Welcome to Meeple to Meeple uniting players around the
world, a 30 minute exploration of PJ and Gareth 4 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
6565 is a fun one where we're going to talk about or.
The title is going to be Geekway Gateway Getaway.
How about that? I got through it as always.
I'm PJ. And I'm Gareth.
And we're going to talk about, so this weekend was Geekway
Mini. Geekway to the West is a gaming
convention in St. Louis, MO in May and that's what
they call Geekway Prime. But then they do a mini, they
host a Mini three day convention, just the games
library play to win games. 400 attendees maybe.
And so that's where I was this weekend and Gareth was home
playing a lot of small games with the family.
So are there are there other, Are there geek ways to the east
and geek ways to the north? So, and here's your history
lesson. The the Gateway Arch in Saint
Louis, which is on the banks of the Mississippi River and it's
on the West Bank, was called or is still considered the gateway
to the West, right. So in the early 1800s, Lewis and
Clark go in their expedition from what is at that moment now
the United States. And they're going West to
explore the land that was purchased by Napoleon, known as
Louisiana Purchase, and to find out what to expect and survey
the land. And so they started in Saint
Louis. And so this arch was built as a
monument that this, that the city of Saint Louis is the
gateway to the West or Western America.
And so to ask, I I honestly, you're like an encyclopedia of
American history. A you even squeeze in a board
game name Lewis and Clark. I do like that board game as
well. And so instead of Gateway Geek
Way and of course their their icon is the Arch in Saint Louis.
But it's we're all geeks and. It's the geek way to look up,
but there we go. So there isn't one to
north-south, east and West. It's just.
Just the one. Just the one there's a there's a
whole convention opportunity there to make others.
And so three days of pure gaming.
No, no trade haul. No so this like I.
Said playing games. This is Geekway Mini and it's
just games, so they have a games library with over 1000 games in
their collection that they allow you to check out and play for
free. It is housed at the Miniature
Market Game store. OK, in.
Saint Louis, So you can go to miniature market anytime.
The games library, the games library is available, but then
they also have, I think it's 25 or 30 titles.
I don't know, I don't remember the number off the top of my
head, but they have 5 or 6 multiple copies of these games
and that's their play and win. So you play the game, you check
it out of the library. You you you play it, you come
back, check it in, and then you go up to Little Station, which
is a tablet, and you enter your name and your badge number.
Say you know you rate it from one to five stars and whether or
not you want to win a copy, it drops your name into a random
drawing on Sunday to win a copy of the game every game you win
when you go up to the station and enter your name.
The beauty is, is that when Katie and I are playing a game,
she can enter both of our names. Everyone who has a badge number
that played the game with you can be entered in to win the
copy of that game. So win, win.
It's a it's a really great concept.
I got to say, I don't. I don't know the concept over
here, but I don't go to conventions.
But I love it and I'd like to see more of it.
And did you win? We did, yes, yes, never.
Look, I don't win anything and. And how many things did you win?
More than one. No, I won a game and Katie won a
game. It worked.
So she won a game by Yellow called Ancient Knowledge.
Yeah, she really, she really enjoyed that.
It's a two to four player. 12 plus is the age range according
to the box. It's it's really fun and it fits
in our wheelhouse of the ancient world since that's what we both
studied. And then keeping with that
theme, I swear it's like Geek Way knew who we were.
I want a copy of World Wonders. Oh, those little minis.
Yeah. And so you have all these
beautiful 3 dimensionally wood ancient wonders of the world
that you're building, you know, on a my city style grid.
OK. In front of you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you have polyamino
districts and roads that you're building.
And then when you meet certain conditions, you automatically
get to purchase one of the monuments that are in a market
in front of you. And that includes the
three-dimensional. Are those unique?
So like there's only one, there's only one.
There's. Only seen it a few times.
Technically there are three Great Pyramids of Giza, and so
it's cool because that miniature when you when you get it, it's
actually 3 wooden pyramids, right?
Whereas the Parthenon's, the Parthenon, the Coliseum, the
Roman Aqueduct, But the the pyramids are actually 3 and you
have to position them on your board once you've purchased
them. The only other one that's like
that is the Great Wall of China, which comes in three sections
and you can place them on the board.
Yeah, I've, I've seen it a few times.
I've been, oh, that looks good. And then I think it's worthy.
Ball game reviews got it and I said I'd play it first, so I
need to play that. Nick, you need to teach Gareth
World wonders. It's worthy.
We've got a date and a diary for Nick's Games Day.
Great. It's so worthy.
Only a month away. No, it's fantastic.
The other highlight, I think for the our experience is all told,
from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon, we played twenty
unique titles. Wow, 26 individual plays.
See And these These are not games you took.
These are games you just went. And all of these games, all of
these game libraries were in the Play and Win or the games
library, with the exception of two of them.
OK 2. Of them, two of them were
actually brought by people that we played with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not I I end up taking the
whole bag of games and and I teach people, but.
It's it's why I love Geek Way, because I don't have to bring
anything. You just turned up and play
games, You play 20 games. So what was the where, what was
the highlight, the number one favorite game that you haven't
played before? Oh well, we had never played any
of these games. OK, OK, let's start so.
There were no repeats, so we got there.
And the first game that we picked up because we'd seen a
lot of hype on social media, we're like, you know, we really
want to see what it's all about. It's Barcelona.
OK. And.
It's it's beautiful, isn't? It it is beautiful and it scales
perfectly for because keep in mind, the majority of these
games we all played at two players, right?
And it's scaled really well and just when I thought, well, the
games aren't going to get any better than this, we played Life
of Amazonia. Oh my gosh, so many.
Is that is that a new game? It.
Is It's a fairly fairly recent game.
It's so amazing. There are so many animal mini
meeples and they're so beautiful.
It's kind of like Cascadia in that you are placing tiles in
front of you and you're trying to build the largest habitats.
Oh, nice. Oh, yeah.
The minis are lovely, Yeah. You have one unique animal that
represents you, and that animal cannot be placed on your board
until you've met a certain requirement, whether that's
placing trees, placing water lilies, is it?
The kind of mixture, like habitats where you've.
It's a little bit of yes, a little bit of habitats, a little
bit of Cascadia and a little bit of wild Serengeti, OK?
Yeah, in terms in terms of the. Animals.
Yeah. It's so, so fantastic.
So we. It's lovely.
We checked that game out of the play and win and we played it
twice, so we checked it out twice.
That's how good it was. And the second time we played
it, we played it at three players and it didn't
disappoint. Like it.
Just it's so good. The book says it's one to four.
Best play 2 and the kids you say play it one to three, I guess.
Is there some downtime possibly? There is some downtime.
A little bit four. It's actually three out of five
weight as well. It's not like he looks like a
cute family game, but actually looks like there's a little bit
of. It's.
Meats behind it. It really does.
Most of the games that we played were very similar to that in
that they look like family games, but they had that meat,
like you said, and that was pretty, pretty fantastic.
Next up, we tried a cooperative game, and you know that Katie
and I love cooperative games and that's Tesseract.
So, OK, so it's got like you, you've got a cube of dice and
all the dykes are very colorful. You've not seen any pictures.
It's been all over social media. I'm sure it's.
It's it's a cooperative game. The concept is that this, this
tesseract's come to earth and we're.
Trying. Oh, yeah.
Now it's in the box. Yeah.
OK. I'm with you.
Yeah. Yeah.
So the problem with the problem with still photographs of
Tesseract is it's very colorful, it's very vibrant.
You can tell that it's got, you know, it's got a lot of dice.
What's going on, 64 dice in total I think is what's in the
game. It's like, but what is, what is
the game? I I get it right, but what is
it? Once you play it, it is so good.
It is so good. Best with two.
I don't know. I think a third player would
have helped. We played it at two.
It was great. I think a third would have been
perfect. There are many votes, so that's
a yeah, it's a loose 2. So, so yeah, but we played
Tesseract and then we played Ancient Knowledge, the game that
Katie won, we really enjoyed that.
And so that's our first four games.
Then we met our first flop. Oh yeah, we we played Forbidden
Jungle. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm excited.
New. New.
No. Now, I've talked to some folks
who absolutely love it, and they all have the same thing in
common. It's their first forbidden game.
So here's the deal. This is what I'm going to say.
Objectively speaking, it is probably the best of the four
Forbiddens the fact that aliens in the jungle evolve from from
egg to hatchling to adult, the adults.
Can aliens in the jungle? Yeah, aliens.
The things that they do are really interesting and
compelling. The trouble is, for a seasoned
gamer, is, and I'm sure you felt this as well, it's cooperative
game. Take four actions, draw threat
cards, take four actions, draw a threat card, take four actions,
draw. So it was really it.
It felt like something we had seen.
Rinse and pee. That's what it felt like.
But with all that being said, I think the way that the game is
structured, the threat is better or more compelling, so I can see
why people would love it. It's just that because it was
the 4th in the series where we're like, you know, so.
We're. Done.
And then the last game of the day for us was forced to
shuffle. It's gotten a lot of hype on
Instagram. I've heard mixed views.
What do you think? So we started playing it and
we're reading the rules and we're like, I don't get it
right, We're like, what? We're supposed to do.
What? I mean, OK, So we're going to
plant trees in front of us and we're going to do a thing.
OK, what are we doing with these animals?
Because it's weird. The cards are split in half
vertically or horizontally. So it means that when you play
the animals or the the forest woodland creatures or the
mushrooms or the fruit or whatever, you're going to put
half the card underneath the full tree card.
And after two or three turns it made sense to us.
What I can say is Forest Shuffle is delightful.
It's calming. I had no regrets.
I would play it again. Did I hear is scoring a bit
administrational? Is it a bit?
There's a lot. Maybe that's what I heard.
There's a lot of. There's a lot of.
Scoring, yeah. Because you've got set
collection and then you've got you score your trees and then
you score your top and bottom cards and then your lefts and
your rights and it get and there's so many multipliers, it
gets a little bulky and cumbersome at the end, you know.
But yeah, so you know, I'll put that in the middle.
It was great. I enjoyed it.
I'm glad we played it. We actually played that one
twice, 'cause we did enjoy it, right?
There were only four games we played twice, so this was the
second one and yeah, it was it was good.
Was it up to the hype? I.
Don't know. I walked away feeling really
good and we played it a second time later.
Like I said, it was really calm and pleasant.
I. Mean out of your list.
I mean Barcelona. I've got and it's, it's
beautiful. I mean, it does play very
nicely. I am intrigued by Life of
Amazonia. That was not on my radar and now
it is on my radar. It was not on my radar either,
and I was really hoping to win that.
We didn't, but that's OK. Because in the boxer it's just,
I think it's a parrot. I don't, I don't know.
Oh that looks good. It's like a a kids game.
But now I've read through the Ball Game Geek page, I'm like
this. Is so good, when you trigger the
end game, you get 5 points, you get a 5 point bonus and you get
this marker that's a beautiful wooden piece.
It's some sort of exotic flower that grows in the Amazon.
And it's, I mean, so even down to that bonus token was
beautifully designed. So that was just fantastic.
So that was our first day we got together with Jonathan and his
wife Megan. Jonathan of course is part of
the trio of re engineer the game.
There's they're a group of three in Saint Louis, group of three
gamers. And so we met up with Jonathan.
If you recall, I met Jonathan a geek way last year with him and
his wife playing Flame Craft. Remember saying you remember
that story? Well, now this year we
organized. We're like Jonathan, you're
going to be there. He's like, of course I'm going
to be there. It's like we got to get together
and we, you know, and we did. And so we got to have dinner,
and then the next day was Saturday and we start off.
We started the day off with dwellings of Elder Vale.
Brilliant. That was something someone
brought one of Jonathan's friends Brought it did.
You do it. Yes, Katie and I both did.
I demoed it at Origins in 2019, and the only thing I remembered
was that there was an alligator. I didn't realize.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alligator's a monster.
It's a monster, yeah. Because Jonathan's like, what do
you want to play? And I'm like, I don't really
care what color I play, just let me be the alligator.
And he's like, there's no alligator.
That's the boss. Well, I didn't know that.
I do now. It brought out a little, I don't
know, I'm playing that game and all it, it brought out my, it
brought out MyHeritage a little bit, which it probably shouldn't
have, but it's like, so you're building dwellings, right?
And I build the first dwelling and then some of the players
start exploring and laying tiles and they're like, I don't know
what to do. And I'm like, well, why don't
you come visit me, come to my house.
I got a dwelling. You know, I it just, it came out
of me. I was like, I got to build
dwellings and camp out on these little rivers.
And that was a fun game I really enjoyed.
It, yeah, it's fun. I can make it's a game that it
doesn't hit the table. I mean yeah I can see it here,
the box is so big when it when the table I do it is a table
hog. But I do enjoy.
I need to get back to the table. You do.
I do. Maybe Cajun Con?
Maybe Cajun Con, maybe six, 6th of 6th of April, 6th of April.
April 6th, yes. Saturday, if you're listening
and you have let me know, Message me on Instagram.
Ball game people. Yes.
So that's a possibility. That's supposed that that's not
a bad shout. That could be a good one.
Yeah. Good choice.
OK, so else. So then we went back to the play
and win. Everything was play and win for
the most part. We played Art society.
That. Oh.
I was hoping, I was hoping for that for Christmas, but it had
sold out because it's, I think it's very tight.
How was it? That was incredible.
Looks lovely. You just, you know, you're
purchasing artwork and you're hanging them on your wall and
the wall has texture. Yeah, yeah.
Amazing. Because it's like the little the
tack holes for where you would hang your artwork on the wall
and it's like a museum, so you've got an eye line.
So your final scoring is the pictures that are in the eye
line on the wall on your player board, which is art society.
I can't say enough. That was beautiful.
That was really good. Now after that we played Match
of the Century. Do I know that?
I don't know that you do. It is a two player game.
It's about the match between Fisher, the chess match between
Fisher and Saske. No.
They Saske, you're not playing chess, but you're kind of
playing chess. It's got a pitches.
It's got a thick historical context catalogue at the
beginning. It's very much informed by the
history of the match they played, but it fell a little
flat for us. It it didn't appeal to our type
of gameplay, but I mean we love two player games, but it was.
Like, I mean, it looks intriguing.
I didn't. I think I'd skip over it.
It was really clear what the designer was trying to do, and
the designer did it. The gameplay just didn't.
It just didn't hit us. What?
What's?
What's mechanics? Is it a card game or?
So you do you have a deck of cards, You draw three cards, 4
cards. So you're not playing chess,
You've got, you do have chess pieces, you have pawns.
There's a king and I play the card it it, it feels like land,
air and sea, where I'm going to play a card with a number on it
and you're going to play a card with a number on it.
Highest number wins. Whoever the loser, whoever's the
loser, will activate the ability printed on their card.
So sometimes you want to lose because the ability's good, but
if you lose, then you lose your influence.
There's an influence track off on the side.
I say influence, it's something else.
Advantage. Advantage 'cause it's a chess
match. It was fine.
It was not for us, but it was
definitely fine. I'm glad we played it so Match
of the Century. And then we played my Celia.
Oh man. This is This is My Celia.
That's not the My Celia that was on Kickstarter.
This has gone straight to retail from a different publisher, also
called My Celia. Oh, is there two my Celias?
Yeah, well, this one was cute. You're like playing little
mushroom peoples. You're moving raindrop tokens on
your game mat. You're trying to get them into
the portal, but it keeps raining, so you get some back
each so, so many rounds. As soon as you the game ends,
when all your board is clear. That's really what you're trying
to do. But you're trying to use your
cards to move your raindrops into the portal, right?
And sometimes that's one space at a time and some cards give
you leaves. Leaves is the currency of the
game, so pretty simple. We played it twice.
It was good, so that was good. Then we played books of time.
Another board and dice game. This game is the design is so
good. This is the one you are making a
book with with leaves, so I've not played this one.
You. Yeah.
So you have like you've got like a little.
Pedestal. Well, there's a pedestal with a
chronicle that opens up. That's it, yeah.
And that that that governs the 15 rounds of the game.
Meanwhile, we each have 3 little books that have two rings.
It's not a three ring binder, but two rings that you can open
and you're adding pages to it. So you're writing chronicles on
technology, history and geography.
I think it is. But anyway, so and you're trying
to get the cards, you're trying to get the pages in a certain
order. When you open the book, they're
revealed in a certain order so that you can get your objectives
for end game scoring. The design was just so good, so
good. You know, it was that was a lot
of fun to play I. Always.
I always see. I think it it does look
beautiful. It's like it's really good.
Again, we played that at two players, so so then we had the
luxury of Laura and her husband Ryan.
This is obsessed with board games on Instagram, and her
husband Mr. Obsessed with board games on Instagram.
There live just outside of Saint Louis in a suburb.
And they drove down to the hotel and we sat at a table and they
brought a couple of games, of which we played a few and that
was wandering towers by Capstone Games.
Heard so much about this. Katie had read about it.
She wanted to play it. We were going to try to buy it
at the Capstone Games Store in Cincinnati.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they were sold out.
So you have a collection of Wizards, these wooden maples in
this big circle, and you got these little tower segments and
you play cards, and those cards will either move your Wizards.
You're trying to get them into the key, which is this one Black
tower, right? And you you you physically, you
have to land directly on it. You can't.
You know you can't. If your card says move two, you
have to move two and it and it has to be exact in the keep, you
actually put it inside the keep, which is cool.
Or you can move the towers, and the towers can go on top of
other Wizards. So you're moving tower pieces,
or you're moving your pieces. The problem is it hides your
opponent's pieces. So sometimes you got to remember
where your pieces are. But you can take the like.
So if there's like 7 segments of a tower stacked up, whatever
segment you move, all the ones above it move too.
So that means even though you've been, you're on segment 3 if I
move the whole thing and then you forget where you were.
So you've got it's a little bit of memory as well.
Yeah, I'm just reading it. It's yeah it makes your memory
memory game but it's just play up to six which it.
Does and. It's quite light, so quite a
good party game, not party game, but you know it's large group.
Game. It was fun.
We played it at four. I think it would just be chaotic
at six. If anyone's coming to Cajun Con,
that would be a good game to bring.
Because six players, I think this would be a lot of fun.
Maybe moving the towers and trying to remember where all our
dudes are. It scales.
It scales well to like two players.
You play two colors that have more meatballs and then four
players, the meatball number diminishes, right.
So. So that was fun.
And then they brought three sisters, the Roland, right, You
think, Which Katie and I never played.
It had been on our list forever. So we got to play that, Yeah.
Yeah, it's good. Oh.
I love that game. It was fantastic.
We really enjoyed that. It's also, in Geek ways, games
library. So the next day, because we
played Three sisters and enjoyed it with Laura and her husband,
we checked it out of the games library.
So that's another game we played twice was Three Sisters.
So we really, really enjoyed that.
And then right at the end of the night.
So the weather was terrible and I apologize that the
temperatures I'm about to relay to you are in Fahrenheit and not
Celsius. So Friday it started at 40°F,
but by the end of the night it was 12°, it was -12°F, which is
probably going to be more negative in Celsius and then it
stayed in the negative below 0. In fact, the temperature today
is below 0 right now where I am talking.
To you? Was it -14?
Sounds good? Sure.
Yeah. What did you say it was minus?
It was -4. I think the lows got to minus.
-20 Celsius, Celsius. Yeah, yeah, it was cold.
It's quite chilly, it's like -1 today, so.
And there was a little bit of snow.
And so, so Laura and her husband left because they were concerned
about the weather and everything.
So we went into the games library, we checked out
Herbaceous, and we played that. Nice.
That's a that's a pencil. What's the publisher for that?
Oh, Oh dear. They do a whole series of games,
which we adore. They're really great because
you're just planting herbs in pots and planters and it's
really delightful. And that's a theme that Katie
and I really like. Thank you.
And I did a whole episode on gardening and, you know,
planting things and. Pencil first games.
Pencil first, yes. And they've Oh yeah, because
they've got herbaceous. And then there's.
Horriforous. And there's sunset over water.
You played that 10? Not yet.
That's good. It's delicious.
Herbaceous. So good.
That's good. Yeah, such a great, lovely game.
Great. It's a great theme, very
relaxing, yeah, which was great for the end of the night for us.
So and then our final day, we're at the final stretch now folks.
You. Got to say, I mean my shopping
list has grown. So any anyone listeners, I I
apologize because I'm shopping as we speak.
So this has been, it's been a very enjoyable set of games.
How many more we got to go? Yeah, something like that.
Actually, believe it or not, we have six.
OK, there's six more to go. So we started off Sunday with
World Wonders, the one I talked about before.
This is the this is the game that I won.
I fell in love with that game and I'm so glad I I won that
because we really enjoyed that. And then we went and we played
draft and write records draft. Yep.
No. Only good no?
No, it's. It's.
Trying it's down from PJ. Yeah, it was just trying to do
too many things, yeah. Draft and right.
Yeah, I mean, it's a flip and write is what it is you.
Draft and write records I mean. You do draft you you get a, you
have a you have a set of odd cards in your hand.
You choose one to play and then we show them simultaneously and
we take that action on our mat in front of us and then we pass
them. So we draft the deck, right.
So that's why it's draft and write but and you're trying to
create a band of musicians and you're trying to pump them up on
social media and it's just, yeah, you know, it was, it was a
lot going on. Three Sisters was just executed
better in my opinion, but that's OK Next we played fit to print,
which a lot of people have been talking about.
Yeah, they have. We were a little nervous.
We are not fans of Galaxy Trucker.
So a big pile of tiles in front of you where you can only touch
them with one hand and flip them over and decide to put them you
know on your spaceship. And I love the trucker I.
Love. We hate to get we.
Yeah, I've got other friends who hate everyone.
I think Gareth and his Santa group doesn't doesn't like it,
but I quite like that chaos. Cannot stand that however fit
the print. You're doing the same thing,
yeah, but then you put them on your desk, which is a
three-dimensional cardboard desk and then you put them on your
your layout for your newspaper and it works.
I liked it better. I liked it better.
We played it and we were like we were happy we played it.
We don't know that it's worth the hype, but we certainly
enjoyed it and would would gladly accepted.
Into play a game, would you add it?
Would you add it to your collection?
We would, yeah, because it's a, it would hit the table.
Our group would enjoy that. I think it's executed better
than Galaxy Trucker, I think. Is the problem.
But Galaxy Strucker must be 10 plus years old now, isn't it?
As. Well, it is.
It is. I know he.
Had a He had a bit of a second edition, but it's still old.
Oh. Man.
Well then we played first in flight afterwards.
This game was fantastic. Oh wow.
First so. Good.
Yep. So you play a famous pilot in
the early days of air travel, like we're talking about the
Wright brothers, right? Oh, I.
Love the art already? It's great.
So you have a flight deck of cards, and they include flaws
and basic air problems, glides and whatever.
And so you flip them over and they have a distance number in
the corner that lets them know the distance that you've flown,
right? And so you're trying to get,
you're trying to get to 40, you get to 40 points.
The end game ends, you're done. You play over the course of four
rounds or years. And so you you take, you take
flight actions. As you move your meeple or your
pilot around the Rondell of actions, there's a asymmetry
because whoever your pilot is, and these are all historically
accurate individuals and so you get benefits.
And then when you get to 15, if you could travel 15, you flip it
over because you're famous, you've you've managed to fly a
plane, assert, you know, whatever the distance.
Right, right. So you become famous, which
makes your person stronger, your asymmetrical power stronger.
And so it's that. It's that push your luck.
Do you keep flipping cards to try to get further and further?
You've got basic problems and flaws, and they have like little
explosion symbols on them. If you get four of them, that
means you crashed, you know, so that's unfortunate.
At the end of each year, there's whoever went the furthest gets 7
gold, The Michelin cup, 4 gold, 3 gold.
Whatever it is, there is a third player ghost player in in a two
player game, but all it is, is it's just his pilot.
He moves around the board, too, just like Tokaido, whoever's in
last place gets to go first. Next.
Yeah. OK.
And he has a he has a token and he just blocks spaces.
That's really all he does. So it's very low.
Admin Low admin. Yeah, it's what you want in the
admin. And then we we ended the day
with another game of Three Sisters because it was so good
and we played I'm, I'm probably going to say this wrong Aughton
or a Ton Aton. It is an it is a very old game
by Queen Games. It's a two player game where
you're striving to gain power in ancient Thebes.
In Egypt, 2005. Yeah it was in their games
library and it was a it's a two player and it I mean it is it is
the standard two player back and forth.
We're we've got 4 temples in front of us and we're trying to
play. This one sent to me like as a
freebie from like. It might have been a Kickstarter
and this was added in to backers, but it came with.
I think it came with like missing tokens.
I've never. Played in No.
And I asked for them. They couldn't find any.
It is. How was it?
It's good. It really it is it.
It fits in our wheelhouse of two player games that we really
enjoy. There's not a lot to say about
it, right? It came out in 2005.
It's exactly. What you?
It's what you expect from Queen Games.
It was nothing flashy, it was nothing crazy.
It was just putting tokens on the board and then our last game
of the weekend was Brussels 1893.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a solid it's the new
reprint deluxe version with like, the gold foil and
beautiful worker placement. We only got to what I call demo
it. We ran out of time at the end of
the day before they started. You know, like you need to bring
all the Bud games back to check back.
So we got to, we got to set it up and play around.
It's very interesting. I would love to get that.
In our it is lovely.
It's a really chunky mid to heavyweight worker placement
game that that really appeals to my wife and I, and so there you
are. What's your What's your top
three? Top three was Life of Amazonia
and this is in no order Life of Amazonia World Wonders and 1st
in flight that might change tomorrow but.
Yeah, I've got to say, Wandering Towers looks like fun.
That does look like a good game to have for larger groups.
So I'm looking for group games. I look, yeah, yeah, Group games
that play. Group games, Yes, quick group
games for Cajun Con. That is the key.
That's the key. You're busy.
I'm impressed. 2020 games, 26 plays.
What's the What's the next convention you've got?
Is that Cajun corn? Have you got anything else
summed up? No, actually I'm going to be
going to Nashville or just outside of Nashville, TN for
Tennessee game days where Adam from Tabletop Vibes will be
driving down. He's going to pick me up and
then we're going to drive together to Tennessee.
It's a four day event. I think it's going to be similar
to this. I don't know a lot about it, but
I know that we're going to see Ameritrash talk, random meeble,
TJ plays tabletop worldwide. They're all going to be there.
It's going to be good to see them again.
I've not actually met May and Josh before Ameritrash talk.
I have not met them. So I'm looking forward to
finally meeting them. Everyone else I have so far.
So we've got that up in the, that's up on the in the pocket
and then like a month and a month and a half later I'll be
in England. KJ.
Yes, Sir. Not on to go.
So in 30 seconds, I'll tell you what I played this weekend.
Tell me what? You played this, right?
I didn't mean for this to be all about me, folks.
But PJ, it's always about you. I mean, that's that's how it
rolls. So in my 30 seconds of this very
short episode, we got left. I play lots of small games
because I guess he's quite fitting for the 30 seconds I've
got. So we played French Quarter.
Oh man, I can't wait for my coffee.
Which arrived on Saturday and was straight on table on Sunday,
which is the 4th. Is that a fourth game in this
series? So there was Fleet, the Dice
game. The fleet.
Yeah, dice game. Then there was the Motor City.
No, There was three sisters, then Motor City and now French
Quarter. So roll em right game.
Only played it once. I really enjoyed it.
But I wish I'd read. I wish I'd read the scoring
mechanic before I got in the game because Mrs. Ball gave me
Paul whooped me. She had also not read the the
scoring mechanics. But man, there's combos so it's
combo. Tastic.
So it's like, or the others, you know.
Oh, I've done this. Oh, trigger this.
I've got a bonus. Oh, I've got this.
I've got a star 05, you know, Five actions later, I'm filling
in exes all over the board. I feel like you actually went to
the French Quarter in New Orleans.
That's exactly. I was on.
I mean, you're travelling by cabs and carriages and taxis and
steamboats and something I've forgotten.
And the beauty about New Orleans is you really need a local to
help you navigate, and you didn't have a local with you.
So I did a local because so you see like the rule book is
thinking about second lines and I was like what is a second line
and I had to go right back to the very first page and a little
bit of, you know, intro that you always skip over, you're rolling
the rules. They explained about the second
line, which is like a like a party that moves along the.
It is a. It is.
Explain it better than me. I will.
So second lines are predominantly funeral
processions in New Orleans and there's like a jazz band and so
the the, the family and the bit and the mourners and the pastor
is the first line, right. Second line is just everyone
else can join and join the procession and it's, you know,
it's so you could be in New Orleans.
And all of a sudden there's a second line walking by.
Yeah, you get, you can join them.
Yeah, you can join them, yeah. But without that context, I was
like, I don't know what it is, but but we played that and then
over the last, like I know four or five weeks we've had loads of
buttons. Shy Game Wallet games arrived.
So we played some of the two player ones, a game called
Making Manhattan, which was, you know most most of these games
are 18 cards games. So that was you start with
Central Park, which got unique scoring conditions, and then you
draft six more cards to your table, so eight cards in total.
Game finished. Nice, excellent.
Sounds like this is something I need for the airplane ride to
England. So somebody messaged me and
asked me whether it was good for planes and I said yes.
OK. For trays.
So making Manhattan was good. They played a game called Forest
Sky, but he played that game twice, which was again drafting.
And you're trying to get three cards in your hands and there's
two sets of three cards on the table to basically hit scoring
mechanics on your cards, but utilising what other people have
dropped, like thrown away so you've got lots of birds flying
around. I thought it was very unique.
I couldn't do anything else. I played like it but again was
fun. I'm going to destroy this
pronunciation. Kinsugi Ki KINTSUGI based on
kinsugi based on pottery that are all broken and then you use.
Gold. To make, to make them and it
makes it. Stronger.
Laying cards down to basically make beauty out of what is
broken. You have your own colour, but no
one knows. But you can't make it too
obvious because if people guess your colour, they take your
score off their score. Lowest score wins.
That was very good. And then we played another round
of tickets to Ride Legacy. No spoilers, but still very,
very much enjoying that one. How many games do you have left?
Three. So we're going to try and oh,
what won't be tonight, be tomorrow night.
So we had a bit of a gap because of back to work, but.
It's it's good. It's worth.
It's worthy. It is really worthy.
I definitely glad that somebody sent me that copy.
And then back in 2002 at the Board Games Expo in the UKI
played the game called Isla Isla, which is like a family
roll and write, so had a lot of fun.
It's on Kickstarter next month, so I've got to set a preview
copy just to play a game. Just yeah, just fun.
Roll dice, move around trying to fill the island and escape it.
But if you try to escape too quickly, every tile was negative
points. You got threat cards?
Yeah, just a standard family oriented role and right, good,
Good for the kids and that's it. That was the small games.
Weekends. So slightly more than 30
seconds. I think I took 5 minutes, but
it's fine, it's fine, right? I've got a list of the games.
I have circled Wandering Towers and Life of Amazonia to see what
I can find in the UK. Not that I'm able to buy the
games because currently I am on a buying ban and alcohol.
Ban. And generally trying to keep
myself fit and healthy for dry January, including board game
purchases. Good for you.
So far I've done. I've done quite well.
Good for you, any so. So I think there's one last
segment. So we've recently gotten some
feedback that the disappointing part of our episodes is that
they're not about our dear friend Nick Board Game Review
UK. Never heard of him.
Yeah, like we we need to make episodes about him.
He will be joining us, right? This is pretty soon we'll be
having. Him on episode 69 would be the
episode that Nick has claimed is his own.
There you go. So Maple to Maple Takeover with
Nick Ball Game Review K It might be a not safe work episode.
It in my nubby. So Nick, if you're listening,
this last 1530 seconds are all about you, and episode 69 will
be all about you as well, Sir. He's got his equipment and he's
ready, he's ready to go. So we'll give him some tuition
on his equipment and we'll we'll be, we'll be ready for episode
69. Well, that is our Geekway
Gateway getaway for the weekend. 3GS Thank you PJ for sharing
your awesome trip. Well done on the games plane and
thank you everyone for listening as ever.
Thanks everyone for listening. Please subscribe and as always,
we'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so make sure to leave
those in the comments. And don't forget, you can also
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