James Geist: Welcome to Dads on a Map, a board game podcast by Dads for Everyone. I'm James. And I'm Camden. And on today's show, we're talking dome darlings. No! Not how much we love them. We've been there, we've done that, but the ones we can't stand where we just diametrically oppose the community viewpoint. We'll also talk some recent plays of Cross Bronx Expressway, the Kosu Dice, and Capital Lux 2. Enjoy the show. Camden, so glad to have you back on the show for your second appearance. Thanks, James. It's great to be here. And ⁓ would you believe that it has been almost five years since you appeared on the show? I I went and went and dialed it back up. Episode number 53. We talked about trading games. ⁓ that was November fifteenth, twenty twenty one. I I was shocked. As I scrolled backwards, I was like, I know it was about trading. I was like, I'm just scrolling through the titles. I know it's somewhere in here. And I just kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Eventually I gave up and I went to our DMs and I was like, let me just scroll up a little bit because we we don't have a lot of DM history. I knew I'd find like when we talked about doing the show or whatever. And there it was. Twenty twenty one. I can't believe it's been that long. Yeah, I was looking at it myself and I I was surprised. I had completely forgotten that I had been pitched as a mystery guest on the the previous episode. Same, same. When I heard that lead in, I'm like I'm like, what are we doing? We're wow, some high billing here. We we left the shroud of darkness over you until you were revealed. Well, regarding your question, would I believe that has been five years? I would say, yes, I would believe that. I've Then at the time I was in the thick of raising preschoolers who are now all elementary schoolers and time goes by way too fast. Yep. And can't for the for the ⁓ for anyone on the Discord who just may not ⁓ draw a name to a person or a to a, I guess, ⁓ being that's on the Discord, Camden's username on many things is second of the new. So like if you play any Async games with him, or if you've ever traded with him on BGG, ⁓ you might have seen that name come across as well. Are you still heavy in the trading game? Are you still trying to turn that paper clip into a house, so to speak? I would say not quite as much as I used to be. I was a very prolific trader. ⁓ in some cases, that that was the hobby for me when when I was ⁓ in the midst of those ⁓ crazy preschool age kids times four or five years ago. ⁓ and I I think I l left a a a note here, a lot of those trades were with board game co R.I.P. And I was I was looking at ⁓ the history of my trades with them and I think they stopped trading about a year after we had that last ⁓ interview. So ⁓ the ⁓ the the death some people may not even know. Yeah, the board game code before their rise to prominence as a ⁓ you know paid shill YouTube channel. I'm just gonna say straight up like that's kind of what comes through for me, at least in my corner of the hobby from them is is mostly that kind of thing on YouTube. ⁓ Alex, who is in the person who started the channel, or I don't know who's on the channel nowadays or whatever, but ha ran a trading business business, I suppose the idea was to make money. I we never really understood how they could be making money doing this, but a really great trade tool that used to exist, sort of the most similar ⁓ comp to draw to it today is is Noble Knight, except Board Game Co. was just a BGG kind of ⁓ listing, user listing that you could easily stack up your your games versus theirs and it it pulled points out for everything. So it was really easy to find deals and and you could trade them a literal bucket full of crap if it was worth enough points to get a hot game that whatever that means for you, right? A game that you wanted to come back to use. It was really fun times. Those those were the those were the good days. Yeah, so the end of Board Came Co. kind of necessitated a shift in the way I approached buying and selling and trading. So nowadays I do a lot more flea markets and virtual flea markets. ⁓ for those who don't know, I I live in Orange County in Southern California. So I'm sandwiched right between LA and San Diego, major metropolitan area. So there's various exchanges happening. ⁓ in real life over the course of the year. And that's kind of where I focus my efforts nowadays. Very cool. Yep. The the wheeling and dealing continues, just looks a little different than it used to. That's good. Ke still keeping a a fairly light collection. Like I because I felt like that was kind of one of your one of the purposes of a lot of go outgoing was to keep the Incoming, at least tidy, I guess. Yeah. I've I've got about a hundred games. It it kind of goes up and down. I'd say usually depending on the time of year, like eighty to a hundred and ten is where I'm kind of oscillating between. I have been playing more games in real life the last couple years, so it l lightens the mental load, I think, of of having a a few more games in the collection than I used to when in many cases I just wasn't having as many opportunities to play them. Very cool. All right, ⁓ brief housekeeping before we talk about some recent plays. It's Dome Con Go time. It is we're in the final month, the last 30 days. Side ups are closed, sponsors are locked in, the raffle table is stuffed Games are getting scheduled. You know, we're deciding what who's bringing what game. It's it's just time. And I can't wait to see everyone who's gonna be there. ⁓ it's it's the best time of the year. It's like the Super Bowl of dads on a map, and I'm ready. I'm not I'm not ready, ready, but I'm ready to be there. I gotta still do some grunt work on the back end here and start ⁓ printing badges and whatnot. But yeah, that's that's nothing. We're ready. We're ready to roll. I can't wait. So ⁓ I can't I can no longer say, Go to the website. Go of the Discord. No, that's it. You missed your window, folks. You're just gonna have to regret not being at Dome Con 6 at this point, 'cause here we go, baby. It's time. Camden won't be there. Sorry, Camden. Yeah, it's one of my continual regrets. just happens to be around the time of year of my son's birthday, my wife's birthday, school's starting back up again. It's it's just ⁓ it's just a lousy time, but ⁓ I'll be ⁓ living vicariously through ⁓ all of the the images and and reports that I see. Absolutely. All right, we'll get to some recent plays here. I'm gonna start us out with Cross Bronx Expressway. Derek talked about this on a recent episode ⁓ from BGG Cons actually on the tricky episode where he he talked about his plays of this. This game had caught my eye, honestly Because GMT is one of our sponsors for Dome Con, and they sent a bundle of games for the con. And I always kind of have to decide: am I going to keep some of these for the kind of con library or do I want to put them on the giveaway table? And when I looked at Crossbrox Expressway, one of the games they sent, I was like, wow. Immediately I was I was just intrigued by the the box art, frankly, is is very different than anything you would expect coming from GMT. And just the pitch that this is like essentially a a socioeconomic ⁓ war game kind of vibe from their irregular conflict series, only the third game of the irregular conflict series. And so I was like, I want to get this on the table after I heard Derek talk about it. I'm like, I gotta get this on the table and figure out like, is this gonna stick around in the Dome Library? Is it gonna be a game I wanna play and ⁓ gotta play in? Got ⁓ so this is a three-player only game. Well, ⁓ I'm sure it does some kind of solos and and two player modes or whatever, but it is a three player game with three players controlling three different kinds of entities in the South Bronx in the mid nine mid 1900s, where there is a lot of ⁓ development in the area. The ⁓ epitome is Cross-Bronx Expressway is being built, and many other kind of areas are being developed and built, and you're dealing with apartments going up, coming down, you know, clearing space, doing the things that go into ⁓ kind of keeping the borough viable while trying to also expand it. So those three entities that are playing are the public, the private, and the community. So each player is kind of tasked with upholding their end of the bargain. working with the other two to kind of grow things in a ⁓ responsible way because the game kind of spits out almost like a John Company-esque ⁓ unrest just naturally, right? As things are growing, as population grows, as you build new housing developments, as you deal with events that come out, then these cubes are kind of dropped onto the map. ⁓ just to kinda ab you know, cut through all of the all of the text and just talk about the abstract. Your job is to get these cubes off the map, because if you don't, they're gonna turn into ⁓ people who are incarcerated at a blight on the city, so to speak. And that is one of the conditions of the game, actually you're fighting to keep these people off the streets, to responsibly house them, to responsibly take care of them, or the game can just crumble and end and and nobody wins. So this is a The game versus the three of us, and we're all versus each other, but we're also responsible for keeping the game afloat. So I'm gonna keep saying John Company in my descriptions here because I get a lot of the vibes of Joko, where the game can crash and burn, and somebody can be left on top of the pile of ashes in John Company. That's not really how Cross Bronx Expressway works. If the game crashes, the game crashes. There's no winner anymore. So it's your responsibility to keep it alive through the decades that you have agreed to play. The game kind of pitches you to play a two-decade setup, but it also gives you the opportunity to continue playing on if you want to. And I haven't really explored that yet in my one play. So I got this on the table with Scott and Steve here in my local group. And I just loved it. I it was so tight. It was so difficult. The tempo was. incredibly hard to kind of work your way around, but so vital to ⁓ kind of the the system and and getting yourself in position to to do something in the game, frankly. Because a lot of the times you feel like you just can't do anything. So you've got to set up multiple turns in a row just to get yourself in a position to take the first ⁓ action selection spot. I'm not going to go into the rules minutia of how to make those selections. I think someone with a coin background could be a lot more ⁓ accurate with describing its twist on it that I'm going to be able to just because I haven't played those games. But really great system, really great tension throughout, and a real feeling of desperation that captured kind of where we were, right? We're in the 1940s Bronx. It's not a pretty scene. It's you're trying to make a thriving kind of metropolis and it's just very difficult to do. I want to play this more and more and more. The way the game is set up, just play through two decades, means that like we played the 1940s and 1950s. We saw a sampling of event cards that we can see in those decades, but we haven't even touched the other four decades that the game allows you to to play through. And so really it just feels like a box of toys that you could continue playing with weekly. with a a a stable group and cruise through it and see see what you can find and see how you can do it. And and again playing from a different perspective, right? I played the community and it felt really difficult. Like versus watching my neighbors, like watching Scott as the private, it felt like he had a leg up on us in certain regards. And from what I understand, depending on the decades you're playing, that feeling is going to be there because historically this game is a massive historical love affair basically from the designer non-breaking space is the name of the designer. ⁓ a huge booklet of historical information that I haven't even popped into yet. The instruction booklet itself has a ton of historical notes and information to kind of teach you as you're playing the game. ⁓ really, really great stuff from Cross Bronx Expressway. Did you find that the ⁓ your interest in the historical context just was it something that ⁓ you found super intriguing just from reading the back of the box, or was it something that you found developed more as you were playing and realized, ⁓ this is really an interesting place and era? I'm so kind of unaware of the history of that ⁓ of that area of the country, first of all, that I ⁓ you know, being someone who grew up in the Midwest, I have no I have no basis of of knowledge for New York City, basically. I'll just put it that way. And I do not consider myself a well-read person who who historically has a a a firm grasp. So what intrigued me about it could have been placed anywhere, ⁓ historically, right? Just the socioeconomic Hook of the three of you have to figure out a way to build this thing. It could have been anything. However, as we were working through it and you start to see kind of some familiar things either from that are really notable historical ⁓ figures, or, you know, there was like a card talking about ⁓ the mafia or something like that, where it can get a little Hollywood on you a little bit and kind of pull you in. started to draw my attention a bit. Now, like I said, I didn't give it the time or effort it deserved as far as reading like the historical texts that go with it, but I could certainly see falling into it and being more interested. The first time I ever played a train game, I didn't give two craps about where the Pennsylvania Railroad started and and and, you know, how it developed and and where it it grew and and then I find myself in train museums now. Like I care about these things because of eighteen thirty, like giving me a basis, right? Something like Crossbrox Expressway could could run me on the same journey to where I start to care about the material and start to learn about it more. I love a game like that. ⁓ and you know, a game like John Company has done that, ⁓ to a degree. And I think that's very cool that when board games can cross over a little bit into being much more than games. on a table. Yeah, I always think it's interesting just examining how I approach war games and historical games, and seeing that there are some where I've had a preexisting interest in the subject matter, and that is what initially attracts me to the game. One example for me I think is Versindas Volk, ⁓ the ⁓ card-driven game by Pierre Sylvester and Richard Savelle about the ⁓ the conflict between West and East Germany. And I growing up traveled, I I was actually in I went one time to East Germany before the wall fell. As a two-year-old, I think I was taken there on vacation by my parents and went to Germany maybe three years later after the w wall fell. And we had pieces of the little chipped off pieces of the Berlin Wall and a in a shadow box in our family room. So it's just a something that interested me just going in. whereas so many other historical games I've played the game first and and had that interest develop from that. It's just a interesting juxtaposition when that that happens. Yeah, Versindosvolk is actually a wonderful comp for this game because while I haven't given Versindos folk as much time of my time as I wish I had. I've loved every bit of it that I got to play. And it had a very similar vibe where everything was difficult. You're chipping away to kind of get yourself in position. And it all leads up to a scoring where then you see the ramifications of these decisions you've made and regrets that you'll have that you made along the way, right? A very similar kind of feel that I got from. For both of those games. Yeah, I feel like this type of semi co-op games is one of the most interesting ways of doing semi-co op. And it doesn't seem like there's a lot of games that do it quite that way. There's a really interesting moment at the end of this game where I I had a very bad first decade. So let's say the scoreboard at this point was Scott Four, Steve Three, me one, where I almost felt like I could not win. And I could have attempted to burn the game down, like I would do in a game of Jawn Company. ⁓ however, I I really don't do that in Jawn Company unless I'm at the top and trying to secure my victory, or at least one of the front runners, and I'll leave it up to a coin flip or whatnot. Here, I I it'd be more apt to compare it to an 18XX where you're eliminated, you could bankrupt and end the game. But in this case, I could. Kill the game where nobody would win. But I actually didn't feel I I the game dangled a carrot at me enough to dissuade me from wanting to go full D gen and doing that. ⁓ you know, I had my ways I could score points. And if I could just chip away Scott, why couldn't Scott have just as bad a first round as I had and I have a great round that he had, right? And so the game did a great job in keeping me just invested enough that I didn't want to nuke it. I thought. that was a really good that was a really good moment to to kind of participate in and witness from the game's development. Did you find that the I'm I'm assuming that this is a because it's ICS that it's a card driven system. It is. Every round has an event card ⁓ that you may interact with or or may not. Mm-hmm. I've in my limited experience just playing around with coin online, for instance, Andean Abyss on ⁓ Rally the Troops. And I have played a decent amount of ⁓ Vijay and Agarra. ⁓ it sometimes feels and some of this I'm sure is due to just ⁓ lack of experience to like the the deck just isn't going your way. Did you f find that you were able to push the game in ways that you wanted to go without Feeling like you were fighting the system, the Yeah. ⁓ no, I other than that moment where I said, ⁓ you know, I felt like, you know, Scott as the private had a a clearer path than I had. Like that that that feeling was there. However, the event deck and the opportunities to get yourself first in turn order were always there, right? And you could do things The question was always the kind of h how good those things would be when you could do them. But I I didn't feel like the game didn't let me in or didn't let me play or didn't let me participate. It didn't feel like that at all. There was always always an interesting decision to be made, just maybe not a good one. Hmm. Yeah. I think I think when it really comes down to it's those interesting decisions that I'm looking for in games, even if they're not necessarily ones that poor. Yeah. All right. Well, that's Cross Brox Expressway. Camden, tell me something you have played recently. Well one game that ⁓ I got into towards the end of last year. It was released on Rally the Troops is another card-driven game, a two-player Card-driven game called Paths of Glory, which is quite an ⁓ old card-driven game at this point. It's, I think, almost 20 years old. ⁓ the basic premise is it's a kind of a grand strategic view of World War One, where one player is controlling the Allied powers, one player is controlling the ⁓ central powers and ⁓ you're trying to Claim ⁓ objectives on the map by just controlling territory basically. So the Central Powers player is mostly just controlling Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Allied players is all the allies, so France, Britain, Russia, Serbia, later in the war, ⁓ Italy is ⁓ an allied player, and I've been playing this online on Rally the Troops and I've I found it just a fascinating war game. ⁓ I never have really had the desire to become the Grognard Hex encounter combat tables move chits around with tweezers type of a war game player. And I I found as just a someone who has gotten into the hobby you know, during a relatively modern era, ⁓ this game just mechanically works in such an interesting way. And ⁓ like you are encountering with Cross Bronx Expressway, deals with and examines the history of World War One in such an interesting way that I've been equally drawn into it. ⁓ It's a point-to-point movement system. So you have a map with ⁓ lots of cities and towns on the board with ⁓ movement lines in between them. And as a card-driven game, you're either playing ⁓ your hand of cards for events, ⁓ for operations where you use action points to move armies around and attack them. You can do a strategic re de redeployment, which is A different type of movement where you can just move something really far across the board, but it burns a lot more points. And then you can also spin your action points for reinforcing troops that have been lost. And I just found how in a relatively straightforward system, it really captures the feel of all these different nations and how their geography and situation forces them to fight in different ways and ⁓ kind of looks at how the the situations for the different allied players were evolving over the course of the war. an example a couple of examples I can give is ⁓ Germany is as a nation is just the powerhouse. Their armies are stronger than everyone else's, they can beat up pretty much anyone they want to, but their problem is they're saddled with an ally in Austria-Hungary that frankly as the Central Powers player is pretty incompetent. ⁓ they're getting steamrolled by Russia at the start of the game. They're trying to hold off ⁓ Serbia who started the war to begin with are eventually in a conflict also with Italy. So they've got three fronts going and basically they're collapsing and Germany's walking it having to walk in and be like, What are you guys doing over here? I'm trying to deal with with France and Great Britain, and here I am having to split off all my forces to the Eastern Front. And ⁓ it's just interesting how You know, you have all these shits with numbers on them. You roll on a combat table, you're just moving things around on a board, but the the ebb and the flow and the feel of these grand things happening is ⁓ you're just experiencing it as you're playing it. you've got this Western Front that's just piled with all these armies and it's kind of like a knife fight in a phone booth and everyone's just crunched up against each other. Then you have this really broad Eastern Front where Russia is slowly bringing all of its troops in from its ⁓ deployment zones and they have to cross this huge territory. And Austria-Hungary and Germany are trying to keep Russia from pushing in. And ⁓ I just found it to be such a an interesting game to get reps in just because of how much variety. it is in the experience and how many different points of pressure you can bring on the other player. And ⁓ it's one of those games where every time you do something you feel like you're no matter what side you're playing, it feels like every move is the wrong move and you're having to to ⁓ sacrifice on two or three different ⁓ fronts to advance on another and ⁓ It is one that if it didn't exist on Rally the Troops, I don't know if I would be able to get the the reps in to really experience it to this level. But ⁓ being that it is, I found it to be such an enjoyable experience. And you know, I may never play this game on the table. ⁓ if BGG is to be believed. It's easily a Florida eight-hour game potentially on the table, but I've really been enjoying my plays on Rally the Truth. I think with our first two games of discussion being Cross Bronx Expressway and Paths of Glory, the coin collectors are back. It's just us. So there you go. Coin collectors one-off show. Who saw that coming? There we go. Cool. Sounds cool. ⁓ I you know, a game like this that is a head to head long war game encounter does sound custom made and perfect fit for rally the troops, right? I haven't played it on there. I don't know when I will, but that's a great point that it would be the time and place that I would put into it is a place like that. ⁓ just because you're not giving up half of your day to Give it a try, right? ⁓ so be interested. I'm not I'm not committing, but I'm interested. Yeah. No, I think it's one that you know as I've played it more and I just sort of learned it by clicking around on Rally the Troops. And then when I encountered things that I didn't understand, that's when I looked at the rule book. ⁓ I mean I've I found it very easy to learn it that way. And as I learned it, I just gained more of an appreciation for the system, ⁓ especially as compared to some card-driven games like Rally the Troop or ⁓ Twilight Struggle, of course, being the the big one that most people have experienced, but also some of the card-driven games that I've the that I've played on Rally the Troops and just comparing it to those and appreciating the design. Design choices that were made that make it a good fit for me and the type of game that I enjoy. Well, we'll go from some ⁓ rare war game talk on the main show to some nonsense dice talk. How about that? Now we're settling in. It's like a cozy blanket pulled back over myself. I got a chance to play a game called Owner's Choice. I teased this on the last episode I did with ⁓ Steve. When we played a game called Shadow Hunters, designed by a man Yasutaka Ikeda, who also designed 1889, those two things existing in the same universe, Shadow Hunters and 1889, was enough for me to go, what in the world else has this man designed? And I come to find a game called Owner's Choice, which appeared to be a simple stock game with dice. And I was like, hey, I'm kind of in a dice mood lately. Lately, if you say, It's like blank with dice. I'm kind of there. I'm kind of ready to play. So I picked up a cheap copy of Oder's Choice on the BGG market. I got the rules because I I actually could not find the rules online. So I got the rules, read them, and I basically laughed to myself and said, There's no way there's even enough game here to be a game. ⁓ because in Owner's Choice, you have four different stock companies that all start the game valued at $100. And Whoever owns the most of each one of those companies is the president of that company. And just like in a an 18xx or cube rails, to take it away, you have to surpass them with more, with more shares. ⁓ but there's a Rondell that runs around the outside of the board. This Rondell is only, let me just look. I I want to say it's probably 25 spaces. And on your turn, you simply can buy and sell as many shares as you want that you can afford. And then you may move the pawn of the Rondell one to three spaces and trigger an action that it lands on. ⁓ the action spaces are the same color as the four companies. So a yellow, blue, green, and red action space. There's kind of a special event die ⁓ action space you can land on that lets you roll this white dice and probably make a little money and a little risk going on. And then there is also a ⁓ wild space that lets you do any of those. And there's a space that pays out all presidents. They just get like a flat payment of whatever their company is currently worth. They're gonna get like a dividend, basically. ⁓ so very simple, right? Right. The the only opportunities to really get paid are if you land on one of those colored company spaces, because what that does is it then defes to the current president. That current president can either roll the company dice, which has a chance to pay dividends to all shareholders. It could make the company go up or down in price. It can do a couple other different things depending on the company, because not all four companies are created equal. So, but to do that, to roll the company dice, you the president has to pay $50 of their own personal money. If they choose not to do that, they can roll this black die that. usually just hurts people. It usually makes bad things happen. So being a president is unique in this game because people can go land on your color that you're president of and make you either spend $50 to to roll and and hopefully make a little money, but but not guaranteed. Or you don't spend the $50 and you have to roll this black die that is probably going to hurt your company or other companies. You can even make someone Make this decision when they don't have $50, which means they can't roll the company dice. So as we start playing, I start seeing the thorns a little bit that could come out of this that the rules read didn't really show me to where you want to have a lot of shares because the only way you really make money is through having shares that appreciate through the natural rolling of the dice and then selling them for more than you bought them for, right? Very simple. stock mechanic or holding the shares when they pay a dividend because then you're actually putting dollars in your pockets. There's also a little bit of an outsider thing here where everyone that does pay that $50 to roll goes into this almost like free parking space on the board, like monopoly. And there's an opportunity on the event dice to clear that fund out and put it in your pocket. And so as many company presidents are rolling and paying and rolling and paying You have to watch this Rondell because if you tee someone up to walk on the event space, there's a really good chance they're going to get to clear out free parking. So again, you start to see the game. Now, 25 spaces around the board. A player can move one to three spaces. It doesn't take a mathematician to see that there are not going to be a lot of turns in this game. Period, right? If everyone moves three spaces each time. That they get a chance in a four-player game, you're talking about potentially three turns, three turns per player. That is the whole game. Because when you circle this Rondell, the game is over. Just a wild, wild thing that owner's choice is. I didn't hate it. Like I I I went from this is probably gonna be cool to this looks absolutely stupid, to I kind of liked what we were doing here to where I want to show this to more people now and and poke around it a bit and see what other, you know, opportunities we didn't see here. Because, like a game like ⁓ Shark that we've talked about before on the show, you can buy and sell, you can sell as many things as you want, but in this game, you can also buy as many things as you want. Now, you don't get a lot of liquid cash very often in this game, but you do have liquid shares all the time. Right. You can dump out of a company completely. The the only real ⁓ rule preventing that is somebody has to hold at least one share of a company. So you can't ever discard the presidency, right? And then at the bottom of the ⁓ very tiny stock chart that exists, there is a bankrupt space where you can push a company into bankruptcy, and then everybody gives back all of their shares with no payout. So again, in the very short amount of game that exists here. We had a company teetering on bankruptcy that we were just we collectively, we, the three players who weren't in the company anymore, were trying to crash this company just to to sink that player. Fun stuff for a for a dice rolling stock game that we played in 30 minutes. But like you you don't have to convince me of much with those with those metrics. And I liked it. It's not going anywhere right now. I could see it being family weight too. Like for a you know, very simple stock game. The biggest ⁓ crutch that this game kind of has is the dice. Like I said, each company is not created equal. So you you actually need to know what are on the dice. And it's really annoying to have to pick up a dice and look at all six sides to be like, what's this company do again? It desperately needs a player aid just to show show players that, right? And then the actual font on the dice is Atrocious. They tried to cram a ridiculous amount of text onto these D6s. I don't know why. Again, player aid or some shorthand would have done the trick. ⁓ so it it's ugly. It's it's it's not a pretty game. It's not particularly usable, but if you could work your way around that, it's worth it's worth throwing a couple dice for 30 to 40 minutes and seeing what you think. Yeah, I was looking here at the pictures on BGG and ⁓ I was going to say that. The dice look pretty impressive, but I'm guessing they're probably just a little too small to be completely usable. I mean, they're small and cheap. They're they're just stickered plastic cubes, right? And yeah, they're they're they're too small for their own good. And the font the font and color choices are just y you could barely read them, frankly. We we would roll one and instead of celebration, we'd all be peering at it like, what does that say? What happened? ⁓ okay. I definitely liked everything that you said. I mean, I have a very high tolerance for stupid when it's occurring in half an hour. Same, exactly. It ⁓ yeah. I'm pretty I am pretty forgiving of anything in in that time frame. But there you go. That's owner's choice. Well, jumping from one ⁓ game about rolling dice to another, I had a chance to play for the first time this past weekend ⁓ the ⁓ Grail trick taking game Nokosu dice. ⁓ it seems like one that has always been thrown out there as a very ⁓ acclaimed trick taking game that is ⁓ very difficult to obtain. Now I think in the last couple of years it's become a lot easier to obtain with the more recent printing, but ⁓ I will say I was ⁓ Of the trick taking boom, right, that saw hundreds, if not thousands, of trick takers from Japan get heralded as the next great thing. I feel like Nikosu Dice probably has had the strongest staying power i in that in that last couple of years, like for sticking around and staying on people's lips. Like I I really do feel that way. And that's not even my personal ⁓ thoughts about the game. But it actually has stuck around and continued to get talked about where countless other games you try the gimmick and it goes away. Right. So here's the thing about me and the the trick taking boom. I never really got into that at all. ⁓ I think I've played less than maybe even less than half a dozen trick taking games in my life. ⁓ no, I I may have played Something like hearts once or twice growing up. But ⁓ I have had almost no ⁓ exposure to trick-taking games. So I would say a lot of them are just complete whiffs for me because so many of them are building on people who have had a lifetime of experiencing all of the different variations on the genre and So many of them almost seem to be like a meta commentary on trick taking just as a concept and the the nuances are completely lost on someone like me. ⁓ I think over the last few years I've played maybe Aram. I've played and you know, I'm probably going to get killed for getting For getting trick taking and ladder climbing and shedding all muddled up. But ⁓ you know, Aram, I've played Teach you, I've played, I think, Tournament at Avalon, ⁓ which is probably on the very outer fringes of of the genre, even. I've played Of What's Left. I think that's about it. So this is maybe the fifth game in the genre that I played. I don't even know what necessarily. appealed to me about it, but I had always heard that it was weird and I tend to like weird games that just do interesting things with mechanisms. So I was excited to try it and especially after reading the rules for it. so I'm sure it was covered on tricky at some point. So I don't know if I need to do a full ⁓ summary, but it's basically you roll dice Dice are equivalent to cards that you're playing in this must follow trick taker. ⁓ so you when the dice are rolled, you'll have kind of an e uneven distribution of of ⁓ cards and and values that are in play. but the leftover dice ⁓ determines the the Trump suit with with its number and its its color, and ⁓ you know you Go through a certain number of rounds. People are playing their cards. And ⁓ we didn't finish our game. We played two rounds and a few people, few more people showed up for the game day, and we decided to to cut it short after a couple rounds. But I really enjoyed what I saw. It ⁓ unlike some other trick takers that I have experienced, I was seeing the the levers for ⁓ you know. kind of getting other people into trouble and failing their bids. And ⁓ it's definitely one that that I would like to continue playing in the future. And you know, it's possible that it may be the token trick taker in my collection, but it's one that I would happily play again. Think it's l you know, I haven't played it much. I haven't played any trick takers really other than my kind of golden top of the heap, Doppelkoff Teachu and and ⁓ Moo. But in the in the last few years. But I can appreciate the mechanics of Nikosu dice and they interact more in an interesting way than just being a one-off gimmick, right? It's interesting that the dice are carts. It's interesting that we draft them at the beginning and we, as a table, make the Trump, right? In that decision. It's interesting that you're leftover last dire or whatnot. ⁓ is what you need to match your tricks to if I'm remembering things right or or or or whatnot. Those are really interesting twists on what is the simple gimmick of dice are also cards, right? And so I think that's where it it actually elevates and has staying power because those things all interact in a in a meaningful and fun way rather than just being the one gimmick. Which so many trick takers I felt like that I came and went through my collection. They only had the one gimmick. And once the one gimmick was done, you were kind of like, Cool, cool, cool. I tasted that one flavor of ice cream and I don't need to taste it again. Like, yeah. No, I think exactly what you said. It was the the combination of interesting things that made it greater than the sum of its parts. Where in another one it might have just been, ⁓ that's kind of cute. And then you you move it along, sell it in the the Portland game. collective ⁓ discord to exact to someone who who hasn't experienced that particular Flavor of of trick taking, yeah. Camden, ⁓ trick taker arc incoming. Prepare your inboxes. Prepare to be traded with. speaking of trick takers, speaking of speaking of what's hot at the moment, how about a game called Wolful? This is Wolf E L. Wolful, which is I'm gonna assume a German word for Wolf, but I don't Don't hold me on that. Wolful is a trick-taking-ish game that is a variable partnership, hidden variable partnership, a la Doppelkoff. And this is a game designed by Stefan Heller, who only has two or three design credits to his name on BGG. This is from 2019. Derek and Drew talked about this on their BGG tricky episode. And frankly, if you say like Doppelkoff to me, you're going to get my attention. And that's exactly what happened. However, something even more interesting happened because not only so let me tell you something about Dads on a map. We have a Gmail account. I never, I never receive emails on shows. I mean two or three a year. And it'll be like something like I don't know, right? Hey, are you guys going to talk about game I love or something like that. Well, I get an email right after this show came out, someone saying, What the heck was that game that Derek talked about? I couldn't really understand the title, right? Because it's Wolful, and he kind of said it as woofful. You know, people say wolf is wolf and whatever. I'm not giving Derek crap on that. So I told the person what the game was so he could go find it. Right after that email comes in, I receive another email from the designer of Wolful, Stefan Heller. And he says, Greetings from Germany. I heard that you talked about my game on your show. I mean, I didn't. Derek did, but he said, It's so cool to me to hear that Americans are talking about my little game, Wolfle. So I just wanted to know the path that led to you know, this game to your hands, basically. So I kind of did a little detective work, talked to Derek, who turns out it had come through, no surprise, Ryan Campbell of the Portland Game Collective. had done like a group buy after he had heard of the game. And one of those ended up in Derek's group or in in his hands locally. And so I kind of gave that credit out to to Stefan Heller. And then he said, ⁓ s interesting, there's another person that I'm talking to right now about trying to get a group buy together to get like 10 games sent to the US. Well I shared this in the Dome Discord and then a bunch of people said, I mean, I'd do a group buy. Ask him, James, can we just do our own group buy? And I'm like, let's do a group buy of of Wolfle, right? So we bought 10 copies of Wolfle. Took about three weeks to get here from Germany. In the meanwhile, I had already ordered some blank dice on Amazon to make my own proxy version. I had blank dice in the necessary eight colors. I bought some ⁓ some like nail polish markers that apparently you use for like fine, like. ⁓ little detail work on your nails or whatnot. I bought those to do the dots with, and I made my own set of Wolfle while waiting for my set of Wolfle. Ridiculously, I paid just about as much money for my print and play materials as I did the $23 or whatever we paid to Stefan Heller to get this game from Germany. Anyway, the game arrives and I make my copy. I play it with my family. It is a stone cold hit. I mean, right out of the gates, it does exactly what Doppelkoff does so well. And what Doppelkoff does is it Doppelkoff is a lot about learning the the calls you can make. It's a lot about learning the Trumpsuit and how to kind of balance that heavy Trumpsuit versus the rest of the cards. Well, Wolfle strips all that away and just does the Doppelkoff partnership thing, which is someone at this table is my partner. I don't know who until we show something from our hand. And it's so important to know who our partner is because in Wolfle, for instance, there are 15 wolf dice of certain colors. And the winner of the of the round is whoever captures at least eight of those 15. You got to capture the majority of the wolves. So you need to know who your partner is because you need to feed them wolves when they're winning a trick. That's that's the crux of the game. It's throwing points to your partner, in this case Wolves, in Doppelkoff, it's actual points, to make your goal in order to score points instead of the other team. Now, how are the teams decided in Wolfle? There are two green dice in the 28 dice bag, and whoever gets the two green dice are partners. If one person gets both dice, there's kind of a special variant. That's one versus three. Not really important for the sake of this discussion. But so you're deciding when you're gonna show your green dice. When I say show, I mean like a game like Mino Dice, you're gonna choose what you want to play, but you're gonna roll it when you play it, right? So just because you bring a great dice up that should win, you have to roll it. And the gods will decide, the woolful gods will decide who's gonna win the trick. uniquely. For this trick-taking game, if you want to call it that, there is absolutely no following. There's no follow rules, there's there's no considerations for who played what. You could play whatever you want at any time. And somehow, despite reading that and being like, I don't know about that, it works 100%. It works. And the dumbest and funnest rule in the game is everybody gets a goblin token. And Once per round, which is a a whole trick-taking round of all seven tricks here to see who captures the most wolves, a player can use their goblin and make the most recently rolled dice be re-rolled. Sounds simple, sounds stupid. The amazing thing is we all have one, which means it's the fourth person in the row who's who we're rolling our dice or rolling our dice. Ooh, my partner has it. ⁓ Derek rolls. Now Derek's got it. I say, Derek, re-roll that dice. He rolls it again. Yes, my team got it. Derek's like, I'm re-rolling my dice. He uses his goblet, rolls it. Yes, I got it, Derek says. My partner says, re-roll your dice and flips his goblet, right? So the goblins are just this little knifey, degenerate thing that I loved so much in the game. My kids loved it. We're firing off these goblins, but at the same time, you need to be strategic with them. You need to hold them and use them on the tricks that really matter. Which are the tricks with a lot of wolves in them, right? That's what really matters in the game. I loved this. And I gotta tell you, saying I loved it after my second game, which was with my game group, where I scored zero points. Like this is a variable partnership game. Like everyone should be scoring points every now and then, right? We played like six rounds, the game ended. I scored zero. I was never on the winning team. And I was the only person at the table who'd played the game. I don't know if that's a ⁓ a sign of ⁓ you know if I'm saying something great about the game or saying something disastrous about the game that I could score zero and feel helpless and still have an amazing time, but I did. ⁓ this game is gonna get played at Dome Con because I have 10 copies sitting on my shelf that are getting picked up at Dome Con by everyone. So there's gonna be a lot of woeful on the table at Dome Con. And another US group buy just happened, ⁓ led by Julian on the Discord, who I believe is in the northwest ⁓ Seattle area somewhere. And I think he's got sixteen or eighteen copies coming in. I was kind of the guinea peg for ⁓ Mr. Heller to see if we would have any ⁓ tariffs or anything like that to deal with. Thankfully, we did not. So hopefully we're on the back end of that nonsense for for small games from Germany. But for this one, no tariffs to speak of. So I was happy. That's woeful. ⁓ you can't buy it, but you should if you get a chance and and give it a try. Also a wonderful introduction to the why of Doppelkoff, right? I I think playing woeful with someone and then being able to say, We're gonna play Doppelkoff, it's like Wolful, you know, is going to be an asset for for my attempts to make Doppelkoff more well known. ⁓ that it's just like here, learn this entire deck of of Trump cards while you're at it. But you know. Do you think it's accurate to say that partnership games like this are almost a genre to themselves? I'll admit I have almost no experience with any games other than ⁓ a single play of ⁓ Teach You a couple years ago of games that involve partnerships like this. I do think partnership games are unique on their own because they offer they offer something unique on the tabletop space, which is an additional boost of kind of camaraderie, high fives, you know, gamesmanship, right? A team game. variable partnership games are even more niche. In fact, somebody asked the other day in the Discord what other variable partnership games I could name, which I I couldn't name anything other than Doppelkoff, Mu, and Frank Zoo, another card game that that does variable partnership in the scoring anyway. Each round it basically says you're paired with them now because you have the most points and they have the least points, which is a stretch versus the hidden partnership of Doppelkoff and Wolfle, and then Moo, which is kind of a ⁓ a partnership that you fight for, right? In Moo, you f you actually have the ability to say, I'm going to wager enough to be the one who gets to choose their partner, which is a you know a whole twist on itself. I guess ⁓ Le Plateau would be another a variable partnership game, but that one is randomly determined. ⁓ just it's literally whoever has this card is my partner. So there's another one. But I do think partner games are unique and some of my favorite, I mean Doppelkoff, Moo Are both top twenty games for me and teach you. And they are and it's because of the partnership. It's because of the high five moments and the fist bumps and the things that come along with partnership games. ⁓ and those same things can exist in strong shared incentive games, but they're much more volatile partnerships and they're opt in and opt out, right? In John Company, we we could definitely be short term partners, but you can leave me at any time. you know. We don't have to stay together. I in a game like ⁓ Loenhertz, we can agree to work together for the for the benefit of us by building walls in a a beneficial space until you decide to invade and attack me. Right. Like ⁓ in in these games, you don't really get to decide to. The the the bag in this case, when you pull your dice, it decides who's gonna be together. And for that round, you're together. Like There's there's really no tanking someone in Wolful or Doppelkoff, because you're tanking yourself. we gotta win when we can win. I worry about you next turn. So interesting. Interesting dynamics that that you don't find in every board game. Okay. That's enough woof talk. ⁓ this is not the start of another trick taking era. This is a one off for me. I won't be buying any more well. German trick takers, maybe, just not Japanese trick takers. I got my fill. ⁓ Camden, what's your last game to talk about? So this past weekend I also had a chance to play Capital Lux 2. This was my second play. I think I'd played it for the first time a year ago. ⁓ this is a a tactical card game where you having to make a choice each turn. It's ⁓ the deck has four suits. Cards are valued in ⁓ num numerically two to six, and each turn you have a choice of playing a card from your hand either in front of you to what is called your hometown or to the center of the board, which is called the Capitol. ⁓ if you play a card to your hometown, The the cards in your hometown are endgame points. ⁓ so the more you play in front of you, the more points you're getting at the end of the game. If you play a card to the Capitol, you get to, ⁓ depending on the suit, get some get to activate some sort of game-breaking power that affects the board in some way. So ⁓ the kind of twist on the game, though, is You're going to have these four columns of cards in front of you and four columns of cards in the Capitol. And at the end of each round, if your hometown has any columns where the score is higher than that corresponding column in the Capitol, you lose all of those cards. They get cleared out. So it's a constant, ⁓ kind of dance of increasing your own points, increasing the capital's points to increase your own point threshold, but also being aware that by increasing the capital, you're also increasing all the other players' point thresholds and kind of managing that that shared space. And the the powers that you get by playing cards to the center of the board ⁓ will do things like For instance, in one of the simple ones is the merchant who lets you take the ⁓ a gold ⁓ a token from the center, you can spend that token at the end of the round to increase your threshold by one versus the capital. So if you have, for instance, six points in yellow and the capital has five points in yellow, normally you'd lose those six points at the end of the round, but the gold Tokens that you get let you kind of make up that gap and preserve your your score. Another one just lets you add a card to your hand, give you more flexibility. ⁓ I found that it's just an interesting, you know, short half hour tactical interactive card game. ⁓ there's two editions of the game: Capital Lux and Capital Lux Two. Capital Lux Two, it's the exact same game as Capitalux one. It just adds another half dozen cards that are the special powers that go in the middle. So just ⁓ gives it a little more variety. ⁓ I find ⁓ it super interesting. ⁓ you know it's it the game starts out with a quick draft so you're you're selecting ⁓ a set of cards ⁓ each round. ⁓ it's played over three rounds. ⁓ it's one of those ones where, you know, when you start describing it to yourself, it's like, well, there's there's nothing really, you know, super revolutionary about it, but the way the package combines, the way that you interact with the other players, ⁓ it really really hits well for me. Cool. Capital X two, electric boogaloo. It's very, very electric colored ⁓ vibes too. Yeah, it's one of one of my kind of ongoing in jokes is that ⁓ Quan Shaimoria does not draw art for good games. It's it's one of the games that I've found that is an exception to that that personal rule. which is really unfortunate. I I think his artwork is striking, but I wish it was in more games that I enjoyed. Yeah. All right, well, that'll do it for our recent plays. We'll move in to the main topic. Dissing Dome Darlings. Who doesn't love a little obliteration? So, I mean, every year we do the top 20, right? We we we talk about Dome's favorite games. We talk about our favorite games. Whoever I might have on the show is always talking about their favorite games. ⁓ and you know, everyone hears their favorites. Come and go, where it's like, ⁓ yes, you're you you know, you're pumping your fist for that one. But everyone also has those games that just makes you put on that kind of stank face a little bit where you're kind of like, hmm, that not, but not that. That's not for me, right? So Cameron and I thought we would talk about those games where the ones that we just don't connect with the community on. Now, community is a hard word, and it's a it and you have to remember. That Dads on a Map has been around for seven years. ⁓ that there are over a thousand members in the Discord and probably a hundred voices, you know, regular voices at a time talking. So just because someone's saying something, whether it's a person me on the show or someone making a post on the Discord, that doesn't always necessarily reflect the community at large. And sometimes I think people get caught up in that. Like Just because five people like something doesn't mean you have to like it, and it doesn't mean everybody likes it, right? And we're gonna talk about the games that we don't like, despite our perception, maybe that a lot of people do like them around dope. ⁓ I'll just start us off with what I think is a pretty obvious one that has almost become like a meme at this point, and I want to kind of bring it back full circle, especially for people who may not be long time listeners of the show or haven't listened to every show. And I just wanna I just want to talk about it again. So we'll start with Age of Steam. Age of Steam is a game that I have you know, never quite jived with the community on to the point where and every year it seems like Age of Steam just keeps getting stronger. It was the number three game in the Dads on a Map community listings last year. Now I don't have an inherent Problem with Age of Steam, I think it is less interesting than so many of its ⁓ contemporary train games that surround it. Because while it does have a very interesting auction, which is very high stakes, because you get to choose a special power coming out of it that pretty much dictates everything about the round and gives you the ability to kind of slow other players and w whatnot. Everything else about it to me is blah, right? It's multiplayer solitaire. It's the worst parts of the worst winsome games that I don't like. It's Iberian Gauge. It's manage your or sorry, Iberian Railways, which is actually worse. It's manage your manage your dollars most efficiently through your builds to deliver your cubes most efficiently. Do the efficiency. Just do the efficiency best. And the worst part is. Over the hour, 90 minutes, two hours, depending on the map, up to three hours that you're doing this, your builds are getting more complex with options. Your deliveries are getting longer and more complex. It's taking players longer to take their turns. And the bad part of the game quickly outweighs the great part of the game, which is the auction and that tension and decision. That's where I've always opposed Age of Steam. Now, Age of Steam can be fixed with great maps. I've played some games of Age of Steam that were absolutely wonderful because they had highly interactive maps with not obvious choices. ⁓ a lot of maps and a lot of age of Steam. It just feels like taking loco is the right choice, and being able to do higher deliveries is important for everyone. So you gotta loco, right? I have Tended to really enjoy discovering maps that remove the loco action and make you earn it in other ways. And I think that's interesting. So I think a lot of maps do fix Age of Steam. However, the maps are another part of my problem with Age of Steam because I just get kind of overwhelmed by the maps. Like I get overwhelmed by the community, always wanting more maps. I get overwhelmed by people choosing what maps to play. I get overwhelmed by the discourse around the maps and which ones are better and who how to play the correct rules of the maps. So it's another, unfortunately, it's it's that's where Age of Steam is really stuck in a corner for me. It needs good maps to make it a better game. And I don't want to play a game that is so dependent on the What I'm trying to choose my words carefully here is so dependent on the need to constantly crank out new content to be relevant. ⁓ age of Steam people are not gonna like that sentence. And it might not be the right sentence, but that's how I feel about Age of Steam. And it it makes me not even want to participate because I don't want to jump through the hoops to find the good maps that I do want to play. I I have had my best experiences when players that n know me have brought maps to me and been like, this is one you want to play. And I I I I'll tend to enjoy maybe a game of Age Esteem a year ⁓ in in that department, but I would just so much rather play 18XX, good 18XX, to be fair, ⁓ or good CubeRails games that do. ⁓ you know that have high stakes auctions with interesting tempo and leverage and player denial and great action on the map as well. Right. That's my that's that's the big one for me. So I'll continue to be a post and you know those two things like people love age of Steam, I think for a couple of reasons. They love playing a game that feels interactive and is interactive in the auction. But people ultimately they like putting their head down and figuring out their puzzle. They people do. They like it. And it's they let them do their own thing and people can't get in their way. The game makes you get in each other's way in the auction so much that people are like, let me take a breath over here and just figure out my thing now. ⁓ I don't want to do that part. And people sure love collecting maps. Like Age of Steam people, they they're it's a sickness. So They are what they are and I'm not one of them. And so the I'm opposed to the community on Age of Steam. I think it's interesting when in a vacuum the game is fine, but the way that it has been chosen to be played does seem to be a bit at odds with how you or I might choose to engage with the hobby. Yeah, I think that's appropriate. All right. What game are you gonna bury? All right. Well, I could ⁓ have ⁓ picked a number of ⁓ Crommer and or Keisling games, but ⁓ I'm going to go after El Grande. Now I'll preface this by saying that El Grande is a game that I don't like that I respect a great deal because it has clearly inspired other games that I enjoy way more. Than El Grande. I don't need to go into a long explanation of what El Grande is, just basic area control, but I find that the s mechanisms that are in place to engage with that area control are just way too obtuse for me. I don't like the fact that you have to select a turn order bid which is connected to the quantity of of cubes that you're pulling from from your your court or and then use that turn order to select a special action for that round just doesn't work for me. It just let me take cubes from wherever I want to, put them wherever I want to, don't make me go through this whole whole long, complicated rigmarole. See now I love the painful process of El Grande. See? Like I I am I'm I'm on the other side from the But it seems to me Like for me, the pain is coming from interacting with the system, which is getting in the way of me causing pain to other players. I think that's fair. I do think that's fair. But yes. I yeah. I okay. I'm not gonna defend. I'm not I'm gonna I'm gonna hold my tongue and let the community take take their lumps on these. Okay. ⁓ my next one. And I so I was trying to think how to do this. And part of me was like, I don't just want to talk about age esteem and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, again, because that's all I do. But then I I kept thinking, like, I want people who might not listen to every show to to get to hear why I take shots at these games in the Discord randomly. So I thought it was good to bring it back. And we also we just haven't done a good hater show in a long time. So it was it was definitely time. Campbell bringing out the hater aid in me again. So I'm going with brass, all brass. Brass E B, Brass Lancashire, I'm sure Brass Pittsburgh or whatever it is is is also gonna feel the same way to me. And I have I have two major problems also with brass. The first one is brass continually over the last, you know, ten years as it's grown and grown and grown to I think be the number one game on BGG right now. I think Birmingham is is still that. ⁓ It has gained a reputation for being, yes, I do play economic games. I play brass. And I think that holds some players back from discovering real economic games. Because, yes, brass does have an economic aspect to it, right? There is money management involved in your decision making. There is, you know. G getting yourself in the right place in turn order. Those are the interesting parts of brass, the turn order, ⁓ waterfall kind of situation. Who spent the most in reordering yourself? But I don't want people's journey to stop at brass. And I think for so many people in the larger board game community, they will never get past brass because it's number one on BGG, because it continues cranking out variant maps that They're going to be content having that be their economic exploration when there's just so much more out there. Whether it's getting stocks involved, whether it's just a more robust ⁓ economic system of decision making, like in Indonesia, like there's so much more to be done with your money and considerations with that money than brass allows you to make. And I want that for people because I think it's one of the coolest things in board games is. strong economic systems in board games. The other thing I have always hated about Brass is this multi-use card system that pretty much lets you do whatever you want all the time, right? There's really one action in the game, which is, you know, I have a card that is a you know, Lancashire card. So I could build anything I want in Lancashire or I could build off of Lancashire, right? But every other card is just like play a card face down, do what you want. Do whatever you want, you know, just play a card, do what you want. So there's a tiny bit of hand management, but mostly it's do whatever you want. Like you just said about El Grande, if that got out of the way and I got to make my decisions and make my mark on the map without needing to be dependent on drawing the right card or not having the right card at a vital moment of the game. That's just so much more interesting of a game to me to let me do what I what I need to do. Let me do what I want to do. I don't find that interesting. God, I'm such a hypocrite. I was defending El Grande two seconds ago for you saying get the systems out of the way. But that's how I feel about brass. The card system holds back so much about the game and prevents the knives that need to come out to make this game a meaningful shared infrastructure, common spaces. thing on the board. Like I want that to be a thing and it's happenstance. Or you, you know, you happen you get screwed out of happenstance more often than you like find yourself being in a great place because of it. ⁓ I don't know. These these brass thoughts are brought to you by me. They're my thoughts only. And they're also outdated. I think the last time I played brass, I left the game and said, You know, maybe I haven't been fair to Brass. Brass was all right. And then here I am back on my horse again, ⁓ talking smack about brass. But Yeah, I certainly won't defend Brass Birmingham, which to this day remains one of the worst gaming experiences that I've ever had. But a couple of years ago I did play Brass Lancashire and I found the differences in the play of the two games to be quite pronounced in my opinion. I know a lot of people say, they're both identical, but I found the the the two games to be fairly different in in my experience, but no. No brass defense over here. Perfect. Look at this. Full of haterade. Alright. Who's taking the next shot? All right. We're coming coming for the the highest Ranked game of Reiner Kenizia, Tigris and Euphrates. Right off the hotness, right off the Kickstarter hotness. So I will preface this by saying at some point I really enjoyed this game. Playing it more online, though, I started to realize on board game arena that I was seeing people do the exact same opening moves every single game. And I started getting drawn into just repeating this pattern because if I tried to zag when others were zigging, it just wasn't working. I came from a background of competitive collectible card games. I played a Star Wars customizable card game for 20 years. So I'm very familiar with the concept of Of the meta and the opening moves and things that you have to do, or you're just not going to be able to engage competitively with the game. And to a great extent, I got into board games after retiring from playing competitive CCGs, specifically because I wanted to engage with gaming in a different way. And then when I found myself seeing these types of patterns occurring in Tigus and Euphrates like giving me flashbacks of of my tryhard C C days and like with a game that has as much randomness also as Tigris and Euphrates had and just sort of wanting to be able to just lean into the the chaos and the ebbs and the flows just wasn't working for me. ⁓ anymore and I understand what what people the things that people like in it but the last set of games that I was ha having bes before I kind of decided you know I'm I'm kind of done playing with this I was just finding that maybe I had a good game of Tigris and Euphrates ten, twenty percent of the time. Most of them just just weren't hitting and ⁓ It's one that that promised a lot, but you know, I'm I'm not seeing the love anymore. You know what's crazy? While you were saying that, I looked up my BG stats on Tigers and Euphrates, which I haven't put on the table in three years. The last on the table play was with my children three years ago, which I don't even really remember ⁓ that. I'm sure I recorded an episode bit about it. And then before that was another year before that, my last the last time I played it on the table. ⁓ and you know who backed the new printing? This this idiot. This this guy who hasn't put it on the table in three years. I somehow talked myself into backing that game. It was that guy's video really convinced me. He really made me like him versus ⁓ some other some other people in the hobby and made me made me give him his money. My ⁓ my money. So New T and E coming to me, and I still own a Mayfair copy, so guess I should sell that. Or I'll just put it in the Dome Library. That's what I'll do. Donate to the Cons. ⁓ yeah. Tigers in Euphrates. I'm I'm not gonna say anything else about it. We'll let the people say what they're gonna say. My last game that I'm gonna ⁓ diss here is one that I've said things about, and I'm gonna be honest. This is a it's me, it's not you game. And this is root. ⁓ two things again that really with root. I have discovered ⁓ that I really don't like, generally speaking, in games, I don't like being told that this is how my character works. I I guess. I don't like being given a character. I like or a character, a faction, a person. I like to build my character. abilities. I like to build myself up. I like to choose. I like to customize. I like to be in charge. Right. ⁓ John Company, right? I can start as a lowly, you know, president in Bengal or whatever, but I have higher aspirations. I want to be chairman eventually. I can do that. I I I'm allowed to make the decisions that do that in the game. Root is a game that tells me I am the, you know, I'm the eerie. That's who I am in this game. And this is what I have to do. I have to play this little game with my cards and I have to do my thing. And I have to babysit the rest of the table, and that's what we're gonna do here. And I I just don't I don't take to games that tend to tell me to do that, at least historically. And so I've never really got on with Root very much in that regard. It's always felt fine, but n nothing more than fine. ⁓ it also has like insane feature creep. Like I'm at a point with Root where I would feel like I can't play Root because everyone has so many expansions and so many things. And for a game that, you know, everyone is a unique faction every time, like that is incredibly overwhelming to me as a player. I I would just feel like I couldn't even get back in at this point if I wanted to. ⁓ so Root and I were just you know It sucks having one of my favorite designers having designed it and me feeling like I missed the mode on it and can never get back in now. But that's the way I feel with Ru. It's it it hasn't fit for me. I'm not sad about it. And people can continue to love the game and do the things they do with it. And I just I won't be one of them. ⁓ I realize that on this same show, I talked about Cross Bronx Expressway. That gives me my my Entity in the game. I was the community and I had to deal with that and figure out my way around it. And I liked it. So I do realize that I am a hypocrite in this same episode. Just to beat someone to the punch with that one. ⁓ yeah. So that's root. Still not for me. All right. For me, one last one last ⁓ sip of ⁓ Haterade. I'm going to break out the pitchforks for Pax Premier second edition, the ⁓ Cole Worley modern classic. ⁓ Cole Cole's taking a back-to-back shot from from Dad's on a map here. Sorry, Cole. ⁓ I found with this game that despite loving the the history, despite loving the setting, despite loving the the cast of characters and you know I ⁓ took the time to read one of William DeRumpel's books, author who inspired a lot of Cole Worley's ⁓ history in this game. I listened to the podcast that the same author did where he was he covered a lot of historical events that took place that are ⁓ referred to in the the flavor text on the cards that are in this game. This game just does not evoke the the setting and and the feelings and the the dynamism that was occurring during this historical period. When I play this game, it feels like I'm just collecting cylinders in front of me on my cards and ⁓ I have a map in front of me that almost might as well just be a Euro track. ⁓ the times when the the map in Pax Premier 2E actually matters are very, very few. ⁓ it's kind of one of those things like I was saying with TND, where maybe in five to ten percent of the games of Pax Premier Second Edition I play something interesting is occurring that is not involving just collecting cylinders on the cards in my tableau. I wish there was just more dynamism in the game. There are other PAX games that give me that that feeling of of interaction and and interesting things happening on the board. And just way too often I find that people build tableaus and packs from Pamir Tui that are just completely unassailable and you know y you want to be able to do things to interact with people, but the game just doesn't give you the the tools to do more than just collect colors, collect cylinders and and hope you can buy the right cards at the right time. I think you're absolutely right. And I will say, you should play Pax Premier first edition. Because I have it on my shelf and it is very high on your spot on ⁓ complaints flat out are so much better in first edition. I, you know, I think Pax from Ear second edition came at a time in the hobby for me that shiny was better. And I think that happened to a lot of people to where It was such a glorious production that a lot was forgiven. It's a soft game. It's a soft game with soft choices and and just everything you said is correct. And playing first edition makes you see it even more because things matter in first edition. You cannot hold a tableau as strongly in first edition. It's very hard. It's harder to build the tableau. It's easier to get absolutely wrecked and sacked. Even the card actions, I feel are more meaningful in first edition than second edition, where it is just pieces, just picture ⁓ pictures and icons on cards. And like you said, ⁓ you're just collecting cylinders and that essentially d does not exist in first edition. Period. Like that part doesn't exist. And that is to me the worst part of of two E. It's just, of course, I need to get the most cylinders because it's it's hard to get a a faction in control. And if you're not a faction's not in control, I don't really care because I have eight cylinders out on the board. You know, good luck getting rid of ⁓ The board matters, first edition. ⁓ you gotta play first edition. But but yes, I agree with you. ⁓ okay. I gotta play more first edition. I I'm thirsty for that game. Okay, we're gonna lightning round these last two questions that I that I tossed up here. This is three games that we love that can't seem to get the community momentum that we would like to see. ⁓ I'll do mine first here. First one, I toot the horn, toot the bean all the time. Bonanza, bonanza, bonanza. I need to see more universal love for Uwe Rosenberg's best game of all time, Bonanza. I feel like Bonanza's major ⁓ hurdle to having universal acceptance is it's one of its greatest assets that it's only a deck of cards and people think you can't take that seriously it's only a deck of cards right where's the bits where's the things where's the chits where's the track it's all right there so all you need is your deck of cards in bonanza. ⁓ soul last days of a star I'll continue to beat the drum on this one. It's beautiful. ⁓ it's amazing to look at on the table. It is unique and insanely variable. The the kind of variability modern gamers chase is in Seoul. It exists right there. It has just enough leeching on the board to be more interesting than just multiplayer solitaire. It's pretty multiplayer solitaire. I'll I'll be honest, but it does it in such a ⁓ gorgeous and I'll it just is a smooth operating system. It's like a crank that really has a nice, a nice flow to it ⁓ when you're doing these minuscule little moves to set up your bigger moves. I really like the way it does that. I want more people to continue to play soul. And my last one is just one that slipped down the ranks year by year by year. We're not talking about Pax Porphyriana enough still. This is a like former top 10 tome game that was like number 50 last year in the community rankings. People aren't playing it as much. People aren't talking about as much. I would say I wish that the new printing that's coming soon is gonna make a difference, but it looks so bad that like I hope it doesn't do even more damage to it. ⁓ but I I just want more people to play Porf because I think it is a I I think it is a ten out of ten design. Like it's just it's it's just a wonderful PAX game and I need more people to enjoy it. So those so good. So good. So good. Unbelievable. So good. Those are my three that I need to still get more love. All right. My first selection. Games that I love that do not seem to get momentum. First one is Ginkopolis. This is ⁓ ⁓ Xavier Georges game from 2012. ⁓ drafting drafting cards. On your turn, you can do one of three actions. It's area control. It's ⁓ building up a a map and spreading out and and trying to get points by creating and controlling the biggest areas and and getting points based on ⁓ cards that you put in front of you. If I were to compare it to a game that Dome does love, I'd say it's one of the few games that actually compares in some ways to Rise and Fall. It ⁓ has that that kind of ⁓ not necessarily super direct interaction, but there's some meanness there that that you can engage with, and there's some really interesting ebb and flow. Second one, my my favorite. ⁓ short 4X game, Imperium the Contention. ⁓ this designer's only game, really. they're the ones who have ⁓ more recently done the Slay the Spireboard game, but Imperium the Contingent is pretty much the only game that I found. Maybe Pax Ren that kind of reminds me of my Old Love, the Star Wars customizable card game. It has the same ⁓ emphasis on important importance of ⁓ movement and placement of your your cards in a in a space and ⁓ just a wonderful short space for X that has a feeling of ⁓ two player card dueler, but plays from two to six players. And then lastly, the Expanse board game. I was mentioning in my roast of El Grande that I have respect for El Grande because of all the games that it inspired. And first and foremost among these is the Expanse. It has El Grande scoring, it has a coin and ⁓ card-driven game, ⁓ initiative and action point system, and it has ⁓ kind of mini packs card market and it all just wraps up nicely with a a neat bow and it's just a great area control game. And then we're gonna say what games or mechanics, you know, systems do we think we might be wrong on, but we just need a little more exposure or what or what do we need to break through, right? We'll run through these pretty quick also. minor minor things I've been saying for years. Coin. Coin. I've been saying coin for like six years and it's all on me. I'm the one who needs to actually give it a chance and play and try these games. And I still really haven't, you know, maybe Cross Bronx Expressway could be the the gateway in. I don't know. But I'm still interested in exploring them, yet still unwilling to ⁓ be like, hey, group, we're gonna play a coin. So, you know, it's me. ⁓ Agricola. Something I put on here. This is looking through the dome, you know, top top list of the community. And Agricola always is hanging around up here. And, you know, I'll be honest, I haven't played Agricola in like six years. And when I played it, I think I just played two player. I couldn't even tell you what version I played. I know we didn't draft cards. Like, maybe it's time for me to go back and give Agricola another chance. And then Guards of Atlantis is a game for like three years, I've been saying. I want to try at one of these cons and I have continued to not try it and it just keeps getting more and more voices behind it and interests me. The you know, the the team play thing is what interests me here the most is the, you know, us against them. Sounds fun in board games. I want to do that. So interested to give that a try in the future as well. To you, Camden. All right. I am considering the possibility that I may be wrong about trains. I haven't enjoyed a Cube, Rail, or 18XX game that I've played. The caveat being I haven't been able to play any of these games on the table. And I definitely need to make that happen at some point. ⁓ Tim, if you're listening, I need to play a train game with you. You live half an hour away from me. We need to play trains. Do too. Next one on my list. Fresh fish. I like fresh fish. Sometimes when I play it, I'm questioning whether I like fresh fish just because I'm always hating myself and the decisions that I make in the game. I still own it. I don't think I'm getting rid of it, but I need to play it enough where I'm I can be like, okay, I I like this game again. And I think again for me the the key is just getting it onto the table and and not ⁓ having to deal with the the online async brain lag that happens. And then the last game on this list for me is Container. It's one that I've long said, I don't know if this is really a me game. I've you know had it come and go in trades over the years. I'm trading I've got a trade in progress again for the new edition. I'd like to to give it a chance on the the table and and see if it's one that maybe maybe I can ⁓ find the fun in it. See, I feel like we ragged on six community absolute pillars, but then we took our medicine here, right? We we we talked about what what we haven't been able to get done. And so in a way, I think that'll soften the blow a little bit if people didn't turn it off after You said Tigris and Euphrates sucks. I said what I said and I don't regret what I said. Sweet. That was a really fun show, Camden. I appreciate you ⁓ existing in the community, sticking around and ⁓ you know, always you're always there with a ⁓ a jab. I can always count on a campaign. It is okay out nowhere. It is okay to not like all the games. It is okay to to not like the the brown games with cubes that you can only pronounce if you have a ⁓ bachelor's degree in ⁓ German language. No that's not okay. But but if you want, come to Dome Con. I wait, I can't even prom promote anymore. If you're coming to Dome Con, we'll play some brown games with cubes. Yes we will and some dumb dice rolling games too. So that's what we have to look forward to. ⁓ Camden, ⁓ I hope one day get the opportunity to cross paths. Hey, hey, you know what? I'm gonna be in LA in December visiting Tim. Maybe we play a train game together. We could maybe h make that happen. Okay. I'm gonna see now Tim can hear that. And I'm coming out there to go to the Chiefs and Rams game with Tim. And we are definitely gonna be playing some disc golf during the weekend, but I bet we could I bet we could manage to get something together. We'll we'll work on that. We'll work on that. It'll be fun. My my first and only trip to California in my life. So we gotta make it count. So all right. Camden, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for ⁓ taking the time out to prep this show with me and ⁓ thanks for ⁓ dissing some dome darlings with me. To everyone else, I'll see you at Dome Con if I don't see you then. I think I got one more show coming up before Dome before Dome Con. Maybe one or two, so be on the lookout for that. ⁓ Camden, thanks again. Thanks James, this was a lot of fun. All right, we'll see y'all next time.