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The Benevolent Board Game Dictator Method · Operation Game Night

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Travis Smith.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me as always is my co-host, Clayton Gable.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Clay, how are you doing?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am doing great, Travis.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I am so excited to be back here with you on another episode of the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited to talk about big old game nights because we are Operation Game Night after all.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so hosting a good game night is an important piece of the puzzle for us.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, a big game night.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking like game nights where you have multiple tables set up.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're you're in this, there's a lot of people.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: How are we doing that?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: How do you manage a game night like that?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're in luck because I just did it and I think I crushed it.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you guys will have to let me know how I did.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm pumped.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: With uh with a unique solution to how you manage all the tables and expectations for people so that people could come correct.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't wait to hear that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you might have noticed that I didn't say that we're back in better than ever.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that we need a new tagline.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, for those that have been tuning in for a while, that you notice that I I always say we're back in better than ever.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: That might not be the tagline anymore.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: I we gotta come up with something new.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little stale.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanna I want to send this one and I'll uh I want to hear what you have to say about it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right, ready?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Clear the table, gather your crew, get your battle rattle on.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's time for Operation Game Night.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, you're live pitching me right now?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: How does that how does that strike you?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm struck.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I feel good.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Clear the table, get your battle rattle on.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, all right.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Command is gonna like that.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll see.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, but we are gonna debrief our week, and then we're gonna talk about hosting big game nights, and then as always, we will go over the fence and talk about what we have been doing outside of board gaming.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, Clay, hit me with your debrief for the week.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna keep it short because for once my co-host here has played a lot of games, and I want to give him the space to talk.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, I'm gonna talk about two little games, novelties, maybe.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: These are first impressions, these are hot off the press.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have played Collect.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is just a little card game from C-Mon.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know they were capable of these type of things.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought C Mon was cool mini or not.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: We were just getting big old games that took up so much shelf space.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a sea salt and paper size box here, little chameleon on there.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking at first when I saw it, I thought maybe like it was like a redo of Coloretto, but turns out it's not.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you about what you're doing in collect, and it does box size aside, it does remind me a lot of sea salt and paper.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially you have these maybe seven different types of animal cards um in the deck, and you shuffle up the deck and you make two stacks in the center of the table.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And on your turn, you can draw a card from a stack.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you like it, you add it to your display, and it has to go on the right or left side of the display.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: It'll make sense why that matters in a second.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you don't like it, you can put it back on the top of either stack and then draw a new card.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: That new card you then have to keep and add it to your display.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, each animal card has a specific power that you can activate when you add it to its display.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, your goal here in all this is to achieve an alliance of animals.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: An alliance is if you get four animals of the same type next to each other in your display.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if I get four crabs, they're all lined up next to each other.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I win the round, I get half a crown.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'll explain that in a second, too.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get there.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is a short game, it's easy.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the abilities that activate on these cards, so like the crab, when I play a crab in front of me, I can shift a card in somebody's display as many spaces as I want.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good way to you know get some of your cards close together where they need to be, or you can, you know, screw your neighbor and say, Hey, I see you got two hermit crabs next to each other.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go ahead and slide one to the end of the display, making it harder for you to achieve victory.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a parrot card.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you play the parrot to your display, you can say the name of another card.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you draw that card off the top of the deck, you get to keep it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's fun.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you have cards that manipulate the ways you can win the round.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the octopus lets you win by getting three pairs that don't have to be next to each other, and so it's like an alternate win condition.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I can win with an alliance of four next to each other, or I can get the octopus and then win with three pairs.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have the lion, which lets you win by getting one of seven different animal types.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: However many animals there are, you gotta get one of each, and then you win with that.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you're kind of diversifying your ways you can win with some of these.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's other ones like the monkey, let's you swap, swap the monkey card you just played with a card anywhere else on the table.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody else has a card you want, you just give them the monkey, you take that card, you put it on your row.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the way it goes.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So super simple, super quick little light card game.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Plays in like 15-20 minutes.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I said half crown because they have this system and I kind of like it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you win the first three rounds, you just get a half a crown.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody wins again in those first three rounds, then they get a full crown.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The game's over, they won.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if nobody has won in the first three rounds, there's a full crown up for grabs in the last round.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, you could have not won any of the first three rounds, and then last round you win, you win the game.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, this is a great little card game.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really like about it is, you know, Simon, they they didn't just make a little card game.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they did, but they gave each card, each um animal card has a little pop of holographic that just adds something to the aesthetic that I just find so enjoyable.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And for what it's worth, every like crab card has a little bit different artwork on it, so it's not the same crab picture over and over again.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one's got like an earring, one's got like a little bikini on like you know, they just did something different on each card, they didn't have to do that, they didn't have to go there with the holographic stuff.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it's fun, it can be a little meme because you are be able to manipulate what people are doing.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: But again, mean games don't bother me when it's you know a 20-minute game.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is what it is.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So collect, that's the first one.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of this, Travis?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I have, and the second that you said putting it at the ends, like that sort of decision mechanic that you're making, uh, decision that you're making, uh, I immediately recognized it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have not played it though, and I was always intrigued.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a good debrief, and I'm definitely gonna go see if I can pick that one up because that sounds awesome.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, this was great.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I grabbed this in a little game store in California when I was out on a visit.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and it's also on BGA, so you can try it out there too.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we should do that.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want me to hit my second one and then just let you run wild?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, CMYK games.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying it here, I'm saying it loud for everybody to hear.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is they're the masters of fun.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I don't care.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: They they make more fun games than the other publisher.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fun by my standard.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so I saw this.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, our man Mike at the Meeple That Luces pointed this out to me, sent me a Discord note that they came out with this.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Grabble.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Had no idea what it was, didn't even look into it.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just add the cart by.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Grable is one of the most interesting little uh activities you can play.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, there is just in this box just a whole bunch of things, little trinkets, you have little pigs, you have little bananas, you've got dice, you've got meeples, you've got letter G's, you've got all this stuff.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Many, many, many of each of those things, and they just sit in this box.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the way the game's played is that each person gets a thimble that they put in front of them.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's maybe like a shot glass, whatever.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the first part of the game is you reach into the box with one hand at a time.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can only use one hand and you pull one thing out and you add it to your little shot glass.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody is just reaching in, pulling things out, adding them to their shot glass until one person has it full enough that they decide, I think I'm done here.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then they grab this big red pawn out of the center of the box, put it in front of them, and start counting down.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Five, four, three, two, one.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, while you're counting down, everybody else has to, you know, they can keep grabbing a few more things and then they put their hand on the on the table when they're done.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you were the last person to put your hand on the table, you have to give one of your pieces to the person who has the red pawn.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't want to be the last one still trying to get stuff out of the box.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I grab all these things, you may be asking?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're gonna play this amazingly entertaining nothingness of a game here in the second part, where you dump out all your little goodies that you gathered in your shot glass behind your hand.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you're hiding all your stuff, and you play what kind of amounts to a trick-taking mechanic where one person leads and they throw a die in the box.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now everybody else has to, from behind their little stash, follow suit and put a die in the box.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't follow suit, you're out.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, you're trying to collect enough things to like diversify and stay alive a long enough time that you like the last one in.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so one person leads, everybody throws in.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't do it, you're out.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then the next person leads, they're like, Oh, banana.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's throwing in a banana.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Next person goes, they're like, I got a G here.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody's like, Oh my god, I didn't grab a G.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm out.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this whole thing takes approximately three minutes from start to finish.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: We played this as a family like 17 times in one night and just had the best time with it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is a novelty to be sure, and the game, there's more of a game there than you would think, but man, what fun! I I had so much fun with this.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I can't even explain why it would be fun, but it is.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's uh they find some unique ways to like integrate different mechanics, like ones that you would not see, and the rush to grab a bunch of random items and add them to a shock glass that on the on the initial grab, like let's say I'm I'm reaching in with one hand and I'm pulling items out one at a time and adding them to my shock glass.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how you just do it until it's filled up?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can I just grab a thousand pieces and then it's overflowing and I just have a collection in front of me already?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: As long as they don't fall off the top of your shot glass.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so they have to fit within the thimble, the shot glass.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the and they're like all different sizes, so you have like big dice, you have small dice, you have like so yet, like you can get more of the small stuff, but they're they're harder to pick out of the box.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, there's more to it than you think, like once you start playing it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: But man, it's fun.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm glad I have it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna bring it everywhere.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what what a brilliant way to like reduce production costs.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they probably go on some surplus site and buy 10,000 dye, like mismatched die dice, and then they just like add them, scatter them across all the boxes, and then that's it.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, they don't have to have like standard pieces, they don't have to have stuff that's you know mass-produced.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like uh for the listeners.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am showcasing a die.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm showcasing little traffic cone traffic cone.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, traffic cones, the one I forgot to mention that are in there, but yeah, like just these random pig things.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my gosh, little bananas.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just crazy.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And here's your little shot glass you stick everything into, and so okay.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: What a what a game, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, you know, you you either know you're about that or you know you're not, and uh, that sounds like really dumb fun that would be a lot of fun when people are uh a couple drinks in.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds awesome.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the those are the two games I wanted to debrief this week.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Travis, tell me about you you played some games with some people.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of played I set you up on a blind date.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: You did, and I I was gonna say, you I was set up by my coworker on a blind board gaming date.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I had been texting with these these guys, um, some guys that Clay used to game with when he lived out in Colorado, and uh he set me up with his crew.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: This has been like months in the making trying to align schedules.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: It finally worked out, and we had a game day, and I showed up and I didn't lose a kidney and I played lots of games.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I asked them, like, what sort of games do you guys play?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they were down for pretty much anything except for like the heaviest of the heavy, the longest of the long.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And even then, I think they dabble from time to time on special occasions.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like the first game that they had talked about when I walked in was like, Oh, have you ever played Twilight Imperium?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, This is gonna be a day if that's what we're playing.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, that was not what we played.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we played four games, five games.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, first we played uh we played some trick to the future from game head, and uh Paul Solomon came on and talked all about that.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: That is one of those games that is really hard to grasp a strategy right off the bat.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that the scoring works, like if you're trying to shoot the moon or go for zero wins in a trick-taking game, you score the most amount of points if you can use up all of your fuel rods.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that this works is you have these cards that can change numbers in four different suits.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I put down a seven, I can use two of my fuel rods that I'm allocated to turn it into a nine, potentially win that trick, and then score that at the end of the game.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of the game is after the round is over, you want the number of tricks uh that you won to be equal to the remaining fuel rods that you have.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you have less fuel rods than you had tricks, then you are lost in time and you score zero points.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you have more fuel rods than you have uh tricks, then you are safe, safe journey, and you score two points per fuel rod that you collected.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um or you can shoot for zero tricks one and try and expend as many of your fuel rods as you can and score double points for every empty fuel rod space, up to seven, I think.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think you have seven on your board.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can really push your luck and like try and go for zero, but if you win one trick and you end up with zero fuel rods left, then you're lost in time.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: You score zero points for the round.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I really freaking like this game, it's so cool.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Have you played this yet, Clay?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have not.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have we we've only I mean I've heard Paul talk about it.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think he talked about it both times he was on our podcast, and both times I was hype.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was hype about it.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have it, I haven't played it yet, but yeah, man, what a clever little twist.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not bidding before the hand starts.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Your remaining fuel rods is your bid and it evolves over the course of the game.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: So your remaining your remaining fuel rods will go back up to I think we had five.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on the player count, but I think we started with five fuel rods each round, and then you score points based on how many tricks you have as compared to the fuel rods you have remaining at the end of each round.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the end of three rounds, uh, then you your total points is the winner.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we actually came down to ties.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we came down to a tie after three rounds, and I think it's like number of fuel rods left on that last round that wins.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but man, it it reminds me of the first time you play no loose ends, and you're like, what is the actual strategy here?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's kind of brain-bendy a little bit.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I will definitely be playing this again because I I really like this type of trick-taking game that has a little bit of strategy undercurrent to it that you don't see everywhere else.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So uh shout out to Game Head Games, shout out to Paul Solomon, shout out to the awesome designs that they are just pushing out in every wave.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was trick to the future, real quick.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't recall, you know, back when they were my gaming group, um, or I was lucky to be a part of their gaming group, to be honest.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: They they had it going before me, and I just weasled my way in.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know that they I remember playing trick taking games with them or them talking about it.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Was this was trick taking something that was a familiar concept to them, or was that kind of a new thing?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: They seemed like they dabble in trick-taking games and understood understood the concept of like lead suit, must follow, trump suit, that type of stuff.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they said that they don't play a lot of trick-taking games, but they picked it up pretty seamlessly that it would have fooled me that they played them.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I would have believed that they play them all the time.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, pretty seamless, pretty easy, good warm-up game, something that they hadn't seen before.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we started off with Trick to the Future.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Then we went into some wingspan pocket.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Great, as always.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna play that before.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: They had, yeah.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was sitting on the shelf and they all knew the rules.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um beautiful.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: They were, yeah, we dove right in, pretty seamless.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, then we took a little break, uh, ate some lunch, and then we went into cursed court.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Clay, have you played cursed court before?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have not.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've heard of it, but I couldn't picture it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Bring it up for me.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank goodness.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: So Cursed Court is kind of a uh bidding, almost um what do you area control style game?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Where you oh, let me verify that I'm a human.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um thank you, Cloudflare.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks a lot.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So Curse Court is uh bidding area control style game with hidden information.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So each of the players is given 20 of these discs, they're kind of like chips, and they're given four crowns to which that they can claim these areas in the middle.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: In between each of the players is dealt one card.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: We played three players, so you had two cards in between.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I can look to the at the cards to the left and my right, and the cards have these characters, these nine characters on them, and then uh based on whoever starts, whoever has the starting player token, um, you will place a crown with any number of chips that you want in any of these spaces.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: It can be on the character itself if you know that that specific character is there, it can be in these quadrants, it can be you know, on these diagonals in the corners, on the straights, it can be like basically any combination.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's like 30 different places to bid.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: But if I go in with like two chips and somebody else wants to steal that space from me, they have to double my bid to put their crown in my spot, kick me out, and then I get another round turn at the very end.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea is you score points if like let's say I I bet this upper left quadrant, I'm betting that all four of these characters exist somewhere in the cards that have been dealt, and they all have to appear.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: If I put uh my crown on a specific character, I earn points based on the number of times that character appears in the cards that have been dealt.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there's secret cards between each of us, and then in between each round of betting, another card is flipped in front of everyone that can see uh that information.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so going in really heavy on your first bid, you might screw yourself later on when somebody kicks you off and that card gets revealed later on.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost better to like low ball it first, get extra rounds at the end.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're just assuming that somebody's not going to go in with 11 chips on one spot that you really want, uh, because you're only dealt 20 chips, you can't double 11.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it this one was really cool.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you played it over three rounds, I think.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: They said that they had never seen anybody get above 25, and I think the scores were pretty close between like 25 and 20 between the three of us.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, that the cursor court might be uh on the purchase list here sometime soon because I really like this uh kind of round robin bidding for positions.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, bidding rules.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this was new.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: They they taught you this one.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: They taught me this.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they had played it maybe once before.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like they had recently procured it um and taught me it.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we played it.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: It the gameplay is like maybe half an hour, depending on how often people hem and ha about what they are trying to do.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, however.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Think that three players is the best player count.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think the more players you have, the more hidden information is out there.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you're gonna see some pretty wild swings in terms of bidding and um jockeying for position and in game scoring.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I definitely like the words you were saying with regard to this game.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I might have to put this on my keep an eye out for list.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know if it's like the top of my procure list.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if I found a cheap copy somewhere, I would certainly consider picking it up.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: If I just saw it somewhere, I'd probably get it.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like one of those things where it's like, I'm not gonna go out of my way to order it online, but if I'm somewhere and I see it, that's probably enough to put me over the edge.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably a game that I've seen before.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably been in some used pile or you know, somewhere on a on a shelf, and I passed it over not knowing what it was, but it's so simple.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you can teach it to anybody, and if they understand the the concept of an auction, then they can play this game.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like uh it's like bidding for roulette, right?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can play the corners, you can play the the straights, you can play the the diagonals, like you can you have tons of options out there, and it's just about where you want to take your risks to maximize your points at the end.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love it.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Then we capped off the game day with Architects of the West Kingdom.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Have you played this game, Clay?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have played this game, and I this is one that I have played one time, okay, and I loved it, and I have not played it since.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I it has been sitting there, I look at it all the time, and I was like, that was such a good clean worker placement game, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it for a euro, oh I I'm gonna steal your thunder.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: You just tell me what you think about it.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I I just got in my whole thing.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh go ahead.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, I we finished the game and I was like, it gave me similar feelings, I guess.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if if board games can evoke feelings, it gave me similar feelings.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the first time that we played like Dune Imperium.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's that clean, certainly, and I don't know if it's that cutthroat uh as Dune Imperium, but the worker placement, the kind of like race for rewards, um, the exchange of resources for advantages later on, you have to keep it constantly keep an eye of how on how many workers you have left because it is completely possible to put all your workers out and never be able to get them back.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I put them all out and say, all right, I'm done, I can just sit there the rest of the game.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or I can continue to just like cycle them through and recall them by this mechanic that is like rounding them up, throwing them in jail, recalling them, buying them back from other characters.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot going on in this game, and the path to victory is not at all clear to me, but man, this game was so cool.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we played it with one of the expansions, which has like the robber baron and the princess, and the princess you're trying to uh buy favors from with resources.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if you go to the spot with the princess, you are allocating resources that then get added to the uh the giant buildings that you're trying to build at the end of the game.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, nobody built any of those wonders.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're called wonders.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody built any of those um during our games, but it was simply just like exchanging resources and placing workers and rounding up.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And man, there's a lot going on in this game.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I well tell tell me what you think.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Help help me out.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, again, I'm digging back probably it's been like two years since I played this, but you can tell I'm still excited about it and still have really fond memories of it because it is that there is complexity there, but at the same time, it breezes by.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like the turns are so fast.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and some of the cool features I I really remember liking.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: One, you have that kind of like accumulation spaces where the more workers you put in a space, the more rewards you get for it.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, like you all are like policing each other because as soon as someone starts getting like eight brick every time they go to the brickyard or whatever it is, I can't remember the specific resources.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: You somebody's like, all right, we gotta we gotta round that up, and that like player interaction that's kind of like driving the whole like worker management system where somebody goes to the spot where it lets you round up all the workers, you put them in prison, now somebody's gotta go and pay to get them out of prison.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's so cool, like it is just so much interaction there for what could have been just like a dusty resource conversion, you know, management game.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh man, it's so clever.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I liked it a lot.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I also really enjoyed that.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have two tracks on either side of the board, one is honor and one is like fame or something, and you're kind of managing your level on both of these tracks.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have negative honor, uh you might lose points at the end of the game, and you lose honor by like robbing banks and doing you know, stealing resources and doing all this stuff that can get you an edge, but it could lose you points in end game scoring, then you have I don't know, I think it's fame or something on the other side.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And every time you cross a certain threshold, you get additional cards that can give you bonuses or resources or end game scoring points, and like managing those two tracks because you can go up and down both of them was super interesting.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that as like a resource is like your otter and your fame that you're trading in this village to get ahead in life.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was awesome.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, isn't it so that like it once you get once you start doing some naughty stuff, like you can't contribute to building the cathedral or something like that?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the the game ends when the cathedral is filled up for the player account that you're playing at.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my character, because each of the characters has their own um you can play where every character plays the same, or you can play with kind of variable powers, I guess, or like starting conditions are all different.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so my guy was like this, you know, sweaty little guy that is balding and looks like a villain.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started with like half of my workers in prison, and my honor was like way, way, way down the track.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to kind of regain enough honor to buy myself out of those negative points at the end.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it came with a stipulation that I could also contribute to the what what is it?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: The what are you trying to build towards the end?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: The cathedral cathedral, yeah.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: The cathedral, yeah, yeah.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I could still contribute to the cathedral even though I was at negative honor.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that man, there's a reason it's so highly ranked, right?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: 133 overall on BGG.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like this game slaps.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: This game is awesome.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I don't know if this is one that I would get played a lot, but man, this might need to enter the collection at some point.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I'm so I'm still fired up about it.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I haven't played it in so long.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think Mary liked it quite as much, but I'm telling you, everything we just said, it sounds like it's a lot, but I'm when I tell you that the turns just breeze by because you literally just take worker, place it out.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Boom.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Next person's turn.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just remember it just uh zooming around the table, and I love that.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love when your your singular actions are very simple, and but it's part of a more complicated ecosystem, which is exactly what this is.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, phenomenal game.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm less familiar with this whole series than you are.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know that you've played a couple of these.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've not.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is the only one I've played.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you played like Wayfarers of the South Tigris or something.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, I've this is the one and only of these Kingdom Tigress, wherever else they've been, Raiders of the North Sea.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I know they've done these trilogies all over the place, but yeah, this is it.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't Garfield Games, I haven't played hardly any of theirs.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a publisher blind spot for me.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: We should get in on some Garpill Games.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do it.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I did play a couple extra games.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I played Deckers, which I want to talk about later because it's getting a lot of hype, but that game is complicated.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is um very much in the same vein as um Forbidden Island.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's the the game that you freaking hate, the solo game that everyone talks about?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Spirit Island, Spirit Island, yes, it's kind of in the same that same vein.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about that later, though, after I freaking figure out what's going on because it is complex.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I want to bring you a featured review that I would like to do right now, courtesy of Petri's Family Games.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for those of you that have listened for a while, you know that Petri's is our favorite friendly local game store here in the Colorado Springs region.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you might think, like, what good is it doing to be sponsored by a friendly local game store?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: I can't contribute to them, I can't give them money.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: They just started an online store where you can shop their, like as if you were walking up and down the aisles, you can shop their store online at petriesgames.com.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm hyped to partner with these guys and the for clarity and for um transparency, the way this is working, they're not providing us any financial backing as of now.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: They are simply lending us copies that we can review.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: We can they can push our show, we can push their store, mutually beneficial.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I will there's no guarantee that we're going to like the games at all, but they're gonna try and hook us up with games that we are interested in playing.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh thank you to Petri's Game, Petri's Family Games, and they can be found at Petri'sGames.com.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I am proud to present to you night at the zoo.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Night at the zoo, brought to you by Petri's Family Games.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: The publisher is Albi, designer is Tomas Holeck, and artist is Teresa Kovanat Kovandova, excuse me.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this game is a tile draft drafting game where you are trying to program out some moves to return lost animals to the zoo at night.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this game is played over three rounds where you are drafting tiles of three different suits, let's call them, um, and you are placing them into your neighborhood.
• 32:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so none at the zoo comes with six different different animals to start with.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: They do have an expansion um and a promo with a unicorn, which I did not play, but I played the base game, comes with six different animals to include uh cheetahs, sloths, wolves, butterflies, snakes, and penguins.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think I nailed them all.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: And what you are doing in this game over three rounds, you are drafting tiles of different suits and placing them into your neighborhood, which is kind of like a I want, I don't want to call it a tableau, but you're building out this neighborhood and you're placing these tiles into this grid.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And by placing these tiles, you are getting actions to move your animals closer to the zoo here in the center.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Really, what it does is on your turn, you're drafting a tile, and I can either play it to the grid or store it for a future use.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: And each of the animals moves differently, so you got to plan ahead on when and where you're going to use these abilities.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the tiles in your neighborhood require certain suits of tile, um, being grass, sand, or rock to be placed.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them will grant bonuses or bonus actions if they are in matching suits between two different um spaces.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them will gain end-game scoring points, some of them will let you discover and move animals, etc.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: So for setup, you pull out a whole bunch of these kind of um discovery tiles and you place them um in these face-down piles that you'll find here.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: You are placing as many tiles out as there are players, plus one, and you go around drafting one tile each.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: The remaining tile that was not drafted moves down into this bottom row.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with the tile that you drafted, you can place it immediately, or you can score it.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then at the end of the round, when all of these bottom spaces have filled up, it will grant you an automatic move from an animal that's positioned on the tile with the most amount of tiles in this bottom row.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, like let's say there's a there's three reds left over at the end of the round, three reds and one sand and one grass.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: If I have any animals that are on a red or a stone uh tile, I can move them according to their move rules, and they all move differently.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, dang, look at that.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's brought to Petri's family games.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's right.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget about it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the animals all score differently.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Butterflies, you get pollen if you're discarding um tiles.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the the snakes will move in direct lines, but if you want to turn them, they uh they have to move in the direction that they're facing.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll move them one forward in orthogonal directions.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you need to turn them, that's gonna cost you a move action.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: So getting snakes to the end are really difficult.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: The penguins will slide all the way to the very end of the tiles that are available.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to really plan ahead on those.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the sloths move slow, the wolves are trying to be in a pack and all get to the zoo at the same time.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole thing.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: You got to really plan out around what animals you're playing with and the actions that you have available.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: The player interaction in this game is slim to none.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're just kind of influencing the tiles that are being drafted and the animals that are moving at the end of the round.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's more of like a programming puzzle that you're doing competitively against someone else.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: I could see this one being great for solo gamers because it is a it's a kind of a brain-bendy puzzle to try and plan out across not just the immediate round, like what is best for me right now, but how do I get the most amount of animals to the zoo to score the most amount of points at the end of the game?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're planning across rounds, you're planning tiles and steps ahead so that you can get the animals where they need to be when they need to be there.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I I think this game is is uh pretty cool.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think it's like my favorite game of this type, but I think it's unique.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I kind of wonder how they ended up on this theme.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of interesting.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: It could have been anything, it could have been like lemmings or whatever creatures, but they chose animals.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it gave me uh Goodnight Gorilla Vibes, which is my daughter's favorite book, uh, where the zookeeper ends up letting all the animals out and they escape, and the zookeeper's wife has to take them back.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another mechanic that I want to cover is discovery.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: And some of your animals that you were trying to get to the zoo, which start on the outside of your board, outside of your neighborhood, some of them are undiscovered, which means that they're kind of on this rock space at the back.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: And when you draw and place a tile that has a um kind of a looking glass, like a binoculars symbol, you can discover an animal, which moves them down and primes them to move at the end of the round or next time.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: You just can't move animals that are undiscovered yet.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Umgame scoring is based on the number of animals that you get and their scoring conditions.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's kind of a set collection going on as well with food.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you have you get more points, the more diversified food tokens that you put down.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is one method of scoring, but it's not the end all be all.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you get all seven types of food out over across the three rounds, you score like 30 points.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it could be a big swing.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you're missing out on actions because the food tokens don't have the additional symbols that you would get if you're putting some of those other ones down.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, this is Night at the Zoo.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's fun.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: I I will revisit it.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: I will play it a couple more times.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'll play it with some different iterations of different animals.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I think it it this would be a good like solo game because the only interaction is the limitations on drafting, and the solo mode literally has cards like little punch out cardboard tokens that will tell you what the automaton drafts each round, and so you know exactly where it's going, you know what it's doing, and then it limits your selection each round.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that is night at the zoo brought to you by Petri's Family Games.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Petries.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Petries.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: We got if if that sounds good to you, go to Petries Family, petriesgames.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's that website, Travis?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and hit us with that.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is petriesgames.com.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they have a link to their store where you can buy.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: They even have their used section on their online store, which is pretty sweet.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm pretty pumped about it.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Petries, for allowing me to uh draft some games to do some reviews.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: More to more to come in the future from Petries.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: We got Petries everywhere.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe you get night at the zoo there, maybe you get something else.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just go, let's just spend more time shopping at Petri's Family Games.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I know.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I and I will say, um, Petri's all while we are big board gamers, they also have RPGs, they got puzzles, they got magic gathering, they got all sorts of stuff.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: They got DD, they got minis, they got whatever you want.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: They got it.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, Petri's Family Games, thank you for putting together some uh reviews for us.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: We appreciate it.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: That was exciting.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: That inspired me.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Long debrief.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's a long debrief.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: Clay, it's your turn.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you talk to me about hosting a large game night?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because you just did this recently, and I think people need to hear how you pulled this off because I think it's brilliant.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Take it away.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Travis, what's the biggest group of people you've ever accommodated for a singular game night?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably like family gatherings at the holidays where we play maybe eight people.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think, yeah, it's probably eight.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I know that you've done much larger.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: This was the biggest.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I've done only done this a few times.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: What do I consider a big game night?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think, yeah, like I said at the beginning, if you have to set up more than one table, you're probably looking at a big game night.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So my wife, I had talked about doing this for my birthday.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh man, what what I can force people to play games with me.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be great.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I didn't really do anything about it.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, maybe people will forget it's my birthday.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can just not do anything.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my wife sent out a text to my whole family.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like 20 people, they all live here.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we moved back to Pennsylvania in the first place.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: But she sent a text like, hey, come over on whatever day it was, we'll have some dinner and some cake, and then you know, you can stay and play games until your heart's content.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, it's out there now.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now I gotta do something about this because if you've ever tried to just have people over to play games in a sit setting like that, this is a nightmare, right?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is where my anxiety just goes to live.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine these people, there's no plan.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: We finish we finish dinner.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's 20 people not knowing, they're like, uh, I'm kind of, I know he likes games, but what are we doing?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm scared, I don't know.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then everybody goes down to the game room.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, okay, um, what's everybody want to play?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, uh, what party game?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I might have some ideas, but you know, then trying to, well, this one only plays up to five, this one plays to eight.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing with all these people?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: How is everybody gonna have a good game night?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I went over top.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: I went over the top with it.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I I have to overplan and I think you have to in these situations, especially when you're dealing with some casuals, you know.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want this to be a good experience for everybody.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta think about grandma, I gotta think about grandpa, I gotta think about the kids.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted them involved.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll just talk about what I did for this this event, and then you can kind of you know throw throw darts at it.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do what you will.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: I knew we were gonna need approximately, I did the math.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, most games, five to six players is kind of be a sweet spot for the type of games we're gonna be playing with this crowd.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I broke it down.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, we uh need three tables set up that can accommodate five to six players.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I had to then divide the people up into groups.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and I I kind of gave people this sounds crazy.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like I went I went over the top, but I feel like this level of detail in planning is what's required to execute at this level.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: A lot can go wrong in a game night.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's this can go wrong in so many ways.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is where my head goes.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I assign them like a one, two, or three.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, they're really comfortable with games, you know.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is a three there they're gonna be a liability is a one, you know.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Grandma's getting a one.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't want to see, I don't want to see what happens if she gets stuck at the wrong table.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I went through, just gave an assessment of everybody's gaming readiness, all right?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Gaming readiness score.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then I kind of developed the time frame.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, all right, we're gonna eat dinner at five.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: When's the earliest I can conceivably start playing games?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because this also happens, you know.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: People like to know what they're getting into.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think they they want to know a plan.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody feels better when they know a plan.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, okay, we got somewhere to be after eating this food.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Cut out the chit chat at dinner.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where we we gotta move downstairs because game number one is starting at 5:45.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: So my agenda was to have three tables across three different rounds of gaming.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: So three time slots, three tables, nine games.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have this all worked out in my head.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now I realize there's only one of me and there's three tables.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to find willing participants to run the other tables.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is where you uh get the biggest bang for your buck.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: And huge shout out to my lovely wife Mary and my awesome sister Allie because they agreed to be um table leaders for me.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I reached out to them.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know what?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: I we're doing this, we're gonna do it right, and I want to make sure that at each table there is someone there that knows the rules of the game and is ready to teach it.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I got them to agree to be table leaders.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now we got three table leaders, we got three tables, we got three time slots.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have nine games going over the course of this maybe two and a half hour experience.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted everybody to be on the same journey.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you were at table one, two, or three, I wanted everybody to be playing the same type of games at once.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're all going through this together.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, time slot one, we're opening up with some party games.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I picked out a couple good party games for each table, ones that I knew I could teach easily that were winners, ones that I knew my sister could teach easily that she liked.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and same with Mary.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had that time slot, you know, 45-minute time slot for some party games.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't set an end time, but I did set a start time for the next round of games.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you could party game as long as you felt fit in that first time slot, but just know we're moving to a new table at 6:30 or whenever the next start time was.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then so in the second time block, I was like, all right, now let's get into some card games, let's do some fun card games.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I picked out, you know, jungle.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: We had flip seven going, we had some no thanks.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I made sure with my table.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is critical, people.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Your table leaders need to be there and they need to be comfortable teaching the game.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: They they were ready at 6:30.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody shuffled table, and I did this intentionally, like I wanted this to be a mingling experience.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want the same people at each round of gaming.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to switch it up.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: So every round you'd be at a new table, new table leader.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: You got new people you're playing with.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: We got a good mix of skill levels at the table.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was popping off on the planning.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right, it was it was good, it was good.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so round two was the card games.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Played that for about 45 minutes again.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Had a next didn't have an end time, but we did have a new start time.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Finish early, great, get some cake, do whatever you want.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: But when we free time, construction free time.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds crazy, but you need to do it.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know what happens if you just say, Oh, yeah, we're gonna play three games, and you know, here it is, like people wander off.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're never getting them back.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you gotta keep them captive.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: All right, grandpa's sleeping on the chair.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know, yeah.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I kept an eye on grandpa, he wasn't sleeping, he was party gaming, man.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was playing gibber jabble, he was having a great time.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then round three, we went to racing betting games.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so everybody was playing a racing betting game.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: We had Ready Set Bet, the big game set up.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had um, what was the other one?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: We had Magical Athlete, and then we had Hot Streak.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we had those three tables going again.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't the shuffle of the people.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had my table leaders ready to go.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: Allie came with questions, she was ready, she was ready, she was ready to rock.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then this is where this is where it fall falls apart, and this is why you have to be so diligent about the schedule.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because at the fourth time block, I said, This is the time block, only the strong survive.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like whoever is left and still wants the game, you know, grant it's only 8:30.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let's be real, it's not that late.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, let's leave this ambiguous.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: We'll say it can start at 8:30.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna assign people, like you can just let me know if you want to stay and play.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Soon as that third round ended, people just scattered to the wind.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: They were mingling, they they nobody was nobody was gathering around the table eager for more.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know, I think it was getting late for that crowd, you know, the grandparents and stuff.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really expect them to, but you could just see as soon as I knew there were people that wanted to play more, they told me.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: But because there wasn't an actual game on the schedule and a table they needed to be at, and uh, you know, like that structure just let things kind of fall apart a little bit.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I had reached they reached the end of the tracks.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're like, what do I do now?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I still want a game, but there's no spot for me, I don't know what to do.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to wrangle a couple people.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know, and and we played one more game.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I think overall I got rave reviews.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: People loved it.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: The grandparents even went nuts that were skeptical.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: They came to this and they were like, Why am I having to play my grandson's stupid little board games?
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, you know what?
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: You picked such great games that was so fun for everybody, everybody could play the grandkids, da da da da.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a lot of planning and it was a lot of prep.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think you have to do that.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I just hate that experience where you're you want to get games in, and people generally are like down for it, but it's so hard to mobilize a group that big and figure out what you're gonna do and what you're ready to teach.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I what are your thoughts, Travis?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but I want to get into the nitty-gritty here about the actual event planning.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: What time did people show up for all this?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: They showed up at five.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Five o'clock.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yes.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: You gave them 45 minutes for dinner and mingling before gaming commenced.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that was 10 more than they needed.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Table leads were responsible for setting up the games, yes.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and table leads were responsible for teaching and facilitating the games.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, table leads did not rotate tables.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: They did, they did rotate tables, they could, yeah.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like it just in the next time block, maybe Allie was at table one with hot streak, and you know, Mary was at table three with whatever game.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you just follow the schedule.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but no like two table leads at one table ever.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, so I never played with Mary or my sister, you know.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: Give him sacrifice, yes.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all right.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't lose that talent, you can't have that talent like consolidated one table.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you find uh the balancing of experience butted up against the ability to really shuffle up the tables between rounds?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like you want to shuffle and make sure people can mingle and chat and do all that stuff with the most amount of people possible across these three rounds, but those experience levels are not always going to jive.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, how'd you balance that?
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, the experience levels were kind of a wash because I just played to the lowest common.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, I played to I tried to play the lowest common denominator in every situation.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: When it came to table makeup, I really wanted to just make sure that one, the kids were interspersed because I did not want them to be consolidated at a table.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's too much.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: Three there was my two sons and a their cousin.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if the three of them were at a table together, it would have been bad news.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I I knew there were some games that some of the grandparents had played before.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I tried to get them to at least one of those games they had played before for comfort level.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, all right, I don't have to learn three new games.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a game I already know.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've played Flip 7 before.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is easy.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you could see a world where you do a similar thing and actually divide up by skill level.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a world where that game night would have gone plays at table one, he's with all the level three gamers if you would have got this sound so uh so crazy.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: But he's with all level three gamers at table one, and they they have this slate of games they're gonna play.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then at table two, we have you know the intermediates, and maybe Allie's running that table, and then at table three is Mary, and she's doing the party games with the grandparents.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there's different ways I could have done it, but I like the idea of everybody kind of being on the same playing field and experiencing the same type of game night, yeah.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and for those that are listening and have never met Clay, this might sound like the ramblings of a madman, but this is Clay does this better than anyone.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like we had a marathon game weekend where we played as many games as we could.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: We got through like, I don't know, something like 30 games, something crazy.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you had meal time scheduled in, you had workout time scheduled in, you had the whole schedule built out, including like links to all the games that we were gonna play and videos that we could watch.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like we got through as many games as we did strictly because of your organization.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think people need to take note because this was very well done.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what I want to emphasize is how you orchestrated all of this.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk about um how you got this information out to people so that you could level set expectations?
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let me just go back to that game.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I consider that game weekend to be a big game night, a big game.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a lot of people, but it was a big it's a big muscle movement.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we we had the intentions to go hard and we needed to be ready for that.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, I hate when we're the moment in time where you're just standing around looking at the game shelf, like, what are we gonna play?
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: So for that particular event, the bet the most important part was the game solicitation on the front end where everybody we had a page of the Excel sheet that was just like list all the games that you might want to play, rank them and like I must play this game.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: The you know to oh, I'd be happy if I played this game.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then we went through and like, you know, we had different people come in.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: This so this was kind of a big deal because we had people sign up for time slots.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there was probably a pool of 10 people that we um solicited from like, hey, when are you gonna be here?
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna be the Friday night crowd?
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be the Saturday morning crowd, like when are you gonna be here?
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so peep knowing when people are in all the time slots, knowing all the games that people wanted to play, and then finding the games that were right for that player count and right for that group, and slotting them into those time slots is actually kind of a big big deal and it and made it run smoothly.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, no, like it, and that's that's important because if it was just you, me and Jared, we could have just flown through games, no breaks at all, and gotten through maybe more.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: But because we kind of had that rotating seat of you never I mean, we knew who was gonna be there, but like we didn't really know how prepared they were actually gonna come to whatever game that they said that they're they signed up for, then we had to taper expectations and maybe have a couple of audibles to call in case somebody showed up and was like, Oh, I didn't have time to watch the video, right?
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we were adapting on the fly.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think in the middle of that game weekend, we had maybe like a that Saturday, we had like a much larger group, right?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: We played like Mananza and all those, right?
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and even then we had two tables going, I think.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think we did at one point in that game weekend.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I mean, I forgot what a freaking awesome weekend that was.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was awesome.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's get back to your weekend though.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got the rotations, everyone shows up prepared.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: Table captains are leading the charge.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: Did you feel like you got hung up between rounds where people are shuffling tables and like wanted to talk some more, or they got uh, you know, they're sitting next to somebody that they hadn't talked to in a while and wanted to catch up?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have catch any uh snags there between rounds?
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think we gave the right amount of buffer time between game start times that people had a little bit of time in between, but I did have the big TV in the basement.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had the schedule posted on the big TV, so everybody could reference that.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was right in your face.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: It showed everybody where they needed to go next and what time it was starting.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there was some announcing happening on my behalf.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: You blew the big steam whistle.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: We got five minutes till next table, wrap it up, put your ice cream down, let's get going.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so clockwork, really.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and you didn't talk about this, but talk about the uh like the website that you coded for this game.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: We can code it and uh you know, you vibe you vibe coded it.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: Vibe code, yeah.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: We'll use the word vibe code.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I really I do kind of feel bad that I did that because I was just trying to be cute.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I had my Excel sheet, it was ugly, had it all planned out.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, I was like, you know what, this seems like an AI thing.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I asked Claude, I was like, can you make this look nice to send out to my guests?
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the next thing I know, it created a freaking HTML website where like each guest could like click their name, it would show their schedule for the day.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how it took the leap from make this look nice to I made you a website, but I I was able to send this this link to the website out to everybody, and they would you know they could preview like, hey, I'm gonna be at table one playing flip seven with Allie at 615 and table two.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing again.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not the best use of our water or whatever AI is destroying these days, but I did it, and you know, I'll have to repent for my sins someday.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it I was impressed by it.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: It m it made a pretty uh sexy looking uh game game night agenda.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: It even like color coded the other names, like you click on Clay's name, and then it had each of the tables color coded, and then the list of names up above, it would color code those names based on who you were sitting with at that table.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man, peak.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was so good.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: So our AI overlords didn't let me down on that one.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, overall impressions, like what did you think?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: How did you think it turned out?
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, no false modesty here.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was perfect.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I probably I could I knew who the people were gonna be that wanted to play in the fourth round.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: I probably could have just put that on the schedule and avoided that, you know, 15 minute 15 minute it took us 15 minutes past when I would have liked to start round four to you know re-marshal the troops and like hey, I was serious about round four.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this wasn't a joke.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so anyway, that's a lesson learned.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Another lesson learned.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: No thanks was not the best.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: That game that one seemed like an outlier to me when you're talking about card games.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: That game was too fragile.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I wasn't at this table, but these are reports from Mary, who you know, she's a seasoned gamer, she knew she knew what's going on.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: My dad, um that game requires people to make uh reasonable decisions, and my dad was not doing that.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: He you you don't want to take cards, but he was just taking them.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that kind of ruins that game.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I don't know, yeah.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: Again, a game like that where you kind of have to have people that make somewhat intelligent decisions, maybe not for the level one gamer crowd.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, dad.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, lesson learned.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but I think overall, like I just you over planning, over planning is is my motto.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is probably the third time I've done something like this.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: We did that one game weekend.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: I did another game night when Jared was back in town in Colorado at one point, or we had two tables going, um, and there was an agenda, there was a schedule, there was people signed up at the table.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because I my anxiety is just so bad that these situations, I've just been there where I'm uh people, there's a bunch of people, uh, and this only hits me when there's a lot of people, really.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, and you like don't know how to accommodate all those people.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to head that off the past.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I can I can make this perfect beforehand.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know enough about these games, I know enough about these people, I can make this perfect beforehand.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now there is probably some nuance there and some art of feeling things out and how things are going with the group, but I don't know.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think I'm too scientific about it?
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's more room for you know feeling the vibes?
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it matters because it's your birthday, and people are have to be have to obey the birthday boy.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it matters in that case.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you were trying to put something together like this and you're like, okay, well, here's the schedule, and we are gonna follow it to the minute, and I'm gonna blow my steam whistle, and you better be in your chair, then people might be like, All right, I this guy's a tyrant, I'm not coming back to his game night, but it's your birthday, and they have to they have to obey the birthday boy.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I'm a generous leader, like I'm not even there for me.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: I would have been happy if I didn't even play a game.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I was I would have been happy to just facilitate the experience for everybody.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I like just seeing people gaming.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, although I am a dictator and a ruler with an iron fist when it comes to it, I'm doing it because I love you and I care about you, and I want you to have a good gaming experience.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love that, and I don't trust you to do it on your own.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're a generous, benevolent god king ruler.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can tell that you're passionate about this because I've never heard you hit your table so many times while you're talking, you're even pounding your fists like a like a dictator as you talk about your game weekend.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel passionately about this, I just know how bad it can go.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: You show up with the expectation that you're gonna play games, and then everyone starts mingling, and then it never gets off the ground, and then you get maybe one game played, and then people bail, and then that's it.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, yeah, sign them up for three games, yeah.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: You pull up them in the basement.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even worse.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, even if the people are excited, you're like, Okay, you're trying to gauge what what game to play, you pull one out.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: People are like, Oh, yeah, cool, I'll play.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, more people show up than the game can accommodate, and you're like, Oh, now I have to turn you away.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is horrible.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to do that.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, bad.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want that.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: That feels worse.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm glad your birthday game of Palooza went well.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, can you guys drop in the comments what the biggest game night you ever hosted was?
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: And also tell me if you think I sound like a fun person or possibly the most annoying person ever.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, we're all about having a good time and locking people in the basement to play games for two hours.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds great.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are we ready to go over the fence?
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go over the fence.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get it.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about some Star Wars video games that have been popping off this year.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: The first of which is Star Wars Zero Company.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh created by some X XCOM developers.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with XCOM?
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is kind of a turn-based tactics, positional troops on a map type game uh where you are moving characters around and shooting from behind cover and trying to take out the enemy forces or accomplish some object objective over the course of a round.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a Star Wars version of that, and it feels freaking awesome.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: It is like a Star Wars skirmish game that you would get like um Star Wars Shatter Point almost.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you have objectives that you're trying to accomplish.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: You have this crew of pretty fun characters that you're assembling, you're upgrading them over the course of the game.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, each of the matches is pretty short.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: You run in, you shoot a bunch of droids or some troopers or whatever it is, the bad guys, the drug smugglers, whatever they are.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get to the objective and you win the game.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: But each of these uh characters that you can interact with or play with, um, they each have kind of their own storylines that might inject some other storylines into it.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, like one of your teammates is like an ex clone trooper, and he gets a call from his buddy and his old battalion that's like pinned down on this map, and the droids are coming to get him, and you gotta go save him.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so like you Have this kind of immersion storytelling as you continue to bond with the characters on your team.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I freaking like this game.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: I XCOM never clicked with me.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the matches were too long, the maps were too big, the characters were whatever.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: But the Star Wars version of that is awesome.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: You have droids that you can add to your team, like little R2D2 units that can like throw grenades and like throw you stims so you can heal your character up.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty fun.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, that is Star Wars Zero Company.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I never heard of that.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I need to get in the video game world that you can just run circles around with these video games, Travis.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: The other one that just came out this week, last week, uh, is Star Wars Galactic Racer.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a spiritual successor to the N64 game, Star Wars Episode One Pod Racing or Pod Racer.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a game that took that one scene in Star Wars Episode 1 that everybody loves, the pod race, and they turned it into a game, and it's like a kind of like a cart racer.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I say cart racer, but there's like less items and stuff that you're using.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: This one is kind of a run-based game where you are trying to make it through all the way to the pod racing championship or the galactic racing championship.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: They don't call it pod racing because you have speeder bikes and land cruisers and or land speeders and eventually pods that you are pod racing.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this game is frenetic fun.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is so cool, it is so fast-paced and crazy.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what look up some videos of this game and you're like, how are people even doing this?
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how is this humanly possible to play this game?
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because the these carts are racing around at you know, hundreds of kilometers per hour, hundreds of miles per hour.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're flying around corners, they're like boosting and shielding and doing all this stuff, and it looks crazy until you get the controller in your hand, and then you just like you have to use the force, and you're just navigating these crazy terrains.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: The first uh planet that you're on is called is Jacku from Rise of the Resistance, or you know, the the later trilogy, and you're flying through old crash, crashed starships, you're like have to slip through these tiny little gaps.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy, and it's so much fun, and I'm really enjoying it.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_01: And basically, you get as far as you can until you basically crash out or you don't meet the objectives to win, and then you start all over again, but you keep some progression, you keep your money, you keep some of your upgrades, you keep some of your challenges, and then you eventually get strong enough and you're gonna win.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that is uh Star Wars Galactic Racer, which I have really been enjoying.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just like Mario Kart, but no items, no items and way more sweaty, like like Mario Kart can get sweaty.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is like like my hands hurt because I'm clenching the controller so hard because you're like flying around at breakneck speeds, you're like going through volcanoes.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's one map where you're like um it's a frozen planet, and as you race across this frozen planet, you in you accrue this like ice buildup on your speeder or your your craft, and then to get the ice off, you have to fly through these little tiny tunnels that have heaters inside, and like the tunnels are so freaking tight, it's like one person can fit through at a time, and you're flying through it like 800 miles an hour, and to slip through this while you're going around a corner or something is crazy.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: It feels so good when you pull it off.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: You also crash a million times, so it's quite difficult.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds stressful, Travis.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little stressful, but Clay, what what have you been up to?
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, Travis, I've been up to so much.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just got back from you you're from California, right?
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I am from California.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was in California, all right.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not like San Francisco, yes.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Where where are you from?
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just east of San Francisco.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, where?
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm from originally from like Fresno area, like Central Valley.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, how close to Vacoville is that?
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's like an hour away.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's where my brother's at.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's out there, he's out there at Travis Air Force Base, and we went out to visit him.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wife and I got away, left the kids, and went out to see old Brooksy in uh in California.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I had I had been to like Central Coast California, uh Vandenberg Space Force Base is there.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent time there, but and in like LA, I visited there, but I'd never been to the northern regions of California.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big freaking state, man.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure is.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big state.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyway, so it was my first time up there, and he had a whole agenda planned for us.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the one thing I did remember about California, I don't know if this is true, but I feel that the food is just better there.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is, but everywhere I eat there, I'm like, man, this is the best food I've ever eaten.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: He he took me to this like steakhouse place on the first night.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then we went to this coolest like brewery.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it was called.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's called like Roost Dollars, Roost Tales, or I don't know what it's called, but it was like this huge outdoor.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was like you were had this brewery in the middle of like a tractor field, and it was just so cool.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, I'm not normally going out and do things kind of guy.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this was a really out of my comfort zone trip.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he had me out, but then he took us to San Francisco.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: We stayed two nights there.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what did we see?
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: We saw the bridge.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: We saw a Bernie Sanders tour bus.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was there to give a rally some speech, literally right next to our hotel.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, all these people were like, you know, taking videos and yeah, like posted up outside this theater, which was right next to our hotel.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what is going on here?
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw like the tax the rich tour bus roll up.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sure enough, it was Bernie doing a rally, so that was exciting.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what else did we see?
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, just there was like some outdoor museum type thing.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: What was it called?
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like we saw the painted ladies.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just taking you through this whole thing, but really what's like of note to this crowd.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we ate at this place called the Stinking Rose, which was like all about garlic.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was pretty cool.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Had some garlicky food.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: That region is all about garlic.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, they have a um a garlic festival that's like half an hour east of there, and it's like garlic ice cream, garlic dips, garlic spreads, garlic, like anything garlic, they will serve, and it is so good.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the food is just amazing.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, couldn't believe it.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we saw yeah, fisherman's wharf, I think maybe that's what it's called, a P39.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just like a that was cool.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, man, look at this.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is what did you get any clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl?
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I did not, but we saw there were supposed to be a bunch of sea lions on these rocks, and unfortunately, they weren't there, but there was just one sea lion that was left there that had like a big chunk taken out of its tail, and he was not looking good.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that made me pretty sad.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I yeah, that was kind of I almost left after that, but I I rallied.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, oh, we went to Golden Gate State Park, then he took us to a Taco Bell cantina, which I didn't know that's a thing.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, that was a nifty little excursion to see the Taco Bell on the beach that serves alcohol.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Oh, this is cool.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Drinking beer on the beach at Taco Bell, doesn't get much better than this.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it did get much better than that, and I'm sort of hopping back on the fence a little bit because I went to I made him, I was like, you know, I'm in San Francisco, I gotta see if there's any good board game shops.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Went to Dog Patch Games in San Francisco, and what a cool game store.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they if I lived there, that would be like the spot.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_00: They had so much open gaming space, it was crazy, and the hugest library.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know how they can afford that much real estate in San Francisco, but this store was huge, like the little retail space was small, but they had a huge diversity of games, and then there's this huge open play space with a huge game library.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, that's pretty neat.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, picked up a couple games there.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Picked up a couple games, got a dog patch uh game shirt.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what was really cool was the only way I do not like going out, I don't like doing things, I don't like people.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: My brother knows this about me, so he let me bring my little backpack full of games, and we he took me out to this bar, and there was more people in this bar than I've ever seen anywhere in my life.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But he assured me if I go there and brave the bar that we would play board games while we would play some games while we were there.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we somehow got a seat in this sardine can of humans, and we played Soda Jerk in this bar in San Francisco, and we played Soda Jerk and something else.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember the second game we played, but oh den up.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice down up, whatever you call it.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we played these two games in this bar, and people were into were interested.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_00: We had like people take pictures of the box.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: We had you know, like we're out on a Friday night in San Francisco, and people are inquiring about our games, and I felt pretty cool about that.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have did you have any Operation Game Night stickers on you?
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I did not.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think we'd be getting that type of attention.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I thought maybe we'd get beat up, but oh yeah.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So then that was you know the the one game experience, and then he took us to this park where people just go because they don't have yards, I guess.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but saw a bunch of people just sitting in a park.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we went there and sat in this park.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't stoked about that, but then again, he knows me, so he let me play a game, and we played sushi go on a little on a little blanket in this park, and it was actually quite lovely.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I played games and places I never would have dreamed of in San Francisco.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what was cool was I eventually looked around at the rest of the park because I was in my introverted shell.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And but after I played sushi go, I was feeling myself.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, all right, I get it, we're good, we're good.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I walked around the park and I saw another group of people out there playing hues and cues, and excellent, and they had coup next to it, like they were out there gaming in the park in San Francisco.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, maybe San Francisco is like a little gaming community, so shout out to San Fran.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I love San Francisco, I think it's great.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we grew up going there.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the food is delicious, the scene in your scenery can't be beat.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: The city is shining up on a hill.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_00: The city is amazing.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I mean, one, there's cars that drive themselves.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know this is probably old hat for a lot of people, but that was my first time being in a city where like 50% of the cars were just driverless.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Weird.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they were they were an early adopter of Waymo and Uber driverless and all that stuff.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And well, you're about to find out when you come to Philadelphia for Packs Unplugged, but unlike Philadelphia, where it was just a cacophony of horn blows and people yelling, there was not I listened my hardest.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not a single honk.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's honking at each other.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's just playing games in the park.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_00: San Francisco is a dreamland.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what people are talking about.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_00: When I was going there, like, oh, you gotta watch out, you know, the homeless, whatever.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, this might be the nicest city I've ever been to.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I like I I have nothing bad to say about San Francisco.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I would go back there anytime if it wasn't so far away.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, any large city is gonna have their fair share of the unho the unhoused, but I feel like San Francisco does a fair job of taking care of those guys and making sure that they have what they need.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And as long as you're not like walking down dark alleys in the middle of the night, like you'll probably be okay.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was impressed.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was impressed.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Heck yeah.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I man, made me homesick, made me hungry.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe want to play some board games, all in the same over the fence.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, did we do it?
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think we did it.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I you you knocked it out of the park with that over the fence, and you like that.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: It might be a park that people are playing games in.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh right, let's get out of here.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_01: This has been the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have been your host, Travis Smith.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: He has been my co-host, Clayton Gable.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have talked a lot about how to host a proper large game.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Our review today, our feature review of Night at the Zoo is brought to you by Petri's Family Games.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_00: You bet it is.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead and hit them up and let them know that uh you learned about Petries on the Operation Game Night podcast.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_01: We will see you next week with another hot topic and hot reviews.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh two hot hosts questions.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_00: At least one of us.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's get out of here.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I have been Travis, he's been Clay.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_01: This has been Operation Game Night, and we are out.