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, welcome to episode 74,
a Cajun in the UK. Oh yeah, as always, I'm PJ and
today is a special episode. They're all special really.
But I'm so low today. No, Gareth, he is on the road
for work and I am getting ready, along with my wife Misses Cajun,
Gamer. We are getting ready to fly to
London, so at the time of recording we leave in less than
48 hours. But when you listen to this
we'll already be in London. So I thought I would talk a
little bit about my expectations and our plans for our two week
excursion through southern and central England.
I'm going to talk about a few of the games that we are in fact
taking with us on the airplane. And then I did a post where I
asked you, our listeners, to submit one game that you would
take on an international flight to keep yourself entertained.
So I'll close out the episode with that.
So thanks for listening. It's a little unusual.
It's weird. I have no one to talk to.
So it's just like you have to listen to me drone on for 30
minutes or more. For that, I apologize.
But yeah, so, so here we go. So like I said, a Cajun in the
UK. This is my first time leaving
the country ever. My wife has travelled compared
to me extensively when she was in undergrad and grad school, so
this is her second time in England.
I think she spent like a day or less in London, but this is my
first time leaving the United States and it's exciting.
Most exciting of all is it's the first time that Gareth and PJ
will meet in real life. The meeple to meeple connection
will be made and we're going to record what would presumably be
episode 75, which is just a milestone for us.
We will be in the same room looking at one another the whole
while, so look forward to that. That should be fun.
So we're going to spend 4 days in London and we're going to be
tourists and we're going to do all the touristy things and you
know, the the shopping and the museums and everything like
that. I do say, personally, I am
looking forward to seeing both the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin
Marbles at the British Museum. Putting aside any, you know, all
your socio, anthropological and political opinions about
colonialism, yes, these things are bad, and I realize it, So
we'll, we want to speak to that. But if I want to see the Rosetta
Stone and the Elgin Marbles, I have to go to the British Museum
in London and I'm looking forward to that.
I mean, I devoted greater part of 1012 years of my life to the
study of ancient Greek and Roman history.
And so to to see them in person is a really, I'm really looking
forward to that and just experiencing London and the food
because man, there's so much food and it, you know, if you
say one thing about us Cajuns, we love to eat and I'm not
afraid to eat anything and it don't matter whether it's spicy
or not. I'm ready to go.
So I am looking forward to fish and chips.
Of course, a traditional English breakfast blood sausage is a new
one for me. I'm looking forward to that.
That should be kind of exciting. I feel like there's if there
isn't, there should be a board game where you you guess it
would be set collection as you would be eating all the
international cuisines in some sort of a market or something
like that. I know there's the farmers
market which is a cool little tile placement game, but yeah,
so it's going to be like 4 days of exploring London real life
gaming. So let's talk about the games
that we have packed, that we are bringing with us on the
airplane. Although I imagine we won't play
them on the way to London because we'll be sleeping.
It is a overnight flight, but we packed Love Letter obviously for
its size. And we did pack Next Station
London, because what's more appropriate than playing Next
Station London in your hotel room or at a cafe in London?
So we did do that. Of course we only brought like a
few sheets. We didn't take the whole thing,
but we've got enough of those. We also use cartographer color
pencils instead of the color pencils that come with Next
Station London, because they're smaller and more compact.
So we were able to fit those in a single box.
The other thing we're taking with us is Rolling Realms.
Now as you know, if you have a copy of Rolling Realms or have
played Rolling Realms before, there's multiple player decks,
right? And all the decks are the same
so that you can play. And then the two dice and the
dry erase markers, so 2 dry erase markers, 2 complete decks
of the Realms and the dice, and that's all we need.
So we don't have to take the whole, the whole packet.
And if somebody wants to play Rolling Realms in real life
while we're in England, well, we have our decks, we're ready to
go and we have all the promos, we have everything that's come
out, all the realms. So we're ready to do that.
So that's Rolling Realms, Love Letter and Next Station London
are our three games that we're taking with us with the hopes of
playing on the airplane, with the hopes of playing in the
hotel room, you know, at night or or maybe a breakfast or in
the pub or something like that. There's a lot of other games and
we'll talk about them that you've recommended.
There's so many options we could have taken but obviously when we
want to pack light because we are in London, well we are in
England for two weeks and we're going to be in London for four
days. Then we're going to go down to
Southampton for three days where we will meet up with Gareth and
his wife and daughter and hang out and play some games in his
game room and have dinner with the Southampton gaming group
that Thursday night and then on Saturday April 6th.
So if you live anywheres in southern England, and in my
opinion as Americans, driving 3 hours is easy peasy, you should
all come to Southampton. We will be hosting Cajun Con.
I think there's 25 or 30 people that have committed that are
going to be there. It's a little one day gaming
convention, Bring your own food, bring your own booze and we're
just going to, we're going to game all day.
There have been talks of there out of an Obsession tournament.
There were talks of maybe playing Feudum or Nemesis, tons
of other things as well. Just bring your games and come
play. They're gonna they're gonna do a
bring and buy, so that'll be interesting.
So maybe I'll buy a second hand game from somebody to take back
home. Who knows?
That'll be fun. There are a few of you.
Few of you I know are not able to make it.
And I'm really disappointed and sad, 'cause I was looking
forward to meeting so many of you.
I'm still looking forward to meeting all of you anyway, so
that's fine. But yeah, so that's Southampton.
So that's Cajun Con, April 6th, that's a Saturday.
So if you're listening, come to Southampton.
Think about it, even for the day.
Take the train down from Oxford or Nottingham or, you know,
drive. Drive down from Bristol.
Take the train from Manchester or Leeds.
Come spend the day with us. Let's play games, let's hang
out. It's going to be fun.
It's going to be great. It's going to be, it's going to
be fantastic. I can't wait, can't wait to
just, you know, dive in gaming. And I don't know if we're we're
going to record Episode 75 from Cajun Con or whether we're going
to do that on the day before or the day after.
I'm not sure after that. My wife and I are going to take
the train up to Bath and we're going to spend 2 days there.
I'm looking forward to that because I'm really excited to
see the Roman Baths, an intact Roman site.
Like I said before, I dedicated so much of my life to studying
ancient Roman history to see a Roman bath.
Yes, it may not be the bath where Julius Caesar or Cicero
visited, but Roman citizens bathed in these springs and that
to me is is significant. I'm I'm really interested in
looking forward to that as well. So there's the Jane Austen
Center. We'll go to the Royal Crescent
few other things in Bath. So it should be fun right?
And it's supposed to be a a beautiful city right?
Like there's the there's that annual there's an annual
competition for the most beautiful city in England and
Bath sits out of the contest because they were winning it
consistently every year. I I don't remember all the
details, but our British listeners will know exactly what
I'm talking about and yeah, so I'm looking forward to that.
That should be pretty fun. After that, we're going to take
the we'll take the train, short train ride over to Oxford, where
we will meet up with Craig and Becky.
That's get into games and misses, get into games and we'll
be they're going to take us back to their house.
We're going to stay with them for a few days.
They're going to put us up. That's going to be fun.
And then games with Beanie and my Shelf life.
Brad and Susie will come up because they won't make Cajun
gone. They're on vacation, but they're
going to come up to Daventry and we're all going to get together
in game for a fun day. That'll be interesting.
That should be fun. I'm looking forward to
chocolates and strawberries and waffles.
Oh my. Along with all the war games,
all the board games in the Get Into the Games on Air Studios.
I'm looking forward to that. That should be exciting.
Hopefully, hopefully we'll get in a game of distilled.
Craig and I have been wanting to play that for a while.
If you listened to I think it was episode three, it was two or
three of Get Into Games on Air where Becky and Craig talked
about their top ten. Distilled made both their top
ten lists. My wife and I love distilled, so
hopefully we'll get to play Distilled.
What else? Planet Unknown hit their top 10,
so we're looking forward to playing that.
We're still waiting for our copy to arrive.
We backed it some time ago. We were late pledgers, so we're
waiting for our copy of Planet Unknown, and hopefully we'll get
to play that with Craig and Becky.
That'll be a lot of fun, I'm sure.
I'm sure if you've watched, if you watched last week's episode,
watched, if you listened to last week's episode of Get Into Games
on Air, you heard Becky and Craig talk about their new
obsession and that is Star Wars Unlimited, where I think they
did a live unboxing of an entire box of packs of cards.
Craig, I expect the bedroom to be wallpapered with Star Wars
Unlimited cards. I expect that project to be done
before I get here. That's been a joke between Craig
and I was like you have so many cards.
You have so many duplicates. You could just wallpaper a whole
wall, one accent wall of the bedroom would be fine.
Thank you. You know.
But I'm. There may be a game of that too.
I feel like they're going to they're going to want to play
that so. And who can blame them, right.
That's a that's a huge investment, but definitely
looking forward to staying with them and playing with them and
enjoying their their village where they live and just
experiencing for two days, 2 1/2 days a little bit of their life
and they're sharing it with us and that's that's going to be
really exciting. And we say this all the time.
You hear this constantly. It's the beauty of our
community, right, is that we share not only a hobby, but we
share our lives with one another and I'm really looking forward
to that. I think more than more than all
the tourist stuff, that's really what I'm looking forward to.
I had someone just the other day ask me what I was most looking
forward to in England before we go.
And I mean, naturally I said, yeah, I'm really looking forward
to seeing the Elgin Marbles, but above that, I'm really looking
forward to seeing and visiting all of our board game friends,
meeting them, meeting you all for the first time.
I think it's going to be the most exciting part for me.
I'll try to maintain my composure, but yeah, I'm really
looking forward to that. So yeah, and then after that
we'll head down. I think we're going to go to
Oxford for a day or somewheres. Outside of Oxford, there's a
French Manor house Craig and Becky have agreed to take us to
as part of the the National Trust.
So that'll be fun. Maybe get in a game of obsession
outside of a Manor home. That'll be fun too.
And then we fly home on the 12th and I think because that's
that's a trip where we leave Heathrow middle of the day.
But we get back to Springfield, IL 6:30 in the evening.
So I'll want to stay awake to avoid the jet lag as much as
possible. We've got love letter, we've got
rolling realms. We've got next station London to
keep us occupied. Although I'm really looking
forward to playing next station London in London be really cool.
I don't know, but in the tube, if there's like a cafe somewhere
is really like right next to a station.
I would love to play next Station London while in a
station in London that just that would be really cool.
I love all those little meta, you know, meta moments that we
create for ourselves and I think that would be super exciting as
well. So yeah, that'll be great.
Look, it's it's just, it's it's really amazing.
I'm still surprised I'm leaving the country guys for the first
time. It's, you know, it's a little
overwhelming as it approaches. But like I said, by the time
y'all are listening to this, I'm going to be gallivanting the
streets of London, passing a good time and showing the
British how Cajuns do it. Because we'd like to do it right
to all of our friends in England that we will be visiting.
You know, if you open up your kitchen, I can cook for you and
we then we'll pass a good time. That's that.
I would look forward to sharing some of my culinary heritage
with you as well as playing board games because that's what
I'm all about. I want to cook for you and I
want to play games with you. That's, those are my love
languages, right? Let me cook for you and let me
play games with you. That is like the end all be all
of what I would love to experience and share with all of
you. So.
And I'm going to get to do that with Gareth.
Oh my God, that's going to be amazing.
I can't wait, can't wait. So that being said, I'm going to
get to the end of this episode. It's kind of weird to prattle on
when you're by yourself and there's no one to to feed off of
here. So this episode may be a little
bit shorter than what you're accustomed to, and I apologize
for that, but so I I took down some notes.
This is from all the responses I got on Instagram.
I had posted an image of Tower Bridge in London and I asked the
question what would what one game would you take with you on
an on an international flight? I should have been based on the
responses, I should have been a little bit more specific.
These were games meant to be played on the airplane and of
course with a partner, because I'll have my wife with me to
keep us entertained on the flight.
There were a lot of, there were a lot of conditions, there were
a lot of maybes or so. So maybe I should have been a
little bit more clear, and that's on me, and I accept that.
But I want to go through some of these, so make sure you're
listening because your name should pop up.
If I missed anyone, I apologize, but I tried to get everybody's
response. Some of you put multiple
responses so I may not get to all of them.
But yeah, so John from Try Win Games, our good friend who we
will meet at Cajun Con. He recommended Tokyo Highway.
I'd love to see how I play Tokyo Highway.
Just a little bit of turbulence will make all the little roads
and wooden cars fall off. That would be just tragic and
lose pieces. But I appreciate the suggestion,
Erlena at Mostly Solo, our friend in the Netherlands,
Rotterdam, I think. I think you're from Rotterdam,
and I know that you're going to correct me when you listen to
this, when you listen to this episode, you suggested Nummsters
where it because it takes up no space and you play with your
hands and so you can play that on the airplane.
So I'm going to have to check in, check, check that out.
That'll be kind of exciting. Good to know.
And I appreciate that. You understood the assignment,
right, Sam at Sam Jeremy 87, he suggested Fleet the dice game.
I don't have that game, but I would be a good candidate to
play with the Traybacks down on an airplane for sure.
So thank you for that. Sam our our good friend Alex at
Pink Maple, who unfortunately will not be making Cajun Con.
It just didn't work out. She suggested my city roll and
build. You know, it's interesting.
So we talked about, you know, because we're in the middle of
another campaign of my city, Roland building.
Like we could, we could easily just tear the sheets that we
need and the two dice we could do that we could fit it in into
our luggage. So we may, I don't know, but
it's a good that's a good choice.
By the way, that's a great game. Y'all should.
It's better than my city. Like the actual board game
itself, the Roland build is awesome.
And if your friends have a copy, you can go through Zoom or
Discord or any video conferencing and play it with
one another. That's a lot of fun.
We, Katie and I, both played it with Craig and Becky over
Discord, through video conferencing, played the whole
thing. We had a lot of fun.
That was that was a really great game.
So, Alex, thank you so much. Be safe.
And I'm sorry you won't make it to Cajun Con, our dear friend
Anna Anna Leyless, 19. From Brazil, she suggested sea
salt and paper. An excellent choice.
It is compact, it is easy to play.
It doesn't take up much space, so an airplane tray back would
be excellent. Someone else also suggested it
and said you'd be flying over sea and salt.
So that's kind of a kind of meta.
I like that. I like that a lot.
So that's a great one. So Anna thank you so much for
that. Our dear friend Adri at Wanderer
meeple she suggested welcome to. She did say you know well it
kind of depends on space. It depends on theme and what
you're interested in playing and she's absolutely right on all
accounts but welcome to is a good option.
We thought about welcome to but the way we'd have to pack it
we'd fold the we'd have to fold the sheets in half and we didn't
want to have a crease running through it.
We opted out of Welcome to, but I know that our friends in
England have welcome to and it may hit one of the tables at
Cajun Con. And I sure hope it does because
it accommodates a lot of players so everyone could play this one
game and that would be a lot of fun.
So thank you for that. Vanessa at Miss in Pieces, our
dear friend from well outside of Venice, Italy.
She will not be a Cajun Con, but she will be on vacation in
Berlin, Germany. So do you have a great trip to
Berlin? She had a lot of suggestions and
I and I love her for this. She suggested Penny Dreadfuls.
She suggested next station London, which is an excellent
choice because we're taking it with us.
She also suggested get on board. Well, we'll be on board a plane
and we'll be on board trains too.
So that's a that's a really great thematic option to take on
a plane as well. So Vanessa, thank you and have a
great trip. Our wonderful, wonderful, sweet
friend Nate at N Miller 39 on Instagram, he suggested he
suggested Stool Pigeon. And for those of you who know
and have listened to the episode when Nate was on, Nate is the
designer of Stool Pigeon and he admits to being very biased.
But that's his game. Game fits.
That would be a great option. It would work really well on an
airplane. So Stool Pigeons a great option
if you're thinking about travelling internationally and
you need a game to take with you on the plane.
It's a Stool pigeon and Nate, we will accept your bias.
We all have them and we love you all the more.
So thank you so much for that. Now we get into, let's see, So
Steven at Nashville board game guy who I had the pleasure of
meeting and playing several games with played amazing game
of terror scape with him while we were in Nashville at
Tennessee game days he suggested the Star Wars deck building game
which I think would work. It's a two player game.
Cards don't usually take up a lot of space.
I don't know about the market in between.
I mean because we are sitting it side by side, but I mean it, it
could work. I don't have a copy of Star Wars
deck building game but certainly it is a good option.
And so Steven thank you for the suggestion.
Thanks for listening and thank you so much for hosting me in
your home when we were in Nashville.
So I appreciate that Sergio at Board Gaming Animals he
suggested I love him for it. Gloom Haven Buttons and Bugs,
which just recently came out. The solo Gloom Haven campaign
unfortunately, I don't know. I could let, I could let Katie
play that and I could just watch or like run the monsters or
something. That would be kind of fun.
But yeah. And then Hadrian's Wall was the
other suggestion. Little too many pieces but again
it's a good option. That's a solid game.
We love it. I have a 100% win rating with
Hadrian's Wall so I'm really excited about that.
And then our our dear friend Cassie at Spooky Meatballs lives
just outside of Liverpool. Apparently there's going to be a
train strike on the day that she's supposed to come down to
Cajun Con. I'm hoping it works out.
Cassie, if you're listening, I hope you figure the train
situation out 'cause I can't wait to meet you and play French
Quarter and talk about New Orleans with you.
She also suggested sea salt and paper while on a plane.
And again, it's a great option. It's a great option.
I saved the best for last. These two have both been on our
show multiple times and clearly did not understand the
assignment whatsoever, and I think their suggestions are more
about a reflection of them than it is about the question at
hand. First up is Adam at Tabletop
Vibes. Adam is my one of my Rose Bros
Adam had to I or I got to experience.
We both experienced a 5 1/2 car ride.
Two and another one coming back from Nashville.
There's very little that we don't know about one another at
this point. But my rose bro, Adam, he
suggested Wonderland Wars. Wonderland Wars is great.
I love playing it. It's amazing.
It doesn't. It's not gonna.
Where am I supposed to play it out on the airplane?
I'm not really sure. We'll probably we could play it
at Cajun Con. I know Gareth has it and it's
the first game that Gareth ever painted.
He uses the he used the armor arm, army painter fast paints,
so he painted the minis. So that could be fun.
I would. I mean that would be awesome.
I would love to get in like A5 player Wonderland Wars with
Gareth. That would be great.
Thank you for the recommendation.
Adam and I cannot wait for the Rose Bros to unite once again.
It's going to be epic. And then finally, is Craig at
Get Into Games, Our lovely, lovely friend Craig, who
suggested Nemesis when who made this suggest, like, how am I
supposed to play Nemesis on an airplane?
And his response was just put it on the floor in the aisle.
Yeah, because everyone's going to be OK with that.
Well, I guess if they're asleep, we could do that maybe.
I don't think Katie's going to go for it.
Oh, well, thank you, Craig, for that.
So that is all of your suggestions.
Oh, I missed one. I just realized that's at gaming
wife suggested Hive, and we thought about Hive.
Great game to transport, Go to a pub on the airplane.
Yeah, we thought about it. So great option.
Thank you so much for that recommendation as well.
So thanks guys for participating in this.
I appreciate it. You gave me a little bit of
material to kind of talk about. If you're flying
internationally, then here is a whole list of games that our
good friends from the community recommend that you take with you
when you're on an international flight.
If anyone posted after I recorded this, I apologize and I
missed. You know that I still love you
very much and you're not forgotten in my hearts and my
thoughts. But yeah, so I'm looking forward
to this is this is going to be a great two weeks.
It should be fine. It's going to be, I mean, one of
the highlights of my life recording Episode 75 in England
in the same room as Gareth is just going to be phenomenal.
I I don't have words and it's going to be awesome and I can't
wait. So I look forward to that and
I've almost made it to 30 minutes.
Wow, you guys. You guys are beautiful to listen
to me prattle on about my upcoming trip and not trying to
instill FOMO at all, but then participating too and making
gaming recommendations for my wife and I on the airplane.
I got to say I feel loved and I feel appreciated.
And I am just so grateful to you all as this Cajun from Cajun
from southern Louisiana is going to go to the United Kingdom and
hopefully not upset anybody. I tell you what, you know what
would be really cool is if I could get in the Buckingham
Palace and cook for the king. That would be really cool.
Cook him up a nice, nice pot of gumbo.
You know, he can he can enjoy a meal and just relax.
He ain't gonna give him a mission.
I can imagine that. But that would be that would be
a lot of fun. Anyway, thank you guys for
listening. As always, I remain the Cajun
gamer, Your dear friend PJ Gareth, I can't wait to see you.
I can't wait to game with you. More importantly, we're going to
record Episode 75 together in the same room.
That's going to be so awesome and I can't wait for all of you
to listen in. So thank you for all of your
thoughts, thank you for all your prayers, thank you for all your
recommendations and remember, as always, to game on.
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 chat with us both on Instagram
at meeple to Meeple.