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Gencon 2023 Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

0:08
Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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as a head out for a walk and delivering episode to you while I stroll
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around. I'm Brendan Riley. Oh, good afternoon. It's a lovely day
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here in suburban Chicago. I am our good morning. Actually, I'm pleased
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to be talking to you as I head out for a stroll. It really,
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you know, all writes, all things in the right order. I
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should probably be doing a Top of the Stack for August, but given that
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I took a sort of unplanned six week break from the podcast and my last
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episode was Top of the Stack July, I figure I'll put one episode in
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between and then do Top of the Stack August and get us rolling toward normal
0:55
production schedule again. So this episode is actually going to be because I was
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really ready to start again right around the beginning of August, but then I
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had gen Con the world the Best four days in Gaming, so I think
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the tagline for that. So what I thought I would do is spend a
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little bit of time talking about my experience at gen Con, as I have
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done the last two years or three three years, two or three years when
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I went to gen Con, I went as part of x y Z Game
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Labs, the game design and production company publishing company that I am a partner
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in. At the con, we were doing a couple of things. We
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were demoing the Magic Socks expansion, which we kick started last fall, and
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we were showing off and selling the brand the newly arrived Bigfoot roll in Smash,
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which just came in or is almost in. So I'll start with an
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explation there. First off, if you, as a listener, are someone
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who pre ordered Big Foot roll and Smash from us, thank you very much
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for that. Hopefully you got an email about it. If you did not,
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email info at xycgamelabs dot com and let me know. But the long
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and short of it is our shipment, our main production shipment of games,
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is coming in leave it scheduled land August twelfth, which is two days from
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now, and we will have it at our distribution company shortly thereafter, and
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we should have the shipments go out and sent to people by mid September,
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so we are well on our way to getting that game sent out along those
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lines we had we wanted. We tried to figure out what to do about
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gen Con this year, because if we didn't have Bigfoot to show at gen
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Con this year. It really wasn't worth going. But gen Coons are really
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important networking and visibility building event for us, so we really wanted to go,
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and so we made the hard decision to fly in air freight a couple
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hundred copies of the game so that we could sell them at the con and
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we could show the game and that sort of thing. This was difficult,
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of course, because some people pre ordered it, and it's never fun to
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find out that other people just got to buy the game when you pre ordered
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it and you're waiting on your copy. So that was very disappointing for us
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to do that, but sometimes it's fiscal health of the company versus being a
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little disappointing. Well, that was the decision we made, so but anyone
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who pre ordered the game should be receiving it mid September, I believe.
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We also were demoing the Magic Socks expansion, which some people did kick start
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it last year, so we had a lot of people who had come in
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excited to try it out and see what the hubbub was about, and then
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we had the opportunity to show it to people and that sort of thing.
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So I thought I would talk about five fun things about gen Con and then
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talk a little bit about the games I brought home with me. So start
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with Number one fun thing was showing off Bigfoot. As I mentioned, we
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had Bigfoot there to sell in limited quantities, and I spent most of the
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week demoing Bigfoot and Our Travels, the two games that we have available for
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people to play and buy, and it was really gratifying. We had several
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people, We had lots of people giving us really thoughtful and positive feedback.
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We had a couple of people who were irked about not getting their copies yet,
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but generally they were relatively pleasant. We only had one or two people
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who were actively unpleasant about it. Most people were pretty understanding and generally it
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was a really fun con. It was really fun talking to people about the
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game and showing people the game. We had a lot of people who really
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enjoyed playing it. We're very complementary of it, and it's just fun to
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see that game working. The decision to include the timer in the rule book,
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which we had Dizzard back and forth on, I think was a good
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decision. I think the game works better when you're using a timer because two
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minutes is enough time to plan your route, I think, and taking more
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than two minutes makes the game slowed down a lot. We did have a
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number of groups who actively didn't use the timer, but generally we encouraged people
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to, so if you weren't familiar with the game. Big Foot Rolling Smash
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is a game partnered with the big Foot with the big Foot Monster Truck and
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in it you are trying to be one of the new drivers for the big
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Foot Monster Truck family. Either drive Classic big Foot, you drive snake Bite,
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which is a sort of villain truck you had big Foot Racer, or
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you drive fast Tracks. Fast Tracks of course as a Ford aerostar built onto
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tank treads powered by two V twelve engines. So it's pretty wild looking actually,
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and the you know, the attractions of the game. It's got a
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really good toy factor. We had a couple times where people were played testing
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our travels and they had little kids. If we had an empty spot at
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the big Foot table, we just let kids play with the big Foot trucks
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and they had a good time with those. Yeah. Overall, really fun
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time, very good feedback from people about the big Foot game. So yeah,
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that's hopefully the start of a long and Osprus run for the big Foot
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game. A second we were showing arch Ravels demoing that as well. Arch
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Ravels is the knitting game that XYZ Game Labs brought out in I think twenty
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eighteen, actually now I think it's marked as a twenty twenty game, and
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then we kick started our twenty twenty one maybe even, and then we kick
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started an expansion for it, which is coming next year. Sometime later this
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year, we'll see. And in that expansion, we have some new mechanisms,
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we have some alternate sets of tokens and cards, generally just more of
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the stuff people really like. That game has a very enthusiastic fan base and
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people really enjoy playing it, which I it's really fun to teach it and
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sort of connect with those people. We had a lot of good play tests,
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people who had pre ordered the expansion come to see what it was all
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about, and we're very excited to check it out. So yeah, the
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arch Ravels expansion is great and I'm really excited for it. So yeah,
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I'm trying to think if there's anything else to share about that if you pre
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ordered that, I'm not sure exactly when it will deliver, but I think
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in the spring of next year would be the most likely time. So that
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was the main work that I was doing at the con, was demoing the
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two games we were selling. It was interesting experience this year. We were
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over in Lucas Oil Stadium because the demo halls closer to where the games are
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costs money to be in, and we were trying to be a bit more
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thrifty this year with how much we spent on gen Con and that well overall,
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although I think you get less foot traffic and it's harder to get to
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transform a demo into a purchase if they have to walk twenty minutes to go
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buy it and go through a hall full of other good stuff to buy.
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That said, it was a really fun time. So the next thing I
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wanted to talk about was food this year. Last year we discovered a Mexican
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restaurant called La Parata, which my design partner Rob has decided is his one
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of his favorite Mexican restaurants, if not his favorite Mexican restaurant, So he
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was enthusiastic for us to go back there at least once, if not a
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couple of times, and we did that. It is a friendly place in
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eastern Indianapolis, not too far from the con hall, although I think it
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would be a bit of a walk if you decide to walk there from the
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convention area, but really good food. Both times that we ate there,
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I ordered the Horchata, which comes in a gigantic mug and is absolutely delicious.
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Almost The hor Horchat is enough almost on its own, but then also
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really good food as well, very friendly wait staff, never so far,
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never crowded. We've always been seated immediately and helped right away. So I
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don't know if it's I don't know who's sleeping on La Parada, but you
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shouldn't if you're going to. I'll put a link to it in the show
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notes if you're in Indianapolis and you want to check it out, I highly
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recommend very good La Parata Mexican restaurant. So we did. I did have
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a time to be a little bit social at gen Con. First off,
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aside from hanging out with the x y Z crew after the con was over,
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each night, I did have two social meetups. I got to hang
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out with my buddy Rolf from Frying Flying Frog games Hi Ralph. He had
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he you know, he had a break each day for like an hour or
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two, an hour and a half to walk the hall, and so I
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met him for one of his breaks and we walked the hall. It was
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really fun. It was nice to catch up with him. We mostly used
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us the walking around time to look at stuff, but also to catch up.
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Even though he and I play in the same virtual role playing game every
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other week, seeing each other in person it's different. Also, when we're
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meeting with six other people, you can't really do too much catching up,
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so it's nice to chat directly. And yeah, that was fun. So
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hey, Ralph, I don't I don't think you listened to the podcast,
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but if you do, hello, Yeah. So we took a walk around
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hall and looked at a bunch of stuff. He pointed out. One role
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playing game that looked really neat to me is called five Parsecs from Home or
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five Leagues from Home. They have like two versions of it. One is
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kind of a Star Trek version and one is our Space version, and one
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is a Fantasy version. These are solo play miniatures games that our miniatures agnostic,
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meaning you can use whatever miniatures you want, you don't have to use
10:24
specific set to play them. And I think that's really neat. I was
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thinking about buying it, but then it was forty seven dollars, and that's
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a lot of money for what, frankly, is going to be an aspirational
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purchase. The reality is I don't have a lot of time for solo game
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playing, and so buying a forty seven dollars rulebook, it just seems unlikely
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that I'm going to have time to play that game. So it looked really
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neat, but I did not pick that up. But overall, it was
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really nice to see Rolls. It was fun to connect with him. My
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other social connection was my friend Allen Hey. Allen he As he was a
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regular at our game club, Taggo Gaming, and has since moved to Michigan
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where he is actively building and expanding the Lansing area board game board Gamers or
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Board Game Society something like that. It is a conglomoration of several other groups
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that meet to play games in Lansing, much like Taggo Gaming does. So
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it's exciting to see more groups being expanded and meeting regularly. But Alan comes
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back to Chicago regularly and it's fun to see him, and it's exciting to
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get to hang out with him even in at gen Con, so yeah,
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he met up with us. We all went out to dinner to La Perretta
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again we did. We went there twice over the break or over the con,
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and then he came back to our airbnb and we all played Raw together.
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Now, RA is a game I'll talk about in a in a Espresso
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Espresso episode, But long and short, RA is really good and I can
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see why it is a classic. Definitely an interesting game. The auction elements
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are very clever, and I know kind of surprising that a Rhiner Canitzia game
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is really good, but boy it is. So Yeah, if you haven't
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played Raw, I definitely recommend you do so if you get a chance.
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The twenty fifth century edition addition that came out this year is beautiful and really
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fun to play. So that's Raw that we played with Hellen. The other
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game I got to play during the break was After Us, which is sort
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of themed around human beings have gone and apes have taken over the world.
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I'll talk about that in another Espresso Espresso episode. And then finally I want
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to talk a minute about We had some good meetings. As I said,
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one of the things about gen Con is It's about the image a company has,
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right like that part of x y Z Games is x y Z Game
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Labs. Visibility is the fact that we are visible at gen Con. Gen
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Con is the flagship event, perhaps second only to Essen or parallel to Essen
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in terms of game companies doing things and being places, and so getting to
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do gen Con every year is a really important piece of how we market and
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strategize, and I think that piece of it. It is really important for
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us to keep our visibility up. So that's kind of why we do gen
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Con. So part of what we do is we take meetings. So we
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did have a couple of very productive meetings. I don't want to say more
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than that right now, but as things become public, I will suffice to
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say that it was really gratifying to pursue that. So that's my gen Con
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report, at least in terms of the things I did, and I want
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to share the stuff I got because part of the fun of going to a
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con is seeing all the games that are maybe hard to get and trying to
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get them first up. I managed to get a copy of Revive. Revive
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was one of the darlings of Essen last year, but it's been very rarely
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available here in the US. I was excited to find a copy and picked
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it up. This is a technology tree game with some worker placement. I
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believe it looks really neat and I'm very excited to play it. It's from
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Christian Auspi and I left Spencon and two other designers and yeah, really exciting.
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They had the expansion there to preview, but you couldn't buy it,
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but I got to see it. That was neat. The one time we
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were walking by the booth, I saw something had had a game called Tucana
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Builders or something like that, and it looks like it's in the line of
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games sort of started by Trails Trails of Tucana, which is a rolling right
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I really enjoy. But that was a reviewer who got a review copy,
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so so it's just anyway, it was really exciting to see and I was
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like, oh, where'd you get this? And they're like, well,
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you can't get it. It's like, oh, bummer. I also picked
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up Vagrant Song, which is a cooperative battle game that has a really cool
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looking theme. It's got kind of early Fleisher Brothers art or not Fleisher Brothers
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early like Warner Brothers type Looney Tunes art, think about like the dancing skeletons
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and all that. It's that kind of art, and it's about a haunted
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train and a bunch of villagers trying to defeat the haunted train. Looks really
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neat. I'm excited to play it. I got a package of Hero upgrades
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for a Touch of Evil. These are special cards that you can buy.
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They cost ten experience, so they're pretty expensive as far as things go in
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a Touch of Evil. But they are special weapons specifically designed for the different
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heroes, so it's very exciting to have access to those. I have been
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for a while trying to get my hands on copies of the Advent calendars made
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by Eggs at the game, and they had all three here, so I
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splurged and bought all three and now the next three years of Advent calendars are
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covered for me, so that's fun. I bought a Sherlock Holmes game called
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Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Are Regulars. This is a book game where
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everybody's reading a book and you solve the mysteries together. I bought a package
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of mimic That Sherlock Holmes game was for my daughter. I bought Mimic Dice
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for my son, and lastly, I was going to get a copy of
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the game Mother of Frankenstein, but then Rob decided to buy it and he
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said I could borrow his copy, which was very exciting, so I get
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to play it without buying it. Thank you, Rob, you are the
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best. So that is my gen Con haul. Lots of exciting games,
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lots of exciting times, and a really fun time at gen Con. I
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apologize to anybody who went there that I didn't let you all know ahead of
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time I was going to be there. I know that's not as fun as
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getting to see me there because I told you I was going to be there
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and I wasn't, so or I didn't. I apologize about that. It
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looks like we may or may not be at Pack's Unplugged. I think right
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now we're leaning toward not. I never go to that one anyway because of
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the time of year that it is, so I'm not sure when the next
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con we will go to. We'll definitely be at gen Con next year.
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Whether we go to any con in intermediary times, I don't know. But
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I am back in Illinois and that brings us to the end of the podcast.
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Hopefully you've enjoyed this extra long gen Con roundup. I hope that you
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can reach out. I'm on Board Game Geek as womb at nine two nine.
17:14
I'm on Board Game Arena as nine Womba at nine two nine. You
17:15
can email Brendan and at rattlebock games dot com if you would like to play
17:21
a game. You can reach out to me in those asynchronous game platforms like
17:23
he's mentioned, or you can participate on our guild Guild three two six nine
17:26
over on board game Geek. Thanks for joining me on my walk today.
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I hope to your next walk, because as closed as mine was. Hope
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bye. Brought to you by Rattlebods. I