James Geist: Welcome to Dads on a Map, a board game podcast by Dads for Everyone. I'm James. I'm Steve. And on today's show, we play a little catch-up after a tremendous month of gaming, not a lot of recording. Boy, do we have games to talk about today? Shadow Hunters, John Company, Archipelago, Pax Premier, First Edition, Intrigue, Bonanza, so much. Much more. Let's go. Steve, I'm pleased to finally officially welcome you to Dad's on a map. Great to have you here. Thanks. It's good to be here. I was gonna say, you're just gonna go, thanks. There's no it's good to be here. It's just thanks. It's great. It's great to be here. Look, we we play a lot together. We do. I enjoy the show a lot. You know, for Steve and I to record an episode together, I mean we generally speaking, you know, we're gaming together, hopefully once a week. Doesn't always work out, but sure has lately. We've been which is why this show is jam-packed full of game talk only. But ⁓ so we're we we talk all the time, right? We talk all the time. And when we aren't talking in person gaming, we're usually in the DMs, ⁓ what game should we play next? ⁓ how'd that game go? You know, grinding it out about about different things. So we we we get to chat funny. But now today we get to chat with the listeners as well. Yeah, I'm excited by it. I really am. ⁓ if people have not you know, other than his Steve's username is Steve from OP, so you can identify what who he is on the Discord. But he was at Dome Con last year and briefly the year before. Am I do I have my years? I don't remember No, I was only at Dome Con last year. I was at Aegisteam. Yeah. Okay. Agisteam. So tell people yeah how you came to ⁓ find yourself in the clutches of Dome where you now waste your time Doing craft projects and redraws and rewrites and all kinds of other things. How'd you end up here? So we moved to KC in 21 and I was trying to find game groups and I found some and they were mostly Euro type or playing at the cafe. But I really like a lot of the heavier games and I like a lot of economic games. And I was having a really hard time finding that. And I was on the heavy cardboard Slack because I had had that before to learn games. And I was like, hey, is there anybody in the Kansas City area? And Joshua Acosta was like, ⁓ we have there's this thing called Age of SteamCon that happens and it's coming next month. You should go to Age SteamCon. So I went to Age EsteamCon, which was great. a lot of really friendly people there, and got in my like my very first play of Age of Steam. I had a lot of age of Steam, I don't really play it that much anymore, but ⁓ it was a great way to meet people. And then Dad's on a map and Punchboard Paradise both sponsor, you know, had had blurbs. And Kevin talked about it. ⁓ yeah. That was the Heartland one where he gave us a little shout-out on the screen. And yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and so that really got me into looking around and listening to the podcast. And I listened to a few episodes when I was doing travels. I travel for work a lot. And you know, it really, these were the kind of games that I was interested in playing. My old group in Houston didn't really play them that much. And I really hadn't found that in Casey. And so then I think I just reached out on the Discord and was like, hey, can we try to play? And I think we played PO was one of the first games we played. I remember that. Yep. Because I I went along with you and then you ⁓ that that didn't turn out so well for me. I think we're gonna talk about something similar to that later. I think we are. Look, like Lucy, I'm like Lucy with the football, right? I actually thought like First of all, I thought you were a bigger age of steam head than that. Like you know, that was 2024, right? Yeah. That one. Yeah, no. I thought of steam core long, long-term age of steamers, but you you were still pretty fresh, I guess. ⁓ and I I always think I always I don't even know if this is the case with you, but I always like defer to Scott. Scott is the social glue that in that tries to grow our game group. And so I I'm always thankful because Scott will be like, hey, I met this guy. He was really cool. We should invite him to our game group. I think that's how you got wiggled in, but maybe I'm wrong. And it was somebody else who who flamed out and didn't work out right. But Scott is always that guy where I'm I'm a total despite being a real life, I I would not call myself an introvert, but I am ⁓ I am guarded when it comes to new people entering my my small circle, right? ⁓ Scott is much more welcoming with open arms. I'm more like standing behind a bush peering through, like, I don't know. I don't like the way I don't like the maps they like. So it's probably not gonna happen. No, that was that's true. And then we've we've got and I think our game tastes lineup very similar inside the inside the game group. I really do. I think you and I both get excited about a lot of the same games. I mean, that's why we're able to play a lot of these games. And it's it we're pretty blessed to have that here locally. So I've enjoyed that, you know, since since joining the group. I like hosting. I kind of feel like I need to call Tim out and say, yes, I do host like that every single time. It wasn't just for Clef. Yeah. If you go listen to the most recent ⁓ Punchboard Paradise podcast episode, which is a too off the top episode, it's so confusing. I I'm as a person who's done spin off shows, trust me, it's confusing. But their spin off show, too off the top. They just talked about a game night we had at Steve's where Steve Steve is like the best host ever. He's always got cheeses and meats and hummus and and the ⁓ cold brew MMs and Clef was talking about strawberry water. Is this even real? Was there strawberry water? Yeah, there was. Cause I had, I mean I was like when he said that, I'm like, he's totally misremembering. It was a pitcher of water and some strawberries next to it, but apparently the strawberry water was a real thing. No, I mean they did that. We used to go Jed and I used to go to a cafe in Japan and they would put fruit in the water and it tasted really nice. And I cut up the fruit and I had some extra left over and I was like, oops, go throw it in the water. There we go. But yeah, Steve is always a great host. I'm thankful just as, you know, for the geeze seven or eight years that I've been playing games with my game group, which has morphed and evolved and changed and now includes Steve and Scott. I was the primary host for eighty five percent of that time. Yeah. And there there's nothing wrong with hosting, right? I enjoy hosting games at my house, but I have the opposite of Steve. I am the anti host. I am the you walk in the door, sit down, we're playing games. Like there's there's no treats, there's no snacks, there's no napkin. You won't need napkins because I'm not giving you any food. ⁓ and let's play games. But the games but the game's always set up though. They and it's always ready to go. It's always set up. it's always set up. This is a nice juxtaposition between Game nights, right? It's nice to go to Steve's and get treated like a king. And you come to my house and get treated like a pauper. And Scott's somewhere in between, right? He'll give us some ⁓ Yeah, Scott's got good food. He'll give us some treats halfway through and you you know, and he's always welcoming with his fridge full of beer and and it's nice. ⁓ it's just nice to have other people willing to host game nights and and again, this is why this show exists, because we have had monster game days at Steve's and Scott's over the last month. Like three of them, right? At this point. Yeah, we had three back to back, right? So we had Scott did with Saturday. And then my my girl, my wife and my daughter were out at camp for two weeks. And so I always take that. And then Juneteenth, I had off. So we did a pretty we did, you know, we did a a game day at Scott's. Then we did a full Saturday at my house. And then we did a Friday after going and play disc golf and barbecue with with the guys from Omaha. And that went pretty late. So It's been a really banger June. It has been in terms of games. And and we got seven people. I we we brought a guy in from church. Yep. Because my church the church game group consisted of me and Matt. And I was like, this is stupid. We should just we should just invite Matt to come play with our game group. And he's been a nice addition too. It's been great. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, that ⁓ that's been a good run. We'll see how July treats us as we build towards Dome Con and see. How things go from there. But we we got I got games scheduled this week and we got next week at your place again. So we're gonna keep yeah, and I got and I got containers, so I'm excited about it. Containers here, so it's time, right? Now we just what I'd really like is if we can land five for that day, because right now we don't have five, I don't believe. So we'll see. No, four for we begin. I don't know. Maybe I can talk Liam. Maybe I can talk Liam. But we should get five. Okay. Speaking of Dome Con, signups are we're pretty much there. I'm I'm probably I haven't put a hard date on it, but I think July 15th, I'm gonna say no more signups for Dome Con. ⁓ that's to give myself enough time to get all the badges prepped and everything and get all my numbers in order. So, as of right now, six triple beds remain, two double beds, and potentially one solo upgrade if you if you ⁓ were one of those people who wanted to pay a little extra to lock down a room by yourself. That's something we're offering because of the numbers that we have right now. ⁓ we'd love to have you at Dome Con. Yeah, I couldn't be happier with the roster and the group of people that I'm gonna get to see again this year. Amazing ⁓ stream of gaming from Wednesday through Sunday, food, fun, adult beverages, if that's your thing, tons of games, big event games. I I I think the clock tower. I'm looking forward to that. A lot of the clock tower is gonna happen. I think the secrets out on on Medina. We're gonna have the Megadena. In the house that Jacob made. ⁓ the pieces are like two and a half inches by two and a half inches. Monster board, ⁓ s you know, putting jumbo indo in its place almost. So that's gonna be fun. Of course, the dome game of the year this year, one dome madness, Medina, so it gets the ⁓ the special treatment at the con. I guess that's gonna be something we're gonna try to do in the future. I still can't believe that game won. But yeah, I would love to see anybody who wants those last couple spots, please sign up. If if you don't want to stay at the convention center, there's also the ⁓ tier to stay outside of it. If you want to get a hotel, you'd rather stop gaming and go to the hotel rather than just kind of living in this space. That's a possibility too. Go to dadsonamap.comslash domecon for all the information. Join the Discord. We'll help get you set up. You can DM me if you need to. Yeah, I can't wait. I mean, I'll I'll I'll say I last year was my first year. So if you are if you're ⁓ you know a listener or you're on the Discord and you're on the fence and you're worried about, you know, because I know it's been going on for a couple of years, everybody there is super welcoming. ⁓ they're super friendly. You'll get in a game, you don't have to worry about it. You know, if you're like, I don't want, you know, I'm just going by myself, is that gonna work? I I went by myself last year. It was really nice. ⁓ I didn't actually play with my regular game group very much. I met a lot of new people and then I'm in a lot of async games with those guys ⁓ you know throughout the year. So it's a really good chance to really connect with people. Yeah, we always say Dome Con's like a a family reunion, right? For the people who have gone and for the people who haven't, it's a chance to get introduced to this family and ⁓ it's a lot of fun. I can't believe I can't believe that we have six dome cons now. I you know, I couldn't believe when we managed to put Dome Con one on the map and now to do it for the sixth year in a row. I couldn't be happier. It g it honestly. And it honestly gets easier every year because all my pieces are in place. It's pushing buttons, getting everything in place. This thing is a well-oiled machine at this at this point. Knock on wood. I'm I'm looking forward to see what the badge thing is. I want to see if you top Clefts. it's been topped. It's been it's been topped. It's been that's topped. Topped. Good. It is not the old prince on the back of the badge. I I'm like sitting here emphasizing it, and that's not what's happening. Okay. So but that leads you to the next thing. It does. Let's talk about some games and we're gonna lead off with the old prince because the old prince, of course, which you've heard about tons over the years with dads on a map. I honestly feel like a pro like this is my third child, the old prince, even though I have nothing to do with its inception, its conception. It's creation, it's play testing. But what I have done is taken a wild ride with it over the years, right? The old prince started, you know, in Dad's on a map as this like this like mythical fairy tale that people talked about, right? They're like, ⁓ wait till you play the old prince 1871. It's like, why the hell do you keep saying the old prince 1871? We all know you have to say the year first, right? So immediately it's like, what do you thought? What is this? Why are we Why are we bucking tradition? And then you'd I'd hear more trusted voices come through. ⁓ why is Kyle talking about the old print? I gotta play the old prints, right? But I didn't have people locally to play. I didn't even know how to make a copy. It dot games was in its infancy or non-existence at the time, and it wasn't on there anyway. But to see where it's come, right? Getting on dot games, becoming available on 18xx Maker, I made my first and only 18xx print and play of the old prints. And now here it is on Kickstarter in what I can only call an ambitious, ⁓ over the top edition of a game I already love. And as a person who already loves the game, I couldn't be happier that that's what ended up being the thing that I got to back and put my money into because I already know I love the old prints, right? And yeah, so I'm back to day one. You could have given me a ⁓ you could have given me minis, you could have done anything to it, and I'd have been like, Yeah, it's one of my top ten games. I will I would love to play any kind of this with whatever, but I love the direction they've taken. I'm bearing the lead. So this on this day of recording, there are five days left to back this. By the time this publishes, I don't think there will be any more days left to back it. But as of today, over seventeen hundred backers. It's made over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I have to think that is considered a success ⁓ for a title that until now was unavailable, right? I looked at eighteen eighty-nine Shikoku's numbers and it had a lot of backers. It had over four thousand backers, which is very impressive. But it was also a title that was already known in circles. The old prince has a hurdle to climb. With new bad. Yeah, I mean, I think 1889 comes back to 2004. Yeah, yeah. I mean, 1889 has forever been the default. This should be your first 18 18XX. Like it's been trumpeted for for years, decades, honestly. ⁓ so I'm happy to see the success that the old princess had. I'm happy to hear all the things people had to say about it. ⁓ good, bad, ugly, celebratory. Because the things that people are complaining about are the reasons I'm excited about it, frankly. Like Yeah, exactly. The art is the I think Josh knocked it out of the park with the art. I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to see it in person. That's that's all I can say. ⁓ I I predict a lot of old prints is gonna get played at Dome Kong. ⁓ I think so, for sure. So meanwhile, like not only celebrating the Kickstarter, myself, Steve, and John. Well, I've talked about all year of playing a three player async set of games. We played a ton of the old prints. We switched gears to eighteen forty one light for a minute. We've gone back to the old prints and we're just playing the hell out of this game. Like I don't I think our play count for the year has to be in the upper twenties. We gotta be close to I d I don't keep stats, but I I know we're over twenty games. ⁓ I keep stats. I'll drop ⁓ I'll drop ⁓ in our chat one of these times. Give a little measuring stick, see how we're doing. I d I don't want to see that because I think I've only won once. And that was the one time that you did that stupid ⁓ I'm gonna suit Casey Alberton up in the like I don't know that I won that game as much as you lost that game. ⁓ was it really that game? That's hilarious. It was that game. I very much remember that attempt. That was that did not work out. ⁓ but the old prince continues to be an absolute gem. ⁓ you know, I I don't think I need to say much more about it. Do you have anything you wanna say about it that we haven't? Said a million times on the podcast before. No, I mean, just the only thing, and I'm gonna bring it up a little bit later, is he's not only just doing the old prints, but if you're getting into it, he's also reprinting Shikoku 1889. And I think, you know, I'm excited to see what the old prints looks like in person. But to me, that last publishing of 1889 really set the bar for what you can do with ⁓ with an 18xx. And I saw some guys streaming it the other days, and it looked really and I was like, Yeah, I love this game too. It's I love both of those games. I got a game spun up now with Ben and John and Alexander just to go play 1889 as well. So I think you can if you wanted to get 1889, you can also get that as well. Yep, that is true. ⁓ all right. That's the old prince. Steve, what are we talking about next? We're gonna talk about and I'm not gonna say it right, Archipelago Arch Archipelegio. See, this is classic, like this gives me warm fuzzies of days of Sancho's here. You couldn't ever pronounce a title correctly. So Arch archipelago Archipelago. Archipelago. Archipelago. That's it. Archipelago. This was a Scott game, right? So Scott, Scott, we that that first game day we did, we were talking about we wanted to play, and Scott was like, Well, I got this thing and we're gonna try this thing. Which are like those are the most dangerous words you could hear at our game group from Scott. So no, he picked a good one. I like this one. I I I did I did some research and I was like, Okay, it's got boats. So I'm in. It's got boats. ⁓ so we can we can play. So this is by the same guy that did Rise and Fall. Which you talked about, you know, a couple of shows ago. And and it's an old one, it's 2012. And I I quite like this. It's a long, I you know, it not getting it, I don't think a lot of folks know what this is. So I'm gonna spend a little bit of time talking about what it is. You're you're you're kind of ⁓ exploring a new island, and you have to set up your your your villages or your your settlements and you're getting resources. but there's an interesting mechanic in it where you have to recruit the meeples. But the more meeples there are, there's also natives that get unrestful. And there's ⁓ variable win conditions in this thing. So everybody gets a card at the beginning, and that tells you what your victory points are. But one of the cards that comes out is if the you if the natives overtake, have a revolution and overtake the islands, then everybody loses. But if you've got this one card, then you win. And I thought for sure that Matt had this card in our game, ⁓ the whole time. ⁓ So to me, this felt a little bit like a simulation game. And I think we played the short version. I think it would be more enjoyable as the longest version because you can really see the game develop. But then it's a really long game. It was already pretty long with the short version. ⁓ because a big, a big kind of ⁓ kick in the game is trying to figure out what does everybody else have for scoring? Because then you want to duplicate it. Like I James, you had churches. So as soon as you started building churches, I knew churches were a thing. And so I was like, okay, how do I get churches? I ended up winning the game, but I won the game because I had people. You can get cards in this game, and some of the cards are places, and some of the cards are people. And I had forgotten that people was even a card that you could get. And and I had, but I I knew what my own card was, which was exploring. Exploring to me was the was my was the favorite part of the game. But after there's a risk when you do it, it's got to push your luck element. You have to flip the, you have to flip this hex over. And if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. And then your exploring action's a waste. But if you do get it, you get free resources. I had all the people that let me explore better than other people. And I had you get a token when you explore. And so I was able to get them, you know, I got points for that and points for people. So I really enjoyed the play, and I'd like to play it again and explore. But I don't know that you actually have the ability to ⁓ understand how you're gonna win it. It seems more like a simulation of a settlement than it does a strategic game with with you you're you're kind of playing you're you're experiencing the story of the game versus trying to play to win the game, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's a it was a interesting interesting thing because it's incredibly low scoring too. I guess we should mention like the final scores were like six, five, five, four, three. Right. Something, right? Right. You score very few points in the game because those hidden goal cards that again everyone has, ⁓ the most you would get off one is three usually and then two and then one for second, third place. Well, they're so varied that most likely you are not dabbled in all five things that people might have, right? So it's kind of unique. And again, like this is just a thing in a game that features these hidden variable scorings, you have to be aware of all the cards. And while we did talk through them before the game, you know, in in second, third, fourth, tenth plays, you'd be much more aware of them. Like in a game like Twa, where you see someone who keeps building on the cathedral and you're like, okay, I have to care about the cathedral. It's a little while you're trying to see through the trees of the game, it's hard to notice That somebody is specializing. That's why I think I think that's where the long game would come in. There's a more length of time to develop that and see what people have. Yeah. But I don't know how long it would be. I think it's hours. I think it'd be long as hell. This game was already like three hours long. And we played the short game. And after we, you know, kind of we had a little stumble with the person not realizing they hit their end game trigger and we were able to find ⁓ I remember that. And close it down. Yeah. But after that, we started looking at e all the other endgame triggers that we each had, and they were all incredibly out of reach still. If we had not hit that end game trigger, we would have been playing much longer. And we were playing the shortest version of the game, which felt weird. It felt it felt weird. It felt a little underdeveloped, right? There's a lot in this game. There's a lot in the game. Like there's a very good market. There's hidden goal cards. There's hidden endgame triggers. There's Action selection, which is the most boring part of the game, honestly. There's like specialization where you can be this guy, right? Yeah. But the part that was actually good was like all of a sudden there's interaction, there's extortion, and there's negotiation. There's there's kind of this that's that's the best part of the game is ⁓ there's a part where these little card those cards that flip over every turn, you have to lay all your meeples down, and then you have to spend resources to stand it back up so they can do so right and the and it and the first player can use the resources in the market. And I was I I think I was first player every turn of the game. And I think that's part of what what got me the game was being able to spend my you know decide who was doing that was the best part of the game was it was but there was standards up or else going on that I frankly didn't care about, which is why I was just like, well, my hidden goal card says build churches. So I'm just gonna build churches while I wait for the good parts of the game to show up, and that's kind of how it felt. So I don't know. I don't know. I would play it again because I think the familiarity of a first play would help a second play. but it was long and there's a lot more and better choices that I'd rather play for a little bit longer Euro game. So I think so. Yeah. It's fun to explore though. It's fun to explore. Archipelago. Thanks, Scott. It was not a bomb, I will say, Scott. Had some redemption because it was not a bomb. ⁓ next game up Pax Pamir first edition. So the 2015 Cole Worthy game that, you know, preceded the ⁓ beautiful Pax Pamir second edition. This one is in a original Pax Papiriana size box. It's just a deck of cards. The cards make the map like ⁓ like ⁓ Pax Renaissance first edition. It's just cubes and some cylinders. And there's something really endearing and special about that. We played with no kyber knives expansion, which I don't own. We did not play the nation building ⁓ variant, which is kind of makes it into the point based game of Pamir 2E. So we just played straight Pamir 1E, which is kind of like Porfiriana. The topple shows up. If it is purchased and triggered and it is successful, one player wins the game. Period. Right. There could be a tie, but it would go to military stars, just like in 2e. And I loved that. That felt so good because unlike Porf, where so often in Porf, topple number one is completely meaningless. Nobody has built up enough prestige points to be able to to create a threat. So topple number one just kind of comes and goes. But in Pamir 1E, topple number one showed up and it was like, uh-oh. The table was on immediate alert. And and and you have to have all the preconditions, right? Because you gotta have like an army, you have to have a road, you have to have a tribe. Yeah, there are a lot of conditions that you have to meet. And a spy. Yep. And we could we couldn't get any tribes in our game. Yeah, like tribes seem like they're pretty rare. Yeah, purple cards just were not showing up in the market, which has always been a thing with ⁓ frankly, all porf games or sorry, all PAX games, you never know what your market is gonna spit out in this game. ⁓ I love the sharper edges. Of some of the actions in this one, there's the bribe action, which basically doesn't exist in in 2e, where you literally, if you have a spy on a card, you can steal the card all the way to your tableau by paying the requisite cost. And if it happens to be a purple card, just like in kind of the two e collapse rules, like this happened to Steve actually, and it was it was phenomenal when somebody did this because he was on the doorstep of a win. Somebody used the bribe action, stole his last and most powerful purple card out of his tableau, which let them convert all of his existing tribes to their pieces. Just an absolute wrecker. It was crazy. I loved it. I I just want to play this more because it was nice. We we got over the rules hump, which is it is not a difficult game, but there's of course a little bit of a language transition from two e players. We we had the special luxury of. having two e players that we were downgrading and one player that had never played a PAX game that we were inundating into the whole system. And so, you know, we got through those things. Now I just want to play it some more. So hopefully a Dome Con play at least is on my in my future docket. Yeah, I really like this. I had not played this before. I played second edition one time before. I really like Porf. I'm kind of lukewarm on Ren. And I really like this. I think this has a chance to surpass Porf for me as my favorite PAX game, ⁓ with some more plays. Because I like the map play. You don't you don't have that in Porf, right? You don't have the map where you've got to try to make sure you've got everything set up and all of that. ⁓ and and I felt like we were entangled from the very beginning of the game, in terms of like in in this in our play of it, we knew exactly. Who was on what group and what they were doing and what we were trying to do from like turn one. So it it I feel like sometimes in four if you you develop a position after a few turns. I felt like in this one you it's straight in there. We kind of know what's going on and and ⁓ how we how we need to try to get the win. I mean, like you said, that first topple comes out and it's a it's it's it's serious. A really cool thing I like again in one E versus two E of Pamir. Is yes, you get those immediate relationships, right? Like three of you were British right out of the gates. But then as we're talking through, but when that topple shows, only one of you can actually win. And that is such a great difference from the point scoring method of two E, where it's like, Yeah, I'll ride coattails and get my three points to their five points or whatever the case may be. Right. Here it's like, no, you're gonna lose the game. Are you cool with that? Because if not, you gotta change the game state. And that there was a lot of changing the game state in this game because you had to. Yeah, I think I switched to Afghanistan halfway through the game because it was in that I was I was very close to winning until somebody stole my card. So I really like this. And I think I think we played it at five. I think this would play good at three. I actually think it would too. ⁓ so I I think next time we want to play Porf, we should pull this out instead. I agree. And now I feel like I feel capable and ready to teach it and play it again and just fire it up. And it's only like I shouldn't say this because I want to get a copy, so I shouldn't say this before it comes out, but I was checking. This thing's only like 25 bucks on Noble Knight. If you really that's cheaper than I would have anticipated. Exactly. And and they have a couple of copies on Noble Knight. It's like 25 bucks. Wow. So it's a good way to get into PAX if you want to try PAX. There you go. ⁓ Pamir. One E getting a little time on the show. And then we were we were just kind of brutal that day. We we had colonists with with with the first game, and then we were taking over Afghanistan with the second game, and we continued the theme. And so the next game is a game of intrigue, which was ⁓ my print and play copy that I had made. So I started getting into print and plays a couple of months ago. I don't know what I think it was Kai Vie. I really wanted a copy of Kai Vie and didn't want to spend 200 bucks for it. So I started making a Kai Vie and then I was like, this isn't as bad as I thought. I went back and listened to your old episode. You had a really great episode, James, on print and play. I went back and listened to that. Got into the Discord and got going with some people to learn some tips and tricks. And if you're thinking about print and play, it's not as hard as you think it is. And the community out there is very friendly to help you out. So, and this is an easy one to do, and I have all the files for it. But I wanted to re-theme it. So we play Banana Republic print and play. so the whole thing's re-themed for the Banana Wars from the early 1900s. It's historical. ⁓ I felt like that fit the theme pretty well of what intrigue is. I really like this one. This is a pure negotiation game, kind of like lifeboats, but unlike lifeboats, which is a pure, pure negotiation game, it's just Hey, I like you better, so I'm gonna throw you out of my boat. You know, this one actually has some structure with it in terms of how the bidding goes for assigning, you know, it's got you got three phases in the game. It's not a very complicated game. You got three phases in the game where basically you're gonna, you know, collect money, you're going to assign people who've come to your your your region to put to assign them. There's there's you each each player has four workers. Of different types. I used hats for my version. There's four different hat types. There's four different slots on your on your country or your plazo in the original one, minus a country. They pay out money and you negotiate for where to put workers, but you can only put one kind of worker on each spot. So I can't have two pith helmet guys. I can't have two top hat guys, right? They they all have to go individually on on on where they go. And And then there's little battles. If you try to put the same thing in there, you can have a you do a bidding a bribing battle where you bribe people to put your guys onto the spaces. I'm probably messing up the rules. James probably knows the rules. I'd say the most important thing to convey is when you bribe in this game, the bribe is sealed and given to the owner before they make the decision. There's no returning. This isn't Santiago where you're gonna, you know, flex a little bit and get your money back. No, no, no. You're essentially making agreements and putting that player in a position very often that they are gonna have to break their word with somebody. And it's who do you break your word with and the ramifications of it going forward? That's that's intrigue. Or and and you make more money, I think, sometimes from the bribes than you actually do from the locations. Or sometimes you can just keep your word and ride or die all the way to the end, right, Steve? That doesn't work out very well if you play with hidden money. And you think, yeah. So James had the most amount of money and I had the least amount of money. And it really surprised me because I kind of thought we were in a very similar position when we were playing. And we were buddies. We had our the whole game. Our 10,000 guy was on each other. We were taking taking care of each other's family. Yeah, I was Scott Scott probably screwed me. I don't think he actually did. That's just a an ongoing joke in our group. But ⁓ No, I really it's it's pure negotiation, but it has structure. So if you like lifeboats, but you thought it was a little too too pure negotiation, then you might like to try intrigue. I will warn people, you know, if you go look online, it's like don't play this with your friends and family. It because the game, like James mentioned, the game is designed. You will have to break your word or screw somebody in the game. It's like structurally built into the game. You won't be able to ⁓ You won't be able to keep all your promises. It's impossible. I actually think intrigue is is meaner than lifeboats because because of what you said, everything in in intrigue is public, right? ⁓ it's it's my guy coming in or it's Scott's guy coming in. We talking about this, we're cool. You're not gonna be the one to break the word, right? Cause then I'm gonna have to stab you if that's what we're gonna do. But in lifeboats, you can get away with some nonsense where you you can not be the deciding vote, right? You can you know what I mean? You can you can play the fence a little bit in lifeboats and just stab someone at the moment you need to. Intrigue is just stabbing. It's just stabbing. It is, but it's pretty it's still pretty ⁓ fast. I mean, I love it. I'm not saying a good or bad thing, I'm just saying I don't know that I'd give it the pass of not being as BS mean as life boat. They're both pretty much ⁓ no, it's just as mean. I'm saying, but there's some structure to it. Some people I've heard talk about lifeboats. They're they're it's pure negotiation. I don't like it. There's no game in it. That's what I'm saying. I think intrigue adds a little bit of a layer of structure to it that gives it a little bit of a game. What I really enjoyed in Intrigue was the hidden money because that is lifeboat's biggest drawback is you get to the island, you can see who's winning all the time. You can see who's winning all the time, you can see who's gonna take the lead all the time. I like the hidden money here and the haziness of not knowing everything. Because that actually made it click a little more. Lifeboats is like if people want to gamify it, you're just sitting there going, Well, they're gonna win if you do that. Well, they're gonna win if you do that. They win. ⁓ but they're gonna get seven points. You know, I almost And nobody knew how much money anybody had. No, nobody had anything. That never came up. There's too much money changing hands. So that never came up. Yeah. Not to start an HDI. ⁓ discussion, but I really liked the hidden money in this game anyway. Yeah, I would I would play this again. I do you think other people are gonna play this again with us though? Yeah. You know, the person who I thought would be turned off the most from it was Scott and he didn't seem he didn't seem he didn't poo-poo it. Scott will poo-poo things pretty publicly and he did not. Yeah, he did not. That sounds good. So this might hit the table. And I am pretty happy with the way the P P turned out. So if you want files, I mean there's other ones out there the because this game is another I think it's pretty expensive if you want to try to get ⁓ it's like very, very hard to find. So I there and there's nothing tourist. No, no. You could you could play this with playing cards if you wanted to. Yeah. Like you could you could just make this out of anything. So do what you want to do, but it's it's certainly I do recommend it with five. I think this is another five player game. I I mean you could play it with four, but I think you really want to have there's only four spots and four workers. Yeah, the asymmetry of five was kind of nice. But we we definitely had a player who felt like they were out in the cold. But that's Matt Matt just Matt needs to learn to speak up in our group, I think. He gets a little he you know, he will, he'll get more comfortable, but he's a he's a quiet player, and sometimes that can work against you. Yep, it can in those negotiation games for sure. Speaking of P and P the w some you know I've been off my PP game for a while. I haven't broken out the laminator in a while or cut cards or anything like that. But you know what got me to do it? Bad Bets, a game that doesn't even have a BGG listing. ⁓ talked about it on the PP Con show. This is a game by our friend Tim Alvarez. ⁓ Bad Bets is a silly, silly Tim described it and sold it to me as a very stupid game about rolling dice and betting. And I was like, ⁓ that sounds beautiful. I'm in, right? ⁓ these files are now publicly available. They're in the Creative Lounge channel of the Discord. And there's probably a half dozen or more copies now out there in circulation, just from the Dad or Map crew that has put it together. It's 20-something cards. So you just print cards, sleeve them, and get the dice together that you need. You need a couple different dice. ⁓ a wonderful palette cleanser or end of the night or kickoff game to your night. Because it's it's it's pretty unserious. It's a game where you start with a hundred dollars, you're have some tiny little auctions, the winner of the auction rolls some dice, everyone else loses that much money that they roll. So, are you gonna make a good bet by winning this and rolling a great number? So you spent your money on it, but people lost more, or are you gonna make a bad bet by spending money on it and then rolling three? And so everyone loses almost nothing and you spent your money. And my favorite rule, and I hit it. If you roll doubles I I cannot believe you did that. You get to keep your money and everyone else. Two D twelve. I cannot believe you did that. Because they're the same. The r odds went up. Something like that. It's not true, but that's what we went with that night. I I I am I love this game. I'm I'm horrible at it because I always bid I don't know if you can be good or bad at bad bets. I'm not sure about that yet. I think I think overbidding For the right to roll two dice. You know, I I think what did I bid one time? I think I bid something like 20, you know, 20 on 30 or something like that. Yeah, you're probably it seems like your hand is stuck like in this formation with all five fingers up. Cause you just every time I can count on Steve to come out with the five or five. Five I want to roll dice. That's the fun part of the game is rolling the dice. ⁓ I have ⁓ we I I've sent a a couple private notes to Tim. I'm not gonna put ⁓ on the chant on the show here. about some some fun ideas that I think could could even intensify the experience. I I did too and I he was very nice about it. He's like all all feedback is good feedback. Cool. Which I think was a nice way of saying thank you for your idea and a go away. Gotta get a BGG listing though, Tim. That is like essential here. We can't talk about the show and then people can't look it up. There is in fact a bad beats BGG listing with that is No you can't use that then. You can't use that then. ⁓ we also played, I think the one other thing to say about this, we played it at five, I think, or six. And then when we had the seven, when when yeah, we played it at seven. Cleflef and Cameron came over, like, let's try it at seven. And I actually enjoyed it more at seven. That was the time you got the the the doubles. Yeah. The energy at the table was pretty high. I think this is another one of these games where it's going to be very table-dependent. I agree. which gets us into the next. I guess in the same kind of category of of fun, silly games is Nur Peanuts, which is a you've talked about this one before, but it's a 2001 Heinz Meister game. again, I did ⁓ another P on this. ⁓ I went with because it's I'm not gonna say it's as hard to get, but even if you get it, it's pretty damn hard to get. I I have to pretty ugly too. I did not like it. I did It's butt ugly. It butt ugly. It is really it's almost. It's not readable. I don't, I don't, I didn't like the original version. So I made a 1950s Las Vegas theme P. Some other people have made their versions too. I know Josh has a good version. Josh from Alabama has he made a pretty good version. So this is pretty easy to play. And what I wanted to do is talk a little bit about it. Is we played this as a group, but I also got my family to play it. My family doesn't really like playing games. I was joking with James. It's like my daughter, my wife asked me, is this one of those dome games? And and they're like, Yes, it's like, well, those are all mean games. Let's not so go up go find me a game that the Dome guys don't like to play. You're like, no, they're not only mean, sometimes they're stupid too. Yeah. Sometimes they're stupid. Well Nur Peanut or ⁓ we're gonna talk about Port of Banana later. It fell flat too with my family. It did not do good. Unaccepted Peanuts did peanuts did good though. ⁓ And in peanuts, if you don't know what peanuts is, you it's kind of like a fast, it's a push your luck monopoly kind of game. You you get a prop, you get a slot, you roll dice. ⁓ the board is beautifully constructed. As I was doing the P and messing around with the numbers, I understood why they picked all the numbers in the order that it went in. You can actually put that there's a lot of thought that went into that. But you you whoever lands on the highest property, the other players have to pay the difference of where they land. And where the highest player lands. So there's always an incentive to keep rolling and keep going. The thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about is there's actually two ways to win the game. One way is somebody goes bankrupt and the person who has the most money wins. The other way is if you win the round, if you land on the highest property, the highest place, you get to buy a property. And if you collect enough property chips, once you get to a certain number, depending on the number of players, I think it's five, then that person wins the game. And when I play it with the Dome guys, it's always everybody, it's it's bankrupt every time. Bankruptcy every time. Like it's a very short game. I told my family, it's like, how long is this game? I was like, I don't know, this is 20 minutes tops. And and it was like 45 minutes for us because they actually played it a little bit more. And and I kind of like that to be honest. It was because they're, you know, there it legit was people were thinking. You know, maybe I go next round and I get a property type of thing. They were actually trying to think about kind of sh shepherding their money versus just blowing But with James, when you played, it was always roll, roll, roll, roll, roll every time. Yeah, and that's that's like my note here. This like there was actually it's so weird because there's gonna be a game like ⁓ I'm trying to think of the most recent game we played where It got gamified too hard and it it ruined it a little bit where gamers were trying to gamify it too too much. I talked about it recently. It's not coming to me, right? Yeah, no, I know I don't I remember what you're talking about. Yeah, Ner Peanuts actually goes the other direction with gamers, even because gamers realize that settling on the 12 spot when somebody's on the 22 is a loser move, right? So again, we're like reverse gamering it by saying, screw it, I'm gonna pay twelve dollars to roll again because doing this is a loser move. I cannot win if I do this. So it turns out when you get it in the dome circle, if you want to say that, or in our game group, everyone's like, screw it, I'm gonna keep rolling. Because if I'm not number one, I'm not anything in this game. It's a loser move. And so it's just cashing in the chips, throw it, just throwing in the chips because if I, you know. And it's almost a self fulfilling prophecy. Everyone is playing like the game will end in bankruptcy. So everyone must continue flushing their money knowing the game is going to end in bankruptcy. ⁓ which is not a complaint necessarily. It is just a thing. And it it gives me it makes me laugh, it makes me happy. ⁓ So so that's what it is. Yeah, I just thought it was interesting playing it with a family. They weren't approaching it in that gamified way. Yeah. And so there was actually a little bit more game there. So I think this is a good one to play with family. That's why I wanted to put it on the list and talk through it. I actually I agree with you. And I think like I I I haven't made a P and P yet. I am not sh positive I'm gonna, but I actually agree that like this could be a hit with extended family, like at Christmas, things like that that I like to take it to. And I think it could be better. For something like that, where people are a little more willing to play the game. Because that's how I feel is like when you get it with a group of hardcore gamers, they're like, this is just ridiculous. I'm not, why would I even try to play the long game, if you will? Let's just let's just do this thing, you know? I mean, I I still want to crack it out. I still like it. I want to play it, like I want to crack it out at 12 30 at Don Khan after I've had a few beers. I definitely don't dislike it, but this play. Did not hit the high highs for me of my early plays. I'll just say that. ⁓ all right. That's peanuts. We got Santiago to the table as well. ⁓ Santiago, I feel like we say the word Santiago in this show so much. So let's give the designers a shout out. 2003, Claudia Haley and Roman Pellick. One of only two designs by that group. ⁓ I've played the other one as well, which was ⁓ Das Weinhandler, I believe, which we talked about once on the show. Mm-hmm. But really, what's left to say about Santiago? The best part about it was we got to introduce another new player to it. This was Scott's friend whose name is escaping me. ⁓ was it Dave? I think it was another Dave. Just over. Yeah, because we have like three. Yeah. I think I I've determined all of Scott's friends are named Dave. I think that's correct. That's correct. ⁓ so we introduced Dave to it and he absolutely rolled us. ⁓ I'm gonna guess there was too much infighting amongst the experienced players. 'Cause he was just building fields and fields and I was like, what is happening? I don't even know how to slow him down. It was just growing and growing and growing. ⁓ but you know, the best part about it was he seemed to really enjoy it. And, you know, I'm always down to play a game of Santiago. When we have five, it's almost automatic that we're gonna pull it off the shelf and be like, Let us show you this. We'll be done in sixty minutes, and you're gonna love it and loved it again. It was a really wet Santiago. was quite wet. Yes. It was very and people was like, what does that mean? I was like, well, we had just the way we kept setting up the water. There was always players used their emergencies early, which created more spaces. And just the way the game built, you know, sometimes you'll have people really double those canals back on each other early on, which makes a pretty dry board. But this one was a lot of, you know, bang, bang, bang, bang, where it just ex it kept extending. And so we had a lot of places to build to build water, to build irrigated crops. It it but it meant for a lot of deal making. ⁓ I felt like there was more deal making in this one than our last plays, where because you would get the situation where there'd be three spots where it was already watered, and maybe the other two tiles that would come out, one of them, you know, then that got to to be the deal making of where does the overseer put the canal? Because somebody was gonna get screwed out of that. Out of that proposition. And so there was a lot of deal making, a lot of shared, there was a lot more shared incentive in this one than I felt like in a lot of our previous plays. And it was a really good play of it. It was. I mean, it's just always good. It's crazy. ⁓ well, from a dome hall of famer, Santiago, to another one, yeah, you know, another one that belongs in the Dome Hall of Fame. But every year when we get to Dome Madness, it doesn't get its due. Steve, what do we play next? ⁓ we played Bonanza, which is 1997, Uwe Rosenberg's masterpiece. And man, I always like the beans. This is a great game. what I find really funny about it, and I, you know, I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna be negative on another game, but when we were on the Discord, people we were we were like, What what what do we play with seven? And somebody posted the serial meme, which is Sidreal confluence, which is not allowed in the house. So we weren't going to play that. But but and and it's and and I Sidreal's a good game. I just had a bad experience with it. But it what it what it it really reminds me is it's a negotiation game. I'm like, why would you ever sit down and do that when you can just go play Bonanza? Because the fun part of both of those games is the negotiation, but it's a different kind of negotiation. And Eke Tree, the game we talked about previously. It's almost kind of a screw your neighbor negotiation. And Bonanza, it's always what's best for me negotiation. What can I, you know, what can I do? And the trades, sometimes you do a bad trade in Bonanza. It's not an or not equitable trade. You do a non-equitable trade because it's the best thing for you and you get points. And ⁓ it was really fun ramping it up with with seven people. And then we started getting crazy with it, which I had never seen before in my plays. We were we we created we would have nothing to trade. The bead slot machine. Yeah. We would be like, well, if you're on your turn, when you flip cards, if it's one of my cards that comes up, then I get it. And and so we're we're making up derivative products. It's like 2008 financial crisis and bonanza. There was one point where I I owed No, Clef owed me one of these bean slot machines, which is when you flip your two cards, if it's something I want, you have to give it to me as a future, a future promise, which is completely non-binding, right? And I don't think anybody ever did it. I then traded away my rights to the slot machine to Cameron. ⁓ and Cameron asked Clef, So you're giving me the like if I if you flip something I want, I get it, right? And Clef's Yeah, yeah, sure. Clef's turn comes up, he flips something Cameron wants. And Cameron says, okay, I'm gonna take that. And he says, No, no, no, no. We didn't have a deal. James and I had a deal. James, do you want this bean? And I was like, No. And that was it. The bean slot machine, I think, broke at that moment. Somebody's like too far. Derivatives on bean slot machines? Are we shorting them? I mean, it was it was great. ⁓ I I you know, I I I really like this game a lot. It encourages trade, it has a low rules overhead. It's very, you know, I like the art. It's cute. It's easy to set up. It's not very long when you play it the way we play it. And that may be part of the thing. One of the things that our group does that it if you if you play this a lot is we gamify this one a little bit, right? We we hold on to our cards. Like at one point you had, I don't know, umpteen Kazillion coffee beans, and you knew the deck was gonna shuffle in and you chose not to turn in your coffee beans because You didn't want those in the next deck shuffle. And and that actually speeds up the game a lot. It does. You know, because there's not a lot in there. And everybody had a good time with this one. I I really like Bonanza. And it's seven. I mean, terrific. My favorite seven player game. And there's really no, well, maybe there's a new competitor coming down, coming down here. But I have never, there's no never been another game that I'm like, ⁓ we have seven, boom, bonanza every single time. Just slam it up. We need to try to get the community to recognize that this needs to get higher up in the dumb madness. You know, Med Medina did it this year, which is Yeah. I listen, I've been beating the drum, beating the bean drum for years and people are not listening. In fact, I just had to come to its defense over on the Punchboard Paradise Discord because Clef talked about it and someone was like, It's not even a game, it's just a deck of cards. ⁓ that cut me deep. That cut me deep. Because I saw that. I I I think I typed a lot of words that I had to delete because it's like so it's not a game if it's not this goes right back to that freaking BGG post somebody just shared. It's not a game if it's not full of plastic and cardboard and stuff. Like, don't even get me started. Bonanza is ten times the game most games released today hope to be with with only a deck of cards. It is a masterclass on a rich, full game experience. It is not just a dumb Trading game. It's a game. No, it's it's it's a negotiation and it it it's kind of like ⁓ Porta we talk about Porta Banana later, but Porta banana and QE. Porta banana took the best part of QE and distilled it down. Bonanza takes the best part of those negotiation games and puts it in there so you have all that fun. And it is a game though where you gotta be a little bit loud though. You gotta speak up. Yeah, you gotta speak up in that one. ⁓ bonanza gets me passionate. Okay, enough with the beans. ⁓ we played Bauerenschlau. We had six players. I'm always happy to pull out Bauerenschlau when we get to six players. I really want to have the full six player count because of the way the board works. ⁓ you know, this is a dead simple game. The real shine of the game comes in the shared fences. Me yelling at my neighbors, do your part. We're not gonna finish our fences and we can't win, right? And of course, the little okie doke of staring across the table as Steve looks at a chit. puts it in his own farm and go and and that someone says out loud, that was definitely a black sheep and Steve's sweating bullets, right? I know I should just pick up my chits and go, hey, it's a black sheep, everybody. Everybody knows I'm pretty I'm pretty transparent. There's a lot of a lot of talk about this game on the show in the past. I'm not gonna explain rules to it. And a lot you can find a lot in the Discord about it too, but Terrific old 1991 game from Tom Sheps that delivers so many good little bursts on those on those I gotcha flips, right? It's also a very hard to it's very hard game to finish. And like to to you know, you have to finish to compete in the game. It's hard to finish because you get distracted fighting, elbowing your neighbor when you're like, we gotta build our fence. You know, I I love that about it. And it's yeah, I thought it was a real easy teach. That's a it's got really, you know, it's very easy rules. Mm-hmm. It's very easy to introduce to a group, which I think makes it a good con game too, right? You there's not a lot of overhead it. The game kind of gets out of the way after you and lets you just play it. All right, well, that that's we're gonna go to the other end of the spectrum of easy to teach. Put some more stuff in that box. Put some more stuff in there. Yeah, we're gonna go to my what I think is this may be my favorite game now. It's always been on my top three, but we got a chance ⁓ to play John Company. And I will always play John Company whenever there's an opportunity to play John Company. ⁓ you you've talked about it a lot on the show too, but it's a 2022 Cole Worley game. And every time I play it, ⁓ right after we get done, I mean, we could play a five hour game of John Company. And when I'm done, I'm like, let's just rack it and play again. I would totally do that any, any, any day of the week. ⁓ you know, I and it's really around the stories. I don't actually remember that much that happened in the game, other than the fact that. You somehow managed to pull off a win with no retirements. This is true. Which was amazing. And you had this huge wad of money the entire game. This is also true. And I do remember that Kirk was really quiet. So I like to do Saturday game days because Kirk comes out from Lawrence and he won't always make the weeknights, but he came out. And I don't know. For some reason, I just don't remember that much about this game. I really should because I like it so much. But I just remember Kirk did something and India exploded because of what Kirk did. And that's one of the reasons why I love this game too. He did. Well, here's here's my here's my memory. And again, we've played a lot of games in the last like three weeks. ⁓ the company was flying high. We were making a ton of money. Matt was the chairman in his first ever game. He was paying out divs. I mean, he was all we're making money. Yeah, that's where I got a lot of my money. Cause I think I had two shares to start the game and he had three. So he was just paying divs. I was advising him as one does. ⁓ But it just doesn't take much to crash and burn, right? We were dealing with India fine. We were kind of getting a little too big for our britches with ⁓ governorships starting. It's always that always creates a threat because now we own territory. We were making money, and then I think it was like one bad event. It it was I remember who was who was seated on my right? Who was our original chairman? Was it It was Matt. No no, sorry. Who was our original prime minister? ⁓ ⁓ yeah, no, no. Was it Josiah or whoever was to my right? Yeah, it was Josiah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ yeah. No, I killed that bill. I killed that tax that was military bill. The military spending bill where we were going to get because I didn't want to pay a tax. Exactly. And that was kind of the little, the little pebble that started rolling down the hill because we had to flip another law, and it ended up being a law that shut down all our ports, which was kind of the beginning of the end. Well, we had to fight to get those ⁓ open. Yep. It was the famine one. And I didn't want to I wanted to vote that down too because I didn't want to pay taxes. Meanwhile, Kirk ended not paying taxes. Kirk found himself the new military affairs ⁓ commander where he got to disperse the armies and he ended up doing something I I don't even know why. I don't know. I don't know if it's I think I he was one of the game. I don't know. He basically made it so we were unable to defend our territory just by the way he split up everybody. Yeah, no, he just moved all these guys out of the way. That's what he did. He moved all the guys. And what you know, what's really interesting to me about that when I play it is there's a historical aspect of this game, too, that really intrigues me. That's part of the reason why I like it so much. And it's fun for me, that's fun's the wrong word. It's interesting, I think is a better word. It's interesting to see the motivations of the players. Because in those particular cases, that was the law that was the famine for, you know, paying relief for famine for India. Well, if you know me in real life, that's the kind of thing I'd be like, totally, we need to go do that. Like, that's that's important. We need to go help people. But in the game, it was gonna cost me a lot of money. So I didn't want it to happen. And so that game sets up those motivations that gives you that historical aspect in the stories while also delivering a really strong game. Sounds familiar. Sounds I play Joko any day of the world. Love love to help the people, but I just not from my money, not from my money. ⁓ you know, I think that's what I continue to love about John Company so much is it everything can be good and then it can crumble really fast. It's incredibly tactical, and you have to be willing and able to shift gears at the snap of your fingers to capitalize on the current situation. And that's what I did. I bought a luxury and then the next year I bought two luxuries. And that's the only reason I won the game is because those are points. I got six points right there, and I won the power award and that That's the only that's how I won the game. That was it. ⁓ you just have to be you know, it's easy for me to say when I had a bucket full of cash to shift gears and do what you need to do. But that was the situation I was in. So it was it was terrific. ⁓ Scott did say at the end of this game that he will never play John Company again. So we have we have officially lost him. He already did not like to play John Company, so I guess, yeah. Put that one in the eighteen XX pile or what? Yeah, that's a that's a Dome Kong game now, James. Perfect. Because you need cause unlike 18, like there's a few days we can get 18xx together if there's just three of us, if like Scott's unavailable or somebody else is unavailable, we could talk Kirk into it or something. But you need like a ton of people to play Joko. So like that ain't happening. You don't. Four four is a tremendous game as well. I will just say Yeah, that's fair. I I just It's not getting played again for a while. I think we flew, we flew too close to the sun. You know, we knew we knew what we were doing. So we we got ours in. We got it in. All right. ⁓ next game up is Shark. We played the Flying Turtle version. This is 1987 by H. Jean Vene. I've never said that name before on the show. ⁓ this was Scott's version. He has the Flying Turtle. I love how ugly and barren that version of the game is. I love that game too. It's great. It is, I mean, big, solid. Colored shares, cheap little plastic thumbtack markers. It it actually perfectly complements the game, which is a very basic premise. You know, it's a lot of acquire with dice is kind of the vibe of this game of where you get to place stuff and what color you have to place is beholden to the dice. ⁓ once we ironed out the rules again, for some reason Scott has like three different rule books in his box just to ruin our lives, I think. ⁓ but we were off and cooking and it was a great play. We had a lot. This is a different play. A lot of similar size companies that were threatening each other, like the whole game. Like we had a red of size six next to a green of size six, next to a yellow of size six. So whatever color popped and could build in that magic spot, it could gobble the other one up. So you saw a lot of people divesting on their turn for safety and then buying back in, you know, very cautiously. So we had ⁓ at one point, it felt like Nobody had shares and everyone just had their money in front of them because everyone was just getting out and then they'd buy in, they'd roll dice. Nope, didn't get it. Get rid of these shares. And I it sounds so degenerate, but it works in shark. It it does. If you haven't played this, I really think people it you know, I I don't I'm not a huge fan of a choir, but I really like this and they're very similar. So I if you haven't got a chance to play this, I think there'll probably be a copy at Dome Con. You should really try to give this a try. I think I ended up I think that was the only game I won. I'm I don't I don't keep stats, so I don't remember if I won or not, but I divested early and had a big stack of cash, like you said, in this game. It was it was really good. I really like ⁓ we put the X on the die if you get it. Just for people who do get it. We took the whatever version Scott has didn't have this. We put the X on the die, which is move the lowest company up on the die roll. Because if you haven't played it before or rather. Rather place place a marker for the lowest company. Yeah, play place a marker for the lowest company on the board. Which, you know, i i people who complain about rolling the die for the lowest marker on the the company that has the lowest share value, there's a fifty fifty shot you're gonna get that company when you put that X on the die. Because there's a while, there's the color of the of the marker, and then there's the move the lowest marker. I'd play this any day in the week too. This is a great one game. I really love this and it goes to six, I I believe, which makes it a a you know, a very flexible game that I would play anytime. I still need to get a copy. I'm still butthurt about I got a copy and it was missing like eighty percent of the shares. Yeah. There's like nothing in it. It got refunded, but I'm still like, okay, I want my shark. This one's on my maybe P and P list. I might, I might try to take a stab at trying to P and P. I can see that because you could you could even just use You know, just cubes and cubes and shares. I have I have I bought a bunch of little meeples to use for a different P and P and I might use that. Ooh. Meeples. For for doing a silly AI startup. Not endearing me already with the meeple talk, Steve. Yeah, I like little meeples. So they're really tiny. They're like all right, Steve. This is the big one you've been waiting at. Yeah, I want to talk about it. Go for it. Yeah. ⁓ we're gonna talk about Shadow Hunters, which is ⁓ Yasu Taka Akita. From 2005, who also happens to be. I didn't realize this till you told me this and looked at I didn't realize it till I stumbled upon it on BGG. He is the designer of Shikoku 1889. And he doesn't have that many titles. He's got I was looking at it at the hotel yesterday. He's got this, he's got some stock dice game. Which I bought we're playing on Thursday without you. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. And then and then he's got some like war game that he did for a magazine. It's a really weird kind of group of things that he has. So I I this one has a special place in my heart. I I talked about, you know, I used to play in Houston ⁓ with a group of guys. I I've been gaming since 2007, I think. And they would host every Friday night. They feed everybody. That's where I got my hosting from as Jim and Tron would feed everybody. And we that was when it was a very large group. We'd have anywhere from 15 to 20 people show up on game night every Friday. And so inevitably at the end of the night at two o'clock in the morning, somebody would bust out Shadow Hunters. And this is a time when there weren't a lot of other, if you cast your mind back to 2008, 2007, Werewolf and Mafia were the only kind of social deduction games. This is a little bit of a social deduction game. So I'm gonna spend a little bit of time because we haven't talked about in the show. Basically, there are three, there were there were three factions. There's a good faction, a bad faction, and a neutral faction. And we played with seven, so we have You know, we we we put out three good guys, three bad guys, and two neutrals. By the way. They're called shadows, bad guys, hunters, hunters, good guys, and humans or something. No neutrals. They're just called. Steve didn't Steve didn't tell us this during the teach, by the way. He's saying you're either a good guy or a bad guy. I'm looking at my frickin' card going, It says hunter. I don't even Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Because we didn't have you didn't give us any context yet. You just good guys and bad guys. I was trying, yeah, I didn't do the best each. So I'm like, I don't know what team I'm on yet, but I'm gonna figure it out. Yeah. So it it what what really makes it work is is you you get you get these characters and your turn is very simple. You roll the dice, you move to one of six cards, you go to one of those areas. When you land on that area, you can either draw a white card. Which is a good card, a black card, which has weapons or does damage. And then really the game has these cards called hermit cards, which are green. And that's part of the social deduction aspect. When you get a hermit card, you pick it up, you read it, and then you give it to another player. And you're reading it to learn. And the the cards will say something like, I bet you're a hunter. If you are, take one damage. Or I bet you're a shadow. If you're a shadow, give me your piece of your equipment. And that's how you learn a little bit about who the players are. You get one of these cards, you look at it, you read it, and then you hand it to another player, and then you see what happens to them. That's one aspect of finding out who they are. Every the only other aspect of the game is everybody has hit points and they range from eight to 13 or 8 to 14. And it's public knowledge, it's printed on the board what everybody's hit points are for the different people. So you can see them go up. And part of your turn is you move, you get a card if you move to the right spot, unless you moved it where James went. James rolled the same thing every turn. We just got just got the one where you either hurt somebody a point or heal somebody a point. Pretty boring game for you. No, it was not. I loved it. And and and then you can also attack people in your zone. So the the two cards, there's six cards. There's there's ⁓ six locations, and they're grouped by twos. And when you're in those locations, you can attack anybody that's on those two cards in that location. And the attacks are kind of fun. There, it's a D6 and a D4. And you roll the dice and you take the difference and you do that much damage to them. And so also watching people's hit points is also how you learn who people are. Because if they die, they they flip up their card and say, I'm dead. Yeah. Or it triggers people. Every character in the game has a special power. And you can only use your special power when it's revealed. And most players you can reveal at any time. And that gets into well, I'll save that for a minute. It's like one of the one of the bad, like I was a werewolf. I was the bad guy, werewolf, bad guy. And my special power is when somebody attacks me and I can attack them back. Well, for the first three quarters of the game, I don't tell anybody who I am because I don't want them to know I'm bad guy. But once we're getting towards the end and we've eliminated some people, it's best for me to flip over my card and then use my power. So there's a really strong decision in the game. By the end of the game, everybody's gonna have their cards flipped. Is generally what I've seen. And so the real decision is when do I flip over my card to get to use my power to try to push the game over? When do I take my shot? And I always like games where it's like, I gotta go take my shot. and and so it becomes a kind of a quick social deduction game that has some gaming in it. The neutral characters really make the game. Matt played a character called, I'm not gonna go into all the characters, but Matt played a character called Daniel, and it's a really interesting character. The neutrals have their own win conditions. The the shadows, the bad guys win if all the good guys are dead. The hunters win if all the bad guys are dead. The neutrals all have their own individual win condition and they really change the dynamic at the table. So Daniel is the one that he wants to die first. If he dies first, he wins the game. If he but as soon as another player dies, if any other player dies in the game, he flips over his card and reveals who he is. And then he has to then he has to then he's basically on the hunter on the hunter team for the rest of the game. And I just noticed that that we were whacking on Matt and he was getting up there. And I'm like, wait a second, if he's Daniel, the game's over. So we had to stop whacking on Matt. In fact, we we thought Matt was a bad guy, the those of us who thought we were good guys. And we were literally ⁓ pounding the table chanting, kill Matt, kill Matt, kill Matt. And then Steve's like, Hold on, you guys might not want to kill Matt because he shows us who he could be. Because we're all we all kind of blind for our first play, right? Yeah. And then he's like, if if he's Daniel and he dies first, he wins the game. Don't kill Matt. Don't kill Matt. Don't kill Matt. it was so good. It was, I I just couldn't believe how much I liked this, right? The pitch had never properly like gotten through for me. But as we're sitting down and Steve's giving us our roles. And then I'm realizing the whole thing is really dice rolls. Like you roll to see what location you go to to see what kind of card you're gonna get or or you know, information you're gonna get. I think saying social deduction is probably risky thing that could turn people off. Where I'd call this more of a variable team game, right? An unknown variable team game. Like a game like Moo or Doppelkoff, like you I don't know what interesting. But I gotta figure out a way to win the game. ⁓ versus like a social deduction of a you know blood on the clock tower, things like that. There's certainly some of that, but it's more information finding than it is like staring them at but I'm saying these things. That was in the first play. In the second play, now that I know Daniel's a thing, man, if I'm a bad guy or a good, like I have so many things I can pretend to be now. Just to mess up the table. Now, of course, like a game of blood on the clock tower, you're gonna be risking your own butt if you pretend to be something that's actually in play. But if you are willing to go, you know, that way and and try to convince someone, and if I can convince them more than you can convince them, it doesn't matter. I could sell myself until those hermit cards come out. You just gotta dodge them properly. But then there's a guy who can lie about the hermit cards, which Yeah, that's what Cameron was. He could do anything, basically. Yeah, he he was funny. very, very cool. I I'm so excited to play again. ⁓ because I I couldn't believe how fun this was. This this game and Bad Bets and ⁓ Aqueduct and so many other games, they have me thinking, what other games might just be better with dice? Yeah. Because you you know, this is essentially like this ⁓ hidden info, hidden team. Let's call it Battlestar Galactica, right? Figuring out who's on what side and trying to kill ⁓ But with dice, you know? And in 45 minutes. And in forty five minutes. Like, can I just put dice in every game? Yeah, I would I would like to have dice in every game. I mean, I think I that works. I I I really like this one. I've liked it because it's got nostalgia. I'm glad that it kind of hit at the table. Our table was pretty, they had a fun time with it. I don't know that everybody's gonna have a fun time with it. The one thing I will say is if you go out and get this thing, which is really hard to get, it's like 150 bucks. Impossible. On it's impossible to get. Is the the cards use like one point font on them? Yeah, they're poor. It is a poor production. I would not recommend buying it. I would wait till Steve makes a new redraw of it. Yeah, I'm gonna try to do a K pop Demon Hunters one for Dome Kong. We'll see how It's made for K pop Demon Hunters. It really is. It really is. Jake's we're getting the ball rolling on this. James is gonna enlist his niece to help us retheme the cards. And then we'll we're gonna make Clef Junior developer and we'll get it, we'll get it done. It was so much fun. And it goes it goes to eight, which is crazy. Nothing goes to eight. Like Yeah, and and it's by the same guy who did Shikoku 1889. Right. ⁓ and owner's choice, which is the name of that dice in stock game. Man, I read I read the rules. It doesn't seem very good. So we'll see what happens. Okay. ⁓ okay. Two more. Kind of. Three, three more. I don't know how to group these. We played Magical Athlete and Hot Streak over some of these gaming days, right? High player count was it was something we had. What can we get in? Let's play some silliness. And we got plays of both over those weeks. ⁓ Magical Athlete. The CMYK package is just so much smoother than my overblown PP, which I'll likely never play again at this point, because it just works so much better to have this condensed set of characters. You can still get annoying combos of characters with the lols getting stuck in like forever endless loops, and it's funny. But you know, the draft is quick, the play is snappy. I really like it. hot streak components are great. Components are great. It's a little fiddly, like doing like the dump out the pieces, like find your guy. I don't I don't love that part, but it's a necessity if you're gonna have unique pieces. That's the necessity of of what we're doing. ⁓ Hot Streak also made an appearance for the first time in a while as well. ⁓ you know, it's a little more gamey with the investing versus just the dice rolling, but then it can kind of be a bummer like to me in hot streak how quickly you're done playing, right? You make three decisions per race. I'll bet on this. I'll bet on this. I'll put this card in. I'm done. Versus at least in Magical Athlete, I get to stay engaged the whole time by rolling my dice, even though I only make, you know, three or four decisions up front of who I'm gonna who I'm gonna draft and then what order I'm gonna use them in. They're similar in that regard, but I think I would rather still be engaged rolling dice than just watching the race. It again, comparing the two of them. against each other because similar games by the same company. So that that's why I'm comparing them. Yeah, and that's and it's interesting because I think I maybe fall on the other side of that. I think they're both good games. I had never played Magical Athlete before, so I really wanted I'm really glad we got it played. I enjoyed it. I love the components. I love, you know, I'm all about roll and move these days. I think roll and move has got a bad name. We played several games in this list that are roll and move, whether that's You know, in in a way, whether that is ⁓ Shadow Hunters is rolling move, Magical Athlete has roll and move, Nord Peanuts has roll and move, but they're good rolling moves. What I what I just felt like Magical Athlete overstayed its welcome a little bit too long. ⁓ it you know, in some of the races it became pretty apparent who was gonna win and who was gonna be last. I think maybe what soured it for me was ⁓ I don't know if it was you or somebody else got that one card, drafted that one guy that's You get the points up front. Yeah. If I did. Now I'm I did horrible. That was the only points I scored. I didn't finish first or second in any races. So I just I was that guy. I got like four points. And if I rolled ones, I had to give a point back and I never rolled any ones. But I didn't score any other points. I don't think I scored any points either. And I didn't have that card with my guys. It's it's so hard because like both of these games are so unserious. But they take a little more time than they need to for their level of unserious when we have Puerto Banana sitting right there. That's true. Like we can play Puerto Banana, which is unserious, but it's faster, it's more fun, it's more engaging, and you make a lot more decisions in it. And and I could l list probably five to ten more Puerto Bananas. Or or Bad Bats. I mean Bad Bats fits in the same category. Over Magical Athlete and Hot Streak. They have Toy Factor, which is gonna be a huge thing for certain groups and for extending to family gaming and things like that, right? But for like sometimes I feel like I wasted my time playing magical athlete or hot streak that could have been playing something dumb, fun, and fast that also lets me make decisions while we're doing it. Yeah, I don't I don't think it's an every week game, but we pulled out we had played we played a bunch of hot streak when it first came out because I remember that I even made the bun banger ⁓ hot dogs. ⁓ that's right. With the with the walnuts and the plum jam. We had them. ⁓ it was actually pretty tasty. It was pretty tasty. The guys were really good about that. But we hadn't played, so it's probably been about a year since we played hot streak. It might have been since Dome Con, honestly. I don't remember. And I I really ⁓ maybe it's just me. I really, really enjoyed our hot streak play. ⁓ it was a lot of fun. It's I feel like you're in the race. That's the fun part to me is watching the race, is watching what happens to the stupid toys if they fall down or don't fall down when you flip the cards over. And everybody at the table's engaged in that. So I don't think it's an every week game. Like porta banana like an every week game. You could play that thing every week at the end of game night. We're gonna talk about it in a minute, but you could, you know, every every every week, I don't think I'm ever gonna get forward to playing Porta Banana. Hot streaks maybe like a once every couple of months pull it out and have fun with it. But man, I really had a blast with it when we played it. Yeah, there was some good shouting and moments in it. I I did ⁓ exclaim when I think Hurley got ran off the track. So Yes. Hurley Okay. Hurley's always disappointment. ⁓ He certainly is. We've said the word banana twenty times. So I'll talk about our ten plays of Porta Banana that we've logged in the last month. ⁓ man, I love Porta Banana. And it's it's so great. ⁓ what I it it's interesting to get new players in it. I think almost every play, I mean we've had a few with our group, but this last time we had new people in it, and it's always interesting to see new people. Either one of two things happens, either they're completely fall behind, and everybody's bidden like ⁓ 800, and this this poor guy's I'm 123. But we we played it with seven, which was fun because you got your boats out and mixed them with my boats. So we had enough boats for everybody to play. And we got up to what was it, 24,000? I think that the winning the that was the highest I've ever seen in my plays. And yes, 24,000 nine nine nine, I think, was the winning bid. And and and that guy didn't even win. That was my bid. It didn't win. The second place player won. Because you overbid. Because I overbid. And then I had to play it, and I get and that's how Clef won. So ⁓ the funny thing was, you know what actually pushed us to the that stratosphere of bidding? It was a long game of Puerto Banana, it was probably 30 plus minutes because people kept busting. That that was the big thing. People kept overshooting, which led to a lot of people heading to zeros, which led to the economy raising itself even more than usual because everyone was. was resetting so everyone was like, I gotta get back in it. I gotta get back in it. And and everybody could get back in it because somebody had like a hundred and fifty bananas or something. Yeah. So there was always like two turns two rounds. You could win and win. You can win. Yeah. So man, I I really, I really like Porta Banana. I hope it gets I hope plus Justin owes me all votes for Porta Banana for the rest of his life. ⁓ I just hope it makes the tournament next year because if it I hope it does the tournament, anything can happen. I'll we'll wager. We'll we'll Mortgage our houses. We'll do whatever it needs needs to happen. Because it's the year of the banana in twenty twenty seven. It is. Is I want Josh to show up in a big he showed up in a big ⁓ hot dog suit last year. ⁓ maybe maybe shows up in a big in a big ⁓ how about you show up in a in a banana suit. I don't think they make banana suits large enough to fit me. Josh Josh would be a good banana. He's a tall, he's a tall dude. He would be good. It just never gets old, right? And everyone knows bananas only get better as they ripen anyway. I don't know. Let me ask you, what's your desired banana level of that you eat? So I actually like them pretty ripe. And and I'm a I'm a little bit brown. I want to see a little brown. And then to me because they're sweeter. Those sugars come out. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're good. My wife, I my wife is like a green banana person. So I don't like that. That's I have to wait and see if the bananas even make it. Because she eats them then and I'm waiting for the brown ones. So yeah. My my wife, she devs it, she's if if they're going bad, she'll like it, she'll we're gonna freeze them. Toss them in the freezer for banana bread. And then and then all right. Well, we we make smoothies out of them. We'll make like fruit smoothies out of them. So yeah, it's the year of the banana. It's the year of the banana. All right. We're done. Hey, we did it. That was a lot of games, and we came in under 90 minutes, and I am super impressed with us. I am too. I I really appreciate being on the show, James. I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. I love gaming with you, Steve. I love coming to your hosted ⁓ gaming events at your house, and we're just gonna keep stacking them up. And ⁓ if you want to play with Steve, come to Dome Con. He'll be there. Staying, I'm staying on property this year. Staying on site. No, he's not running out every night. He'll be there playing games till 3 a.m. You got it. Maybe. ⁓ also. Happy Fourth of July, Americans. ⁓ hopefully all your fingers survived because you need those for board games and other things. But Yeah, don't don't shoot your eye out. No. I I say it in past tense because I think I'm gonna release this after the fourth of July. So if you lost a finger, sorry. Sorry. You could still probably do port up in Anna though. I bet you could. I don't know. It was your right hand or your writing hand, I guess I should say. Yeah. Alright, that's it. Steve, thanks for coming on the show. ⁓ everyone else, Dome Con. Not very much time left. One more month, and we'll be in the month of Dome Con. And it's it's go time, baby. All right, thanks. Thanks, guys. Alright, see ya everybody. Bye.