James Geist: This speech is my recital. I think it's very vital. To rock around, Howdy folks, and welcome to the BGD Screen 2026 recap show presented by Dads on a Map. On today's show, I'll be joined by our regular Drew to run down all the games and good times we had. So join me and the mayor of DFW Gaming as we talk games, games, and more games. Enjoy the show. Alright, Drew, another BGGI count down, a little over a week removed from it, ⁓ from the convention. So how are you doing? ⁓ not too bad. Got got an eighteen XX ⁓ day in in the last weekend and then got sick after that. So we're recovering from a little bit of a cold here, but aside from that, doing pretty well. Very nice, very nice. 18xx, maybe a t ⁓ topic of discussion today. We'll see. We'll see. Could could come up. ⁓ yes but I was saying ⁓ not too much gaming since the con on my end. ⁓ I've been kind of just winding down and also coming down, you know, y you hit five days worth of gaming. It's like, ⁓ you can take a a couple of weeks off and kind of get back into the into the groove. For sure. Yeah, it's it's always that ⁓ that last day you kind of ⁓ hate to see it go, but then you're also a little burned out too. So it's it's nice to get back into the groove, back in the swing of things. Yeah, you know the one nice thing I realized was like typically whenever it was like you, R and J, Sanchez, y'all would leave, you know, most nights around eleven, midnight. And then typically I would have Jake, Aaron, Taylor, some of those guys. We would play card games until like three AM, but all none of them could make it. ⁓ two of them couldn't, and then Jake ended up having something come up too, so I actually got in bed I think before midnight, like or at least by one o'clock every night, which is like a record for me, I think. Turned into an old man that that early bedtime. And of course I would be up at 6 30 every day anyways, just sitting around reading rule books without wait you guys. So did make it easy to get some games in when I got there, like ahead of Sanchez. So Yeah, that was good too. ⁓ so on the dome recap, so obviously this is another the con show. You guys are getting some back to back con shows here. Always the some of the favorites, I'm sure. ⁓ but speaking of cons, now that PP Con is over and also BGG Spring, one thing to keep looking forward to is Dome Con. I know I'll be there. I know Drew will be there. I will. And I know we'll have a lot of other cool people there. There are still beds available. And so just to make sure I give the plug for James and he's not on this show, make sure you go sign up for Dome Con because it is a you know, we speak about this con here, they say P con. It blows all the cons out of the water. So Definitely get on it while you can. Yep. Definitely a great time. Get get to play all the great games. Yes. ⁓ other than that, I don't think there's too much on the podcast side or anything to catch up on. So let's get into the games. So we know what you guys are here for. You're here for games, more games and game talk. ⁓ there's been a couple posts, you know, on the Discord about some of the games we play, but let's start running ⁓ down. Let's start with Thursday. So Thursday, first day of the con here. Roll in. ⁓ Drew rolls in a little bit late. Drew basically, you know, the the con being at a airport, Drew comes in off a plane and then just drove goes over the con. Literally w walked off the airplane, grabbed my baggage, walked across the ⁓ the parking garage and into the con. Yes. And so Drew finally shows up. I had a little scheduled game before he got there, so We then hook up ⁓ play some small games and then one game that was requested that we play, ⁓ which is, you know, as a dome ⁓ staple was to play the one of Dome's favorite games, Santiago. This was requested by our good friends Alex and Emily. ⁓ and so we got Sanchez off that. We all sat down and we played a nice five player game of Santiago, which was their first time, I believe, both of them. Yep. Yeah. That was why they requested it. They'd heard great things and wanted to try it out. I feel like this was a really great play. I feel like this really ⁓ showed a lot. ⁓ I don't know if Drew agree from the very beginning. It's kind of like the me and Sanchez. No Drew. There was there was collusion. I was not included in the collusion. But but yeah, I feel like it it was a it was a great time. The one ⁓ the one sad thing was, and ⁓ the one thing to talk about here with the Santiago play too was we're getting everything ready. Of course, Drew just topped off his plane, so he doesn't have his poker chips. I, you know, I'm coming from ⁓ San Antonio, I was like, I don't need to pack my mi my Rubens, like Drew has chips, Sanchez has chips, D Pek has chips, we're fine, we're fine. And then Sanchez did not bring ⁓ anything as well. So we set up Santiago, get everything ready to go, and then we realized we have to play with the paper money. And that was a sad fact indeed. That was yes, probably the only downside of the game. But we were saved. ⁓ Daniel shows up like halfway through our play and we're like, Daniel have chips? And he's like, Yeah, sure. He just pulls him out and we just grab his. He doesn't need to play the game. He just he has to go off somewhere else and play something else. And we just take his chips. And I even like taking a picture beforehand with the paper money and I was like, No, we have to retake it, so we don't have to ever show that to somebody. So I retook it with the the poker chips. So there's no record of us using paper money in the game. Yeah, middle of the game, just updated the money. It was great. Yeah. But yeah, it was a good time of all Santiago. There's not too much to say about it. Always a great time. Yep. ⁓ so following up with that, ⁓ Emily and Alex went to go play something else. And so then Drew, you had a buddy that was looking to play some trains. Yeah. So one of the local guys here, Matt, ⁓ organizes some eighteen XX plays and he pinged me wanting to know if we wanted to get some 1830 in. So of course I said yes. And ⁓ he told us to meet him at this one particular room in the con that ⁓ ended up being the Gamers in Training, which ⁓ if you're not familiar with those rooms, it's the you know, like six to ten year old kids running around all over the place. he had a kid at the con, ⁓ but not in the room with him, I think, at the time. I think. ⁓ she was upstairs taking a nap or something, so I'm not sure exactly why we ended up there, but it was an interesting venue for the play for sure. Yeah, and Drew says six to ten, but he doesn't have kids who doesn't understand. There were like three year olds in this room running around like crazy. there was like in this I you know, in my mind, I've never been in this room 'cause like if my kid's not old enough yet, I don't think I'd ever probably do that to her. unless she really wanted to go. But in my mind I was thinking like, ⁓ the gamers and training room. Well first it was in a different room this year. Originally Aviators what's called, that's where ⁓ this guy said he wanted to play. That was originally like the big one of the big ballrooms they had. And so he said, ⁓ I'm in here. I thought, Okay, he's in a big ballroom but then this year that switched with another room that's usually the events room and so now it was like the registration, it was like all these other things. So that's why just the back part of it was this game was in training room. So that was the first like, ⁓ we did not know what he meant when he said this room. But then the second thing was like, I'm telling you, like there was like these little like play pins where all these kids were. There were like, you know, I drew was about to just go take a xylophone from a kid that was. I think it was fine until the xylophone came out and then then we had issues. But Yeah, it wasn't just like, ⁓ there's some smaller kids playing games still like, you know, playing my first Carcassonne or something. It was like legitimately small children banging on toys and having coloring books and stuff like that. It's like a a a daycare at the college. Yeah, it was yeah, eight eighteen XX in a daycare. But we made it. But we did okay. We did it. We actually ⁓ we I think we started yeah, it was a really game. I think we started it around like seven ish. And somebody came up to us and be like, You're gonna be here before they close. I guess they close at like eleven. And we actually I think rolled through it and probably it's a four player game, probably two and a half hours ish, somewhere in there. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Had a bankruptcy. ⁓ D trains? Yes, on the D's. Yeah. Yeah. and this was okay. This is my second eighteen thirty play. My first since last BGG Conn. ⁓ wow. I didn't realize you hadn't played that much. Yeah. and I won. So that you can think about that too. I don't think by all my like I had you know, some I asked some questions as we went along too. about some some good player stuff like that. ⁓ but yeah, Matt made some unfortunate investments that got a company dumped on him and relieved you of a train liability at a certain point. So And yeah I kind of wrote that to a a nice swift victory. ⁓ when the when the the the the bankruptcy happened. But I will say I'm just gonna you know I'm gonna come clean right now. So last year's eighteen thirty for me it was I think we we ended up spending like four hours in it and like was like with a new player, so we took a little bit more time. We played through no bankruptcy the whole game. ⁓ we ended up calling it, I think, ⁓ you know, close to around the same number of ORs, but we didn't have any like early exits. So that play was like, okay, this was all right, still, I was still in like that. You know, eighteen XX is maybe still not for me category after last year's play. I will say after this year's play, it highed a little bit more something for me. ⁓ you know, I I th it w I think the quick play and the no teach really like kinda kicked it off for me. We didn't have to like sit down and go through it all or like go through each step. We were just like we were busting it out, boom, boom, boom, OR as our, you know, stocks buy around, go, go, go. ⁓ yeah, when everybody knows what they're doing, it can really just it flies and it it feels really nice 'cause you just get into the game. Yeah. And so I think and I was starting to see more like with the 'cause like when I first played, you know, the questions are always like, Why do I buy more than one train if I can't run it? Blah blah blah, you know, or this. And I think this play I realize what a lot of the questions become are, you know, do can I afford to take a risk on this stock if in case I may get dumped or will ⁓ you know, will I get priority before I get dumped so I could possibly switch? some of the options in the track lay I think were opening up a little bit to me. I I think there's obviously some pitfalls that I don't see, especially in thirty, I know there's a lot of things that people just know like you have to do this before this happens or else you're screwed. which is like not my level. ⁓ but it was very interesting ⁓ coming back to it. ⁓ and it's another one of those kind of like we knew did Guards of Atlantis last year where like it been, you know, well that one had been two years, but this one had been a year. ⁓ I had come back into it and really it felt not too foreign and I was able to kind of get into it pretty quick and so I have started playing a couple games on eighteen x dot games. ⁓ I'm possibly looking to grab a copy of eighteen eighty nine to play locally, so maybe igniting a little bit more. ⁓ really, honestly, it's kind of tied to that plus you hear all the stuff about top. And then you re you see that the the Kickstarter getting announced, you see that beautiful art they have for it. That looks so good. I'm like, okay, I need to get a baseline just so I can try this and see if it's actually worth it. Because if it is, as people say, ⁓ then maybe I'll hop on that Kickstarter and I I get a copy of Tab. Well, Dome Con, great opportunity to get some plays in as well. That it is, that it is, and so. ⁓ it was funny too, because I got to post our picture of eighteen thirty and say, once again, beating ⁓ James to the punch, playing an eighteen XX at a con. So Nice. Even though I'm not an eighteen XX here, but maybe maybe I'm coming back around on it. You know, we're slowly converting you. Slowly converting me. You know, a play of eighteen thirty a year I could do. We'll shoot for Falcon. We'll make it twice a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. ⁓ and so the rest of the night we kinda played some ⁓ smaller stuff, and so it kind of got Cold Pixar is here. ⁓ starting off with me, I wanted to talk about a game that I'd actually got to play the week prior with my family. So I brought it out to the con. ⁓ and this is a game called Snop. Snope? ⁓ Snope. ⁓ if you spell it, it's really just Snow with a P at the end. but this is a dexterity game from the Japanese publisher Spiz Spills Lab. S-Z-P-I-L. ⁓ they are most known for the game Plampeda, which is like a crokinole with magnets game. ⁓ and they have another game I have as well. They're kind of just like a ⁓ do a lot of dexterity, weird stuff in the Japanese realm of like the indie hobby. ⁓ so Snoop is a flicking game where you flick these little metal rings into a kind of like a Ice rink that has bells in it. Legitimately like these are bells that you find anywhere else. ⁓ and the bells are different colors and you're trying to basically collect different colors in order to score kind of set majority points. But there's also some bonuses if you get the last of a color off the map, and there's also a negative if a color is left on the map, but you don't get to score that one, so you're kind of trying to prevent people from scoring large amounts of points if you're able to keep their color on the map still. and it's it's, you know, pretty simple, pretty small board two, not too much of a of a table hog for a game that could we play it at six players and I felt like this played just fine, ⁓ too, but could play from two to six. ⁓ but it was a pretty fun one. I think everybody had a a decent time with it. ⁓ for like a, you know, different kind of dexterity thing. ⁓ my f my family loved it and it's Especially fun 'cause when you look out on the board you just see all these little bells and you hear the bells when you're flicking and it's like, you know, a very tactile ⁓ dexterity game, which I really love too. Did what'd you think of this one, Drew? I liked it. I I thought it was an interesting little ⁓ you know, dexterity flicking game. ⁓ really good components and I'll give ⁓ credit for that, 'cause I think the dexterity games can really live and die by component quality. And like the little metal rings that you were flicking with this you know, had some heft and substance to ⁓ the boards were good. So it you know, it never was frustrating playing the game and you never felt like the components were letting you down in what you weren't able to do. It was it was you. Or your un or your understanding of the components in Daniel's case. Yeah. Or how yeah, how how you thought they might flick. You definitely want some practice flicks with those things to get kind of the the feel down for sure. Yeah. So Daniel D Pack Daniel, he was like flicking and he would he was like the first couple flicks he flicked like an inch and that was it. Yeah. And then about halfway through the game, he's like, ⁓ these are metal, they're not plastic. I don't I don't think joke I I think jokingly. But then after he said that, his next flick was like perfect. And he's like, That was it. I just didn't know what it was. Yeah. Yeah, it was a neat, neat little take on flicking. ⁓ it's a cool game. We'd play it again. Nice. All right, which one do you got for us? Do for our Thursday picture. So I wanted to highlight Puerto Banana. And we had at least four plays of this over the course of the con. ⁓ but this was the first day we played it. And this is like speed QE, but with bananas instead of ⁓ fiat currency. So you're auctioning some number of bananas by making blind simultaneous bids. The hook, like QE, is you can bid any amount you want. So the number of bananas you're bidding on starts at 10 in the first round. ⁓ and then after that it's the highest amount that anyone has. ⁓ when you bid, if you have the highest bid, you win, but you have to pay the difference between your bid and the second highest bid to the second highest bidder. So you bid 20, somebody bids 18, ⁓ you pay them two. ⁓ and then you get the rest, if there's any after that. So if you can't afford to pay the difference between bids. ⁓ so you bid really high, somebody else ⁓ bids pretty low. ⁓ then you basically zero out the second highest bidder now becomes winner of the auction, and they look at the bidder below them to figure out the differences. This is all done with dry erase boards, so you're just recording all these numbers down, kind of doing the math there. You could proxy this game with dry erase markers and some you know dry erase surfaces. A copy of just one would probably proxy this just fine. But I think without like the cute banana shaped dry erase boards, it kind of falls apart. Cause like the charm of the game is that you're doing this over some kind of silly things, like you're, you know, you're auctioning bananas. ⁓ so I I think it's really clever. I think it takes the best bits of QE and speeds it up and just keeps just keeps that, right? Like the the interesting thing is QE and QE is the the unlimited auction. Like what do you want to do? What do you want to bid? Anything you want. ⁓ and so it it does that perfectly. ⁓ I think where maybe could fall short is how how long of a shelf life it has. Like does it get a little bit old with a group? It's fun to show to new groups, and I think you know, being able to show that to new people is is a great time. ⁓ and we played, I mean, in I think most of our plays, we had a couple repeat plays with like the same group, but a lot of times we were showing a new player or a new group. ⁓ the game. ⁓ and so I think it's really neat to show. I'm just not sure what the ⁓ you know what the staying power is. If it starts to wear a little bit thin after half a dozen dozen plays, do you really keep reaching for it or not? But ⁓ really enjoyed the plays. I mean obviously we played it four times. It was fun to keep going to it's a great filler game. So that's where you kind of slotted it in during the con is we had an extra fifteen minutes and hey, let me show you Porta banana. It's hilarious. Yeah. ⁓ you know, this is a dome hit right now, ⁓ with a lot of people too. ⁓ I know I've grabbed a copy pretty quick and it's it's it's sad this is not like easily accessible 'cause they'd be better to like recommend for like, ⁓ you can pick this game for fifteen bucks up at the you know, down the game store instead of thirty dollars from overseas plus shipping. makes it a little harder for like a a grab or a sell. But I agree. I d I think for me, I would not pull like I would not try to teach this game if I just had six dry race boards. 'Cause then it's just like, ⁓ you're writing down random numbers and then you get random numbers. I feel like some of the the charm is like you say the word banana like a hundred times during the game. For sure. It becomes funny. ⁓ but you know, one thing too I I I noticed in this ⁓ instance, I think it's been fun showing the people like you said, but then sometimes it's fun, like say we had a group ⁓ that played once and then I think We had played it once and then were gonna play it again and like Daniel and his wife joined us and Daniel I played with locally. ⁓ so like he's been in a couple of plays there, but like our group meta had like grown in those couple plays that we had before he joined. And so he was like, ⁓ I know how Derek Derek and they they play back home, I'm gonna bid like that. And so his first bid was like sixteen and we had already gone to the meta where like the first bid we had was fifty. And he's like, What in the world is happening? Like he's like, why is this ⁓ a thing? And I also think just in between games the meta is funny too. Like I ⁓ I gotta tell the story. So this So every time for like the first three games I play with Drew, ⁓ like the first bid I would be like the same. Typically my second or third bid, depending on how fast we're going up, would be sixty nine. I would always ride it. And so like our f my fourth game with Drew, I think. ⁓ like my second bid we're getting ready and I was like I'm gonna write down seventy one just because and so we flipped the boards over drew bid seventy and so I win the lot with seventy one and he just starts like you always do sixty nine you can't do that like that's not what you do the longest con of the entire like thing like that's playing the long game so credit for that but ⁓ my gosh It was so funny 'cause like I had like thought about it and was like, they probably won't even notice. Like nobody ever notices. Like I'm back home, I do it all the time. Nobody ever cares. And just the fact that it worked out perfectly in that one game was just those little moments still let it let let me pull on it for it all the time. ⁓ right. So that was basically it for ⁓ Thursday. We kinda did some other small stuff. We did some peanuts, we did some off toyful, small stuff here. Wait back up again Friday. Friday's like the first full day of the con. ⁓ and so we had some bigger some good bigger plays that day. But one thing to talk about first was that that's also the day that had the Exhibitor Hall. Exhibitor Hall is not like huge, especially not if you think of like bigger cons like a Pax or even like BGG Fall as a bigger ⁓ you know, exhibitor hall than this one. But they do have some some good places and one that always sells there is a local DFW place called House Rules Games. And they're typically pretty much on the up and up as far as like new releases and stuff. And so our buddy Alex was like, they're gonna get copies of Danup in ⁓ for the con before it releases next week. And you can pick up copies that day. And then he had told me they were gonna have fifteen copies. That's what he had heard. And so we're like, ⁓ we gotta get down there and grab a copy. We get down there and they have like fifteen boxes of thirty six copies. So there was no need to rush. But we did pick up a copy of Danup. ⁓ D N U P ⁓ And this is a basically I don't think it's a re implementation. I think it's just straight one to one re re theme of the game called Revolve. So Revolve was a Tokyo Games Market game, I think of sometime twenty twenty either late twenty twenty four or early twenty twenty five. Sounds right. ⁓ but this is by the same designer as Scout. ⁓ and so denup is the new English version from I think it's one more g no ⁓ is that the original publisher or is Asmoneidish the publisher? Maybe Asm Asmoneidish the publisher. So Asmone is publishing DNU. ⁓ which is down up because just like Scout in Denup you have a card that has two different numbers on it, one on the top and one on the bottom. ⁓ unlike scout, you can rearrange your hand, so you don't have that kind of liability. But Danup kind of takes the idea of shedding in kind of a different way where instead of like everybody playing on one different set and kind of going up from there, you kind of have this like own personal sets and different actions you can take. So in Denup you can play cards down in front of you. And those can either be the same as only sets, no runs. And you can either play Different number of set, like a different set. Like I if somebody has a two set out, you could play a three set. It doesn't matter what numbers you have compared to theirs, you can play it. Or you can play something that matches theirs. Like if have a two twos, I can play two of anything higher than two and make you pick those up. Or you can add ⁓ somebody else's suit, or you can just flip your hand, like your entire hand, you just take it and you can flip it over. And the whole goal of game is to still shed out, but the weird thing about this is there are no like rounds or passing like most other shedders. It's just like every turn you must take an action. And so you can get to the point where it's like I you have one card and it's like everybody's playing down one card and so your action is I just I take my card and I flip it. And then next turn I take my card and I flip it. And that's you just kinda can get in this this rut if you don't play your hand right. And so the first play of it I was like this is interesting. I'm really sure how I how I like it, but we ended up playing a couple more times throughout the con. And I really started to enjoy just the differences and especially from Scout, but just in general for shedding. ⁓ and also just the the the way it made you think about shedding a different light. And so ⁓ and I think it played well at the low player count and also a high player count still. So kinda had some some leeway to play. ⁓ what'd you think of this one Drew? Yeah, I thought it was really good. The your first instinct when you see it is to compare it to Scout. ⁓ and I think it's got some of that, but it actually playing more of it, I think it differentiates itself really well from just being another Scout like. and actually feels a lot like panda spin, I think. Where you you have a lot more opportunity to kind of strategically flip cards in your hand. ⁓ scout, you know, that kind of comes up, but it's it's more of a you might grab something if it's out there and you see it, but there's not really a whole lot of opportunity to flip stuff other than that. ⁓ this really embraces the the double-sided cards and letting you manipulate that a little bit more. ⁓ so I thought that was really neat. And there is as you play it more you get into more of the strategy of are you trying to go for those those longer ⁓ sets, you know, more cards. when do you play your your singletons out to just get rid of those. so I really liked the the shedding strategy into it. and actually ended up picking up a copy myself, ⁓ one of those, you know, fifteen boxes of of games. So I I picked it up a few days later. ⁓ but yeah, really really good. Enjoyed it. Yeah, and a good production quality too. And especially since it's been brought over, it's fifteen bucks to pick up. So I think it's a pretty easy one to sell if you're like if you think it sounds interesting. I mean, I'm sure it'll be on like mo most game stores, really easy to go grab. So definitely one if you're interested. All right. So ⁓ after that, we got the copy. We were all set. ⁓ we started getting to some games. And so, Drew, why don't you go with your pick of the day for Friday? So we played Euro Crisis. this was an interesting game. I'm not even sure how I ran across it, but grabbed a copy from the VGG market at some point. And so you're You're greedy European bankers trying to take advantage of the Euro crisis, ⁓ the currency crisis, and you're nationalizing different national treasures ⁓ by lending money to the nations in crisis and then ⁓ changing that to to gold bars or hard currency so you can actually buy ⁓ or ⁓ privatize these national monuments. very tongue in cheek, ⁓ as you can probably get from the theme. ⁓ but really interesting too, because you're so you're manipulating the the governments, ostensibly, of these different nations that you're lending to. So and you can you can kind of change them in a couple different axes. So you can change some of the financial stuff where it's gonna change how much or how little you can lend you and other players can lend. ⁓ it might cause ⁓ one of the countries to ⁓ basically ⁓ have to wipe out their ⁓ their doubts or d to default. So ⁓ and so you might do that to someone where, you know, where Derek has a bunch of money lent to them and he's he's getting ⁓ income from that, but I've only maybe got one loan to them. I might force them in a default. Now Derek's income's wiped out. I'm only hurt a little bit. ⁓ you can also there are riots and you can buy ⁓ guns. So you can provide those either to the governments to push to, you know, quash the riots, or you can provide them to the rioters, ⁓ which will free up ⁓ or or take back some of those privatized ⁓ national monuments, ⁓ which takes points from whoever owns them. So really interesting in giving you a lot of levers to kind of manipulate everybody's position on the board, ⁓ and what they own. What you want to defend? Do you do you try to defend that country that looks like it might go into default ⁓ and defend your loans, or do you just call it a lost cause, write it off and and start loaning to somebody else? ⁓ felt a little PAX adjacent in that way, ⁓ where there's where it gives you all those levers and and kind of different things to manipulate, ⁓ and it'll affect everybody a little bit differently. ⁓ No randomness, ⁓ though. So there's no, you know, card drawer or events or anything like that. It's you you see exactly what's gonna happen when it's gonna happen. ⁓ and gameplay is very snappy. I was really ⁓ impressed with that. So it's you know the kind of have the turns and the rounds all lined out, all the steps are on the board. You just take the ⁓ the little tracker pawn around that, everybody takes their action. There's an auction ⁓ initially. ⁓ to set player order or where you're gonna go. and so you depending on what you're planning to do for that round, you you might bid differently there. ⁓ but really enjoyed the play of this. This was ⁓ you know one of my top games of the con, I think. So I don't know what how did you like it, Derek? Yeah, I think when you pulled it out, I was like at first I was like, what is this? Like I've never heard of this game. I never heard of it before in my life. ⁓ And then I think when we got the teach and stuff like that, I was like, this game can be good. Like that was like I was like initial impressions of just, you know, teach what is good. Every turn I started to enjoy it more and more. And it was also funny, every turn I started to realize why I took a bad turn. It was like that was the that was the I got every time. 'Cause it was so funny too, 'cause like we in the very first round, we all picked our action. You have like a hand of cards, take actions, you pick one and everybody reveals what that action is. ⁓ and so the I think the very first three turns we all took the exact same action back to back to back. ⁓ which w I think was like all of our thinking like in a straight mode of like this is probably what you should do. You should do this, this, this. And then at the end of that round I like, ⁓ we like I should not have done any of those actions in any of that order. Like I should have done so many different things and there were so many different time. So I play a card, do something, go to the next round. ⁓ my I I messed up. I already messed up. I already know I messed up and so It has a learning curve, but it has a a learning curve that I think you can see pretty well. Like it's not like opaque in like a crazy way, like a Pax Ran or something that. Like you can see the ways maybe you messed up and what you could have done different a lot easier than something like that. ⁓ but it's got so many smart decisions too, like you said, with the way you can manipulate the countries. Even the turn order I really like. Like so in the the turn order way you have like a person who gets to pick first ⁓ round, but you in the three rounds or four rounds, I guess you have. And so in a three player game, one person gets to go twice, but you have to select what action you want to take and be first in. So like in the first round, I want to be first in action two. But then I probably will get like maybe second in action three and last in action one. And so I have to kind of weigh like when do I want to like maybe like if somebody else is going first here Maybe that lets me go last there and then I can take the first action here. Maybe I can set something up that really nice that nobody can stop or something like that. So that's really smart too. ⁓ and the one thing too, you think it's got four rounds in each turn. ⁓ so you think, ⁓ it's made for four players, everybody gets to pick one once. But I thought our three player game worked just like really well. ⁓ obviously I don't know what the four player game looks like, but I thought it worked just fine at a three player game too. Yeah, that was one thing I was really happy with as well. It was just how smooth it was at three. Yeah, and then the one thing too, I was like, I wonder how long this game's gonna be 'cause I was like, it seems like it'd be a lot, but then like it was snappy. I feel like once we got going, it was like ninety minutes. We were in and out. And I felt like it was like a full breadth of game and like that ninety minute time frame. So ⁓ it was definitely my surprise, the con for sure of like, man, this is a really good game. ⁓ ⁓ and then going kind of the opposite thing of maybe first impressions sleeper Drew, ⁓ we also played after that a game called Night Soil. So Night Soil is a twenty twenty five game ⁓ from John Moffitt and Grail Games. ⁓ it fulfilled Kickstarter, I believe, last year and has gotten some talk in Dome and some other places about it kind of It's it's a Euro-ish game, but some people have said, ⁓ it's Splotter adjacent or something like that. That's what kinda got me interested into at first. And so I was like, Okay, let me check this out. So I picked up a copy, brought it a gun, and taught and we play a three player game of Night Soil. So Night Soil is a game where you are basically playing as Night Soil ⁓ cl companies trying to compete in London to create Night Soil first, which is poop. ⁓ and then clean it out into the river themes in the night to make money. ⁓ so basically is a two phase kind of approach to the game. One phase is a worker placement game where you're placing out neutral workers. You don't actually own anything. You kinda have what you have at the beginning of the round and place them out on to different actions in order to get money or clean up poop or s advertise for yourself or even like get influence on these kind of like different tracks that give you benefits if you're leading them. So you can do that. ⁓ and then once everybody's done placing workers, you go to the night phase where you have like this tableau of cards that you can use ⁓ in order to move poop around ⁓ different locations in order to hopefully clean it out. When you clean it out you collect it in front of you and you're trying to collect the most to get money at the end of a round. The other thing about the moving action is that by moving poop out of a region and making it clean, ⁓ you're able to then advertise in those locations. When you're advertised there, if at the beginning of your next turn, if it's clean, you get to take any workers and any money that are on that spot into your personal collection. And that's the only way you get workers back for the next round. So in the unfortunate case, which was Drew's case in the first round, you don't have that happen. You don't have any workers for the next worker phase. ⁓ which is kind of like the trap you can get into. ⁓ but because there's no like real rules on how you move poop except for that the there's like limits on each location, you can technically like not move it towards the river. You can technically just move it into somebody's region that they're about to get stuff from and prevent them from getting it. You're just like, no, you don't get that. It's just a straight just mean action of I'm not even gonna try to do well. I'm gonna try to just make sure you can't do anything. So it can get really just like rude in that way, in a way that is feels sometimes a little out of your control. so I know for me, like I I I I had a little better impression than Drew probably. I'll I'm talking about his but I will say like people are like, ⁓ it's Splotter adjacent, it's bus adjacent and something like that. And I I don't I'm just gonna say from my perspective I don't see that. I do see something that feels a little bit more interactive and has some cool ideas compared to like a modern hero. ⁓ but the the splatter ish comparisons are are not quite there for me. ⁓ to kind of give my two cents from what I've heard. What about you, Drew? what Yeah, I'm I don't I don't think I I see a splatter comparison. ⁓ definitely had a bad time with a little bit of collusion between the other two players deciding that I didn't need any actions in the second round. So that was a little rough. I I probably could have played better as well, right? So I'm you know I'm not gonna chalk it all up to to the game. but I think it is tough. You know if if you really decide or especially if you know two of the other players really decide that somebody's not going to have actions then they just might not have actions, right? And I I think that's probably tough to get around that, or at least a very minimal number of actions, ⁓ you know, in in subsequent rounds. ⁓ so yeah, that that part was ⁓ not great. ⁓ it is an interesting take on worker placement, I think. ⁓ and certainly more interactive than ⁓ most or just about any midweight euro worker placement type game. I you know, I'm I don't know that you can be I think you could do some s some clever moves in the the second ⁓ phase where you're kind of moving the the poop and the the the people and stuffed or are trying to claim those things. ⁓ so you you're trying to sort of set that up, but ⁓ I don't know. I didn't for me it didn't feel like it quite had the the payoff there of ⁓ really letting you do a whole lot of really clever things with that. You can make some interesting moves, but ⁓ yeah, I don't know. It was no wasn't the best thing. Like I'd I'd play it differently if I played it again, but then I was thinking to myself, do I really want to play it again? Yeah. It can feel limiting at times too. Just so I was thinking and like you mentioned you mentioned that collusion thing. Like if I want to give a comparison that I think some people will relate to, maybe like if they played Vanuatu. I don't know if you play Vanuatu, but I feel like it kinda has a similar feeling because in Vanuatu, like the way the action selection works, like if two people work together, like I had this happen to me my very first play of Vanuatu where if you two people work together, they can basically make it to where like you will not take actions, you may not take actions like at all in a round. And you can just feel it feels bad. And I remember it felt that way to me when I played that. And so I kind of see that comparison, like they're just like the sinkholes you can get into and sometimes you feel like it's out of your control. And so I feel like this is definitely one where you could have that happen. And this is why like I don't know, I'd be interested to see it play up more and see if you can if there's like a little bit of ways out. Like obviously if there's more people's turns around you they can kind of do that. But also maybe it's like, you know, it doesn't make sense for me to do this if it's kinda set somebody else up for doing that. So maybe I just worry about my own case a little bit more. ⁓ yeah. And do you try to incentivize it for other players so that's more lucrative for them to make a move that doesn't screw you? Right. Like ⁓ and I think maybe more players might help too. You know, we had three, and I think that's easier at that point to, you know, two against one and ⁓ you just kinda get hosed, but at four players maybe you you have enough interaction or enough other people doing stuff that That you don't get that? I know. Yeah. Definitely ⁓ one I'll probably get back out, but yeah, not like a one I'm I'm super high, even I'm super high on I'm like, this was good, but you know. Yeah. I'd play it again. I probably wouldn't suggest it or or like try like seek out a play, but I wouldn't, you know, if somebody wanted to play it again, I'd definitely give it a try. All right. And so that was our Friday. But then ⁓ On Saturday. Saturday rolls around. And this was one of the games that I knew for sure I wanted to play. I know Drew said he wanted to play. He had a copy. And so we scheduled it. We're like, okay, Saturday morning's gonna roll up. Derek is gonna set up this game and we're gonna play it first thing with our tacos. ⁓ that's Cross Bronx Expressway. ⁓ maybe a little bit more setup than you planned on. ⁓ my gosh, don't remind me. So I get I get the game out. In the morning. I'm like, I'm reading through the rule book. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get ready to teach this game. It's gonna be me, Drew, and Sanchez. We're gonna knock it out. It's gonna be easy. I've opened the box that Drew gave me last night to set the game up, and there's a punch board in it that's unpunched. This man made me punch his game. Was there only one punch board in the game completely? Yes, but that's just that's beside the point. I had to punch this man's game for him. I was I was I I was fuming. It's much appreciated. But It was worth it because we got a play in. ⁓ so Cross Bronze Expressway is the third game in the ICS series, the regular conflict series from GMT that takes coinish ideas and puts them into different kind of aspects or locations. So the first two being ⁓ Robin Hood or what's gosh, I can't think of the name of that game now. Adjusta Robin Hood. Justice Robin Hood. I was like, there's something like Robin Hood Merried Man. I no, that's that's a movie. Adjust Robin Hood. And the second one being Jay Anagara, which is one of my personal favorites. ⁓ but this one takes coin into more of a, you know, socioeconomic idea of here is, you know, between the nineteen forties and two thousands, here's the South Bronx, and here are three different competing, you know, ideas of the government. the private sector and the public. And you're all kind of setting up different infrastructure and you have these liabilities coming out that you have to deal with. And you're trying to make your own money enough that you can get you know keep moving but also get your ideals through ⁓ while dealing with all these things coming at you. And I thought, you know I just kind of barely I thought this game was fantastic. Like I think it took the ideas of coin still with the idea of activating and doing stuff and kind of having this counterinsurgency idea, but translated it to a very unique theme that I think played really well with it. it plays really well at the three player idea too, of these three competing ideals that, you know, I I i it's just funny 'cause I work for the city now. And so like I see that governmental side and I just think it's it you know, you think it hits too close to home, but I think it just it hits some of those ideas so well of how those competing ⁓ you know, factions work against each other but also need to form coalitions, need to work t towards the same kind of goal and stuff like that. and so ⁓ it was a really great play, I feel like we ended up so it's also a three player game where you all have kind of these different objectives you're trying to hit during the end of the round census. And so you can play basically a two decade game is what they recommend as like a game, a full game where you play basically two if you're familiar with coin two two rounds where at the end of every round there's a prop, or in this case called a census. ⁓ and then can in instead of like immediate victory points or intermediate end game, like most coin, they more have like points you get to score at the end of a round, where at the end of the round game, whoever has the most points wins. So it kind of turns a victory on its head, which I kinda like too. But the one thing there's also a you know, a competing idea of having too much vulnerability in the city. And dealing with that. If there ends up being too much losses because of that, then you end up losing the whole game as a whole. So it's a semi cooperative kind of aspect. And we ended up having that happen because one player just was like, Wow, screw the city, I'm gonna try to make as much money as I want So which I feel like can happen. ⁓ but ⁓ I like that idea too with it. ⁓ I feel like this has it was it was very like the very first few turns were kind of get into the system And seeing how it works, but I feel like once it opened up a little bit more, I was definitely like really feeding off of that and definitely got more interested in it as I went. What'd you think, Drew? Yeah, it was really interesting. I like seeing the you know coin adjacent system taken to a really a the non physical conflict area, right? Like a purely political aspect where you know you don't have troops at all. There's there's no ⁓ you know combat war resolution. It's you're you're housing people and you're trying to figure out the best way to house people ⁓ while either making money or you know protecting citizens or for the government just keeping everything balanced. ⁓ so really cool to see like that coin concept just taken into a a different type of conflict. ⁓ so I really like that. ⁓ I'm not a huge fan of the everybody loses ⁓ mechanic. I think because it I think it works if everybody has bought in, but I think if you have somebody that doesn't buy into the game or just wants to do something else at a certain point, then ⁓ you know it can kind of sink the game. ⁓ so That's not my favorite thing. I think it's just kind of it is what it is in this game. but I really enjoyed the game. It's one that I think needs, you know, some additional plays to really get your head around ⁓ what you're trying to do. ⁓ and how like how you manipulate all those ⁓ options and and levers and what you can do, right? But but really cool. ⁓ enjoyed it. Would love to you know, would love to play it more and and would love to really get a like an epic full game in sometime. Like that'd be kind of an awesome if you had two other people that were really bought into it and just committed. ⁓ I think that'd be an an epic ⁓ game day. Yeah, that's the one thing. So it's like it says, you know, two decade game is the usual game, but yeah, it goes from nineteen forty up to two thousand. So you can play a full six decade game that changes up some of the lost column and how that kinda works too, but Yeah, I would agree. Like I feel like you try to do that. It would definitely be like something you'd have to have a lot of experience and a lot of people, like you said, having that buy in that you know, because obviously in that kind of game, if you play for yourself a little more selfishly, it makes it to where like other players be like, Well, if you're gonna do that, then why do I care about, you know, the game ending already and was y'all losing? And so that nice balance between that kind of idea too would be cool. And then one thing just talking about this because I feel like all coin systems, especially in the ICS, they do some interesting things as far as the action selection system. And so in this one, instead of having the typical it just have the typical like, you know, each event card has the order of operations of who gets to pick. But it's not like other coin games where it's like, ⁓ you can do your ops and your special activity or you can do the event or something like that. It's Basically there's four different actions and each player will choose an action each round. You can choose to do basically an ops and special activity like normal. You can choose to do the event. You can choose to do an ops and special activity, but you can't make new infrastructure. So it's like a little bit less. You can't do this one specific action that lets you basically increase your kind of presence on the board a lot more. And then you can also plan, which is basically like saying, I'm gonna pivot for this round. But next round I get to choose what I want even if I'm not first in the card. So you can see you see the next card coming up, you'd be like, ⁓ I'm last in that card, but I really want to do this next round. So I'm gonna plan for this round, sit it out, let people do stuff, and then I'm gonna jump in there, boom. Get to pick what I wanna do, easy as easy as that. So I think that was really cool because every every round you're invested, especially in a game like this where it's just always eight cards and census, it's not like a random prop or anything. It kinda helps you kind of always stay invested in the game. ⁓ and all the actions are pretty like fast too, so it's not like it's taking more time 'cause everybody's doing action or something that. ⁓ but the other thing I just I I I talked about this game to like people at work because they're like, ⁓ what'd you What'd you a game con? Like what would you like? ⁓ well I played this one game about Cross Brock Expressway and, you know, working for the city and then at one point we get to audit ourselves. And they're like, What? I'm like, Yeah, you get to audit yourself. It's awesome. And so I feel like this is definitely a game where it's like if you don't have any interest in the theming, like it's gonna lose you so much faster than like a war game because man is like mundane as all get out. Yeah. I took a picture of the audit section of the rule book and sent it to one of my accountant friends. ⁓ but yeah, definitely a cool one. All right. So then ⁓ going from Crossbows Expressway, ⁓ we had the trick taking event hosted by our friend Alex. ⁓ he always at BGT Fall and Spring hosts a trick taking kinda like he typically did about four hours, four and a half hours ish. Kind of rents a room and has a bunch of his games there that we can try and so it's just a day of, you know, playing cards or whatever. So we hopped down there and got some good trick taking games in. ⁓ first one we did was Texas Showdown, always a classic. Six players, nothing really competes in the trick taking space. ⁓ but then we played a couple new ones. ⁓ not one not new for me, but I think ⁓ new for Drew and another one new. So talk about those. One we played was Wolful. So Wolfel is a game that is from German, ⁓ German descent. ⁓ and it's basically just this bag of dice ⁓ where it takes some of the ideas of old school German games like Doppelkoff and stuff like that. But then puts them in a straight dice taking game where you are just drawing dice from a bag and whenever you go to play them, you're rolling them, kind of like Mino Dice. ⁓ but it has a hidden partnership aspect like Doppelkoff, where you can possibly be on different teams, you don't really know who's going on who to collect points. You can have moments where you're doing a 3v1 because you are the only person that got the two teammate dice. And you can either do like diversions where you're trying to ⁓ you announce it and you're going basically like a solo, or you can even try to do it secretly and play just by yourself without anybody knowing until ⁓ they realize you just threw both dice. ⁓ my gosh, you're going by yourself. ⁓ and so it it takes some of the zaninest of German games and also the zaniness of dice games, but makes them in a package that's pretty simple and easy to play. ⁓ so I was very excited to show this one off at the trade training because I feel like it's very different. ⁓ Drew, what did you like of this one? I loved this game. I'll say it now. I'm I'm looking there it's I don't know if you can even get copies. It didn't look like there was anything available out there, but looking to see if I can paint some dice myself. ⁓ because they are all uniquely ⁓ they're they're not standard D6 dice. It's you know like two through four and stuff like that. ⁓ I thought this was just really cool. It's it's like Mino Dice and Doppelkoff had a baby. ⁓ and it takes I I think it takes a lot of the almost, you know, like the scariness out of Doppelkoff, where you know, you're you're you play Doppelkoff and I I like it and I love the concept of it. You're you know, concept, but like you know, I like the hidden partnership, variable partnership. You don't know who you're going with or, you know, if somebody's just going alone. ⁓ all the other little little things that you can ⁓ kind of achievements that you can get in Doppelkov. But al along with that, you know, learning Doppelkov, you're trying to learn the the the whole setup of the trumps and everything else and the card play. And it's kind of lot. ⁓ and this takes, I think the really interesting part of the variable partnership, the unknown partnership, and you can add in, I mean optionally it's got like if you take this specific die with this other specific die or if this little thing happens, it has all those little kind of achievement things that you can add in with those traditional German card games. ⁓ and you can add those in here. And I I think it does a great job of just getting that interesting part of the traditional German card games. And then you're not worried about learning a new trick taker and a new set of trumps and everything else. It's just roll dice. ⁓ And you you know, here's what the dice are numbered. If you're not sure, look at the dice, right? ⁓ so love this game, wanna play it more. I I think it's it's pretty quick, you know. again, ⁓ it gives you some of that feel of of like the traditional German card game. but just like Mino Dice does to ⁓ to you know Skull King or Ohell, just in a fun, sillier package. So it's never going to be as serious as like Doppelkov, but I think it's it's way easier to pull out and just have a kind of fun, silly time with. Yeah, I kind of agree too. And like you said, it's like it's not that whole, you know, three hour spread of stuff or whatever. ⁓ but it just makes it nice where, you know, if we have You and it's still like a little bit meager game, like Amino Dice where you you have a little more decision space and stuff like that too. But overall it just kinda gives a a that feel and a quicker package. ⁓ that is just fun to to be on and you know, you don't gotta shuffle, you know ideally just throw ⁓ all back in the bag, pull ⁓ all out, do it real quick. There's not as much thinking. And especially with a game like this too, 'cause none of the dice like Like unlike Mino Dice are not suited dice. They're kind of just like they all have a special power or like some abilities and some points or whatever. But nothing's suited, so it's never like ⁓ somebody threw this, I had to follow that. How do I follow it or have I followed? It's just no whatever dice you want to throw, throw it. 'Cause that's sh that's how we're doing it. So it was definitely fun to show you guys. I'm glad you liked it on that one. And the other one you decide to pull out, so you can talk about that one. Yeah. So I had a copy of Rowdy Partners. We had Four people. ⁓ and this is a team based game where you're ⁓ pro wrestlers ⁓ competing against each other in the ring, trying to ⁓ I guess you have health meters, so you're trying to damage each other and and take the health down, ⁓ and you can swap in for your partner. and ⁓ so yeah, so that's the general idea of the game. ⁓ must follow pretty standard trick taker for that aspect. ⁓ it is a remind me on this one, Derek. Was it the second highest card that wins? No, it's the lowest card. Lowest card wins. Lowest card, that's right. ⁓ yeah, so there was and but and then cards can cancel as well. ⁓ so you can going later you can kind of manipulate what cards get cancelled and what becomes the lowest and what you know kind of manipulate the trick that way. ⁓ There's also some special powers that you can unlock as you ⁓ play certain cards and and kind of get your special power meter going up. ⁓ and it was interesting, I think. our team did not do well. We played it twice. We played it twice because we got killed really fast the first time. so ⁓ I don't know. I'd like to play it more. I don't know if it's just really swingy. ⁓ Or if we need to get better. ⁓ but it was fun. I think the the theme is really neat. It was a little tricky to try to swap in with your partners sometimes. ⁓ and you know, maybe that's just part of getting better at the game is being able to easily swap or knowing how to do that ⁓ with with the card play and leaving those opportunities ⁓ for your partner when you need to do that. ⁓ but Yeah, I don't know. It was it was interesting. You know, it wasn't like a ⁓ my gosh, this is amazing, but it was a fun game. So I don't know. What do you think of it, Derek? Yeah, so I played this just once on like BGA like async and really didn't know the rules too well. So I I kinda got an idea, but not really. it was not good async do that much, but ⁓ playing in live, it was it was definitely better. I think I think it is like like you said, ⁓ it can be a little swingy and then sometimes just feel like 'Cause the way the game works is like you and your partner do not play like it's not like a typical partnership where it's like, you know, your partner, somebody else, you, the other person's partner. Where it's like you kinda alternate. It's you play and then the other two people play and then your partner plays, or vice versa, like the other team plays and then you go back to back before they have, and so like whenever you're in that driver's seat of like we are first setting the you know, setting what the trick will be, but then also last, it can feel like a very powerful seat compared to like the middle two seats where you're kinda like I'm hoping we can play off this well. and then also because it's a game where it the same numbers always cancel out. So like if I play a three, you play a three, we're cancel, no matter what. But n it's not like cancels in like we can with the trick. It's like straight up you flip those cards over and it can change what suit led. It can change what's what cards winning. ⁓ and it can really like be it can just feel sometimes like a lucky thing. Like I know like we in the first game had a moment where I was like we were able to do like seven damage in one hit because we were able to cancel out something and then my seven led and you then the other person couldn't follow suit and it was just like, ⁓ you went from ten to three in the first attack. It's like, ⁓ that's not like the ones and twos you typically see. so I usually like, okay, I don't know if we could have done anything different. ⁓ So it could be a little swingy in that case. But overall I think it has some good ideas. Yeah, you can end up doing like a lot of damage in one trick. ⁓ like probably more than half or about half of a a life damage. So Yeah. Just a little swingy. ⁓ I think it's but I 'cause I would definitely play it again, but I think other partnership games I would probably prefer over this one. Alright, and so that was the end of our trick taking event. And so after that we got in a few more games and Drew has one he wanted to talk about. Yeah, I was happy to finally get Giants to the table. ⁓ I know this is kind of an an older one. ⁓ but ⁓ definitely interesting with you know shared space. You're all building on the board trying to ⁓ build, so you're on the the island of ⁓ Rapanui, ⁓ building the giant Moai heads and transporting those ⁓ from the quarry to their you know build sites along the the edges of the island ⁓ and then also potentially ⁓ building the stone hats for them from a different quarry and transporting those. And similar to kind of a cubes rail feeling to it, you can actually transport over other people's ⁓ networks as well. ⁓ but unlike cube rails, you're essentially building out that ⁓ network, that transport network, every round. So every round it it comes up, ⁓ you do a bid for ⁓ what you want to be able to build, and then ⁓ then you use actions to to place pawns down to to kind of establish your transport routes. ⁓ so you're rebuilding that every time. ⁓ which I found really interesting. It you it had that kind of cool cube rails feel where you're ⁓ trying to use other people's ⁓ kind of you know, infrastructure ⁓ to do what you want. ⁓ and occasionally getting into like a little bit of a game of chicken, right? Where I think that somebody might put some, you know, a pawn to transport something in an area where I might be able to use it. So I'm not gonna put one there yet and ⁓ try to force them to do it. ⁓ but really fun. I really liked it. ⁓ probably one of the one of the top games for me as well for the con. So ⁓ really good play. What did you think, Derek? Yeah, this is my copy I picked up in the VFM, ⁓ because I'd heard things about it before previously and I I agree with you. I definitely like it was it's very like I don't know, th I think I walked away from it being like this is a very unique game because I I like why you it's like got some key relative aspects, it has like Some market placement stuff, it's got auction stuff, but I feel like the overall feel is like very unique in the space of what it tries to do. ⁓ and so I really like that. I really like the idea of that kind of like you said, that that chicken game, I think is huge. Like we're like, if I don't place it there, then I could possibly place it here. And since we're moving different size moai, I can place mine to where I can move mine ⁓ further and he can't he has to stop. And so he helped me, but I don't have to help him or vice versa. Like I want to help him because if 'cause but if somebody uses your transport deck work, you get points. Maybe that's the way you're gonna get points instead of doing stuff and it's so fun because as the game builds up, you get like more workers and there's also like this finite amount of wood you can gather. But the wood allows you to kind of place workers out and give them additional carrying strength so they can roll the Mowai over them. and so, you know, by the third or fourth or even fifth round of the game, instead of like moving your Moai like two or three spaces on a turn, you can get to a point where it's like, ⁓ I can move this guy like halfway across the map because the way workers been placed out and the way people are working and doing stuff. And so that becomes like really fun of just like it just kind of organically happens ⁓ throughout the game. And it's got some good decision points too on that, the way you kind of upgrade. So like each round you have a special sorcerer who can like give you an upgrade, either like another worker, or it can give you more influence in order to bid, so can bid better or control more mowai on the board. Or you can even just use him to ⁓ claim a spot, which I realized almost all the way through our game. So the one thing as were playing is it's a it's a fixed turn order and it's a turn order that just like passes each round. And so halfway through the game I was like, I don't know if I like that at five players, like the the set fixed turn order. and really no way to ⁓ manipulate it. I felt like half the game was just trying to figure out like how I play around that turn order. Because there are so many ways where it's like, ⁓ if we're building out together, you're definitely gonna get there before I am, so what how do I pivot? And if I pivot something better, then you're gonna just take the better one, even though I still get one, like I just set you up for something better. So does that make sense? But like I think like three fourths of the way through the game I remembered, ⁓ this guy can just reserve a spot. And so literally I was like, ⁓ there's a spot that everybody wants. What if I just put this guy and reserve it? And then even though I'm last in turn order, I don't even have to worry about it. I can do something else completely on my turn. And then my next turn, ⁓ I can just deliver this one for free. Nobody can take it from me. And so I think that helped me with the idea of the turnover a little bit better. When I remembered like when I thought about that aspect. 'Cause literally you'd never think about doing that with your guy. I was like, ⁓ I gotta get my engine built, engine built, do stuff, you know, get more stuff, typical you know, game thoughts. But then you realize, ⁓ reserving a spot is maybe one of the better actions in the game. Maybe. I don't know. ⁓ and so I think that helped me in my overall thoughts in the game too. So it's definitely one I want to try again. I want to try at four players because five we played at full five, five count, which I think was still good. Like it played fine at five. It plays very snappy. But I want to see it at four to maybe where the turn order ticks down a little bit where you're you know you're moving it a little bit more and you're becoming like, you know, it's not five people in front of you or four or whatever, it's a little bit less. So you may have some more options. ⁓ so I wanna see that, but it definitely is one I want to pull out again soon because it was definitely a very interesting game. Yeah, and it it's cool, especially as the game progresses where, you know, at the start of the game you think, there's no way, how do I transport something all the way across the map there? Like that's gonna take three or four rounds just to get there. And then by the end of the game, you're transporting stuff in one round three quarters of the way, maybe all the way across the map. ⁓ just because everybody has enough workers, then it's it all gets built out. ⁓ and you mentioned the wood. I thought that was a really actually neat ⁓ thematic touch, ⁓ because Rapanui doesn't have trees right now, but it did in the past. And they basically, you know, clear cut the the island down at some point. ⁓ and so I thought that was an interesting inclusion in the game. ⁓ that those were just a fixed resource that eventually pretty much completely disappear. Yeah. It's got like I said, it's it's got some good thematic diet. So it was reimplemented like a few years later as Rapinu Revenui. ⁓ I was like, I wonder what the implementation did. I looked at it and like it wouldn't it it removes a lot. I think the interesting stuff. I think there's no auction in the game at all anymore. I'm like, well that's lame. ⁓ Yeah, so I haven't looked at the the differences, but I remember when I've when I've asked people about it, it's been like just get giants. So Yeah. It was like, yeah, this doesn't seem like it's good. So definitely if you see it, I would get Giants, ⁓ for sure to check it out. It was also funny because I like, I wonder what other people think of this game. So I went and looked at like the the ratings and stuff. And our good friend RJ had like a a big review of it and it's so funny, like the one thing he was like talking about his qualm was like the the turn order whole thing and he had like a little like paragraph about it. So I like copied it and sent it to him. I was like, basically we have the same thoughts on this completely. Like the turn order was like the thing that we thought most about, but we think we're not sure how we think about it from the first play. So it was it was kinda a funny moment. I was like thinking the same thing. Agree with you, RJ. Love you, RJ. all right. And so then Saturday night, we got to do something different than just playing games. We got to sell a game. That's right. Yes. So BGG Spring this year ⁓ had a very first thing new to it that was called the homegrown market. ⁓ so this was kind of like a it was a three night thing, so Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday or Thursday, Friday, Saturdays, I forgot. Yeah. Through Thursday, Friday, Saturday. They had different events from this homegrown kind of games thing that somebody was running where like I think on Thursday night they had like a game jam where you could like try to design a game in ninety minutes. Friday night they had like a kind of like a talk about the like game development, game design, and some like ideas of that. And then Saturday night they had the first homegrown games market, which is kinda like, you know, one of these newer pop-ups of indie game designers and stuff like that here in the States that are kind of basically off of the idea of T GM, but, you know, kind of trying to do that here more locally. And so our good friend Jake ⁓ had a game he's ⁓ designed called Hill Country Grocers, which is basically a very kind of stripped down, kinda easy to get into cube rails game set in the Texas Hill Country where ⁓ you have different grocery stores expanding in a very, you know, simple cube rail system. ⁓ but we had to try it last year, had a good time with it, and this year he got ⁓ approved to kind of sell it. So he made a lot of copies in a classic can't clamshell. It looks great. ⁓ but we learned ⁓ a few weeks before the con that he wasn't gonna be able to make it. And so he asked us to kind of step in for him and sell the games for him. ⁓ and so we got to kind of be a part of that. whole thing and be able to kind of pitch it and get some games sold for him. ⁓ which was really cool. I think it was really cool just to be a part of that that whole scene as it's kind of his first year doing that and also see some of the other game designers and hear some of their pitches too. ⁓ was just a really cool aspect. Something, you know, I wouldn't typically be a part of or anything, obviously from my end. I'm not really looking to design many games on my side. ⁓ but it was it was also just cool to see, you know, even if people didn't buy the gamer stuff, like the interests people had and just learning about stuff, you know, it was fun to like people walk by, you know, our the booth here and they see ⁓ hill country grocers, especially f being in Texas, stuff like that, like they're like, ⁓ it's a theme they can relate to more, and so I drew a lot of people in, even if like the the train idea or the cube real idea didn't. ⁓ so definitely a very like unique aspect to this year's con. Yeah, it was it was fun and ⁓ we definitely got the the patter of the game down by the end of it, giving the whole spiel and the pitch. ⁓ and sold a few copies, so it was a good time. Yeah. Definitely a good time and I think something they'll be looking forward to just check out every year, hopefully. See what games get there, seeing if Drew's game gets out there maybe one year. Who knows? This didn't give you inf your you're you know, you weren't like jazzed up that after we did it. ⁓ we'll we'll see. Yeah, I don't know. Our our friend ⁓ Alex actually had a game ⁓ ready to go. He was hoping to get in there ⁓ and and didn't get selected. So they they were doing some some kind of selections for who got to sell at the market. ⁓ but they had an interesting variety of games too. So ⁓ that was ⁓ really interesting to see. ⁓ you know, it was Jake had the only cube rails there. There were some other ⁓ some lighter games or some party games or the a at least a party game. ⁓ some different little like tile laying games. So ⁓ definitely ⁓ they went for a kind of a wide variety, I think. ⁓ yeah, that was very cool to see and ⁓ very cool just to see the whole process there. So very cool different aspect for this year. All right. So that kinda closed our Saturday, did a couple other small things again at night, but then we woke up on Sunday. So Sunday I had scheduled ⁓ a play that of a game that I had been very interested in lately. So I went off and did that. You guys did your stuff, and so I'll go ahead and talk about mine. You can talk about what you did and we'll be back up here at the end of Sunday for some for some classic games. But on Sunday, my big play that I wanted to schedule a game that ⁓ had drew my interest, actually it it just you know, released from GMT a couple of months ago. I think it was the April ⁓ thing. So, you know, it'd been out in the wild for probably less than a month by now. ⁓ but this game is called Baltic Empires, the Northern Wars of fifteen fifty eight to seventeen twenty one. ⁓ it is like I said, brand new twenty twenty six game from GMT. ⁓ that is basically a I mean up to five players, typically a five player game. You know, any player count below that is kinda like a you have to do some weird stuff. or have some neutral players, something that. But it is a kind of a more approachable war game style game in the Baltic region during that time. ⁓ where you co control five different asymmetric factions, you know, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Poland or Prussia, and kind of this fight over resources and territory. ⁓ and it it lifts a lot of the bones from a older game called Mari Nostrum, ⁓ which ⁓ I don't remember exactly when that came out, but it was kind of a a sieve building game and the and the ⁓ you know, more of the ancient Roman era style. ⁓ but takes it into a more historical theme, gives it, you know, it's got beautiful art, even though it's more form over function, ⁓ for the most part, ⁓ in a lot of areas. ⁓ but then also replaces some of its other thing with a lot more thematic touches from the history and you know, kind of does a little bit more things different to allow more negotiation in there. So the basic idea of the game is each round you kind of have this this set thing where ⁓ you're producing resources from the land and then being able to do some trades with the people or with the with maritime resources there. And then using those to produce different either you can produce units, you can produce different buildings, or you can even like buy these ⁓ what are called the dramatis persona cards, which are like special leaders or rulers that you can get to your court that allow you to kind of have different powers. ⁓ and then from there you're kind of doing this kind of expansion and the board, whether you're expanding into your own territory or you're expanding into somebody else's and fighting. A very simple like dice based combat system that, you know, it has some good feel to it and doesn't it's, you know, it's not too complicated. It but, you know, is able to get quickly into things. ⁓ and then overall you're trying to either just complete your your personal objectives, which is like control certain regions, or you're trying to complete basically there's three different tracks you can move up on based on the number of like goods you produce, the number of cities you control, and the number of military pieces you have. And so the automatic win conditions are you either meet the top of all those three tracks or you meet your personal goals of controlling a certain number of regions based on what region you control. Or at the end of eight rounds or kind of like a tiebreaker thing and stuff like that. But I really enjoyed this game. So I played Maori Nostrum a couple of times and it was good. Like I'd heard good things about it and I was like, this game's okay, it just has some some aspects I did not like. Like the trading in that game was like this weird H T I minigame that was really dumb. ⁓ Like it was awful. Like I was like, ⁓ you trade in this game. Not really. Like it's not really I wouldn't call it trading. And so it removes that and makes these Dramatis Persona cards, even though they're very swingy, much more like interesting and very cool to play with. And then it also allows for more negotiation because you can actually like trade money or trade re ⁓ provinces in order for like binding deals or even do non-binding deals with like stuff. And so it gives you more levers to pull and then it adds that historical kind of lens on top of it. Where it's not just like ⁓ we're randomly in Rome and there's you know, these are Romans, these are those guys, whatever. You just fight each other. It's like there's actually a lot of different ties with your abilities and who you are and stuff like that. And so and ultimately like so we had a scheme scheduled for like nine o'clock, but the guy should have a little late and we had to still set up. Setup can take a while if like it's not like in GMT trays, so it probably probably didn't get started until like between ten and ten thirty ish after like some of the people who hadn't read the rules so they had to go through the rules again too, which a good teach would probably take like ten to fifteen minutes. ⁓ the teach we had there but he was a little disjointed so took around thirty ish minutes, but I I could easily teach to somebody like fifteen minutes tops. but ⁓ I think it ended up taking us probably between like four and five hours for the full play. ⁓ that's going all eight rounds of like the normal scenario, there's like an extended if we can do like twelve or sixteen rounds. ⁓ so they have kind of some options there too. But I would I would easily see this being like a weeknight like three ish hour game for five players pretty easily after people get some experience with it too. ⁓ maybe even shorter than that if people do some of their objectives faster. But it was one where like I got myself hyped up for it. I actually even bought a copy that's on like game nerds 'cause I heard about it. I like, I gotta get a copy of this. But then I wanted to play it locally and one of my buddies who actually comes up from San Antonio too, I got him in the game and he absolutely adored it too. And so we're already looking to schedule local games of it. And I'll definitely be trying to run a game at Dome Con as well. So it was definitely one of my favorites of the con for sure. Nice. Sounds really cool. I didn't get to see the play of it, but it sounded really interesting. Yeah, definitely one that like if you're into like that kind of political side of stuff but like don't want to get like the heavy end of things like like I don't want to be a here I stand person like we our virgin queen person like we were last year. If you like want that asymmetric feel but want to be able to like use your brain afterwards. This is more of that speed. Nice. And then while I was doing that, Drew played a game I really wanted to play but played it without me. Yeah, sorry about that. So we got a play of Manila in ⁓ in probably a lot faster time. so this is one, ⁓ you know, older euro. And you're you've got a an auction to to set first player. ⁓ first player can buy a share. So you've got ⁓ four different goods that are coming into or potentially coming into port. ⁓ and you can essentially buy a share in one of those goods and the the kind of value of those is tracked on a few tracks. and then from there you go into placing ⁓ your ⁓ I'd say workers, but not really, ⁓ kind of these pawns in different places on the board. And essentially you're kind of betting on where the ships will end up eventually. So you've got three ships. I mentioned you've got four goods, obviously only three ships. So the the harbor master, what you that thing you bid for at the very first ⁓ start. ⁓ gets to determine what goods are actually going on the ships. ⁓ and then from there they're ⁓ also going to roll the dice to see how those ships move. and they're starting the ⁓ or determining the starting positions of those ships. So ⁓ obviously you know how you're invested in the goods can depend on how you want to set those up, but ⁓ depending on how much that auction is going for, ⁓ you may want to sit back and just try and make money from kind of strategically betting on how the ships will will go. There's also positions on the board that let you manipulate the the ship movement, ⁓ aside from the dice. ⁓ and then also betting on, you know, if the ships won't make it. So ⁓ you know, some really neat sort of betting well not yeah, betting really on kind of the outcome of things. It it's one of those games, you know, it looks like this kind of old semi-dry euro and it's gonna take a while and but the the rounds are just really fast. ⁓ you you do the auction, the the harbor master kind of sets everything up for the ships and then it's you know boom boom boom everybody places a a worker roll the dice move the ships boom boom boom place workers and it just it progresses really fast. so it was really pleasantly surprised at how quickly just the game moves, you stay engaged the entire time. and just a lot of fun. ⁓ you know, a lot of player interaction as you're kind of joking about who's got what bets on boats and where you think they're gonna go and and kind of trying to ⁓ to threaten or entice people to move boats the way you want them to. So there's a little bit of above the table negotiation as well. And just really fun game. So ⁓ this was another really great ⁓ play and a great game to to kind of discover at this con. Yes, and I'm sad I missed it. Sorry about that. We we had a few games like that that people wanted to play and just we couldn't quite get the timing right. So Yeah, it's always the end of con though. But I'm hoping to get this ⁓ I think it should be Dump Cons. I'll be gonna play there too. And then news this week, ⁓ we have seen in in the Discord that that people have been asking ⁓ games of Plate Plate T, Plate whatever you want to play it. P L A Y T, the Korean Publisher games. And then everybody's like, ⁓ when they do in Maricash when they do in Hellas. And one thing we've learned is that they are doing a new version of Manila. ⁓ in an L board shape. So it will be coming out for them, they say, sometime probably this year. So very nice. I don't have to continue to look for another hundred and twenty dollar copy of this thing that nobody wants to trade or sell. ⁓ I can maybe pick up a new copy from them and see how that goes for like twenty bucks. So There you go. Perfect. so that And then that evening. What an evening. ⁓ man, what an evening. So I I I don't know how this happened. I'm shocked we got all of these played. I'm also like, I I I don't think this could ever happen again, but man, was it the time of my life? So we had I guess it was ⁓ is five players at the first one, right? So if we had five players and so one game that we all ⁓ last year played and we were like, let's pull it out again. We have five players. We're we're all feeling a little bit. We had Sanchez that treated us all to a nice old fashioned from the bar. He was of course a few beers deep. You know, we were all feeling good. I think somebody brought some wine, everybody was drinking. So we decided let's start doing some negotiating while we're all a little liquored up. And so the first game of this negotiation trilogy as we're calling it. We played I'm the boss, which as typical I'm the boss just involves just yelling at people as much as you can to get whatever you want done. and I think in this point I gotta remember is is this no I can't remember. Is this the one where you snuck by Drew? Yes. This this was the one where I actually didn't do that much yelling and everybody else Did all the yelling and I just kinda quietly, you know, took all the deals. Yeah, so this is the one where basically like half the table went against half the table. So me and Sanchez were like well first Sanchez, it was poor Sanchez. He got his like guy stolen from him like in like round three and was like basically not in any deals by the first like four deals. And so at that point he's like, I'll take two dollars if you if you let me join. I'll take, you know, I t a percentage as low as it can be if you just let me be in these And then the other half the table, Jin and ⁓ I can't think of his name now. ⁓ Steven. They're basically like, ⁓ we're gonna make our deals together. And so we being conscious of like, okay, I gotta help out this guy. No, he he's low, so if I just say I'm gonna join with him every time, I'll you know, keep ahead of him, it's good. And Drew just sitting there, he's just like, Take it in both sides. He's like, ⁓ yeah, sure, I'll join with you. It it was a race to the bottom on both sides, like everybody's going, ⁓ I'll do it you I'll do it for what? I'll do it you know, I'll do it for Eight, I'll it for six. I'll do it for two. We're like, okay, well, here's two, and here's two, and I'll take the other ten. So yeah, it it worked out. And I think I ended up almost doubling second place. Yeah, I think when we're like going to the scores, I was like, well, I have twenty. And then Jim was like, ⁓ I have like thirty seven. I'm like, dang, I lost by quite a bit. And then Drew just like was like, I have sixty one. And we're just like, Wow. It's a good game. ⁓ so that was a great one. And then we follow that up with some ⁓ Tief Toshin. ⁓ so Tief Tashin, now known as good critters, but is still different, not really, you know, changes some stuff, whatever. Tief Tashin is another kind of negotiation game. I think you know a little bit more about this one, Drew, let you kinda introduce it. Yeah, so and it it's a it's a shame they changed the theme ⁓ when they brought it over and turned it into good critters. So good critters is ⁓ like a I don't know, anthropomorphic animals, ⁓ gangsters. ⁓ tiefitaschen is literally ⁓ deep pockets in German, ⁓ but it's government officials bribing and paying each other off, ⁓ which is just a way more on the nose theme, I think. But ⁓ what you're doing is you have ⁓ it's sort of like I'm the boss, you have a set amount of money ⁓ that you draw from a deck. And then you have to determine the president, if you're the president, has to determine how they're going to split that up among all the other players. And then everybody has a fixed number of ⁓ actions that they can take, ⁓ what they ⁓ or fixed set of actions that they can take. So you've got cards to to show what you're going to do. and so you're going to select that action that you're going to take and then everybody flips their cards to show what they're doing at the same time. ⁓ so you can either agree to what the the president has divvied up there and say, you know, vote you vote in favor of it. ⁓ you can vote against that. ⁓ you can threaten another player and and basically say you're going to blackmail them. ⁓ and if you do that, so you actually have a little pawn as well that you put in front of the player that you're potentially blackmailing. ⁓ so placing that, you don't necessarily have to play the blackmail card as well, but you can just threaten with your pawn. And they don't know whether you're actually going to do that or not. ⁓ you can play a counter blackmail card. ⁓ so if a bunch of players have put pawns in front of you, you might play that to keep them. ⁓ even if they do play their blackmail cards, they won't be able to steal from you. ⁓ and then if you're the president, you have the option of ⁓ embezzling. ⁓ actually I think everybody has the option of embezzling, but it's the first player ⁓ to select, it gets to embezzle and nobody else does. So Usually it's the the president will choose to embezzle. ⁓ and you basically just get to draw a card off of the top of the deck that gives you some amount of money. ⁓ and so yeah, it it's a great time because you you really figure out that you just need a majority of the voting block, right? You don't have to make everybody happy. You just have to make enough happy that it passes and you stay president and you can keep embezzling and people keep voting. ⁓ so the the dynamic of how that you know, how you kind of pick that group that's gonna keep you in power ⁓ while staying ahead but keeping them happy. It's ⁓ it's a really I I love the game. It's a good great negotiation game. ⁓ you know, can can definitely get some sharp elbows, but ⁓ it's a good time. ⁓ yeah. This is my first time playing. I I was like, this game is just absolutely slaps. ⁓ my goodness, man. It was so good. Like I didn't even do that well. But it was just so fun, like the the way you can play around with the pawns you have each round and like just throw them out there just like I'm gonna go after you no I'm gonna after you no I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure that you vote this way and like just the the bribes sometimes too, like half the time the bribes are not like you shouldn't probably do it. It's not worth bribing somebody. But just the fact that you can throw somebody out there for somebody and like I think I bribed you once and you like, That's an insulting bribe and then like we voted and you Took the bribe. She's like, I'll do it, whatever. ⁓ my gosh. The funniest thing was like, I bribed I like sent a bribe over to Jen. And she was like, That is like if you change this bribe to something else, I'll I'll take it. Like I was wanting her to vote yes. And she was like, Just tell me to vote anything but no and I'll I'll I'll take it. And so I was like, Well, I'm going change my amount 'cause like I like done like d two million or whatever the the the valuation is. So I'm like, ⁓ I have a one million, I'll put it underneath there and I'll do that for that. And she looks at it, she's like, Okay And then it goes around and she does it and she takes the bribe and I was like, dang, I I she said the two thousand two million was insulting. I guess the one million wasn't as insulting. And then I was looking at my pile of money later and I was like, I was pretty sure I had two five million, but maybe I'm just wrong, 'cause I'm like, we're it's I'm like losing it now anyway, so I'm like, surely I'm just not thinking straight or maybe I maybe somebody stole it another time for ⁓ whatever. And then we get to the end of the game. And she was like, Well, that one time you bribed me with five million dollars. I was like, Hell yeah. I was like, I bribed you with five million dollars. She's like, Yeah. I was like, Of course I'll take it. I was like, ⁓ my god. So definitely one where you gotta like make sure you know what's happening. But that was that was a hilarious moment where I like I had to even recognize I had bribed her with the most money you possibly could. And she was like, Of course I'll take the bribe then. Why not? ⁓ but this was ⁓ yeah, this game, I'm like God, I need a copy of this because it's it's top tier. Yeah, I I have a copy of Good Critters. Unfortunately, Tifitashin is just so difficult to find Yeah, I I think you can I think there's some PNP files available for it if you want to make some cards though. So I might be looking at that. It's so good. And then to follow that up, we got I'm the boss, we got Tif Tashin. We're feeling good. We decide why not pull out lifeboats. so we pull out lifeboats and we've already had two games of yelling at each other and bribing each other and colluding with each other, and so we figure what's one more for the meta just to keep going. And the funny thing is too is so ⁓ buddy Jake, who we talked about earlier, he was flying back in on ⁓ Sunday. ⁓ he was supposed to be there by like four four or five o'clock and hopefully be able to play some games at the con. He messages me like during the first couple games and is like 'cause there was a storm that day in in Dallas and it was like they had to circle and then fly to San Antonio to refuel then come back once the storm was over. And so he got in at like nine thirty, ten. And so he's like, ⁓ I guess can I stay with you in the hotel room? Like, sure, you can stay with me and you can just hang out. So he like gets in and he sits down and we're like, We're about to play lifeboats. You wanna play lifeboats with all of us who are like little buzzed and he's like, sure. And so he joins us for a hilarious six player game of lifeboats that involved just all the good stuff lifeboats has of just, you know, backstabbing and jumping out of boats and making sure ⁓ the captain hat the the captain hat was so funny too. Just that's a that's a great mechanic of like when do I use it? Does it matter? I don't know. Am I gonna just have nothing happen. ⁓ and he ended up winning because he was the only sober one there. So we can take that into account. Was yeah. A great game of lifeboats. Every I think it's just a great game period. So we had a great time with it. Yeah. And so I think just like I said, just that back to back to back was like one of the craziest ones I've ever been involved with. You go home the boss, Teetasha, lifeboats. If you ever wanna just hit ⁓ all in a row, I don't think there's a better three games you can do. with like five or six people than those. Yeah. Make make sure everybody's got really thick skin. For sure. Some feelings will get hurt at some point. By life bows. I think Jim was about to tear my head off. all right. Close it out. ⁓ we get up on Monday and Monday's typically like the last day of the con, not doing too much. And so There were a couple games that ⁓ one that Drew said he wanted to play that I brought and one that Drew brought that I wanted to play. And so we're like, we'll just pull out these two, kind of close it the day, so we can go ahead and talk quick about those. ⁓ the one that I brought, ⁓ that I set up before everybody showed up and we got in was the Verbotenstadt, which is a game that James was talking about previously on on the on the the pod game picked up from John and his selling, and this is ⁓ Alex Randolph. Game. ⁓ there's a code designer too. Can't remember their name, but ⁓ an older one, a game that predates Ricochet Robots, but takes the idea of Ricochet Robots of the pieces moving and bouncing off walls and going round and round on the board, but adds on a lot of weird stuff. So it adds on this set collection idea, it adds on this. idea where your turn could be one action or it could be possibly up to four actions, depending on how the person to your left rolls. ⁓ it adds on this like hidden like where stuff is going to be able to be picked up. So and also a hidden who you actually control on the board of these twenty five different combinations of hat and body colors. So you actually have to pick which one you're going to try to score with. And at first you must score with them. That's the only person you can choose to move into this temple to get clothing, garments for the king or whatever the theme is. But later on you can choose to choose the bluff. You can just say like, ⁓ I'm I'm this person and if you want to call me out you can and we'll like basically bad stuff will happen to one of us if I'm lying or you I'm not. ⁓ so it's a bunch of random ideas. thrown into a game of Ricochet robots still basically we're that's basically still all you're doing, but there's no life there's no like live version of it. It's like you take a turn and do your thing. ⁓ but it's weird. ⁓ the w the one issue we did have at first two, the first few rounds, based on my reading of the translation from German, I thought you could only move like a couple actually like a very limited range, and we realized looking at the German and looking at the example, ⁓ you can move like Ricochet robots. So it was like Okay, we c first couple rounds were slow, but once we got into it, ⁓ it was funny. And I think there are just some moments too where it's like especially when that bluffing comes into play, where it's like, if I try to figure out how to get my guy into there, it's gonna take me like five minutes. But if I see this guy over here, what maybe it could be mine and I see the example of how to get him in there like this, maybe I just grab him and go. And don't think about it. And maybe people are like, ⁓ you've been looking at that guy forever. Maybe he was your guy the whole time. So I think it has some fun aspects if like you have been familiar with it. But ⁓ it definitely has some some weird chrome to it compared to like just playing ricochet robots. Yeah, it has that like nineties year German Euro feel of like let's throw everything into the box and and see if it works or not. Yeah, you you definitely see where Ricochet Robots came from. And Ricochet Robots is like the most like honed down version of this game you could get. You know, it's like kind of taking the one mechanic and and just building on that. ⁓ I liked some of the aspects of the game. I think You know, and I I think there's some happy medium between this game and Ricochet Robots, ⁓ where there's, you know, more more game than Ricochet Robots has, which Ricochet Robots is one that I love. but it is very dry. And if you know, if if your group or if if the players are not into a stare at this board and solve the puzzle type game, then it's just gonna fall flat. ⁓ And I think you know, there's I I liked having different ⁓ people. So, you know, being able to solve with different ⁓ people on the board versus this is the one that we're solving with and and trying to just pick that ⁓ that one. Thought that was really interesting. I don't know about the bluffing. ⁓ it that seems a little out of place, but then at the same time too, I think that's one of the things that takes it from just being a a dry puzzle game to something that maybe has a little bit more mass appeal. ⁓ where, you know, yeah, you might not be able to solve the puzzle the fastest, but you can call out the person who you think is bluffing, or if you see something good, you can bluff, right? So ⁓ yeah, I don't know. It's it's like it's I I didn't love it. I I think it was really I liked pieces of it and I want pieces of it in a f in a a game, but I don't know that that's the game. I don't know. What what were your thoughts beyond that? Yeah, I think definitely a weird one. I think I definitely agree the the biggest point like you're saying is like I think there's a happy medium you can find that would make a really interesting game. This one may just have too much on top of the idea to like like I said it they they threw the kitchen sink at it and made a game that's Weird. I don't I mean, I think it's it's not necessarily bad. Like I wouldn't say we had a bad time. but if you were able to cut down a little bit of the the chrome, but still have a little bit more than Ricochet Robots, I think you could have a pretty pretty fascinating stuff. I mean it's just that whole idea of the Ricochet robot movement is is fascinating on its own. That's why it's it's its own game. ⁓ and so I would be interested, even if it wasn't like something like was like this, but ⁓ a different kind of game that used that, but something more would be cool to see. So Yeah, and I think the one thing that Ricochet Robots did that really improved on this was the simultaneous play. Where so in Devorbotant shot each player is taking their turn and it's just their turn. So really the other players are just sitting there. You might be staring at the board trying to find this, you know, the path for your piece, but then the current player might change all that up. But there's nothing like limiting that ⁓ that turn time. ⁓ and I know I I was guilty of this. I took some pretty long turns trying to find the perfect route for the the exact pawn that I wanted to use, ⁓ which was probably not a great time for ⁓ you and Alex. So I think, you know. That's one area where Ricochet Robots definitely has the edge of it it might be a long term, but at least everybody is taking their turn at the same time. ⁓ and so you're not waiting on somebody. You're you're doing something. Yeah. Very much so. All right. And then our last game in the con was another card game. Got a little tricky in S Dill. ⁓ and this was the one that I requested to try out because I'd seen it on Kickstarter and thought it looked kinda cool, but I wasn't really sure. It was a little less stricking mode. But I wanted to play a game of crits and tricks. And so this is a new trick taking game. I think this is just a filled this year, is that right? Earlier this year. Yeah, yeah, just ⁓ a couple months ago I think. Yeah. And so it takes ⁓ some ideas of a dice trick taking game. it uses basically six dice of different valuations, so a D four, D six, D eight, D ten, D twelve, and D twenty. ⁓ And then you have a set of cards that all have different abilities, but the cards themselves don't have numbers. So each time you play a card, you actually assign one of your dice to it from behind your screen. And ⁓ all the lead suits have different ways that you may win a trick. So you may have some suit that where if you lead this, the high number wins. But then on this one the low number wins. On this one, the one closest to this random number that they chose on it wins. ⁓ And so you have a different way of evaluating your hand. And then also the scoring itself is not typically just like just winning tricks. ⁓ you draft these different goals each round ⁓ that give you certain objectives you're trying to complete during the hand. and so they're also each suit has different powers you can use. So you get a hand of eight cards, but you only play six. during the trick and the other two you can choose to use for their powers or you can't just keep them in your hand for more options during the trick play. ⁓ and so it has I mean it sounds like a lot whenever you talk about it, but really in play it's pretty simple. Like it's it's a pretty simple trick taking game of you know the May f the must follow and kinda doing these little little tricks to get it. But ⁓ overall I I definitely did like it. ⁓ I had been interested in it and wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, but I definitely did like it quite a bit. The goals you draft at the end of each round are feel like the valuations on them are like random at times, but maybe that's just because of the first play. Like there were certain goals where it's like, ⁓ this goal you get like a crap ton of points for, but it doesn't seem that hard to do. I don't know why it's so high. And then you get another one where it's like, I can do this. It does it's it's like not like the the hardest thing to do, but like I literally have no control over it unless there's a very specific situation. Like I had one where it was like play a dice that nobody else played, like a certain t die face, like a you know, I play a D twelve, nobody played D twelve in the trick. And so a round goes around was figuring out that you had that goal. ⁓ god, yeah. It's just like and then forcing you to not meet it. 'Cause like I I'm playing third in a trick and I'm like, okay, he played that die, he played the same die. So I'm like, I should play this one. All Alex has to do is not play this one die. And he has all of his options available. Surely he won't. He plays that. And so I'm like, okay, well, ⁓ let's do it again. And same thing happens. I'm third. I can play this. Alex just randomly pulls out from behind the screen the exact same die I had. I'm like, this is only for half a point. It's literally nothing. ⁓ and then As soon as Drew figures it out, every time he's last, he's just doing it despite me. And like I think I randomly pulled it off by like switching dice into the trick 'cause I was like, I'm tired of this junk. And so it was so funny too, like try and do that. And so it it's funny. It reminded me so there's a game that I love, Oracle, which is in Trick Taker by ⁓ his Dora, a trick taker, where you have kinda that similar idea of like, you know, play a must follow, but like a high card wins in that case. ⁓ so it's like nothing out of the suit. And then also you get these objectives each round. But in that one you just get basically at a hand of ten and pick four. So you have like all these options. In this one you only get four but you draft them so you get to see a little bit more. But ⁓ the it's it's a good medium because like when you do the door game it's like you have my hand of twelve cards plus my hand of ten objectives that I'm trying to pick from is a lot of upfront options before a trick. which is like not probably something they want to do in a more modern treating game. But I think it it was pretty interesting, like, 'cause especially with the the objectives, sometimes you may be playing to win a trick, but it's not necessarily like you're playing against the people who want to win. Sometimes people want to lose or want to get certain places and stuff like that. So you have a lot more things to evaluate in the hand than just can I win or not. Yeah, and one suit of cards is worth points if you capture them in tricks. ⁓ but that's really the only other points aside from the the objective ⁓ cards that you draft. So yeah, kind of like Oracle, it's really about the objectives that you get and playing around those and and trying to achieve those. ⁓ this was my second play of it and really liked it. I liked it more the second play than I did the the first. ⁓ I think it just kind of came together a little bit more. And it Yeah, it's really solid, fun game. ⁓ it's fun to, you know, manipulate with the dice or or kind of play around with ⁓ how you want to hit those objectives. I didn't do I I don't think I did a great job of drafting the objectives ⁓ for my hand. So that's you know, one thing where you can I think there's, you know, some some skill sealing. You can get better at reading your hand, figuring out what you can do and then ⁓ pulling the the right or drafting the right objective cards. but yeah, really fun game. It also ⁓ with dice, I mean, you also have the option of if you don't like one of the dice you've rolled, ⁓ when you play it with a card, ⁓ you can opt to just re roll it and see what happens. So that's one of the fun random things in the game is it's like if you don't don't feel like you've got the the number you want, then just roll and see what happens. So it's always fun, I think, when the the game gives you that option. For sure. For sure. All right. So that closed out our con. ⁓ we've been talking for quite a bit actually. So real quickly, I just want to get your final thoughts on like what was your play of the con? What's the one that you when you think back like that's the one that jumps out to you the most. as far as the gameplay and what we what we kinda went through. Yeah. So this con I I think it was really cool because I got several games that I've been wanting to play ⁓ finally to the table. ⁓ you know, mainly Euro Crisis, Giants, Manila. Those were the the really top ones. ⁓ out of those, I think Euro Crisis was probably my top game. It was kinda hit that ⁓ Highly interactive, lots of options, lots of ways to to mess with other people, but then also just quick, easy to get into. You know, you go through the teach, by by the end of round one, everybody knew what they were doing, ⁓ mostly, right? Like I I think we still kind of figured out how we went wrong round after round, but but you never felt like you didn't understand what any of the levers did, I think. ⁓ And so yeah, that was I think Euro Crisis is my pick for the colon. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's the top one. ⁓ for me, any GMT game is always gonna be up there. So like playing Cross Bronx is great, playing Baltic Empire is great, both great plays the first time. But I'm I'm gonna go back to to negotiation trilogy tonight. I'm gonna say that my favorite play was Tief Toshin. Like that was the one that blew me away the most. Like I'd always heard things about it. I know I think that Marcus he has a copy and he's a big proponent of it. ⁓ the D FW crew. But man, this game is like next level in the negotiation space. Like I th and I think it fits the good like if we play like on the Boston Lifeboats, right? Those like straight negotiation, but also just like a little BS, you know? Like just kind of bullshittery and doing stuff. It fits that good line of like being BS but also being so smart. ⁓ and l allowing for a lot of smart plays and stuff like that. So I I think that's why it elevated for me over the other two is that it doesn't feel like a little more like highly randomized or just more about just the negotiation. It's like you can make some really smart, interesting plays and just the the amount of levers you have in that game for how small it is and how quick it is was ⁓ gosh, it was it was fantastic. ⁓ so it was definitely like my like this is the game I think about when I was leaving. It was like I and I need a copy. I gotta have a copy. It's gonna be my it's it's my number one, you know, must have right now, I think. ⁓ from overall. So definitely Tief Tashin. Nice. Yeah, it's a great game. For sure, for sure. All right. So that was our BGG Con twenty twenty six spring. ⁓ we had a great time. I always love getting to hang out with Drew and Sanchez and all the other group. We had of course Jen was around this year again. She's awesome. We had some other people chopping in here and there. So it was a great time overall. And, you know, it's something I I don't stop looking forward to every year, man. It's always great. Heck yeah. Coming up for fall? ⁓ we'll see. We'll see how fall. Fall's always different. But we also had to make sure we toasted RJ. So if RJ was the toasts were done. You were you were gratefully missed. That's pretty good. He missed for sure. But for anybody else who is in the state still and not down under, always feel free to come join us down here at BGG Con. We would love to have you. And the mayor will always show you a good time. That's right. Let me know if you're coming up. All right. So for myself and from Drew, thanks for listening and catch on the next one. Yep. See you guys. Bye. This speech is my recital. I think it's very vital. To rock around. That's right. On time it's tricky. Here we go. It's tricky to rock around. To rock around. That's right. On time it's tricky. It's tricky.