Latest / Dice Camera Action! / Cards, Kings & Consequences - The Old King's Crown / Kingdom of Heaven

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Cards, Kings & Consequences - The Old King's Crown / Kingdom of Heaven · Dice Camera Action!

• speaker-0: You're back. speaker-1: And we're back. You don't hear me? And can you hear me now? I can hear myself. I can hear myself. speaker-0: You're talking into your headphones? You have a mouth, and you have headphones on. Me? You can hear... the microphone. You can hear yourself. Yes. I can't hear you. I... I you. yourself. I can hear you. You can hear me. Yeah. I can't hear you anymore. It's not gonna be much of a dialogue if I can't hear you. I don't think I have you muted or anything. speaker-1: I can hear myself. Me, myself. Can hear you Test test test. speaker-0: I'll tell you what, you keep talking until I can hear you and I will tell you when I can hear you. You keep asking to hear me now. But I can't hear you. Any plans for this evening? Perhaps a game night? Game over, man! Game over! speaker-1: Shut up. Play the game. Play it from your heart. 26 years ago, we started playing a little game. Now we're all gonna sit down, we're gonna finish it. And may the odds be ever in your favor. ⁓ There we go. each episode we review board games and if you're a cinephile you can stick around to hear more of this voice and hear us discuss a movie with a similar theme today folks i have isaac hersfeld with me what's going on isaac speaker-0: ⁓ Only on Screen I'm gonna talk like this the whole time also. speaker-1: That won't be annoying at all. speaker-0: You can turn off the podcast right now. ⁓ speaker-1: So what's good with you? What's new, man? speaker-0: ⁓ thanks for asking. ⁓ The big news for me is ⁓ I helped out a friend, a colleague working on his board game for quite a while, doing a lot of playtesting development work, ⁓ giving him ideas how to run it ⁓ for a board game that he just self published called hairband. And I think he did a really good job. had a successful campaign. Really, really awesome. You know, every time you play test a game and help it get better through your feedback, it kind of feels like I have a little bit of ownership to it. So really proud of that work. And, you know, it's in late pledge right now, and it's actually doing really strong, you know, anytime you see some guy just trying to self publish a game doing well, it's impressive, you know, it's hard to get that breakthrough in this industry sometimes. And I think he's gonna go places. speaker-1: Yeah, I got to play test it. Well, I guess it wasn't even a play test. You and I just straight up played it, played the final version of it ⁓ on TTS a couple of weeks ago. And yeah, it's really neat. It's very thematic. ⁓ It's very vibrant. I like the colors. I like the actions. It's like that ⁓ medium light, maybe like gateway plus, maybe not quite gateway, but just the next level. So it kind of fits a nice niche. And yeah, I'm looking forward to to playing it some more down the road. And you're right, like when you play, when you like play test a game or work with somebody or give any sort of feedback and then that game ends up getting published and comes out, it's always really exciting to see, ⁓ you know, I've got to do that a few times. And ⁓ even it's funny cause Andrew Stiles, a mutual friend of ours just had a game ⁓ that's going to be published a little bit later this year, I think. And it's an avatar themed game. ⁓ I, and it's funny because, ⁓ you know, I don't think we can share anything and I know very, very little, but, you know, he told me it was a, you know, this game that you play tested like two years ago, remember it was had this theme and I'm like, yeah, vaguely remember that. He's like, that's avatar. Like what? ⁓ and then honestly, I don't even remember the mechanisms. I remember almost nothing, but just the theme difference is like so interesting. ⁓ but it's just fun to see, yeah, friends and, and people that you, you work with and, ⁓ play test their game and you're right, you give the tiniest bit of feedback or you even play test it just a few times and you do feel like you have just a smidgen of ownership ⁓ of the success. So it is fun and like obviously the pride of like, know, ⁓ being a friend and Andrew being ⁓ a co-host of this podcast too is just really fun. Yeah, and so it's exciting. speaker-0: I will also, I will also disclaim that Dickie did hire me to do some social media stuff for it. I'm into it. did a lot of annoying people in Facebook groups. Hey, look at this. speaker-1: Yeah, that's right. kept it engaging enough that it wasn't annoying. You always had an interesting question to pose and you were asking people their opinions on things and I thought you did a good job. speaker-0: Yeah, it's something about being part of that, that Facebook group, that big one. And they have like very specific rules and I, I do a little bit of moderation for that group. So that, uh, I kind of understanding what's allowed and not allowed there. Uh, this is that like riding that line between being, uh, engaging and interesting and, know, obviously self plugging in. Um, but it's a skill that I'm developing. speaker-1: Well, I think you're doing a good job. So yeah, check out Hair Band. It's where can they find it if people want to go check it out and, you know, do a late pledge thing. speaker-0: Yeah. mean, if you just search Kickstarter hairband, it should be right there in the first. Yeah. It's still the late play just still up on, on, ⁓ yeah, should be a little bit longer and Kickstarter. speaker-1: Right on. Cool. for those with a sharp eye, you might've noticed a new logo for Dice Camera Action. So I decided to splurge a little bit. ⁓ We do have the sponsorship with Board Game Bliss, ⁓ but even that sponsorship doesn't really cover the expenses of running a podcast. But I did decide to splurge and spend a little bit of my money ⁓ and update the branding. ⁓ of the podcast. So got a professional to design me instead of the kind of stuff that I that I made myself kind of amateur at graphic design stuff. But yeah, spend a little bit of money and a little bit of time working with a graphic designer slash artist and got a nice shiny new logo done for dice camera action. So you'll see slowly. It's amazing. Like I was telling my wife this yesterday, like I'm a little nobody with a little nothing podcast. And then I changed the logo and a little bit of the branding and it's incredible how many spots I have to go and change it and places that I forgot exist. know, like I opened my link tree and it's like, ⁓ my God, I have to update this logo in eight different places. How am I even in eight different places? I don't think eight people listened to the show. But speaker-0: It's six because there's only six people listening to Joe because if you discount you and me. speaker-1: ⁓ right, right, minus us of course, yeah, if you don't count us, yeah. So yeah, I do Dice Camera Action logo. I thought that was pretty fun to do. ⁓ yeah, let me know what you think, folks. I'm pretty proud of it. speaker-0: looks great. You know, almost look legitimate. speaker-1: Almost, almost. One of these days we'll put out legitimate content to match the look. speaker-0: That's the goal. Yeah. Next time. speaker-1: Next podcast. speaker-0: this podcast. speaker-1: ⁓ You had, you had one more interesting thing you wanted to bring up before we got into kind of the meat of the show. speaker-0: So I'm not sure how much of this is like public knowledge. I'm definitely people know this. So as a little context to this, I'm pitching a game to companies right now and I was able to, I the game I designed and they accepted my pitch to send a prototype to them. So that's exciting to me. But in that process, I learned that the OP speaker-1: you designed right speaker-0: whatever people call it, pronounce that is within the success of flip seven is now shifting their company more gear towards this. ⁓ speaker-1: More mass market. speaker-0: more mass market, right? You think even more mass market, right? I mean, they had some decent successes, you think like nom, nom hollow or whatever. But if you look in the success of flip seven, comparatively, I think, you know, without 100 % confirming this, I got a sense that the company is moving towards more vast market appeal. mean, I can't imagine how much money they made with flip. Like I just speaker-1: ⁓ they made the best card game in the world. speaker-0: I mean, it's ⁓ at least number seven. speaker-1: I always loved that, that he put that right on the block. The best card game of the world. It's like nice catch, I like it. speaker-0: I guess. Do you ever play the board game sequence? It's like an older game. Yeah. Classic game. Yeah, it's great game on the box. It says approved by some guy. Do know what I'm talking about? Look at the box sometimes on the box, or at least I have one of the older versions on the box that says like approved by Ron something I don't even know is remember the name, but speaker-1: No. speaker-0: the guy I ended up looking this up like who the heck is this guy that's printed on this box? It's just some guy that liked the game and they printed it on the box. ⁓ Yeah. It's one of the older versions of the game, the box. But anyway. speaker-1: That's great! I'm trying to ⁓ see if I can find it. speaker-0: I'll look it up later. ⁓ but anyway, so the OP moving towards more massive mass market games, something that's going to have higher player accounts. ⁓ that's quick game filler games. Very curious how that's going to push the industry. speaker-1: Interesting It's we live in a capitalistic, capitalistic system, right? It's the world that we live in. Our capitalist is the word we live in a capitalist world. I've been up since five o'clock in the morning and I worked a 12 hour shift. So my brain's a little mushy. I feel like I say that on every podcast recording because I just have to like fit this in somewhere in my life. And I'm a shift worker. But anyways, we live in a capitalist system. And so if the AWP makes a game and makes a bajillion dollars, why wouldn't they continue to make that kind of game? speaker-0: I'm saying it's the thing. I'm just curious how it will go. speaker-1: Yeah, I'm not saying it's a bad thing either. I just hope that, you know, ⁓ we don't see a general shift ⁓ in that direction. You know, I think it's fine to have some publishers do this and some publishers do that. I just don't want to see the whole hobby shift in that direction because there's quote unquote more money there, right? ⁓ Well, speaker-0: We could talk about that more, but I will say over the last few years that has been the shift. ⁓ smaller box games. mean, hopefully it's a temporary thing. ⁓ temporarily I would say, ⁓ certain political situations and economic situations have caused. In, in generally make smaller box games. And I've seen this, I mean, going to Jencon last year was very obvious. ⁓ but. speaker-1: Yeah, tariffs and all that. speaker-0: Let's see if things shift back. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. And like, even like, if you go and look at the games that have done super well in the last couple of years, you've got a lot of the like, ⁓ gateway, gateway and gateway plus games doing super, super well. And I suppose that's probably always been the case, but maybe a little bit more pronounced, you know, games like I'm thinking of Cascadia, or like, ⁓ you know, even like just A lot of tiling games, trick taking games have gotten really hot. ⁓ know, games that just can appeal to more people that you can just bring to any family event and be like, hey, let's play this and then, you ⁓ not be overly intimidating. So yeah, it's an interesting ⁓ interest, a little bit of an interesting shift in the ⁓ in the industry. We'll see what happens. Alright, before we move on to the meat of the episode, let's hear from our sponsor, BoardGameBliss. Board games spark joy, forge connections, and create unbelievable moments. We source exceptional titles from around the globe, so your table always has something exciting to offer. Whether you're just starting out or you're a seasoned pro, there's always a new favorite waiting to be found. Go to BoardGameBlessed.com and find out why they're my personal favorite place to buy board games. Alright, thank you Board Game Bliss. Big fan of those folks. If you listen to the last episode where I just did a bit of a recap of my last kind of the previous two, three weeks leading up to that recording, I had a bunch of stuff happen, including a couple of cons and stuff. And that felt like ⁓ it felt like a Board Game Bliss ad the whole episode because I was talking about a bunch of games that I bought there. anyways, ⁓ Board Game Bliss definitely check them out. ⁓ speaker-0: I will. look, you know, also just to reiterate on this, independently of you recommending for Game Bliss, it's the only website that I get regular. Like I subscribe to their emails. Well, that's actually true. So. speaker-1: Well, there you go. That says something. And I didn't realize it, but because something about being Canadian ⁓ and it feels like sometimes a bit of a bubble. ⁓ I don't know what it is about the border ⁓ or whatever, but often Canadian companies primarily sell to Canadians. ⁓ American companies primarily sell to Americans, but also make their stuff available to Canadians. But like the cost of shipping over the border and stuff often makes things prohibitive. ⁓ But Board Game Bliss, found out, you know, after, you know, being a customer of theirs for a long time and, you know, leading up to their sponsorship with this podcast and stuff, I found out that they do sell into the States ⁓ and they have warehousing there and everything. So like their pricing and their competitiveness exists, ⁓ you know, south of the border as much as it does. up here which is great. So anyways moving on from the Borgman Bliss ad. speaker-0: We're not complete chills guys. You're gonna have to. You hit the word limit. speaker-1: Pay me more, board game bliss. Alright, so on this episode, I'm super excited. We're going to be talking about the Old King's Crown, a super hot game, ⁓ you know, in the last little while. And it's even hotter right now because it just finished ⁓ its campaign on GameFound, where it was promoting ⁓ a couple of things. It was doing a reprint. ⁓ It was also doing an expansion called this Songs of a Home. question mark. ⁓ and also it, they launched a game, an in world game, or an in universe game called annulet. And what I mean by in universe is that the idea is that this annulet game, which is a completely standalone little card game, small box card game, is quote unquote or like you know within the universe of the Old King's Crown is a game that if you walked into a tavern or a bar or somebody's home in the world of Old King's Crown you might see people playing annulet that's the idea so kind of a neat little thing and it's a cheap I think it's ⁓ well mind you it's in euros so ⁓ do whatever conversion you need but I think it was like 20 euros 22 euros for annulet ⁓ so I definitely ⁓ backed ⁓ one of those expansions. think this is the second expansion they have, and then they have the base game, two expansions, and this standalone game, Annulet. So I'm excited to check out that standalone game and to get the expansions, because, spoiler alert, big fan of this game. And then we will be pairing the game Old King's Crown and the movie of the episode will be Kingdom of Heaven, the 2005 Ridley Scott. But before we get into all that, let's do some shout outs. speaker-0: you Stop shouting! I'm not deaf! Dude, Arnold gets me every time. speaker-1: You know what I love? ⁓ My favorite thing about that is the Wilhelm scream. I'm not sure. you familiar with the Wilhelm? You are. Not a ton of people are, but I just find it so fascinating. And now after like years and years of like having this knowledge, I just hear it. And I meant to check this out before and I didn't. But I thought it would be fun to do kind of ⁓ you know, coming out of the shutouts bumper. speaker-0: I am. speaker-1: um, to ask the question was the Wilhelm screen in this episode's movie? And I thought because it's in hundreds and hundreds of movies, let's provide a little bit of context for our listeners. Um, I think it was like in the fifties, there was an actor or maybe a character called Wilhelm and, um, they ended up, be honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure of the origin, but Either the person screamed like that or there was a scream missing and they needed a scream. So they had somebody come in and do a scream. And anyway, so that's the Wilhelm scream. Maybe in the edit, I'll put it right here so that you folks can hear it and know what it sounds like. But it's become an inside joke in Hollywood and in sound editors within the community of sound editors or whatever. They try to sneak in this scream. speaker-0: hear it again. speaker-1: in movies and they do it in moments where there's an explosion or people falling off a building or falling into things or whatever. So it's sort of camouflage and kind of fits in a lot of cases. ⁓ But I'm, I was pretty sure I heard it once. I wasn't 100 % sure. Did you notice it, Isaac? speaker-0: in this episode or in the movie? speaker-1: the movie Kingdom of Heaven. speaker-0: No, no I didn't. I did not. speaker-1: in Kingdom of Heaven. I'm doing this live. Yes, the Wilhelm scream. The 2005 Ridley Scott film, Kingdom of Heaven. This iconic stock sound effect often used in action films appears in the movie alongside numerous other 2005 releases. And there's a video, this video explains the origin of the Wilhelm scream. So if you want to hear more about it get a more accurate description, ⁓ check it out. speaker-0: ⁓ my It always, for some reason, when the Wilhelm scream comes up, it always reminds me of also when something falls into an alleyway in the background of like, ⁓ of any movie, there's always a trash can that falls over and a cat screaming. There's always a cat screaming every single time. So like to me, it's the same concept. It's like just the Wilhelm scream is always there and that cat and the trash can. speaker-1: Yeah, and like you you I dare you to go in any city and try to find a tin trash can like that. It doesn't exist. speaker-0: Right? speaker-1: Alright, let's get into our shoutouts for the episode. I feel like I've been talking a bit here, so Isaac, I'll you start us off. speaker-0: All right, so shout out board game that ⁓ my wife and I tried recently, we played Amber heart by my clash. ⁓ For the first time. artwork of dragons. The concept is you are basically befriending dragons and freeing them from slavers. And, you know, becoming harmony with speaker-1: one of the dragon errr speaker-0: either releasing them into the wild or having them become dragon writers sort of concept. ⁓ really interesting. It's a director retail game, which I thought was an interesting move. There's not, you know, not many of those coming out as recently, especially with this production. The production is really good for, especially with the artwork for not going. Yeah. ⁓ and the production's great and it was direct to retail, which I thought was surprising, but it's also mind clash. speaker-1: I'm just looking at it now, it's beautiful, yeah. speaker-0: Also for Minecraft, they usually make much heavier games. This is a more strictly medium game. It has some really interesting kind of action selection through like almost like a currency based worker placement concept where like you have a certain number of disks that are your workers and go into locations, cost a certain number of those worker disks. And then based on how many you spend is if you get the priority at each location. Right, so if you spend the most you get to pick from a location before everyone else when when it's time to activate the locations, which is really interesting. And then each of the mechanism ⁓ locations have just like a little bit of a flare of a different mechanism to each ⁓ spot. Like one kind of has like a almost area control effect where one has an area because you power cards that also have end of game scoring conditions. So ⁓ each location kind of. does something a little bit different. ⁓ And I was surprised by it, you know, when how the rules aren't that heavy, but there is some thought and complexity to it. ⁓ But it also looks really complicated, but it's not complicated to get going. ⁓ Once you get explained to you, I was impressed by it. I had fun. speaker-1: Cool, yeah, I really dig the art. I remember looking at it a bunch of times at the store and just kept catching my eye and I never ended up pulling the trigger, ⁓ try before you buy, speaker-0: Yeah, try it before you buy it. It's not a must buy, but I'm going to play it again. speaker-1: Cool. All right, that's Ember Heart. ⁓ The game, pardon? Yes. Did I say that wrong? Ember Heart? speaker-0: I've repeated it for no reason. speaker-1: Okay, okay. Yeah, that's a thing to do. speaker-0: You're going to kick me off the podcast, aren't you? Continue. speaker-1: You're doing great, Isaac. You're doing great. I'm proud of you, buddy. ⁓ Okay, so the game I want to talk about is a game ⁓ called ReNature. Have you heard of ReNature, Isaac? You have. Okay, have you played it? speaker-0: I have not, but I've seen the box covered many times. speaker-1: It's very deceptive. It's very deceptive because it looks like a pretty like placing animals like nature, you know, ⁓ ecosystem kind of game. ⁓ You know, if you look at the cover, especially it's got butterflies on it and it's got a beautiful tree and the sunset and it's beautiful. But make no mistake, this is a game by Kramer and Keasling ⁓ that, ⁓ you know, from, you know, Probably their one of their most famous one is Tigress and Euphrates. And amongst other like tile laying area control games that are very, very competitive and sometimes seen as mean games. And this game is, ⁓ I want to say it's no exception. There's a couple of potentially mean moments that happen in the game, but it's not generally most of the game is not that mean. But you are definitely competing for areas and there's definitely like an area majority thing going on. Essentially, this is if you picture a board with a whole bunch of like zones in it, and each zone has like, ⁓ you know, four, three, anywhere from two to like eight or nine ⁓ kind of little squares in it where you can place plants. ⁓ And then our surrounding each of these zones is ⁓ single lines of like track basically where you can place dominoes okay and these dominoes just like a standard domino has two sides on it and each side has an animal not like flip each side but each like each zone of the the two section domino has has an animal ⁓ and there's butterflies and again it's like you look at it and it looks cute and it's sort of like you know, it's very misleading in that way, because there's turtles and squirrels and frogs and you know, just like animals. And so you place the basically your turn the game is very, very simple, you place a domino, and then you have a player board with a limited number of plants, and you have plants that are worth one plants that are worth two plants over three and four. And then you also have on your player board, a very limited number of neutral plants and so they're just like beige pieces versus like my color might be orange or black or whatever my color is. So when I place a domino ⁓ I will then choose any plant on my player board and place it adjacent to my domino in one of these zones that we're going to compete be competing for. Then it's your turn you take a domino and you either start in in one of ⁓ four pre-determined starting locations or you place adjacent to the domino I just placed. In which case, if you do that, you have to match the animal. ⁓ And then you place a plant. So let's say you place your domino next to mine and then you place a plant in that same zone. Now I have a plant in there and you have a plant in there. ⁓ Let's say a couple turns down the line. What happens is if somebody completely encloses one of these areas with dominoes, that basically will score that zone. ⁓ So ⁓ you did a very good job stifling that sneeze. I like barely heard it. speaker-0: I all of the pressure went into my brain. I'm probably going to have concussion later. Yeah. Don't worry about it. speaker-1: I don't know. Let's move on. What's your next shout out? speaker-0: What are we talking about? What are talking about? speaker-1: Okay, so once the dominoes completely ⁓ close off an area, that triggers scoring for that area. So then we're look in that area, we're gonna see who of me and you and Johnny and Cindy has the most power in that zone. So let's say had put my four plant in there and you had your three plant in there ⁓ and then, know, whoever else had less. speaker-0: your plans into a speaker-1: ⁓ There's a little token that goes in there and whoever got the most gets X amount of points. Whoever got second most gets X amount of points. And that's all it is. Like you're circling out an area ⁓ and then as soon as it's closed in, you score it. ⁓ So it creates a lot of like really tactical decisions of like, could place a domino here and place a plant there and that's really good. But on the other side of my domino, there's another area that I'm competing for. and I might want to play there instead. Or maybe now that I've done that, I'm opening an opportunity for the next person to place a domino to a section that hasn't been previously available, giving them the leg up on that area. So you're sort of playing defensively, you're playing very tactical in nature. And it's a really simple system with a lot of really interesting decisions. And the rule that I think makes this game is that ties will mutually eliminate the tied players. So if I have strength four in there and Isaac, you have a strength one in there, okay? And then you close it in, so you have the last opportunity to place in the zone and you place a neutral four, because you can put in neutral. Right? could put in a neutral in there. So now me and neutral player, non-existent player are tied, effectively eliminating us. It's as if we're don't exist in that zone, making you with your little tiny one, the strongest player in that zone. So you can really like sneak in and if you plan it properly and you know, I mean, obviously there's a cost associated because you're using your limited amount of neutral pieces. to do that, but there's like lots of opportunities to feel really smart and really sneaky and kind of sneak in and steal things and grab things where you where you know other players thought they had a leg up. But of course other players are doing that to you at the same time. And the worst that's going to happen is that I was planning to try to get six points there and I got none instead or I got four instead. And then but like my next turn comes up and I can do something similar in a different zone. So there's always like It's a game where you're like, you take, think it's like, if you're playing three players, you take 18 turns. So there's lots of turns where you're like, oh, I get five points this turn and I get four points this turn and I get eight points this turn. So it's not a big deal if like one turn somebody slides in and takes some points away from you. It makes them feel really smart and good. although it does make you feel a little bit bad or whatever, it's not... the level of feel good by doing these smart things like way outweighs the feel bad, if that makes sense. So I think that's like a beautiful chef's kiff's kind of design because like you can make people feel really great and at the end of the game like the winner's gonna feel really great and the losers are not gonna feel like they just got stomped on the whole time. There's gonna feel like they still contributed and had fun and did a bunch of interesting things. Renature ⁓ looks really quaint and cute and cozy and though it sort of is depending how you play it can be a little bit mean ⁓ So if that sounds interesting to you, definitely check it out. I'm a huge fan ⁓ simple simple rule set a really fun tactical decision-making vault speaker-0: Next shout out. So technically not a movie, ⁓ but I have finally took the deep dive into Dungeon Carl or Cool. ⁓ I know that's very hypey right now. And I decided that, you know, I'll jump on the train and, Ooh, what a ride. Have you lessened or read these, this book series yet? speaker-1: No, funny enough, my wife, who is not into fantasy or role playing or sci-fi or any of these things, but it's been, that's how hyped it is. That's how mainstream it's become. She's seeing it in all her book groups and it's being recommended to her and she's seeing it everywhere. So she decided to give it a try. and she did the audio book and she found it really fun and interesting. I'm not sure she's going to continue after the first book, but she definitely said that she had a great time. speaker-0: ⁓ So I probably started listening to it in January and I'm already listening to book seven. speaker-1: God. So that's all you've been doing. speaker-0: It's all I've been doing on my did you quit your job other than playing Ember Heart recently? Well, I have an hour commute to work in the morning. So I have plenty of audio book listening time. The for the audio book, the voice, ⁓ the narrator is phenomenal. speaker-1: I've heard nothing from you. speaker-0: is phenomenal does, you know, I've have friends that didn't realize there was one person doing all the voices. ⁓ so that's very impressive. ⁓ book series is great. the very small synopsis is there's an intergalactic TV show called dungeon crawler, ⁓ where basically web, ⁓ tire. planets are seeded with life and then after a certain amount of time, they transform the planet into a giant dungeon of some sorts and force all of the life on there to compete in this dungeon ⁓ with the carrot that if they complete the dungeon, they get to reclaim their planet. And if nobody does that, the planet just gets completely wiped off the map. And through this process, ⁓ the main characters go get forced into this dungeon and all they're trying to do is survive and they have no idea what's going on and suddenly there's a goblin attacking them and like what the hell's going on? ⁓ And then they later on find out it's a TV show and it's just the layers get on top of that. It's very crude in a lot of ways, very humorous in lot of ways, but there's a lot of very interesting social commentary to it as well. Very enjoying it. speaker-1: So canonically, the reason there's even life on earth is it was planted here by these people for the purpose of this TV show, like millions of years later or whatever. speaker-0: Yes, I don't that is technically spoiler, but it's not important to the storyline enough. I don't feel like I'm not really spoiling things. speaker-1: So ⁓ you don't like it, it's not your jam, you're not. speaker-0: Um, yeah, I'm gonna say it's my it's the media that I'm consuming the most right now. You know, there's a campaign for TTRPG of it right now. I'm not too interested in that. But I the card game looks very interesting to me. So I'm going to look at that. I, you know, there's a graphic novel of it being made. speaker-1: Later. There's a TV show. They're developing a TV show right now. speaker-0: Yeah, they're saying that it hasn't gotten far yet. I'm definitely going to watch it. Yeah. speaker-1: ⁓ Speaking of ⁓ graphic novels, a little bit of a funny story with this, but I was browsing ⁓ and I came across a title called All You Need Is Kill. And are you familiar with this title? No, okay. So it's called All You Need Is Kill. And stop me if this sounds familiar, but essentially the planet is sort of taken over by aliens and humans are sort of living alongside but you know also trying to survive or whatever and then at the very beginning a war like a war breaks out and the aliens start killing the humans and our main character who's like a i don't know if she's like high school or you know ⁓ college but ⁓ i it's animated so it's a little bit tough to tell but she's like you know young adult, let's say, she has a large tool that she was using for work or something like a big look like a jackhammer type of thing. And when they attacked, like the moment where the aliens stopped being sort of civil and attacked, and she jumps in and like kills one and gets covered in the aliens blood. And then she wakes up. And it's the same morning that she just lived. And she's like, ⁓ dream whatever. So she goes about her day and starts realizing that she's reliving the same day. And then the aliens attack again, and she gets killed because the aliens attack everywhere. She gets killed, she wakes up again, same morning, wakes up again, same morning, gets killed, wakes up again, same morning over and over again. Does this plot sound somewhat familiar to you? speaker-0: Edge of tomorrow? speaker-1: You got it. Yeah. So I had no idea and I felt sort of smart and dumb at the same time for whatever reason, cause like I'm watching this movie and it's like the very, very broad strokes of this are similar, but like all of the details are completely different. And obviously this is animated versus live action. ⁓ so like when it very first happened, the very first moments, I'm like, ⁓ this is sort of a little bit like edge of tomorrow. And then as soon she woke up for like the second time, that's when I realized I'm like, this has to be this has to be the same source material it has to be. So I googled it. And of course it was so I felt really for just not knowing in the first place, but also kind of smart for having figured it out. ⁓ yeah, the broad strokes, the broad strokes are pretty familiar. And I would still say worth watching though, like the animation is really cool. has a bit of a Studio Ghibli vibe to it, not quite the same. It feels a little bit, I don't know, I wouldn't even know how to describe it. It has a Studio Ghibli vibe to it, which might not be the only time we mention that today on this podcast. But yeah, it's really good. The action is good, the storytelling is good, the characters are cool. different enough for sure from the movie that would be 100 % worth watching. ⁓ You know, versus the Tom Cruise version, which is, you know, way more American and way more, you know, male centric macho versus ⁓ this movie, which is about like a young woman, just trying to figure things out and whatever. It almost feels like ⁓ it almost feels like at first I what I thought it was, was that the the uh Emily Blunt character from Edge of Tomorrow. I thought this was maybe a like a prequel to Edge of Tomorrow where they like talked about how she became whatever they called her the princess of I don't I forget what the angel of death or something like that was her was her nickname in the movie but but it turns out it's just the same source material. Uh yeah all you need is kill really really cool if you dig animation um and you like and you like that sort of like Groundhog Day style storytelling, I'm a huge sucker for it. I could do like a whole episode talking about those types of movies. There's enough that we could probably do that. It's a good idea for an episode. Yeah, big fan of these time loop movies. And All You Need Is Kill is a solid addition to the sub genre. speaker-0: Yeah. I really enjoy edge of tomorrow. And if I could watch a version of edge of tomorrow that doesn't have time, Tom Cruise in it, I might actually love it. speaker-1: Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Edge of Tomorrow. I think it's like an incredible action movie. Like if you just want a great, fun action movie, like it's a blast. It's so much fun. And like I'm Luke Warm on Tom Cruise. You know, I could take him or leave him. I think what he does, he's pretty good at it, you know, but at some point I have, you get enough, you have enough of it. And it's like, he doesn't really like deviate much anymore or at all. speaker-0: Thanks. speaker-1: He used to be a much more diverse actor, right? He used to do, he was way more interesting when he was working with auteurs, like he was working with Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and like that part of his career, I thought it was way more interesting than him playing Ethan Hunt over and over again, even when he's not Ethan Hunt. But anyways, that's all you need is kill. Check it out. Did we do two? Two? Yeah, we did. That's our shutouts. speaker-0: People don't direct them anymore. speaker-1: Good job. speaker-0: Good job guys. you. Good job you too. speaker-1: Did I mention it's been a long day? speaker-0: Okay. Let's talk about that. speaker-1: Let's move on to the Old King's Crown. It was published in 2025 by Eerie Idol Games, by Pablo Clark. Art by Pablo Clark. Published by Pablo Clark by Eerie Idol Games, but essentially from my understanding, he is a one-man show. And I think actually I was looking at the game found and there was a few other dudes on there. with roles now within your rental games. But I think this was primarily his baby. It plays. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Plays one to four players in 60 to 120 minutes. ⁓ The weight on BGG is 3.66 and it has currently a BGG rating of 8.1. So yeah, just to carry on from what you were just saying, it's an incredible what this guy's done. ⁓ Whether you love this game or not, ⁓ you know, if you don't like this game, my reaction would be, because I do love this game, is that it's just not for you. Because when you look at the design of the game, I feel like it's incredibly well designed. It does what it's trying to do really, really well with some caveats that we'll get to. ⁓ But... ⁓ Yeah, what he's done here, not only as the designer, but as the artist is really, really impressive. Apparently he'd been working on this game for about seven years before its release. And now he's done a couple of expansions and another game. ⁓ I'm really excited to see what Pablo Clark does going forward as well. the old. Yeah, we might not see something else. You know what? And if he comes out with a banger like this, every, you know, speaker-0: We won't see it for seven years. speaker-1: once every five to seven years, I mean, might be worth it. It could be like the Paul Thomas Anderson of board games. speaker-0: Yeah, no, it's incredible amount of work. And it's such an amazing thing to see somebody in industry just kind of be able to come out of nowhere. I mean, obviously not out of nowhere. He's been working on this for so long. In the full package himself and being so successful and making such a product that I don't know, just feels like it's coming from one of the big guys. You know, credible. All right. What's it about? the speaker-1: So the Old King's Crown is a game of card driven conquest where you play as heirs to a vacant throne, vying for control of an ancient overgrown kingdom. Wield unique abilities and leverage your followers traits to best outwit your opponents across a map that stretches from the teetering heights of the castle to the dappled light of the necropolis. As leader of your faction, you will be staking claims with heralds openly as well as positioning your forces in secret. hoping to claim the locations that fit your designs. However, keep an eye on your rivals as they too have agents and agendas poised to undo your best laid plans. ⁓ So I will do a very quick, ⁓ very high level overview of how the game plays. There's like teaching if you teach this game and I've taught this game now four or five times. ⁓ I've learned not to teach all the little minutia of all the little details because there's like there's so much to this game. ⁓ But at its core, and especially once you start to understand the iconography, the gameplay is actually fairly simple. And the rules, not the rules, but the flow of the game is sort of laid out right on the board in front of you. ⁓ So it's I feel like after having played it once and understanding how the game works, The last time I taught this game we base I basically more or less taught it as we played ⁓ I taught the very like I did it's like maybe a 15 minute teach which like which is really short ⁓ I think the first time I played this game taught it for like 40 minutes probably ⁓ Or the first couple of times So and I think that's probably the move here with with with teaching this game. So I'll do a little bit of that ⁓ that kind of high level overview teach of this game just to give you guys an idea of how it plays and what's important to understand about the game and whether or not this is something you want to to get behind that being said the late pledge is open now ⁓ as this podcast you're listening to this podcast if you're listening to it within the first week or two of publication you'll be able to go to game found and back it and pick up ⁓ know, the base game and it has a quick ship if you're just getting actually no matter what you're getting if you're getting the base game it's going to ship and arrive this summer ⁓ and then any expansions and annulet and whatever else you might get will come I think in like you know eight months to a year from now. Okay Old King's Crown we're just talking about the base game today how it plays So it's a multiplayer lane battler. Think compile or air land and sea rad lands or even marvel snap. ⁓ So that's kind of like how I think about this game. There's three lanes and you're competing for those three lanes and at the end of each round ⁓ you know you'll you'll calculate who won each lane and then ⁓ people get points based on that. ⁓ So you'll have also asymmetric factions. So everybody has their own player board. ⁓ And on those player boards is a handful of one time use abilities that you can use that are super powerful and really fun to pull off. ⁓ But you can only use them for the most part once per game. We all start with the same starting deck. That's kind of the exception to the asymmetric factions. We all have the same 10 cards to start the game with. but we have the ability to go and purchase more cards that are affiliated with our faction. They kind of get set aside and you can buy them and put them into your hand and ultimately into your deck. So that's kind of fun is like those cards are really powerful and they really play well into what that faction is trying to do. And then over the course of multiple phases, ⁓ We will do the following. So the first thing we do is bid for Kings road cards. These are cards that ⁓ you'll put on your player board and their game breaking abilities. And some are stronger than others, but they're really, really like they're really like rule manipulating and they'll let you do things that otherwise you wouldn't be able to do and try to gain edges over your opponents. ⁓ So these like everybody will There'll be a row of these cards. Everybody will pick one of the cards from their hands face down, reveal them simultaneously. Whoever bid the most gets first choice and down the line it goes. And then after that phase, you will be placing heralds. So like I said, there's three lanes that we're going to be fighting over. And in turn order, we're going to place a herald, which is like a really, really neat looking screen printed meeples. ⁓ that are, again, are designed to look, you know, the, the style of your faction. ⁓ and you'll place them in one of these zones, essentially saying like, this is the one I'm most interested in. This is the one I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket potentially to try to win maybe. and then, ⁓ so then I'll do that. And then in turn order, everybody else will do that. And if two heralds end up in the same zone, ⁓ That gets really interesting because then you the winner of that zone will end up stealing points from the loser. If heralds are not in the same zone then you just get bonus points for winning with your herald. ⁓ That being said the herald doesn't provide any power or strength or do anything other than if you win that zone you get bonuses. ⁓ Then we're all going to play supporters. So think we each start with six supporters, which are just little, again, screen printed meeples of your color that you can choose to push into whatever zone you want. And these are sort of one time use as well. So you have to use them very sparingly and carefully, although there are ways to get them back. So interesting there to kind of, you know, there's, there's, there's very much as a game where this is very much a game where you could kind of blow your load and like you use your one time use abilities and you use all your supporters and maybe jump out to a big lead. But then like you're sort of like nerfing yourself going forward. So interesting decisions to make there as well. So replacing out supporters, then everybody will take one card per zone. So three cards and place them face down next to those three zones. ⁓ Then the next phase would be that we will resolve these zones one at a time. So in order we will all reveal our cards for zone number one. ⁓ And then, you know, I played a 10 Isaac, you played an eight and somebody played a three, right? So now I'm winning this zone. So again, in turn order, we all have the ability to activate abilities during this combat. abilities that let you bring cards in from your hand, abilities that let you ⁓ retreat and actually say, you know what, I don't want to hang out in this zone and I'm going to take all of my stuff, my supporters, my Harold, my cards and retreat and get out of there. Maybe you that as a bluff ⁓ or maybe you just got outplayed and you don't think you're going to win anymore. So you want to get out of there so that you're not wasting your resources. So in turn order we each get to either flank or ambush or ⁓ There's a couple of pardon Sasson eight's another one. Yeah, there's all sorts of little abilities and things that you can do ⁓ during this phase ⁓ That involved playing offense or defense or just like leaving altogether so some really interesting tactical decisions there and then you know once everybody's kind of done their abilities speaker-0: assassinate. speaker-1: one person will end up having won the zone and they'll get the rewards. So each of these three zones has two, or I guess they're called regions, I think. And then within each of these regions, there's two zones. So two abilities that you can activate. So you'll choose which of those two you want to do. So no matter what, you'll get points and then... ⁓ depending on which zone you're in, you'll choose to do to activate one of these other abilities. They'll get you, allow you to, you know, whether it's draw cards or do all kinds of things. It's not important. ⁓ And then, then like that combat for that region is over. We move on to region two and we do it all over again. Then we move on to region three, do it all over again. And then there's just a reset. Like we reset, grab all our cards back. ⁓ Any supporters that were on the board will then go to like, ⁓ I forget what it's called a dead zone or something like that. Never to be seen again or potentially not if you have a way to bring them back. ⁓ Cards that were left that are still on the board and in those positions will then go to your discard pile ⁓ and your heralds will come back to your board. You basically reset everything and then you have your fall action. So it's done in seasons, right? So there's like spring and then summer that's where the combat happens. And then there's fall. which is an opportunity to use whatever cards you have left in your hand to either journey or govern, which allow you to get ongoing abilities in a kind of common area. Won't get too much into that. Or you can journey, which is ⁓ something that you can do that'll allow you to buy those side cards to put into your deck. So again, very high level overview here. But then we go into winter reset and then we play either four or five or six rounds depending on how long of a game you want to play. ⁓ So that is ⁓ kind of a very high level overview, but the like crux of this game is that essentially it's a lane battler where you're all placing cards face down, revealing each lane one at a time and then activating a whole bunch of abilities that you can do. whether it's on your player board, the King's Road cards that you purchased earlier in the round, abilities on your cards, ⁓ et cetera. And then you're just jockeying to try to win these positions ⁓ for points. And then you play four or five or six rounds and then that's the game. So, know, that... I guess what I'll do now, Isaac, is I'll kick it over to you. First of all, is there anything important that you think I missed that wouldn't, that doesn't give, you know, maybe I missed a little bit of the essence of what the game is for you? speaker-0: I gotta start to clarify that wasn't a high overview. You almost described how to play the game. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, is each of speaker-0: What I'm saying is essentially if you are teaching people how to play as you go, right? If that's the style that you did, you basically set somebody up to already basically play this game. ⁓ speaker-1: Each of these things that I've talked about have like multiple little steps and understanding about where you get courts from and how you pay and blah blah blah. Right. Let's like it's a lot more complex than what I've just said. But this is like, you know, that is all the steps of how to play the game for sure. speaker-0: So, so to me, to boil it down even more, I think when I, when I played this game, ⁓ it is the most amount of area control layers I've seen in the game. And that's essentially each phase and each part of the game is you're trying to outpower each, your opponents in each phase of this game. And I, I think it's incredible that he was able to jam pack this amount of. power struggle in each step of this game, ⁓ which that's how I would summarize this game. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. speaker-0: So, and then the other thing I wanted to really iterate from when you were describing the game that I think is very interesting is the resource scarcity of this game. That you were saying that you have this certain number of meeples that you could that feel like that are in general a one-time effect sort of things. There are ways of getting them back, whatever. But all of your resources are very powerful, but scarce. And So anytime they have the ability to get them back feels strong. So there's a lot of interesting opportunities in that game in old Kings crown where like, I really don't want to use this. And then you get a card or an effect that's like, ⁓ I'm going to get it back. And now I'm going to do something really great because I can throw this out there and everyone's going to be like, wow. You spending a lot. And you're like, bam, I get it all back. And that feels very satisfying. ⁓ The other thing ⁓ I to mention is there's a very satisfying ramp of your abilities and effects you get in this game. You do very little at the beginning, but as you use these very powerful effects, they give you two powerful effects that you get three powerful effects. So, ⁓ you know, at first doesn't feel a little like a little bit. And when you get to the last round, everyone just like taking their turns, just ⁓ damn. Boom. ⁓ damn. Boom. ⁓ damn. So it gets the ramp is very interesting in this game. And that's assuming everybody is paying attention as they play the game and they didn't blow all of their one time effects within round one like I did. Right. speaker-1: Yeah, no just kidding in the league rounds if he did that speaker-0: No, I actually came back around, but that's a different story. ⁓ Because there's a, you know, if you play it right, you can still come back. speaker-1: share you. ⁓ Yeah, it's a really fascinating puzzle. And I think you're right that the like we talk about resource scarcity, there's no resources in this game. There's no like, you know, money or like diamonds or like whatever. There's like little scrolls that you can get and you use these scrolls to purchase cards, I suppose. But that's the only thing in the game. And it doesn't feel like a resource. just feels like you're like sacrificing cards to like save up for, to replace those cards with better cards. ⁓ speaker-0: Well, I think I would first say your meeples are one resource because they're, but I would also say your. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, that's what I like money or like whatever resources. Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: your cards are your resource. I that because it's hard to get them back. You have to do specific things to get them back. And your hand limit decreases throughout the game unless you do specific things to change that. So even you're playing your cards feels like a resource, a scarce resource in this game, is fascinating and adds a very self tension that is fun, but also like always doubting yourself. Does that make sense to do? Because I won't get this again, probably by the end of the game. It's interesting. speaker-1: Yeah, the you almost Yeah, you only have ⁓ six supporters, right? And for the most part, you use them, you lose them. ⁓ There are, you know, some ways to bring them back. ⁓ But that comes at a cost as well. And when like, for example, we talked about the the King's Road, which is a set of four cards that ⁓ speaker-0: deck builder, not really. speaker-1: that ⁓ you can ⁓ be that everybody bids on at the beginning of each round. ⁓ And then whoever has the highest number gets the first choice. So then I take that card and it says, you know, during combat, all of your, you know, choose one zone and put this card in this in that zone right now. And all of your opponents strength in this zone is are halved for this round, you know, or there's another one that'll let you ⁓ go in your discard pile and fish out a card. There's other like to just let you do all kinds of really powerful things. And we just talked about how scarce this game is, right. ⁓ And what I'm getting to here is that like, when I buy one of these Kings road cards, I'm bidding with a card to do it. And I have to occupy the Kings road card with a card from my deck that I bid with. So it essentially slides under my player board where I put that card. ⁓ And then it has to sit there. as long as I have that King's Road card on my player board. And so like I have to sacrifice a card altogether from my deck of 10 cards to use one of these King's Road cards. So that's just like one example of like use a thing and you might not see it for a while and there's a good chance you might not see it ever again period. right? And so you really have to calculate out and be careful about how much you use your stuff and when you use your stuff. You have these four abilities on your player board. And again, this is asymmetric, but there are tiles and when you use them, you flip them over and they're one time use. They're really big, fun, splashy effects, but they're one time use. ⁓ If you want to purchase more cards, you have to sacrifice the cards from your hands to do it. ⁓ Those cards you will likely see again, but they have to go to your discard pile. And as Isaac said, in a lot of games, when you run out of, when your deck runs out, you just shuffle in your discard pile. You do do that in this game. However, every time you do that, your hand limit goes down by one. And if you calculate how many cards you need in a round, you need one card to bid with, ⁓ that'll occupy your King's Road card. You need ⁓ one card. to, sorry, you'll use three cards ⁓ on the board to do combat with, because you have to put one in each of the three zones. And then at the end of the round, you use one card to govern with and one card to journey with. That's six cards, that's your whole hand. So unless you're using abilities on these cards to bring them back into your hand or to cycle them or to pull them out of your discard pile, Essentially, you're using your entire hand if you're doing it super efficiently, you're using your entire hand every round. But you only have 10 cards in your deck. So how many times are you going to go through your deck over the course of four, five or six rounds? ⁓ That's when all of these abilities and the not the cheating, but the rule bending with the King's Road and your asymmetric abilities and all these other things come into play. ⁓ But yeah, I'll let you talk a little bit here, Isaac. ⁓ I guess the question I'll ask you, and I think I already know the answer to this, but you've only played this game once, right? We should probably preface this. You've played this game only once. ⁓ Isaac will have a little bit more of a first impressions ⁓ kind of review to the game. ⁓ And I've played this game six times now ⁓ at ⁓ all at three player counts, except for one, which was a four player count. And I think we'll spend a significant time of our review here talking about those differences. ⁓ But Isaac, why don't you tell us a little bit about how your one play went down and your overall thoughts on the game based on that. speaker-0: Yeah. So overall, ⁓ I played, ⁓ only once, ⁓ and it was a four player game. That's what was quite a while to get into the rules and get things going. ⁓ and one player had played this game many times before. It's one of their favorite games and the rest of us hadn't played this game. It was very obvious from the first action that the player that's played this before played the game before. And the rest of us were scrambling to do the figure out what was good or what was not good. ⁓ Our first ⁓ trying to get the first kingdom card, you know, we have these hands of cards like, ⁓ this is going to be interesting. This is going to be interesting. And ⁓ I got to sacrifice a card right now. ⁓ Before I even know what I'm doing. And kind of just kind of all did this non committal trying to like, this sounds interesting. This sounds interesting. Does that is that broken? I don't know if that's broken yet. And then he got a card that just gives him seven points right off the thing in the game. Now that is a lot of points for this game. Seven points. Just do it. He got a car. He won a card that gave him seven points and we were never within seven points of him after this. there's a, ⁓ there's a kingdom card that just gives straight seven points. speaker-1: I'd be very curious to know what that card was. haven't seen it. speaker-0: You play seven cards and that card then gets, I forget the term, exhausted. You're ⁓ immediately. So you lose the card that you used to get it, but you just get seven points and that's the effect. And he was ahead of us by at least seven points the rest of the game. ⁓ Which is like fine, right? But it was like a very interesting... Okay, that's what's going on now. We need... Seven points is a lot. should have been paying attention to that. ⁓ but anyways, okay. So let's keep going. The general flow of the game is really good. I do like the flow of the game. I like how it's set up where you're first going through this, you know, quote spring actions and then the summer action, the fall actions, and they all kind of have their own uses and purposes and timing. And there's a very interesting timing and dynamic of trying to struggle of when I should play certain cards and I could, this could be really good for me, but it might be better for me to wait to a later part of the round to play so that I felt that that felt great. You know, the different extra area controls, the governing is a whole other section of almost area control, having cards play in the fall has another feel of almost area control too, because they can come onto the board at a different timing than the other cards. And we all felt that we're all having a really good time until we realized the person has played this game before is so astronomically ahead of us that we're not even sure. You know, at some point my buddy and I it's like, okay, I'm going to beat you. No, you're going to beat me. It doesn't matter for second or third or third and fourth. That's our goal now. speaker-1: Yeah, we're playing for a second now, yeah. speaker-0: ⁓ And the other thing that in that process made us realize there's a I don't know. I would care what you think about it. I feel like there's a big King making problem with this game. There's very easy food. You'd be like, I'm going to enable you to win this by putting your resources in somewhere and then moving it somewhere else or or or whatnot. ⁓ But that unfortunately did happen a few times in our game. speaker-1: Yeah, I think any game with like area control ⁓ has can can get into a situation where that's possible. And I'll say that in the five games that I played that happened once, where it was the very end of the game, I was not in contention for the win. And then the two people that were in contention for the win were battling over an area. and I forget what action or ability. ⁓ I think that I wasn't going to win any ⁓ zones or I had won the first zone. And then I had the ability to like flank into another zone and very clearly one was going for one and the other was going for the other. So wherever I was going to flank was going to nerf that person potentially enough. And I wasn't mapping it out to the point where it's like, you know, but it felt like wherever I was going to go was going to set that tone or whatever. So, you know, I tried to just take and everybody's going to use that scenario a little bit differently, but I just looked at whoever was in the lead at the moment, whoever looked like they were going to win. And I went against that person ⁓ with the idea that in theory I was trying to catch up as well. Right. ⁓ So that was kind of my thinking to be like fair or whatever. ⁓ But we, had such a good time that like in the end, it didn't, it didn't really matter that much. ⁓ And ⁓ ultimately at the very end, I don't even remember having mathed it out and whether or not that person won. I think they did. I think the person that I kind of went up against didn't win, but I'm not a hundred percent sure it was because of what I did. ⁓ But yeah, long story short, I think you're right that that can happen in this game, but I don't think that's exclusive to this game. I think it's just ⁓ the nature of this genre of game. I think that there are scenarios where that can happen. And again, in my five plays, maybe six plays now, it happened once and I wasn't even 100 % sure in that moment whether or not I was actually able to king make, but it felt like I had that opportunity, you know. But yeah, that's that's a possibility. speaker-0: Fair. speaker-1: I don't think that again, I think it's just a double edged sword. And if you want to have the big stand up and cheer moments and the big like the tension and the excitement of a game like this, it has to come with a little bit of a down, down, you know, downfall or drawback, I guess is the word I'm looking for. Sorry, but yeah, go ahead and finish your final thoughts, not your final thoughts, but your general thoughts of how your game went. speaker-0: Yeah. So, uh, know, uh, we can talk about this a little more, but I, I definitely feel like this is one of those games that is very group dependent of who you're playing with. And there's going to be times if you introduce the person to this game that doesn't like this style of game, they will not have fun. This is definitely a game that you need to go into knowing that you are going to have a game. breaking effect, you're going to feel incredibly clever. You're going to be like, Oh, this is going to be so good. And you put it down and the person next to you expletive word that I can't say it because we're trying to keep this, this a PG 13 podcast, you, and that did nothing. And you got to be okay with that because you're going to do that again, probably to them later. Right. Oh, On a personal standpoint for me, I think there was a lot of cool, very cool combos and effects and lots of moments to feel incredibly clever, but I didn't know those yet. So every time I had several times where I took two rounds to build up this plan and I was so excited and I was always the guy right before the guy that knew what he was doing. And I'm like, bam. And he's like, ⁓ countered. And like, so I did all of this effort and it literally left me led to nowhere. And despite all that, I still actually got second out of the four of us. So there, I was able to flex my strategy and still go around that. But, you know, it felt frustrating and I could see that the more I played this game, the more familiar I got with the different effects. I can see that rock paper scissors coming a little bit more ahead and that feeling would go away because I know that I can fix it. Yes. But as a first time player playing with a very experienced player, that a very experienced player that their concern was not to have everyone have fun, but more to win. Yeah, there was a ⁓ that can cause tension if you're not playing with the right group that can handle that. speaker-1: Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, my second to last game, I played a four player game. That was my one game at four players. And one of the players ⁓ got really upset super early in the game, because one of his like plans didn't come to fruition. And he was like, ⁓ well, this is just rock, paper, scissors. Like I put a thing here and I didn't put it in the right place. And you happen to put your thing there. So my thing didn't work. And what can I do? What can I do? And he was like, just mad and like, It was sort of a experience. It was sort of a miserable experience for the next like almost two hours because this guy was so miserable about it. And even give him an opportunity. said like, we can, we can finish without you. If you're not having fun, like, you know, it's not a problem. Like not every game is for everybody. Like you can, I won't be mad. You could step away and we called you. We'll just continue without you. It's fine. And he was adamant to continue. So it's okay. Fine. But like he was just miserable the whole time. And so it kind of dragged the whole kind of like juju of the game down. ⁓ But the rest of us, you know, had a good time with the game and, and, that was probably the game, the play of this game that I did enjoy the least, I will say. And, ⁓ and I remember when we were kind of having our group chat and it was me, you and Jason. So Jason was involved in that game played with us and he was echoing some of your thoughts of like, ⁓ of like, you know, it's, it's like, it's just really chaotic because there's four people at the table and everybody's doing like all these crazy effects and whatever. And this is the kind of game where you're going to have plans. And if you're playing at three players, I'm just going to throw out a number 75 to 80 % of those plans will work. speaker-0: That's a reason number. speaker-1: It's 100%. I don't know. don't know what the ratios are. I don't know what the ratios are, obviously, but it feels like, you know, somewhere around three quarters of your plans will work out. You you plan the thing. You're like, I'm going to reveal this is exactly that moment. It's going to give me the boost and I'm to be able to do a thing. And then somebody else comes in and they squash that. Well, the three out of four times that'll work, you know? Um, and this is, this is kind of just my general feeling about it. That's at three players. When you go to four players, it just becomes the wild west. And although the game can be enjoyable for that reason, but it felt like that percentage of like, you know, three out of four times my plan's going to work and it'll be like, it'll, be like, yeah, that worked out and that feels really good. And I feel really smart when at four players, just the injection of that one extra player. I felt like the game got exponentially more wild Westie to the point where only like maybe 50, 60 % of my plans were actually working out. And that drops to a number where a lot of people are gonna really struggle to be like, like half of what I'm doing isn't gonna work? Like that's really frustrating. speaker-0: Yeah, no, I could definitely see that with the four player. I mean, it was very chaotic. I think it's mostly. And I think there's a little bit of way to mitigate that is trying to go for less to break them, like not as big moves. ⁓ You definitely would play differently. I think I would play very differently having to play it again, especially if I was playing on a different player count. ⁓ But there's, you know, different area pockets where you can get effects, right? I, you know, I realized I was not going to get a huge advantage from the governing section of the board, um, very early on. So I actually started to ignore that. And that's when I started to do get better. And that's what ultimately led me to get second in this game was flexing my strategy. So there's definitely, you know, even though it's wild, there's definitely enough things that you can do to mitigate that. And ⁓ as long as you are okay with that frustration tolerance, but not everybody is. speaker-1: That's 100%. That's 100%. Like if you're, if you go into a game and only 50 % of what you're trying to do works, like that can, that can be really frustrating and annoying. If you go into a game, knowing that, and just, just trying to go with the flow and have some fun and be a little bit more tactical, a little bit more flexible, a little bit less long-term planning and a little bit more just like sneak in a point here, sneak in a point there, figure out how to like, you know, be a little bit more tactical and a little bit less strategic. maybe that's the move. But I will say like my favorite player counts going to be three players going forward. I think it's just like the sweet spot for this game. And I have not played it at two. I heard it's really good. And I hear that it becomes way more chess like you're very much reacting to what your opponent's doing. In a lot of cases, I'd like to try it. I haven't gotten the chance to. But my three player all four or five of my three player games of this have been like super tense. and super fun. And most of the time my plans work out, but every once in a while, ⁓ no, somebody like foiled me. then like, but those are fun moments too. Like you want some of those moments in these kinds of games, right? Otherwise, if everything always works, what are we even doing here? Right? Like go play ⁓ Arc Nova where you could just like have your head down and do your plans and then figure out who won at the end. ⁓ that's not my favorite kind of game. I want to be Seeing what my opponents are doing and I want them to like foil me sometimes and I want to have the opportunity to like get them back and have some fun with that stuff and laugh about it and like give each other a hard time or whatever, right? Like that's That's the that's the kind of game that I love You know, I talked about re nature a while ago having the similar kind of vibe right and old King's crown is a you know, obviously a way bigger more complicated complex ⁓ layers of area control as you said But yeah, with that comes way more opportunities to feel really, really sneaky and really fun. And those moments can't come if everybody always just gets to do what they want. Right. So again, you have to take the good with the bad with this style of game. it doesn't sound like your style of game, then I think that's totally fine. There's a game for everybody. ⁓ You know, and there are games for every style of board gamer. This might not be the game for you. But I would love ⁓ Isaac for you to have an opportunity to play this at three players. It is a very different experience. mean, obviously it's the same game, but you just have that extra like 15, 20 % of control that puts you in a sweet spot where like almost all the time things go, you know, you pull off your big plans and the little plans maybe get foiled or you have to like reset or like readjust or whatever. And I think that that's kind of what the crux of this game is. We have them. speaker-0: to come on down to New England and workplace. speaker-1: Yeah, I don't know what that drive would be for me, but I bet you it's north of 15 hours. speaker-0: I was going say it's about 16 hours. I've driven it once. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: There you go, went to Toronto. Okay, yeah, I'm four hours north of Toronto. speaker-0: Okay, so yeah, 20 hours. This probably some sort of diagonal hypotenuse in there. So let's say 18. I could probably get to Toronto faster if I ignored some laws, but speaker-1: Jumping a boat little like ⁓ We have not talked about yet the the the the look of this game the art graphic design We definitely have to get into that ⁓ I'll put the I'll push the art conversation Kick that down the road just a tiny bit ⁓ To get to the grip. I want to talk about the graphic design first ⁓ The reason I want to talk about that is I think that this board ⁓ despite being massive And this game being a massive table hog. Like I have a pretty big table. And yeah, it fills it up completely, even at three players, like we're struggling for space. So take that in consideration too, if you're considering picking up this game. ⁓ If you have a fairly big table or access to one to set up to play a big game, then great. Otherwise you might struggle playing this game. But despite that, the board is basically a map of how to play the game. And I think that's a gene, especially for a game with this many layers and trying to keep track of what's next and what I have to do next and what's, you know, what's two steps from now, what's three steps from now. Those things are all going to be important in your plans. And the board has basically a map around the edge of the game and through where you're doing your combat. and then where your fall actions are and where the cleanup is, there's basically a wooden token that you're gonna move along to each of the spaces as you're doing them. ⁓ So I think that despite it taking probably like the boards, probably 20 % bigger, 20, 30 % bigger than what it would be otherwise if it didn't have this feature. I think because of the, of how tactical this game is and how much you have to plan ahead, two, three moves ahead, I think that it's a genius decision to set that up so that players can look and be like, okay, I got to do, I'm going to make this decision right now. What's next? How is this going to affect my next thing and my next thing? And it can look at the board and have a way better understanding of the steps, even for a new player. I don't know how you felt having only played this game once and how that, that kind of affected you and your play. speaker-0: Yeah. I, I, I meant to say this earlier when I said I liked the flow of the game. It's very visual. which is great. I agree exactly with you. And I think that great does a service to it. I will say I am a little upset. aren't player aids in this game. It, yeah. So the general flow of what we have to do and when we have to do it was obvious. because of the great graph design of how they laid it upon the board and you can see when we're going to do doing certain stages phases of the round. But we had to pass around the rule book a bunch of times. speaker-1: Yeah, the rule book, the back of the rule books acts as a player aid for a bunch of icons. And then there's actually one more double-sided, like full page player aid that has a bunch of like quick reference stuff. Then that had to get, that has to get passed around quite a bit too. speaker-0: Yeah. So I think it's a matter of, once again, we're playing a four player game. Most of us didn't know what we were doing. We have to keep reclarifying to each other. Now, a majority of the stuff that you would want on a player aid for player reference is on the board. So after playing it once, I think that wouldn't be a problem. But the first play was a little bit rough ⁓ because of that. ⁓ But at least the flow of the game was very clear. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Player aids could be really helpful for sure. Even just icon. It's just there's like a little explanation with each of the things. like a like you'd almost just need to make four of those sheets, those double sided sheets. ⁓ speaker-0: But then it's at some point ⁓ I ended up. like somebody, a fan had made a player aid themselves and I just had that open up my phone. So I keep grabbing the book from somebody. So BGG asked that stuff. It's just. speaker-1: Right. Yeah, this is definitely a game. I will say this is definitely a game where the first game feels like an investment so that you can ⁓ really dig in ⁓ to the following place. ⁓ I definitely like loved this game more and more with each play. After my first play, I was like, I'm pretty sure I love this game. It seems to have all the things that I love about gaming in it. But I'm not sure because my brain melted and I'm still like, you know, I'm still like spin my head still spinning from having learned everything despite how like, you know, smooth the play is there's just lots of so many little things to remember. And everything's very intuitive. Once you know the graphic design, once you understand all the iconography, and you understand, you know, five or six different concepts, you're good to go. But it probably takes most of your first game to really have that all sink in. And then if you play shortly thereafter, you know, you it's been a month or whatever, how many months since you've played Isaac you mentioned, ⁓ you know, playing a second game now, you'll probably have to re remember a lot of this stuff. ⁓ But yeah, it definitely feels like a game that could be like a lifestyle game. ⁓ We could you know, the way that people play route or the way that people play. Agricola might be a bit of a stretch because that's a whole nother level but like, you know that kind of thing where like the more you invest in it, the more the game gives back to you. And I've definitely speaker-0: I'll never play a root. And that's why I'll never play a root. speaker-1: Yeah, you know what? I haven't. That's why I haven't. speaker-0: I have a friend that has, we're going to do it someday, but. speaker-1: Yeah, I've been told that like that game really starts to shine once you know exactly how all the factions work. And I'm like, I don't think I ever will have the time and energy to invest into one game. Yeah, maybe someday when my kids are moved out and yeah. speaker-0: Then just to finish up the second thought that you had of this whole section is the art is fantastic. was incredible, detailed, vibrant colors and contrasting color. The color choice I think is so spot on that. You know, a lot of, a lot of games will go vibrant and beautiful and bright. You know, I think of. speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. speaker-0: Flamecraft is, you know, the colors are great. It's beautiful, but it's all this kind of one color brightness saturation. Well, the color choice he did for this. There's so much contrast. There's shadows, there's darkness. speaker-1: Yeah, this doesn't feel like a Saturday morning cartoon. speaker-0: It's incredible. I think he did such a good job with it. speaker-1: The art in this game blows my mind. The board is like, the board is a window looking out onto the kingdom. speaker-0: He just he just needs to make a graph graphic novel. speaker-1: Yeah, I like I'm literally blown away by how gorgeous this is every single card, like, I don't know how many times in my first couple plays of this where I'm just like lost in the art. And it's like, ⁓ it's my sorry, it's my turn. I was in the middle of my turn. Sorry, I got like dazed out by by how gorgeous this card is. speaker-0: I had to look at it after I played because my brain was already melting at 200 % trying to figure out all the effects. speaker-1: The game box is amazing. Like I'm looking at it now and like the inside of the bottom layer of the box, the one that the top kind of goes over the outer edges is just like beautiful, like overgrown, like ⁓ kingdom forest statues and stuff. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. If you haven't had a chance to just go look at the art, he's selling art prints. in that game found campaign. And I'm like looking at that going like that's maybe a good investment. ⁓ Anyways, yeah, I can't I cannot say this has to be I think I've said this a few times on my on the podcast, but this has to be the most beautiful game I own now, like rad lands was at one point, like I just fell in love with that art. ⁓ You know, and then Wonderlands War is another one of my favorites that I think is just like gorgeous. This blows both of those out of the water. Like I cannot, and I mentioned earlier, a little bit of a Studio Ghibli vibe. ⁓ I think a lot more detailed than a Studio Ghibli and more vibrant. ⁓ But yeah, anyways, I just had to. speaker-0: I got my favorite art is probably gonna be frostpunk. Even though it's like only two colors. ⁓ Basically, basically, it's like blue and gray and black. So three colors. ⁓ That that's my favorite artists, Jake's, I forget his last name. ⁓ He also did site. ⁓ speaker-1: Okay, yeah, size is beautiful too. ⁓ speaker-0: Anyway, so... speaker-1: Any final thoughts on the game, Isaac? Why as we wrap this up here? speaker-0: So we're going to so I'm going to talk about my rating for this game. I'm going to talk about why. So big controversial thing out of 10, I'm giving the seven now. speaker-1: I was expecting lower to be honest. speaker-0: So I give it a seven because I know this is an incredibly well designed game. I know the mechanisms work wonderfully and it has a lot of avenues to make these amazing wow moments that I've accomplished this, which is amazing. And the reason why I actually don't rate it higher is if any to our six people that actually listen to the show would know that I have an opposite style of board games that I prefer from you is I prefer heads down like Arc Nova in general. I still like kind of take that. There's a plenty of take that games that I do enjoy. But in general, I like working on my own and I win because I did that the best out of everyone. ⁓ And in general, any game where I can work on something for so long and then somebody can just say, nope, is going to feel bad for me. Now I can handle that stress and I still had a lot of fun with the game. One player at our table had zero points in the game. The winner, I was second. The winner was 18 points ahead of me. The. I have me as in so so the so what I. the final take home of it. I want to rate this higher. I want to. ⁓ but I don't because to me there's a huge importance of wanting people to play a game again is very important. And when I play a game, I want to do better next time. That is such a good feeling in a game. Even if you don't do well, you know, you can do better. I know I could do better playing this again, but I don't want to play it speaker-1: Yeah, fair enough. speaker-0: because of how devastating that disparity for somebody that got zero points. speaker-1: I will say it sounds like you had a really unique play of this game. speaker-0: Yeah, Tommy the game was not. speaker-1: I have not seen anybody get more than like, I don't think anybody got more than 20 points. I think the most was like between 15 and 20. speaker-0: Yeah, somebody had zero points in our game that every single decision she made was outdone. And I know that's a product probably of the four player account. And this is this is all personal experience. So that's why I like I want to write to rate it higher because I know it's a really good game. It's just something that I don't think I personally am going to want to invest myself to learn all those crazy card effects and then learn the strategy around it. All right. speaker-1: completely fair. I think this is going to end up being a really good review for people because people will understand that ⁓ if they're more, if they're, if they're scared of, and scared is not the right word. If they're, if they just don't want intimidated, if they don't want to have feel bad moments, right? If they're not that kind of gamer, ⁓ like I seek those out because if I can have a feel bad moment, it means that I can have a big stand up and cheer excitement moment as well. know, like when's the last time you saw somebody like play a card and then or do a thing and everybody at the table went and then whatever in Arc Nova or Terraforming Mars or like any of these like heads down Euro games which I think are great games don't get me wrong they're fantastic games just not my preference right and it just depends on what you're looking for out of a game And this is the kind of game that just like speaks to me exactly. ⁓ But it does sound like you have. Maybe I don't know. played one game with Paraphorin Mars and I think I had the similar experience that you did with King's Crown. speaker-0: There's wrongs, by the way. I understand. ⁓ love is actually my favorite game and I could see you not liking it. Yeah. speaker-1: It's just for me, it was three hours of like not caring at all what anybody was doing. Just waiting for my turn. And then, yeah, well, I'm just saying like nobody cared about what I was doing either. Or at least it's, it felt that way anyways. ⁓ Anyway. Yeah. And anyways, we're not, we're not talking about terraformers. We're talking about old Kings crown. Old Kings crown is a top three game for me of all time at this point. It's a 10 out of 10. I love it. I think it's like perfection for what, for what I want. ⁓ speaker-0: You lost. speaker-1: So that's what I was getting to is that like, think this will end up being a really good review for people that want to know more about whether or not this game is for them. Because they'll figure out, I on the Isaac side of the pendulum or am I closer to the Matt side of the pendulum? I don't think either one of us are on the extremes because I do love some heads down euros. I do like this. There's some that I absolutely love. As long as they're not. super overly long, I am 100 % down to play those types of games. They're just not my favourite, right? But yeah, so depending on where you land on that pendulum, you know, I think this will be a good opportunity for you to decide whether or not Old King's Crown is for you. All right, let's get to our Kingdom of Heaven review. It was released in 2005, directed by Ridley Scott. It stars Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Liam Neeson, Edward Norton, and Jeremy Irons. The story follows a humble blacksmith, played by Orlando Bloom, who gets swept up in an epic adventure, takes on more responsibility than he should, ends up with a woman way out of his league, and turns out to somehow be this incredible swordsman and combat tactician. The movie though really loses me when we find out the crew of the Black Pearl. are actually just undead pirate skeletons afflicted with a curse? I'm not sure what that's all about or what it has to do with Jerusalem. ⁓ wait, did I watch the wrong movie? speaker-0: Don't forget about Professor Lupin from Harry Potter showing up here and there as well. speaker-1: Right, yeah, and he's trying ⁓ to remember his name. ⁓ Thulis, Edward Thulis, something Thulis. Anyways, think he was in, he was actually in one of the, David Thulis, thank you, was actually in one of the ⁓ Pirates of the Caribbean movies too, believe it or not. speaker-0: David Tuas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. speaker-1: Alright, the real sedopsis is that a humble blacksmith discovers that he's not just good with hammer, but also apparently qualified to become a knight, a master military strategist, and a moral compass for an entire kingdom. After a brief crash course in swordplay, he heads to Jerusalem, where he proceeds to win respect, navigate complex political tensions, and casually outshine people who've been doing this their entire lives. Along the way, he befriends kings clashes with hot headed warlords and delivers really unconvincing speeches. Naturally, when everything falls apart as it tends to do in medieval epics, our blacksmith steps up to defend a city, organize its people, and negotiate with legendary leaders like it's just another day at the forge. In short, one man, zero formal training, and an impressive ability to rise to every occasion as if destiny personally fast-tracked his abilities. So that gives you a little bit of my thoughts on Kingdom of Heaven. having, having said all that, it sounds like I hated the movie. didn't. I didn't enjoy the movie. It does sound like I hated the movie. I think it's, I think it's extremely flawed. But I think Ridley Scott's direction and some of the action set pieces and speaker-0: hated the movie. speaker-1: choreography and war scenes ⁓ kind of save the movie and pull it out of the dumpster a little bit for me. ⁓ So that's a little bit of my thoughts. We'll get a little bit more into it. But yeah, I'm curious to hear what your general thoughts are on Kingdom of Heaven. guess first of all, did you watch the... Because famously this movie had a theatrical cut. that ⁓ did not do very well with critics and then had a bit of a second life when Ridley Scott released a director's cut that was like 45 minutes longer. I think it's just a little over three hours and 15 minutes or something like that. That's the version I watched. So I didn't, never, this was the first time I've ever seen it. I never even saw that original cut. ⁓ Isaac, what cut did you see? What's your experience with this movie? And what are your general thoughts? speaker-0: So I ⁓ watched the director's cut. ⁓ Yeah, so I apparently. speaker-1: Is that your first viewing of this movie? speaker-0: Well, apparently I at the end of this movie, I realized I actually had watched the theatrical cut when it first came out 2005. I fell asleep 10 minutes in and I woke up for the last 10 minutes of it. So I watched about 20 minutes of the theatrical version ⁓ and I didn't realize that until I almost finished watching the director's cut and I could see I could see how speaker-1: Yeah, that tracks. speaker-0: All the content they used to cut ⁓ for the theatrical release would make this movie. Confusing at best. OK. Definitely a little bit of a puzzle piece there, and I didn't read a lot on this because I like to do my our own analysis on the show, but I did read the one article I did read about this was about how. People hated the theatrical cut and as soon as they released the director's cut, it was everyone's like, ⁓ wow, this is an amazing movie. It turns out it's good movie. ⁓ So I'm curious now at some point I do want to watch the theatrical cut just to like have the contrast of like, okay, now that I've experienced this and this is my opinion of it, like, how would it feel worse? speaker-1: Yeah, I'm glad I didn't watch the theatrical cut despite it being shorter. ⁓ If it was way worse than this, then the director's cut. I'm not sure what it got through it. Isaac, do you want to tell the people when I texted you like three nights ago, two, three nights ago? speaker-0: Yeah. There's the middle of the night for me. Okay, granted. We're a little bit of a time zone difference, but still middle of the night. You're like, uh, can we watch something else for the episode? No. speaker-1: I'm like, I'm like, I'm like 45 minutes into this thing and I am struggling. speaker-0: Like how much do you work all day? I work all day. I have two toddlers. I got a strangle strangle. I got a wrangle. Wow. That was a weird Freudian slip wrangled again. The bad speaker-1: the importance of just a couple letters, right? speaker-0: I love them. Let me clarify. It would never hurt my child. We need to restart this episode. welcome to the Dice Camera Action Podcast. I put him to bed. I had to watch this movie. ⁓ That's how long is it? The director cut like three. speaker-1: I am not cutting that out for the- when your children hours and 16 minutes or something. speaker-0: So I had to watch this over three nights. I had to rent this on Amazon, but you only have 48 hours to, to, to watch it. I had to rent it twice. no, we're not watching a different movie. We're watching. speaker-1: Thank you for your commitment, Isaac. I very much appreciate that. speaker-0: You speaker-1: That's so funny. Oh yeah, I was, I was struggling and like, um, it's funny because like, um, I was like queuing it up and I put it up cause I had watched, like I said, like 45 minutes and that 45 minutes was a whole bunch of like table setting and like, this is what these folks are doing. This is what happened to these folks. This is where we're at. And like, I am not a history person at all. And so like, They basically are like, this is happens, you know, between the Second and Third Crusades and expect that to like mean something to me. ⁓ speaker-0: familiar with our medieval crusade history. speaker-1: Yeah, so like, I'm just not that interested in, in history in general, sorry, you know, like, ⁓ and so, yeah, like, you know, 45 minutes into this movie, you know, Orlando Bloom is now in Jerusalem talking to this, you know, this king, I'm like, the king of what the king of who? You know, like the King of Jerusalem. It's a city, is it not? Like I am just like a little bit confused. And I decided at that moment, I needed to go to bed or whatever. Like I was, I was done for that night. You know, I watched it in a couple of different, ⁓ you know, sittings as well. And ⁓ I was done for that night and I decided, I'm like, okay, you know what, I'm not going to like stress about, about learning and understanding all of the details of who's who and what's what. This guy's from faction A and those are his people in white. And those guys are from faction B and they're mostly in this color and they're led by that guy. And that was good enough for me to like get the enjoyment and understanding of like just the dynamics of the characters and who's trying to do what. And then by the end of the movie, I had like figured out a lot of that stuff. Right. And then after the movie, because I didn't want my research to kind of like, you know, ⁓ you know, colour my expectations or like what, how I take in the movie. I just wanted the movie to stand on its own. So, but after the movie, I went and did a little bit of research to try to understand the Crusades and all that. And I found out that Orlando Bloom's character is French. He's from France. speaker-0: Yeah, they changed they changed his character quite a bit for the movies like he wasn't a blacksmith. He was actually already royalty. But yeah. speaker-1: What this guy's He was he grew up in Jerusalem. He's like that. He's from Jerusalem. Apparently this guy ⁓ anyway. So like that was a little bit of a struggle. And after watching 45 minutes, I was like, you know, I was I was I sat down and queued it up on that night in your quote unquote middle of the night. I'm an idol. It was like 11 o'clock at night for me. So I queued it up and I press play and like four minutes later, I'm like, oh boy, I am struggling here. Like I need something, you know? And so I texted Isaac and I watched something else that night. I just didn't even, you know, and I texted Isaac and the next day I wake up to this message going like, I spent, I rented it twice. It took me three nights and we are not switching movies. And I'm like, okay, okay, okay, sorry, sorry. Yeah, no problem. No problem. speaker-0: I will say it's funny that you don't you that you don't I knew a little bit of the historical context of coming in this and I will say that I know it because of my video game preferences. So I'm a huge fan of Sid Meier civilizations and I played a lot of Total War medieval. Total medieval Total War and there's a lot of crusade business in that and some other things and some books that I read. So I had a little bit of historical context. Not a huge amount, but enough. actually they did technically teach this in world history in my high school. ⁓ I would say 99 % of everyone that I went to high school with probably don't even remember we talked about the states. ⁓ but we did. ⁓ so when I was coming to this and like, my wife is falling asleep as we're watching this movie and then They mentioned Saladin for the first time. I'm like, Oh, it's this story. It's Saladin. Okay. And she's like, what? Who the heck is Saladin? How do you know about that? I'm like, man, ninth grade world history class. were in my class. Pay attention. speaker-1: It's funny because like I knew in that moment that that name meant something because they're like Saladin and there was like a zoo and then Reacted and the music change and I was like, ⁓ this guy's this guy's somebody. He's a somebody Please somebody speaker-0: Hmm. ⁓ exactly. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. There was a weird timing around this era of films where I feel like suddenly everyone wanted to make historical epics. was gladiator with really Scott's gladiator like the start of that. like around that time, I feel like I feel like just suddenly there was like three or four years so we just only got historical epics and then it just disappeared because you know, historical epics are hard if you don't have the historical context. speaker-1: Yeah, and I think yeah, especially, especially lately, right? Like, movies are not making as much money as they did. And historical epics are very, very expensive to make. ⁓ So like, that's, that's probably ⁓ part of it. But yeah, you know, we're not seeing a lot. We're not seeing a lot of historical epics anymore, despite having seen one from Ridley Scott last year, year before Napoleon movie, which I didn't see. But ⁓ anyways, So yeah, I put it on for five minutes. I was like, I'm struggling. I texted you, you said we're watching. And I said, fine. So the next night I was like, I was, I steeled myself. I'm like, I'm sit down and I'm watching this movie and I'm going to focus and I'm I'm going to, I'm going to try to enjoy it, you know, and I'm going to deal with it. And, uh, the, the movie kind of took a turn for me a little bit there in that moment, because the table setting was done for the most part. Right. And it was more just like, now it's like, things are happening and events are happening and you know there and it was it was just after that first big battle that ⁓ that had turned it off where Orlando Bloom rode in it was basically a suicide mission to like buy time and he ended up surviving and then gaining the respect of both sides ⁓ somehow and you know but then from that moment on it felt like major event after major event after a major event. And it was it was funny because I kept thinking like this the pace of this movie has gone from a snail's pace to like a bullet train. Because like they would have there would be a scene where, you know, two or three characters would be like, what's gonna happen is this and then you're gonna cause a battle and you're gonna cause this war and then cut next scene. It's the war. Did that like three, four times. I'm like, this is great. speaker-0: My number one note that I have ⁓ for this movie is this is the slowest fast-paced movie I've ever seen. speaker-1: Yeah, I buy that. Yeah. ⁓ speaker-0: It's just, was so much parts where I'm like, wow, this is dragging on. Oh my God, that thing is over already. What? okay. Wow. I agreed. And going along that, I could tell your opinion when you were doing the synopsis about the main character. There's a strange level of no incompetence in this person, followed by this huge amount of competence. speaker-1: Yeah, there's a major gap there that speaker-0: I just feel like it was so slow that they had the opportunity to build them up towards this competent leader, but it wasn't. speaker-1: be a montage. Just give me a montage of him training just like just a 45 second montage. speaker-0: And, and, and the end, have a lot else to say, but in the end, what I think this actually could make a very good mini series, um, where you could kind of split up the major battles and events and then have some context to each one of those. think that would make sense as a four hour movie. was too much was trying to be put into this movie and the buildup was slow. then suddenly not justified because it wasn't enough. And I'm not sure how it felt like that, that it was the slowest fast paced movie I've ever seen. speaker-1: And then once we got to that last hour, it was like set up scene, combat scene, set up scene, combat scene, set up scene, combat scene. And luckily each of like those combat scenes. And for me, this is what saved the movie is Ridley Scott's direction and these epic battles that, you know, saw lots of stuff in there that I hadn't seen before. It was, it's always really, really fun to root for the underdog. And they were set up as like this Helms deep. type of situation where they're like behind this wall and they have all these tactics to just try to defend and defend and Right. And it's just like fascinating to watch and like some of those tactics and stuff was just really satisfying and really fun. you're like, ⁓ yeah, you go Orlando Bloom, even though like, and you know, I'm just jumping right back into a criticism here because as I'm watching these scenes and thinking about it, I'm like, okay, so the timeline of how Orlando Bloom became the, I don't know, king, the leader of Jerusalem is that he was a blacksmith. His father shows up. So it turns out he's a bastard son of a father who is some sort of knight. ⁓ Baron. Baron, sure, of Jerusalem. speaker-0: Essentially. speaker-1: So he goes there and then falls in love with the sister of the king. The king dies because he has leprosy, making her son the only heir. The next scene after the son gets crowned, he gets diagnosed with leprosy. She wants to give him peace ⁓ and not have to deal with the pain that her brother went through. So she murders her own child, basically making her the queen and essentially her husband who's like built up as one as the big bad the big villain of the movie, the king. ⁓ And then in the next scene, so so like power goes from one person to the next person to the next person in three scenes back to back. And then that guy gets I remember what happened to that guy that king but anyways he got taken he got taken by Saladin as a prisoner. speaker-0: They basically, it's Napoleon trying to go into Russia and they die at Waterloo. That the metaphor. speaker-1: Why didn't you just say so? speaker-0: So he, he, it means nothing to me. Gee, guy you're talking about goes to fight. And then they all die in the desert because they're not desert people. They don't understand. They don't respect the desert. They are not just weights. And then they all exactly. And they all just die. speaker-1: That's the analogy you should have used. speaker-0: Fremen. Okay. Sorry. used another historical epic to this. Right. We already established you don't understand. You don't have historical context. Sorry. speaker-1: I get it. I do get it though. Yeah. So they went on a journey. They thought they were going to be able to cross the desert and take and take Saladin by surprise and beat them. They just died in the desert because they're, they're just thirsty. And so Guy gets taken by Saladin leaving, leaving Orlando Bloom in charge. There's no other generals. There's no other barons, leaders, Knights, just this blacksmith. who just showed up a couple months ago. Like where is the other Lee? Where's the rest of the Jerusalem's leaders? speaker-0: Finish your thought and I have things to say. speaker-1: That's it. That's like, where's the rest of Jerusalem's leadership? Why does why does why does why does Orlando bloom? Why doesn't Legolas end up defending Helms Deep? speaker-0: First of all, it's a Legolas, right? speaker-1: What did I say? speaker-0: No, no, I'm saying like that's why he's, speaker-1: Why because he's legless. Yeah. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I take it back speaker-0: Yeah, duh. Like I would let him lead my, he could show up like this is your house now. Right. speaker-1: Yeah, he's more like Will Turner from ⁓ Pirates. speaker-0: Um, I think you're missing some of the subtleties of this movie. I know you're saying that some of the greatest scenes were the battles and I think that final battle scene is amazing. That's definitely the pinnacle of the movie. Yeah. So good. It's like almost home alone isc like in its way of like winning the battle. But I think one of the some of the central themes about this movie is around these conversations between the characters. You know, you said that Guy that is like the big bad guy in this movie and like he's not though, but you want you want him to be. But the big bad guy, Saladin, but there's something about Saladin, even though he's a ruthless kind of like war pillaging type of guy. There's something about a least a morality and an honor to his system. Even if it's doesn't align with whatever morality you have, like there's something honorable about this. Actually, I wonder if this now I'm thinking about this. I wonder if this is why this movie didn't do so good. This was like right post 9-11. And there was a lot of like, yeah, sorry, I'm getting into a different subject. But anyway, there's something about there's a lot of like honor bound in this movie. And some of them speaker-1: Yeah, that makes sense. speaker-0: the best scenes in this movie are just really hard to pick up on the weight of it. And I think of this one where the king of Jerusalem is standing in front of Saladin right outside of one of those first battle scenes. The guy, there's one of these guys is destroying all the villages around because he's a giant dick. Saladin comes to go murder him, right? The redhead guy. speaker-1: hit. speaker-0: Obviously the King Jerusalem can allow that because, you know, it's his guy. You can't just let him attack a castle. They basically, the two leaders like stand there and they could just all kill each other through this incredible short exchange, very tense exchange. They both prefer end up having peace in that situation with a very quick dialogue. And I think there's some, there's a lot of messaging of there's a lot of messaging this movie about what is piety and whether that piety is being used for power or this piety is being using for honor. And, it's, it almost feels like there's a little bit of an attack on what the historical context of what was a Christian back then in this movie. ⁓ yeah, because there's a lot of like, there's almost like Literally, think literally one of the characters at one point said the 10 commandments. We don't need to listen to that. We're the elite like there's like, I'm pretty sure one of the the sister, the silba, Sibla, whatever her name is. She, one of the characters literally what? Yeah. Yeah. One of the characters actually literally says that. And so there's a really interesting dynamic of what is power versus honor and That's where I think some of these ⁓ should be the conversation about this movie and why I think some people actually really like this movie was those more subtle interactions. And that's why like, it's kind of hard to see it that way, but Balin, that's why he ended up becoming the leader of Jerusalem because he actually is one of the only honor bound pious people in this entire movie other than the king who dies and the king's right hand man, which doesn't matter because he doesn't actually have power. Because the Gi character who's like you want to be the big bad guy, but he's not, he's just the, he's the paragon of, he's the representative of piety before power. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Actual being a knight crusader, a templar, like he's just a giant douche and he does everything for, he just won't, you know, thinks of only himself. ⁓ so that's the, I guess the whole point of this is I think that's the justification for why Baelin gets to be the leader is cause like everyone's a giant douche bag around these people. And then suddenly there's this guy that's actually like, Hey, let's, ⁓ you know, not die. can do this. speaker-1: was given an opportunity to... speaker-0: And everyone's like, ⁓ okay. So, but it's like still the weird, it's hard to see that justification unless you're like trying to pay for it. attention to it. speaker-1: But I think the crux of what you're talking about here, the scene where that that kind of comes to fruition in the most obvious way is when the king says that he basically offers him to be the leader of the army of the Christian army. ⁓ And said that if if we have he killed, will you marry my sister and take take the army? And he says, I I won't do that because I'm not going to be the reason that's that a man dies. I'm not going to be the reason that you go and kill Guy. And so I can't do it. And so that's that's the the the kind of like the best example of what you're talking about here of piety, for honor, and for the greater good. So that was a really nice, that was a really nice scene. And I feel like there's those scenes, there's a bunch of scenes where they're trying That's probably the one that actually hit for me. There's a whole bunch more scenes where they're trying to ⁓ hold that much weight and meaning and a lot of it just ends up falling flat and not meaning a whole lot. ⁓ Because it just isn't earned in my opinion. Like there's just not enough of the of the character beats that are earned and the biggest ones being all of the leaps that this blacksmith takes from being like this humble guy living in a shack. speaker-0: just goes with it. speaker-1: ends up being this incredible master tactician on that wall and like, you know, he's running around and giving orders and, it's working and he's incredible. Like, where does that come from? So there's just a big disconnect there. And again, we could have, especially for the length of this movie, a lot of stuff could have been cut out and it could have just been leaner. And we could have had a handful of scenes of him being trained, or maybe him having been ⁓ some sort of, of warrior as a blacksmith or something. I don't know. It's just like, and, don't give me the excuse of like, they're trying to be historically accurate because that is not at all what they're trying to do here. I, I, in a lit, in my little bit of research, trying to figure out what the hell a crusade was. I, I stumbled upon this guy's YouTube channel that is like a historical buff and his thing is to go into movies and be like, This is true, this is not true, et cetera. And he basically just like tore this movie apart saying like this, like don't go to this for your history because this is not, this is not, this is not it. Yeah, how many of those types of scenes do you need where you're like, need to be convinced further that somebody's speaker-0: We lost it. That scene is so funny to me. speaker-1: All right, let's let's go to final thoughts and scores. ⁓ So I'll go first here. ⁓ I ended up giving this a three, you know, it's like, just just past the half like out of five, past the halfway mark, I had it at three. And then I was thinking about it today. ⁓ As I was like preparing all our show notes. And you know, prepping my notes and stuff. And then I erased that and I put 2.5. And then immediately when I saw the number, I'm like, nah, it's too harsh. I erased it and I put it three back in. and it's, it's purely on, ⁓ the action sequences and those epic moments and like, you know, probably 30 % of the dialogue and the jockeying and the talking, the people talking in rooms and stuff. 30 % of that worked for me. Okay. I thought it was some of the scenes were really cool. Some of the performances were really good. I really like Jeremy Irons. I really like Eva Green. Edward Norton was solid for what he was doing there. think with, you know, with the thing that he's given to act out, I think he did really solidly. ⁓ it's always neat when you see somebody with their face completely covered and they still convey what they need to convey. And you're like, that's pretty impressive. So ⁓ yeah, that's where I'm at. Three out of five. I will probably never watch this again. I'm glad I ended up finishing it. was definitely that last hour kind of like pulled it out of the gutter for me and I enjoyed myself. speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, so. speaker-1: Just not for the reasons that the movie wants me to like it. Sorry. That's not like that action stuff is not the reasons the movie is supposed to be great. But it's the only reason that it's any good. speaker-0: I mean, that's coming off of the back of gladiator him making gladiator. So yeah, since he wants to throw in that kind of experience that he just pulled out and that's why those shine in the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. ⁓ I, I give a 3.5 and I give a slightly more edge than what you're saying because I actually did appreciate some of the more in between the action scenes of, know, it's just something about you want speaker-1: Phil. speaker-0: the weight of ⁓ a tension of a combat scene to feel the progression of the story through almost not words or words in that posturing. And a lot of movies do that really well. This movie had it, but it wasn't shined around it. So I feel like if that was more of, you know, there's a lot of movies that has political intrigue and that's the focus of the movie. ⁓ I just feel like this movie was trying to do too much. And because of that, the political intrigue parts got finished and the battle scenes themselves got a little diminished because of that too, because they were trying to do everything. That's why, like I said, if this may was a mini series maybe, or they just focused on one thing, I think it would have worked better. But I did enjoy the ride after, you know, also, like you said, after the, you get past the beginning, it's like, ⁓ okay. Slowest. Fast-paced movie I've ever seen. speaker-1: Very cool. So I gave Kingdom of Heaven a three, Isaac 3.5. ⁓ Thanks for listening folks. If you're enjoying the podcast, take a few minutes to rate, review and subscribe, whatever platform you're listening on. Follow me at Dice Camera Action Pod on Instagram. You can email me dicecameraactionpod at gmail.com. Thanks Isaac for doing this. It was a lot of fun. speaker-0: Yeah, thanks for texting me in the middle of the night. speaker-1: Take care. Take care folks.