Latest / Operation Game Night / OGN Ep 20: Our Top 5 Game Mechanics (feat. Tara from Tara's Bad Luck Club)

Transcript

OGN Ep 20: Our Top 5 Game Mechanics (feat. Tara from Tara's Bad Luck Club) · Operation Game Night

• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Operation Gabe Knight podcast, now with new intro music, and by the time this publishes it with new intro music, and by the time this publishes, it'll be New Year.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Happy New Year, happy 2025,.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Gentlemen, joined with me, as always, is my co-hosts, clay Gable and Jared Erickson.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Clay, how are you doing?
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I'm doing great.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know, Can you guys see when it takes us off the stage and it starts playing that music Like can you see us?
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: No, no, oh because I can see you guys down there and just bob into the music and it's a whole vibe.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: All I see is the beautiful Operation Game Night podcast logo.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: But anyway, I'm here, I'm pumped.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: I'm glad to see you guys.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Hope you had a great Christmas.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, we did.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Jared, how are you Outstanding Recovering from a little tornado that tried to come for us here in Alabama?
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I thought tornadoes don't come around Christmas, you know.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I thought the Christmas season kind of put a squash to that.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know, is this what happens when you watch Wicked too many times?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: You just get sucked into it.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: How many times have you guys?
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: watched Wicked.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Only twice.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Zero times.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: I saw it in London.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: When we went to London I saw it once.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: He talked ill of it.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: He didn't stay for the rest of it.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I did not.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: You left mid-act.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: They wanted to.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: We stayed the whole time.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: We just decided that we're not huge theater people.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: We don't have the culture that you and Clay clearly have, because we got to the intermission and Rachel turned to me and said is it over?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: And she was standing up like she was about to walk out and I said, no, we're only halfway done.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we're just not big theater people.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: You went to the West End Went to West End and you saw Wicked, saw Wicked.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And you were done at halfway.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was After she tried to defy gravity yes, that's like the closing number of first act.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And you I mean first act, and you I mean it is probably my favorite.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So you, maybe you thought you climaxed, but you still have more to go.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: There's a whole second act, okay, yes, yes, yeah, I mean elphaba, the girl that played elphaba.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I wish I knew her name, but she had some serious pipes.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: She was just bringing the house down oh my god, it's just you haven't seen the movie, but you have not seen the movie but I.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I read that it's coming to streaming here in like a week.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Really that's dangerous.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I think we're getting our over the fence done early but it should be wicked themed.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you that.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it comes to streaming.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, next week comes to Prime and Apple streaming or whatever it is.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Is it Apple, not Apple Plus?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: What's it called Apple TV?
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Apple TV, apple TV, there you go.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: That's the one.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Adrian does have that one.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Hey guys, Our special guest is coming.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: She is going to hop on here in a minute.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, and we'll be ready to go.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Should we debrief her a week without her, or no?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Or are we restarting this whole thing?
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: we're not restarting, we're just gonna buy some time until she pops on so can you edit it?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: so it goes and then like boom, she, she appears, that type of thing.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Theoretically, I have the skills to do it, but do I have the wherewithal and patience?
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Nah, probably not.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Well then, while we wait, I do have a confession to make to you guys.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Wait, is this being cut, or are we live?
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, we're live.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: We're live.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I need to confess this to you, to you, my co-hosts, to you, my friends.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I have heard the siren song that calls to all board gamers once in their lifetime, I think I might be getting into Warhammer.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: No, I might be getting into Warhammer.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: No, so Clay was just talking about getting into freaking Magic Now you're getting into.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Warhammer, I know.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: We're falling apart here, guys.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: 2024.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: 2024, they had Warhammer 40k, space Marine 2, which is a video game, come out.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: I've played some Warhammer video games in the past and they've been of varying quality and enjoyment.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: This one is freaking awesome.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: It starts you off.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: You play as these big beefy Space Marines.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know a whole lot about the lore.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: All I know is that technology and religion and politics are all just jumbled together in this super futuristic society where, like, war is everything and the humans are trying to crush all these tyrannids which are like these lizard creature looking things that are coming from outer space.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: And you play as these space marines that are these giant hulking tanks of people in these giant suits of armor and you are just mowing down thousands of these lizard creatures as they run at you.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: These guys have huge armor everywhere.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, garrett's not into it.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: No, I can't wait to talk about hulky bulky Marines, hulky bulky Jess.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: So I've played video games where they give you uh, swords before.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, what if they gave you a sword that's also a chainsaw and then you got to cut lizards in half like holy.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: It's kind of cool it's kind of what weapons are the lizards holding?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: that's why uh, they have these.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: There's some of them that have these like little blasters, but a bunch of them are just trying to jump all over you.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Some of them have these big swords.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: They've got like big tanks that have like swords that come at you, uh, but you're like parrying these lizards as they try and jump at you.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: You're stomping them into the ground.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Uh, they have this parry system where it jumps at you and you can catch one in midair and swing it by its tail and like hit the other ones on the ground.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Oh so then you go to like the over hub world and you're on this big spaceship with all these other hulky, bulky marines running around.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, my god, like the first little thing that you interact with is like this floating skull with a laser eye that like scans you.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm kind of, I'm kind of into it.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: So the siren is calling hard and I just might need to have somebody teach me some warhammer stuff is this like a minifig game?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I, yes, I think it's like a tactics skirmish type game, uh, but I've only ever played the video games, so all I know is that it's like it's big enough to have its own store, like there are warhammer specific stores that you can go to, so yeah, so that's that huh, I dip my toe into some warhammer here soon okay, I, I'm, I'm throwing out a proposal.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: why don't you guys pitch to me magic and warhammer, koa analysis or whatever?
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Okay, which life-changing hobby do you like which?
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Rabbit hole should you go to?
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, neither is probably the right answer.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: But no, gabe, you know, gabe Martinez.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he messaged me the other day and said he was getting really into Warhammer.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: You heard me.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: He messaged me it day and said he was getting really into Warhammer.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: You heard me.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: He messaged me.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: It's all the rage right now.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Did he tell you anything about his baby?
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: Because I'm dying to hear I don't ask about childs.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: They're of no concern to me.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I might need to ask him.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to reach out to him.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: I want to know about he's getting into Warhammer.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: He said he's like super into it.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: He sent me some videos.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did a, I did a secret standout one time and the guy uh, he wrote in his description that he was like getting into painting warhammer figures, which is all I know about warhammer is just people paint these figures, and so I was looking for like books on warhammer, and the book that I got this guy is like a freaking tome.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: It was like a thousand pages of just Warhammer lore and pictures and stuff and I know it goes pretty deep.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: So that's a world.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a whole thing.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: It's it's a vibe, it's a vibe.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Listen, if there's one thing I know about myself, it's I can get into things, and I am just terrified that I can get into things.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: And I am just terrified that I might get into Warhammer, because collecting board games is bad enough space-wise, but I feel like Warhammer.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: You got to have a whole table right.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: You got to have terrain set up and a big area where they can battle.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: I went over to somebody's house a long time ago and they had just this big Warhammer table with mountains and terrain and and they would, yeah, like I don't remember what it was made of, but it could have been paper mache yeah, you're basically like doing a futuristic dungeons and dragons skirmish thing where you're like measuring line of sight and you're like measuring out distances between troops and like it seems really involved.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: but I just know that people get really into painting all this stuff Terrain and vehicles and characters.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I kind of like it.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: We've got to find a hobby after we retire.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: It can sustain you.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: It ain't going to be golfing, that's for sure.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: The song is calling hard and we'll see.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we might have to disband Operation Youngest.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I have no reason to get into it now because I don't have anybody to play with, but I would need a Sherpa to guide me through all the lore and the actual game itself, because I don't know anything about it and it's not something that you can.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: You can just show up and say I'd like to play a game of Warhammer.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: You have to watch, you know like, understand what's going on before you even set foot in the in the room.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: So we'll see.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Well let's get some neck beards on here.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I'm working on mine.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: It's a pretty good neck beard?
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you think so.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: It's not anywhere near the thickness of Travis's.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I was about to say Travis, you got yours shaped up.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Your hair is looking strong.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Are you using a product?
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I got my hair cut the other day.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I'm slowly transitioning back into the real world, so I got my hair cut for the first time in two months, beard's coming off in just a matter of a couple of days.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: So back to the real world.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: It's going to be tough for us.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're going to lose a lot of viewers.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: When you cut that beard, youtube numbers are going to drop off drastically.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Oh man, Been setting me as the splash image on all of our videos.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, been setting me as the splash image on all of our videos.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the hulky air force space warrior space warrior just need a chainsword what's your show and tell?
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I'm interested.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: I was going to do it during the debrief because it's part of the part of the board game geek secret santa that it during the debrief because it's part of the part of the board game geek secret Santa that I wanted to debrief should we just over the fence real quick?
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Sure, let's do, let's go over the fence first.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Well, hey, flexibility is the key to air power so over the fence right, come back inside the fence and then we'll debrief and do our mission objective sometimes I like to have dessert, since we're all.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Since we're already kind of out of out the fence right now, I would like to say I I could be a lego guy, like if I wasn't already so into board games.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: My kids got a ton of legos for christmas and I've been sitting down and working on them with them and time just evaporates when you're like going like I'm working on this thousand piece, uh atat, star wars lego and I just sit there a page, get a brick, put it where it's supposed to be.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: Next page get a break and it's.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: It's like meditative and yeah, it's great.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: I I don't know if I can sustain two, two hobbies like that, but if I, if I can like Legos are going to be the next thing because they come out with some pretty cool stuff.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Like I go through target and I'm seeing like a giant Vader head or you know these awesome looking creations and yeah, Legos are sweet and they really do just take you to another place for a little bit where all you can think about is what brick you're trying to find and where it needs to go on the thing.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: And it's wonderful for someone who has trouble not just having rampant thoughts running in their head to just sit there and follow an instruction and just keep doing it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I'm big into Legos right now.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Have you tried paint by colors?
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: That might also be good for you.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: It probably would be so what other sets did they get besides the AT-AT?
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: A bunch of Star Wars sets, I think.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: I've gotten Rachel a couple of the botanicals, the Lego botanicals they have bouquets of flowers that you build out of Legos.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Those are pretty cool.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: And then they also have the Lego architecture, which is like monuments from across the world, like famous buildings and stuff.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Those are awesome.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I really enjoy those ones too those are awesome.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's my over the fence.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I am a brick.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Do Legoers have like a slime name for them?
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Brickheads, Brickheads is that what it is?
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I bet.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Let's get bricked up.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: That's my over the fence.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Beautiful Wait, is something happening?
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: No, our special guest is here.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Hello, I'm so sorry, tara.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: What's up Tara?
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Beautiful Wait, is something happening?
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: No, our special guest is here.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: Hello, I'm so sorry, tara.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: What's up Tara?
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: welcome.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the party.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Live from Austin, texas.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: We got Tara in the house from.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: Tara's Bad Blood.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: Club.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: Hello, hello.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: What's happening?
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Go ahead.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Travis Tara.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: This episode is about our favorite mechanisms or mechanics in board games, and we wanted you to come on and talk some board games with us.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: We love the content that you put out, and so just take a brief moment and tell people who you are, how you got into the hobby, maybe what your favorite game is, anything like that.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Just brief introduction.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: Sure, so I'm Tara.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: You can find me at Tara's Bad Luck Club on Instagram.
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: There is also a Tara's Bad Luck Club YouTube coming very soon in this month, so you can check me out there.
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: What got me into board games?
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've been playing my whole life just like most people, but you know, like Pictionary um Stratego was like a big family game we had um, and then after moving to Austin, I started playing Ticket to Riot and Catan a bit.
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: But it was actually when my friend backed uh, dice Throne that I ended up getting super into gaming.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: Like Dice Throne, really like awarding something within me and I was like I need more of this.
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: And yeah, I went to my one local game store and like went in and talked to the guy and was like I just played this game and I want more.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: And he was like I literally don't know what to do with that.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: That's one game I don't know.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: And then, yeah, it's just been a downward, upward spot.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: I don't know you've spiraled one.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Well, welcome, we're happy to have you other.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Welcome, we're happy to have you.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite game that you want to shout out?
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: I'm actually going to talk about two of my favorite games.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, we'll hold it then.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: No, I won't do that, yeah, yeah.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, Tara, she drove me off of my Cardboard and Clay account.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: You know people like her posting these awesome Instagram reviews and pictures, and I was like I can't keep up with these people.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to talk to my friends on a podcast instead.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it happens, it's going to count.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Check her out Paris medley club.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I did see she did like a like a mystery murder night.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, my friends and I, yeah, we did a murder mystery dinner thing.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Um yeah, that was a lot of fun it was, it was like it was a little hard because it was like scripted and so we weren't really sure like how scripted it was.
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: So like, since it was all of our first ones, like trying to get into it was a little difficult um I also had an issue where I was at somebody else's house hosting it, and when I turned on the oven to heat or to roast vegetables for the party, I did not realize that there was plastic cutting boards stored in the oven, so I did cause a little bit of a catastrophe with a house full of people yikes uh, that's all right, that's chaos right there was this like a?
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: was this a pre-boxed like uh, murder mystery game night, or was?
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: this um, it was from university games.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: They sent it to me.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: Um, yeah, they had reached out to me and asked if I wanted anything, and I looked at their uh game catalog and saw they have like, uh, like 10 different ones.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: Um, and yeah, they're really cute.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: They actually just sent me another one, like a cocktail murder mystery thing, so I'm excited for that.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: It's just been hard to plan with the holidays.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: So, um, yeah, now that that's all settling down, I'm going to get some friends together and do another one.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Cool, that sounds awesome.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: Uh, so you're all over the place, you.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: You went to all types of conventions, right?
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Uh yeah, I just got back from Philly.
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: I was at PAX Um and then, like a week or two before PAX, was BGG Fall in Dallas and since I'm in Austin it's only a couple hours, so I was there, I did Gen Con and I usually do Dice Tower West in the spring out in Vegas.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: What's the best?
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: What's your favorite?
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: I really like Dice Tower West.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: Honestly, I get to see a lot of friends from California that don't make it to some other conventions and it's just like that and BGGCon, the focus is on gaming, so it's really nice.
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: Like at PAX, I was really busy with like meetings the whole time so I didn't really get to like settle down and play games with friends very much.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: It's a lot more like like networking stuff.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I really like the ones when I can just like sit and chill and play games the whole weekend.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Hell, yeah yeah.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: We went to Dice Tower West two years three years ago now, oh nice, that was a lot of fun.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Library is insane.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: That was unbelievable.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: There's like 6,000 games that you can check out and play and I just love how everyone is so willing to have some random person sit down at the table with them and teach a game, or have them teach them a game, or you know.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: People are all very welcoming and accepting and it's just a cool atmosphere.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what I take my daughter to with me and she's like a bit older than your kids.
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: Clay actually met her.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: She's 14.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and she like has described me before as like a dad at home depot where, like we can't make it through the room without me like stopping and talking to somebody like yeah hey, what do you think of this?
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Uh, here, yeah, two by four all about anybody in here these days yeah, oh geez yeah, cue the Ron Swanson.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: I know more than you.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, excellent.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: So are you familiar with our show and how it works?
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: Yes, I'm like, I think, one episode behind on your recent episode.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for listening.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: We are going to debrief our weeks.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: We're going to fall in on the mission objective and talk about our favorite mechanisms and board games, and then we're going to go outside the wire over the fence and we're going to talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Sound good, Cool.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: So why don't you start us off?
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Debrief your week in gaming for us Anything.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: You've played, anything.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: You've bought, anything that you got for Christmas.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Tell us about your weekend gaming.
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: So I was a little worried I wouldn't have like much to talk about.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: I did take like a bit of a break from gaming In my head.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: I took a break from gaming because we just got back from a really big road trip over Thanksgiving.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: We were gone for like three weeks but I did play Spirit Island last night, which I haven't gotten tabled in a while.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: I was really excited.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: I played with this one girl in Austin I just recently became friends with, and her boyfriend's like a bit of a board gamer and he hasn't played it in like four years.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: So he was like do you think she has Spirit Island and can bring it over?
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: And I was like I absolutely do.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: So we played that last night, which was a lot of fun.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: My friend, she's not a huge gamer and she and once we started going you know how it is she picked it up and by the end of it she was like all right, I like this, we can do this again for sure.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: Every year my daughter and I do the exit advent calendar.
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you've ever done them.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: They are legitimately so fun.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: I love them.
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: I look forward to it every year.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: But we were a little bit behind, so the day it was either christmas night or the day after christmas we like ended up doing 10 of them in a row to finish them, but they're so and then the last thing I've been playing is my daughter also loves decorum a lot and we got the moving out expansion a couple weeks ago, which is like a two player.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: It's not like a campaign so much, but kind of, I guess it's just like a.
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: They're just scenarios, but you're supposed to work through them in order.
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: So we've been working through that.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: We're through like four or five of them now very nice, nice.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Hey, my wife and I married.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: We got the exit advent calendar and we it is awesome.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: I just don't know why we forget to do it every day.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Because we're on like day 10 and it's now past Christmas and I bring it up and after we've already positioned ourselves on the couch for the night to watch TV, I'm like, oh, we should do one, and they're only supposed to take five minutes.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: But Mary's so freaking stubborn she won't look at the hints, and so we end up sitting there for like 30 minutes while she tries to figure this out and I'm like, waving the hint booklet in front of her, like let's go, come on.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's super cool and I hope we will finish it, but it's certainly going to take some time probably.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: But you forget the first rule of mary that, uh, she can do no wrong.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: So and that's a true statement, I don't care when you guys were chirping about when the presents are coming, the presents come.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: When the presents come, mary can do no wrong.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: Geez, all right Fine.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to shout out Mary, a little bit later too.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: She better be listening to this one.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: She doesn't.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: That hit her in his dream we're losing our family and friends, so, yeah, hopefully somebody's out there listening.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Excellent, well, thanks, tara.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Uh clay, why don't you debrief your week in gaming?
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: so I did a lot of gaming this week, but the one I want to talk about today is invincible.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: The hero building game, oh, just came out in 2024 by kevin spack and the folks at direwolf doing imperium, jared whoa, yeah.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: So I was listening to I gotta stay off youtube but I was listening to some top 10 list of the year and somebody described this game as quacks of quellenberg meets like marvel united, and I was I.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: I immediately went to ebay and added one to the cart money yeah, I could money.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: That was a premature christmas money, but I spent my christmas money.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: I got uh, I got it, it showed up and I played it once.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: So take this for what you will, but essentially you are all heroes from this show.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: I guess it's a comic invincible.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I tried to watch the show because I like to be familiar with the theme and like really feel that when I'm playing the game but couldn't do it, I mean this is the goriest cartoon I've ever seen in my life.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I just can't do like cartoon violence.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: It freaks me out, maybe more than real violence, but they just like show like guts coming out of people and stuff.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: It's apparently a good show.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: It was like nominated for an Emmy but so if you can tolerate it, maybe check it out, but I couldn't tolerate it.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: So it's based on that comic slash TV show.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: It's on Amazon Prime, I think, but essentially you're fighting these villains that come in and there's three different zones you have that you're trying to rescue civilians from and defeat villains there, and the way your action works is you have to draw cubes from a bag and then you have these like superpowers in front of you, and so if you have a punch superpower, it might take two yellow cubes to activate that punch ability.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: And then there's like a rescue that takes two blue cubes.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: So you pull out three cubes, you assign them to any abilities that you have and if you've filled up any of those cards, you can take that action.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: After you do that, you can decide whether or not you want to pull three new cubes.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: But there are these black cubes in the bag which are good because they're wild and you can put them on anything, but they also.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: If you draw your fifth one, you crash.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: You've exerted yourself too hard as a superhero and you crash.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: And then one of your fellow heroes has to come to your location and try and rescue you, or else at the end of the round you have to roll a die and take that amount of damage.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: So essentially, you win if you defeat.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: Whatever the episode is, it'll tell you like defeat three of these villains and you win.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: And you lose if the heroes get KO'd three times or if I forget how many civilians have to die.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: It's like 12 civilians die, you lose.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Or if the time runs out on the time track, if all of them die.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's all from one location oh yeah, no, you fill out like that yeah that's right with the civilians yeah, yeah.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: So you either fill out that track or, if all of them from one location die I think you're right about that you lose so there's a lot of ways to lose no big deal yeah, and it's cool because you're simultaneously like after you, everybody's taking their actions and crashed, you have a chance to upgrade your bag by getting, um, a new color cube to put in there, and you also have a hand of superpower cards that you can pay for to upgrade your like abilities as a superhero.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: So it's cool.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: You're like building out your superpowers, you're also building out your bag of cubes and you're, you know, have this fun little push your luck pulling mechanism to fuel these actions and you're all doing it the same time.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: So like you're all pulling cubes and like it'd be like hold the same time.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: So like you're all pulling cubes and like it'd be like hold on, I'm about to punch over here, just wait, and then you can do your move and come over, but everybody's kind of acting acting at the same time.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: It took us like 45 minutes to get through the first one.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: We beat it.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be easy.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: They have like the deck stacked so that it like things come out in a certain order to get you familiar with the game.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: But I'm super excited to play this more.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that's invincible.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: The hero building game from dire wolf.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Clay, if you ever sour on this one or get tired of it, I might be interested in swapping with you, cause this is speaking to me, oh yeah.
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: I like I don't care about superheroes at all and I'm so sorry, like I am just not.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: That's not my vibe and I apologize in advance, but I have been playing through this with my friend.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: we're on the last scenario and we oh so much fun with it so nice, nice, awesome.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad I brought it up today, since you yeah, we actually, like I said, like we've all just now confirm my uh, since we've been so busy with the holidays, we haven't touched it in a minute.
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: But we actually for one of the missions, because we're just playing the two of us, and for one of them we played it twice and failed and we were like I think we need more people.
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: So we took it to our game night and made them play it with us Nice.
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: Because, we were at scales, we just felt like we couldn't move around the board quick enough, cause, like you, have to be able to move between the three sections and we just can't do this.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's super fun.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: Did you play like the campaign version where you like go through the scenarios?
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, sweet, yeah, I, I.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: I hope Spanky will maybe join me up and we can like start going through the scenarios, cause he liked it a lot too.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, that's awesome, game Clay.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: Anything else, no, that's it for my.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: I'll say one more thing.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: I might be late to the party on this, but at Petri's I was there buying games, as usual, and they had a deal where you could, if you spent a certain amount of money I won't disclose how much you they would give you a game for free.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: And the game I got was strike, which is just this little dice game where you roll dice into an arena and you're trying to make matches and you want to be the last one standing that still has dice in your pool and it's super fun.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: If you haven't played this game, you can get it for like 20.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: My kids like they play games a lot with me, but this is the first time I've ever seen them just the two of them like play a game by themselves, on their own accord.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: They're like oh man, isaac, isaac, let's play strike.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: And I just like see, hear him in the other room throwing dying to things.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: So it's just a fun time.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: We've played it probably like 10 times in the past week the just the four of us.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: It's like 15 minutes.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: But yeah, just a fun little push your luck game that I can see why so many people have talked about it before.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: But yeah, strike, don't sleep on it.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: It's been out for a while, but it's still fun yeah, that sounds awesome.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Jared, debrief your week let's hear it all right.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Well, I was lucky enough to get uh a little game night last night with uh randy and some and some guys.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: We played just some basic uh pandemic.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: You know, uh lost both times.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Um got absolutely throttled by the uh the diseases, but I did get.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Uh travis sent me gorilla marketing, so I got that to the table and that was a lot of fun.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Um, initially it was a rough start initially because I watched a youtube and I was trying to teach it and then people were kind of like uh yeah, and then we got going and you know I think you might have mentioned this when you talked about it earlier but it very quickly devolved into Cards Against Humanity.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of dicks and things happening in your food truck and you're like whatever.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: But it was a lot of fun.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: It plays a lot of people too, so that's nice.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: You can get a lot of people involved and stuff.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: So that was fun.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Anyways, that was my week.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I want to debrief my board game geek Secret Santa, because she went all out.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: She sent me a bunch of artisanal chocolates from Seattle she's from Seattle.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: She sent me a nice little postcard with beautiful handwriting that said you've been a good boy this year.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Happy holidays, all this stuff.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: So she got me three games and they sat under my tree, nicely wrapped, and I was dying to open them.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: And Christmas morning I tore into them.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: And the first one was Lands of Galzear, and this is a Snowdale design game from 2022.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: This is in the same universe as peacemakers, horrors of war, horrors of war jared and dale of merchants.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: So all their games are all in the same universe.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: This one is like a grid-based movement, exploration, narrative, story-driven game.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: It's got cutesy animals.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: This one I might have to like kind of role play as some silver spurs syndicate and get the weasel out.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Yes yeah, really impressed with this one.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: This is a used game that she sent me.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: I don't mind at all because I love me some used games, so looking forward to digging into this one.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Then the next one was Three Ring Circus.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: This is a 2023 production by Devere Games.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: This one I was on the fence to buy at Essendon Spiel when I was there and I think I got it was between this and White Castle.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: They were both available and I went with White Castle and I do not regret that decision.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: But this one was like just looked a little bit heavier and I wasn't really sure.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, three Ring Circus Fabio Lupiano super quality designer, so looking forward to getting Three Ring Circus played.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: And then the last one, which was a surprise, but a much welcome surprise, was Comic Hunters, which is a 2020 production by Arcane Wonders and Spin Master.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: So this game I guess it came out in 2020, but it was like available only in like Brazil or like select areas and then it just got Tara.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: You're nodding.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: Am I on the right track?
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: I just played it.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: It's very fun.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it was just in Brazil.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they just brought it to the US recently.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: I remember this we saw this at dice tower West.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: They had like a demo table of it and I was.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I saw it and I was like man, that looks awesome, I want to play that, but I don't think it was available here yet.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: And then they just launched it on Amazon, a bunch of the you know smaller retailers and stuff.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: And this coincides with me just starting to dive into more marvel comics.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I've been reading a lot of marvel comics lately.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Um, they have it, yeah.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: I go through these phases where I like read a bunch of comics and then I like burn out on them and then I don't read anything for like a year.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: So I just started reading comics again and, uh, so I tore this one open.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: I was really excited and I love that they feature all of these like original comic cover arts on these cards that you're trying to collect and trade and swap, and it's like you're swapping all these different comics at these different.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: There's like a, an auction and a swap meet and a you know garage sale or whatever or the comic book store.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: And I tore this thing open and the very first card on the top of one of the decks is this Captain America card.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's got nice artwork and everything.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Look at the side of this card.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's already torn, already torn, brand new card.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: So then I start flipping through and a bunch of them have like little nicks on the cards and the card quality is just terrible.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Like it's got a ding in the middle.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: You probably can't see it, but he's got a big ding right here in the middle of his body and then a tear on the side of the card and I'm like this is a marvel themed game by arcane wonders and spin master and somebody's going to be like walking through a store and see this and be like, oh little john store and see this and be like, oh little johnny loves board games and marvel.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Like let's get him this game.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: And this is not representative of what board games are like nowadays.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Like I I get the mechanics are cool and like people seem to like this game.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: It's pretty popular right now but that's so disappointing to get a game that's like marvel themed and and Disney owns the rights to these characters and everything, and you open it up and the very top card had a tear in it.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: That's a little disappointing.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I thought you were about to say oh, this is part of the quality of the card and it's part of the gameplay.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I was waiting for that comment to turn, but you're actually upset.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: I mean Just leave him Travis.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: It's disappointing.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Like it's a brand new game.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: I I I was the first person to open it and it had like the little bands around all the cards and everything and a bunch of the cards have like wear on them and like little chips out of them.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: This one was probably the most egregious with the side tear, but okay, mickey mouse.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Mickey mouse, if you're listening, send bob eiger bob what are you doing?
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: you signed off on this.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Come on now, uh yeah anyways, I I love the games.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I'm very excited to get them played, but I just had to get on my soapbox about the quality of production and then you get like there they they have like little tokens and stuff that you're supposed to punch out and it's like no thicker than card stock.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: It's not like cardboard or anything, it's like just this flimsy little card stock that you punch out for the tokens.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I don't the production leaves much to be desired, but I'm excited to get it played.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: I've heard good things.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: I've heard it's pretty cool.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: So that's comic hunters.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, and that's.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Those are my procurements for the week and I'm a little disappointed by comic hunters, but excited to get it played.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, come back to us after you've played it.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: I want to hear if the torn cards are overshadowed by the amazing gameplay.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sure.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: I'm sure all the sins of spin master will be washed away, because the gameplay will just be so great.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Anyways, are we ready to hit the mission objective?
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Let's do the mission objective All right.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: So our mission objective today is we are going to count down our top five mechanisms in board games, whether it's something you interact with or some action that you take.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Mechanisms are what shape your gaming experience, so we want to highlight our top five each.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Some action that you take, mechanisms are what shape your gaming experience, so we want to highlight our top five each and maybe highlight just a couple of games.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Real quick on what makes that, that mechanism, really shine.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: So number five Tara, why don't you kick us off?
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Sure, well, I started with the one that has my favorite game in it, which is classified on BGG as rolling dice.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: I always called it just dice worker placement.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: But, we can probably all guess.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Maybe that it's Castles of Burgundy, yeah.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: Interesting Nice.
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: But I know you guys have talked about Castles of Burgundy a ton, and as has everyone else on the Internet.
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: So the second game I added with that is uh twa, which, uh, you may have seen it.
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: It's spelled like troys, um, but it is a french word, so it is twa and um.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that one's just like.
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: I've played it a few times and I've had, honestly, like fantastic experiences playing it and I've had like fantastic experiences playing it and I've had like terrible experiences playing it.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: So I still haven't.
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: It's like an older game, I think it's from 2011, I think.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: So it is like not as polished, I think as newer games.
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: But yeah, it's a lot of dice rolling and you, however many meeples you have out on the board, which your meeples can get bumped throughout the game, which means you have less dice to work with throughout the game.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: Or you might put more meeples out and end up with more dice throughout the game.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: But either way, like whoever's the starting player, they have to defeat these bad cards first, so they have to use their dice against that and then they have to start it.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: They can knock out all of the bad dice or they can only knock out one of them and then it'll go in clockwise order and everyone will have to take turns.
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: But either way, however many dice it takes for you to knock out the bad cards, um, that's how many dice you're left over with to actually play the game.
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: So I played before where we we were rolling so low but the bad dice were really high, so we were having to use all of our dice to knock out the bad dice.
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: So when it came to actually time to like play the game.
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: We had no dice left to do any action, so that was my bad play.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: But other than that, like our dice rolls haven't been like that terrible that we weren't able to actually go through and like play the whole game, but that one's nice dice rolling.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: What about civolution?
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: You played that.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: I heard there's dice rolling in there.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Civolution, I played at a convention and it was like dinner time I played with like Tabletop Jonesy, if you know him, but he it was brutal.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: Honestly, I'll just say that it looks involved.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: It was, yeah, it was just a lot no-transcript.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you just gotta eat.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Got off on the bad foot.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Awesome Clay, give me your number five.
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: My number, five number five I don't sorry.
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: Before you say that, I just want to say mine are not ranked in my top.
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: I just picked five favorite ones um, if you could please leave, no this is I was gonna say, your favorite game had that mechanism and you listed it probably my favorite but like, okay, aside from that, they're not in any particular order they're my five favorite mechanisms that's right, that's fair.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: Mine are somewhat ranked, but they could all go anyway.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: This is probably definitely my least favorite of the five, but that's just because I don't typically like euro games all that much.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: But if I I am playing one, I do like some good worker placement, because worker placement just makes sense to the mind.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like you have meeples, you put them somewhere, you get the thing.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: And I think the game that really just made me love worker placement was Viticulture, because everything you do in that game just makes so much sense.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: It's like, okay, I'm going here, I get my grapes, now I put a worker here to plant them in my field and now I can harvest them, age them, sell them, do all these things.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: And worker placement just makes sense to me.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: And if a game has it, I'm usually into it.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: And there's so many different iterations of worker placement now, like Apiary with the upgrading your workers as they get bumped off the board.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: So yeah, the way people incorporate it it can be novel.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: You know, like between having things to do when you bring your workers back, or in Architects of the West Kingdom where you have cascading benefits the more workers you have at a place.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: There's just so many ways to tweak it and make it interesting.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: But even like standard worker placement is just fun to me.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: I played Santa's workshop with the kids the other day and even they like they understand it.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: They're like I'm going here to get the fabric I need and then I can make this toy, and I'm going to go here and get the metal I need to make the bike, and so yeah, worker placement is my number five and I will usually be interested in the game if it has worker placement, with the exception of unconscious mind.
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: I was so sad to hear about your experience with that but I'm just lazy.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: That's what I hear I definitely am in the minority.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Jared, what's your number five?
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: So I like in true fashion, I like to break the rules a little bit, but I think for overall all of my five, engine building is like, slowly, in the background of all of these mechanisms.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: I love a good engine building.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I'm an engineer like it just fits.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I want to be, uh, growing my powers, making myself better, um, feast for odin comes to mind.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Feast for odin's probably like all of my um mechanisms combined, but uh, ultimate game.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: But so that's, just just have that in the background while you're listening to my top five.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: But definitely I love a good push your luck kind of game.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Um, quacks of quillenberg that I've recently been on, uh, a good kick.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And uh, I love that.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: One camel up even is a little bit of a push your luck.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Or your betting, uh, I guess betting's its own mechanism, but um, I, I love to to just like get to the edge and then just keep going.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: You know you just get a little crazy with it.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: So push your luck definitely a big favorite of mine, and plus it, you know, it's an easy one for people to get involved in and a lot of party games are push your luck too.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: So I'm kind of a party guy yeah, you bring the party but oh spots, I was gonna say, I was gonna shout out spots for yeah, you love spots oh, you've played, can't stop right yes oh, you have so good yeah, isn't that the one?
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Um, haven't we played?
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: It's on BGA, right?
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: That's a classic.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: We're going to have to whip that one up.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Don't be surprised.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: If you all have a friend request, I'm ready.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: So my first one is going to be hidden player roles or goals.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: There's something about getting a hidden goal at the beginning of a game and like trying to maneuver and scheme and plot and take actions to enact that goal secretly.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: I know it's like that's more of like something that's tacked on on the tail end of a game versus like the core mechanism.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: But uh, stuff like nemesis, where you have like your corporate goal and your personal goal and like picking one halfway through and then, like you know, bluffing the other players as you take your actions.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: There's something so satisfying about that and it builds all this tense moment at the end.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: It's something like that feels so thematic and great.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: So yeah, hidden roles or goals is my number five mechanism.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Tara, hit me with your next one.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: My next one is one that I'm just getting into by a stockhold thing.
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: I've discovered that I like freaking love stocks and games, and I just bought some iron clays, too, from Rockley and they're so nice and I haven't busted them out yet, but they were great for, like I don't know, just any game that comes with paper money, which is a lot of stock games, but I did buy.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: Like a year or two ago I bought city of the big shoulders, which it's like you're rebuilding Chicago after the Great Fire and have these businesses that you're running and it's just so much fun.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: Like you buy a business, people can buy stock in your business.
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: You can buy stock in your own business and then you're using that money to like make business decisions.
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: So you're like hiring and automating workers.
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: You're like hiring salespeople to make the goods that you're selling be worth more money and, yeah, you're doing all of that.
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: It's actually like an 18XX, but with worker placement, so it's like a train game but like with worker placement, and every time I've played it it's taken hours.
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: It's like a very long, tedious game, but I did just talk to someone recently who's like it only took us like two and a half hours.
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: So whatever I'm doing is just wrong, but anyway, yeah, and I just started playing train games and stuff and like getting more into that.
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: Like I played Wabash Cannonball Cannonball recently, which is also called Chicago Express it's the same game, but yeah, anyway, just trying to get into train games and more stock stuff, like I really like the dealing with stock buying and selling and stuff.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you mentioned a bunch of big heavy stock trading games.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Have you played courtesans that just came out this year?
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: No, I have not.
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: Is that a Pandasaurus game?
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think so.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I have not played it yet.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like baby's first stock manipulation game, but it's.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: It's pretty fun and it plays in like 10 minutes it's pretty awesome.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: I am super intimidated by the sound of 18.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: X games.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: People talk about it, but now that I know a real person that has played these games, like I just assume I don't know the people that play these games, but now I know somebody that says they're, they're worthwhile yeah and and is what's a good entry point like for somebody that doesn't want to be immersed in a rule book for 18 hours yeah, um, honestly, like um, I was at bgg con and I learned I think it was iberian gauge.
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: They're like a set.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: It's like iberian gauge, irish gauge, and I always forget the name of the third one there's three of them, um, but I and I learned I think it was Iberian Gage.
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: They're like a set.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: It's like Iberian Gage, irish Gage, and I always forget the name of the third one.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: There's three of them, but I played Iberian Gage, I think, and it's literally one sheet of paper and I do get a little overwhelmed, but I just put on some noise-canceling headphones and sat there and I read the rules in 15 minutes and we were.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: So the biggest thing with that one is it is paper money and there is a lot of exchange of money in that game.
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: So if you do have any poker chips, I would like highly suggest it because, like the paper money, it was just like it was so fiddly and annoying to deal with, but that was like my biggest qualm with the game.
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: Like other than that it was.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: It was a good game.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: I might have to dip my toe in the water.
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the other thing, too, though, is train games a lot of times require At least three players, so that's the bigger thing, too, is getting the three people To play it.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Three people with like six hours to Spare in their lives.
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, honestly, iberian Gage is really quick, so you don't need.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: That much time.
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I would recommend starting With those like as like a Nice starter intro train game.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Awesome, okay, sweet, good call-outs.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Clay, hit me with your next one.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: My next one is simultaneous action selection.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: So the ones I was thinking of in this vein are where you're trying to get in each other's heads, like Libertalia, where everybody picks a card and then, based on what cards are, but, like, everybody else's cards all affect what you did.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: So you're trying to like de-conflict or outthink other people, and Libertalia is definitely one that I love playing with that mechanism.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: There's also simpler ones, like six, nimit or take five, that have a similar thing.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: I love this just because you're you're like very interactive with the other people.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: What they do really matters to you.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: It also speeds up the game because everybody's doing something at the same time.
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: So in that vein too, it although it's not what I had in mind like games like fromage or planet unknown that I've been playing recently, where everybody is taking their action at the same time.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Although it's not like that double think, simultaneous action selection, I still I like those games where everybody can do stuff at the same time.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: Although it's not like that double think, simultaneous action selection, I still I like those games where everybody can do stuff at the same time, because maybe I just play games with a lot of people who lose interest in between turns, but I like when people are constantly engaged and like making decisions and interacting with the game and not having that downtime.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: So if a game's got simultaneous actions in any form or fashion, I'm probably going to check it out nice good.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Call out, jared, what's your next one?
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: I I feel very out of my element because I I like, have three things.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I need to google what the is, uh 18xx and uh train games, which I think are just games with trains.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Um, so I I will look more into those things um my, my roger I know I'm sorry and you might need to bleep out that f word I.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: I don't have my card up to remind me.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: No efforts, um.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: So my next one is cooperative play.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: I I don't know if that's a mechanism, but I like games where you're working together to solve a problem or, uh, beat a monster.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I mean marvel united is obviously a big one that comes to my mind.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Or I mean even last night playing pandemic, um, but another big one that I I enjoy sky team that's.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: It's been hot on my, on my, uh on my list lately and I did give it to my buddy Dallin for Christmas, just fun.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: I like cooperative games.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: We all win or we all lose.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: My next one is going to be auction slash, reverse auction and bidding.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: There's just something so satisfying about the auction mechanism in a board game.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that like says about me as a person and a gamer, but I just I.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: I was looking at my shelf and I have a lot of games that involve bidding and half of them feel like reiner knizia productions, but I just love a good auction slash reverse auction in games.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: So what is reverse auction?
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: reverse auction is usually when you are bidding to not take something, like you're paying to not have to take an action Like no thanks, yeah, like no thanks.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Or like in high society, they have like the negative cards that you're bidding not to take, yeah, so yeah, auction.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: That's my next one.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Tara, hit me with your next one.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: Next, I have tile placement, which is my second favorite game that I always say, which is Patchwork, which I own like every edition of Patchwork ever, except for Halloween which fun fact if you don't know, halloween is the only balanced version of Patchwork the like amounts of buttons and time on all of the tiles.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: So the tile shapes are the same, but the cost of them is different um.
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: So yeah, the halloween version is the most balanced version of the game and all of the other versions are exactly the same and I own all of them because I love it and they're so cute.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: And yeah, my daughter and I, like she'll pick out and she'll be like I'm gonna play the china one today and I'm like, okay, perfect.
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: And then we'll pick out and she'll be like I'm going to play the China one today and I'm like, okay, perfect.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: And then, and yeah, so we have all of them.
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: And then I also put down Keyflower as like another tile placement.
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you've ever played Keyflower, but it's like a super unique game where there's just like open tiles out on the table for anyone to use and you put your meeples either on top of the tile to take the action of the tile, or you put them on the side of the tile to bid to win the tile.
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: So you can like get those actions immediately, but then you'll lose those meeples.
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: Or, if you win the auction, you'll still lose the meeple, but you'll get the tile and you put it into your neighborhood.
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: But everyone's like building out their own little neighborhood and you can also go on other people's tiles later in the game and use their own tiles, like forcing them to have to play more meeples, to use their own, like resources that they're building out in their towns, but um that was a really cute worker or a tile placement game I considered doing this one as well, because I just played Rolling Heights and the tile placement and the building of the little towers was so much fun.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's true tile placement, but I saw that it was categorized on BGG.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like the mechanisms start to get a little blurry.
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I think that's valid.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Clay what's your next one?
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: Trick-taking.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Trick-taking will always have a place in my heart because that was what got me into games in the first place, growing up watching all the adults playing spades and just wanting to get involved in that action.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: To me there was no cooler thing in the world than sitting at the spades table and playing with somebody and you got a partner and you're working together trying to get your bid.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: And I've never lost that soft spot in my heart for trick taking.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: I don't play as much as I used to, but I mean, the modern board game hobby is just run rampant with offshoots of every type of trick-taking twist and turn you could imagine, and I want to play them all.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: I don't play them all, but I want to play them all.
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: And so if I see a game, a new trick-taking game just yesterday I was in the store the guy I was talking to who worked there was really into trick-taking.
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: He's like, have you heard of Yokai Septet?
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, I've heard of it.
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: And he's like, oh, we just got it in here.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: It's a little little box gave it to me.
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, cool.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: And then I saw the Friedman freeze fishing game that just came out trick taking game.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: Got that?
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, I will.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: I am a sucker for a trick taking game.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: Travis sent me some from all play, so I so I have a lot to work through that I haven't played yet, but I I just love that the crew I mean just trying to play your cards, just right to like hit that bid that you set.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: I mean that's basically what usually happens is there's a bid and you're trying to get it, and trick taking is my number three nice, so jealous that you got fishing, because our game store sold out of it with pre-orders, so like I'm not ever going to be able to get my hands on that oh man, yeah, I just like happened to see it sitting there on the shelf and I was like, could this be?
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: I didn't even know.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: I like I wasn't even on my radar to look for yet, because I assumed it was not going to be around.
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: But got lucky on that one freaking feel like trees this was a store in Denver.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: I feel like Friedman Freeze games they're out for a week and then you never see them again, except for maybe occasionally at a game swap or something Hard to get your hands on.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: Jared, what's your next one?
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: I like games that have player abilities.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Well, dune Imperium, each person has their own little benefits.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: But obviously Root for my two bros over here, I guess, is that asymmetric playing.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know You're playing your own abilities that might not have you know, your partners don't have it.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I even thought about, um, freaking, uh, dice miner.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: You know dice miner, you have these starting benefits and like little, like you can kind of get into your persona a little bit, I guess.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: But that's that's really what I it comes down to.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: For my number three is player abilities yeah I had that one written down as well.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: I was considering that one because a lot of my games have unique and variable player abilities.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, but my next one is going to be area control.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of Welcome to Tara's cat.
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: I was trying to stop you from jumping up.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Tara's cat.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: What's your top five?
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: Tara, what's your cat's name?
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: It's actually Bowser Jr named.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: Named after bowser jr from mario kart.
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: Excellent, yes, my sponsor.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: Part of the koopa clan nice, that's awesome.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my next one's area control.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: I love area control control games.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, root small world is one of my favorite games I love small world so much.
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: Sorry, I'm so sorry.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: Be sad, I feel like it's so underrated.
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: Nobody talks about Small World anymore.
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: It's so good.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: It's on BGA now my.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: BGG Secret Santa.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: It was on his wish list so I sent him Small World.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: That's one of the few ones that I first played when I was getting into the hobby.
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: Definitely underappreciated, they've got some cool expansions to it.
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: So if you have not played it, go check out small world.
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: So area control is my next one.
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: Uh tara, okay.
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: So next I have uh mancala.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: Um, I think mancala is such a fun mechanic in games and it's like not used a ton.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: And yeah, my games I have for that are trajan, which is another Feld game.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: If you've never played that, oh, that's the TR game I was thinking of when you said Troy.
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's pronounced Trajan, I'm pretty sure.
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: But yeah, that one has like a fun little mancala where you're trying to like pick up your different colored pieces and drop them off in the right spot and then, if you match up the colors, uh, you have like a tile above it and if you get the colors to match the two colors on the tile, you'll get a bonus action.
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: The first few times I played that game, I just like could not wrap my head around it.
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: I was so bad.
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: But, um, I played it at a convention recently and like, actually it like clicked for me finally, like how to get my pieces in the right spot.
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: And when that happens it's just like so good, um, and then the other one I have written down for that is come sail away, which is like a sashi game.
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: It was, uh, designed by sashi and daryl from origami games, um, but yeah, that one's a lot of fun too.
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: You're basically it's you're running like a cruise ship and you're trying to get passengers to their rooms and there's like different stipulations you need to meet and like if you do it perfectly, you'll get bonuses and stuff.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I think Mancala is super fun.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard of Come Sail Away and I was listening to a podcast where they were singing its praises and I was like man, that sounds awesome.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: I need to check that out.
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: I have zero experience with the original Mancala game or any games implementing that, except for Merchant's Cove, has one faction you can play that has a Mancala thing going on with picking up dragon poop.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: It's definitely a hole in my gaming that I don't play.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: We are learning so much from tara 18xx I know cultured I play a lot of games real gamer with a capital g.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: I like it.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Uh, clay, what's your next one?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: already been talked about, but auctions, I love auctions.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: Again, I love things players interacting and everything somebody else is doing.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: You know, trying to get in people's heads, like in for sale, you're like, okay if I, yeah if I put six coins out here, there's no way that everybody else is gonna keep upping that and people probably drop out till it gets back to me.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: So just trying to like understand the value people put on things is just so much fun and there's so many games that do it so well.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: I mentioned for sale.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: Like that is one of my favorite, just filler games.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: You get the, uh, yeah you get the I love for sale yeah, it's got the two phases.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: You do that around the clock auction in the first half and then you do the like blind uh bidding kind of auction system in the second half and then you do the like blind uh bidding kind of auction system in the second half and it just works so well.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: And then, like yeah, all the kinesia games with auction rule, like beowulf, the legend board game, is just auction upon auction in different form or fashion, like uh, and I just always love that.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that's my number two, jared, what you got uh it's deck building.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: I love to build.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: It's also kind of an engine builder too, right?
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Um, definitely obviously dune imperium and, uh, lost rooms of arnek.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Um, huge fan of just like getting these sweet abilities that you can rank like, and I love like the random shuffle and then you pull them into a draw pile and you can draw out your cards.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: But I was going to ask you guys what other deck builders should I be thinking of?
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: So, on BGG, because I looked at this one specifically they have it grouped together with deck bag and pool building.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, and bag building I was thinking of Wonderland's's war immediately, because I love pulling me some chits out of bags.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: So, yes, you got your class of quedlinberg, your wonderland war.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: Anytime I get to pull chits or tokens out of a bag is a good day.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: So you know, you should also check out the, the.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: What's that game?
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: You always talk about travis, the star wars deck building game.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, that is just like deck building, like kind of Not quite as pure as Dominion or something.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: But it's just a head-to-head.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: You're literally just building your deck and trying to beat the other person.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: And not just building it, but culling it as you go and exiling characters.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: Shards of Infinity and Star Realms are good ones for that too.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: I really like Shards of infinity, and star realms are good ones for that too, but I really like shards of infinity yeah, and star realms is just a reason, or the star wars deck building is just a reskin of star realms, so okay yeah you put.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: You play a lot of deck building with other things around it, so I think you should try out a pure deck builder anyway well, I was, I'm gonna jump on and because that was my next one as well, and I'm also going to mention Marvel Champions, because that is more of a deck construction than a deck builder.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: But you get to.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Actually, if you read the rules and the guidelines for building your deck, you can actually stack your deck and you're still drawing randomly and you shuffle cards between the rounds.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: So yeah, deck bag and pool building is my next one.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: Tara, what you got my last one, um I think, clay, you said this one earlier the simultaneous action selection.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: I also have that one, um, I was going to bump it up and talk about it right after you, but I wanted you to have your moment with oh, I appreciate that um but yeah, so I have that one.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: Um, I also I I'm the person who gets on my phone between rounds and it's like the worst and I hate that about myself.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: But, um, yeah, I do like the simultaneous action selection to like stay engaged.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: Um, the games I have for that are Orleans, which both of these games I have is like a bonus mechanic so I could kind of cheat and like throw more.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: But I also love bag building, like you said, bag building and I was like yes, I love that so much and like orleans like main mechanic and addition to the simultaneous action selection.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: But, um, yeah, there's something about drawing from a bag like yeah, deck building, great fine.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: But like there's just something like I don't, it's the tactile of like drawing from a bag that makes it so fun, like, like I said, I like that invincible game and everything.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: And then the other one I have for simultaneous is welcome to, and I love welcome to and welcome to the moon.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: I've never played welcome to Vegas, but yeah, and my bonus mechanic for that was like I love verb and rights, like I love flipping rights, I love rights, I love all of them.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: So I wanted to squeeze that into.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: But yeah, welcome to is such a fantastic game.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Nice, and you're really stealing my thunder here, Cause I also had rolling rights on mine rolling rights, football rights.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: So that's okay.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: Uh, wait what you got.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: My final one has also already been talked about and I talk about it a lot.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: It's push your luck.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Anything with push your luck I.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: I love it because, again, even if you're not the one pushing your luck and somebody else is, you're still involved and it's exciting to see if they're gonna bust or not.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: We just played inking gold last night, which is a fun little push your luck game, deciding whether stay in the temple or leave and get what you already have.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Mary is just a deviant about push your luck.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: I've never seen her not push her luck.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: She busts relentlessly.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: She ended inking gold with zero points.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: Uh, I've never seen, but she still had a blast I bet you still had a blast and we had fun.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: Everybody's laughing and like just making a joke.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Every time we we would flip over the card to see who was staying and going and mary was still in.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: But yeah, a push your luck game is just the interaction between the players, the fact that I'm not that great at games, but if maybe I can push my luck a little better, I still have a chance at winning some of these.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: So it's a game that I can't get enough of, a type of game that I can't get enough of.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: And if I see that a game involves any type of push or luck, like that invincible game, I'm in.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't take a lot to to get me to try out a game where I can do a little gambling on the side.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that's my number one favorite mechanism in board games.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: It's fun.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: Games are supposed to be fun.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: Jared last one, what you got Well.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Clay says games should be fun, but I'm putting worker placement as my number one because you can block people and try and be strategic.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Obviously, dune Imperium, odin Arnak, you just need to put me on a.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: Uh repeat, I guess.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: I just I do love, um, trying to make sure you're using your workers correctly.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: You know I'm an engineering management major, um, so I like to manage my workers, make sure they get to the right spot, do the right thing, but yeah, that's if there's a little meatball and I can put it in a little spot.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: That makes me feel so good.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: So that's my number one mechanism.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: We already talked about it.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: But Travis finish, give us the finale.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: So all of these other ones have already been talked about, so I'm going to pull a wild card and I'm going to talk about solo games.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: I know solo games are not for everyone, but I appreciate being able to get a game out on my own terms and play it, and it's kind of like a puzzle.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: I like doing crosswords, I like doing you know, little brain teaser type things, and I have a shelf dedicated to just like solo games.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, solo games and being able to get out a game on my own terms.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: I'll also shout out sandbox games.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Uh, sandbox games, like you know, mage knight, western legends uh, taken grail things that you can like get immersed in and go and play either with somebody else or by yourself and get immersed in a story, in a world, or always in a costume, in a costume.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you play it by yourself in a costume alone, in your house, in your basement.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm just waiting for you to show up as a Marine, a really musty Marine, you missed that Travis is flirting with some war hammer in his in his free time.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: So I think we lost her Good.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: The show must go on.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: I was really trying to throw you under the bus there, didn't work.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, are we ready to go over the fence and outside the wire?
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: I've already gone.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: We lost.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Tara.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe she stayed on base while we went over the fence, who knows?
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, these guys had props and I'm going to show my Christmas gift.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: This is Bad Boy Elixir.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know if you guys are ready when this is paired with the 5mm chain.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I'm unstoppable.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: I'm a bad boy, oh, oh man it's my signature scent.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: Now uh, and I was so that this is building.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: I was going to shout out mary.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I'm like mary was going to blush when she sees me with the five milli and a bad boy sent on me.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: Um I can't with you, man, that's crazy.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: Uh, that's what I'm doing over the fence.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: This is my signature move.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to grow my hair out until someone tells me to cut it.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: That's my goal in life.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: I'll keep the edges shaved up.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: You're one step away from doing the broccoli top.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: You're going to get a perm on top and then shave the sides.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: A couple of raising stripes.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: With the new grooming grooming standards I think I could do whatever I want, but I heard rumor on the strips they're gonna start cracking down.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: You know, daggone anyways uh, so I do have one more shout out on my over the fence.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: We'll see if pops back on.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: But uh, college football playoffs are going on right now.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, uh, led by our fearless leader, general richard clark.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: He is the president of the college football playoff, so hats off to him.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: Thank you for your service, general clark, and uh, yeah, so he's leading the charge right now.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: Some people were a little upset about the, the rankings and who got in, who got out, but the bowl games have been phenomenal.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: There was like a total of 10 overtimes the other day, or no more than that.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: Six, four, two.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: There was like 12 to 14 overtimes just in one day, not in one game, but like across multiple games.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: And then I want to shout out the Pop-Tarts Bowl.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: So I don't know if you have seen the stuff on the Pop-Tarts Bowl Last year I think was the first year and they brought out their pop-tart mascots.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, so it's a guy in a pop-tart suit runs around the stadium being goofy, silly and then at the end when they do the trophy presentation, he climbs on top of a giant toaster and he holds a sign that says dreams come true and he gets loaded into the toaster and then a lookalike edible gigantic pop tart slides through a chute at the bottom and the winning team gets to eat pieces of this pop tart.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, they had like a meme that was floating around.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: They had a meme that was floating around of this pop tart that's just like devastated, like people ate the top layer, so there's like a bunch of strawberry filling and like a loose eyeball and like all this stuff dying.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: They made a costume of that meme pop-tart that had been eaten and so like there's a there's like zombie pop-tart that's running around the stands.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: They had a memorial outside the stadium for last year's pop-tart bowl and then they they took it one step forward and the people that run this pop-tarts bowl this year the sidelines had sprinkles on them, like the white stripe that's normally on the sidelines, had sprinkles and they partnered with general electrics.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: The trophy for the pop tarts bowl is a working toaster.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: Toaster are you?
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: serious yes, the trophy is a working toaster and it comes with pop tarts that you put in the toaster.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: So yeah uh, bowl games cannot be beat.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: So how many years till the Falcons get to the pop tart bowl game?
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I will be stuck with the military bowl and the bell helicopter bowl for the rest of our lives.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: If we, if we're lucky, we get to go to the armed forces bowl, the boys need to pick it up, all right.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: Shout out to Navy, who just beat oklahoma in their bowl game.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: That was huge.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy dang yeah, good game.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: That was a really good one so there's back tara, she's driving us over the fence.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: Hold on, hold on.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: I gotta fill her in quick, um, so what you missed is travis is thinking about warhammer a lot, and oh, I love that, yeah, and I, like legos and jared is a, has a bad boy scent that he got for christmas.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: That's gonna really make him pop off with his chain so I feel like I was gone for 30 seconds.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: I missed so much.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: All right, first of all, I want to touch on the warhammer thing.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: I don't play warhammer, but I do play battle tech and I'm um a huge supporter of you getting into that.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: So I was hoping you're gonna flame him for it and be like no, I love it.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, do it out, I love, I love it.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: The reason for this is because I was playing the new Warhammer space Marine video game and I was like I think I could get into this.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: This seems awesome and I know it's not the same, but man, those characters and the world is just like off off the wall honestly fun, like I know.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: I don't know how the warhammer dice rolls work, but like for battle tech, they're all in pairs of d6s.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: So like I've had so much fun like getting dice that have like heart-shaped pips on them, because there's nothing more fun than like beating guys with dice with hearts on them and, like I've, painted my mechs pink, like I like to make, like I'm not even that girly, like well, all right, I'm very girly, girlies are, girls are awesome.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: But I just mean like in general, my favorite color is like black.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 4: I wear like all black and whatever, but like for uh battle tech, I just love to make it just as like pink and frilly as possible, because there's nothing more fun than like beating dudes with girly stuff we can do a podcast on toxic masculinity.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: We're uh we're very forward thinking on this podcast.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, I appreciate it so what have you been doing outside of board gaming, tara?
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: um, honestly, honestly, not a ton.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: Like I said, I've been trying to work on getting YouTube stuff started, so hopefully that should be up within the next.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, hopefully YouTube will be up soon and then, other than that, just like holiday stuff, Like we like go to see lights around the city, and not that much.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: I've been kind of boring.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: Like I said, I just got back from like a road trip.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: I wish I knew you were in Alabama.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: We drove through Alabama.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: I would have been like, hey, I don't know what part you're in, though we were in Southern Alabama.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, we went through.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: I was in Savannah the last week, so he missed me.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: This was right before Thanksgiving.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: So we were going through, we were in Mobile Alabama and we stopped and got ramen and we were like oh it's actually like kind of cute here, but yeah.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: So, uh, yeah, we've just been kind of like chilling since we got back from all of that.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: Like we went, we were like down in Florida, uh, we were in Atlanta and like up the East coast and then the convention.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: So I've been kind of like fried since getting back and yeah, we do like a real christmas tree, so we like went and got a real tree and did all of that.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: So yeah, that's it.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: We've just been kind of hanging out and, yeah, playing some like silly party games and stuff uh, can you give us a sneak peek into the youtube channel and what that will look like when it launches?
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: yeah.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: So, um, I keep telling people and I'm like I should stop telling people what I'm doing because someone's going to steal my thunder.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: But it's fine if they do, I'll just do it better.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: No, I'm just kidding.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: But all of our listeners, I'm sure.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, the biggest thing is like.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: So on my Instagram I started comparing um to their board game counterparts, but just with the character limit and everything.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: I just didn't feel like I had enough space, like I had to do two separate posts for like the game and the roll and write.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: So that was like what I really wanted to focus on, which is like why I've been playing 12.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: There's like 12 the dice game, and so, yeah, I've just been like going out and finding like as many games as I can, like Invincible has a dice game.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: There's like a ton of them.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: So that's going to be like a big focus, but, like, obviously, there's like a limit to that.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: I also am working on comparing like board games to the card version or if there's like a dual version, and so there's going to be a lot of like those, like which one should I get you know like one's better suited for me, and just kind of like reviewing them, talking about them, comparing them, contrasting them, doing all that.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: So that's going to be kind of like the main focus of it.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: But we'll see.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: That's that's the starting idea.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: We'll see what happens from there.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: What kind of train game do you think that I could get in?
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: It was a good train game Iberian Gage Iberian.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Gage For a bad boy.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: You think a bad boy rides a Iberian Gage.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a bad boy, I'm on a standard Gage.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: I'm American standard Gage.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: No, yeah, start with Iberian Gage, because that's like a bad boy thing right, like jumping on the train and like taking it off, like into the distance and like no one knows where you're going, where you're from operation operation game night brought to you by bad boys jeez, jared and iberian
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: cage I also have like a party game I haven't played it yet, but it's called whale street and uh, it is an import but you are dealing with stocks in that and it is like a pretty low level stock game.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: But I mean you could be like the Wolf of Whale Street.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: I guess it's pretty bad.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: I'm into it, awesome.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: Do you have an anticipated launch of your site and do you have a name?
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's just Tara's Bad Luck Club still have a name.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's just uh, tara's bad luck club still um it's actually, like it's already created on youtube, I just have to put the content there.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: Um, I was hoping to do it for december but like just with the holidays and stuff and that just really got away from me.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: But it'll be in january.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: I don't have a launch date, I would say mid-january okay, awesome, yeah.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: so if you're listening to this, be sure to go and check out Tara's Bad Luck Club on YouTube and follow her on Instagram, because she puts out some awesome stuff.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: And this has been episode 20 of Operation Game Night.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: I have been Travis, he has been Clay.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: He's been Jared.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: She has been Tara.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: Let's go, and I have been, tara, you.