Hey guys, and welcome to a bonus episode of Meeple to Meeple.
As always, I remain PJ and this is going to be bonus episode #4
I wanted to just share with all of you a quick impromptu story
about our gaming this weekend. And so this episode is sponsored
by the letter T. So unintentionally on Sunday, my
wife and I, we were playing some games and I think halfway
through the day we realized every game we played started
with the letters TA and totally unplanned.
So by the third game, we were like, well, what other TA games
do we have in our collection? So we started our day playing
Tapestry by Stone Meyer Games. Now this is a beloved
civilization building game was designed by Jamie Stegmeyer.
Just amazing, amazing artwork by our good friend Andrew Bosley
who made an appearance on this show.
So we want to give a shout out to Jamie and Andrew.
Thanks so much. So we started our day playing
Tapestry. There are so many because we
have all the expansions. There are so many civilizations
that we have not gone through all of them.
So when we played yesterday, I was playing the Craftsman
Civilization, which I never seen before.
And so it was a really interesting experience where I
would put my economic buildings on my player mat rather than my
capital mat, for those of you who are familiar with the game,
and you would get bonuses along the way as you're crafting.
It was exciting. I did not when Katie ended up
beating me in Tapestry. It's a game we play often.
It is a game that we will never call from our collection.
It was the last game. I don't know if I shared this
with you. I don't know if I've shared this
on the show previously. This was the last game that my
mother gave us as a Christmas gift before her death in 2021.
So it kind of is like, you know, not that my mother was a really
big board gamer. She did enjoy cards, bridge,
cribbage, canasta, rummy and so forth.
But she supported our board game hobby and she bought us Tapestry
and all the expansions. So Tapestry is the first TA game
that we played over the weekend. The next game we played is a
newer game. This was a Kickstarter that we
had backed about a year ago. It arrived early in December.
And what I'm really excited to talk to you about, and that is
Tabreeze. Tabreeze is a majestic game.
It is incredibly beautiful. It is published by Crafty Games.
It was designed by Randy Flynn, and it was illustrated by Sid
Finney and Dawn May. It is an incredible game where
you are in the Middle East and you are create, you are
fashioning rugs, right? And so you have 3 workers.
Everyone has three workers. And one of the things I think my
favorite thing about this game is there is no board.
The board is a neoprene double stitched double sided mat and
you roll it out and it is incredible.
There are stalls for different types of resources, all that
come in different sizes. They're made of wood and they're
dual layered. And so you move around the
board, your three workers one at a time by trying to collect the
necessary resources so that you can meet the customers orders
for the rugs that you are crafting through a set of cards
in your hand to get more. There's a middle section where
you can draw one card and get 4 coins, or you can draw 4 cards
and keep one. When you fulfill an order, you
get a bonus right away in money, in resources, even in bonus
points. But also you slide it underneath
and you have like a little workshop area at the bottom of
your player mat. You slide it underneath and what
is shown at the end of every round when you reset the board,
there's the workshop phase, which is essentially a glorified
income phase. Whatever money is showing,
whatever resources are showing. Sometimes dice because you roll
dice at certain points in the game to determine what type of
resources will be generated or will be available for you for
purchase. Again, that is to breeze by
Crafty Games designed by Randy Flynn.
We strongly recommend taking a look at it if you haven't.
It is absolutely incredible. It was at this point where my
wife said, So what other TA games are we going to play?
Because we played Tapestry and we played to Breeze and then we
did not play them in alphabetical order, of course.
So I was like, well, why don't we grab a light one and let's
play the beloved Takinoko? Who doesn't love the cutest set
of pandas and gardener and beautiful bamboo?
This game is so simple, so accessible, and yet it has a lot
of emergent qualities. The more you play it, there are
more strategies every single time.
It was designed by Antoine Bauza.
We love him to death. It was published by Matago and
Bombick's Games. And so we we played a Takinoko.
And what can I say? Takinoko is the classic
experience. Played it then.
You know the beautiful pink, yellow or green hexes that you
place on the board every? So my initial draw my there's
panda cards, Gardner cards, and emperor cards.
Basically, it wants you to set up tiles in certain locations.
So the panda card wanted to eat pink bamboo, the gardener wanted
to grow certain bamboo of different heights in pink, and
then the hexes had to be pink and irrigated in order to grow
bamboo. And wouldn't you know it, it was
probably four or five rounds, four or five draws of hexes,
because you can draw 3 hexes and play one as an action.
And between myself and my wife, no pink, that was rather fun.
Took me a while, but I ended up eking out a pretty considerable
win. But so our second game of the
day, once again Takinoko by Antoine Bauza.
So we're really thankful for that.
And we decided to play a heavier game, one that we we have
recently gotten the big box to hold all the contents of all the
expansions. We also have all the expansions.
We've talked a little bit about it on previous episodes.
It is probably the most beautiful game that we have ever
played and that we even own, and that is Tang Garden.
And this is the big box. So Tang Garden.
This is so beautiful, guys. I really can't stress enough how
beautiful this game is. It's just incredible.
It was published by Thundergriff Games, and Andrew Bonsley also
was a contributing artist. It was designed by Francesco
Testini, Pierre Lucci Zizi and Pierre Paolo Paletti.
I apologize to all three of you for having butchered your names,
but your game is amazing. It's beautiful. 3 dimensional
cardboard trees, pavilions, bridges.
There's even little miniature cats that you can play.
So you're building or you're not building, you're fashioning a
garden in the Tang dynasty in China for the emperor.
You also have all these little miniatures.
These are characters that you start with one and then as you
move your elements, a green, yellow and blue water, earth and
forests. As you complete them, those
features on the garden, you move forward on your chart.
When all three of them pass certain markers, you have the
option of drawing a new character, which comes with a
new miniature. Each one gives you a power
during the game, and they will score you points if you put them
out in the garden. So you're trying to get all
these nobles and Royals and scholars and everything out into
the garden. The last expansion was the
seasons, which is kind of a campaign where you play through
The Four Seasons, and it also came with this big box artwork
here. I mean just look at this.
The tree on the cover is an actual reflection of the game.
I'm telling you guys, if you've never played Tang garden, find a
copy, find a friend for friends in England.
If rent shuffle and roll has a copy that you can rent to do it
guys, I'm telling you this game is incredible.
It is so worth playing, it's worth owning as it is incredibly
gorgeous. And then of course, our last TA
game of the day, we played the beautiful rolling right.
Simple Taka, no color. Taka, no color.
Nope, color. This one's amazing.
It's a Roland, right take on Takanoko again.
Designed by Anton Bowser and Quarantine Labrat, it is
fantastic. The thing that makes this game
stand out are the markers, so there are no dice to roll.
You actually roll the markers and so you've got yellow, blue
and green and pink in front of you.
And then these little rings that you see here on the pen, they
have shapes. So the sheet in front of you and
there are different levels of difficulty.
They may be green squares or pink triangles or yellow
circles, whatever it is. So if I were to take this, it's
a blue, obviously, and it's got a circle facing up.
I can fill in or color in on my sheet a blue circle.
And you're trying to fill up features in order to score
points there. Ladybugs on all the sheets.
The first person to color in three ladybugs through the
course of the game. That triggers end game.
But it's just a really unique feature where you simply take
the markers, roll them on the table, and then each player in
turn order draws 1 and colors it in.
Straightforward. The first player marker is an
adorable a panda meeple made of wood so that everyone knows who
that active first player is who's rolling the markers.
So that was our weekend gaming. And that was finally, again,
that is Takino Kohler. Great rolling, right?
So yeah, thanks for watching. We appreciate your support.
Remember, we're trying to unite the meeples from around the
world. Also, you should.
When this episode comes out, it'll also be episode 109, Last
Night Games, where I had a really good conversation with
Nathan Jenny, one of the owners of the publishers and designers
of Last Night Games. So be sure to watch that if you
haven't already, because presumably you've watched that
already and then watch this. So yeah, little bonus episode
brought to you by the letters TA again, that is Tapestry,
Tabreeze, Takanoko, Tang Garden and Takanokollar.
And that was a complete day of gaming with my wife.
It was incredible. Thanks for listening.
Please make sure to like and subscribe to the channel.
Your support means everything to all of us.
So we've got some really interesting Co hosts going on
right now. You'll notice that Gareth's kind
of been absent right now. He's got things going on.
So there will be various individuals filling in in the
next few weeks and we've got some things planned.
So once again, like subscribe, leave a comment, let me know
what is a game that starts with the letter TA in your
collection.