56. Halloween Spectacular: 2023

Scares are aplenty in this year's special Halloween edition of Hidden Gems! Will poor Dean survive a night at the Kurtz's? Will Jason and Cameron do better on Chris' torturous Halloween-themed trivia game show? And, most importantly, will we find any more gems? Join your hosts Chris Alley, Jason Yanchuleff, Bill Arney and Cameron Lockey as they bring you three fresh reviews of unusual, forgotten, and under-appreciated Halloween-themed games in this 2023 episode of Hidden Gems!

FEATURED GAMES:
00:00:00 Sketch: Chapter I - "All Little Boys Should Have A Mother"
00:04:34 Intro & Banter
00:34:29 Halloween Trivia Game Show
00:49:17 Sketch: Chapter II - "The Mind Can Become Quite Disturbed"
00:56:28 Poison
01:18:41 Sketch: Chapter III - "The Unsettling Feeling That Something Is Wrong"
01:25:26 Grave Business
01:54:23 Sketch: Chapter IV - "What It's Like To Feed"
01:59:55 The Banished

BGG GEEK LIST:
https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/289922/hidden-gems-podcast-game-ratings

STORY CREDITS (Sketch):
"B Is For Bogeywoman": Iain Rob Wright (with permission)

MUSIC & SOUND EFFECTS - courtesy of https://epidemicsound.com
B Is For Bogeywoman Score:
   "Special Treatment" - Moss Harma
   "A Little Nightmare" - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
   "Antagonist" - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
   "Bad Dreams" - Mary Riddle
   "Cold Nights" - Kikoru
   "Colossal Terror" - Jon Björk
   "Death Chimes" - Jon Bjork
   "Deathwish Attic" - Experia
   "Hours" - Max Anson
   "It's Dark Outside" - Mary Riddle
   "Little Susie" - Hampus Naeselius
   "Murder in the Dark" - Jon Bjork
   "No One Sleeps Tonight" - Leimoti
   "Scary Stairsteps" - Stationary Sign
   "Shivers in the Shadows" - Victor Lundberg
   "Someone There?" - Victor Lundberg
   "Tearing Threads" - Jon Bjork
   "The Cost of Fear" - Jon Bjork
   "They Vanished" - Jon Bjork
   "Twilight Song" - Jon Bjork
   "You're Not Hiding Very Well" - Trevor Kowalski
Hidden Gems Intro Theme - "Spooky Gems", Travis Lockey, Royalty Free
Game Show Theme - "Spooky Game Show", Travis Lockey, Royalty Free
Poison - "Way Past Bedtime", Stationary Sign
Grave Business - "Tales From the Grave", Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
The Banished - "Path to the Abyss", Christoffer Moe Ditlevse
Sound Effects credits available on our website

FOLLOW US:
Email: hiddengemsboardgamepodcast@gmail.com
Web: https://hiddengems.games
Patreon: https://patreon.com/hiddengemspodcast
Instagram: @hiddengems.games
Facebook: @hiddengemsboardgamepodcast
Twitter: @hiddengemsboard
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR8wU2vjV2RJ7C6iRuq2WcA
BGG Guild #: 3874
Discord: https://discord.gg/hcvThGfj

Hidden Gems: A Board Game Podcast was produced and edited by Chris Alley, Cameron Lockey, and Jason Yanchuleff in Raleigh, NC.

Transcript

Jason: 4:26

Gems, Episode

Cameron: 4:28

56! Halloween Spectacular! 2023! Welcome

Chris: 4:37

to hidden gyms, a board game podcast, where we review unusual forgotten and underappreciated board games. We're your hosts. My name is Chris.

Jason: 4:46

I'm Jason.

Bill: 4:47

Bill.

Cameron: 4:49

And I'm Cameron, thanks for listening to our show.

Bill: 4:53

was that Cameron's voice? I just heard? Woohoo. Cameron's It's a ghost.

Jason: 4:58

I know if we have good voice impressions, it's gotta be Cameron, so.

Cameron: 5:01

Oh

Chris: 5:01

voice acting is on point this episode.

Cameron: 5:05

Oh man, speaking of voice acting, that was fun.

Chris: 5:08

Yes. Then we're doing something a little bit different this year on hidden gems. We're trying to mix it up a little bit every now and again, so it doesn't get too stale. The past we've gone a little bit, goofy, kind of horror, poking fun at ourselves a little bit this year. We're taking a more serious role in the skit, you know, a little bit more serious horror. We'll see how it

Cameron: 5:26

story is unsettling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to throw out credit

Chris: 5:31

Indeed.

Jason: 5:32

in this one. Unlike some of our previous ones, if you couldn't tell between the writing quality, shout out to Ian, Rob Wright, who's actually the writer of this, Chris found this story. Where did you find it, Chris? what's the name of the book that it came from?

Chris: 5:45

Yeah, so I found this short story in a book written by Ian Robb, right? It's actually a collection of horror stories called A to Z of Horror, the complete collection. So you'll notice how the title of our skit is called B is for Bogeywoman. So he writes 26, 26, right?

Cameron: 6:02

Yeah.

Bill: 6:03

Yeah.

Chris: 6:04

Every story, yeah, right. Yeah, every story Starts with a different letter of the

Jason: 6:12

part of the whole episode

Chris: 6:13

know it's terrifying

Bill: 6:14

I know, the scariest part is Chris actually reads, so I don't...

Chris: 6:18

Barely

Cameron: 6:19

pictures, does it?

Chris: 6:20

it does not know there's no illustrations in this book, but We thank Ian for letting us use his content. We actually reached out to him directly via email because we didn't want to use this stuff without permission. And he was like, yeah, totally. He doesn't know us at all. I'm just like, Hey, we're a part of a board game podcast

Cameron: 6:39

Nice

Chris: 6:39

and we're going to read your story. Is that cool? And he was like, yeah, it's totally

Jason: 6:43

like, nobody's gonna listen to that. You're good.

Cameron: 6:51

but it's a blast and, uh, look forward to more of that story as the episode progresses.

Chris: 6:57

Yeah, because it's a little bit longer,

Jason: 6:59

a couple of installments

Bill: 7:01

longer

Chris: 7:01

Yeah. So in between each review and between the banter and the first review, you'll get a little bit more of the story and find out what's going on with Dean

Cameron: 7:10

out what's going on with Dean.

Chris: 7:11

and the Kurtz family,

Bill: 7:12

the story and find out what's

Chris: 7:14

little Vindal.

Bill: 7:14

Dean and the Kurtz

Cameron: 7:16

All right. Well, I'm glad to be back. Uh,

Chris: 7:19

like it's been

Cameron: 7:20

yeah, I think I was out for three episodes. Bill's Bill's been holding down the fort over here. Uh, yeah. So those of you who have been listening for a while may know that my wife was pregnant this year and we just had a baby girl in September. So we've been in full time lockdown. New, you know, new parents mode with two kids this time. And, uh, Oh God, it is, it is quite a different experience than just having one.

Chris: 7:47

late night feedings.

Cameron: 7:49

My,

Chris: 7:49

The sleepless nights.

Cameron: 7:53

my wife had an afternoon to herself with just, Nora or baby girl. and we had someone else taking care of my son and she came in, she was like, so happy. And she was like, this is so easy. I can't believe we ever thought this was hard because two is just so different than one. So that's been, beautiful transition for us and, we're, very delighted mom and baby are healthy and, we're kind of like figuring out how to get back in the swing of things.

Jason: 8:18

Awesome.

Cameron: 8:19

Yeah,

Jason: 8:19

Good to hear.

Chris: 8:20

Good to have you back,

Cameron: 8:21

yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's good to be back

Chris: 8:23

be back. Bill and I are just glad we don't have to read the flavor text tonight.

Cameron: 8:26

Right, right

Jason: 8:27

Yep.

Chris: 8:28

Scottish vampires?

Cameron: 8:29

Yeah

Chris: 8:31

That would be awesome

Bill: 8:32

Bill and I are you talking about? So, uh, I've

Cameron: 8:34

So, uh, I've been missing these, banter sessions where we share all the cool stuff that we've found. those who have been listening for a while know that I do woodworking and so I work in a shop all the time and I listen to a lot of audio books. And as soon as I started listening to this book, I was like, I love this book. And I want to share it on the podcast. So I haven't told you all about this the entire time, even though we've kind of seen each other a few times and played games together and stuff like that. So I listened to this book called Project Hail Mary, uh,

Jason: 9:02

heard of this, I haven't read it.

Cameron: 9:04

it's by, Andy Weir, who is also the author of the Martian that, that, um, Matt Damon started in the movie that they made of it.

Bill: 9:12

And the Hail Mary, I think is the second one,

Cameron: 9:13

They actually are making another, they're making a movie of this book. Oh, really? however, I highly recommend this book, Project Hail Mary. the way that they communicate the science of everything that this guy is, dealing with in his adventure. I don't want to give away too much, but we'll just say he ends up alone in space and having to do all sorts of astronaut science stuff and biology stuff. In, a spacecraft, it's not science fiction and, and a really fictiony sense, if that makes sense, like it's, it seems to be very true to the science and he explains a lot of stuff and honestly, really great detail. I, I, you know, I don't have much of any science background apart from what I learned in high school, but I have a general understanding of physics and the kind of things like that, but, they do a really good job making it,

Bill: 10:03

kind

Chris: 10:04

of

Cameron: 10:05

and just how he problem solves. It's a whole book of him just problem solving his way through the narrative. figuring things out and

Chris: 10:13

favorite science fiction book ever. Did you read The Martian? I, I've

Cameron: 10:13

I told my wife, I was like, this is like my favorite science fiction book that I've ever read. the movie of the Martian. I haven't,

Jason: 10:21

really good

Bill: 10:21

Yeah, the book is just exactly like that because it's all about the science kind of thing.

Cameron: 10:26

yeah. I started looking at more things to Andy Weirhead has written. Um, and I was excited to see that they're going to make a movie of this one.

Bill: 10:32

You know, he's local. I think he lives, I think he's local North Carolina and he's in, he's a computer science guy. And this is kind of funny. He got a start. He published his book for free online and somebody was like, Hey, I want to get this on my Kindle. and I can't because you got it like in a PDF form. Can you do something about that? And he's like, let me see if I can figure this out. And it's like, well, I can put it up on a Kindle, but I can't make it free. So I have to charge for it. And then, and then when he started charging for it, he's like, I got a lesson in the scale of, of the world. Cause of the, cause he was like making, you know, I don't know, somewhere between a dollar and 5 and he ended up making a boatload of

Cameron: 11:09

Oh, wow. Because

Chris: 11:10

out

Jason: 11:11

Kindle because it's so popular.

Chris: 11:12

the

Cameron: 11:12

it's so popular. That like a YouTube

Chris: 11:13

he

Bill: 11:13

there's like a YouTube of him out there talking about the science of, of what he was doing in the Martian that I thought was, kind of cool too.

Cameron: 11:20

of

Chris: 11:20

he really seems to understand some of

Cameron: 11:22

him out there talking in any of those fields, he really seems to understand the science stuff pretty clearly, more clearly than I do.

Chris: 11:28

Yeah, my, my

Jason: 11:29

my wife read that book and I just haven't gotten around to it. I read the Martian, so

Cameron: 11:33

Yeah. And I will say too, think this would probably work fine, as a, paper book. but there's a, language thing that comes up. I don't want to give anything away, but there's a language thing that comes up that, uh, that works really well. in the audio book experience.

Chris: 11:46

Happy, happy,

Bill: 11:47

It's funny. If you're going to start telling your wife, happy, happy, happy.

Cameron: 11:50

happy.

Bill: 11:52

a language thing that comes up. Anyway, that's, that's kind of funny. I read it as

Cameron: 11:56

read it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and I just really, I really liked as well, like just how the audio book handled that, difference.

Bill: 12:03

Right. Exactly.

Chris: 12:04

Nice. Good one, man. Good to have you back, Cam.

Bill: 12:07

It's awesome to have you back.

Chris: 12:08

Bill, what's going on with you, man? You got something spooky for us? Maybe sort of. Spookier than a

Bill: 12:16

I'm going to, I'm going to do two light ones. next week I'm headed to Iceland by the way, which is super cool. I'm very excited about that. Um, yeah, I will, I will blaze the path for when you go later. I'm sure you're going to do a bunch of cool things there, I ended up listening to this podcast that talked about. Iceland has this kind of weird quirk to it that they're into this crime noir. They're all into these murder mystery things that is just kind of crazy. I don't know if you guys ever read, any Stieg Larsson in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest or the, uh, what's the others?

Jason: 12:47

dragon tattoo.

Bill: 12:48

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Chris: 12:49

the

Bill: 12:49

the, yeah, yeah. Yeah, those things, the books are really good. Anyway, I guess that's just a thing because if you look at Iceland, it has the lowest homicide rate of any other country in the world. They have two per year, I think, or something like that. I think it doubled maybe last year and had four, right? But for whatever reason, it's kind of captured the public imagination about, murders

Chris: 13:08

just started reading the book.

Bill: 13:09

And, um, I just started reading a book by the prime minister of the country and another mystery writer on it. That's, uh, that's about this, this. Uncovering this murder that happened in Rajavi Iceland. And so the title of the book called Rajavi by,

Chris: 13:25

title

Cameron: 13:25

can't even remember

Bill: 13:26

I know Janna Johanson and Catherine, I can't even attempt her last name but, but she's the one who's the prime minister. And it's kind of funny. You look at her picture and she looks like she's in her mid thirties or something. Wow. but anyway, it's, it's been kind of cool. I will say the scary one that I'll say, I'm not sure if I talked about it on here before, but, the Scaredest I think I've ever been. And this is, I'm trying to think in or out of anywhere was playing a VR game. That's

Chris: 13:50

I

Jason: 13:51

this is, I'm trying

Bill: 13:51

the walking dead saints and centers.

Cameron: 13:54

I'll

Chris: 13:54

say, I'm in the dark.

Cameron: 13:55

I've seen this. Yeah,

Bill: 13:55

Have you seen, yeah.

Jason: 13:56

where

Bill: 13:57

I play. Okay. it's kind of got a sort of typical opening maybe where you actually meet this old guy in the Louisiana swamp by you. And it's some dystopian future, right? Where the zombies have taken over the world and they like own all of Louisiana. So you come in on a. canoe, and you end up, he directs you to this old school bus that ends up going to be your base, I guess, for the whole episode. And so, you're, a big part of it is scavenging stuff. So I have like a pistol with two bullets in it.

Chris: 14:25

Yeah, like any good horror game should

Bill: 14:28

exactly.

Chris: 14:28

fear of running out of ammo should be strong in a horror themed video game.

Bill: 14:33

And then I think my, my main weapon is a screwdriver.

Chris: 14:36

But all else fails.

Jason: 14:38

Um,

Bill: 14:38

So I, go to the first mission. This is probably the tutorial mission. I meet a woman on the side of the road and she says her husband's turned into a zombies and he's in this house just up the road. Um, and I would like to get my wedding ring back, but I just can't bring myself to off of, so can you go do it? They're like, well, okay, I guess I'm going to go do it. So I ended up going to the house and there's like this little nervousness, by the way, because they say once it gets dark, the zombies just come out in force and you can hear like the church bell ringing off in the distance. So you can hear the gongs of the church going off all the time. So it's like.

Chris: 15:12

it's like, what time was that really? How many

Bill: 15:13

What time was that really? I mean, how many gongs was that? Cause you just, it's easy to lose track. so I'm in the house, I meet a couple of zombies. you know, it was okay. I was able to handle him, but I'm saving my gun because I'm thinking the dad's going to be kind of this beast zombie. So I go up to the attic and I find out that it is pitch dark. And that's the first time I've ever been in the dark and you have a. A flashlight that's attached to your lapel. So you turn on your flashlight and so all you can see is this little round window of light that's right

Chris: 15:43

and so all VR.

Bill: 15:44

and in VR. So you feel like you're looking all the way around. So I decided I'm going to pull out the gun because it's the time I need my gun. So I pull out my gun, I go upstairs, they have it set up for like the perfect jump scare. He jumps out. I pull out my gun and I shoot him.

Cameron: 15:57

upstairs, I hadn't

Bill: 15:59

my gun. So I go, click, click, click. And I was like, oh my god. So I'm like, turning around, running, trying to find my bullets, open up my gun and put it in there. And I haven't really ever loaded my gun before. While the zombies attack me. So I end up like, dropping my bullets in the dark on the floor. I end up dropping my gun on the floor.

Jason: 16:18

floor. I'm

Bill: 16:19

running around, so I ended up like running downstairs and he's following me and I'm trying to like get into my inventory and pull up my, screwdriver again to try to get him.

Chris: 16:29

get there. Everybody

Bill: 16:31

just freaking me out and I will say, I will swear to God, I have not played that game since. It freaks me out so bad.

Chris: 16:39

And I was the first 30 minutes

Bill: 16:41

Right, exactly. That was the first 30 minutes of the game. What's

Cameron: 16:43

VR game. I

Bill: 16:47

Well in near heavy it is. But I was alone at the house. Oh, okay. So, but yeah, it's very immersive. Very, very immersive. I could imagine. So

Chris: 16:55

VR game. I was alone at the

Bill: 16:58

I've played it a few times. Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm.

Chris: 17:00

That sounds terrifying and I'm intrigued, but I do know that in VR, sometimes the graphics, you know, it's just, it's not like on a PS five, right? They're just not quite there. Does the graphic quality kind of pull you out of the immersion a little bit? Or is it something where you don't really even notice

Bill: 17:17

Oh, I, I, I didn't at all. I've got, even there's another one

Chris: 17:20

I played a zombie shooter one time with you. That wasn't like this. They were just kind of coming from all sides and it was a lot of fun, but it wasn't really scary because they didn't look.

Cameron: 17:29

They were meant

Jason: 17:30

be

Chris: 17:30

Yeah.

Jason: 17:31

cartoonish.

Bill: 17:31

The walking dead one is they're meant to be much more realistic.

Chris: 17:34

they looked terrifying.

Bill: 17:35

Yeah. And when you're like, I'm

Chris: 17:36

I'm, I'm down for this

Bill: 17:37

when you do the real tutorial, when you go through, like when you have the, this is going to sound horrible, the screwdriver, when you're like, you have to take them out in the brains, right? When you stick them in the head and you're trying to get it out with like sticks and you have to wrench it around and you have to pull it. So, I mean, everything just feels real when you're doing it. And it's like, because

Cameron: 17:54

it out, real wholesome.

Jason: 17:56

it. You have to

Bill: 17:56

you have to stick your hand out and like, you get a little effort to jerk it out. So

Jason: 18:00

desire to do any of this. I'm like, why do people subject themselves to the corn maze with the people running through a chainsaw? It's like, I'm like, why?

Chris: 18:09

that about?

Jason: 18:10

What is fun about that?

Bill: 18:11

I will say I'm scarred, Jason, so I'm with you now, I'm, I'm, I'm team you on that.

Chris: 18:16

into people.

Cameron: 18:17

This is always, this is always an ironic episode for me because it's like, I seem like I'm super into it with all my voices and everything, but horror is the thing I'm least interested in.

Chris: 18:26

The thing is, the

Jason: 18:28

I go is that I usually read a Stephen King book or something scary around this time of year. It just feels right,

Chris: 18:34

books, I think I mentioned

Cameron: 18:35

speaking of

Bill: 18:36

you Jason?

Jason: 18:37

So, speaking of books becoming movies, I think I mentioned on the last episode, Killers of the Flower Moon, and that it was becoming a movie. So I went to see the movie this past week. I will say,

Chris: 18:48

don't know. Take

Jason: 18:49

I don't know.

Chris: 18:50

you will, but I

Jason: 18:51

Take it for what you will, but I was not impressed by the movie. Really? So I will throw that out there because I was pumping it up last time. The book? Phenomenal. Go check out the book.

Chris: 19:01

check

Jason: 19:01

Again, this is about the Osage Indian tribe in Oklahoma, and the advent of the FBI, but man, the movie was three and a half hours long. Maybe it was cause I'd read the book and I already knew it was going to happen. Maybe if you don't know what's going to happen, it's more interesting, but just throwing that out there, my two cents.

Chris: 19:17

it's more interesting. Just throwing that out there. Yeah. Aside

Jason: 19:20

aside from that. I've been playing some video games. one that I know you've played Chris vampire survivors. I think we've teased it

Chris: 19:27

I have played this one. This is good for the Halloween episode

Bill: 19:31

this Is this

Jason: 19:31

feel like I've been on a, on a spree of,

Chris: 19:33

and other platforms, yeah

Jason: 19:35

yeah, I feel like I've been on a spree of,

Cameron: 19:39

Yeah.

Jason: 19:40

so vampire survivors, darkest dungeon. I'm going to talk about in a second and slay the spire.

Chris: 19:45

Mm hmm.

Jason: 19:46

Have you heard of

Chris: 19:46

I have heard of rotato because it's like vampire survivors. Yeah

Jason: 19:50

It's not as good as vampire survivors, I would say, but, uh,

Bill: 19:54

Survivors. A little

Cameron: 19:55

Vampire Survivors. You

Jason: 19:57

a little bit.

Chris: 19:58

Uh,

Jason: 19:59

you basically play,

Cameron: 20:00

play uh, an armed potato.

Jason: 20:01

an armed potato.

Chris: 20:03

Gameplay's different.

Jason: 20:05

Yeah. So anyway, vampire survivors, basically you are a sprite character,

Bill: 20:10

Various different,

Jason: 20:12

different, mages and whatever. you just have to survive for as long as you can with these like swarms of thousands of monsters coming at you.

Chris: 20:21

that is not an exaggeration by the way.

Jason: 20:23

no, like...

Chris: 20:24

Like tens of thousands by the end of the level.

Jason: 20:26

Yeah, it's insane. Like the entire screen is just filled with things coming after you.

Bill: 20:31

coming at you.

Jason: 20:32

mowing, just mowing them down.

Chris: 20:35

Start slow though.

Jason: 20:36

Yeah, it starts off slow and basically every time you kill a monster it drops like a little gem. And you collect the gems. The more gems you collect you level up and you get to upgrade one of your weapons or you get a new weapon. and so the goal is to survive for, what is it, 20

Chris: 20:49

30 minutes.

Jason: 20:50

minutes. You survive for 30 minutes, then you've, won, right?

Chris: 20:54

Then the Grim Reaper comes in and kills you. But, yeah. You've won, basically.

Jason: 20:58

yeah. very cool though. Cause you, there's lots of different characters, lots of different weapons. You're trying to figure out what the ideal weapons are, upgrade. yeah, I've enjoyed that one. It's not super deep. It doesn't go like way, way deep down the... There's some

Chris: 21:11

There's some trickiness to it though. So there's an interesting opponent of the game where you can combine two different weapons and it will create a new thing, a super weapon basically, but it doesn't tell you when the game starts what those formulas or those recipes are. So you kind of have to figure them out with trial and error throughout the course of the game to figure out how to forge these super weapons. Because if you don't, You will not make it. You will not make it. I mean, the, board becomes so full, you will just get overwhelmed. But if you make these super weapons and make like two or three of them,

Bill: 21:46

feel like, you're like

Chris: 21:47

you just feel like you're like God tier. I mean, like you can't be killed really, but it's kind of fun just to see it playing out with you just becoming overpowered basically, but you have to work to get there with garlic. Yeah,

Cameron: 22:01

the

Jason: 22:01

the best one.

Chris: 22:02

it definitely is

Jason: 22:03

But, uh. Yeah, so that's what I've been playing. Another, another one that I got into very different, called darkest dungeon, which is actually pretty old. It's been around for a while,

Chris: 22:12

Cool art style.

Jason: 22:12

this is, yeah, it's got a really unique art style. basically you go into this old school, like medieval town and the manner that is in this estate has been overrun by like kind of eldritch horror kind of. monsters, right? And so you're, tasked with putting together a band of, or potentially multiple bands of people to send down into these dungeons and try to eradicate monsters.

Chris: 22:40

super dark

Jason: 22:41

What's interesting about it is though, it's, it's super dark in terms of like theming,

Chris: 22:46

in

Bill: 22:46

theming.

Chris: 22:47

is

Jason: 22:47

of the biggest components of, surviving in this game is that your, characters are permanent. You obtain a character from like the pub, basically, or whatever, like, as they arrive in town. But once you...

Chris: 22:59

like

Jason: 22:59

Assemble them into your group. Like you have to keep them up. You have to maintain them. So every time you go into the dungeon, they get stressed out basically. So like more

Chris: 23:08

their

Jason: 23:08

they encounter, they start to go insane. They get diseases. They like, going nuts and taking on all these conditions and stuff. So when you're back in town, you have to maintain your crew. Or if they take too much stress when they're in a dungeon, they'll just go insane and they'll have a heart attack and they'll die and then they're gone. Like your character's just

Cameron: 23:24

Sounds like, sounds like D& D first edition. Yeah, yeah. You have a disease, you have a mental disease.

Bill: 23:31

yeah.

Jason: 23:31

Right. And so it's interesting because like different things like, we'll get kleptomania. So now every time you go to like a treasure chest, they just steal it and the group doesn't get it. Right. so it feels like as you're going through, it's just like everything that happens to you is bad, but basically the game is managing all the bad things that are happening to you. And it's surprisingly fun despite all of that. so I haven't made it super far cause it's really freaking hard. it's an interesting concept, cool game,

Cameron: 23:56

changed some things

Jason: 23:59

darkest dungeon. There's a darkest dungeon too, also that has come out since then, but I've heard that it's not as good. I heard they changed some things around,

Chris: 24:06

that one.

Jason: 24:07

um, and it's not as, not as interesting. Oh, you've played this. Okay, did you make it all the way through?

Chris: 24:11

Nope.

Cameron: 24:12

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, it's

Jason: 24:14

yeah, it's a bit of

Bill: 24:14

of,

Chris: 24:15

bit of a, if

Jason: 24:15

if I have to say anything It's I would say it's hard enough that it's starting to feel a little bit like a slog like it's just taking a long time to progress because You'll level up your whole group and you'll get to like level four and you're like awesome And then they all die and you're like, well crap now I have to start back from the beginning, right?

Cameron: 24:30

whole group

Chris: 24:31

it wasn't for a lack of not wanting to. I think it was at a time where I just kind of got busy, and I just wasn't able to get back to it. kind of a thing. But, I kind of want to finish it.

Bill: 24:41

finish it. I have a quick question. So this is on the Switch, right? Are you doing this? Like while you're watching TV, is that how you fit it into your life? Or,

Chris: 24:48

Ha

Bill: 24:49

or

Jason: 24:50

Yeah, or like or like I don't play for a long times That's just why I rarely beat games because I'll have like 30 minutes, you know before bed or something

Cameron: 24:59

like 30 minutes You know,

Bill: 25:02

00

Jason: 25:03

didn't beat it

Bill: 25:04

with you?

Jason: 25:04

Yeah,

Chris: 25:06

All right. I have a video game to talk about also, that's also Halloween ish themed and that is Colt of the Lamb. So yeah, Jason has got me on a devolver kick here talking about all these devolver games and devolver a few weeks back did this huge sale where all of their games were like 60 and 70 percent off and I bought like almost all of them. Download them on the Switch eShop because they were so cheap and I was like, I want to try these. So download Cult of the Lamb. So Cult of the Lamb, the idea of the game is, is you're a lamb. a little sheep and you're on an altar. You're getting ready to get sacrificed. Okay? Cause you're a lamb. Obviously, yeah. So, so let me begin by saying this because when I describe this game, it's going to sound super dark. Okay? But the art style is super cartoony. Have y'all ever seen the show Happy Tree Friends?

Bill: 26:02

Happy tree friends.

Cameron: 26:03

Yes.

Chris: 26:04

You know what I'm talking about where the characters in that cartoon dry these like horrific deaths But they're like super cartoony and cute. So it really doesn't seem horrible. It's actually kind of funny

Cameron: 26:15

guts are like all over the

Chris: 26:17

Yeah, that's kind of like what this game is.

Bill: 26:19

So who is the demographic for that show? Is it supposed to be for kids or is it

Chris: 26:23

year old four year olds that are awesome.

Bill: 26:25

Oh my

Chris: 26:26

So yeah, it's like happy tree friends. Okay, so you got these really cute cartoony woodland creatures. Okay So I'm getting ready to get offered up, but then I get rescued by this imprisoned god known as the one that sleeps. Okay, so he releases me, but he says, Hey, in return, you have to build my cult back up, basically. I need you to free me. Okay? So my lamb Builds his own little cult back up and we're not gonna be the sacrifices anymore We're gonna be the ones that are gonna be taking it to the people, right? So that's the idea All right. So the game is a base building Dungeon crawler, so there's two parts to the game the base building part basically your cult Starts out in a plot of land and it's completely barren. There's nothing that are just like trees and rocks And basically you have to start harvesting everything. You're clearing the land, you're gathering resources, and you start to build buildings. Because you need a church for your people to worship in, your cult members, right? You need a kitchen, you need an outhouse, things like that. Because you have to manage everything. your followers, when they eat, they poop.

Bill: 27:32

poop. So

Chris: 27:33

So they like leave poop on the ground. If you leave it sitting out...

Cameron: 27:36

They

Chris: 27:36

get diseases. So you're like cleaning poop. You got to clean the poop up. If you're not feeding them, they

Cameron: 27:41

are they also lambs?

Chris: 27:43

it's all different kinds of like little woodland animals. And so if you're not feeding them or not meeting their needs, they start to get pissed at you. Right. So they walk around and they're like all angry. They've got these angry eyes.

Cameron: 27:56

Like Sims?

Chris: 27:57

It's kind of like Sims. Yeah. And because you're a cult leader, you can read thoughts. You can read their minds and see what they're thinking. And if they're thinking about Spreading discord in the cult, you can re educate them, quote, unquote, by putting them in the stocks.

Cameron: 28:12

Oh my gosh! So

Chris: 28:14

So you build this jail, there's these stocks, you put their heads like in the holes and you read from your scriptures to re educate them and show them that, you know, yeah, if you're brainwashing

Jason: 28:25

Yeah.

Chris: 28:26

them, yeah, so pretty much every like

Jason: 28:28

cultish,

Chris: 28:29

trope you can possibly think of. Is in this game and because it's done in this

Jason: 28:34

like,

Chris: 28:34

cartoony cute art style. It's funny to see it being played out

Bill: 28:38

I have so many things I want to say in my head, and I can't say any of them right now.

Chris: 28:42

Like what?

Bill: 28:45

Um, no, I can't say it, but it's going to, it's going to make people unhappy in this room. So I won't say it.

Chris: 28:52

Okay, we'll talk about it after

Bill: 28:54

All right. Sure.

Cameron: 28:55

unhappy their

Chris: 28:57

the least so then the dungeon crawling part Once you're done with the base building because it's a lot of upkeep if you've ever played a game like stardew Valley or the Sims I guess you know, there's a lot of like you're just like checking boxes

Cameron: 29:10

go harvest your plants, gotta go do some fishing.

Chris: 29:12

Yep, exactly. So you're doing all that and by the time you're kind of done with that can go run a mission So you're trying to kill off these other cult members and their elder gods or whatever Gathering resources and then when you're kind of done with that you go back to the base building part So you're kind of bouncing back and forth And I

Bill: 29:30

Do you send, do you send out an army to do that,

Chris: 29:32

no, it's just you, although you can build a summoning circle

Cameron: 29:38

circle.

Chris: 29:38

you can call back so you can sacrifice your cult members, you can call them back to fight with you and things like that. So you can bring people in with you, to help you if you've built the right structures and things like that,

Cameron: 29:51

game sounds terrible.

Chris: 29:52

it's not terrible. I am telling you, it is not terrible. it is actually. Quite good. It really is. And not easy. It is challenging to say the least. Well, what's turning you off about it? The

Cameron: 30:06

Everything that you've said about it so far. It's like, you could play Stardew Valley and make friends and create food and, you know, collect eggs and make mayonnaise.

Bill: 30:17

it so far. It's like you

Chris: 30:19

That sounds boring.

Cameron: 30:21

you could sacrifice your friends to the gods.

Chris: 30:23

I mean, they want you to though. They actually ask you to sometimes they're like, Oh, great leader. I would be honored if you would sacrifice me. And then you sacrifice them. And then you get all these glory points, you level up.

Jason: 30:36

that's, that's the society we're

Cameron: 30:37

of society we're going for. Why this is scratching some itch for you, Chris,

Bill: 30:42

this strategy so

Cameron: 30:42

is beyond me.

Chris: 30:43

It's funny, man. It's a good game.

Bill: 30:46

game. Wow.

Chris: 30:49

Jason knows he wants to play it. Don't, don't, don't, don't act like you're not going to try it, Jason.

Bill: 30:56

Now I know why you picked the short story as well, so

Jason: 30:58

game. Don't, don't, don't. Don't act like you're gonna drive, Jason. I don't know why you picked this game. I'm glad to hear that you think it's good.

Chris: 31:02

honestly do. I'm not trying to be funny or make for good listening content. I've enjoyed it so far. I think it's good. I really do.

Bill: 31:09

I've enjoyed it so You know what I think we need to bring our four computers in. Cause you never played Warcraft. Did you like the original Warcraft or Warcraft two? We need to do that or, or, uh, right. empire's dawn of the modern world or some really good real time strategy game where that's what you do is you build

Chris: 31:25

Cult of the Lamb is good

Bill: 31:27

Yeah, but you, I mean, when you're talking about building buildings and creating an army and going after one person or the other or against the computer, I mean, those games are really the bomb. So it'd be interesting to see how you would compare the game that you're playing now versus those

Chris: 31:39

I will tell you, I never played a game like this, this base builder type thing where you're taking a, barren landscape and you're building it up in the way that you need, but also the way you want. There's, this is going to sound weird, but there's kind of like this aesthetic part of the game where you're like, well, I could just put the outhouse here, but it would really make more sense if I put it over here because it's next to this building, you know, it doesn't matter. But your mind starts to think about how you would want everything to look, you know what I mean?

Cameron: 32:05

There's also the convenience thing. How far do you really want to walk to go over there every time you need

Jason: 32:10

Chris will be fully prepared when he decides to start his cult.

Cameron: 32:13

get there. Sorry, this came too

Chris: 32:14

too far from the summoning circle, I mean honestly

Cameron: 32:17

training ground.

Bill: 32:18

and like in a, in a world of Warcraft or Empire of Dawn of the world, where you put your, town hall is really important because it's how far are the people going to walk to do the thing that they need to do? And it's a time based thing, right? So if you're making them walk halfway across the map, then you're going to lose. You've got to put it, you have to be a little strategic about where you place it. Yeah.

Chris: 32:37

Yeah, I'll have to look into it like I said I've enjoyed it so far especially that aspect

Bill: 32:41

fun.

Chris: 32:41

Alright.

Jason: 32:42

are. So, yeah, in the Halloween theme, I think I've mentioned this. My wife has actually been the cocktail maker in our house lately, but she made something the other night and then we were talking about the Halloween episode and I was like, that That would actually work perfect for this. So, we have a, Maple New York Sour, which may not sound very, Halloween y off the top.

Chris: 33:01

is two ounces

Jason: 33:03

this is two ounces of bourbon, an ounce of lemon juice, a half an ounce of maple syrup, all mixed together, strained over ice. What makes it Halloween themed

Chris: 33:13

So what

Jason: 33:14

is that you float a half an ounce of red wine on top of this. So the drink itself is kind of like a yellowish, pale yellow, beige y color. Then you float red wine on top, so you pour it very gently over the top, and it actually, floats on the top, and it looks like blood seeping down through the drink.

Bill: 33:29

I took a picture of it. We'll have to share

Jason: 33:31

Yeah, but it mixes that sweetness of the red

Cameron: 33:34

for the first time in like six years.

Chris: 33:36

Yeah, that's right.

Jason: 33:37

Yeah, the sweetness of the red wine with the tanginess of the lemon and the bourbon just goes really

Bill: 33:42

me the recipe again. Two ounces of bourbon. What's the other?

Jason: 33:44

Two ounces of bourbon an ounce of lemon juice a half an ounce of maple syrup the good kind not like anchomima

Bill: 33:51

Good time.

Jason: 33:52

like real maple syrup and then a half an ounce of red wine floated on top I've seen some recipes call for an egg white as part of it, too But i'm not a big egg white fan. So I leave that out

Cameron: 34:02

The egg white is traditional for the whiskey sour.

Jason: 34:06

Yeah,

Bill: 34:09

like the tea. you mix it hard or anything? Do you try to

Chris: 34:11

dry shake.

Jason: 34:12

it real hard.

Chris: 34:12

Dry Shake it no ice.

Bill: 34:14

shake.

Jason: 34:16

a pretty popular classic cocktail. this one just kind of adds the maple syrup to it which gives it a little bit more, flavor and depth

Chris: 34:22

nice.

Bill: 34:23

gonna try this at my bar at home. This is cool. I love

Jason: 34:26

it.

Bill: 34:26

Good job Jason.

Chris: 34:27

Good job, Jason. All right. Well. It wouldn't be a Halloween episode We didn't do a little Halloween trivia

Bill: 34:37

is

Chris: 34:37

because I have to torture my friend

Bill: 34:39

my goodness.

Chris: 34:39

for Halloween

Bill: 34:40

Should we tune back into the episode to hear what happens first or do you wanna do

Jason: 34:44

don't like it. It's just torture.'cause I'm terrible at it. Yeah. And then I get made fun of her being terrible at it.

Chris: 34:49

Since Jason and I have been fighting a lot lately I definitely felt like we needed to do the trivia section this year so I could torture him even more

Bill: 34:58

Do we have prizes?

Jason: 34:59

Oh, we're actually keeping

Chris: 35:00

Oh, we're keeping score, my friend,

Bill: 35:03

What do we win, Chris?

Chris: 35:04

uh, the glory of being the best.

Cameron: 35:06

Alright,

Chris: 35:06

So similar to last time, if you are ready to answer, as I'm reading the question, you say answer. Okay. That's going to be like buzzing in and that gives you first guess at the question. If you're incorrect, you will lose a point. Okay. So you can't just buzz in and then. Take a wild guess. You should try to at least think you might know the answer. Okay? I did a few more questions this year than I did last time. So it's gonna be a little bit more involved All right, but I tried to stay off the 80s slasher stuff because I don't think that's y'all's forte Okay, so I tried to incorporate a few other things

Cameron: 35:40

few other things.

Chris: 35:42

Okay,

Bill: 35:43

Yes, you.

Chris: 35:44

the spooky Halloween trivia music. All right. Question number one, everybody knows that Reese's is the most popular kind of Halloween candy. However, which of the following is not a type of Reese's candy? This is multiple choice. You don't have to buzz in for this one. Everybody's just going to pick an option. So which of the following is not a type of Reese's candy?

Cameron: 36:08

candy?

Chris: 36:09

Reese's Nutrageous, Reese's Big Cup with Almonds, Reese's Outrageous, or Reese's Fast Break.

Cameron: 36:18

not

Chris: 36:19

is not an actual Reese's

Cameron: 36:23

them again.

Chris: 36:25

Reese's Nutrageous, Reese's Big Cup with Almonds, Reese's Outrageous, Reese's Fast Break. A, B, C, and D.

Jason: 36:34

with Almonds. Reese's Outrageous. Reese's

Chris: 36:37

Okay? Bill?

Jason: 36:38

B,

Bill: 36:38

whatever that outrageous

Cameron: 36:39

Fast Break. A, B, C, and D. Big Cup with Almonds.

Jason: 36:42

with

Chris: 36:42

is Big Cup with Almonds.

Bill: 36:44

Really?

Chris: 36:45

Reese's Outrageous is an actual Reese's, and it is awesome, by the way, if you've never had it. It's my favorite.

Cameron: 36:51

I want one. Now, is that my prize?

Chris: 36:53

That's right. Have you had it?

Cameron: 36:54

No.

Chris: 36:55

It's like a Nutrageous, but instead of nuts around the

Cameron: 36:57

around the inside, it's Reese's.

Chris: 37:01

it's incredible. Yeah. So who got that? Cameron got

Cameron: 37:04

I, I, I know that Reese's knows better than to put freaking almonds in their delicious candy.

Jason: 37:10

candy.

Chris: 37:10

I was trying to throw people off with the nuts, but there's no almonds, no off in Reese's. All right. Question number two in the long running scream movie franchise, ghost faces, first onscreen victims were Casey Becker and her boyfriend, Steve. Which actress played the role of Casey Becker?

Jason: 37:31

of

Bill: 37:32

were 90s.

Chris: 37:33

That is incorrect.

Cameron: 37:34

screen yeah that

Jason: 37:35

movie?

Bill: 37:36

What did you say?

Cameron: 37:36

you said you were staying away from slacker hunter that's 90s

Chris: 37:39

Wasn't

Jason: 37:39

I thought you said you were staying away from Slasher Horror. That's 90s.

Cameron: 37:42

you say

Jason: 37:43

did you say? 80s. Oh, okay,

Chris: 37:46

Oh, okay. I'm sorry, I like the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th stuff.

Jason: 37:50

Okay.

Cameron: 37:50

Uh,

Chris: 37:52

Nobody's seen the first screen?

Cameron: 37:53

Nope.

Jason: 37:54

Nope.

Chris: 37:55

Oh boy,

Bill: 37:55

I haven't seen any of the screens.

Cameron: 37:56

Who was it?

Chris: 37:57

Drew Barrymore.

Cameron: 37:59

Okay.

Chris: 37:59

Okay. They're going to get easier.

Bill: 38:02

should get a point for like trying.

Chris: 38:04

All right. So I'll

Jason: 38:05

that's the whole point. Bill, if you try and you get it wrong, you lose

Cameron: 38:07

very terrible

Bill: 38:08

This whole minus point thing. I'm against that. I mean, you should, you shouldn't have no minus

Chris: 38:13

it's going to get easier. I promise. All right. This is actually an eighties question. Okay. I'll warn you up front, but I think somebody is going to get this.

Cameron: 38:20

What

Chris: 38:21

of monsters are the lost boys

Bill: 38:24

Okay. Vampires

Chris: 38:25

that is correct very nice

Bill: 38:27

answer. Sorry.

Cameron: 38:28

In what context? The Lost, not the Peter Pan Lost

Chris: 38:31

Not the Peter Pan lost boys, there's a movie from the 80s called the lost boys starring Kiefer Sutherland

Bill: 38:37

Exactly.

Cameron: 38:37

Oh, their vampires. Oh, okay. Before he was an amazing anti-terrorism.

Chris: 38:43

That's right before Jack Bauer, yeah

Bill: 38:45

This is the first movie like that where they did the obvious thing of putting holy water into squirt guys to squirt it. Damn vampire. So it's like, why didn't they do that in every other

Chris: 38:55

done bill

Jason: 38:57

This is going well.

Chris: 38:58

Oh, no, no. Okay. Y'all be ready. Y'all are going to probably know this one. Question number four,

Cameron: 39:03

we buzz in for this

Chris: 39:04

buzz in, you say

Cameron: 39:05

say answer.

Bill: 39:05

Sorry, I must have to

Chris: 39:06

I'll take away a point if you do that again,

Jason: 39:09

do that again.

Chris: 39:10

in the Netflix show, stranger things, what is Dustin's favorite kind of Halloween candy?

Bill: 39:16

Answer. Yes. Oh, gis no. Dammit. Oh, I've, I know it. I should know it.

Cameron: 39:23

That's a great question.

Chris: 39:25

It's mentioned several times in the episodes yeah, yeah, he feeds it to the Demi the Demi dog

Jason: 39:32

I should know this because we're watching the first season of Stranger Things with, our oldest right now, but

Bill: 39:37

I have a second guess. Nobody else is going to guess, but only if it doesn't do minus.

Chris: 39:42

It will

Jason: 39:43

I know, I know he says something about nougat, but I think he's down, I think he's against the nougat.

Cameron: 39:48

the

Chris: 39:49

he's

Jason: 39:49

I don't know. Answer. Three Musketeers.

Chris: 39:51

is correct

Cameron: 39:52

Oh yeah, that's,

Jason: 39:53

It took a, it took a second to come to me.

Cameron: 39:55

Because he freaking names it that he names it after the three musketeers. Yeah, that's right.

Bill: 40:00

Yep.

Cameron: 40:01

Good job. Good job. Jason.

Jason: 40:02

Hey, I got a point. I got a

Chris: 40:03

Jason. You're tied for first right

Jason: 40:05

Oh my goodness. What am I going to do with myself?

Bill: 40:09

of every

Chris: 40:10

a minus. Alright, number five. Be ready.

Bill: 40:12

to

Chris: 40:12

Finish the following song lyric.

Bill: 40:14

with us and

Chris: 40:16

and girls of every age, wouldn't you like to see something strange? Come with us and you will see.

Bill: 40:23

it. Uh

Cameron: 40:24

Something about the Adams family.

Chris: 40:26

Boys and girls of every age, something strange. Come with us and you will

Cameron: 40:33

oh yeah, I know. Is it, are we

Chris: 40:35

Blank. Yes, you're finishing

Cameron: 40:37

Oh, something

Jason: 40:37

Something something Halloween.

Bill: 40:40

Yeah,

Cameron: 40:41

Yeah, it's, it's,

Jason: 40:43

I just watched this movie too,

Cameron: 40:45

is, this

Jason: 40:45

but I don't pay attention to song lyrics. It's, I literally watched this movie with my kids this week.

Chris: 40:50

Don't know it.

Jason: 40:51

I don't know it.

Chris: 40:52

The answer is this, our Town of Halloween.

Cameron: 40:56

of Halloween. There you go.

Chris: 40:58

Question six. This is AD and D ish question.

Cameron: 41:01

Let's go

Chris: 41:02

This atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over swamps, bogs, and marshes. Attempts to lead travelers off the trail where they will meet their demise. Name this monster.

Cameron: 41:16

Answer. Yeah. Swamp Pack

Chris: 41:19

No.

Bill: 41:20

A

Cameron: 41:20

This.

Chris: 41:21

This ghost light. Anybody?

Jason: 41:26

You know, I don't know this one.

Chris: 41:28

Bill, you got a guess?

Bill: 41:29

Only if it's not a minus. A

Cameron: 41:31

Only if it's not on my list.

Chris: 41:32

I'll give you a freebie.

Bill: 41:33

will o

Chris: 41:34

That is correct.

Cameron: 41:36

Yeah.

Chris: 41:36

It is a Will O Wisp. You got that, Bill. So, score update. Jason has one.

Bill: 41:42

Cameron has

Cameron: 41:43

Cameron

Chris: 41:43

has zero. Bill has zero.

Jason: 41:45

I am winning. So.

Chris: 41:48

Because I anticipated this. We're entering a Jeopardy style. We're actually gonna go into a category here. This is Stephen King trivia.

Bill: 41:56

I'm out.

Chris: 41:57

Really?

Bill: 41:57

Well, I'll try. Yeah, I didn't read. I

Chris: 41:59

All right, you ready? First question in this category. What breed of dog is Cujo?

Jason: 42:06

I haven't read this one. Good guess though.

Cameron: 42:07

Really? What Cujo? Answer. Yes.

Chris: 42:09

No.

Cameron: 42:10

Rottweiler.

Chris: 42:11

Good guess though.

Bill: 42:12

It's a minus.

Chris: 42:14

Yes.

Bill: 42:14

I'm not going to guess. I think I know.

Chris: 42:17

Come on. Just go for it if you think you know.

Bill: 42:20

All right, uh, answers. St.

Chris: 42:22

That is correct. St. Bernard.

Bill: 42:24

Look at me.

Chris: 42:25

Well done. Alright. Name the Stephen King movie adaptation that the following line comes from. They're all going to laugh at you.

Jason: 42:36

Answer.

Chris: 42:37

Yes.

Jason: 42:38

It. Did you know the answer to all of these questions? Absolutely,

Chris: 42:42

Did I did. I wrote

Cameron: 42:43

I

Chris: 42:44

I totally know this. I saw this movie numerous times when I was a kid. Well,

Bill: 42:47

did. I wrote them. I will guess without the minus, but.

Chris: 42:50

Gosh. Alright, no more minuses. Good grief. Alright, go ahead. It is Carrie. It is Carrie. That's the mom. to get Carrie to not go to the dance. Cause she's like, they're all gonna laugh at you. And then they dunk the pig's blood on her head and she kills everybody. Spoilers. I've

Cameron: 43:07

Sounds awful.

Jason: 43:08

you.

Chris: 43:08

It is kind of awful. Next question. What is Christine?

Bill: 43:13

I answered the car.

Chris: 43:15

that is correct.

Cameron: 43:16

I'm just going to say my wife. That's a real name. Everybody.

Chris: 43:21

Multiple choice. Which of the following is a Stephen King pen name? Richard Bachman, Clive Staple Lewis. Robert Galbraith, Charles Dodgson,

Bill: 43:35

same again, again,

Chris: 43:36

Richard Bachman, Clive Staple Lewis, Robert Galbraith, Charles Dodgson.

Bill: 43:43

Richard Galbraith, I have a one of two guests.

Chris: 43:44

Go for it. Everybody gets to guess,

Bill: 43:47

Go for the second one.

Chris: 43:48

okay? Clive Staple Lewis,

Cameron: 43:51

I'm gonna go with A. Okay. The

Chris: 43:53

The

Jason: 43:54

I'm going with B.

Chris: 43:55

answer is A, Richard Bachman. Why is B incorrect, Cameron? Oh, I'm sorry, Staples,

Cameron: 43:59

Because that is C. S. Lewis name and it's Staples.

Bill: 44:03

Oh yeah. That's funny.

Jason: 44:05

Oh,

Cameron: 44:05

Oh, I'm sorry. Staples. Yes.

Jason: 44:07

I knew it wasn't C because that's J. K. Rowling. Right.

Bill: 44:09

right.

Chris: 44:09

That is correct, yeah, and then Charles Dodgson is Lewis Carroll,

Bill: 44:13

right?

Chris: 44:13

actually.

Bill: 44:14

Yeah. I'm, I'm reading all the GRE books. They just posted one, a new one now, so.

Cameron: 44:19

Lewis

Chris: 44:20

All right, having fun?

Bill: 44:22

Yeah, man.

Jason: 44:22

Oh yeah. This is great.

Chris: 44:24

Hopefully everybody's playing along at home. It's fun for me. All right. I'm going to give you the plot of a Stephen King book turned into movie adaptation. One sentence, name the movie or the book. In the future, prisoners try to earn their freedom on a game show where they have to survive a gauntlet of professional killers. One of whom is dressed up like a hockey goalie. That is correct. Running man.

Cameron: 44:51

Bill's crushing us. He's

Chris: 44:53

crushing it right now. Bonus question. The game show's host Killian was played by actor Richard Dawson. What game show did Richard Dawson host in real life?

Bill: 45:03

in real life?

Cameron: 45:07

Wow.

Chris: 45:07

Family Feud. Fun fact, my family was on Family

Cameron: 45:10

You said Richard Dawson. All I could think of was Richard

Chris: 45:14

Not, not when Richard Dawson was the host. When Ray Combs was the host of Family Feud, my family was on Family

Bill: 45:20

Wow.

Jason: 45:21

You were on it?

Chris: 45:22

Not I. I was in first grade.

Jason: 45:24

grade.

Chris: 45:25

Yeah. My mom, her three sisters, and my grandfather. They won the first day, lost the second day.

Bill: 45:31

Cool.

Chris: 45:32

No, no kidding.

Cameron: 45:34

my grandfather, they won like a fun fact, right? Like if you ever have to introduce yourself and give a fun fact to an entire room of people. Be like, my family was once on family feud.

Chris: 45:42

Like my family? What's a Family Feud?

Jason: 45:43

yourself

Chris: 45:44

All right. Got a couple more here. Hang in there guys. Let's score update. Bill has five Cameron Jason have zero. So

Jason: 45:51

Because

Cameron: 45:52

I came back from negative one though, so...

Chris: 45:54

have going for a second here. You got this. All right. We're going to continue with the theme. Just a couple more single sentence movie plots. I'm going to read a sentence. You tell me what movie it is. This is a weird one. It's old

Cameron: 46:08

what movie it

Chris: 46:09

man adopts a son to replace his recently deceased son, but instead ends up with the antichrist.

Bill: 46:17

a son, replaces recently deceased son,

Chris: 46:21

is correct. Bill.

Bill: 46:22

with the

Chris: 46:23

horror.

Bill: 46:24

The You guys. That

Cameron: 46:25

Jason and I, by reputation, don't know crap about this stuff.

Chris: 46:29

Y'all

Jason: 46:30

yet Chris does this every year. Yeah,

Chris: 46:32

fun for me. Alright. Two more. Two

Cameron: 46:34

two more.

Chris: 46:36

Woman tries to bring peace to a creepy, well dwelling girl, but instead unleashes a monster that kills people through their TV screens. That is correct. Well done.

Jason: 46:46

That's not a scene

Cameron: 46:48

I still haven't seen it. Don't plan to.

Chris: 46:50

It's pretty terrifying. Alright, last one. A girl hits a man with her car. Dumps his body in the water and ends up getting terrorized by a hook wielding madman

Cameron: 47:05

Answer. The Hitchhiker.

Chris: 47:08

No Like the guests though. No, no, know what you did last summer

Cameron: 47:17

I'd I think I, this is actually one that I

Chris: 47:20

Did you see this

Cameron: 47:21

some reason I thought it was called the Hitchhiker and not.

Chris: 47:24

But that's the one you were thinking yeah All right. Well, Bill, you won

Bill: 47:30

you won. Yay! You came

Chris: 47:31

points. Well done. Jason came in second with one Cameron had zero, but Hey, this is good effort. Appreciate the effort.

Cameron: 47:39

a follow

Bill: 47:39

with

Jason: 47:39

question

Cameron: 47:39

for you. Yes. What show did Richard

Bill: 47:41

one, Cameron had zero, but hey, good effort. Appreciate the effort. Oh,

Chris: 47:45

Was it a game show? Oh, I have no idea.

Bill: 47:49

It was Hogan's heroes.

Chris: 47:50

No way.

Bill: 47:51

was one of the, was a British guy there, I think, or something, but anyway,

Chris: 47:54

Yeah, I think Richard Dawson was the first host of family

Bill: 47:57

I think he was,

Chris: 47:58

I'm not mistaken, so like back in the seventies, old school.

Cameron: 48:02

Speaking of game shows, how wild is it that Pat Sajak is no longer on Wheel of Fortune?

Chris: 48:07

Is he not?

Cameron: 48:08

Pretty sure, like,

Jason: 48:09

Really,

Cameron: 48:11

sure that he's like, being replaced. Really? Or like he's gonna retire or something soon.

Chris: 48:16

This is like ends of an era. Cause you know, yeah, you know, I was

Jason: 48:19

like, I'm, I'm pretty sure he was a robot like five years ago. Oh, look this up right now. Yeah.

Bill: 48:26

Um,

Chris: 48:28

watching jeopardy with my mom and dad. The other day and I was killing it only reason because it was celebrity jeopardy. The questions are easier. My parents were thinking I was like complete genius. They were like, you should enter. And I was like, no,

Jason: 48:41

Normal Jeopardy,

Chris: 48:42

I'm getting like, you know,

Cameron: 48:44

15%. What was I thinking? Thinking that I could Google something on my phone out here in the,

Chris: 48:50

not out here.

Cameron: 48:51

in the upside down.

Jason: 48:55

Uh,

Bill: 48:55

That was fun, Chris. I enjoyed

Chris: 48:57

Well, thank you, bill.

Jason: 48:58

I'm glad somebody did.

Chris: 48:59

I'm glad somebody appreciates the time I spent to think up all those questions that yes, I do indeed know the answer to

Cameron: 49:05

They were good questions. All right. Well. There's your banter session. It's only an hour long.

Chris: 49:10

Yes, good,

Cameron: 49:11

Let's get into the games. Let's do it. This episode is gonna be like four hours long.

Chris: 49:15

it is not

Cameron: 56:35

The mad doctor's cooked up something evil in this clever strategy game. Choose a potion card from your hand to add to one of the three colored cauldrons. Being careful not to let the pot go over a total value of 13.

Bill: 56:53

go over

Cameron: 56:54

If the cauldron boils over, you must take all the potion cards in it, including any poison. Be the player with either the most or none of any potion color and you're safe. Otherwise, take the risk of receiving a deadly dose.

Bill: 57:13

Right, and your pudding pops.

Jason: 57:15

of receiving a deadly dose. Right in your pudding pot.

Bill: 57:16

Right, and your pudding. Oh my

Jason: 57:19

I think you just explained all the rules,

Chris: 57:21

Yeah, pretty

Jason: 57:22

you just saved

Cameron: 57:23

And that is how you play Poison

Chris: 57:27

published in 2005

Jason: 57:29

That's how you play it! Oh man. Poison. Published in 2005. By

Cameron: 57:32

by

Chris: 57:33

many publishers, Playroom Entertainment, Amigo, Yellow, Scorpion Mask, and many, many others. At the time of this recording, it's BGG Rankin's 2, 268. Designer of this game is Reiner Canizia. You might have been able to recognize that from the box art. The, uh, guy on the front there, the crazy looking

Jason: 57:54

everyone can definitely see.

Chris: 57:56

That, yes, well, I'm talking to y'all. Reiner Canizia there on the box?

Cameron: 58:01

Oh, it is him! Look at that! I recognize that haircut.

Chris: 58:06

Hey, that's right.

Cameron: 58:08

Yeah.

Chris: 58:09

That's him. Well, so a few

Cameron: 58:12

stirring it with one of his airline spoons.

Chris: 58:16

a few years back when we first started the podcast, we started a thread on our BGG guild taking recommendations for Halloween themed games, and yes, I am still referencing that. So if you would like to get mentioned on a show, it's a good way to do it.

Cameron: 58:27

Who referred this one?

Chris: 58:28

Ultima ratio,

Cameron: 58:30

Oh man. We got so many recommendations from

Chris: 58:32

Paul Sue yacht. Yeah. Recommended poison. So I thought that this would be a good one for this episode. So thanks Paul for the recommendation. All right. Brief rule summary for poison, also known as Friday, the 13th, also known as Baker's dozen, by the way, if I didn't mention that earlier.

Cameron: 58:50

I didn't mention that earlier. In

Chris: 58:51

In the game Poison, players are trying to avoid taking cards, or are they? While, at the same time, trying to poison their opponents. In the center of the table are placed three large cauldrons upon which cards will be played. The deck in Poison consists of three 14 card suits, red, blue, and purple, with each suit containing two 4s, and then three 1s, three 2s, three 5s, and three 7s. In addition to these three suits are eight... Four value green poison cards.

Cameron: 59:25

In poison,

Chris: 59:26

players gain points by capturing cards. Each suited card a player collects during the game counts as one point against them, regardless of the value of the card. Unless they have the most cards of that color of suit at the end of the hand, then all of their collected cards are worth zero points. However, each poison card a player collects is worth two points, regardless of the number of collected, so... Even if you collect the most poison, that doesn't help you. You're just going to take two points for every poison card. And again, in case it wasn't clear, you want a low score in this game. So points are bad, man. I was crushing it. Y'all

Bill: 1:00:02

a single card to one of the

Jason: 1:00:03

Fill in it.

Chris: 1:00:04

each round, all of the cards are dealt out to the players. Play begins by a player playing a single card to one of the cauldrons. The first suited card played to a cauldron determines the color of that cauldron for the rest of the hand. So if I play a red seven to a cauldron, that is the red cauldron. Now, only red cards can be played there, and I cannot play a red card to either of the other two cauldrons. If a

Bill: 1:00:26

So if I play a red seven to a cauldron, that is the

Chris: 1:00:28

player plays a card to a cauldron, And they cause the sum value of cards on the cauldron to exceed 13. That player must collect all of the cards that were on the cauldron, leaving behind the card they just played. It should be noted that the green poison cards can be played into any cauldron, regardless of suit. So you can play them anywhere, whenever you want.

Bill: 1:00:49

can

Chris: 1:00:50

Play continues on this way until each player has been dealer once. And at that point, the player with the fewest points wins the game.

Cameron: 1:00:58

play Poison.

Chris: 1:00:59

how you play poison,

Jason: 1:01:00

That's

Bill: 1:01:00

At that

Chris: 1:01:02

and gentlemen.

Jason: 1:01:02

and

Chris: 1:01:03

All right. So as we like to do on these themed episodes, we usually ask a theme based question. So I would ask you, did the spooky Halloween kind cauldrony.

Bill: 1:01:15

potions

Cameron: 1:01:16

double, boil in trouble, cauldron

Chris: 1:01:19

Mixing potions and a cauldron feel come out. Did you feel like you were trying to poison people in this game? Did that come through? What do you think?

Bill: 1:01:27

that feel

Jason: 1:01:28

and a thousand kind of things. Pens. Does math speak Halloween to you?

Chris: 1:01:33

such low hanging fruit. Jason on a Canizia game. It's so mean.

Bill: 1:01:37

I

Jason: 1:01:38

mean. That's

Cameron: 1:01:39

see why you could call this game poison the number four, green cards function as a sort of a poison to the pot

Bill: 1:01:48

is it

Cameron: 1:01:49

type of a thing. So, I mean, I can see it. if we were going to be harsh, would we call it pasted on, like, is it a little telling that the game is also known as Baker's dozen and something else. Right. I

Bill: 1:02:00

well, to me, I thought it kind of, worked especially given the fact that, one of the incentives is to get the most in a color so if that's a strategy that you started to employ and you're taking all the colors, other people know that they're going to start poisoning that pot that you're going to, that you're going to take those colors. And so to me, I, I did feel that. strategy and, or feeling that somebody is just taking something away from me because they, they, they poisoned my potion that I wanted. kind of felt that. So yeah, I thought it was kind of cool.

Jason: 1:02:30

kind

Chris: 1:02:30

I totally agree with that. It does become a bit of a blood in the water feeding frenzy. As soon as the first person takes the first color of cards, because usually people are trying to hold out as long as possible because of the reason the bill just said, once you capture a color, Usually, and maybe our group suffered with a little groupthink in this one, and maybe we weren't playing optimally, but usually if you have to take, take the thing you're going to get the most of, and then automatically, that's just an invitation for everybody at the table to just poison the heck out of that thing, right? Because they know you kind of want it, right? So you feel that, you feel like you're being poisoned, at least I was.

Jason: 1:03:10

interesting thing about that though is that if you, grab a large chunk of red cards, say, and then everybody gets on the train of like, well, we're just gonna poison the heck outta red. Now nobody can take red or nobody wants to take red. Mm-Hmm, But I still have the most red. So like somebody's gonna have to take it at some point.

Cameron: 1:03:29

Yeah, the interesting thing we noticed happens, and maybe this is by design, is that eventually all of the various pots, the three pots will equal 13. And so it doesn't matter where you place A card, you have to play something from your hand

Bill: 1:03:48

do I

Chris: 1:03:49

Yep, you know you're

Cameron: 1:03:50

you're going to take something. And so you have to weigh this decision that do I take a kind of a new color that someone hasn't sort of claimed yet? Or do I take

Bill: 1:04:01

person to

Cameron: 1:04:02

the other color that someone that already has claimed and try to start competing with that person? To maybe overtake them. And we saw that happen a few times where two thirds of the game. You're like, I'm, I'm red, you know, I'm going to, I'm, I'm getting all the red cards and then someone overtakes you. And now suddenly you're stuck at the end of the round with five points or something like that.

Chris: 1:04:24

Yeah, I would say that we did find, that scenario that you were outlining, Cameron, where. the piles were coming up to 13, especially early in the hands. Once we had learned the game, which means we had played like two hands of it. Basically we're coming up to 13 and you were being forced to take something. Even if your cards would dictate that you may not want to was happening quite a bit. A lot. Actually, I

Cameron: 1:04:49

and you were

Chris: 1:04:49

say

Jason: 1:04:49

I mean, the game, the game's kind of designed to make that happen, right? The way, the way the numbers are distributed. It's like he intentionally set up the numbers so that they would as frequently as possible add up to 13, which I mean, it's good because it, because

Chris: 1:05:02

just adding to it. I mean, in

Jason: 1:05:04

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just adding to what you said. And I think that, I mean, in one sense that speeds the game along, right? So it doesn't, you're not just adding one at a time and it takes forever to get anywhere close to something, but it forces that situation a lot. Which I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But

Chris: 1:05:21

It's a bad thing.

Jason: 1:05:22

yeah, I mean, I would tend to think that's a bad thing, right?

Cameron: 1:05:24

mitigate

Chris: 1:05:25

a bad

Jason: 1:05:26

Cause you can't mitigate it. There's no, there's not really a way to mitigate it. I think your best chance in this game is to assess your hand and say, okay, well I have a lot of red and I have a lot of maybe high value red, so I know I can flip red over 13 probably more times than I can a different color. So I have a good chance of grabbing a lot of red. And then you just hope that people don't poison it too many times, that was kind of my strategy going into most rounds of this. And then it's just kind of the things are going to fall where they fall.

Cameron: 1:05:55

yeah.

Bill: 1:05:56

So the cards I thought the numbering was pretty creative, I guess, as far as being able to naturally get you to 13 in a bunch of different ways. But when you were leading, One of the points of decision, I guess, was, are you going to laid a high card at the beginning? Are you going to lead a low card? Or do you ever save your, sevens, right? Or is it always the best strategy to place a seven on a cauldron, at the beginning so that you don't end up having to take a pot?

Cameron: 1:06:23

numbers are more liability,

Chris: 1:06:26

Are you

Bill: 1:06:26

well, that's kind of my question. Cause I have an opinion on it, but what do you think? Uh huh.

Jason: 1:06:31

on it, but what do you think? Well, before I make my

Chris: 1:06:32

going to leave are you think? You go ahead and make yours then. Complete your thought, because I definitely have a feeling about

Bill: 1:06:37

Yeah, yeah. 100 percent believe they are a liability. And for the most part, I would play them out early in the game. Unless I knew at the very beginning that I was going to be taking the most of a

Chris: 1:06:47

Right, right.

Bill: 1:06:47

because sometimes you could snipe a, a pile and get it to 14 before somebody had a chance to put a poison on it. Because sometimes it'll go a couple of times around and you can tip it over. You're saying that

Cameron: 1:06:58

a and you would want to do that later in the round than earlier.

Bill: 1:07:01

and, and what I would do, partly. So that people wouldn't know that necessarily I was going to go for red the whole time, but I would hold my higher ones back so that I could do that at least once, or at least hold one. I would never hold two.

Chris: 1:07:13

you think you're gonna catch the most of that color you were saying. Exactly, yes. I don't disagree with that. I think you're right.

Bill: 1:07:19

But for the most part, it's just a given that you play your sevens first.

Chris: 1:07:22

star, right? Because they're more swingy, right?

Bill: 1:07:25

Oh, absolutely.

Chris: 1:07:25

a one or a two, a card that affects the outcome of the total. In a much smaller degree is just a safer card if you don't want to catch that color,

Bill: 1:07:32

catch that call. Right. And it ends up in the situation where there's three 13s around and somebody at the table is

Chris: 1:07:38

yeah, so that's a great segue into my point. This is the one last main point I want to make So I think the mark of any good card game is Where you have that hand? Where you just know how it's going to play out. So again, we referenced teach you often here, but I'll reference it again. Cause I think it's a good example. This doesn't happen all the time and teach you. Cause if it did, it wouldn't be interesting, but it does happen on occasion. Where you'll get a hand and teach you. And you're like, I know exactly how to do this. I know I'm going to go out first, unless something crazy happens. Like somebody has two bombs or something. You just get a loaded hand and the game has built in control mechanisms to it, to where, you know, you're just going to control it. Like you look at it and you're like, I know I'm going out first in this game. I had a hand where my whole hand was literally nothing but ones, twos, and two fours, literally the lowest cards you can have. And it was an equal distribution of color. So it's not like I had a whole bunch of red,

Cameron: 1:08:35

bunch of red.

Chris: 1:08:36

literally, if there was a game and poison where you would think. It was the most predictable hand possible, it would be this, okay? Equal distribution of colors, all the lowest cards possible. I was like, I'm not gonna catch anything. In fact, I caught the most of one color. With ones and twos.

Jason: 1:08:56

I think in that hand I had seven sevens. Yes,

Chris: 1:08:58

because I had all the low cards, right? And that just showed me, there is no control in this game. Because like we were saying, the piles go to 13 all the time. if the piles get brought up to 13, it doesn't matter if I have ones or twos, I'm taking them. And that's indeed what happened. And so I guess the point I'm making is, for me, for a card game, there has to least be some of those instances where like, I know how it's gonna go. And in this one,

Bill: 1:09:26

one, there is

Chris: 1:09:28

no knowing. It's just random.

Bill: 1:09:30

there

Cameron: 1:09:31

knowing.

Chris: 1:09:31

Because there is no hand where you're like, I know how to do this because you just don't know what's going to happen in this game. It's crazy.

Bill: 1:09:37

The game gives you

Chris: 1:09:38

The game gives you illusion. I think of control and I think you can play your cards intelligently, but in the end, I don't think it really

Cameron: 1:09:45

yeah, you know, it's wild. I never thought about this stuff before we started a podcast and started reviewing games,

Bill: 1:09:52

started

Cameron: 1:09:53

games like this definitely make me wonder, are there games out there that They're not meant to function like some of the games that we really enjoy, like function, right. Where are they, operate in this very sort of strategic space where you're thinking about things a couple of moves ahead of time. And you can math it out a little bit and maybe guarantee on some level that you're going to win. Right. And, on the other hand, there may be games that this falls into that category where it's like. It's more about this sort of collective experience of

Bill: 1:10:23

and, and,

Cameron: 1:10:23

going along for the ride and laughing it up and, and like, Oh, I can't believe that happened. You know, type of stuff. I don't know. I'm trying to think of another example of, games that we've experienced like that,

Chris: 1:10:35

There are a lot of them. Yeah.

Cameron: 1:10:36

it's just like, Oh man, you know, that was a fun thing. And that happened to you. Like, I think about like ink and gold, you know, like where. You can't really strategize about that. It's that's the most pure push your luck sort of game, you know? And the most fun that we've ever had was with people like Joe, you know, who just like,

Chris: 1:10:54

never

Cameron: 1:10:55

they're always going to push their luck and you laugh about it. Right.

Bill: 1:10:58

you

Cameron: 1:10:58

do you think this maybe falls into that type of category versus like a lot of the kind of card games that we really like?

Chris: 1:11:04

do. Yeah, I agree with

Bill: 1:11:06

though

Jason: 1:11:06

The thing though is, because I agree,

Bill: 1:11:09

time,

Jason: 1:11:09

but we have games like that, like ink and gold that we love that like bring laughs and stuff. in this game, do we have that level of fun? And maybe we're just curmudgeons who are always looking for like games

Chris: 1:11:21

what Bill's thinking.

Jason: 1:11:22

like deep strategy to them,

Bill: 1:11:24

you never want to come to a game party with these guys. I'm telling you.

Chris: 1:11:28

Oh

Jason: 1:11:29

that's all I'm saying. we have games that are not a hundred percent strategy that are, we're like, those that's an awesome game.

Chris: 1:11:35

Ink and gold. Or not ink and gold. Camel Up.

Jason: 1:11:39

Yeah.

Chris: 1:11:39

Camel Up is a lot of educated guessing. I feel like. But it's fun

Jason: 1:11:43

Those games are like hilarious every time we play them.

Chris: 1:11:45

Yeah.

Jason: 1:11:47

They're not boring and stodgy, Bill,

Cameron: 1:11:50

like,

Bill: 1:11:51

looking at me for this game and I haven't even said anything about it?

Cameron: 1:11:55

time

Jason: 1:11:56

with your eyes.

Cameron: 1:11:57

come

Bill: 1:11:58

right. So true.

Cameron: 1:12:01

They're

Bill: 1:12:03

for final thoughts?

Chris: 1:12:04

I think we can be, you want to start us?

Bill: 1:12:06

so yeah, my first line in here is it's a light game. You don't play with

Chris: 1:12:10

cremation.

Cameron: 1:12:11

curmudgeons.

Bill: 1:12:12

curmudgeons, right here. the opportunities for strategy aren't really plentiful. I think we kind of called them all out here. Do you play the high card at the beginning or not? Do you hold onto it? If you're, no, you're going to be shooting the moon for that color. there's just so many times where, You're going to take the poison, whether you wanted to or not kind of thing.

Chris: 1:12:30

you hold on till you're gonna take the suit or not? Do you take the suit or

Bill: 1:12:32

the suit or not, but I mean, I think for me, most of the time there was choices like, which poison am I going to take, right? Do I think I'm going to, possibly get the most in this other suit per chance. and should I, try that one as well?

Cameron: 1:12:45

one as

Bill: 1:12:45

That is something really difficult, I think, in this game to do is to get, at least with four players, to get the most in two separate

Chris: 1:12:52

the four

Bill: 1:12:53

you would really have to have the right hand for that. And somebody almost isn't paying attention.

Chris: 1:12:58

really have five.

Cameron: 1:12:59

want to, right?

Jason: 1:12:59

right. Yeah. The interesting thing about that,

Cameron: 1:13:01

more poison.

Jason: 1:13:02

and, and, and nobody else is gonna take any points if you have all the cards, right?

Bill: 1:13:07

that's true. Exactly. So yeah, that's true. Anyway, it was pretty fun. I enjoyed the plays. I mean, it wasn't like I felt like I want that hour back in my life because, because I didn't have fun. But I, you know, as far as, as a ratings concern, I would put this in a three category. We play some really great trick takers, I think in our last, uh,

Chris: 1:13:27

in the last month or two months. Yeah, Brock Toten. to me. Yeah, I think I

Bill: 1:13:31

and this one just doesn't run in that pack to me, so I'm going to give it a three.

Cameron: 1:13:36

Fair enough. Yeah, I think I sort of gave away my final thoughts a little bit in my previous comments of just this idea of like, okay, is this game in that category of are you supposed to have kind of a crazy zany experience of like, Oh, I can't believe that happened. You know, type of stuff. Maybe, but I think when it comes down to it, that's like, that's not really the sort of games that I really enjoy playing. Like if I'm going to play a card game, I do want to play something with a little more strategy or, you know, cooperative, like team based trick taking or other cooperative games, uh,

Bill: 1:14:08

uh, you

Chris: 1:14:09

Um, Yeah, I think

Cameron: 1:14:10

that, uh, you know. Uh, this one just didn't, do anything for me. I, it's hard. I was kind of on the fence with this one. Like, you know, is you want to say it's a bad game? Like two feels like a little harsh. but I honestly just really was like reflecting on my, plays of this, going like, I just didn't feel moved by it, I guess. And I think that's usually three territory for me. It's like, okay, it's not bad, but. It wasn't great. it wasn't super fun. usually I have this recap of my gaming night with my wife the next morning. Hey, hey, did you have fun? You know? And, do I want to tell her about the game that I played? Right. This is not one that I had that experience with.

Chris: 1:14:47

Interesting.

Cameron: 1:14:49

I think that's a two for me. Oh, sorry. A three for me.

Chris: 1:14:53

Okay. Yeah. So I'll start by saying I appreciate what this game is trying to do. And that's reiterating what you and Bill just said. think there is a market for this game. I get it. there are actually a lot of games like this that have these built in leveling mechanisms that help. What am I trying to say? I guess what I'm trying to say is. If you just played all strategy games with like your family that don't play a lot of games, you're going to win all the time. Right. And so that's not fun, right? You know what I mean? You're playing with your aunts and uncles or your cousins that aren't really gamers.

Jason: 1:15:25

This is like, I win all the games if I play with my family, so I need some games to have luck in them so that I

Chris: 1:15:30

that's not what

Cameron: 1:15:31

my family. So I use some games.

Chris: 1:15:32

you know, the point I'm making here is that there are games that intentionally by design throw in random elements as a leveling mechanism,

Cameron: 1:15:40

be fun for everyone else if they're not big

Chris: 1:15:42

To give, like, your kids a chance without you, like, throwing intentionally like they actually win because there is no control here. I get what Bill is saying about, yeah, you should think about throwing your higher cards and ones that you don't want to catch because the lower cards are less of a liability. But when push comes to shove, you can just as easily catch a color in this game with a one as you can with a seven.

Cameron: 1:16:03

7.

Chris: 1:16:04

That is fact. And so, because of that, I just have no patience for a game like this.

Cameron: 1:16:09

game like this.

Chris: 1:16:10

I get what it's trying to do, but it's not for me. This game was a complete exercise in frustration for me. It enraged me at times, I hated this game. This game is a too easy for me. I get what it's trying to do, and I can see why other people might like it, but me, hated it. Hated this game. Too. No,

Bill: 1:16:32

mass

Cameron: 1:16:33

Bad. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Jason: 1:16:35

Sounds like Calamambo. Alright, so, man, with four reviewers on the show, it's hard to come up with original thoughts going last year. So I'm not gonna, talk for a long time here. I think you guys have explained it pretty well. I didn't hate this game as much as Chris did, but it just didn't grip me. and I guess the one original thing I'll say is it's real long,

Chris: 1:16:57

it, it took 45

Bill: 1:16:58

took

Jason: 1:16:58

what it is. And so this is a game that feels like if it was rapid, you were just like playing through a hand, move on to the next hand, play through a hand, move on, but we were thinking about things and you would think that would

Chris: 1:17:09

if it was rapid,

Jason: 1:17:10

yeah, you would think like that that would indicate that, there's strategy here, but I think we were just overthinking things, trying to figure out what we were supposed to be thinking about. yeah, it felt long you play four hands by the time we were on like the second hand, I was like, okay, the game should be done by now. and that's never a good sign when I'm playing any game. So I'm solidly in the three camp on this one as well.

Chris: 1:17:29

That's

Bill: 1:17:30

Awesome. Look, we didn't tie all the way around

Chris: 1:17:32

did not. I brought us down.

Bill: 1:17:37

brought us

Chris: 1:17:37

And I'm proud of that.

Cameron: 1:17:39

All right. Well, our advice is not everything, so folks who wanna give it a try, where would they find it?

Chris: 1:17:47

Yeah, so interestingly, I find this surprising. This game is not readily available right now. This game has been reprinted a bajillion times again by different companies and different names, but under multiple tiles, I looked. There's no copies on Noble Knight of this game right now. There are 12 copies on BGG, so you can definitely get it. And they weren't expensive, but. I wouldn't consider this to be readily available, but this is not super unknown. I mean, a lot of people I bet that's listening to this right now have probably played Poison. So you probably know how you feel

Cameron: 1:18:17

mean, it's also fairly safe to say, I think you can probably cobble together like a couple of old playing card decks to make your own if you want to just try it

Chris: 1:18:25

There's not a lot to it. There's not a lot to it for sure. But yeah, if you want to play it, you can get it on BGG. That's what I'd recommend.

Cameron: 1:18:32

Great.

Jason: 1:18:34

are our thoughts on Poison. And

Cameron: 1:25:33

taught you the dark secrets of the undeath.

Bill: 1:25:37

poisoned.

Cameron: 1:25:46

servants, who were coincidentally made somewhat more loyal by the zombification process.

Bill: 1:25:53

Again.

Cameron: 1:25:53

now the master has fallen, And this time, those vial heathens have taken the inconvenient extra precautions of separating and inhuman some integral pieces His unliving remains. in these dire times. One has to look after his own,

Bill: 1:26:11

you're

Cameron: 1:26:12

and you're a necromancer who is more dangerous than most.

Bill: 1:26:15

You are

Cameron: 1:26:16

You are a necromancer with a business plan. Your zombies will dig up the graves and loot valuables, and while they're at it, they'll grab fresh body parts so you can make more zombies to dig up more graves.

Bill: 1:26:30

dig

Cameron: 1:26:31

Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, it's so good that other necromancers are after the same cemetery as you are.

Chris: 1:26:40

graves. Sounds good, right?

Jason: 1:26:43

Like any good Euro game.

Cameron: 1:26:45

Yeah. Grave business.

Chris: 1:26:47

that other

Bill: 1:26:49

Good job, Cameron.

Chris: 1:26:50

necroviruses

Bill: 1:26:52

All right.

Chris: 1:26:53

after the same

Jason: 1:26:53

in 2011 by Minion Games. Designed by Andy Van Zandt. The only other notable designs by Mr. Van Zandt would be bottle cap Vikings

Chris: 1:27:06

Not a

Jason: 1:27:07

And balloon pop. Currently ranked on BGG 14, 248

Chris: 1:27:13

Woo.

Cameron: 1:27:13

date. Oh, here we go.

Bill: 1:27:14

and

Jason: 1:27:14

it's

Chris: 1:27:15

14,000

Jason: 1:27:16

This is a hidden one guys

Cameron: 1:27:18

Is it higher than Smiley Face?

Chris: 1:27:21

It might be.

Cameron: 1:27:22

be.

Jason: 1:27:24

All right, so rules summary. Grave Business is a worker placement game Where players represent evil necromancers intent on acquiring the most riches. by digging up graves. Players begin the game with a player board that shows 10 grave sites numbered 4 through 13

Bill: 1:27:44

grave

Jason: 1:27:45

with a laboratory space and a vault.

Bill: 1:27:47

along

Jason: 1:27:48

grave spaces on your player board represents one of the player's worker zombies,

Bill: 1:27:53

at least

Jason: 1:27:54

at least potential worker zombies. So, before a worker can be used, it must first be constructed from various body part tiles that players will be collecting throughout the game.

Bill: 1:28:05

constructs a

Jason: 1:28:08

Each body part tile has a number on it. And once a player has collected enough body part tiles, such that they're numbers, some to or exceed one of their unused gravesites, the player can choose to construct a new worker zombie on that space. They do this by taking all of those body part tiles, shuffling them face down, and then stacking them on the chosen gravesite. And then they take the corresponding worker token for that grave.

Bill: 1:28:33

them on the

Jason: 1:28:33

and that becomes a worker for them.

Chris: 1:28:36

them.

Jason: 1:28:36

Each player begins the game with three workers that are active. The 13, the 11, and the 9 space.

Cameron: 1:28:42

space.

Jason: 1:28:42

Each round of play, players will be placing their workers in various locations. Either onto a central cemetery board that's shared by all players, or potentially onto an opponent's player board. So, let's talk about this central board first, because that's where the majority of the action is going to occur. The Cemetery Board is a 4x4 grid with spaces around the perimeter for placing workers. Each of the 16 spaces will be randomly populated with a tile from a bag, and I'll talk more about what those tiles are in a second. Each player's workers

Bill: 1:29:13

player's

Jason: 1:29:14

have printed on them a number of brains and a number of bones.

Bill: 1:29:19

number

Jason: 1:29:19

Brains determine the strength of a worker, whereas bones are a tiebreaker if opposing players match on zombie brainpower.

Chris: 1:29:27

of a worker, whereas bones are a

Jason: 1:29:29

When a player places a zombie onto one of the perimeter spaces, that zombie will apply its strength to each of the tiles in its corresponding row or column, depending on where it's placed. Zombies are placed face down, however, so other players will not know the strength of that zombie.

Chris: 1:29:46

player influencing the

Jason: 1:29:46

Multiple zombies of the same player, influencing the same tile, sum their values. like, at the intersection of a zombie row or a zombie column.

Chris: 1:29:55

we're playing...

Bill: 1:29:55

playing... Yes! We're hot over here.

Jason: 1:29:58

We're playing,

Bill: 1:29:59

had too many New York towers.

Jason: 1:30:02

Chris is over here. Chris has had too many New York Sours.

Chris: 1:30:06

I had to split the uprights

Bill: 1:30:08

He did. He just got three

Jason: 1:30:09

He's playing paper football with candy wrappers.

Chris: 1:30:12

Sorry, Jason, go ahead. This rules explanation is super boring.

Jason: 1:30:19

Alright, so you're placing zombies around this cemetery. Their brain strength adds together to influence the rows and the columns, yeah?

Bill: 1:30:28

columns.

Cameron: 1:30:28

Yep.

Jason: 1:30:28

After all the workers have been placed, each of the 16 spaces is evaluated to determine which, if any player, happens to exert the most influence on a given tile. The player with the most influence takes that tile. So, what are these tiles? They can be one of four different things. They're either body parts... Are

Cameron: 1:30:48

you

Chris: 1:30:49

serious? Are we distracting you?

Cameron: 1:30:52

Yes!

Jason: 1:30:52

Really?

Chris: 1:30:54

Okay, sorry. Alright, go ahead. We're gonna listen. Body parts, got it.

Jason: 1:30:59

So what are these tiles? They can be one of four different things. They can either be body parts, these go

Cameron: 1:31:04

to a player's laboratory. They can be va

Jason: 1:31:07

to

Bill: 1:31:07

Like

Chris: 1:31:11

Very important.

Jason: 1:31:12

These have a point value printed on them and they go into a player's vault.

Bill: 1:31:16

printed on

Jason: 1:31:18

special zombie abilities. These get placed on top of a player's worker body part stack on his gravesite and can be used to trigger special abilities and things. And then there are three parts of the master. So these go into a player's vault along with other valuables. They have no point value, but if a player happens to grab all three parts of the master, And hang on to them by the end of the game, they will instantly win.

Bill: 1:31:42

So that's

Jason: 1:31:42

So that's the central board. There are a couple other places where you can put workers. You can place a worker on another player's vault. This allows you to steal a valuable in a random draw if that worker happens to still be there at the end of the round.

Chris: 1:31:54

the

Cameron: 1:31:55

place

Jason: 1:31:55

on another player's laboratory. This allows you to steal a body part via random draw. If that worker happens to still be there at the end of the round, or you can place a zombie on the attack board and each zombie that's placed here immediately performs an attack.

Chris: 1:32:11

immediately performs

Jason: 1:32:12

in attacking the attacker chooses any zombie that has already been placed by another player. The attacked zombie is revealed.'cause remember, they're placed face down

Chris: 1:32:21

fight's

Jason: 1:32:22

and a tile from that zombie's body part stack on its grave site is flipped over. This game's ridiculous Some of these body part tiles say the zombie fights back. Most of them do not.

Chris: 1:32:38

zombie

Jason: 1:32:38

if a fight's back tile is revealed, the attacker must then flip one of his tiles over. From the attacking zombies pile of body parts.

Chris: 1:32:47

zombie's

Jason: 1:32:48

This goes back and forth until either the attacker or the defender flips over a tile that does not have a fight's back ability on it. At which point that zombie loses the fight. If the attacker loses, nothing happens, other than that he wasted an action. If the defender loses, that zombie is removed from the board for that round, freeing up that action space.

Bill: 1:33:10

action.

Jason: 1:33:10

In either case, tiles flipped over from a gravesite remain flipped, and if the sum of the numbers on the flipped tiles ever meets or exceeds one half of the total value of that worker, Then that worker self destructs permanently.

Bill: 1:33:25

self destructs

Chris: 1:33:27

apart, man.

Bill: 1:33:28

apart, man.

Jason: 1:33:28

Falling apart.

Bill: 1:33:29

apart. Once all

Jason: 1:33:30

Once all the workers and cemetery tiles have been resolved, players have the opportunity to use their body parts from their laboratory to construct new workers. Like I've said, the cemetery board gets refilled, and we do it all over again. The game ends when the cemetery cannot be refilled, at which point the player with the most points from their valuables and their unused body parts.

Chris: 1:33:51

parts of the map and has

Jason: 1:33:52

Wins the game. Unless of course, someone has all three parts of the master, in which case they win

Cameron: 1:33:58

right.

Jason: 1:33:58

and that's it.

Cameron: 1:33:59

Regardless of what, and that is precisely

Chris: 1:34:02

wasn't perspective. There's a lot going on in there. Yeah. I left that

Jason: 1:34:04

That wasn't precisely,

Bill: 1:34:05

lot going

Jason: 1:34:06

a lot going on in here. It's not going to

Chris: 1:34:08

we started off talking about that forward. This game,

Cameron: 1:34:09

there. Yeah.

Bill: 1:34:10

Yeah.

Chris: 1:34:10

there's nothing else.

Jason: 1:34:11

I left out a few things.

Bill: 1:34:12

off

Jason: 1:34:12

All right. So we started off talking about theme with poison. I feel like we should carry that forward this game. If nothing else is thematic. So let's talk about that. Did you guys get the feeling of being evil necromancers? Raiding graves.

Cameron: 1:34:29

comment on the art first.

Jason: 1:34:30

Constructing workers from random body parts.

Cameron: 1:34:32

a blank, a

Bill: 1:34:33

I'll say I did. I'll comment on the art first. I thought the art was just awesome. each one of the necromancers comes from four different realms, there's the mad scientists in the Frankenstein realm. There's, a mummy builder. Mid Junction mummy. I thought, I think I was a Louisiana witch doctor kind of thing. And then there's another one. Anyway. So I thought all of those, kind of hit that out of the park So it was very, very cool.

Jason: 1:34:55

Yeah, I think the whole, constructing your workers and watching them fall apart thing. That definitely comes through as very thematic

Chris: 1:35:02

this is a great idea I think. The idea of digging up body parts to construct a worker and depending on how many body parts you want to use you can make a stronger worker or a weaker worker

Bill: 1:35:14

hmm.

Jason: 1:35:14

a

Chris: 1:35:15

was a really cool idea, I think.

Cameron: 1:35:18

you can make like a stronger worker or a weaker worker. It was a in terms of theme from me when not only is the artwork consistent with the theme, but the actual game mechanisms are consistent with the theme. And I do think that comes through in this game.

Chris: 1:35:33

Yeah, for sure. would like to comment a little bit more on, on the worker

Jason: 1:35:38

more on the worker structure. Yeah let's dive into that because I feel like that's uh, that's one of the most unique parts about this

Chris: 1:35:42

For sure. That's what I think really makes this game unique and interesting really, because there's a lot, in my opinion. There's a lot to think about, about this component of the game. Again, you're placing workers in the graveyard in an attempt to acquire more tiles along those columns and rows to construct more workers, right? And so there are a few things to think about here. One,

Jason: 1:36:04

You do

Chris: 1:36:05

you do have the opportunity when you're collecting things from the graveyard to get treasures. Treasures are super valuable in this game. Mega points way more than body parts because unused body parts in the game worth points too, but treasures are super valuable, but at least early in the game, you are taking into consideration. Yeah. I'd like to have the treasures because it's a ton of points, but you will find that if you fall behind in workers and everybody has like four or five workers and you have three, you kind of feel behind, even if you have a lot of points. Right. So you kind of want those body parts, although. If you could pick up three treasures, it might be still worth it, right? So that's a good decision point. Two, do I build a really strong worker that's hard to fall apart and has a really strong influence? Or do I,

Jason: 1:36:49

Explain what you mean by strong and weak. Cause I'm not sure that came through.

Chris: 1:36:52

So if you take a lot more body parts and you create a higher value worker, like a 12 or a 13. His tile that accompanies him has more brains on it. So he's stronger as a worker in his influence. Whereas if you construct like a four value zombie, he might just have one brain on him. But the trade off to that is you're getting him out quick. Right? So do you want to flood the board with a bunch of cheapy zombies that aren't very strong but you have a bunch of them? Or you could construct one really strong guy. Right?

Jason: 1:37:23

You also have the strength in terms of how durable they are, right? Because if you, remember you're constructing these things out of body parts and they're numbered one to three, I think. So the smallest worker is a four, right? If you construct him out of a three and a one,

Chris: 1:37:39

have

Bill: 1:37:39

one.

Jason: 1:37:40

right? One tile flip, most likely, right? He could be gone.

Chris: 1:37:43

You have 3.

Jason: 1:37:44

Versus if you constructed him out of four ones.

Bill: 1:37:47

you

Cameron: 1:37:48

if you know, you have at least two or you have three. Yeah, three flips, right? Before that worker self destructs. So,

Bill: 1:37:56

I totally agree. And I think there was a lot of, strategy to that. And I feel like in my games I played, I played it poorly because of kind of the way the attacking mechanism works. Because, as the game progresses, there is the big fight over the graveyard, right? There's a fight over the tiles. It's a, that part is, is pretty awesome. One of the strategies that they kind of manifested, if there's a row in there that has like a lot of body parts that certainly you need in the beginning, or a lot of points that you really wanted to bookend both sides of it, right? You put one of your zombies on one side and one on the other, and that would double up your power all the way across that, row or column. however. with the way the attacks work, you could drop a zombie on the attack and then one of the zombies on that row or column, has to flip over one of their body parts. And if it does not say attacks back, then they get removed from that column. And which ends up being huge. And so what I found in all of this, and it's, kind of interesting is that having smaller zombies was, seemingly a really good strategy because you could use that.

Cameron: 1:39:04

people left when nobody

Chris: 1:39:05

If it does

Cameron: 1:39:05

people

Bill: 1:39:06

The people left and nobody else does, and you could leverage it to take out somebody that could be way bigger than that number four guy, you could take out a 12 guy right on, on that row. And if you're vying for parts on that row, you've just won the lottery kind of thing. to me, it's, it's a fascinating and kind of cool strategy.

Chris: 1:39:24

of

Jason: 1:39:24

of felt like, in a lot of ways, like a game of chicken. It's like you want to try to have more workers than other, people, and you're trying to hold off on the things you really want as long as possible to, to wait until everybody else runs out of workers, and you pick off their workers and sneak into the spots that you need.

Chris: 1:39:42

just looking over at cameras, see if he's had anything positive to say about the game for we,

Cameron: 1:39:47

I had a great experience with this game. great.

Chris: 1:39:52

All right, Cameron.

Cameron: 1:39:53

I mean, I don't

Chris: 1:39:54

How about we move into cons? what wasn't great about this game?

Cameron: 1:39:57

of every time.

Jason: 1:39:59

don't know, I feel like

Cameron: 1:40:02

A game has more than a little bit of take that,

Chris: 1:40:06

Yeah.

Cameron: 1:40:07

this game is adversarial.

Chris: 1:40:09

Oh my gosh.

Cameron: 1:40:09

I mean, you, in order to play this game, I think properly be kind of aggressive and, what's the right word here? You, you have to,

Chris: 1:40:19

You have to like,

Cameron: 1:40:20

yeah, you have to go after your opponents and you can't be shy about it.

Chris: 1:40:24

yeah, you have to go out there and

Cameron: 1:40:26

Yeah. Like for sure.

Jason: 1:40:29

is confrontational.

Bill: 1:40:30

Right? Like every move that you place is. Every move

Chris: 1:40:32

you can't be shy at all.

Jason: 1:40:34

is

Cameron: 1:40:34

with the exception of maybe taking the star point. Right.

Chris: 1:40:37

Which even lets you peek at somebody's tile which could be at a confrontational But yes, when you place on the graveyard board, you're likely being confrontational with people Certainly when you place on other people's boards to steal Confrontational when you put on the attack Confrontational,

Cameron: 1:40:53

single thing that you do is aggressive. Yes. So bear that in mind. If you're considering playing this game, it's hard to maintain. I think a lot of the positive feels if you're not doing well, because any move that anyone takes is going to make you feel. You're in the target sites for sure, right?

Chris: 1:41:12

last few rounds of this game were just a complete bloodbath. Yeah. I mean totally. It's complete bloodbath. I

Cameron: 1:41:17

I'm gonna attack you, I'm gonna attack you. You lose your guy, you just wasted your turn. I just exploded. Your zombie

Chris: 1:41:26

I'm not

Bill: 1:41:27

I totally agree. And one of things that I think about this game, that if I were to change the design in any subtle way, it might be having a few more. Or higher percentages of zombie fights back cards in it. Because when we played, we had very few zombies on our teams have fought back to people who attacked. And, I would have liked to have seen more people's zombies fall apart. Cause I mean, it was kind of cool to hear that as part of the rules. And I was kind of nervous about that. And I built bigger zombies thinking that that would be something that happened regularly, but it just didn't happen to many of us at all. And maybe if the game went on a little longer or something, I don't know that that might've happened more. Maybe there's a different strategy that might've made that happen a little more. But I think increasing the numbers of fight backs would have, made that, Something to be a little bit more concerned about when you're making your decisions.

Jason: 1:42:23

I think. I think you summed up my biggest criticism of this game when I was thinking about it in that

Chris: 1:42:29

for

Jason: 1:42:29

as the construction and deconstruction of workers is such a cool concept in this game, I found that by the end I was like, we didn't actually use any of these mechanisms at all.

Bill: 1:42:40

Right.

Jason: 1:42:46

If you go all low zombies, right? Like all the low numbers, they're going to be super fragile and they're going to fall apart. The problem is though, that when you attack a zombie. You don't know what zombie it is.

Chris: 1:42:57

is.

Cameron: 1:42:58

is. Right.

Jason: 1:42:59

when I attack Chris's zombie, I'm randomly attacking one of his workers.

Chris: 1:43:04

so, in

Jason: 1:43:05

And so the best case scenario, if he has three or four workers, I'm randomly attacking your workers and hoping that I knock enough tiles off to kill one of them. that's not a good strategy for me. Especially when attacking your workers doesn't really do much for me. It doesn't gain me anything other than, it knocks you off of a space that maybe that I want. And so, and,

Cameron: 1:43:27

the main thing that it's meant to do, right? Like it is, it's like now I'm not competing against that one of Chris's workers. That was opposite of mine.

Jason: 1:43:35

No, absolutely, yeah, but if that is your primary strategy is to attack, you're not gonna win, because you're not collecting anything. Because all you're doing is you're attacking other people. that in and of itself does not benefit you. You have to attack other people and be able to place out on the board to gain things. So early on in the game, you don't have enough workers to make it worth attacking other people. And the longer the game goes on, the more workers everybody has, which means the lower your odds are of actually being able to hit one particular worker enough times to kill it, right? And so it de incentivizes you to even try to attack for that purpose. Like you're still attacking because you want people to be off spaces, right? But as long as they don't keep going to the one space you care about with the same worker over and over again. Which is pretty easy to not do. You're never going to kill a worker. Like, I don't think we S we didn't see it happen at all. And so,

Bill: 1:44:27

Like, oh, I lost that guy.

Jason: 1:44:29

and it's because your odds of actually killing a worker are so low, it doesn't make any sense. And, even if you manage to do it, just out of random luck, I hit the same worker of Chris's four times in a row and I managed to kill it.

Bill: 1:44:43

point, the

Jason: 1:44:44

By that point, the game's almost all over, right? So any benefit that I get of having killed his worker, because I don't get anything for killing his worker, I just knock his worker out and he can't use it. Or what the one round that's left in the game, like, what good is that? So think that's kind of where it fell apart for me. Ah,

Chris: 1:45:02

me.

Jason: 1:45:03

I didn't, I didn't even mean to do that,

Bill: 1:45:05

that. But, yeah, I, I, when I, you know, they can

Jason: 1:45:08

but yeah, I, I, when I first heard the rules, I was like, this is a cool mechanism. Like you have to construct your workers and then they can fall apart. That's awesome. But it never happens.

Chris: 1:45:18

I can. Because,

Cameron: 1:45:19

happens. And

Jason: 1:45:19

And so it's like, well, if it never happens, then of course, I'm going to construct my cheapest workers every single time, because like, why am I going to spend time wasting my effort to construct a 12 when a four will do.

Cameron: 1:45:30

am I going to spend time wasting my time

Chris: 1:45:33

is that actually like, somehow, the game can

Cameron: 1:45:35

constructing when a 4 will do?

Chris: 1:45:38

something like

Jason: 1:45:39

Well, yeah.

Chris: 1:45:42

Right. Because, like, I think

Jason: 1:45:44

Or maybe if like, if I kill somebody else's worker, I get points or something. Right. Like incentivize me to do

Chris: 1:45:50

Should we move into final?

Cameron: 1:45:52

Might as well.

Bill: 1:45:53

Sure.

Chris: 1:45:53

Cameron's talking. You're up.

Cameron: 1:45:55

I'm up?

Chris: 1:45:55

You're up, man.

Cameron: 1:45:56

alright.

Jason: 1:45:57

Lay it on us.

Cameron: 1:45:58

Alright, so, it's honestly been a while since I've played a game that had as much, take that,

Chris: 1:46:04

you just, you know,

Cameron: 1:46:05

as this game. I was really grateful that as we were playing it, we were very lighthearted about like, Oh man, you just, you know, you just cracked me over the skull and, you know,

Jason: 1:46:15

have

Bill: 1:46:15

well,

Cameron: 1:46:16

yeah, like,

Jason: 1:46:17

recent track record.

Cameron: 1:46:18

but there's definitely this, this aspect of every single person that takes a turn. You're like, seriously, come on,

Chris: 1:46:24

like, yeah, Bill and I, I yelled at Bill a couple of times. I'm sorry, Bill.

Bill: 1:46:28

our recent track record. But there's definitely this, this aspect of it,

Chris: 1:46:31

You did

Cameron: 1:46:32

to be honest, yeah. To be honest, it's like. It honestly, it just about doesn't matter. Like what else is happening in a game if that's the nature of the game? I'm like, that's not why I came to game night, you know?

Chris: 1:46:44

Right.

Cameron: 1:46:45

and when I come away from that, it doesn't make me want to play it again. And I mean, that's where I went home and after playing this game, I was like.

Bill: 1:46:53

Avoid it. And

Cameron: 1:46:54

I mean, that was fine. I'm glad we got our podcast prep in, you know, but I don't really want to do that again, if I can avoid it. and whenever I feel that that's too territory, you know, it's hard to say like the two different phrases, like this is a bad game and I don't like it. Right. And I'm glad that the, I don't like it falls into two, ranking for me. I don't know if it's a bad game. Maybe other people think it's great.

Bill: 1:47:18

when it comes

Cameron: 1:47:19

When it comes down to it, I just don't like it. And if you were like, Hey, let's play great business. I'm going to be like, I will play something else. I'll sit this one out. So to

Chris: 1:47:27

Okay.

Bill: 1:47:28

game

Chris: 1:47:28

So for me, I'm going to give this game a three. I'll come out and say it right away. And I feel kind of bad to give it a three. The reason being is I do think this game has a lot of really good ideas in it. honestly, the worker construction component and figuring out how to, make stronger or weaker workers, then a whole idea of collecting components to create more workers, as opposed to having a spot on a board where you can get another worker, like most worker placement games, you're actually building it

Jason: 1:47:57

to

Chris: 1:47:57

with components you've collected in prior rounds. I thought it was a cool idea.

Cameron: 1:48:01

Create

Chris: 1:48:01

Not to mention the fact we never even really talked about this in review, this whole idea of the master. If you get all three pieces of the master outta the graveyard, you just win at the end of the game if you have them. And Jason got close to doing that

Bill: 1:48:12

one of our games.

Chris: 1:48:13

in one of our

Jason: 1:48:13

the

Bill: 1:48:13

you never randomly draw the right

Jason: 1:48:15

map right, to doing it.

Bill: 1:48:16

I'm

Chris: 1:48:16

Well, sure. I'm just saying that you had two of the three and then the last round you were gunning to get the third and it added tension to the game.'cause the threat of you pulling it off was, was there,

Bill: 1:48:28

it off was, was there. 20 percent

Chris: 1:48:29

I mean it was close. So like that was good.

Cameron: 1:48:31

But

Bill: 1:48:31

But my

Chris: 1:48:32

But my gosh, is this game confrontational. I mean, it is so harsh.

Bill: 1:48:38

confrontational way where

Chris: 1:48:39

confrontational in a way where there's just a lot of loss. You know, Bill, you talk about this a lot, the psychology of loss aversion. I don't necessarily shy away from harsh games. But this game is harsh in a way that just, doesn't really make you want to come back. In that you just get things taken from you all the time in this game. Take this, take that, I take this, you lose this, you lose that, there's just loss, loss, loss. And, as I thought about this game, every time I thought about, do I want to play Grave Business again? No.

Bill: 1:49:10

No.

Chris: 1:49:11

Cause I didn't want to go through that. I didn't want to put myself through that.

Bill: 1:49:15

It's

Jason: 1:49:16

It's some Grave Business.

Chris: 1:49:17

It is, it's a grave business. I was like, do I really want to go through this process of having all my stuff stolen and my workers killed? No, I don't. it's too much. So to me, I think that component of it was, it pushed me down to a three. I think there are people that will like this game. If you like that degree of meanness, I think it's way better than being in the 14 thousands. Like I said, I think it's got cool ideas. It's just a little too harsh for me. So I'm going to give it a three.

Bill: 1:49:44

3.

Jason: 1:49:44

All right, I will come out and say that I'm giving this a three as well. but for slightly different reasons than Chris. The confrontational aspect of this.

Bill: 1:49:53

didn't

Jason: 1:49:53

It's definitely there a hundred percent. It's there. I didn't feel it for whatever reason in this game. I didn't feel it quite as harshly as I have in some others.

Chris: 1:50:02

what you I think the ideas

Cameron: 1:50:04

pick. Yeah, I'm curious

Jason: 1:50:05

yeah, I'm curious to say. I think the reason why I'm giving you a three kind of goes back to what I. ranted about earlier. Which is that as cool as the ideas are in this game. It felt like they were underutilized It felt like there was a balance issue somewhere where Those ideas just didn't shine through right is like cool idea after cool idea Except, I played through the whole game and never used any of them, or never saw any of the things actually happen, or actually impact the gameplay. And so, that's just kind of disappointed me, I think. when I was like, initially excited by the prospect of like, what this game could have been, and then you play it, and it's like, Oh, I don't really see how those mechanisms would ever really come into play, because of the way the game is structured, or because of the way the game is balanced. So. Is that I think that's why I went in on a three. I do want to hear your

Chris: 1:50:55

So quickly in the games that we played, I noticed that you went for getting a lot of workers and you always had more workers than we did. And so that actually protects you from being attacked because we all knew that if we knocked you off of a spot, you would just go right back. And so because of that, people weren't going after you as much because it didn't make sense to. You know, because

Jason: 1:51:17

Yeah, and, and with, and with a lot of workers, I'm inherently going after other people because, because the central board fills up quickly. And once that's filled up, it's like, well, I have three workers left. I guess I'm just going to attack a bunch of

Chris: 1:51:28

Right, exactly. And inflict pain on everybody, yeah, totally. Which is what you should do. In that position.

Bill: 1:51:37

Yeah, well, that was good. I mean, Jason, I think I've kind of aligned with your thoughts. I do feel like there's so much potential here and it wasn't realized. I feel like if this has been play tested like five more times or something like that, there were some tweaks.

Jason: 1:51:49

tweaks that they could have made to just make this

Bill: 1:51:53

I don't know if there's any ways to house rule some of these things. Cause I do think having, zombie fights back more, um, would actually go a long way to fixing this game because

Jason: 1:52:03

Because you think

Bill: 1:52:05

you'd think twice about it and, that would at least engage some of the rules that are in here. You would actually see them manifest themselves. and maybe just playing it one more round or something so that you could, you could see some of your zombies deplete, maybe two more rounds or something. I don't know. It might make the game too long for what it is, but, Anyway, I'm, kind of in the three world as well, but it just pains me to do it. Cause Chris, I'm like you, I think there's just so much to this game that is cool. Um, and I also feel like there was a lot of take that, but there was like, that's what this game is, right? This is a take that game and it, and it really didn't bother me that much. It was like, okay, that was a good move. You just stole something from my vault. It was like, I, I hate that, but I'm going to steal some from you now.

Jason: 1:52:48

I have a lot of high point value tiles and there's a space

Bill: 1:52:51

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So, I mean, to me, I, there was no, animosity towards it. It was like, well, that was a good move. and or the strategy of I'm going to attack you here in the last round and take you out of that road that I know that you really want as

Chris: 1:53:05

that I

Cameron: 1:53:05

worst. Oh my gosh.

Bill: 1:53:06

Cause

Chris: 1:53:07

know

Bill: 1:53:08

I mean, it really hurts. Cause you're, you're like planning. Cause I can like really screw you up early when you're.

Jason: 1:53:12

go

Cameron: 1:53:13

from getting four tiles to getting maybe one.

Bill: 1:53:16

Right, exactly.

Chris: 1:53:17

like a killer.

Bill: 1:53:18

is a killer. But I mean, to me, it's like, this is strategy, right? And I mean, it is strategy at his best because it's not luck, right? and you could play with the first player marker and move things around and maybe that's when you needed to be first or when you maybe needed to be last. So, I mean, I think this, game is right for a lot of different strategies. And I really thought hard about giving it a four, but

Chris: 1:53:39

4, but

Cameron: 1:53:40

wondered

Bill: 1:53:40

partly because, I wondered if you could like put a little tape on a couple of those things and make the zombie fights back or something to just make this an awesome game,

Chris: 1:53:49

it? Unfortunately, no copies at Noble Knight. However, there are 11 copies on BGG.

Jason: 1:53:55

BGD at

Chris: 1:53:56

reasonable price. So if you want to give it a try, kind of explore this game. I think it's an interesting exploration in the worker placement genre it's worth looking at again, I will reiterate way better than 14, 000. I think that's just because not a lot of people have played it. It's not horrible by any means. All right. Those are our thoughts on grave business.

Cameron: 2:00:03

A dark void is opened and undead creatures are attempting to enter our world. You are a team of uniquely skilled guardians. Who must work together to send them back to their unholy land.

Jason: 2:00:16

Every moment they

Cameron: 2:00:18

moment the undead grow more powerful and threaten to overwhelm.

Jason: 2:00:23

part of their

Cameron: 2:00:24

you complete the banishing and close the void before a terrible evil destroys us all?

Jason: 2:00:30

Yes, I

Chris: 2:00:32

I can.

Bill: 2:00:32

no, you can't,

Jason: 2:00:33

this, guys. We can do

Bill: 2:00:36

a dreamer.

Jason: 2:00:36

guys. It's

Chris: 2:00:37

can do this, guys.

Jason: 2:00:39

vanishing...

Chris: 2:00:42

The Banishing

Jason: 2:00:46

At the time of

Chris: 2:00:46

published in 2017 by WizKids. At the time of this recording, it's BGG ranking is 5, 617. Designer of this game is Sean Rumble. This is his only published design. This game was again recommended to us on our, Halloween episode, guild page by EmperorPenguin. He's made a couple of recommendations in the past.

Bill: 2:01:16

love that name.

Chris: 2:01:17

That's pretty cool, right?

Cameron: 2:01:19

Alright,

Chris: 2:01:20

brief rule summary for The Banishing. The Banishing is a cooperative game. Yeah, you heard that right, where the players take on the roles of D& D style heroes fighting together to banish evil undead monsters from the realm. The banishing consists of a deck of 98 cards and 8 character sheets. The deck is made up of 54 symbol cards, 38 undead monster cards, and 6 item cards. The symbol cards come in 3 different colors, and each color comes in 3 different symbols.

Bill: 2:01:55

The

Chris: 2:01:55

The undead monster cards show only a single number on them, which is how much damage a hero will take if they collect that undead monster card.

Cameron: 2:02:04

Monster

Chris: 2:02:04

item cards are useful cards that the players can collect to help them win the game. Each player is dealt three symbol cards to start the game. Then all of the cards are shuffled or falling apart and the top nine cards are laid out in a three by three grid known as the void.

Bill: 2:02:21

3x3

Chris: 2:02:23

combination of symbol cards, undead cards, and item cards.

Cameron: 2:02:28

On a

Chris: 2:02:28

player's turn, they will do two things. First, they will take a row or column from the void. So again, the void is a 3x3 grid of cards. So you can take any orthogonal row or column of three cards, but no diagonals.

Bill: 2:02:43

orthogonal cards collected

Jason: 2:02:44

3 cards, but no

Bill: 2:02:46

their

Cameron: 2:02:46

A diagonal.

Chris: 2:02:47

Diagonal? Whatever, man.

Cameron: 2:02:49

man.

Chris: 2:02:50

Any symbol cards collected are added to their hand. Any undead monster cards collected go next to their character sheet as damage. It's important to note that each character class has two numbers on its character sheet. A smaller number, which is its stamina, and a larger number, which is its health. If the numerical face value of undead cards next to a player's character sheet equals or exceeds their stamina, they are exhausted and they can no longer use their unique abilities. If the value of undead cards equals or exceeds their health, they are defeated and the entire team loses the game. Once a player has taken their cards from the void, the empty spaces are refilled with new cards from the deck. Now, the second thing a player will do on their turn after they've collected their cards from the void is use an ability. So again, each character has unique abilities and then shared common abilities. So the shared common abilities are things that everybody can do. They're not unique to any character. Everybody can do them. So you can either swap cards in the void, so exchange two cards positioned in the void. You can trade cards with another player, or you can rest, which lets you eliminate your lowest valued undead from next to your character sheet. Now, where the game gets really interesting are the unique abilities. Every player has a character sheet that has six unique abilities, and they're unique. No character has the same abilities. They're color coded. Every player has two red, Two green and two blue unique abilities, and these colors correspond with the symbol cards that are present in the game. So, if I have three red cards in my hand, I can spin those to perform the weakest red ability. However, the other red ability, if I have three red cards in my hand and the symbols on them all match, so that's harder to pull off, You got to do a little bit of hand management, but that lets you do a more powerful red ability. red and the green abilities have to do with healing each other of wounds and managing the void. However, the blue cards, and this is very important, allow each player to do something called a banishing. So banishing is where you remove a card from the deck and put it off to the side. If you're able to banish 10 cards, During the course of the game you win. Okay, so that's what you're ultimately trying to do The players will lose if a player dies if all players are exhausted or if they have failed to complete the banishing So gotten ten cards in the banishing after cycling through the deck a third time. That's generally how you play the banishing

Bill: 2:05:29

you

Cameron: 2:05:29

Well done.

Chris: 2:05:30

All right, to do when people are playing Paper football while you're doing rules, but I stayed True to myself

Bill: 2:05:38

hang

Chris: 2:05:40

and I powered through

Bill: 2:05:42

So

Chris: 2:05:43

Is you did Alright, so staying on with theme again This game, it's Halloween y themed in that you're banishing vampires and werewolves and ghouls and goblins and such, but you're kind of playing D& D characters, right? So D& D classes, like you're Bard and you're Sorcerer and things like that. Do you feel like that theme came through in this game? Either in the art and or the mechanisms of the game?

Bill: 2:06:10

it

Jason: 2:06:10

And I will say it did feel like the different classes were different in their special abilities like your, big brute fighters, your tanks, you know, have the high stamina and bash everything type abilities.

Chris: 2:06:23

Right.

Bill: 2:06:23

The

Cameron: 2:06:24

your

Jason: 2:06:24

you have your more nuanced characters like the bard or the thief, right? It didn't

Cameron: 2:06:29

is all like luck based.

Jason: 2:06:31

It's like you, you

Cameron: 2:06:32

Bard like lets other people do stuff.

Chris: 2:06:35

Yes, a commander type role, you know, controller

Cameron: 2:06:38

you know, controller running. Yeah.

Jason: 2:06:39

Yeah. So not being a very

Cameron: 2:06:40

inexperienced D&

Jason: 2:06:43

I mean, it did feel like there were at least some noticeable differences that, you know, made the classes feel unique.

Bill: 2:06:49

kind

Cameron: 2:06:50

mean, in terms of theme, like it, does kind of tightly, align with a Halloween sort of a theme? I mean, yeah, like there's always the sort of the fear of monsters, right. it may not be maybe the most traditional sort of Halloween theme, but, definitely. if you had said this is a, an adventurer, and D type theme, I would say you definitely feel that you, feel the need to play to your, allies, strengths and that sort of thing and cooperate, the way that you would if you were playing dungeons and dragons.

Chris: 2:07:20

Dragons. Yeah, I

Bill: 2:07:21

Yeah, I felt like the way that they divided up the abilities on the cards and divided them up into, like you're saying, the sorcerer, the barbarian, the fighter, the bard, the thief, they all really felt like they were matching what that theme was. So it felt kind of, cool in that aspect. So I thought they did a really good job of. I'm thinking through what it would look like to be that character in the context of what the game was. So I thought that it was awesome.

Jason: 2:07:47

good idea. I totally agree. I remember at one point in one of the games that we played, we played this game several times, I think Cameron was playing a sorcerer, and he

Chris: 2:07:55

And so I thought they

Jason: 2:07:55

something in the void

Chris: 2:07:57

did a really good job of, of of what the game was.

Bill: 2:08:02

Fireball. Cool. You

Chris: 2:08:02

I was like, is that fireball? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, cool. having a knowledge of D and D and I was actually able to decipher what spell they were going for. I did not know that I just guessed, but the ability that he performed made sense to me and resonated with me and my knowledge of D and D right. Yeah, that makes sense. That's what that character should do, right? So it was kind of immersive in that way. I appreciated that effort. I

Cameron: 2:08:27

in addition to the fact that the way that the different character stats, are oriented, aligns with it,

Chris: 2:08:32

Oh, yeah, they're squishy

Cameron: 2:08:33

the wizard and the, sorcerer squishy and the brute and the fighter are tough.

Chris: 2:08:38

Yeah

Jason: 2:08:38

fireball,

Bill: 2:08:38

Yeah, the other cool part about like the fireball, once you kind of get an idea of what other people do in the fact that it's a co op game.

Jason: 2:08:44

a

Bill: 2:08:44

That will take out a two by two square, I guess, of things around. So you can talk ahead and say, Hey, if you group, these undead monsters in this four grid, be able to take them out next round kind of thing, which cool.

Chris: 2:09:06

beast that you're

Cameron: 2:09:07

character abilities that you're playing, right? that's what I think in a lot of ways gives this game flavor and yet I really felt a need. And I think you guys did too. Of not neglecting the standard actions that you can take and that made an impact on me just because I feel like I've played a lot of games like this, that have this sort of list of standard actions and it, they tend to become this thing of like, well, if you can't do anything else, then do those things. And I think because this game is cooperative. You're actually really incentivized to pay close attention, and maybe even give priority in some cases to those standard actions on your turn

Chris: 2:09:44

maybe even give priority in

Cameron: 2:09:45

maybe you're sitting there holding cards that you could play one of your special actions. It's still worth it. In many cases to go, does anyone need a card? Is it, would it help anybody if I swapped some cards here? Right.

Chris: 2:09:57

here? Right? Exactly. And because it's a

Cameron: 2:09:59

And, and because it's a cooperative game and because you're going to lose, if you don't think like a team, I thought that was cool that sometimes the best thing that you can do is not to play your special moves and to just do something that helps the guy next to you.

Bill: 2:10:14

do

Chris: 2:10:14

I

Jason: 2:10:15

Yeah.

Bill: 2:10:15

next

Jason: 2:10:15

think one of the other interesting things about this game. Is that, co ops get a bad rap because of the quarterbacking issue, right?

Chris: 2:10:23

well, you

Jason: 2:10:23

easy to just say, well, you should do this because that's the best move. Like go do this, go do that.

Bill: 2:10:28

do

Jason: 2:10:28

I don't know. I felt like in this game, it did a great job of balancing having enough information about other players, characters that you're like generally aware of like what they're capable of, but You have enough abilities that there's no way that I'm gonna remember what they all are. I can barely remember what mine are. I'm constantly referring to my sheet, right? And that does an incredible thing in that We all collectively kind of understand the boundaries of what's possible and can all sort of strategize around Oh, well, if we can like move these cards around that would be awesome, but I don't know exactly what your abilities are And so I can't be like, well, Cameron, you should play your special green ability right now because that's the best thing for us, right? Because I don't know what your special green ability is because I can't keep track of that in my head.

Chris: 2:11:13

my

Jason: 2:11:14

so,

Chris: 2:11:14

so, like,

Jason: 2:11:15

and so, you still have that possibility of like, well, I know what my special abilities are and I know how they can contribute.

Chris: 2:11:21

contribute.

Jason: 2:11:21

I don't know, I don't think I'm explaining it well, but it helps prevent that quarterbacking feeling because you have your own, you of agency around your own abilities because only you know what they are And it's not because they're secret, but it's just because there's an information limitation, right of what other people can hold in their brains

Chris: 2:11:40

a 3x3

Jason: 2:11:40

And so I found be one of the better of those two things where it's like everybody collectively knows the goal and knows what's possible because the Decision space is relatively small. It's a three by three grid of cards. It can move around or you can get rid of stuff But everybody has their own unique take on how that can happen and I thought that was pretty cool

Cameron: 2:11:59

I feel

Chris: 2:11:59

could not agree with you more. I had the same exact thought. You know how I feel about co ops and quarterbacking. It's just, what kills them for me. If you think about it in a four player game and every character has six unique abilities, that's 24 unique abilities that are at play in the game. Plus the three comments of what you got 27. Abilities that are available to the team at any one time. And like you said, Jason, you can't really keep up with all of them, nor do you really want to like a game like pandemic. not saying pandemic is easy to win. I'm just saying it's easy to track what's going on in pandemic. It's very easy to know on each player's turn, what is happening and what they can do

Cameron: 2:12:41

possible,

Chris: 2:12:42

and what's possible. And it's just too easy and too tempting to be like, you should do this. But I totally agree with you Jason this game because there's so much possible and you don't see what they're holding in their hands

Bill: 2:12:54

to

Chris: 2:12:55

The ability to quarterback, it's just lessened significantly and I agree. I felt like we weren't quarterbacking this game. I felt like we were cooperating.

Bill: 2:13:04

really

Jason: 2:13:05

Yeah,

Chris: 2:13:05

Go figure.

Jason: 2:13:06

I could really use this green card.

Bill: 2:13:08

I just

Jason: 2:13:09

I'm not even really going to tell you why. Cause like, you're not going to understand necessarily,

Chris: 2:13:13

just need it, yeah.

Jason: 2:13:14

but like I could use it, but at the same time, like, if it's better for you to have this other card, you think that's better than let's do that. Cause that sounds, that sounds like an awesome idea. so yeah.

Cameron: 2:13:22

But at the same thing. You

Chris: 2:13:22

agree.

Bill: 2:13:23

Yeah, I agree with all that. And I think you just hit the nail on the head there, Jason, when you said that, it is kind of a request thing that you kind of trusted everybody else to know that they were trying to do the best thing. And then that was kind of the interaction is I need this card. What do you need? And so it, really was a generous sort of feeling versus, uh, you know, I'm going to tell you what to do

Chris: 2:13:44

Right.

Bill: 2:13:45

Even though there were some overall strategy things that developed as we started figuring out this game, because this game does have a story arc, it's kind of like, as you understand how difficult it is, because this game is really hard. We didn't

Cameron: 2:13:59

saw other people that did win. What did

Bill: 2:14:01

should say that.

Jason: 2:14:04

it's a good thing though, to

Bill: 2:14:06

Yeah, I was funny because I was poking around a B. G. G. And I saw other people were look like they did win. Some said is kind of hard. And I was like, what? You didn't think this was like really freaking hard. I mean, what did you do? Um, so because we don't know how to win right now, but I don't know, I will talk about that, I guess. later, but it is, it is interesting to think through. In the situation that we're in right now, where, we didn't win. Is it the cards? Is it that we didn't figure out a synergy between the characters? Is it, you know, what is, what is happening

Cameron: 2:14:36

the way that the deck shuffled the monsters back in?

Jason: 2:14:38

trying to

Bill: 2:14:39

Cause I mean, I think we're trying to cooperate as much as we possibly could. It was like, I mean, I have thoughts about that too,

Chris: 2:14:46

can just

Jason: 2:14:47

you guys didn't like about this game?

Chris: 2:14:49

the head. Mm

Bill: 2:14:54

It's hard. It's

Jason: 2:14:55

is hard. You did

Cameron: 2:14:56

did

Chris: 2:14:57

And you don't think that's a bad thing, and I agree with you. Mm hmm. Nothing puts me off. Well, I shouldn't say that. There are a lot of things that put me off about

Cameron: 2:15:04

of things that of the Rings co op game? That put you off because it was hard? Yeah.

Bill: 2:15:07

I ain't put off

Jason: 2:15:08

I

Chris: 2:15:09

I am put off when it's too easy to win. I think you should lose the first time. Even the second time, once you get up in like the fourth and the fifth time, then you're like, okay, is it because we just suck maybe, or are we just getting rough runs of cards? Cause I do feel like in a couple of our games. just the way that the shuffles occurred, especially in the later rounds. I'm like, I don't know if there's anything we could have done

Bill: 2:15:33

I'm like,

Chris: 2:15:35

us because we just happened to hit a big run of undead, like just in a row, boom, boom, boom. And if that happens,

Jason: 2:15:42

you're

Chris: 2:15:42

I mean, you're probably just finished at that point. And is that just because of how the shuffle fell? That's a nagging thought that always bothers me about co op games. even if we were experienced, expert players at this game, were we doomed from the start?

Jason: 2:15:58

little bit.

Cameron: 2:15:59

the beginning,

Chris: 2:15:59

know, that's always a nagging feeling I have in games like this. I wonder about that a little bit in this

Cameron: 2:16:04

That's, that's your exact same thought that you, mentioned when we were reviewing the Lord of the Rings co-op game. Like when we shuffled those initial tiles that we're gonna have to flip over on a return. Before

Chris: 2:16:14

we doomed?

Cameron: 2:16:14

did we already lose? Because of this one element of randomness that, you know, kind of had to be injected into the game or there wouldn't be a game. This

Bill: 2:16:25

This does feel like a game that you kind of have to play the perfect game. So when the cards actually play in such a way that you could win, then you will win, but if you, but if you're not playing in a perfect way, then, you're not gonna win and, or you could play in a perfect way and the cards don't come out, then it's not going to play. So you've got to be willing to play it multiple times to get that perfect win. it did feel frustrating at times. It poorly to what Chris said that, there was sometimes we were just dumped on and there was just nothing we could do about it. However, because I was playing with, you know, a bunch of guys I like playing with and I felt like we all had kind of the goal

Chris: 2:16:58

you like playing

Bill: 2:16:59

Well, I mean, don't, don't let that get out. I'm glad I'm

Chris: 2:17:02

I thought we were fun suckers.

Cameron: 2:17:04

suckers.

Bill: 2:17:05

mostly you are, and especially in co op games. But I think I'm like, like helping you turn the corner on that, Chris. Um, but I mean, I did feel like we're, it was, you know, it was a common goal. And it was one of the ones, I don't know how this does it, but we've played a few, co op games where it is like the flip of the card, right. When we played was a flashpoint. I mean, even when you win is like, was it because of the cards and it was, uh, was it because of our strategy and maybe that was too easy, right? I mean,

Chris: 2:17:33

It was too easy.

Bill: 2:17:35

right, right. And then if it's too hard, it's like, well, it was too hard and it really wasn't related to our strategy. This one, I, I feel like, you're going to get a lot of, bad cards. I do think there's a path to victory and I do feel like. We all feel like there's a way that we would have to play it really well to get it across that line. And I think we would have that Band of Brothers feeling afterwards that we got it. And this is one of those, I don't know. It's just, it's just weird to me How a game can get to that point. Cause I don't think it's necessarily great. I think this game has flaws. I think there's a lot of things that are not necessarily the best about this game, other than the fact that I think we, we all know we could win. I think there's some strategies we could do to make it go. and I just felt like when I got through with it, it's like, let's do this again, because I want to win it. I

Chris: 2:18:23

did have that just one more time feel to it. You know,

Jason: 2:18:26

time.

Bill: 2:18:26

I will say one last thing is that I feel like it would be kind of one and done because I think once we win, I'm not sure I necessarily want to come back to it and do it again.

Chris: 2:18:35

and done once we win. I'm not sure I it with a different class.

Bill: 2:18:38

Maybe, maybe. I don't know how far that would go because I mean, once I do it with two classes, would I want to do it again? I feel like it just doesn't have super long legs.

Cameron: 2:18:46

feel like it's like, solvable?

Bill: 2:18:48

I don't know. I think there's probably something that's. We'll find out things that are better than others. And I think we'll find things that are like, this is not a way to win.

Jason: 2:18:56

Not solvable so much as maybe like the amount of effort it takes to actually get the perfect win. if there is that degree of like a random shuffle factors in, it's like, well, we got it once. Do I really want to like play six more times to get the good random shuffle so that I went again? You know?

Cameron: 2:19:12

that

Bill: 2:19:12

right. Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to give it a four just because this has been a bad night for games, but, but, but part of it, I mean, really is it, it comes down to the point as once I got done with it, I really wanted to play it again. and I think that there's some value in that, so I'm going to give it a four.

Cameron: 2:19:30

where once

Jason: 2:19:31

I'm going to go next so that I don't have to go last

Cameron: 2:19:34

it,

Jason: 2:19:35

all three of these reviews.

Bill: 2:19:36

All in the

Jason: 2:19:37

I fall in the same category as bill. I'm going to give this a four. that said, I will say this is one of the most enjoyable co op games that I think I've played. for all the reasons that we've already named in that it felt like we were cooperating. And we won it. We weren't just solving a puzzle where somebody had more insight into how to do it than somebody else and you know The quarterbacking comes into play That said I mean it is hard and I do think there is a randomness aspect to it. So like bill said I question if Once I beat it if I would really want to play it more

Chris: 2:20:12

Once you

Jason: 2:20:13

I think that's probably, personally for me, probably a con to pretty much any co op game that's out there though, right? Once you beat it once, it's like, why do I want to keep playing it, right? I found that in like roguelite games, like video games that I've

Chris: 2:20:28

video game

Jason: 2:20:28

right? Like it's once you get to the end and you beat it,

Bill: 2:20:31

it, even though

Jason: 2:20:32

even though it's a roguelite and there's more achievements that you can get, or there's more things that you can unlock or whatever. It's like, well, unless you give me a reason to do that, that is more than just unlock all these things because they're there. I'm not going to do it. And so that's my personality. So take that for, what it is. I will say the only game that has ever pushed me past that video game wise is Hades. And I'm surprised that you have not played that yet, Chris.

Cameron: 2:20:54

I gotta get on it.

Jason: 2:20:55

anyway, I digress.

Chris: 2:20:56

still working on cult of the lambs.

Jason: 2:20:58

yeah, so I give this one a four. I think it's a fantastic co op game. definitely has that, let's just play it one more time. We got to get it. We got to get it beat after that. Once we beat it, I don't know. and so for that reason, I can't give it higher than a four, but

Bill: 2:21:14

get

Chris: 2:21:14

I think it's a fantastic maybe we'll learn what that

Jason: 2:21:16

yeah, maybe.

Bill: 2:21:17

we beat it,

Chris: 2:21:19

one day. Maybe not.

Cameron: 2:21:20

So, um, yeah.

Jason: 2:21:21

So for, for me.

Chris: 2:21:23

Yeah, it's awesome. I don't have a whole lot more to add. I totally agree. With what Jason just said. A co op game finally where you feel like you're cooperating and not micromanaging each other's turns. So refreshing. You listen to this podcast for any amount of time, you know, I'm not a huge lover of co op games. This one is a good one. I was so encouraged and having a lot of fun at how much we were just like, Oh, I won't do my really cool special thing that I could do because I'm going to swap these two cards on my turn. So you can do an awesome thing on your turn. That's a special thing if you can accomplish that in a cup game because everybody wants to do their cool crap, you know But I feel like in this game

Bill: 2:22:07

you

Jason: 2:22:07

all the blue cards

Chris: 2:22:09

Yeah, right, yeah cuz I feel like

Bill: 2:22:12

I deserved them.

Chris: 2:22:16

Cause it felt like what we needed to do to win, you know, cause the game is hard. And I felt like we were working together and we weren't telling each other what we should be doing. We were asking each other, what can I do to help you help us? You know what I mean? So I think it succeeded there. It is hard. There are probably some games where you, just can't win. We might be wrong about that, but that might be true, but I will say.

Bill: 2:22:38

fresh to

Chris: 2:22:38

The variability of the classes, again, and playing with a new character, and seeing how they're different, what they can do, keeps it fresh to where I would be interested to keep coming back to it as well, and keep trying it, and trying new things, so. I also really like this game. For a co op game, I think it's good. It's one of the few co op games I actually enjoy. I'll give it a 4 also.

Bill: 2:23:01

gonna

Cameron: 2:23:01

Sweet. Well, I don't mind going last. Uh,

Jason: 2:23:05

last? I

Cameron: 2:23:06

I really enjoyed this game. it was very refreshing to come back after a big break. Like I've had, from playing games to get to play a game like this one and to really find myself, not just being at the table and like, all right, I'm going to prepare to review a podcast game and, you know. Give them my best shot, but to be like, I'm having fun and when we would like, you know, lose and then immediately run it back, I would be like, yes, let's go. I'm going to, I'm going to try a different guy this time, whatever. and I did have that sense of, real cooperation, real working together.

Bill: 2:23:40

working

Chris: 2:23:41

sacrifice

Cameron: 2:23:41

And that's self sacrifice of my turn to, you know, maybe someone else could do something that's, better. My thing's not that great. You know, that kind of thing, that is rare, I think in a lot of co op games. did really like the fact that this game has that thing where you have a special character. You've got special moves, but those standard actions are still really, really important.

Bill: 2:24:03

in lot

Cameron: 2:24:04

doesn't happen a lot in, in a lot of these games where it's like usually the standard action, it's like, okay, you can't do anything else. So you just do one of the standard

Chris: 2:24:12

action. When you're exhausted, you can still contribute in a meaningful way. Right. You can, I

Cameron: 2:24:16

and we did that. there were a couple of times where like you're exhausted and it's not like your default move is just to rest. Now, sometimes it is, but sometimes it's like, you know, I'm going to stay exhausted because the thing that the team needs right now is for you to be able to do something awesome by, me swapping out these two cards or by me giving you the good card that I have, and there were times where it was like, that's what the team needed. That's cool to happen in a co op game. And that's what makes this game good. I think. I was thinking about your thought, Jason, about replayability and like, okay, once I beat, you know, if we, we, if we beat the game, would I really want to play it again? Maybe it's like one of these video games. I'm not sure that that's like a bad thing. Like, I know we've talked about replayability. We've talked about it on backstage before and we value it. I think in terms of a thing of like, this game's only really good. If it's got this, long legs, like replay value. But, maybe that's, maybe that's not a thing. Maybe like it is more like a video game where, Hey, I did it, I ascended the hill, And I don't need to ascend that hill again. Right? Maybe that's it. Maybe that would be awesome. If there were games like that, where it's like, yeah, you know, we, tried that. We tried it. We took us eight times to play that game and we've got eight hours invested in a game and then we beat it. And like,

Bill: 2:25:32

the

Cameron: 2:25:33

done, you know?

Chris: 2:25:34

us it, like,

Jason: 2:25:35

eight hours, eight hours out of a game these days. That's

Cameron: 2:25:38

Right. Well, and, and, and for that matter, if I spend that much time, if I have that much fun for five or six plays of a game with you guys. And then I go and I, you know, I have other groups of friends that like to play games. We have friends from church that, that, yeah, that we've like started to kind of occasionally meet up and play games with.

Jason: 2:25:58

I have other friends too, guys,

Cameron: 2:26:01

and, and I could imagine this

Bill: 2:26:03

beyond believable now.

Cameron: 2:26:05

I could imagine this game being one that I would go take to that group of friends and be like, Hey, why don't we try this out? And then they get into it, you know, and then they have the same experience that I had the first time I played it. And then maybe I'm having that new experience with a new group of people.

Bill: 2:26:18

I think

Cameron: 2:26:19

That's cool. That's, that's a different take, I think, on replayability and I think this game kind of has potential for that. So, that's a long way of saying, I'm also going to give this game a 4. I kind of was like between a 4 to 5 on this one.

Jason: 2:26:33

get the five.

Cameron: 2:26:33

Yeah, I mean,

Jason: 2:26:35

it, every time,

Bill: 2:26:36

were like just pumped to

Cameron: 2:26:37

dude, I had a freaking blast playing this game. So, I mean, I really am, I think, still between that 4 and 5. I think people on the guild have pointed out, like my average is actually lower than everyone else's on my ratings games.'cause I'm real stingy with my fives and sixes. I do feel like that, like in between the four and the five on this one, but I'm solidly on a four. for banishing.

Chris: 2:26:57

It's a good one, folks.

Bill: 2:26:59

do

Cameron: 2:26:59

well,

Bill: 2:27:01

get it?

Chris: 2:27:01

Yeah. Well, there are some copies available on Noble Knight. It's like, it's not a super old game.

Cameron: 2:27:07

Noble Knight

Chris: 2:27:08

Noble Knight are our friends to the North in Michigan, our sponsors as a matter of fact. And they, Give us a discount code. So if you would like to use that code, that's Jim's 10 off as Jim's one zero off, get 10 percent off your order. If you order through them and we'd appreciate it. Cause they're good people can also get it on the BTG marketplace or two copies. A little bit harder to find this one. which is a shame because this is a good one really is. I, this one impressed me. So it sounds good. Get it while you can. It's a little bit rare.

Bill: 2:27:43

are our thoughts on banishment.

Chris: 2:27:50

The banishing

Jason: 2:27:51

it's called.

Chris: 2:27:52

epic fail, Bill.

Bill: 2:27:54

Okay. And those are our thought on that's our thought and that's, and those are our thoughts on the banishing.

Chris: 2:28:02

Nice. Well,

Cameron: 2:28:06

do I, I didn't do the outro or,

Chris: 2:28:08

well, I mean, we gotta, we gotta talk about poor Dean. It's wrapped

Jason: 2:28:11

Yeah.

Cameron: 2:28:12

Oh yeah. It's wrapped up. Yep.

Jason: 2:28:14

Yeah,

Chris: 2:28:15

rough.

Cameron: 2:28:16

Yeah.

Bill: 2:28:17

man vendor. You're a bad man.

Cameron: 2:28:19

Like I

Jason: 2:28:20

was eating, but it went to a good cause maybe, maybe.

Cameron: 2:28:23

it's quite unsettling. The, the most unsettling thing is actually Wendell's, weird curiosity about what it's like to feed

Jason: 2:28:33

that, that part, that part's

Cameron: 2:28:34

That's the part that's gonna keep me up at night. This

Jason: 2:28:36

That part not might not make the final cut. I don't know.

Chris: 2:28:39

Oh, it totally will. Come on. You gotta have a little horror in your horror story. You gotta quit being so wimpy.

Bill: 2:28:45

gonna say. Yeah. The weirdest part is Chris picking this out

Chris: 2:28:48

Oh, dude, I'm on a roll and I'm in my element right now. Love this Halloween stuff. It's such a fun season, man. I think I've said on the podcast before, I just look forward to this time of the year, every year, this feels like it's kind of

Cameron: 2:29:03

of candy.

Chris: 2:29:04

the yeah, pounds of candy. This feels like it's the beginning of two months of fun and celebration and family and just. Good times.

Cameron: 2:29:13

My favorite thing about this season is long pants,

Bill: 2:29:16

is

Cameron: 2:29:17

you know, and

Chris: 2:29:19

And

Cameron: 2:29:20

some, some of, some of our listeners might not understand how humid and hot it actually gets in North Carolina, but especially when you work in an unairconditioned shop and you start having days where you can just walk outside and it's like, where am I? Colorado? The humidity is like 30.

Jason: 2:29:37

az

Chris: 2:29:39

now.

Cameron: 2:29:39

Yeah.

Bill: 2:29:40

Do you like wearing long pants? Oh,

Cameron: 2:29:41

oh yeah. I would much rather wear long pants than it'd be like super hot and humid.

Bill: 2:29:46

gosh, I hate wearing long pants. It's

Cameron: 2:29:48

It's not sticky. If it's not sticky. You can wear long pants

Chris: 2:29:51

Bill's like shorts all year, all the

Bill: 2:29:54

I am a hundred percent

Cameron: 2:29:55

Like

Chris: 2:29:56

we get one of our snows every three years. Bill's wearing

Cameron: 2:29:59

Yeah. Yeah.

Bill: 2:30:00

sure. I will stop the flip flops, but

Cameron: 2:30:02

I

Bill: 2:30:03

I'll still wear the shorts.

Chris: 2:30:05

Love it. That was fun. Thanks for doing that with me guys.

Cameron: 2:30:09

Oh, of

Chris: 2:30:09

Fun doing the skit, utilizing everybody's voice acting talents. And Jason's excellent editing skills.

Jason: 2:30:17

hours of editing to do now. Thank you,

Chris: 2:30:20

Thank you, my friend.

Cameron: 2:30:21

All right. Well,

Jason: 2:30:23

to

Cameron: 2:30:23

thank you so much for listening to this episode of Hidden Gems. if you like what we're doing here, you can always check us out on social media. We're, on Instagram and Twitter head over to our website. Check out Hidden Gems board game podcast slash store. You can pick up merch there. We've got hats, we got t shirts. and probably our best recommendation is go check us out over on Patreon. If you like our banter,

Jason: 2:30:48

on

Cameron: 2:30:49

personalities over here. we do a backstage podcast, where we just talk about other board game topics. We talk about life topics. We talk about

Bill: 2:30:58

backstage

Chris: 2:30:59

where we

Cameron: 2:30:59

interested in and, uh, kind of the informal format. so check that out. Uh, we don't have a Patreon episode coming out,

Chris: 2:31:09

Yeah, no backstage

Cameron: 2:31:10

no backstage for this week. Cause kind of went long on this one,

Chris: 2:31:14

Yeah, and the skit.

Cameron: 2:31:15

there are at least. I think it's 17 or 18, uh, other, uh, backstage episodes. You can check out, you can get involved for as little as 2. there's other perks and stuff if you get into the higher tiers. so go check that out. That's, patreon. com slash hidden gems podcast. And thanks for listening to this Halloween spectacular episode.

Bill: 2:31:36

until next time.

Chris: 2:31:37

So next time

Cameron: 2:31:38

Until next time. Wait, what do I say?

Chris: 2:31:42

I'm your host,

Cameron: 2:31:43

Oh yeah. And it's been a long time guys.

Chris: 2:31:47

you're rusty.

Cameron: 2:31:48

And until next time, I'm your host Cameron.

Chris: 2:31:51

This is Chris.

Jason: 2:31:52

I'm

Cameron: 2:31:54

Thanks for listening. Oh, man.

Chris: 2:32:00

Almost there.

Cameron: 2:32:01

This episode of hidden gems. Number 56 was recorded in Raleigh, North Carolina on October 23, 2023.

Bill: 2:32:09

Gems,

Cameron: 2:32:10

Next time on hidden gems, it's time for another Spiel does Yara's losers episode. And we'll be looking at the year 2012.

Chris: 2:32:18

games

Cameron: 2:32:19

Will any of the games we review be better than 2012's winner, Kingdom Builder? tune in in three weeks to find out.

Bill: 2:32:26

Gems

Chris: 2:32:26

and

Cameron: 2:32:27

Hidden Gems is produced and edited by Chris Alley, Cameron Lockie, and Jason Yanchaleff. Our board game geek guild is monitored and managed by honorary Hidden Gems team member Ghidorah. Our Discord channel is monitored and managed by honorary Hidden Gems team member Snoozefest.

Bill: 2:32:43

Snoozefest. Our show's

Chris: 2:32:45

was

Cameron: 2:32:46

was illustrated by designer and artist Kaitlyn

Chris: 2:32:49

and

Cameron: 2:32:50

work on Instagram at It's Kaitlyn Nieto. We would love to hear from you. Feel free to join the discussion on our many social media accounts. You can find us on Facebook at Hidden Gems Board Game Podcast, Instagram at HiddenGems. Podcast, and Twitter at Hidden Gems Board. Disagree with one of our reviews? Have something you want to say about one of the games we discussed today? You can also make your voice heard on our Board Game Geek Guild at boardgamegeek. com, guild number 3874. Once again, thank you for joining us on Hidden Gems, and until next time fellow gem seekers, enjoy your games and enjoy your search.