a took
a toll, I bet. Yeah, and and holidays, of
course. And holidays because we took
vacation time. So my sister-in-law lives maybe
an hour South of Indianapolis, so we're going to go stay with
them for the whole weekend 0. That's good.
And then we'll, we will go up to Gen.
Con just for Sunday. Sunday is probably the best day
to be at Gen. Con.
Yeah, a lot of people are kind of winding down.
They stayed up late Saturday night, so the vendor Hall's not
as crowded. Towards the end of the day, the
vendor hall, the vendors are just trying to get rid of their
inventory because they don't. Yep.
They're willing to just chat more because they're not trying
to, you know, I don't know. It's more casual and I'm down.
I think UKGEI always like a Sunday to go chat with anyone
because it's usually it is so much quieter.
So much quieter. Yeah.
I don't know who we're going to see and what we're going to see.
I haven't even started thinking about Gen.
Con at this point, so who knows? Who knows?
And when's that? August.
August, you say August, August 1st, 1st to the 5th.
Boom. So that's wow, that's that's
what we've got going on. Well, I'm looking forward to
UKGEA few days of gaming and a few days of hanging out with
people. What about seeing all the
friendly faces? Are you going to Essen at all?
I don't think so. We've been talking about doing
something over here with a group, so whether it's ES and
weekends, I kind of used to want to go to get all the games and
these days I'm not so enthused. The games will get here and I've
learned that most of the games that I think will be really good
generally aren't. So I'm just wiser these days of
like board games. I think I said about the Rats of
Wooster earlier, I think that was nesting release.
That's I think came out over here 2 weeks ago.
But you know, my shelf of opportunity, or was it my board?
Game backlog. My board game backlog you know
has it got worse? No.
I think it we after games day with Nick at board game of EST,
I think I might have ticked off. We might have got, we might be
less than sub 80. Nothing's nothing's arrived but
that needs playing. Yes.
Oh, well done Gareth. You think things have got
better? I've been.
Too busy to buy Be too busy to buy board games.
We're we are at 59.4% of our collections.
Played. That is insane.
Yeah. I'm trying to think what's what
got off? Oh yeah, so another game of the
incredibly long list of games that haven't been played.
We finally played Deadwood 1876, which is a facade, which is, you
know, this has been an ongoing joke for years between me and
Nick that we'd play them all and for a long time they were in my
bag but never got played. But I do believe we have one
left to do. So we played that, and
everything else was new to me. Oh, I talked.
Snowdonia. I saw you posted something about
Snowdonia. Yeah, I.
I took, I took the guys the basic the basic version of that
so. I've got a new a new strategy
I'm going to, I'm going to share this with you and hopefully the
our listeners can benefit from this.
I know a couple of people have asked me about how we manage to
play every game in our collection or as close as 100%
as possible. So we recently had This is a
Coffee Tin. I don't know if you can hear
that. We can hear it.
So inside I know inside this coffee tin, are sheets of paper
with the names of games printed on them.
And so whenever Katie and I are like, what do we want to play?
And it's like, the problem is it's like what do we want to
play? And so first of all, the the the
first thing is what are we in the mood to play?
The second one is what is still on our list to be played.
Well, we don't have that list in front of us.
Now she and I both pick a it's like picking a name out of a
hat. Surely sometimes you want a
short game, sometimes you want a long game.
Isn't there? It's true.
But so I pick AI, pick a game, and she picks a game.
OK, so you get. 5050 So then we choose one of those two games.
Might might hit the mark. So here's the interesting thing.
So what if we pick two games neither of us want to play them?
Then what? So, so, OK, there's two things.
Why is is what I love it. You always got to evaluate,
right? Why don't you want to play that
game? Well, I just don't feel like
playing a big scythe right now and I'm in the mood for
something lighter. And that's OK, we'll put it back
on the hat or I don't feel like playing this game at all.
And if we both feel that way, we put it on the the shelf to be
culled, right and get it out of her.
It's crazy. I think Katie's already got
three or four games on our shelf to be sold and the used game
sale was just a few weeks ago, so she's ready to sell.
Yeah, I think we've we've been doing that recently where we've
talked about games and I've gone with the games that Carrie have
always said she wants me to keep.
What was it this week like Bunny Kingdom, which Carrie loves.
And I said, oh, Bunny Kingdom. And she was like, yeah.
And I was like, oh, is that a, is that a no or is that a like,
It's dead to me. But she wasn't sure.
So we we do need to play it. But I was surprised because she
loves that. Game Maybe there'll be a game
coming out this summer to replace it.
Maybe like raising rabbits? Raise.
There we go. OK, Aaron, I love you.
It was a pleasure to meet you. And that's the last time I plug
your game at this episode. Raising rabbits.
Yeah.
So yeah, so that I guess yeah, let's let's Well, if anyone's
going to be at those upcoming conventions, what did you what
did you select? PJ opened his jar of coffee, and
he. I did.
I just chose Maharani Mosaic Palace.
This is a good. This is a good game.
It's by Queen Games. It's a little tile placement
game. It's it's an older game that we
picked up at a used game sale. I love.
That's the other thing too. I'll find the title and be like,
oh, and this story kind of just I remember when we got this.
It's a good. Game I think a feature the end
of every episode because like I can go into my my my app same as
you're picking hat and just say pick me a random game.
And we can talk about it for. Just talk about the random game
that pops up, because there's always a little story.
Yeah, that idea. So one last thing to close out
the episode. What does AI have for us today?
AI has been really busy with work.
We've built we've been we've been building some stuff that
even I think Microsoft, Microsoft said to us we are
bleeding edge, which I was quite proud of.
Not me. I like that clever, but the guys
in the team are. I don't know what can we ask,
what can we ask AI? What is the question?
I shall ask it. We shall ask it.
What are the top 3 tips for attending a board game
convention? What do you what do you reckon
it's going to say? I think.
It's going to take good advice already I.
Think it's going to be. Go ahead, go ahead.
Plan ahead. Plan ahead #1.
Perfect for Katie. Review the convention schedule
in advance and prioritise the events, panels and games you
want to attend. 1B Pre registration If there's popular
events and tournaments get in. That's a great tip because UKG
there's loads of events, Jen. Carney, Ton of events.
That's great. Map it out now in the uki Think
it's the offline game I was going to check.
I think it's the offline gamer. Yeah, Tod cast at Tod cast in
Instagram. The offline gamer does a great
service in the UK. He takes UKG maps that they
produce and then actually makes them useful by annotating and
writing who's on every single stand versus theirs, which is
just numbered. So wrap out Section 2, pack
smart. I think we had this last year.
Bring a backpack, water, snacks, phone chargers, Wear comfortable
shoes, Maybe ChatGPT, which is the one I'm using.
Other AI services are available. Maybe they've just been and read
our listen to our podcasts. Because you know.
I'm sure this is what we said last year.
I mean, we. Almost word for word.
This one This is interesting one.
If you're planning to play specific games, bring your own
dice, pencils, or other gaming accessories.
Do you do that? Take your own dice.
You know, OK do you? I I bring my own Zen bins with
me. So this is like the biggest
piece of this is the biggest piece of advice I have for
anyone going to a convention is bring you Zen bins.
By Zen means you mean token storage containers, yes?
So I think that's a brand ZENI just have the guess because
you're holding. Yeah, yeah I am.
Anyway, these are fantastic because you know what's going to
happen is you're going to play a game for the first time and
you're going to have all these tokens and bits and resources
and they're great for organizing them, so.
Haven't you take? Lots of.
We usually take three because the lid and the bottom.
You've. Got two, yeah.
Yeah. So if you bring 3 now, you could
you could bring like there's a game trays tray that has six
compartments and just bring the one.
But it's it's it's kind of long. It's not square light.
Travel light, yeah. But I quite the ones.
The little pop up ones, the buttons on the corners, that
flat, that fold flat, you know what I mean?
Those are really good too. So whatever, Whatever.
Token organization, bring something.
Because let me tell you what, how many times do we pull them
out of our bag? And they're like, that's
brilliant. I didn't.
Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, yeah.
Well, do it. This time next year when we do
this AI search, you'll say your Zen bins or other Zen bins.
Or. Section 3.
Engage in network. Yes, socialise.
Organ Connection is a great place to meet fellow
enthusiasts. Don't be shy.
Come and say hello. Learn this is this is your
favorite. Take advantage of demo sessions
and workshops and learn new games and strategies.
And the final one, connect. Exchange contact information
with new friends and game developers like UKGE and I guess
even Instagram. Yeah, like, we've met so many
cool friends through that social media hub that we only see at
UKGE, right? And you know, there's a few
people that say messages. It's just great to hang out.
So to summarise, by planning ahead, packing smartly and
engaging with the community, you'll be well prepared to have
a fantastic time at a board game convention.
I love that. There we go.
It's great. Let me.
So only forgot. That last, that last prompt was
connect. When you when you're at a game
convention and you're like, you know you want to, you want to
let them know, you want to let the individual know that you've
got a podcast, you want to get them on our show, whatever.
So we don't have business cards. What do you do?
What do you, how do you handle that?
Like how do you? Know that people gave me
business cards, but then I just say that they, you know, got a
podcast as well. We'll check our Instagram
channel. So I had buttons made-up, but
I'm completely out. I had stickers.
I'm completely out. I've got five.
I've got five buttons left. I really hate that because it's
like I'm like, oh, I need to like.
So I met a designer at Geek Way and I was like, I wish I had.
I mean, she started following us on Instagram right away and you
know, we did that. I use.
I use for work wise so I actually I could use this.
I use the app called hi hello. So I have a I have my business
card, I have my personal one which you which I'm showing PJ's
a picture of me in board games and you just you just share and
then they got AQR code and they can scan it.
Oh, that's neat. That's cool.
It's really neat, yeah. All right.
Hi. Hello.
Cool. Hi Hello I'm sure there are
other networking apps that are available too.
So board games, board game convention season is officially
upon us. You're all going to conventions
and. You there, Come and say hello.
Yeah, and we'll do the interview. 30 seconds. 10
seconds, Absolutely. Whatever you find comfortable.
So for our friends at Origins and Jenkin, I'm definitely
bringing my mics. We're going to do recordings,
we're going to make it happen Geek way.
I got myself distracted and I cannot allow that.
Disappointing. Yeah.
Sometimes you just got to. Can't get stressed by it?
Yep. All right.
Well, thanks everyone, for listening.
Thanks, PJ and we'll see you hopefully all soon.
See you more than hear you. See you Laters.
Thanks everyone for listening. Please subscribe and as always,
we'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so make sure to leave
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