Mat Cousineau: Hello! I want to play game. Any plans for this evening? Perhaps a game night? Game over, man! Game over! Shut up! Play the game! Play it from your heart! 26 years ago, we started playing a little game. Now, we're all in Sit down, we're gonna finish it. And may the odds be ever in your favor. There we go. episode we typically review a board game and then if you're a cinephile or just a movie fan in general you can stick around for an in-depth discussion about a movie with a similar theme. Today is my first ever solo episode. So see how this goes. I think I typically do better when I have somebody to bounce off of. Hopefully I don't get too rambly. I'll do my best to stay concise. But yeah, I wanted to get on and record a kind of recap episode for a couple of events that recently happened, mostly board game related, but a little bit not board game related as well. And yeah, I didn't kind of want to delay this episode too long after Nerdfest. and breakout con. So I decided instead of like dealing with scheduling and trying to find somebody, et cetera, that I would just come on and ramble for like half an hour, 45 minutes, however long this might take and talk about my, my last two to three weeks and what's been going on in my life and in, you know, and mostly tied to the board games and movies and that kind of thing. So today on the podcast, ⁓ We are going to be talking about the maybe some of the craziest weeks of my life, the last three weeks. We had a massive snowstorm. I went to Breakout Con. I bought a bunch of games at auction and I sold a bunch of games at auction. I participated in Portisville North. The following weekend, I went to Back to Back Cons. I went to Nerdfest, my favorite board game convention and had a fairly dramatic start to my trip, including a car crash, which... I'll discuss in a few minutes. Yeah, so we'll talk about Nerdfest, some of the games that I played, as well as some of my experiences. And then I'll do some shout outs. I'll talk about a bunch of the games that I purchased at auction very briefly. ⁓ And then I will talk about a few games and movies that I've been taking in lately as kind of our normal shout outs segment. So don't have a feature movie and or game for this episode. It's going to be more or less just kind of recapping my last couple of weeks. It's mostly board game and movie related, and I promise it'll should be entertaining with a little bit of drama in there too. So before we get into all that, let's have a word from our sponsor board game bliss. I want to take a quick moment to shout out our sponsor board game bliss.com, which is honestly where I've been buying games for years. This isn't some random ad. They're literally the only people I reached out to because I already love what they do and I was relieved when they said yes so could be fully genuine when endorsing them. They've got a huge inventory of games and are always super competitive price wise which is important to me. At Board Game Bliss we believe in the magic of play. Board games spark joy, forge connections and create unbelievable moments. We source exceptional titles from around the globe so your table always has something exciting to offer. Whether you're just starting out or you're a seasoned pro there's always a new favorite waiting to be found. Go to BoardGameBlessed.com and find out why they're my personal favorite place to buy board games. So to further add on to the fact that Board Game Bliss is legitimately my favorite place to buy board games. And the reason that I wanted to partner with them to be a sponsor for the podcast is because I do a lot of my shopping there. And when I was returning from my trip from Toronto back home, I got a notification email from Board Game Bliss that Magical Athlete was available. They had a I guess a restock. So I immediately, you know, smash that, that, that purchase button, knowing that I'd be, I would be able to stop on my way home from BreakoutCon. Because for those who don't know, I live about a four hour drive north of Toronto. So, you know, most of my shopping with Board Game Bliss is online, but when, anytime I go down south to the Toronto area, I definitely stop in to check out what they have in store. It's always fun to do that. So yeah, I purchased Magical Athlete. which was has like been out of stock and difficult to get of late. And I also picked up a finally a copy of a legitimate copy of Nikosu Dice, which is probably my favorite trick taking game. So Nikosu Dice is a Japanese trick taking game. I've talked about it on the podcast before, but essentially it's a fairly standard trick taking game. In terms of like you must follow suit and a trump is set but the kind of major hook of this game is that there are also dice involved so there are I believe five suits of of colors and they're the dice that come in the game Are d6s and they come in the same five colors. So what happens at the beginning of each round? Everybody gets so many cards dealt to them and then we roll a whole bunch of dice into the middle of the table and in turn order we draft those dice. And those dice, as they were rolled, become cards, quote unquote, in your hand. And so what happens is that portion of your hand becomes visible to all of your opponents because they're just dice that are on the table. And then what happens is the last person to draft a die, will choose one of two dice and there will be one left over and that one leftover die will become Trump. So let's say it was the blue four that was left over, then all the rest of the fours and then all the rest of the blues, the blue cards also become Trump. So that is kind of like everybody has a little bit of an influence on what becomes Trump by the dice that they're drafting. And then that last person kind of has the ultimate say between the last two selections. And then what happened, like speaking about the last leftover die, in this game, it's a bidding game. So you're trying to win as many tricks as you bid in the round. But the way that that works is that you're going to end up with five dice in front of you, and you're going to play four of those five dice. You can never play that last die. As soon as you've played your fourth die into a trick, again, remember dice are cards. So as soon as you play that last, that second to last die into a trick, the leftover die that you have in front of you becomes your bid. So if you were forced into or didn't plan properly and you have four tricks, one, but the die that's left over in front of you is a three or a one or a five, then you did not hit your bid. So your bid is sort of a moving target. And that's what I absolutely love about this game. It kind of cranks the interaction, even though there's lots of interaction typically in a trick-taking game, it cranks it even higher. And it's just really fun and very brain melty to try to set that up so that you're playing exactly the right cards. hitting your bid. So yeah, probably my favorite trick taking game. It's been famously completely unavailable for years and years and years to the point where I just made my own print and play. And I've been playing that for a long time. Board Game Bliss brings in a lot of import games. And finally, in the last handful of months, they brought in the KOSU DICE. And this was my first opportunity to be able to pick it up ⁓ from their store. yeah, thanks to Board Game Bliss. They're an amazing store. I don't say that just because they're a sponsor. I'm a huge fan of everything they do there and their customer service is excellent. Their selection, they have so many games and they do sell into Canada and to the United States on their website. So check out boardgameblists.com. They're fantastic. All right, moving on. So a handful of things I want to kind of talk about and recap. about my last kind of three weeks. First thing is the weekend prior to leaving for Breakout Con. So Breakout Con, I was leaving the Thursday evening. The Sunday before that, so just like four days before that, I was working a night shift and I'm an ambulance dispatcher for those who don't know. And we got hit here in Northern Ontario in Sudbury with the worst snowstorm that we've gotten in 50 plus years. So we got somewhere between two and two and a half feet of snow in like an eight hour period or a 10 hour period. Like it came down hard and fast. And then it was followed by a couple of hours of freezing rain. So that created this like super thick crust of ice on top of this like two and a half feet of snow. I live in Northern Ontario and in Sudbury and we are this city. is fully capable of handling a massive snowstorm. Even, you know, two, two and a half feet overnight, we can deal with it. You know, we're used to having to deal with this in the winter. The city has, you know, plows that go out, you know, on, on multiple times per week, usually during the winter. ⁓ And like we're fully capable of handling a massive storm. It's that freezing rain that came immediately after and the fact that it all came down so fast that really messed us up. I ended up, live about 15 minutes from or 20 minutes from work or from like the town of Sudbury in the kind of like a suburb and ⁓ I wasn't able to get home. So I had to get a hotel. I ended up just working overtime and working a couple nights because people weren't able to get into work. So, you know, I, I kind of went in for overtime to make sure that ⁓ there were people there to answer the phones and handle emergencies. ⁓ yeah, kind of a bonkers, ⁓ you know, probably 48 hours there. And then, you know, a couple of days later, I'm getting into my car and driving down to Toronto. The next day, the main roads were all plowed. My neighborhood still hadn't been plowed, obviously four days later, like our roads, just where we live. hadn't been plowed, the snow had not been cleared. I think civilians with vehicles with like plows and snowblowers and whatever had kind of made a path on the side streets or in the neighborhoods where we live just wide enough for like one car. And you know, if you had a car that was like low profile or like didn't have winter tires, like you weren't going anywhere. But I was able to kind of scoot out of my neighborhood and drive down to Toronto. for BreakoutCon, which is a really nice convention. It's mostly a board game playing convention versus like ⁓ a convention where you purchase. However, they do have what they call a bring in by auction at BreakoutCon. And I went down with a few of my friends, shout out Steph and Dawn, and we kind of went and hung out and played games all weekend and it was super fun. And as I mentioned, there was a bring in by auction. So you can bring a whole bunch of games. and you print out labels ahead of time and you get your games all ready and then you drop them off on the Saturday morning. And the way it works is you give them three prices. So you give a noon price, a two o'clock price and a four o'clock price. And you can price them however you want, but typically what people do is they'll price it a little bit higher or what they're really hoping to get for the noon. And then the two o'clock price, it'll come down a bit. And then the four o'clock price typically is you're like, I just want, you know, I'm willing, this is the basement price I'm willing to take for this game to get it out of my hands. And so I brought something like 15 games and priced them fairly aggressively. I wanted to try and get rid of them so that I could like purchase more and keep doing, you know, having more games available for the podcast and that sort of thing. So I ended up selling nine of my games and did really well. A lot of them selling in the first and second kind of segments there. And then I... purchased a whole bunch of games too. And I'll list off a handful in a few moments. Yeah, that's super fun. We kind of like, you know, we were really close to the front of the line and you walk in there and like, it's a massive room with like probably literally thousands of games laid out on these tables. And ⁓ you just kind of like run around and look at prices and throw stuff in your bag. And like some people price like their games. you in a way that they probably won't sell that well. But a lot of people will even at that first, you know, noon price, you know, they're trying to get rid of these games and they're priced very, very aggressively. So very quickly, I'm like filling out my bag and all of a sudden I'm looking at my bag and I'm like, oh my God, I have so many games already. But yeah, so it's just really fun to do that. And then there's a handful of times where you're looking at a game, you're like, this is really cool. I'm not sure I wanted it at this price. And then you make a note. I was making notes in my phone. to go and check specific games at like at the two o'clock and four o'clock times. And there were a few that I was able to snag for prices that just made a little bit more sense for me. So this is just really fun to be like running around and then you see your friends, you're like, what do you got? And what did you get? And this is what I got. And yeah, really good time. Breakout Con also has a section that runs all weekend called Protospiel North, where you can go and sit down with other game designers. And that area was full. all weekend. I went in there and I placed it, play tested four or five of other people's games and I got my kind of latest design that that Steve, my game design partner and I have been working on called Fermi Paradox, which is a trick taking game with contract fulfillment and resource management. So I got to play that I think four or five times with a whole bunch of different game designers. So that was really, really great. Got some great feedback, took it back, made some changes and the game is really heading in the right direction and I think we're getting fairly close to a game that's going to be really cool and I think people are going to like. So yeah, keep your ear to the ground for that and I'll keep you posted as we go along with Fermi Paradox. So yeah, that was Breakout Con. I came home with, I think I purchased like 12 or 14 games in total, including a stop at Board Game Bliss, of course, and that bring-and-buy auction. Yeah, so I came home. and worked a couple of shifts. And then the following weekend, I went to Nerdfest. So if you listen to the last podcast where I did an episode with Jeff Madigan, and we talked about Face Off and all of our favorite two player games, we did mention in that podcast too, we kind of were talking about Nerdfest and Jeff kind of takes part in helping a little bit organize and deal with the putting together of that amazing convention. Nerdfest is fairly new. It's this was the fourth ever Nerdfest. The first two were at really small kind of small hall venues that, you know, was was really cool for them to start. And the first one, I think, was free. The second one was like $10 or something. They just wanted to get it off the ground and see where it could go. And then the last two years were they were held at the Novi Sheridan in like a legit, you know, hotel hall, way bigger. And then this year they had like a whole bunch of vendors and they had like a consignment area where you could sell a buy and sell use games. And they're really stepping it up. And they're, they're kind of, this is another convention that's more of a common play games. have a great library. ⁓ and more than anything, it's the people that I go for this kind of game casters community that kind of started this, this, ⁓ convention is just fantastic. So when we were leaving for nerd fest, we, I pack up. My car, it's about an eight, a little over an eight hour drive to get to Novi, Michigan from where I live. And I bring my son, Charlie, he's nine years old. So we get in the back of the car, we put him in the back of the car, we take off and not 20 minutes from home, snow starts to come down pretty hard and it starts to get a little slippery. They weren't calling really for much that day. So I wasn't overly worried. I'm like, I just got to get through this little storm and then we'll be good. So I come up to this, you know, 18 wheeler with a pulling a flatbed trailer and they're going you know a little bit slower than the speed limit and it felt pretty safe to me. I've driven in you know winter conditions quite a bit so I passed this truck and I have no issues passing the truck you know I'm going probably 90 kilometers an hour that's probably about 50 miles an hour and I get past the truck And then before I even have an opportunity to change lanes to get back into the slow lane, ⁓ the car starts to like twist a little bit. So I take my foot off the gas and I'm kind of just trying to let the car settle, but it kind of twists one way. And then, so I steer it the other way and then it goes too far. Then I'm trying to bring it back. And then before you know it, I'm doing three sixties going like 55 miles an hour on a highway. ⁓ you know, with a Mack truck, an 18 wheeler on my tail. So it's pretty scary moment. We did a full 360 in front of this truck. The truck driver, thank God, was very alert and switched lanes and was able to mostly avoid us ⁓ and dodge us and went around us. So we do a full 360, we cross in front of this truck. My trunk hits the, what would be a guard rail, but in this case, because of these huge storms, it's just a huge wall. of like rock hard ice. So the back of my car, the trunk basically smokes that we keep twisting. So I think we did like one or two more 360s with the front bumper hitting and then the back bumper hitting again. And then I think maybe the very tail end of that Mack trucks trailer flatbed trailer might've clipped the back of the car as well. Cause there's a very like a 90 degree, very sharp dent. in the back of the car that wouldn't occur by hitting a snowbank or a guardrail. So pretty scary moment. We're kind of spinning and jostling as we hit the snowbank, but we didn't hit anything head on, right? Like we're going in the same direction as the wall, as this ice wall. So we didn't hit the ice wall kind of head on. We're kind of like scraping it and hitting it as we're spinning. along it. you know we were going fairly fast but you know thank god no major injuries. I think when we first hit that that snowbank Charlie being in a car seat or in a booster seat kind of got jostled a little bit and he struck his head on the side of the like the partition the wall inside the car. Not super hard, a little bump and was a little sore and tender for a couple of days, but he didn't have any concussion symptoms. He was not, you know, no nausea or vision issues or anything else. you know, thank God he was okay. I turned around in the car when it first happened, I looked at him and I grabbed his hand and said, are you okay, buddy? And he looks at me wide eyed and he's like, yeah, I think so. I said, okay, well, you know what? We're good then, you know, like the car, our games, our stuff doesn't matter. You're okay. I'm okay. nothing else matters. like, you know, that moment, he's kind of like realizing, okay, I'm okay. And like, obviously starts to panic a little bit and, and, you know, starts to cry. And so I've just tried to like, make sure he's okay. But mostly he was just a little shaken up and scared and whatnot. But we were both able to walk away completely fine with super minor bumps and bruises. I had absolutely nothing, not a bump, not a bruise, nothing, nothing. But he was totally fine. And then like, You know, a few moments later, he climbs into the front seat and I'm just kind of trying to keep him calm and trying to talk to him. And he goes, he goes, are we still going? Can we still go? Which I thought was kind of adorable. But I said, buddy, I have no idea. Like I'm thinking our car is probably total at this point. Like it's definitely not drivable. You know, we have to deal with insurance. The police will have to come and take a report. I called the ambulance, you know, not because I was overly concerned, but I just, you know, he banged his head and I'd wanted them to just. come take his vitals, make sure he was okay. I was fairly certain we didn't need to go to the hospital or anything, but I wanted like a medical professional to come and just kind of give me the thumbs up and say like, yeah, yeah, he's fine. Just keep an eye on him, which is exactly what happened. So we had all that done and I told him, said like, I don't know if we can still go pal. You know, there's all this stuff that we have to deal with. So like, I can't promise that we're gonna go. And he's like, you know, and this is so adorable, especially in this moment. He like starts to like wiggle his arms and legs in the back. And he's like, look, look, I'm fine. I'm okay. I don't, I'm good. I don't, I, can still go thinking that it was because of him that maybe we weren't able to go. But of course I told him, like I said, we can try buddy. Like I just, need some time to figure all this out. So yeah, the time took five hours by the time we dealt with insurance and rentals and everything else and police reporting, et cetera, et cetera. By the time that was all done, was three o'clock in the afternoon. We had left at nine a.m. and it was three o'clock in the afternoon and we're finally like truly hitting the highway again and hitting the road. By this time, like the adrenaline has like worn off and I've been running around and dealing with, you know, all kinds of stuff with phone calls and rentals and insurance and all this stuff. So I'm like exhausted and I've got like an eight hour drive ahead of me. ⁓ But yeah, coffee and energy drinks and the company of my little guy Charlie in the back. We made it. We finally arrived in Novi, Michigan at midnight. So really tough kind of start to our trip. But all things considered, you know, we're thankful to be healthy and happy and okay and be able to kind of go to this thing that we've been looking We went last year, Charlie and I. And so we've, you know, we've been anticipating going back together for a year. We've been talking about it for months. So when this occurred, my first, know, after I made sure Charlie was okay, my first thought was like, man, it's going to really suck if I can't go to this thing. So thankfully we were okay. And we went to tack on to the crash, you know, when we got to Michigan to our Airbnb, which we were sharing with some friends. ⁓ you know, I checked out, finally pulled out all my games and went to see what was damaged and I had four or five games that were damaged. The main one that really took a beating was Hot Streak, which kind of sucks because the box itself is like part of the game. It's like a huge part of the table presence. I had a few other games that took kind of minor damage, but Hot Streak was the one that really got really got crunched. It must have been really close to the back of that, the back of the trunk. So, you know, I'm like, okay, I guess I'll have to and I'm chatting with my friends there and I'll have to like include this in our in our you know, insurance claim and that, so I'm taking pictures and whatever the next day. And I guess Shelly, AKA Michiana Borgamery on Discord, excuse me, on Discord, but also on Instagram, as well as Hannah, who goes by To Find Goblins, so T-O-F-I-N-D, goblins, To Find Goblins on Instagram. They behind my back. because they are the sweetest people in the world, write emails to the publishers of some of these games, explaining to them what happened and asking if there's any way they can send box replacements. And one of the companies CMYK, which the aforementioned game Hot Streak, they publish Hot Streak, wrote back to Han and said, you know what, we'll replace it, no problem. which, which is really great. So huge, huge shout out to CMYK. Thank you so much for having a heart and it just kind of like kind of accentuates and explains what I the thing I always say about this hobby, the board game hobby and the people within it is just like, what a great community, right? It's just unbelievable. So Hannah and Shelly, you know, two really, really good friends of mine, thank you so much for thinking of me and going the extra mile and helping out a friend. So if you Like if you're into board games, obviously, really in this podcast, you're into board games, follow Michiana board game Marie and follow to find goblins. They're a great follow on Instagram. So if you want to follow them further board game content, or if you just want to follow a couple of amazing people, thank you, Hannah and Shelley. All right. Moving on to Nerdfest itself. You know, I've talked about this quite a bit, but like it's pretty magical at this point. It's just there's so many people there that I've become really close with. The aforementioned Hannah and Shelley. included as well as their significant others Lance and Zach. Steve Ungaro Plurpie was the last piece of our housing arrangement there in Novi, Michigan that we nicknamed the Brat House. It used to be the Frat House but now we all bring our kids because there's a lot of us that are a lot of the kids that are the same age and so we've called it the Brat House. And ⁓ so I got to hang out with them all weekend as well as a whole bunch of people at the convention that Again, I've become really good friends with including Jeff Madigan, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago, and Ryan and Natalie, who run the convention. Just like if you're, you know, if you're within a three to four hour drive of Michigan, I drive eight hours to go to this thing. Not because it's the best convention in terms of like what it offers. It does offer some really cool stuff for sure. but it's fairly small and it's fairly new and it's not that well known yet, give it some time. And if they keep doing the great job that they're doing, they're going to be as big as some of these other ones that everybody knows about. But if you're anywhere near kind of Detroit or Southern Ontario or within a three, four hour to Novi, Michigan, highly, highly recommend that you check out that convention. ⁓ and totally worth going for a weekend. You'll have a blast. The people are incredible and the services that they offer are getting better and better every year. And they have hundreds and hundreds of people that go out to play games and participate. definitely check out a Nerdfest. convention in Novi, Michigan. So thanks for letting me ramble a little bit and talk about, you know, my last couple of weeks, there's a bunch of drama with the storm and the crash and everything else. And I thought I would share some of that because again, it kind of leads into what an amazing community the board game, you know, board game people are, are that we're part of. Alright, enough of all that. Let's get into kind of our more standard segments of our podcast. So let's get into shout outs. Nooo! Can we close the- And stop shouting! I'm not deaf! Okay, so as I mentioned earlier when I went to Breakout Con I participated in the Bring It By auction and I just wanted to very quickly list off a handful of games that I picked up. I have played two or three of these that I purchased. on that weekend. But yeah, I'll just kind of run through them very quickly. I picked up a red carpet. I have no idea what the mechanisms are, but it's basically the theme is that you're kind of walking with a red carpet at like an Oscar type event. I believe it's for like a film event. I didn't look into it too much further, but it was recently Oscar season and I had that in my head. And when I saw red carpet, I thought this is like a perfect thematic. board game for this podcast so I just picked it up it was a really good price in the auction. I picked up Rebirth which is one of the latest Reiner Knizia tiling games. I have played this a few times at my local game store they have a demo copy there. I almost purchased it a couple times but for whatever reason I just didn't end up grabbing it and I saw it at the auction for like I think like 15. So it was a total no brainer to grab that. It's a really cool, really cool game with a great table presence where you're like laying tiles into a shared area. And ⁓ yeah, it's really cool. Check that one out. I picked up a copy of All In Predictions. That was actually part of my purchase at board game bliss when I picked up Nikosu Dice and Magical Athlete. So I have, I just know it's poker themed and you have to like predict who has the best hand and there's some other mechanisms in there. I don't really know much other than that but just the theme the fact that it has some poker in there and stuff it sounded like something i would really like so i picked that up i also got neko syndicate at the auction and ⁓ funny enough it just looked like a cute little like tableau building game the with anthropomorphized cats and that's part of like what looks like a japanese sort of gang and ⁓ yeah it just looks really cute it looks like something that i would that I would like based on the mechanisms. And then yesterday I was listening to the Shut Up and Sit Down podcast and they were talking about it. And now I'm even more excited because they're talking, they're saying it's a really cool game. So I'm really looking forward to putting that on the table. I picked up two, two player trick taking games, Jekyll versus Hyde. I think it's an asymmetrical trick taking game where one person plays Jekyll, one person plays Hyde. maybe. And then there's kind of a sequel to it called Jekyll and Hyde versus Scotland Yard, where this one is a cooperative game where you and your partner ⁓ are playing cooperative versus Scotland Yard, trying not to get caught more something like that. So yeah, trickling games are great. I'm a big fan and I looking forward to maybe playing this one with my wife. I think that that might be a hit. between her and I. If you listen to the latest podcast we're talking about two player games, Jeff was talking about a tiny little game called Confusing Lands. I saw that at the auction and was a no-brainer to just grab it. I've played four or five games since then, maybe more than that. I played a couple times with my wife, a couple times at Nerdfest, and then I played with Charlie this afternoon. Really, really cool little game. It lasts 10, 15 minutes. And there's some fun little decisions and it's a great little, you know, for the amount of time that you're playing, there's a good amount of crunch and decision making. And yeah, definitely check that one out if you can find it. It's a cool little game where you're like building a little map and some of the cards that you get have scoring conditions. get one of the cards, you'll choose whether you want to, what side you want to play it on. One of the sides will always have a scoring condition. So if it fits within your map and what you're trying to do, then you'll play it on the scoring condition side. But you have to be careful because every scoring condition that you play face up starts with minus 10 points. So you have to make it worth more than 10 points in order to play it. So. There's some fun math-ing stuff there and yeah, and like my nine-year-old Charlie played it this afternoon and I beat him by one point. So it's definitely a game that like, you know, pretty much anybody would be able to play. Also, you heard Jeff talk about Architects of Artemis. Sorry, Architects of Amethyst last week where it's a kind of, there's kind of a grid in the middle of the table of like a three by three and you're drafting tiles from this three by three grid. And when you take a tile from one of those nine spaces, you'll put one of your like a token there. And then, so you're also playing a game of tic-tac-toe. So not only are you trying to pick the right tile that you're going to put into your tableau, but you're also placing your tokens out there trying to win a game of tic-tac-toe in the middle of the table. And every time you do make a line, you can actually go to an influence board. There's a side board where you can put a token down and claim an end game scoring condition. and only one person can have each of these conditions. So I haven't played it yet. I laid it out on the table today and read the rules. It seems really cool. I'm really excited to get it to the table. And finally, a game that came in that I'm excited to check out is called Popcorn. This one was sent to me by ILO. I reached out to them as soon as I saw this game existed because it's called Popcorn and it's about running a movie theater. And as soon as I saw that, I reached out to the publisher. said, you have to send me this game because my audience is going to eat this up. Like I'm a board game movie podcast. ⁓ so they sent it to me. It arrived while I was away at, ⁓ breakout con, I think. And, ⁓ I'm really excited to get that one to the table. Yeah. So let's get into actual shout outs. So a couple of games, couple of movies that I watched and played recently. ⁓ and that will wrap up the episode. So don't worry. We're, getting there. If you're tired of hearing my voice, I feel like I'm tired of hearing my own voice here. So the first shout out that I want to talk about is Panda Spin. So this is another one I picked up at the Bringin' By auction. I didn't mention it before because I wanted to shout it out here. I wasn't sure what this game was. I just like saw it either on the hotness or I saw it on Instagram, but it was top of mind. And as soon as I saw the box at the Break A Con auction, I just grabbed it. It was like five or ten dollars or something. was like fairly cheap as a little box. I had no idea what it was. I didn't know if it was a trick-taking game or what it was. But the art was cool and I remember having seen it somewhere and it was cheap. So I picked it up, threw it in my bag and went about my business. I ended up bringing it to Nerdfest. Just threw it in my bag because I thought it might be interesting. And we pulled this one out and we decided to give it a spin. Pun intended. And we pulled up the rule book. And I will say despite the god awful rule book, this game was really cool. And it's funny because when I pulled it out and I pulled out the rule book and Shelly's looking at the box, she's like, oh, this is a Carl Chudik game. And I had no idea. I like, love Carl Chudik. He's one of my favorite designers and like his games are a little bit hit and miss, but this guy makes interesting Weird, games. Innovation probably being one of his most popular. I'm also a big fan of Matai Nai and Red 7. So if you're familiar with any of those titles, you know he does really interesting things with cards. Panda Spin, when we finally got through the rule book, which was clearly just a really bad translation. The game is really cool. It's a... It is a ⁓ ladder climbing shedding game. And the hook of this one is that sort of like scout, the cards are two sided. But in this game, you're gonna put, there's the white side and the blue side of the card. And you're gonna, when you first pick up your hand, you put all your cards on the white side. And the cards range from like one to 12. And then there's like what they call a Chinese two, which is just like a two symbol, like a Chinese two symbol. So I think the cards actually go to the ace. So I think it's like one, like it goes from the two to the ace and then this Chinese two symbol. So if you play an ace, I can beat it with a Chinese two. But if you play a run, a Chinese two, symbol doesn't fit into a run because it's its own thing. Regardless of all that, what happens is that you play cards as a meld onto the table. So I'll play a pair of twos, let's say. Then the next person has to also play a pair or pass. So they'll play a pair of fives, right? And then the next person will play a pair of sevens. And then it comes to me and I don't have a pair that could beat a pair of sevens. I have a bunch of other stuff, but I don't have a pair specifically that beats a pair of sevens. So I have to pass. When you pass, you'll look at the previous cards that you played on the table. If all of them were white cards, you'll pick them back up, put them back in your hand and then flip them or hand a spin them to the blue side. And then the blue sides are way stronger. Like the pair of twos that I put, picked it back up, put it in my hand, the opposite side on the blue, one of the twos might have like three twos on one card. So then I could play one card and say, that's three twos, or I could play the three twos with another two, and this is four twos, right? So like the blue sides are just way stronger. So you're sort of playing this weird hand manipulation game. where sometimes you're playing cards, you're playing white cards out on the table, specifically knowing that somebody else is gonna beat it and then you'll be able to pass and take it back into your hand because the blue sides fit perfectly with another meld you're trying to use to kind of like shed more. Now, if you pass and you look at the cards that you previously placed on the table and any of them are blue, instead of picking them back up, they get discarded. So if you wanna try to get rid of cards, get rid of these melds, include a blue card if you have one, and then no matter what happens those cards are permanently out of your hand. So there's definitely some like planning and really interesting decision making when it comes to how to play your hand out and when to try to get your card spun to the other side. There's also like some some like ability symbols on some of the cards that'll let you spin cards. that'll let you discard cards or just let you get points, et cetera. So it's a really, really neat game. And like just another hit from Carl Chudik. Just I highly recommend like you watch a video or something because the rule book is rough. All right, my next shout out. So I'll just do another game and then I'll do a couple of movies and then that'll be it. So a shout out that I won't go too long on because I'm sure everybody's heard about this, but. I finally got to purchase Magical Athlete, as I mentioned earlier, from Port Game Bliss, and I got to play this twice at Nerdfest. And this game completely, completely lives up to the hype. It is stupid in the best way. The art is stupid in the best way. The presentation is so dumb in the best way. These are fully, fully compliments. They're just really silly, I guess is what I'm getting to. And the gameplay is while there's a little bit of decision making for the most part, you're just like, you're making a couple decisions and you're going to watch the game unfold and you're going to have a great time and the more players, the better. But like, you know, there's, it's just like so much fun and so silly in the best way. And it's like the perfect game to either start a night to get the juices flowing and get excited or to wrap up the night to have a little bit of a laugh and kind of like. maybe let the tension out after like a serious long Euro game or like, you know, area control game or something. So magical athlete, you live under rock and you haven't heard about it, look it up. It's hilarious. It's fun. Every card and every meeple is funny. The art is great. Can't recommend it highly enough, especially like it's a, I think I paid $35 Canadian, which would be like 30, 25, $30 US for this game that's gonna like... Just, and you could pull it out. The great thing about this game and the same thing with Hot Streak kind of falls into the same category, same publisher, think CMYK. You could play it with anybody, know, bring it, you know, I played Hot Streak a whole bunch of times at Christmas with a whole bunch of different family members. And I can't wait to do the same thing with Magical Athlete. So that's that. Magical Athlete and Panda Spin. Check them out. Moving on to movies. Recently got to watch Nirvana, the band, show, the movie. So it has nothing to do with like Nirvana, like the Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, Nirvana, not them. Nirvana the band is what was 18 years ago started as a web series, a Canadian web series from a couple of guys, Jay McKarrow and Matt Johnson from Toronto. And these guys started a web series where the whole shtick The whole premise of the web series is that these are two musicians. They called themselves Nirvana the band. No explanation as to why. So far, I'm like four or five episodes into that web series. So far, no explanation as to why they're called Nirvana the band, but they're not just called Nirvana. They're called Nirvana the band, and it's Nirvana with two N's. I'm fairly certain all of that is to avoid being confused with actual Nirvana or to like maybe make people curious and interested like Nirvana? What is this? know? But anyways, their whole shtick and the whole premise of their web series and their show is that they're trying to play at a bar in Toronto called The Rivoli. And the funny thing about all of this is that The Rivoli is not this like destination bar where like all the greatest bands come to Toronto and play. It's just a bar where they have musicians come and play. And if they just called and tried to like book it, they probably could. But instead they come up with these huge hair brained ideas of like, were gonna first we're gonna do this and then we're gonna steal the booking book from the owner and then we're gonna book ourselves and then we're gonna plant it back and then we're gonna be able to play the Rivoli. like, or they're gonna just like, ⁓ I think in the first episode they decided they're gonna flyer. So they like spent $150 on flyers and they're putting them all over town. And then they realized that they didn't put a date. just like, like screwed up again. So it's just these two idiots. And and kind of in a pinky in the brain style situation where like every episode, there's like a new, dumb, harebrained idea about how they're going to get themselves booked and play at this bar at the Rivoli. So I'm like five episodes into the web series, which is hilarious. But the reason this came, you know, this that I even knew about this Nirvana the band is because they recently had a movie come out. And I finally got a chance to see the movie. So it's called... So first they had Nirvana the Band, which was the web series, and they did two seasons and they were like 10 minute episodes or whatever. And then Vice picked them up and they did two full seasons of half hour shows on there. And that was called Nirvana the Band the Show. So now, 18, 17 years later, whatever it is, they release a movie. So that's why it's called Nirvana the band, the show, the movie. So this was my first exposure to all of this and I watched the movie with my wife and it is incredible. It is hilarious. It is so much fun. You immediately fall in love with the two main characters. These guys are funny, they're charming, they're charismatic, not the characters, but the comedy is really intelligent and really fun. And one of the big things that they do in the show, Nirvana the band, the show, not the web series, is that like a lot of the episodes mirror and like popular movies and TV shows in their premise. And with the movie, they did the same thing. And I don't want to spoil anything, but basically back to the future movie is a huge, huge plot point of Nirvana, the band, show, the movie, where there may or may not be some time travel and all sorts of shenanigans. And one of the big things that they do in all of their stuff is that they interact with the public, with the public not knowing that they're on a show. So they wear these like lav mics kind of concealed. And then they, when, as they're running around town, trying to execute their plans, they run into people and they interact with them and they have fun with them and it's silly and it's really fun. And it's not, it's, they're not, it's not mean. It's not like. gross in any way. They're not embarrassing people. They're like having fun with people. And it's hilarious. And a lot of this, it's a very Canadian show. And that a lot of the stuff they pull off and do in Canada, I don't think they'd get away with in the States or in the United States if they tried to do it. So apparently it's been a huge, huge, huge hit in the United States, the movie. And I was listening to a bunch of interviews and they're saying that it's like the hits with American audiences even way more than it hits with Canadian audiences, which is interesting. But yeah, check out if you have an opportunity to watch the web series or the TV show. I think the movie now might be available on digital. But yeah, I'm making my way through the web series. I'm going to watch the show. I'm totally in love with these guys and what they're doing. And you have to check out Nirvana, band, the show, the movie. the show and the web series. Okay, and then I learned that Matt Johnson, one of the main characters is and the main creator of all of this, has also directed a handful of movies, including a movie from three or four years ago called Blackberry, which you may or may not have heard of. So Blackberry, for those who are of a certain age will remember that there was a mobile device called Blackberry. that came out not too long before the iPhone got huge and Blackberry like skyrocketed like overnight. They went from being a tiny little company to being like a huge, huge, huge portion of the cellular devices that were being sold. And this is sort of the rise and fall of Blackberry and the people that run, ran Blackberry. And it's sort of a cautionary tale. It's a dark comedy. not too dark. It's a comedy, but like it's also fairly serious in the in the tone. like there's a lot of like, like Matt Johnson plays one of the main characters. Jay Baruchel is in it as well. And so it's very funny. But it's ultimately I think is a cautionary tale of like greed. I think more than anything, one of the big things I took away from it was when you get into a situation where you're doing business with friends, that can sometimes get messy. But more than anything, think I think the main theme that I took away from this is like, you know, if you're whether you're making a podcast, or whether you're creating a game or whatever you you're doing creatively, in your life, we all have principles and things that we stand for that we, you know, don't necessarily want to bend on. And the creators of BlackBerry kind of didn't follow that. They did for a long time and then their back was up against the wall and they were trying to compete with, you know, with iPhone and then they bent on their own morals and their own kind of stipulations that they've been running by with their company. And that was ultimately their downfall. But a really, really interesting kind of rise and fall story of a company that like... got super hot really fast and then plummeted and died just as fast. Interesting story of what happened there. The characters are super fun and it is a bit of a dark comedy because it's like obviously serious themes in terms of like these people trying to run this company but at the same time the characters are kind of like over the top and fun and silly in an interesting way. So yeah, Matt Johnson who is one of the creators of Nirvana the band directed Blackberry. And now I'm going to go look up his other, I think he has two more movies that he directed that were like a little bit more indie. Definitely going to go try and seek those out because I'm a fan of the way this guy creates and directs. And he has a great screen presence as well. So yeah, Blackberry and Nirvana the band that showed the movie. A couple of things that I've been watching lately that I really, really enjoyed. Thank you for sticking around. If you're still here, if you're still listening to me ramble, I don't know how many minutes later. Thank you for hanging out with me. If you're enjoying the podcast, take a few minutes to rate, review, and subscribe to whatever platform you're listening on. Email me, dicecameraactionpod at gmail.com. Reach out to Hannah and ⁓ Shelly and tell them that they are amazing human beings on my behalf. Give them a follow and give me a follow as well on ⁓ dicecameraactionpod on Instagram. Thanks again for listening.