Latest / Operation Game Night / OGN Ep 18: PAX Unplugged Review (ft. Amanda from EmptyNestBoardMama)

Transcript

OGN Ep 18: PAX Unplugged Review (ft. Amanda from EmptyNestBoardMama) · Operation Game Night

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast, where the mission objective is to play more board games.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Put your battle rattle on and mount up.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Let's start the show.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: What is up, everybody, and welcome to the Operation Game game night podcast.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I am your host, travis smith, joined as always by my co-host, clayton gable and jared erickson.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: How you guys doing, we're great I've been living the american dream and today we have a very special episode.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We have a pax unplugged review with our very own boots on the ground, boots on the moon.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Reporter from PAXU.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Amanda from Empty Nest Board.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Mama, how you doing, amanda?
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Hi guys, I'm great.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: How are you?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Doing well, thanks for having me.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, jared, you want to introduce your guest.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: I also have a stowaway of my own.
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: Apologize, amanda, I did spring this on on the uh the podcast group here.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: this is my best friend here, um tanner van hevenhoven that's a pretty sweet last name, is that, is that a real last name van hevenhoven?
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah did I pronounce it correct yeah, pretty close.
• 1:21
  Speaker 5: Well, how would you pronounce van evenhoven?
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: there's more.
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: There's more e in it let's be more that shows you how close.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: That's how best friend uh level I am.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: I can't say his last name in korea.
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: We were just I can't use it in a sentence.
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: He, yeah, he was d5, I was D3.
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: So I was two Ds more than him, obviously in stature size.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: It's good to have you, Tanner.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: We have not only our first guest on the podcast, but we have our first two in the same show.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So thank you guys for joining us.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: We are going to go ahead and debrief our weeks, then we are going to fall in on the mission objective, which is our big PAX Unplugged special with Amanda, and then we are going to go over the fence and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to start with Clayton, because he's always my go-to Clay.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Why don't you debrief your week for me?
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, so the week has been pretty slow on games.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Mary and I did play Everdell on Wine Wednesday, but I feel like that gets a lot of airtime around here and people are pretty familiar with it.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to go to a game I've been playing on Board Game Arena that I recently played in person for the first time not that long ago and that's Architects of the West Kingdom for the first time, not that long ago, and that's Architects of the West Kingdom, oh, nice.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: So this is a Garfield game designed by SJ McDonald and Shem Phillips, I think, 2018.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: That's what I wrote down, but I don't necessarily trust my notes here.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: But anyway, architects of the West Kingdom, you are architects trying to impress the king by constructing buildings and being virtuous doing work on the cathedral.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: It's a worker placement game with a couple interesting twists that I very much enjoyed.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So all the spaces on the board are pretty self-explanatory.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: You're gathering resources that are going to be used to construct these building cards that you have in your hand, and they will score you points at the end of the game.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: So when you go to a spot, that spot can hold as many people as you want.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: So these spaces to get wood.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Like, as you keep putting more people in that wood space, the amount of wood you get from that space goes up.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: So first time I go there I get one wood.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: The fourth time I go there I'll get four wood.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: So it's interesting.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: And the other players are kind of the enforcement on keeping track of when other players might be abusing spaces, because there is a spot on the board where they can go and it lets them round up workers from another space.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: So if you see, if I see Amanda's over there just raking in the clay clay good yeah, she's raking in the clay I'm going to go round up all those workers and I get to keep them on my board and she can't get them back.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: But I can take her workers to prison and drop them off there and I get coins for each of the workers I drop off.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of how the there's no rounds in the game.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: So all your workers that are out there stay out there until either someone else has picked them up and put them in prison and then you can get them back, or you can round up your own workers by going to that spot and get them back.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: There's ways in the game to lose and gain virtue by doing naughty things or doing virtuous things.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: So the more virtue you have at the end, the better, the less virtue, the worse.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: But also, when you're less virtuous, you can skimp on your taxes.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: So there's certain places on the board where you have to pay money and there's like a certain tax amount that you pay in addition to the money it costs.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: And if you are like down on the track, you can start skipping on those payments and taking these actions that are more powerful.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: But so it's this interesting balance.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: It's a super smooth playing worker placement game.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Each turn you just place one worker, do your thing and move on.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Like I said before, there's no rounds and cleanup phases, so it just hums along at a pretty quick pace.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: We played it with four players and it was done in maybe just over an hour, so I was very impressed.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Garfield games have I'm kind of embarrassed, I've been playing games for so long and had never played one of these because you see them everywhere.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: They're very recognizable artwork.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: They're always in these like trilogies.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they're trilogies or like sequences.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: There's the north sea series, there's the west kingdom series, now I think there's the south south tigris series.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: So this was the first one.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I played architects of the west kingdom.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I think it's one of the more popular ones.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, very much enjoyed it.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: On board game arena not as enjoyable, uh, but I hesitate to say that because I don't enjoy many games on there, but it does seem like the actions are so quick in real life.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: It's just that one worker so waiting for everybody to do that.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: It just takes some more time than I would prefer.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: But yeah, the game ends when you construct a building or work on the cathedral.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: You have to give up one of your workers for the rest of the game.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: So they get stored on this track and once that track is filled up the game ends.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So you can try and play the tempo game of being the one to push the end of the game by completing buildings.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: But also, you're not out there just raking in the resources from all these spots where you can keep compounding the amount of stuff you can get.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of a interesting push and pull about when you actually cash in and build your buildings versus, you know, keep raking those resources in jared, is it like?
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: clay.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: I remember clay, I remember clay.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: We played this one right.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: You were quite naughty, from what I remember.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: Like the taxes Black.
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: Market is a pole elf.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Not a good man, but anyway, that's my debrief for the week.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Architects of the West Kingdom.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Does the game end once the cathedral is complete, or is it a certain number of rounds?
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: No, it's like when you take a construct action, you can either construct a building card in your hand or you can work on the cathedral.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: And when you work on the cathedral, the further up you get, the better rewards you get, the more points you get.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't necessarily need to be done.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: It's just how many times any person has built and they've filled up that building track.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: So whether you're building your own cards or building on the cathedral, you're going to trigger the end of the game once that track is full.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: Cool, yeah, it's like.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: It's like committing workers to the rest of the game.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: I got to commit this worker to the building, so, and so you start off with like what?
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: Like 20?
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: .
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you got a ton of workers, a ton of them, but then slowly that stuff starts shrinking down Because once you commit them and you're no longer, they're no longer in your rotation.
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: There is like good bonuses to related to those commitments.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, from what I remember, and it's a very fun engine building-ish resource gathering.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: I like it.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's super.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, we all played it for the first time in person it was me, mary Scott and Brittany, and it was a breeze to teach.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: And again we it played super quick, so very much enjoyed it.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Nice, that sounds like it has some like cool decision-making.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: There's a lot there for what it is Okay.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Well, Jared and Tanner, why don't you debrief your weeks for us?
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: I felt so compelled to bring Tanner on today because we even brought a visual.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: I'm going to pop that bad boy up.
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: Sky Team, sky Team.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: It's in the blurb there.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: It is Excellent Part of our 2024 OGN holiday gift guide.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Buy guide yeah the gift guide.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: I heard the gift guide and then Tanner.
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: He's in pilot training right now he's going to be a helicopter pilot.
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: He was a civil engineer with me in Korea and then he saw the light.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: So now he's over at Fort Novosel learning how to fly those helicopters.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: But Sky Team, I'm just doubling down on the buy guide everybody Absolute blast, no-transcript.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: Where you're rolling die trying to fill out this uh control panel, do you?
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: Is it very, uh, similar to a helicopter?
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: I don't know how you feel about.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: Do you roll any die while you're flying helicopters?
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: We call ourselves the stick wigglers, stick wigglers there's no wiggling of sticks.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: um, I mean, keep it pg, okay, not on the table at least.
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: No, there was.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: No, there was no stick wiggling last night.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: I'll just say that.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: But it's pretty cool too.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: There's a bunch of different airfields you can land at and each one has its own kind of like flavor to it.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: There's different things that you have to juggle, I guess similar to a pilot.
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: There's some that you focus on the fuel.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: The fuel goes down, so you have to commit one of your die to slowing the amount of fuel you're using.
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: If you're going to a cold weather location, the runway might be icy, so there's extra brakes that you might need to apply throughout that role.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: I just love Tegucigalpa.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: I'm going to get on my soapbox here.
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: I just love like Tegucigalpa.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: I mean I'm going to get on my soap soapbox here.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: I did fly into Tegucigalpa one time that's capital of Honduras and I remember specifically, like you, you go in, you like bank super hard and then you like land immediately, like you feel like your wings are the, the pilot is like sideways and then like within five to ten seconds, you're level and you're landing.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: And that's the exact same way that the, the game sets it up, like the, the runway or like the path is a lot shorter and you have to turn the plane side to side, to like maneuver it around the mountains to be able to land it.
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: So I, I mean I had a blast, yeah no table talk happens at all to make to balance out the dice, Cause you're trying to play off what you're you think your partner has versus what you know they have based on the dice that you roll.
• 11:58
  Speaker 5: And how you balance those dice effect what the plane is going to do that turn.
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: So every step there's a little bit of preparation going into each role.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: So that way both, both parties, parties, both pilots are on the same page.
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: Uh, to try to get the plane to allow plane to the ground safely yeah, so I do.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I do love those thematic airfields that you're landing at, because they have keflavik, I think.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's keflavik or maybe it's right to make, yep, the one in iceland.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I've also been there and the crosswinds are crazy and you're like banking in and swerving and doing all this stuff because you're like over an active volcano and stuff and when you're playing it, you can kind of like get a sense of that's how it would feel to land.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But yeah, there'satic, I love that.
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: Tanner, does your pilot thing make you enjoy this more?
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: Do you think?
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: I definitely think so.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: There's definitely some relatability, I mean.
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: So helicopters are definitely different than your fixed wing aircraft, so putting down landing gear and putting down flaps are different than the rotating blades on a helicopter.
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: But uh, before flying a helicopter I got about 20 hours in a cessna and that is definitely a thing is putting the flaps down.
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: So yeah, but then if you're flying on a commercial airline like, you can see out the window the flaps coming up.
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: As you're getting closer to slow down, you can hear the landing gear come down out of the plane.
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: So it's it's definitely super relatable.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: Like the sky team and the designers of this game definitely put a lot of thought into marrying it up with what an actual experience would be flying a plane to the ground do you think we should start a petition with scorpion masks to have a helicopter expansion?
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: oh, it would be awesome that would be super cool yeah, I know they just had their like small pack of um turbulent skies or whatever it's called.
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: I think the next one needs to be helicopters I would do like an ode to like the vietnam era that made helicopters and and the flying the heewees around and what made helicopters so famous is kind of a Vietnam era jungle rescue style.
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: That would be a super cool theme for a game.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Comes with an A-track with Fortunate Son on it.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: Dude, I mean Operation Game Night could get into producing right.
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: Is that a possibility?
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: The design process, as you guys are working towards this game that you've come up with.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: I don't know Well, has anyone got an in with Scorpion Mask?
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: Amanda, I mean I have Amanda.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: I got other ins though.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe, next convention you can get in with Scorpion, just start sending incessant emails to them.
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: They'll respond eventually.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: That's true convention.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: You can get in start sending incessant emails to them.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: They'll respond eventually it is.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: It is amazing what they put in that box.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: That's like a, that's like a 20, some dollar game maybe, yeah, and they pack so much gameplay into that thing and it's such a good game, great, freaking game and the best part is we get to sign the flight log together.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: I can remember the good old days when Tanner was over and we were flying through the skies of Reykjavik.
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: Kuala Lumpur yeah.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: And I did get a lot of good feedback.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Tanner does not think I'm a good pilot, so I need to go back to pilot training.
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: There were some decisions that I made.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: He questioned my authority.
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: He's got a child that wears him down throughout the day.
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: He wasn't firing at all cylinders last night, when we were trying to buckle down and go tackle a black landing.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Somebody needs to check his crew rest.
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: We got to get him 12 hours next time.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah excellent, Anything else guys.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: Nope, that's Sky Team.
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: That's Sky Team, baby.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Jared, congratulations on scoring 100 points in Lost Ruins of Arnak.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's unbelievable.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: You're a machine.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: The environment was very conducive.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: I was playing some guys.
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: They knew what they were doing, but they were giving me good cards and everything just fell into place.
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: But I yeah, I hit the triple digits.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: I've done it, I think, once before, but it was good, it was a good time that's crazy.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm really vibing if I'm hitting like 50.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: I'm like that's me top notch on Lost Runes of Arnak, so that's unattainable.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: I can't wait.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: Next week I'm going to Savannah with my buddy I talked about Dallin Tavoyan.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: We're going to get to play Arnak live in person for the first time.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: Maybe I'll have to live stream it.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: You know, I think you probably should.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, instagram live.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: We'll send you the login to the Instagram.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I do have it, Amanda.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Let's hear what you've been playing this week.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: So I came straight back from PAX Unplugged and went right back to work.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: So my plays are definitely down this week.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I am a postal worker featuring the postal service here.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: I'm actually at work today doing like 10 to 12 hour days, but I did get a chance to break away.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Last night I had my local game night.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: We meet on the second Tuesday or second Saturday of every month and last night I played Wingspan for sale and Wondrous Creatures Excellent, and I'll debrief on Wondrous Creatures a little bit more.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: That one just came out this year.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: It was designed by Yaum CW and published by Bad Comet, who also released Life of Amazonia last year.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: If you guys are familiar with that one.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: It's got some amazing artwork by Sophia Kang and basically you are a crew captain navigating this hex tile board where you're placing your crew and gathering resources.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: And the really interesting mechanism about that is you can either gather the resources or take these creature cards from the wilderness.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: So it's that dual you know duality that you can either take the resources or take the cards to your hand.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: You can only play the cards from your hand.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: You can't just take them straight from the wilderness and play them.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: So basically the object of the game is to be discovering these, this land, and creating the world's most, the best creature reserve.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: And just the artwork is really great.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: The table presence is huge.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: It's a really big board.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: We had three people and we were playing on a six foot, you know folding table and we were kind of running out of space there with just the three of us.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: So took um, took just under two hours with the teach and it's got a pretty beefy rule book, but I think going forward it definitely wouldn't take that long.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Really enjoyed it.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely recommend Wondrous Creatures.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds like.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Is it like a heavy game?
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what this game is rated for weight.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: No, I think it's rated like a 1.83, if I remember correctly.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right in my room house.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, mine too, absolutely.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: So it took a little bit longer, like I said, just with the teach, but I would say it's a light midway game, okay.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: And we had a lot of fun with it.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: You played all those games.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: When you gamed that, you got Wingspan, a new Wondrous Creatures game, and For Sale.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: For Sale.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: Yep Smashed them all out.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: We started about 4.30 and I think got home about 10, so like 5, 5-ish hours, 5.5.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: Do you have food?
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: Who plans the food?
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, so the host usually gives us a theme.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: He just says I'm making this and then everybody else brings you know whatever.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: So last night the host, host and hostess, they provided pizza, they just ordered Little Caesars and then everybody brings you know, usually about 20 people.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: Last night I brought a chili cheese dog cornbread casserole.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Dang Excellent.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: There's lots of sweets, you know, garlic bread.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Everybody kind of chipped in, everybody brought something.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: It's a good time.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: I have a great time Did they use the pizza portal Do?
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: you know about the pizza portal.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, okay.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Mailman.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Gary and I are big fans of the Pizza Portal, probably at least twice a month.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Like our Friday night go-to.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Well, with your ends with Little Caesars, you got to get us a sponsorship, brought to you by Little Caesars.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: I don't have one there.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: I can get you the Hardee's hookup.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Perfect, not the portal.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Excellent, I love me some Hardee's.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, what else did you play?
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Just that for sale and Wingspan.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: That was last night, so I had PAX, I can talk a little bit more about that.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll save that for the PAX discussion.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent, I'm going to go really quick.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I'm going to seed most of my time because I've missed Jared for the past couple of weeks and we have Amanda on, but I got to play Everdell duo, which just showed up a couple of days ago.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Everdell duo is a it says 2025 release.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I went to the future and brought this back.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: It's going out to backers right now.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Everdell duo is a game by Starland games.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: It is a two player only version of Everdell.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Duo is a game by Starland Games.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: It is a two-player only version of Everdell.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I say two-player only.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: It has a solo mode as well.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I did not play the solo mode, but it looks pretty cool.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Everdell Duo is just like a condensed version of Everdell.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: It's a worker placement game where you are putting your worker down to get resources that you're then using to buy cards to put into your city whether they're constructions or critters and you're building out this little tableau that earns you end game scoring points.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Everdell Duo is played over four rounds that mimic the different seasons of the year.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: So you go through fall, winter, spring, summer and then at the end of those four rounds, the game's over.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: You total up all of your points and whoever has the most most points wins.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: This game is pretty cool because it moves the game along and in such a way where you can actually limit the actions that your other person can take.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: So like if I put a worker to get berries or whatever, which is one of the resources, I put the worker down and then it moves this little sun token forward on the track and the track is lined with, I think it's 10 different cards that are from a draw pile and those 10 different cards are like the meadow, which you can draw from to add to your hand or to play to your, your city in front of you.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: You can only draw cards from the meadow if they are around either the sun token or the moon token.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: So as these two tokens move along the track, based on the actions that you're taking, it might limit the decisions that you can make or the cards that you can get.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: So like, if I put a worker, the sun moves forward.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: If I play a card, the moon moves forward.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: If I draw a card from the meadow or the draw stack, then I can pick which one of those moves forward If that token moves all the way to the other side of the board.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: So I think each person has three workers that they can place.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: There's six spaces along the track.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: So once everybody places their workers, that sun token is all the way to the right.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: And then the round ends once both the sun and moon are at the end of the track.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: So once everybody places their workers, that sun token is all the way to the right and then the round ends once both the sun and moon are at the end of the track.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: So you can kind of play this game where you can limit their choices.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: If you know that they're saving up resources for a specific card, you can hurry and like move that token forward to eliminate their choice to draw those cards from the meadow.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of bang in this box for like 20, I think this, but this game is 20.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: It comes with a two-player only mode, a solo mode and a cooperative mode, and I have not explored those other modes yet.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to it.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: But if you have a loved one that you play with and you want like a little one-on-one time, you'll play a game together without busting out the big everdell box.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: This is a great option and it's super easy to pull out and play.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I think it says 30 minute play time.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I think that's probably about right.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: We learned it and played it in maybe 45 minutes.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: So yeah, everdell duo is a great addition for all everdell or worker placement lovers dang travis, I don't know man, I I just like the regular everdell so much at two players, like mary, and I play that all the time at two players and I'm just like how could it be better?
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: But I am a sucker for every game they've redesigned as a two-player only version, I usually get it.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: And then wingspan is the one where I got wingspan asia.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I played it with jared once and he whooped me and that's like the two-player version of wingspan.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I'm not playing that, no more.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: So now I just now, I just play regular wingspan at two players.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: So I don't know if this would fall in the same boat as that, where I would just ultimately prefer the comforting of everdell, which I know and love yeah see, yeah, I mean for the listener, though clay I mean, clay doesn't really care too much about winning or losing, so I don't feel like it's because I whooped you quote, unquote whooped you, but you're always down to get a good game on there, so maybe it's just something about the play mode that you don't quite like I think it just added a little too much yeah, there was a lot of like little weird interaction with like.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I can't remember exactly how it works, but there's that little map with, like the, the yin and yang tokens on it.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: But yeah, anyway, travis, if you had a rebuttal to my here's my here's my rebuttal yes, my, my base version of everdell is the everdell complete collection, which is this big, gigantic, like 18 inch by 24 inch box.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: This thing takes up three shelves by itself it's gigantic 300 pounds.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: It's about 300 pounds.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: It comes with like a nice wooden tree that you can build and everything.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Super cute.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Everdell Duo is in a nice tiny box and you can just whip that out and play it without having to hurt your back.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Lifting the Everdell Complete collection.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: That's my argument.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: For Everdell Duo it's $20.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: I couldn't say no.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm happy to have it.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: We're definitely going to give it a try again.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Rachel wolfed me in Everdell duo.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: She smoked me so bad.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: So, looking forward to playing that again, I'll probably buy it.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Let's be honest.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: I got it too.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: I got it on the Kickstarter and I was shocked how fast it came.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: It was one of the fastest turnarounds for a Kickstarter I'd ever had.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I think they launched it since we started this podcast.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I think like August maybe.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: And it came I think last week for me.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, super quick turnaround and I love Mesa-Meverdell, so happy to have it.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Are we ready to move on to the mission objective?
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Amanda, this is your show.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: You are our reporter on the ground and in the field for PAX Unplugged, so why don't you tell us a little bit about the history of PAX Unplugged and how you got involved?
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: So, for anybody who isn't aware, pax Unplugged started PAX.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: It was started by Penny Arcade, which was a webcomic and editorial basically just about all things nerdy, and they have expanded and now started PAX these celebrations of gaming and gaming culture, and it takes place annually in Boston, seattle, melbourne, australia and Philadelphia and Philadelphia.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: So the East and West, the Boston and Seattle, are primarily like Comic-Con video game kind of focused, and they started Hacks Unplugged in Philadelphia in 2017, after seeing the actual tabletop that selections, you know the more games, things like that, that was growing.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: So they they found kind of that the unplugged version of the nerd world needed to be focused on.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: And 2004, when they started just the PAX events, there was 1,337 people at the very first event and last week in Philadelphia there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot Not quite Gen Con big, but still very big.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: And the real mission statement of the PAX team is to create an event where everyone feels safe, respected and valued and they really, really did a great job with that.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: As far as inclusivity, featuring some BIPOC designers and game publishers, they had the PAX Together room.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: There's a lot to talk about.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of the history of PAX lot to talk about.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of the history of PAX.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: There's a lot to see and do.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: That features an exhibition hall where they have vendors, demos.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: They have some concerts most evenings I can't for the life of me remember who was there because I didn't go but then there's some panels.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: They've got a lot of guest speakers, autograph sessions and then a gigantic free play area, the biggest one I've ever seen, with a huge library of over 1,000 games and tons of tournaments.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: They've got Magic tournaments, lorkana tournaments, and what's the other game, the other card game, pokemon, star Wars.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: No, that wasn't it.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: That wasn't it.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: It wasn't freaking Charizard.
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: Hey, what's wrong with Charizard?
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: You need.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Charizard out of this.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you need Charizard.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: I'm about to blastoise your ass out of here.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: So I spent the majority of my time in Expo Hall.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: I was volunteering to demo with the Doomlings team, which was absolutely amazing.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: They were a lot of fun to work with.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Everybody familiar with the Doomlings game have you guys all seen it, heard it, played it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I wanted to hear your pitch on what Doomlings is.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, Because I saw your work in there.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: I've seen the name, but I have a little idea of what it is, so if you could.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: So it's a super fun card game and the object of the game is to score the most points before the end of the world.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: And the way you do that is by playing traits from your hand over different rounds that are called ages, and each age you're going to flip a card and it's going to have its own little rule.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: So say, the first one is players cannot play a purple trait.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: So there's four different colors and a colorless one.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: So one round, everybody takes a turn.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Then the next age, we're going to flip the card, the next one, and that's going to be a catastrophe.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: So that's going to be a bad, negative and it'll say like negative one to your gene pool, which is your hand limit.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: And you know, discard one for every blue trait.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: You have played something like that and then once you flip over three catastrophes, the game is over, the world ends and you add up the points and see who wins.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Super cute artwork.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: I'm lobbying hard for one of the traits to be postal.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Oh nice, Keep an eye out for that.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Hashtag postal to the Doomlings team.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: Tell them you want to see the postal Doomlings.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Who designed this game?
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Doomlings is the company.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: It was designed by two guys from Germany, andres and I thought there was a game designed by Eric Lang that was kind of more mass market focused and I thought that this might be what it was, but I guess not.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: They're very cute and round all these little doomlings.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: Yes, very round.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: That does appeal to a round boy like me.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, so, amanda, how did you get involved with volunteering for this booth at PAX?
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: So there is a company called Envoy that I do demos for occasionally.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: I just got hooked up with them.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: I was in my once.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: I moved to Pensacola, florida, about two years ago from Wisconsin and I had nobody here, no group, and I was trying to find board game people and I found there was somebody that was doing demos in the area and I talked to him, found out about this company, envoy, and they basically hook you up with publishers and look for volunteers to go to events and demo, work the booths, stuff like that.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is this your first PAX that you've been to, or have you been to it?
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: before it is.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: It was my first big board game convention.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: I went to dice tower east in orlando in june and that one is definitely more like a play focused um, not so much the like sales and demo-y kind of thing there.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: I was there, um, with devir demoing cities at that event, but um, yeah it, it's a lot, lot smaller scale.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: It's only about 1800 people.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we went to Dice Tower West two years ago now.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: And that was a lot of fun.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: That library was insane.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: They're rent, checkout and play games.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that was awesome.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: So glad to hear that PAX U was a success.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: What else, what other games, do you want to highlight from PAX U that you saw?
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: two games in the expo hall and I'll talk about those in a little bit.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: But the other ways that you can procure games at pax unplugged would be through the math trade which, um, I kind of had clay help me with a little bit I think you yeah, you had it all figured out.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: If anything, I probably got in the way.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: No, don't get Travis started on math trades though.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: No, you're not a fan.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: I mean I love the concept of it.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: I love the concept of it.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: It's brilliant.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: But the system that you have to go through to conduct a math trade is terrible.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: The archaic like yes, so bad.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: I will agree with you 100% on that, because I almost did what I think you told me you did was forget to actually submit the actual games, like you had it all done.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: And then there's like a submit button and literally I was in like the 11th hour looking at it.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I should probably hit this submit button, yeah.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: It's archaic and awful, but the math trade I did.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: I got some really great games out of it.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: I actually got Tapestry Stonemaier Games, which I'm so excited to see on the table.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: I'm playing that actually right now with Travis on EDA and he's killing me but thanks for the invite, Amanda.
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: Thanks.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: No, that was.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: That was my pity invite for Travis, since you guys didn't invite them.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: It's about time.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: It's about time.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's just us two.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: You're not allowed.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we started up another game with jared mary and I, so oh, is he?
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's been his turn for like three days.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: I'm all readied up.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: I'm done.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Anyways, amanda what else did you get yeah?
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: My BGA.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: I have to apologize to everybody that I've been playing with just because of the work schedule, the pack schedule.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: I'm like, just boot me if you have to.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: I'm so sorry, but in addition to the math trade, which I was a big fan of, the outcome again not so much the, the, the how it works.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: That's stupid but uh was the bgg virtual game market.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: So if you go on board game geek, they have a geek list where everybody lists what they're selling and instead of having just a big open market, everybody makes their purchases in advance.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: You just have it ready, you know what you're going for, instead of just having everybody bring everything.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: I think with the travelers it works a lot better to know that you are going to sell everything that you bring, not that you're bringing stuff and then also taking more home that you were not expecting to have to take back with you.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: So that was awesome.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: I in total brought home 26 games.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Holy smokes.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: So you'll have to check out my Instagram and the big what do you guys call it?
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: That big camo bag.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: The roll-on employment bags yeah.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: You'll have to check out my Instagram.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: I took my four games for the math trade in it and brought home 26, including Tapestry which, as you know, is a big boy.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: It's big what's?
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: what were some other big ones?
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: I got chai deluxe that's a big box.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Um vagrant song, that's a big box.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that bag, that bag is a banger.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: It's padded, padded, it just.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: It weighed in at 71 pounds, but I got them all home.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: I got them all home, thank god it had wheels could you just mail it to yourself?
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: do you get like a discount being in the post office?
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: do you get a discount in the military?
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: come on yeah, free bombs for you, yeah yeah, mine's.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: Buy one, get one, full, full price.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: That's the pixel service discount.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Oh geez.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I should have thought about it.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so that the, the math trade and the virtual market were awesome.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: I mean the games that I got from the virtual market.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: I spent way less.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: I spent way less.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Most games are $5, $10, $15, $8.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: And a lot of them are still new and shrink.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: A lot of them are just immaculate played once they're getting rid of it.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: So definitely recommend looking into BGG for all of your board game procurement needs.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: Not only do they have math trades monthly, they have auctions.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: People are just putting their stuff up.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: It's a really good way to find a lot of good sales on BTG, yeah.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: We're not good about that either.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: What were some of the more popular booths?
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: What did you see people flocking to in the demo or exhibition halls?
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: So I met up with a lot of other instagram content creators and one one of the top event, events or things was the thunderworks booth and they were playing citizens of the spark.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: That one I backed on kickstarter.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: It just ended, I think last month.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: Shout out, they are from wisconsin thunderworks games they're um also known for cartographers smart people books, yeah, smart people from wisconsin.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Smart people leave wisconsin because it's cold, but yeah, thunderworks was really big.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: All play had a huge presence always and all their little small box games.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: I did, uh, purchase a couple of those for my secret santa got her switchbacks and one of the kabuto sumo expansions okay, um, some of the best people that I met, I would say, are self-publishers.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: So they are the ones that just have like not to say that the big designers and the big publishers don't love games as much as everybody else.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: But when you see like these people self-publishing and just putting their whole heart and soul into their company, I love that for them.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: I'm so excited and I just really want to support those people just as much as the big box games that we know and love.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: So just a couple of shout-outs to them.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: I talked to Clay about this yesterday.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: But Hootenanny Games if you guys haven't heard of them, they're definitely a family-friendly game company.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: They're definitely a family-friendly game company.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: I met Alex, one of the co-owners of Hootenanny Games, at the Math Trade virtual market pickup.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: He was just walking past and he stopped me and said hey, can you tell me what's going on here?
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Because people are just walking around with their their bgg a or bgg names on signs so that you can find each other to do your trade deeds and stuff, and he's like, what is what is going on here?
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: So I explained him what we were doing there, that that was the the math trade meet up and, and so he explained to himself that he was a of Hootenanny Games and they are super fun family-friendly games.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: One of them is Disco Island Escape and that one is.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: It is and it's got like holographic, very colorful.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: It's basically lemurs that are dancing off of a mountain which turned out to be a volcano and they are, yeah, just dancing their way to safety and it is super fun.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: There's no text on any of them, so it's easy for people who may be colorblind or also to get the kids involved that was a lot of fun.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: And then one other one I wanted to shout out was paleo vet by absurdist productions basically that one, yeah, and paleo vet.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: If you look it up on bgg is just one word p-a-l-e-o-v-e-T.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: But you are basically the doctor at the animal amusement park.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to keep them safe and healthy.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: So you're working on the dinosaurs and that one I really like because it has a solo mode as well.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: That was my couple of shout outs of people that I met.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: Also, I played this crazy party game on space on steroids, called space off.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: That one is going to be another self published one next year.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: It was just chaos.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: It was a combination of dexterity games, brain teasers, lots of just player interaction.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: There was one point where I I was.
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: I drew a card where I had to continue to dance um me and a person from the other team.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: We both had to just like keep moving while doing these brain teasers and dexterity things and like basically the first person who stops loses.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: So that it was.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: It was chaos and just so much fun.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: Typically I'm not a party games girl because usually it's just me and you know my husband, mailman gary.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: So we don't really yeah, mailman gary, but yeah, look for space off coming next year.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, last but not least, actually I have two more things.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: I met Chris Porter from Chris Couch Games and he released Kraken Skulls last year and then next year in February he's putting out on Kickstarter Holiday Hills.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: Might have seen some ads for that one.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: It is a christmas tree decorating holiday game.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: It's like the little 3d printed trees and decorations and your, your elves, decorating the, the neighborhood or the city and there's some different restrictions and stuff like that, but that one is super cute, a lot of fun, and he was all.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: He was awesome, chris porter nice, very cool.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Did you have one other shout out, or those?
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Those are the last two I do have one this.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: It was a big one, so I had the absolute honor and pleasure to sit down one-on-one with paul solomon.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Paul Solomon Very nice.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: He is the designer behind Stamp Swap and Honey Buzz.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: And yeah we sat down, we had breakfast at Panera one morning, just a little meet and greet.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: It was great.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: He is taking over for Gamehead Games next year and they are releasing five different small box games.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: All of them are going to be like six by six, by two and they're releasing them like back to back to back to back.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Next year it's going to be like a banger, banger year for game head games and I got to take a couple of my content creator friends and we played all five of those games with him.
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: So we got a little sneak peek.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: One of them is postal themed, which is super exciting.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: It's called First Class Letters.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: It's a fun little word game.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: You're going to shake some dice and there'll be one letter that you have to use, one that you cannot use, and there'll be one letter that you have to use, one that you cannot use, and then, like a bonus, couple of letters and you're trying to make words in alphabetical order.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: It's like a roll and write Okay, so that one's going to be, and then another one.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: I don't remember all five of them, but the other one that I remember was Trinket Trove.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: That one has artwork by Sandara Tang, who did Flamecraft, and Manny Varga, so that one is like your little mice, and every night you go out into the world and you collect little trinkets like a thimble or a feather or just like real world things, and then you're trading them with each other to create your little habitat.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: And that one was super cute too.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: So we played those those two with paul solomon and super, just super excited for those to come out and to see what else he comes up with next year.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: He did tell us about a couple other things in the shoot, but we're not allowed to talk about those yet, so next year's going to be a big year for gameHead games and I'm super excited about that.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: That sounds amazing.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very cool, yeah.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: So if you are listening to this and you might be curious about going to a board game convention like PAX Unplugged, I would highly recommend it.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I've been to Dice Tower West but I've been to SN Spiel.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Those have been the two that I have been to, but I've been to Essen Spiel.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Those have been the two that I have been to.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: But I really wish I would have known more about PAX U when I was stationed in New Jersey, because I definitely would have made it to that, but I was not super into the hobby then.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: I was collecting board games here and there.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that sounds great.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: I will definitely put that on my bucket list to attend.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: Maybe we'll all get together, we're going next year.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm going to be there every year forever now, because I'm oh yeah, so yeah, I'm just a two-hour drive from uh philadelphia, so there's literally no barrier for me going there.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe there will be.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: There might be a minor just because the next year they made it the week before thanksgiving and and it's also the same weekend as the philadelphia marathon.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: So it's gonna be a challenge next year.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know maybe I'll do the marathon too.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: Do it.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: OGN meetup at a PAX you next year.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Love it All right.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: I'll be there, awesome.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for giving us the scoop on PAX unplugged.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: We really appreciate it.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: I forgot my prop oh yeah, what was that?
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: So this?
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: This is another one.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: This is the one of the two games I bought brand new from the Expo Hall.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: This is Tether.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: It's by how to Steam Broccoli Nice, great publishing.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: They're two-sided.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: It's basically like 19, 91 on the cards.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: It's a two-player game where one player is tethering their astronauts horizontally, the other one's doing it vertically, so you're playing against each other with these like two-sided cards Not two-sided, but double cards.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: It's super fun.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Nice, my prop.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: That sounds great.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we got the prop.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Got the prop in there.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: That sounds great.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we got the prop.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: Got the prop in there.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm such chaos, you guys.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: That's okay.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I know that there's a lot to digest at these conventions and you have condensed it and distilled it down for us, so we appreciate it.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: And we like chaos here.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: We do like chaos.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: We invited Jared on the podcast, that's right.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: I was literally.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: We like chaos here.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: We do like chaos.
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: We invite Jared on the podcast.
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: It's chaos, that's right.
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: I was literally talking about that this morning.
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: I don't know how I was able to stay quiet for so long.
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: I was going to ask what's the food situation like?
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: That's my final and only question.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: So there are on-site food vendors right there in the convention hall?
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: No, in the convention hall.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: They have like philly cheese sticks I I honestly didn't really eat while I was there.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: It was so busy, it was just chaos, it that's that's my middle name, really.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Um, I did have tom's dim, which is right outside.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: That was amazing.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: And then just a funny sidebar story.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: We were trying to go back there the next night and the line was out the door, and so me and one of my content creator friends uh, adam from tabletop vibes shout out to.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: Adam.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: We were looking for some place to eat and this couple just came along and they're like hey, you looking for somewhere to eat.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: And we're like, yeah, we'll pretty much eat anything at this point.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: And he's like, oh, I know those great, you know other dim sum place?
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: So he's like follow me.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: So we just started following this couple around the streets of philadelphia and then we get to that dim sum place and the line is even further out the door than the first place.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: And so he's like okay, how do you guys feel about korean food?
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: And we're like, again, we will eat anything.
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: So he takes us back down the block where we came and then we go in this building and, like past a vape shop, up a creepy stairwell.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Sounds like Korea oh yeah Is what we get for following yeah.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: And then we had the best Korean food we've ever had.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: We've walked right in.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: There was nobody waiting.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: We sat down.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: Adam had never had Korean before.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: He thought that the tofu was chicken and I just let him believe that.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: But we had a great time and it was definitely an adventure.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Never go with a content creator to a third location.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: That's your PSA.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Excellent, awesome.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks for the rundown.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: That was great.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Do we want to go over the fence?
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: I live over the fence Travis.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Let's go over the fence.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Clayton, what have you been doing outside of board gaming?
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: I saw Wicked again.
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, it was so good.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: Oh my God, I cried, I cried too many times.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: Was that Amanda?
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: I haven't even seen it once yet.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Jealous.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Oh well, you need to.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: It's so good.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: We took the kids this last time and they loved it as well.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: So big, big hit in round two uh, even better, I think, than the first time.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: I appreciated it more.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: Freaking glinda and elphaba there, I might get their tattoos on my chest.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I'm like I'm a wicked fanboy now.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: And also, over the fence, mason had his little peak improv theater in Colorado Springs.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: His teacher was doing it as Santa for this Christmas extravaganza comedy sketch show and so they needed a kid to play young Scrooge and he knew Mason was a munchkin well-esteemed in his previous production.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: So he asked if he would do it and Mason was like sure.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: So we went and saw that last night.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: It was crazy.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: It was like a small room.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: You know like 20, 30 people can get in this little improv room.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: It was pretty hilarious room.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: You know like 20, 30 people can get in this little improv room.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: It was pretty hilarious.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Mason delivered his lines, it was fun.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: But I mean just I want to support more local things like that, like these.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: In-person productions always impress me, even if it's just a rinky dink little room with a bunch of people.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: But they're they're passionate about it and it's fun and you know I always have a good time seeing that stuff.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: So support your local game stores and support your local theater excellent, you are a full-on theater, dad.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Now it's, it is signed, sealed, delivered.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Uh, jared, what you've been doing outside of board gaming this week.
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: Luckily, I finished all my homework, I turned in my papers and I could finally enjoy myself.
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: So I called up my boy, tanner, here and my babysitter their whole family, came over last night, got out the uni, started slinging the pies.
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: It was awesome night.
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: We busted out wavelength, okay.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: Oh, it was like 12 bucks at target.
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but great game.
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: They have great like their12 at Target.
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: I don't know how that happened.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: Great game.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: Their kids are awesome.
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: Tanner joined the girls' team.
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: We won, he won.
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: No, we didn't, naturally, we almost had to come from behind.
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: They almost did.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: That was a blast.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: Anytime I can get the Ooni out is a good time.
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: I also saw Wicked this week and it blew my mind IMAX.
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: It was phenomenal.
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: So, Gemma, she got a little Glinda and Elphaba shirt and then we realized that's her initials, Gemma Erickson, G-E-M.
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: Excellent, you wouldn't know if you didn't see.
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: I don't know what you guys are doing, you should.
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: Tanner you do anything over the fence.
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: Pretty special week this week for me.
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: Got to do part of pilot training, especially helicopters is getting your first solo Nice this week on Thursday I got to fly from our home airport at Dothan Regional and then got to fly to two other airfields and then back.
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: I was the only one in the helicopter.
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: Super surreal experience.
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: Uh, hard to believe, especially about four months ago.
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: Never, never would have thought that I'd be doing something crazy like this.
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: I mean it was gonna happen eventually, but uh, still hard to wrap your head around.
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: So it's a big milestone.
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: Got to continue to, to think about it and how thankful I am for this opportunity and um, but yeah, super, super special event for me this week.
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: That's great Congratulations, that's huge.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Round of applause.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Appreciate it Okay.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Travis what about you?
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: So I had a super weird week.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: My phone just decided to die on me so I had to go out and search for a new phone and lost all my contacts and have spent the past couple of days trying to recover my life, because everything is connected to your phone nowadays.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: Then we went up and did a couple of Christmas markets and did some really magical Christmas markets that were up in northern Germany and the Netherlands and stuff.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: So that was pretty awesome.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: But I do want to shout out two video games that I've been playing that have been awesome.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: One is Indiana Jones at the Great Circle Just came out on Xbox Game Pass, so it's like free to all Game Pass users and it's like playing an Indiana Jones movie.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: The opening, like tutorial level is the like golden idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark To include like running from the big ball that's running behind you and stuff, uh, but it's all a first person indiana jones game where you are beat up not nazis but fascists, but beating up fascists, uh.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: And it opens up in like the vatican.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: The first level is like the vatican.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: It's got all sorts of like environmental storytelling and puzzles and all sorts of stuff.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Uh, tons of cool stuff to find and little secrets, and plus you can just pick up anything and turn it into a weapon.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: You can like pick up a baseball bat, you can pick up an umbrella, you can pick up.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: I beat up a fascist with like a fly swatter, so that's always fun it's my favorite way to be a fascist I think Troy Baker does the voice for Indiana Jones and he is like almost spot on.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: He is so close to being just like Harrison Ford, so it's been super impressive.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Ratings have been through the roof.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: It's been great.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: The other one that I want to shout out is called Marvel Rivals and it is like a Marvel skinned Overwatch team shooter, team hero shooter, and so it just launched.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: It's free, you can go in and buy it.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Like a Marvel skinned Overwatch team shooter, team hero shooter, and so it just launched.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: It's free, you can go in and buy it, and then you pay for skins and stuff if you want cosmetics.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: But it launched with like 20-some different characters, all your favorite Marvel characters Hulk, iron man, emma Frost, wolverine, magneto, all these like Hawkeye, black Widow, widow, you name it they're in there.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: And the cool thing about this one is it's a lot of like over overwatch type objectives, where you're pushing a little cart through the map or you're defending areas and stuff.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: But then they have this cool thing where if you're standing next to a certain character while you're playing as a character and they have some sort of like relationship, uh, you get bonuses.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: So like if I'm playing as winter soldier and standing next to Groot or black widow or like other gun wielding winter soldier, whatever, and we're standing near each other like we all have unlimited ammo.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Or if I am playing a Spider-Man, I'm standing next to venom.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I get venom powers, so they do this cool symbiotic type relationship between the characters.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: That's really cool.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, and I fell down the stairs.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: Way to bury the lead.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: Are you okay there, big guy?
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: A little embarrassed.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: A little embarrassed, maybe Gwen wasn't anywhere to be found.
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: Right, you weren't holding Gweny.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: I was, yeah, I um my dad instincts kicked in and I had to like dive on the floor and like turn and cradle, and so I basically it wasn't like I tumbled down the stairs but I fell down like three stairs and basically like fell down three stairs straight onto tile, like on my back, because I was trying to save her.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm a little banged up.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: But doing okay Everybody's okay, that's good to hear.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: At our age we were not as nimble as we once were, so I end up with a broken hip.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I wouldn't know anything about that, dang.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I'm back.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, that's my over the fence and, amanda, you are back.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Go over the fence and wrap us up.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: What have you been doing?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: Post office 10-12 hour days for the next three weeks.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: And other than that, we did get a Christmas tree, so it's in the living room.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: It does not currently have any lights or ornaments.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: Those are TDD, but my stepson will be home for Christmas.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: He has his Exodus from the air force no air force so he will be here.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: We got to get it all decorated up before he comes.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: My daughter in college in.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Wisconsin will not be joining us.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: She's going to Thailand to work in an elephant sanctuary for Christmas, I guess?
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, mom works a lot of overtime so she can travel the world.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: Dang.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: That sounds crazy.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Good for you.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah Well, thank you postal workers for your service, because this is a crazy time of year.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: I was going to say I got.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: I actually got an amazing package yesterday from our fearless leader Travis.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: I got a box full of games.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: I, oh my, blew my mind I that was supposed to be my over the fence.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: I got too box full of games, I blew my mind.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: That was supposed to be my over the fence.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: I got too excited about pizza, obviously, but thanks, travis, spreading the holiday cheer via our friends from the Postal Service.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: I'm super excited for the guerrilla marketing.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: I want to get that thing out.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, nice.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: I'm super excited for the gorilla marketing.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh yes.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: The troops weren't quite ready for it yesterday, but we're going to get it on the board.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: We're going to get it on the table.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I feel like if anybody had an opportunity to play a game like that and get really into it, it was going to be you guys.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's why I figured it was a good Clay should be sending some.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: Clay should be sending some packages to you guys as well.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I do have one en route to Travis.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: I've got Jared's in the process of making.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: I just need a couple more things for it.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there is some special treats from Amanda in there as well.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, I'm so excited, so excited.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Well, amanda and Tanner, thank you guys for joining us on episode 18 of the Operation Game Night podcast At the post office.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Amanda, where can people find you if they're looking for you on the internet?
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: No, you can find me on Instagram and occasionally TikTok at EmptyNestBoardMama On TikTok it's actually EmptyNestBoardMa'am because I ran out of letters, so no last A on there, but that is definitely my be real be her material on TikTok.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: So if you're bored and looking for a laugh, that's where you should go.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Everybody should go out and follow Amanda.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: She puts out good content.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: If you love board games, she is one to follow.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us, Amanda.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you for giving us a rundown on PAXU.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks for your time, even though.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you for giving us a rundown on PAXU and thanks for your time.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Even though you are working at the postal office, tanner, where can people find you on the internet?
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: I keep a pretty little profile you don't have to, it's okay.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but if you're, if you're driving South through Southeastern Alabama and you see some helicopters flying around.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: Look up it might be in one of them Tanner at AirForcemil.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: Thank you all for being here.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: This concludes episode 18 of the Operation Game Night podcast.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: I have been Clay or I have been.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: Travis, you wish man.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: I was reading names.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: I am Travis, he is Clay, she is Amanda, he is Jared, he is Tanner and we're out.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: We're out.