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Transcript

Put Your Board Games On A Diet · Operation Game Night

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: The only podcast that is going to play the biggest losers with two big losers.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Travis Smith.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: He is my co-host, Clayton Gable.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Clay, how are you?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not used to the new intro.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Are you did you abandon that or does that come after I say something?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see if it comes natural.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Either way, yeah, as Travis alluded to in the upfront, we are playing Biggest Loser board game edition.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's time to shed some pounds off of those heavyweight boxes and get some games in shape.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: So again, up front here, my wife told me I should acknowledge that the biggest loser was not a great TV show.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it Travis helped me out here.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there as of late, it's been pretty problematic as we got a peak behind the curtains, like 12 to 20 years post-mortem of Biggest Loser TV show.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was not at all the positivity show that we once thought it was, and they mistreated their clients, they mistreated their well, the trainers were the main problem.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, so it's a little problematic in hindsight if you are from America and you have any recollection of biggest loser.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't care about biggest loser or never watched it, then we're all good.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about slimming down and cutting pounds, and they have a bunch of overweight people that cut weight, and whoever loses the most amount of weight wins.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna talk board game weight, not cutting pounds.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you love your heavyweight board games, then guess what?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're in good shape.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you love to slim down, maybe you could cut a couple of uh points off that weight scale, then we are uh you're in the right place.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're we're getting our board games down to their fighting weights because quite honestly, we just don't play that many heavy games anymore.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we thought it'd be fun to do an episode where we take a big old game and then come up with a slimmed down version of that game, another game that scratches that same itch that you can get into without all the baggage of a bigger game.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're doing.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you for eloquently addressing the um socio-political ramifications of bringing this up on our podcast.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And whether you are cutting to your fighting weight or bulking up for bulking season, you better clear the table, gather your crew, put your battle rattle on because it's time for the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You never know when the intro is coming in.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start the show by addressing all of our new listeners.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: We have a ton of new people to the podcast, and I want to express my gratitude for all of those that have time tuned in.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know many of you came over from the board game hot takes podcast after we did our recording with Tim, but we appreciate you guys sticking around.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a couple weeks now.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are still here, you guys are still listening.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you to all of our listeners, new and old, because we really appreciate it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I thought you guys would be long gone.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I thought we might get you for an episode with Tim, uh, but then you realize that we don't edit and we prepare very little.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, I'm glad you're still here with us and you still appreciate what we bring to the table in the board game podcast scene.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna keep doing this, whether you like it or not.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is the the only raw and real board game podcast out there.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody else cuts and edits and uses AI, not us.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: No edits, no downtime, no breaks.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, and uh no no serious forethought into what we're doing next.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you know what thank you for joining us.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know who I have you ever heard of the board game snobs?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think we could vibe with them.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: They seem like they just kind of let it rip, too.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we should uh maybe have those guys on.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it'd be fun.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: We also want to give a shout out to Vic from the Games E Moss podcast, who just hit his 100th episode and did us the honor of inviting us on for his 100th episode uh Games E Moss podcast.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: They talk about video games and board games and pop culture and theme parks and food, and they they talk about all sorts of stuff over there at the Gamesy Moss podcast.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so thank you, Vic, for allowing us to be part of 100 episodes and uh keep it keep it rolling, man.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it rolling and keep putting out good content and we we appreciate you, Vic, over there at Gamesy Moss.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Keep being our friend too, Vic.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: We like you.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do we do we do the intro?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are we ready to roll into our debrief?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should go.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all right.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Clay, hit me.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: What have you been playing this week?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a lot of little things to debrief, and nothing, nothing serious, nothing I've played uh hard enough to get like really into, but a few games I want to shout out as I played them this week.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one is Gravel.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I talked about it last week or two weeks ago, but this new game from CMYK just continues to be a hit.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Again, you can pull it out, explain it as you're playing it, and it's over in like three minutes.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And inevitably, people want to play it again and again because it's just so much fun grabbing those stupid things out of a box and then throwing them back in.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: It shouldn't be fun, but it is.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, CMYK games, for producing grabble and producing endless fun for me.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I recently played Ghost Trick uh during our like work game day.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the one where you like grab a bunch of stuff in your hand and you have to drop things one at a time.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you I can't remember how it goes, but eventually you have to pick up a bell if you can't drop the right item.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if you drop it, Drill Poulter.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like a German name for Ghost Trick or something.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's called Ghost Trick, but yeah, you have a bunch of items in your hand, you're trying to drop them one at a time.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And grapple reminds me of that game.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, hey, well, Travis, you beat you beat me to the punch because I was actually going to talk about Dro Polter.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Ghost Trick, as it were.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm you know, a collector of different small box game publishers, all play being one, oink being another.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I have Drop Poulter, and I played it for the first few times this week, and it's exactly as Travis described.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: You just hold a bunch of weird things in your hand, and then you flip over a card that says what you need to drop out of your hand, just using that one hand to like fidget these odd things like loose, but you only want to drop the things that you need to drop and not anything extra, or else you lose.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, and like Travis said, the it's kind of got a cool catch-up mechanism because every time you win around, you get a bell in your hand, and it makes it harder to get the things out of your hand because now you've got extra things in your hand.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the more bells you get, the closer you are to winning, but it the harder it is for you.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So super simple game by Oink.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, that was another one I played this week.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Had fun with it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things, like it is what it is.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like they you I described it, you know what it is.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be fun for a few plays, and then you're gonna want to do something else.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's kind of like a neat, neat party trick.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You you know who's the best at it immediately, and that's the rest of the game.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like somebody does very well, everyone else does less well, that person wins, and then you're like, all right, let's move on with our lives, let's go play something else.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my brother-in-law, you know what?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is he is an electrician, and he's always got his grubby little mitts fiddling around with wires and screw nuts and things.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, he could sift those little things out of his hand so fast it was blowing my mind.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so don't play this with a a tradesman because they will work you, or maybe like a guitarist or something, like somebody who has a lot of finger strength and like dexterity.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is a true dexterity game.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: My fine motor skills are not there.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I've played tons of things.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: I told you, I'm just gonna I'm I'm I'm rattling these off light speed.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um another one, we've been playing collect still.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of collect is being played.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is like the family game at this point when we have time, the four of us, me, Mason, Isaac, Mary, they want to play collect.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's great.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a quick little 15-minute card game from C-Mon where you're trying to collect sets of animals.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Each animal has a special ability, you interact with each other's cards.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of fun.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I definitely have been enjoying it.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sick of it yet, which usually happens.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're probably 10 or 12 plays into this, so that's a lot in my world.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Usually I'm on to the next next little card game by now, but I'm still enjoying it.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I know playing with you, Travis, on BGA.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like it on BGA.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I like when you have to guess what's next in the stacks.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: You pick a stack and you have to guess what card is going to be flipped next.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: That gives me a lot of uh anxiety.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I got it what I got it right once, which felt really good.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, it's a pretty cool game.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I am still getting my uh my bearings with it, but yeah, it's super easy to pick up.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can not learn any rules and open that game up and know exactly what's going on.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Except for maybe the win conditions.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I will say on BGA, it is a little tougher to play smart because you don't see what people are picking up and putting down in between turns.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe there's a way to look at it when you're playing turn based.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: If I like went through the log, but when you're playing real time and you see, like, oh, somebody looked, took, picked an alligator, they put it back on the top of this stack, and you remember it's over there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So now that when you get that parrot, it's not a guess anymore.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, I drew a parrot, I know there's an alligator over there.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I say alligator, the alligator's mine now.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it does add a little more strategy strategy slash skill to it when you can actually kind of keep track of what's going on on the stacks.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um in the vein of light dexterity games, I also played barba cubes.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a small little tin game where you have these little meats, and again, you flip over a card, you have tiny little tongs, and you have to pick up the meat with the tongs and set it on this little griddle that you put over the tin and not drop things in.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the extent of it.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've just been playing games like this, they're just fun, you know.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: You pull them out, you play for five minutes, somebody loses, somebody's wins, and you're like, huh, that was cool.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but barbecubes works, it works, it's good.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is this your your first mint game that you've talked about?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It might be, it might be the very first one.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mark the date, everybody.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to catch up with you, Travis.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: These these little games are so great because you show up to a restaurant or you have five minutes during your day, or you're passing by somebody, and you just like pull it out of your backpack, or you pull it out of your pocket, and you're like, Hey, you want to play a game in 30 seconds, and then you just get a couple plays in.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are the best.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Impromptu game nights wherever you are.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just I'm in that zone right now.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in that zone of the light five-minute game, give me more.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, which, yeah, again, it's really feeds into our episode here.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: About the lighter the better.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: We we're on a big diet.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another one is My Island.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Played the first game of My Island, the successor to My City, which My City was one of my top 10 games of all time this year.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And Peter C.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hayward, when he was on our podcast, talked about my island, finally put me over the edge.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had been putting it off who knows why, but the first episode of My Island gave me all the same feels of my city.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Love it, love the system.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to keep going through it with Mary.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's like a 15-minute episode playtime.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's so easy to just knock one out at night after the kids go to bed and then you know, move on to our TV watching.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna keep playing my island.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'll keep you posted.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Same mechanics and everything, like take your little stickers and put them on your grid and move on with your life.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yep, yep.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you play, you it essentially ever uh you flip a card, everybody has to put that tile.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: It'll show like a tile with certain things on it, certain terrain.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has to find that tile, everybody has the same set of tiles, and then you place it on your map somewhere.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And each episode the scoring is a little different.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: In the first episode, it was like you wanted houses on the beach.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So when I put tiles, I want to make sure the houses were in the beach area, and then you didn't want to have any empty spaces at the end of the round.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if you like didn't put them together right and you ran out of space at the end and you had empty spots, then you would lose some points.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: But super simple first episode.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: It'll tweak it and keep changing as we go through, I'm sure, if it's anything like my city, but definitely into it, always into it.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Kenizia rules.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So all right, I gotta wrap this up here soon because I can see you want to talk about something, and I'm just uh blathering on.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Played Flip Tunes season two.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, how was that?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think I liked the cards a little better than season one.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: They had ones that like had like tags on them, so like you had like fish cards, and oh that's nice, and so yeah, you could have cards that were like for every other fish card in your grid, you get this many points.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of like that little tweak to it.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: I got into a little fish engine that was fun.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so flip tunes, I dig it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Still a lot of adding every round, but I'll be okay.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's my problem with that game, is like you finish a round, you're like, okay, time to do math.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so hard to it's so easy to miss rules and miss points that you're owed or over count or under count, and like you're always off, and it's it's hard to keep track of that stuff.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I that is one game that I actually prefer to play digitally because it does all that stuff for you.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's definitely true.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Last and all Seas of Strife.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is a trick-taking game.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: I heard about it somewhere, and it's a trick avoidance game.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's one of the games where the whole purpose in life is to not take tricks.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I talked about it in our trick-taking episode.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Go back and see that.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, trick avoidance in like hearts used to be one of my favorite games growing up.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's so fun trying to see how long you can go without taking tricks.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: I love in Skull King going nil, going zero, trying to trying to get that accomplished.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: But um, Seas of Strife has kind of a uh follow suit mechanism similar to Gachapon trick.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So where you have to follow suit, but if you can't follow suit, you can play any other color.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next person just has to follow one of the suits that was already played.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So as the trick evolves, more suits are available to be played to based on how many times the person didn't have what was available.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, then at the end of the trick, you see which suit had the most cards out, and then whoever had the higher card of that suit takes the trick.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an interesting deck.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: The cards go from like zero to 70 or something, and like the suits scale with it.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So like cards zero through 10 are yellow, and then cards 11 through 20 are orange.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've only played it once, but I think I think I really like it.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think I really like it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so simple, it's so simple, and it's just it's chaotic, like it's not to be taken too seriously, probably.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: People say it plays better at higher player counts because you get more colored, uh, more suits out in every trick, and it becomes a little harder to predict what might happen.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, Seas of Strife was fun.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the one that you were given by the publisher, correct?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, that is six-sided seas.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's right.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh opinions on that coming soon.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: That did just come today.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So heck yeah.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for that one.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna land this plane here, Travis.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let's well, let's bring her in.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe in two games.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Magic the gathering.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was lucky enough.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: My my cousin's husband, my cousin-in-law, maybe.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that has a proper term, but my cousin's husband has been getting into magic, and we were just at the beach this weekend, and he had brought a couple of his magic decks.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, hey, I was like, I'm down.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm down if you wanna if you wanna sh you want to teach me, and he was like, Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we sat down and we played a two-player commander game of Magic the Gathering.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Commander game, yeah, a commander game, which we know playing advanced games, dang.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, apparently, Commander's not best at two players, but that's the type of decks he had with him.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I hear.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a hundred cards in this deck, so it's kind of wild.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I haven't played it enough to speak intelligently on it, but this does add to my repertoire of card collectible card games, TCGs that I've played over the years, and I can see how magic created it all.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's all right there.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: It like it stems from it, and each card uh has like, I mean, it is big boy TCG, okay?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I played Lorcana for a little while, and that was fun.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I dug it, I played some Star Wars Unlimited, I played some One Piece, but magic, man, these cards, the text on them is like you gotta read a little bit.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta, you gotta, you gotta think some.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's got your normal stuff on your turn.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're playing lands which generate mana, which lets you play creatures, and then your creatures can attack other creatures, you can attack with them, then the other person can block with creatures if they want to.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I can really see where mind bug came from now because Richard Garfield designed mind bug to be like a baby's first uh version of magic.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's got all that stuff going on.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can play spells, artifacts, what have you, and you're just trying to get the other person's health down to zero.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I could play some more of it.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me want to go out and kind of pick up one of the uh universes beyond decks and just and just get get weird with it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because now I've I was just scared of it for so long, but now I've seen and I played it.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you know what?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: I understand the flow of how these games go.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: If I can read cards and I know some of these keywords, you can do it.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can do it.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna do it well.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: God forbid, I would never I would like years away from building a deck.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but if you give me a pre-built deck, I think I could play.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like okay, it's good stuff.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they have those tournaments where you like rip packs and play immediately.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's like levels the playing field a little bit.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you're on the magic scene now.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: You could call me a magic player at this point.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is there like an official term, like a magician?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there should be.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's the original.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, should we spend you me and Jericho, we spend all of Packs and Blugg playing magic in our hotel room?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's gonna be the best use of our time.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I got one more for you.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And this is in this is in light of of our episode later or the mission objective where we talk about slim slimming down bigger games.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So Peter C.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hayward designed triangulation.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about this actually on the episode we had Peter C.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hayward, you suck up.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I read his design diaries, and he specifically talked about how he loves DeCrypto.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I love DeCrypto.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was so cool, but I can't teach it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's so like hard to I don't know why it's hard to get across, but isoteric.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's so there's like little rules that make it fiddly.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway, he designed this game to be like, what if I could make the crypto a game that people could actually play in like a casual setting?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he nailed it.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like we played, I played it for the first time the other night.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: The whole shtick is you get to give three clues, and before your team gets to look at those three clues, the other team gets to flip over two of those clues.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if they can guess your word with just two of the clues, your team doesn't get a chance to guess, right?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to give three clues that you need them all together to be able to guess the word because if you're if the other team intercepts it, that kind of sucks.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's so cool.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a clever little party game word game.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, just want to give a shout out to the crypto, a successful weight cut.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm but not a shout out to Trang Triangulation, which is a successful weight cut of the crypto.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Try and I I don't want to like overpromise and under deliver, but I may have an in with uh somebody at Wizards of the Coast that could come.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And talk magic with us.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: No way.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: But uh maybe that maybe we'll handle that offline.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a bit of a game week, and this is courtesy of Petri's Family Games, our friendly local game store of choice.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Petri's oh Petri's Family Games let me borrow what is it?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Miskatonic Tales Journey to Endsmouth.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is a Cthulhu Lovecraftian horror game that is more about exploration than anything else.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a choose your own adventure thing, maybe like a DD light.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's published by Chaosium, which publishes all of the Call of Cthulhu RPG games.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you're looking at this and you're thinking 90 to 180 minutes.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a long playtime.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's for one chapter.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's three chapters in this game.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when you look at the box, it says playtime is 15 hours.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to play 15 hours.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's broken up into three chapters.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Each chapter has kind of a solid pacing where you can pick it up and drop it between rounds if you want to.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: It has a save method.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: But really, what this is, it's a game about exploration in the vein of like vantage.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're going into an area, you have certain options for what you want to do.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: You are using cards to resolve those options.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you have encounters with Lovecraftian horror creatures.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you are familiar with any of Call of Cthulhu type stuff, you have probably heard of Innsmith.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably seen it in a different board game.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there's lots of fish people and eels and creepy crawlies.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're going through caves and to the lighthouse and to the these different locations in Endsmith that you would see in most other Lovecraftian horror settings.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so on your turn, though the game flow works like this: you have your areas and your regions kind of laid out that you are going to continue to expand by walking and exploring to these different cards, basically, that make up your map.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And each area that you're in in the different locations is kind of this top-down view where you can move your character around.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go to certain locations, you'll trigger different events in the story that have different books.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, like each segment of this overarching story has a storybook to it.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: What that storybook is, is basically your DM that is going to walk you through what happens.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I go into a cave and it's creepy and it's crawly and it's dripping wet and all this stuff.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there's crates in the corner.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, maybe I want to smash the crates, maybe I want to search the crates, maybe I want to ignore the crates altogether.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Each of those has a repercussion, but all of that is pre-delineated, predetermined in this kind of storybook.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: So this book basically plays DM for you.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a Dungeons and Dragons in the Call of Cthulhu world, where the book is going to kind of it's a choose your own adventure thing.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of having a DM that is reacting to the players, it's pre-scripted, and you are working through these different locations to solve the riddle as to what is going on in Endsmith.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Every Call of Cthulhu themed game has investigators.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are eight investigators to choose from.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Each of them has a different strength and weakness.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: But this game specifically is meant to be played at four.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why it says best at one to two.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it tells you in the rule books it's meant to be played at four players.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you are not playing at four players, the other NPCs or the non-player characters that are in your party become companions, and those companions can use their kind of additional actions to help you out in these kind of skill checks that you would see in an RPG.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have a bunch of different traits, strength and endurance, and mindfulness, and intelligence, and charisma, and all you know, the typical traits that you would get.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when you hit into when you hit an encounter or you are trying to do something in the game, it's going to ask you to resolve a skill check.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your skill check is resolved through cards that you're drawing.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a deck building game, but you do cycle through a deck of cards that are your attributes.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at the beginning of your turn, you draw five cards.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Any of them that are status effects get played immediately.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if I am confused or something, I have to play that card.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: My character becomes confused.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: If I become confused twice, I lose sanity.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: You continue to do that until you have five cards in your hand that are not status cards.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can go about resolving these different actions that you want to take with the cards that kind of give you boosts and stuff like that.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, every roll that you do is a bunch of white dice that allow you to either succeed or fail or try again.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can change your die faces.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's usually, I say usually, usually a red die, which is like the negative effects.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And those negative effects have some serious consequences that are really hard to mitigate that have like game-changing uh effects.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so the red die has a couple of different symbols, usually it's skulls, tentacles, or like a Pentecostal sign, like a Pentecost uh star.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And those will eventually trigger like big bads coming out in the world and messing your stuff up.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I like the setting, I like the kind of choose your own adventure narrative type game.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: This game is a lot of reading, it is a ton of reading, and they try and alleviate that through an app.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: I tried the app.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: What would be a really cool, like immersive type thing is like a British guy reading it in a very flat, monotone voice that doesn't really do anything for me.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: They add no atmospherics.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you would expect him to do like character voices.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't really do those all that well, if at all.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, that the the immersive audio doesn't really do it for me.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is a lot of reading, and the reading has tons of errors in the actual storybooks.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you open up the box, you have your rule book and stuff, and then you have a bunch of pages of errata.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, like stuff that they know that they got wrong, and then a bunch of stickers that say errata on them, and you are supposed to stick them in these books where you find the errors, and then refer to separate pages that are not in the books to figure out what the correct thing is, it's crazy.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't believe that they like publish something like this.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: But overall, I think the the adventure is compelling, they just put so many hurdles in the way to enjoyment that if I if I'm in a tight spot and I have four friends that want to play a Cthulhu style adventure game, but we don't have a DM to run an actual campaign of Call of Cthulhu RPG, this is this would be your jam.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: This would be your jam.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for something that's not quite as punishing as like the Arkham Horror Living card game that Fantasy Flight publishes, this could be a good alternative because it's more about exploration than it is win conditions.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, whether or not you win or lose, as long as you didn't die, the story's gonna continue and you can continue on your character and and play it as a campaign.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you want something that's a little snappier, something that you don't need to necessarily need to live in for 15 hours, I'd recommend like uh Mansions of Madness is something that you can hop right in and play, and it gets you to the action way faster.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for what it's worth, I think that the adventure is fun.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think the Call of Cthulhu world is always interesting at the very least.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I started thinking about this a lot as I played this game.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's meant to be a horror game.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Call of Cthulhu is a horror, Lovecraftian horror genre.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: But what I think board games miss with a lot of this is the unreliable narrator that a lot of these characters become through their interactions with the Lovecraftian horror entities, right?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when you read Call of Cthulhu or The Man in Yellow or these different Lovecraftian horror books, the investigator that you are seeing this world through, like you're seeing through their eyes, as they encounter these horrors beyond comprehension, they slowly lose their sanity.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it gets to a point where they are so crazy and have lost their sanity so much, you don't know if you can trust them as a narrator to narrate the own their own story.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's really hard to replicate in a board game.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can have surprises, you can have horrific entities that you encounter, but I don't know if you can capture living through somebody else's eyes in the medium of a board game.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I I wish that you could do that a little better.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this is like a I say it's more of an adventure game than a role-playing game because you're not really leveling up the characters here.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get a sense for who they are, you don't know where they're coming from, really.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: You get maybe a small blurb about them and their special abilities, but that's about it.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like they do no backstory building for these eight investigators.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're gonna spend 15 hours playing as the cop or the, you know, these different characters that you are trying to embody, it's really hard to put yourself in their shoes or or care about them.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the act it it is trying to emphasize exploration, but you're always fighting against this clock of these horrors that are coming out to mess up your day and kill your character.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not really encouraged to explore, you're encouraged to like just get the scenario over as fast as possible, and then you get to the end and it says, like, there's a bunch of check marks that you log, and then it kind of spits out a number that says you experienced this percentage of the overarching story, and then you're supposed to go back and play it again and like find more stuff, search a different barrel, search a different crate, like peek around a different corner.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the incentive is besides like finding new items and encountering different creatures, or you could just get your way through the story, get to the big bad stuff, solve the puzzles you need to solve, and then move on with your life.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that this was Miskatonic Tales Journeys to End Smith.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: I played through the first scenario of three.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna spoil any uh story beats, but yeah, it's if you're if you're into like kind of adventure style games, you're the choose your own adventure books, and you are into Cthulhu and love crafty and horror, then this might be a great game to play around the Halloween time frame.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Get get your friends together, go on an adventure together.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need a DM to facilitate.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's an adventure on rails.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say on rails, it's on it's on a lane with bumpers, and you can maneuver a little bit, uh, but it knows where it's going, it knows the story beats.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get there eventually.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, Clay, what do you what do you think about Miskatonic Tales journey to Innsmouth?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think I got hung up when you said a Pentecost thing.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, is it called a pentagram?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is a pentagram, not a pentagram.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking Pentecostal, yeah.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is a pentagram.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, man, I felt so smart.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Pentecost, that doesn't sound right.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's pentagram.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta ask him about that.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: So look at my sweet vocabulary.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am not as familiar with the Lovecraft world as you are after hearing you speak so eloquently about it there and the madness.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: I've certainly played a fair share of board games that have like live in this world, but that's about the extent of it.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've not read anything, I don't know anything about it.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I got the general vibe that this madness thing is real.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as adventure games go, I think it sounds I think it sounds like I would probably enjoy playing it.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a 2.3, so it doesn't seem too complicated.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like something you could pick up and kind of dive into.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you play it solo?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I started playing it two players and then had to restart solo, but solo is not the ideal way to play this.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um basically what it is is you maneuver one, you maneuver one character on the map, and then you have three companions NPCs that just allow you to take like 12 actions per turn, and so you're basically like you know, just cycling through your deck a thousand times.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would not recommend solo.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe two players would be good because then you get some extra actions, you get to collaborate with one other person.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: I would say two or four are probably best.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, four can maybe take a little while.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't know how this evolves in the later chapters.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I only played through the first you know block of the story.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: In the later chapters, you I'm sure the areas get bigger, the air the things to explore are far greater.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: But in the first one, you're in a cave, and that cave is relatively linear, and like there would be no need to separate and have this party go do different things, right?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it does have a lot of traps and stuff, like kind of smart traps laid out and predetermined.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: They they know what the characters are gonna look for.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it made me feel a lot like uh when we played our very first DD campaign, it was like you go into a room and it's like, well, can I open that door?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Should I open that door?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: What if there's some bad guys behind that door?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a lot of that.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so if you're new to like a role-playing genre, this is probably a good way to experience it because there's not so many stats behind it.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: You take your actions through cards and you resolve your skill checks through cards and rolling dice, and so it it is very light in rules.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some of those rules are a little vague in the rule book, uh, but you get the gist and you kind of just roll with it and make the best of it.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I I think this would be fun.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it'd be it'd be fun to like get a group together and run through this campaign.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is something that like Vic would dig.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: He would he would get in on this.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, but yeah, it's not gonna be for everyone.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have to kind of like the world of Lovecrafty and horror, and you have to, I don't know, be down for a long campaign and lots of reading, that's for sure.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't wouldn't say you've sold me.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think if I'm feeling I wouldn't say if I'm feeling this type of game, I'll probably pick up Vantage and do my little one shot.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, maybe you're different than Travis and I.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: I sure hope so.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that sounds awesome.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget to go check it out at Petri's Family Games.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, or find another game there you want to buy because they sell a lot.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: They sure do.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they do have a lot of Lovecraftian horror games there, lots of Call of Cthulhu, lots of uh Cthulhu Death May Die, an Arkham Horror, the Living Card game.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: They got a lot of stuff there.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for games, go ahead and check out Petri's Family Games here in Colorado Springs or online at PetrisGames.com.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are we ready to hit our mission objective and go biggest loser board game edition?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: You want oh, okay.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those moments where I wish we were editors of podcasts, but here we are.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I will take it away.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: The first big boy up on the scale for me is Agricola, and that's weighing in at a 3.64 weight on board game geek.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, listen, there's heavier games out there, but I'm just not playing them, to be honest with you.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: I went through every game I've played and I didn't crest four once.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, what happens beyond 4.0 on the board game geek weight scale is might as well be the depths of the ocean to me.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's uncharted territories.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know that I want to go down there.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's scary.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, so I picked some of the heavier games that I've had experience with.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Agricle is actually a game I really like, but I don't play it that often because it is a little heavier, and I mean it doesn't feel that heavy.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: But for the sake of this episode, it is a 3.64 on the board game geek scale.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: When it steps on, that's what the number reads.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: And my alternative, the lightweight version, the featherweight to Agricola that's going to give you the same feels is harvest.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: So harvest by Key Master is you're getting all the worker placement fun from Agricola in a much shorter, tighter game.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: You even have a fun little um polyamino grid that is comparable to how you're laying out your farm in Agricola.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think they are kind of scratching the same itch.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can also, you know, in Agricola, you have these cards that give you upgrades and new abilities and ways to score points.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: And in Harvest, you have buildings that you can place into your little farming area that give you ongoing effects or ways to score points.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's all just uh a lighter affair.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: So Harvest comes in at a 2.58, which is a loss of 1.06 on the board game weight scale for my first pairing here.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Travis, do you feel like that is a fair incomparable decrease for Agricola?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think so.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking for kind of a cozy style game where you're farming and and improving your farm over time.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I love Harvest.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I would have given you a pass just for mentioning Harvest, but um it doesn't, I don't think it hits precisely the the stress of like continuing to feed your family and and grow your capabilities through having children in a board game.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but certainly it gives you the sense of progression as you continue to expand your farm and and you have to really be cognizant about what space you're taking up for buildings versus crops and stuff like that.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I I really like that comparison and I really like harvest.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you that one 1.06.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's not bad.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: 1.06 I've I've lost so far.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we're each gonna do three, and then whoever has lost the most weight, the most board game geek weight by the end is the winner of this episode of the biggest loser.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, Travis, what's your first uh board game that needs to lose a few?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm actually gonna take Fantasy Flight Games Eldritch Horror.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna stay in that same vein.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is a weight of 3.32, and it is primarily a card-driven game, but there is a map to it.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're moving characters around to achieve certain objectives in the Lovecraft horror world.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, just like most fantasy flight games, it's a ton of reading.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's a ton of like cards that have specific denominators or proper nouns or categories on them that you are then comparing to the other cards to manipulate your battle space and achieve the objectives.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you have played the Arkham Horror Living card game, it's kind of like that, right?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is extremely challenging.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you start off not in the right mindset or you don't have a Sherpa to work walk you through this game, it is tough to pick up.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my comparison is going to be Tiny Epic Cthulhu, which is a weight of 2.88.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm dropping 3.32 to 2.88.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: I will rely on Clay to crunch those numbers for me while I continue to talk.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: But Tiny Epic Cthulhu is a pretty decently complex game uh in a very tiny box.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: You are playing as different investigators, you are upgrading your characters as you go along, you are allocating uh characters to this kind of pentagram and eventually uh fighting off these horrors that are going to come infiltrate your world.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Same theme.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's really the same mechanic, but it certainly gives you that same sort of pressure that you would feel in something like Eldritch Horror, where you are constantly balancing and pushing your risk with the kind of negative effects that you're taking onto your character, like insanity, to potentially upgrade them later on and make them more powerful, to then push back the forces of evil and seal the gates to this Lovecraft horror world.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what what it's called, but um yeah, I I think those are comparable themes at least.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the Uh, if the mechanics line up, there's less cards in tiny epic Cthulhu, but it certainly gives you kind of the same vibes.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we're we can only do vibes here.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: And just to be clear, we we're specifically pushing ourselves to not just do games that actually went out on their own on purpose to make a lighter version of their own game.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: So like wingspan to wingspan pocket, although that is like kind of the impetus of this whole episode is publishers that did something like that.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I played neither of those, so I am taking your word for it.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: And since it's only a 0.44 weight loss there, I have no qualms about it.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um I will also give you a you know, may I might give you a bonus here for also significantly dropping box weight as well.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I that is a small, there's so much game in that those tiny epic games.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: This next one I'm a little stressed about.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think you might push push me on this, but but hear me out.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, Root.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: Root has been one of my favorite games for a long time, and I haven't played it in a long time because it is tough to get played um with the crowds I'm playing with these days.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a 3.84.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: And for those of you who don't know Root, it is a game where it's wildly asymmetric.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: There are all these different factions that keep coming out with more.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Each faction kind of plays its own type of game, but all interacting together on this board, trying to get to 30 points.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's politicking, there's area control, there's fighting, there's all this.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great game.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful, beautiful work of art by Cole Worley.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I want to play it more, but it is prohibitive a lot of times.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what I like most about Root are those wildly asymmetric factions, and every time you play, kind of being able to unlock some new different puzzle uh for the game and that interaction with another player where you're you're going toe-to-toe.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm kind of already leading you where I want you to go by saying it like that, because I think you can scratch the same itch, which I'm with a much lighter weight, by playing unmatched.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which, oh, the face is not good.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I am not okay.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, every they keep coming out with new characters, they all have their own unique abilities, and their decks play completely different.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: There is an area movement around a board type mechanism, and there's fighting, and you're interacting with each other, and you have to kind of understand your opponent's deck and strategy as you play against them, but you don't have to get four people where you understand all four factions.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's a two-player game.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I think you can get a similar vibe, much shorter time, a lot easier on the uptake.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's unmatched.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I made a face because I guess I never really related the two, but you do kind of get similar vibes, like it's all about positioning and timing and went when to keep your distance and when to selectively engage your opponent and and setting them up for traps, and and there's a lot more game in something like Unmatched than people give it credit for, just because it has kind of silly IPs and characters.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'll I'll give it to you.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I think the the tactics are there.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, maybe the battles are resolved differently.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um but every faction has its own strength and weaknesses, and you must play to those strengths and weaknesses in order to be successful in something like unmatched.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give it to you.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give it to you.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right, all right.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that that was a 3.84 to a 1.96 for a weight loss of 1.88, which puts my total weight loss after two games at 2.94.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: What do you got?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: Prepare yourself, friend.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I am briefing Mage Knight, the board game.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the board game starts at a weight of 4.38.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oof.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Probably one of the heaviest games that I've ever played.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Near impossible to learn.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have to watch videos, you have to read a very long rule book, you have to be on the up and up to know how to play Mage Knight.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it is largely an adventure game that is all about your action economy and doing the most with your turn to explore this realm, to engage in combat, to level up your character.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I am going to suggest that a very slim-down version of this sort of mechanic of leveling up your character, resolving actions through cards, and uh kind of upholding your action economy is going to be dragons of Etching Stone.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of this one?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not fair.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: You picking things I don't even know, but no, I haven't heard of it.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have a description here.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it is a card-driven RPG where you are leveling up your character and manipulating engagements with enemies through card action economy.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have a bunch of cards that have a bunch of different things that you can do, it even has like kind of dual-use cards.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: You have to pick which way you use them.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: You are playing them to defeat enemies and level up your character and move through the story, probably less story-driven than something like Mage Knight, but Mage Knight is largely a choose your own adventure type thing.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna say that uh Dragons of Etchstone is a decent replacement in terms of like brain power required to like manipulate the cards and and make efficient use of your turns.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Dragons of Etch Stone comes in at a whopping 2.4.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that ain't fair.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, hold on.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Doing some math here.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: Four I mean, you can throw a veto if you want.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the knowledge to veto.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: That takes that's a 1.98.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: That is a drastic weight cut.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: You would be getting flagged by the competition committee on this one.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that mage night properly hydrated before this, before this weight cut here.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um okay, so that's a 1.98.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Add that to your 0.44 from your last one.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you have lost a total of 2.42, and I've lost 2.94 heading into our final, our final picks here.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this one, this one's tough.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: This one's a stretch.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm I'm stretching, Travis.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be frank with you.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so um, the last one I have is Arknova.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're building a zoo, you're building enclosures, you're playing animals to a tableau, you're conserving, you're doing all these things.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a long game, it's a complicated game.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're reading cards, you're you're doing all types of stuff.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a 3.8 on board game geek.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: I want to like it.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: I do like it, but I just won't play it.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: I won't go out of my way to play it because it takes long and it hurts my head.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if I want a game that's maybe about zoos and gives me some similar pieces, I'm I'm pitching New York Zoo here as a smaller, lighter version of Barknova.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: New York Zoos by Uwe Rosenberg, and you similarly have to build your enclosures before you put animals in them.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you create a bit of an engine by your uh breeding mechanism by getting the right animals in these enclosures, and they breed as they as the game goes on.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, your engine building, it's zoo themed, and there's enclosures.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that's a 1.96.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, sure.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I maybe I just don't care enough to to fight it all that hard, but I don't think that I think that there's so much more to Arc Nova that's missing.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like I know, I think the conservation and the the the trading of animals, and the there's a lot of other mechanics that I would say are key to Arc Nova that are not in New York Zoo.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking you might as well throw it like Cascadia or something at that point, like just because there's animals in it.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh my god, no, okay.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean what do you think of when you think of Arc Nova's mechanisms?
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think of that cool action selection mechanism, but the only other game that has something like that is also another heavyweight, which isn't it one of those civilization games, yeah.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um and since we're not picking the slimmed down version, you can't really say sanctuary, which I heard is great, and I need to play, but um I don't know, man.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a hard that's a hard one.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: It something like Arc Nova occupies the same brain space to me as something like terraforming Mars.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah where you're balancing these technology tracks, and there you you have a couple of plates spinning that you have to keep an eye on, and I don't know if those can be laid flat as well as other games, you know.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't I was going, I was going arc, I was thinking terraforming Mars too, but I think that feels too heavy for me to consider consider that.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: I it is technically lighter on Board Game Geek.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: I looked because I was considering it.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think if I had to pick a a second one that focuses more on engine building, I would go wingspan.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think you can feel okay about getting a similar-ish experience.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Similar-ish.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Arcnova just does so much, and you know, but maybe worm span is better because you have the piece where in Arcnova you do have to create the enclosure before you can put play animals to it, right?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in worm span, you have to dig out your cave before you can play dragons to it.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's something there.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll I'll pivot to Wingspan because New York Zoo, I knew that was gonna be that was gonna be a stretch.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I just wanted to see, you know, you didn't really fight me on it, but I didn't feel good about it after after that conversation.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll we'll leave it up to the comments.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the comments can come in and say, like, throw the throw the flag, throw the veto flag on that one.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: So if I go with wingspan, 3.8 of uh of uh whatever that's called, arcnova to a 2.48 of wingspan.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's still 1.32 lost.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that are you cool with that?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Can I can I make that my uh my final one?
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'll allow it.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: All right, what's your last one?
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: My last one is Gloomhaven, a weight of 3.92.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Big beefy box.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: This this box weighs like 60 pounds, and my replacement game is Tails from the Red Dragon Inn coming in at a weight of 2.65.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh 1.7 pound weight difference.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can crunch the math.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but Gloomhaven is all about dual-use cards, moving around a dungeon, fighting enemies to achieve a end objective for the scenario that you're playing.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: Comes with a big book, you work through the different scenarios, you play it as a campaign, um, team tactics, what player progression, all of that exists within Tales from the Red Dragon.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: In this is truly a slimmed down version of Gloomhaven.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: It might be missing the dual-use cards.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't really remember that one, but it certainly has the dungeon crawler feel.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's got scenario objectives, you're progressing and advancing your character, you really have to work together.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: All of your heroes play differently, just like they do in Gloomhaven.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: Tales from the Red Dragon Inn is such a cool, lighter version of Gloomhaven without immediately going into Jaws of the Lion, which is already the slim down version of Gloomhaven.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're looking for something in kind of in the same vein that gives you scratches that same itch as Gloomhaven, I would highly recommend Tails from the Red Dragon Inn coming in at a 2.65 weight.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's a weight loss of 1.27, which puts your total weight loss across the three games at a 3.69.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: And my total weight loss ended up at a 4.26.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, your first one hurt you.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Getting the point four four.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: That you know, that that one wasn't carrying its weight.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it skipped a couple of the uh treadmill sessions.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm being honest, that one was the one that I added last because I was like, oh crap, I need a third game, and I did not know what else to do.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's fair.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: I will blame my lack of weight loss on my lack of preparation and hard work.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: So well, I am the biggest loser.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: You yes, you are, Clay.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: You are Operation Game Night's biggest loser.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: I whip I whip those games into shape.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, like this topic fascinates me to no end.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like people replacing games with other lighter games.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so if people are in the chat or listening on YouTube, like let us know in the comments what your favorite replacement for heavyweight games are, because I I always think that that's so fascinating.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like people that can find a game that might not even play the same but kind of scratches that same itch.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: I I really love that.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: So and I'm always looking to downsize some heavy games.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe this is a recurring segment for us.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: I like it.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's do it.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, should we go over the fence?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wait, hold on.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: Premature, scratch that, edit it.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to give a shout out to other games that are like lighter versions of their big brothers that are like very obvious, but again, I think it's cool.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: I like when I like when games do that.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: We've been talking about wingspan pocket ad nauseum.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've lost the weight from Arknova to Wingspan, you're still like, I could probably shed a few, you can go down to Wingspan Pocket, and now you're now you're really in the featherweight category.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's fun.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Ticket to Ride came out with the the little the little box shorter ones, um, London, New York, maybe Amsterdam.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think Mysterium uh has Mysterium Park, which is great.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: Seven Wonders has Seven Wonders Architects, freaking awesome! I love that game.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh War of the Ring has War of the Ring, the card game.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: So freaking good.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's coming out with a new expansion soon.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, yeah, nice.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then Race for the Galaxy has Jump Drive.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot about that one.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Terra Mystica has Terra Nova.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, some these past two I haven't actually played, but I just know they exist.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: So just shouting them out for the sake of it.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then there's all the ones that you know might be family or kid versions, which are fine.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like you still do it, you know.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: My little scythe, yeah, my little engineer, like all those ones.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my little everdell is hardly a kid's game.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like I played it with my kids, but it's actually still kind of tough.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, there's all those.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's great if you're trying to get people into if you're trying to go the reverse way, like we're talking about it as people who don't have time to play the heavy games we want to, so we need to make things a little lighter.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're trying to, you know, bring someone up or get yourself to a game that you're uh ambitious about, maybe you look at one of these stepping stone games and feel like, oh, I kind of like the theme, I kind of like the mechanisms.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I do want to invest the time to learn one of these big boys.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: All right, we can go over the fence now.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what have you have you been doing outside of board gaming?
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Not a not a lot.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I did go to the beach this weekend, but I don't have a lot to report from there other than the magic.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was fun.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was a Sea Witch Festival, that was cool.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um Steelers won today, so they've they're on a three-game winning streak.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: I am a believer.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think they might just win the Super Bowl this year.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care what anybody says.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: Travis, don't look like that.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: The the Niners just took an L to the Falcons today.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: They did.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it was terrible.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: So bad.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Steelers beat them.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll and they'll beat the Niners too.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: Until Aaron Rodgers gets hit and turns to dust because he's a thousand years old.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to go back and watch the highlights from this Steelers game.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that old man, I'm listening I am not a fan of Aaron Rodgers, like in general.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: But as he is the quarterback of my team that I am loyal to, I do wish him success.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: But he's moving like a cat back there, my man.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I think his Ashwagonda or Darkness.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're working because he's boot scooting in the backfield.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's he scrambled for like 10 yards, got a first down key moment.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: He's like he's gonna put Lamar Jackson to shame soon.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's uh that's a bridge too far.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, that was exciting today.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am still deep diving in the penguin.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: I've watched three more episodes, so now I'm up to episode six.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: Still in love, still can't stop thinking about it.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as we hang up this podcast, I'm hoping Mary hasn't trudged to bed so I can convince her to at least start an episode because it's been like three days since I last watched the last one, and I'm just dying to know what happens next.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, still loving that.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that's pretty much the extent of it.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: What have you been doing over the fence?
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, more importantly, by the time this comes out, we'll be we will be like hours away from Halloween.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna dress up as for Halloween?
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's not that's it.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried to order some Star Trek costumes, and they shut me down.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, guess what?
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: I got a Star Trek costume.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going as Captain Kirk.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can get you can get the shirt with the little Captain Starfleet emblem.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: I debated wearing it on the podcast today, maybe next time.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can get one on Amazon for like 10 bucks.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: All right, that's it.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm buying it, I'm buying it.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're wearing them on the next episode.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right, bet.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yeah, so Halloween's coming up.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: Excited for that.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what are the kiddos going for?
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: Going as they're just like being generic, weird-looking scary guys.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, they got like black cloaks and like weird masks.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I don't know where they got them, but I love it.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: Generic scary guys.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: Generic scary guys.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh man.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my daughter wanted to go as Mickey Mouse, uh, so we got her Mickey Mouse costume that is so ridiculous because she is not wearing the Mickey Mouse ears, she has a whole separate Mickey Mouse head that goes on top of her head, and then the whole outfit with the with the tail and everything.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um but in terms of over the fence, it's kind of been a slow week for us over here.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: I did watch The Invite uh this morning, and it is a movie with um Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogan and Penelope Cruz and man, I cannot remember that Cameron from uh Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: And man, that that did not go where I thought it was going to go.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's about like a couple that is fighting and not happy, and the wife, Olivia Wilde, invites their upstairs neighbor over to dinner.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: And half of the movie is like half of the movie feels like the dinner party episode of The Office.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's so it's like painful to watch, and then it takes this really weird twist.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: And like goes some uh kind of sad places, but uh it's directed by Olivia Wilde.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think she did a great job.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: She acts great in it, her acting is really good in it.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, her direction is good.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the one that felt out of place to me was Seth Rogan from the beginning.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Seth Rogan, like, he's always just himself.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel like.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but man, he uh he brings it in this one, and I think that he uh provides the correct amount of levity to this movie.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it could have been just a super depressing hour 45 movie, but instead he he brings a little bit of levity to it, enough goofiness to it to like let it breathe in the right moments.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's got this really bizarre pacing where it's like you're kind of downward spiral, and then you start to climb back up the hill and then downward spiral again, and you climb up a so yeah, it's um I gotta think about that one a little bit, but it I thought it was pretty good.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was entertaining at least.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you have ever watched the uh dinner party episode at the office and thought like this is the greatest thing I've ever seen, then may this movie might be for you, but it goes some weird adult places, so maybe not for kids like The Office.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah, I well uh that sounds intriguing to me.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is it scary?
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not scary, no.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'm then I'm all in.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's um a dramedy, I would say.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those dramedies, like family dramedies.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not family, relationship dramedies.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: How about that?
• 1:07:42
  unknown: Cool.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I take it.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: I take it.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a little bit of levity, it's got some very sad parts.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's got some super cringe interactions, but yeah, it was uh it was good, it was well done.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's only an hour and 45, which I can get behind.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna put it on my list.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right, bet.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know what you think.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: I do everything you tell me to do.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and I will see you next week in your Spock costume.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: I ordered the same as you.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be it's gonna be like that episode where there's one evil Captain Kirk and one and one good Captain Kirk.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: I like it.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have been your host, Travis.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: He has been my co-host, Clay.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have been cutting some weight with our biggest loser edition of Operation Game Night.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then we went over the fence and we talked about what we've been doing outside of podcasting and board gaming.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've done it all.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: Clay, you got anything to say before we log off?
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like and subscribe.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the man, like and subscribe.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, hit us up on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we'll see you next week for the Operation Game Night.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are out.