Hidden Gems: A Board Game Podcast

67. 30 Minutes or Less?

• Cameron Lockey

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Are the claims on the game box about playtime length accurate? In this episode, your hosts Chris Alley and Cameron Lockey hold things down while Bill and Jason are away on vacation as they put three games claiming to take 30 minutes or less to the test and share their thoughts on these unusual, forgotten, and underappreciated games.

FEATURED GAMES:
00:00:00 Intro & Banter
00:35:09 Cities
01:01:59 Great Wall of China
01:35:07 Nyet!

MUSIC (courtesy of https://epidemicsound.com):
Cities: “The Cafes of Paris”, Joe E. Lee
Great Wall of China: “The Road to Tibet”, Karl Hanson
Nyet!: “Pest March”, Jon Bjork

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/aXThh3N5Kj

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

HGE67_Chris:

Hidden Gems, episode 67, 30 minutes or less? Welcome to Hidden Gems, a board game podcast where we review unusual, forgotten, and underappreciated board games. We're your hosts, my name is Chris.

HGE67_Cameron:

And I'm Cameron. Thanks for listening to our show!

HGE67_Chris:

Yes! The duo is back together again.

HGE67_Cameron:

When is the last time it's been just you and me? Well I think it's only one other time, right?

HGE67_Chris:

episode 14 or something when we reviewed, I remember the games we reviewed. Revolver,

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Which

HGE67_Chris:

not good, and Lord of the Rings

HGE67_Cameron:

Absolutely. So memorable.

HGE67_Chris:

of your favorite games of all time. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

Can we keep that going?

HGE67_Chris:

Can we keep the streak alive? Oh man. Love Jason. I love bill. Obviously we're usually a three person podcast, but these two people episodes are kind of fun.

HGE67_Cameron:

They are.

HGE67_Chris:

Just, you know. A little bit more bouncing back and forth off of each other Plus we've just been sitting here catching up and

HGE67_Cameron:

I know, it's been great.

HGE67_Chris:

of my best friends

HGE67_Cameron:

and two, two episodes in a row for me, which, you know, you're welcome. Everybody you're welcome.

HGE67_Chris:

You're on the hook for at least two more

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, that's right. Before the

HGE67_Chris:

around the corner and then christmas

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. So I had like what, one in March and then nothing until two weeks ago, three weeks ago. this is

HGE67_Chris:

You slacker

HGE67_Cameron:

All right. Well, uh, Obviously everybody's favorite part of the show is where we just talk about whatever we've been up to recently. So you got something you want to share with the gang?

HGE67_Chris:

I've got a couple of things. We've got the times. It's just the two of us. Um,

HGE67_Cameron:

doesn't have like three things this time.

HGE67_Chris:

yeah, exactly. I've got two video games to talk about. I feel like I talk a lot about video games and I will just say just as a teaser, I can assure you that on my next banter, they won't be video games or graphic novels. I'm working on a couple of things. One will be a TV show and one will actually be something around board games, but I'm just going to leave it at that. Um, so I'm going to save it for next episode, but I'm going to talk about two video games today. But before I do that, I want to revisit something just real quickly. And I think you'll appreciate this cause I know you played this game and you enjoyed it and we've talked about it last episode actually, but we didn't review it and we didn't talk about it a whole lot. And that's freeze.

HGE67_Cameron:

okay,

HGE67_Chris:

So, you know, one of the things I think that's the most fun, there are a lot of things I love about this podcast, but I think one of the most interesting things about the podcast is that. It allows us, I hesitate to say force because that sounds like a bad thing, but it allows us to play and review games that we might otherwise never play.

HGE67_Cameron:

Right.

HGE67_Chris:

And freeze would be a perfect example of that. it's hard to find. I wouldn't have played it had it not been for our spiel series. And I will say, while personally, my thoughts haven't changed a lot on it would still be a three for me, dude. Freeze has probably been the most get played game around here in the, like the last three

HGE67_Cameron:

weeks. My kids

HGE67_Chris:

kids are obsessed with

HGE67_Cameron:

it. My

HGE67_Chris:

My wife texted me the other day and she was like, Hey, can you get freeze? And I was like, no. And then why? I was like, why is my wife asking me this? And she's like, Oh yeah, my friend and her son want to buy it. Cause they really like it.

HGE67_Cameron:

What?

HGE67_Chris:

And then Bill took it with him to the beach weekend with his family. Yeah. People are just digging free. So

HGE67_Cameron:

I just again,

HGE67_Chris:

want to just throw a little bit of praise at freeze as just like a really unique improv comedy game where you're acting your role playing. People are trying to guess

HGE67_Cameron:

Mm-Hmm.

HGE67_Chris:

roles and locations and it's your standard style party game, kind of like a Dixit style party game, but with acting. And it was fun. It's not my kind of game, but just wanted to mention it because I think it's just kind of neat. That we even got to play that and that, you know, amongst my family and people I know, it's like super popular right now. Yeah. Which I just thought was

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, dude, I love that you brought that up because I definitely feel like You know, we, we do, we, a lot of the games that we focus on are these a little bit more, you know,

HGE67_Chris:

gamery

HGE67_Cameron:

thinki, yeah, like type games and, and, and that's great, right? And there's, there's a time and place for each of those, but I love that, like, sometimes the same people can also, you know, Enjoy ones that are not, you know, as thinking in the same way and just opens up, this new space there's, there's actually a very similar type game that fits into the same genre that, if folks out there haven't heard of it and you like those types of games, I think this one would, would be one to check out, uh, and I've only played it a handful of times, but it's one of those games are very similarly. When you get going, everyone is just, especially with people that are very sort of creative and not very self conscious, like everybody's just rolling in

HGE67_Chris:

Oh totally.

HGE67_Cameron:

And the game is called fun employed. Have you heard of fun

HGE67_Chris:

heard of this game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've not played it, but I've heard of it.

HGE67_Cameron:

I take it with me on every vacation. Just in case there's like, people are kind of up for that. And what you do in fun employed is. It's one of these ones where like one person's the runner and they're the they're the person who's like running the interview Okay, and everyone else they get they get a title of a job basically and everyone else will Basically, like, see, okay, here's the job that I'm applying for, and your job is to get the other person to choose you as the person who gets the job, and the way that you

HGE67_Chris:

You're selling yourself,

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, but you get, I can't remember, you get some type of, wacky prompt or you have like a bunch of cards, that's what it is. It's, it's kind of like the, um, cards against humanity style thing, but instead of just like picking a card in the hand of the person, you, choose which one of your personas you want to go with that particular job. And then when it's your turn, you have to add. Act out, like, in some, you know, flamboyant way or

HGE67_Chris:

like your motivation or your, yeah, yeah,

HGE67_Cameron:

like, I'm trying to remember one of these things. It's like, you know, like you're, I don't know, you're a guy that's like really aspires to be a park ranger and you're applying for a, banker job or something like that. Like it's real like weird matchups or whatever. And so you take on this persona of like what you think of park ranger guy would act like, who's trying to convince this person that you want to be a banker, whatever, whatever the scenario that's off the top of my head, the topics are way better than that and more

HGE67_Chris:

my interest.

HGE67_Cameron:

and more crazy. but that's like just very, I won't go on and on about it, but we've had some, Awkward and very very funny funny moments. We played this game with my parents one time when I was like newly married and my wife was like getting integrated into our family and my brother we had this I won't mention it cuz it's not appropriate for the podcast

HGE67_Chris:

we

HGE67_Cameron:

we still remember that moment where like my brother stepped up to the stage and gave this This memorable performance and it was, and in front of my parents and it was like, Oh my gosh, I

HGE67_Chris:

this,

HGE67_Cameron:

about this right now. But this is so funny. Uh, so anyway, fun employed. it's a small game. You can probably, I don't know, get it

HGE67_Chris:

Oh yeah, you

HGE67_Cameron:

bucks or something like

HGE67_Chris:

or something or an Amazon.

HGE67_Cameron:

but yeah, if you're on the discord and you've heard of fun employed, definitely drop us a line about it. It's, it's fun.

HGE67_Chris:

Well, there are a few games like this. There's a game that came out, I guess, man, it's probably been a few years now, but there's a game called, but Wait, there's more. Oh. But it's like, but wait, there's more, you know, like infomercial, like you're trying to sell something. Oh, okay. But it's the same kind of idea basically where you're doing that. But yeah, going back to what you were saying about just like funny scenarios and party games. We got Talia to play this with us, my wife, and she is not one

HGE67_Cameron:

stage performer, right? Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

but this deck of cards, it gives you different locations where you're acting out your roles. And there were just some really funny ones that came up. one was like in the basement and we're like, What would four people be doing in the basement and how are we going to order ourselves? Cause basically you're acting in a

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

there'll be like person number one, person number two, all the way down number four and four is kind of like least important. And one would be the most important.

HGE67_Cameron:

But remember, sometimes you can be just an inanimate

HGE67_Chris:

right?

HGE67_Cameron:

you choose to be.

HGE67_Chris:

But in the basement, Who's the most important person, you know, it's like but you can't talk about it ahead of time So we're all kind of looking at each other. Like what are we even gonna do? You know, it's just was hilarious, just trying to figure out how to act that out But yeah, I just thought it was worth mentioning not everything has to be castles of Burgundy, you know what I mean? we love those games I like those games more than freeze, but you know, freeze has a place, you know what I mean? So I just thought it was fun to mention it. And I'm glad you got to mention fun employed.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, that was fun.

HGE67_Chris:

all right. The video game.

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

All right. the first one I want to talk about, and you should actually pull this up and check this out on your computer. I tell people you should look at this. And I think this is a game that you really need to see it. Because it's its biggest selling point. Honestly, it's a game called bleak sword DX and Basically, it's kind of a hack and slash Souls like game I guess but it's done in like Atari style

HGE67_Cameron:

now,

HGE67_Chris:

now, I know that's gonna sound horrible But it takes that Atari style look and makes it look really Really cool is the only way I can explain it.

HGE67_Cameron:

it's two and a half d

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. It's 2. 5D. It's like you're on a square plane and it's slightly tilted and there's environments. There's like buildings and trees and fire, but the fire, it moves. So

HGE67_Cameron:

there's a z dimension

HGE67_Chris:

There's a Z dimension to it, right. you're a stick guy. You look like a stick figure, but it's just so freaking cool on the screen It is wild. just the aesthetic I thought was really neat now was the game good Yes, it was good. So what's unique about bleak sword? Is the controls are simple. You've got a light attack, a heavy attack, and like a roll.

HGE67_Cameron:

But

HGE67_Chris:

But this is not a game where you can just go in swinging. You will die. You, you will die. And that's why I call it like souls like because the combat is very intentional. you have to learn your enemy attack patterns, time, your light, heavy attacks, when to roll, what angle to attack from. To be successful. Cause if you just start spamming X and swinging, you won't, you'll die. Okay. So despite it's simplistic appearance, it's actually challenging. It will push you. And what's interesting about it too, like you said, it looks like a three dimensional plane, I guess, but it's not. But enemies enter from the side and the longer you take They'll just keep coming right like they're on like a timer I think

HGE67_Cameron:

So if you don't move forward after

HGE67_Chris:

25 seconds another guy will come in from this

HGE67_Cameron:

I see.

HGE67_Chris:

So, you know they're coming but it's the kind of game where if like four or five guys get on the screen with you They're just gonna mob you right and so I just found it really fun if you like challenging Difficult games with a cool aesthetic. I would check out bleak sword dx It also has a pretty Couple cool levels where you're riding a horse. And it's like scrolling left to right, and it looks like an old school, handheld, Crappy video game, basically. But it was just so fun. I, I could go on and on about it, but it's neat. The

HGE67_Cameron:

on the website says, Discover and destroy increasingly horrifying creatures across an oppressive lo fi world.

HGE67_Chris:

lo-fi. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

Wielding fierce weaponry and powerful magic in this pocket sized action adventure.

HGE67_Chris:

got boss fights too.

HGE67_Cameron:

size mean it's not that long? Like you can kind of beat it after a

HGE67_Chris:

five to seven hours, something like that.

HGE67_Cameron:

Cool. Yeah. It looks neat.

HGE67_Chris:

Bleak Sword dx. It was awesome.

HGE67_Cameron:

Looks like it's on

HGE67_Chris:

I'm sure it's on s Microsoft

HGE67_Cameron:

Steam and uh, Switch.

HGE67_Chris:

played it on Switch, of course, but, uh, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

HGE67_Cameron:

Cool. Awesome.

HGE67_Chris:

What do you got? Yeah, I'm bouncing it back over to you.

HGE67_Cameron:

so, uh, what, like three weekends ago, my, wife and I, and like eight or 10 of our friends, something like that went and had a, our, our, our first weekend away. Without kids, since we all recently had

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah

HGE67_Cameron:

we, we, uh, like my, my wife and I had our daughter, Nora, almost a year ago. Um, so that's fun. We're actually, Oh, this is actually, I do have another banter thing and I have to talk about it. I will not, I will wait until I'm done with this one, but so a few weeks ago, we all went on this like first, first weekend away without kids. We all got together. Gave our kids to loved ones and trusted them to keep our kids all weekend. And we went to the Grove Park Inn

HGE67_Chris:

Oh, dude. Awesome.

HGE67_Cameron:

in Asheville. Incredible. I literally had never even seen a picture of it before I got there. And I was my mind was just continuously blown as we walked around that hotel.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. So I'll just quickly interject.

HGE67_Cameron:

You're from that area.

HGE67_Chris:

I'm from Asheville. That is where, How should I say this because I was going to use a phrase and it sounds bad, but I mean, I guess it's true That is where Talia and I's Romance began we uh Say hooked up, but that

HGE67_Cameron:

that just sounds like

HGE67_Chris:

But but it's true. That's where uh She and I became a thing um our our college which was right outside ashville Had like a formal at the grove park and we had known each other before that but that's where We, uh, got together, so to speak, so

HGE67_Cameron:

I know, I know why you're hesitating because it's a hotel and that's not the way that you got together

HGE67_Chris:

when you say hooked up, people think like, oh, okay, let's, you know, but I mean, that's just kind of where it started

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, the budding romance

HGE67_Chris:

the dance floor,

HGE67_Cameron:

oh, okay.

HGE67_Chris:

when I used to be able to cut a little rug.

HGE67_Cameron:

Amazing. Well, I could totally see that because there was a lot of hotel there. And we so we stayed in the in the the main hall, I guess, like on the third floor. So it's right above the main sort of center section of the building, not the wings. Right. And we got to eat a couple of the restaurants that are on campus, which were pretty good. Amazing. Really, really

HGE67_Chris:

totally. Yep.

HGE67_Cameron:

but one of the things that we got to do that weekend, and this is my thing really is, is on, on our way. And actually we tried to book the spa and they were all, they were all

HGE67_Chris:

in advance. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

but before we got into town, before we got even to the hotel, we met our, uh, A couple of our friends in black mountain

HGE67_Chris:

Mm hmm. That's very close to where I grew up. Yeah,

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. So black mountains, really cool, cute little town. It's not very big at all. Um, there's some really kind of fun, neat things to do there. And we've found a new one that we're going to be going back to, and that is black mountain escape.

HGE67_Chris:

Oh, dude. Awesome.

HGE67_Cameron:

So have you been to this? Escape room.

HGE67_Chris:

I've been to several in Asheville, but I've not been in Black

HGE67_Cameron:

I think it's still relatively new. they have like two rooms. I think they're going on like four. They're, they're expanding a little bit, but we, uh, met the owner, John Brooks. He ran our game. Yeah. This guy is very serious about making incredible escape rooms. Yeah. And I think very possibly this was the best escape room that I've ever been to. Really? Yeah. maybe there were some that had, I, I guess you might say like. More interesting or more challenging puzzles, but the puzzles in this one were pretty good But the the thing that made it so special and and John if you're listening, hi, John It's Cameron from that crazy group of people. I told you I would talk to about you on the podcast

HGE67_Chris:

talk

HGE67_Cameron:

John is very theatrical himself and and from the beat from the like second you go in there He's got his like vest on and he's like You know, being the magician's assistant for the room that we ran. And he did a magic trick, like a, um, like a card trick before we even started the game. And that actually was the way that he started the game. It was one of these ones where you end up with the card that he means for you to have. And he's like, you just keep that. That's going to get you into the room. And we literally had to put it like a magnetic, like. Thing happened? Yeah. When you put it on the door to get into the room and throughout the experience, I'm not gonna give anything away, but like throughout the experience. He would enter back into the room as a character.

HGE67_Chris:

Those are the best ones. When you have actors in the rooms,

HGE67_Cameron:

he was like, I mean, comedic stuff. He was like, he ran in with like chains around his wrists and everything. He was like, have you guys seen like a big thing of keys? Cause we're like, what in the world are we going to do with 42 keys or whatever it was, this giant ball of keys. It's like, cool. And he like, goes into the, the room by himself. And then like seconds later, he's gone. Somehow he disappeared and got himself out. The handcuffs were on the floor, you know, like this type of stuff. I'm not, I'm, I hope I'm not giving away too much. Um, But it was just, it was really funny. It was really involved. He didn't overdo it with giving too many clues. The puzzles were challenging, but not impossible. Like all that kind of stuff. And, and we're, we got, we had like 18 minutes left.

HGE67_Chris:

Oh nice, so you finished in a

HGE67_Cameron:

yeah, but we were pretty seasoned as a, as a group of six. Escape artists, I guess. So we've done a lot of escape rooms together. but it was a lot of fun. That's awesome. And I would say that if you're in Western North Carolina and You know you're in that area you want to do an escape room This is one to like it's worth I think driving a little bit to go and do one of john's escape rooms We're gonna go back and do some of the others

HGE67_Chris:

When I'll be in Asheville in a couple of weeks, I might go check it out cause yeah, I love doing them. My cousins are really into them. It's been a while since we've done one together, but they used to travel around. They actually did one in Charlotte one time. And one of them got abducted, they were like going into a room and they kidnapped one of them and separated them.

HGE67_Cameron:

so they could

HGE67_Chris:

tied down to a table or something. they had the paid actors, you know, in the room, like kind of as part of the puzzle and yeah, they can be really cool experiences.

HGE67_Cameron:

That's amazing. that's one of mine. The other one that I want to share, and I just thought about it as I started talking about this. Because I was thinking about my daughter Nora's birthday. this is kind of a special thing to share, but I, I think people in this audience probably more than a lot of folks would appreciate it. So my daughter's name is Eleanor. we spell it E L A N O R. And, uh, if you haven't already figured it out, she's named, with the same name that Sam Gamgee gives his daughter at the end of the Lord of the Rings. he has a son and he goes to, has this conversation with Frodo. He's like, Frodo, what do I do? I thought I was going to have a son. I was going to name him Frodo. It was going to be super easy to name my kid. And what do I do? And Frodo's like, well, why don't you give, you know, give, give her a traditional, uh, female hobbit name, like a flower, you know, you're married to Rosie and, and he's like, ah, no, you know, none of the flowers in, the shire will do for my, beautiful daughter. She's, you know, beyond all that. And he's like, okay, well, uh, what about Eleanor? This flower from Lothlorien? It's this beautiful yellow flower. What about Eleanor? He's like, great. That's what I'll do. So he takes Rhoda's recommendation and names her Eleanor. that's, I'm doing that. I'm naming my daughter, Eleanor. somehow I convinced my wife to let me, to, to let me name my daughter Eleanor, um, but we call her Nora and, My family members know that, and for my birthday, my sister in law found this event in Greenville, South Carolina, where they live, where it's a Hobbit Festival. So she bought me a ticket to go to this thing, and we're just like gonna bring our whole family down there, we're gonna stay with them for the weekend, visit, and we're gonna go to this Hobbit Festival. And the thing about it is it's not just like a I don't know, one of these like street things where you can just show up. You have to dress up.

HGE67_Chris:

Okay.

HGE67_Cameron:

can't get in if you're not in character. So my wife, Casey, has been just working so hard to find just the right outfits for each of us. All of us, Casey, me, Owen, my three year old and and Nora. And we're going to look amazing. Going to the Zomit Festival. And I don't even fully quite know what to expect, except for that everything is completely themed out and everyone there will be also dressed

HGE67_Chris:

up.

HGE67_Cameron:

I think it's supposed to kind of emulate like Bilbo's birthday because it's on September the 22nd, which is Bilbo's birthday. My daughter's birthday is the 21st. So we've been Almost got the same birthday as Frodo and, uh, Bilbo, but not quite. So that's this weekend.

HGE67_Chris:

That's awesome.

HGE67_Cameron:

So by the time this episode is released,

HGE67_Chris:

Do you know what y'all are being? Or

HGE67_Cameron:

mean, we're just all what? No,

HGE67_Chris:

doing Hobbits?

HGE67_Cameron:

we're just dressing up as hobbity as we possibly can. So I, there will be pictures. Don't worry.

HGE67_Chris:

That's awesome.

HGE67_Cameron:

So

HGE67_Chris:

I saw this thing, one of my dream trips. One day hopefully is to go to New Zealand and see all the locations where they filmed like Rohan and and Haitin and all that. But apparently they do a 5K race in New Zealand through Haitin, like where they're all like dressed up in character. It's like

HGE67_Cameron:

That's amazing.

HGE67_Chris:

stuff. And I'm like, dude, I want to do that one day. I would totally, I've

HGE67_Cameron:

done a 5k, but I would do

HGE67_Chris:

do that. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

That's awesome. So yeah, so that's my other thing. We're going there. We're leaving on Friday.

HGE67_Chris:

Dude, can't wait to hear about it. That's

HGE67_Cameron:

It's going to be great. I do have a wig. That I will be bringing. I, it's a redheaded wig and my beard is very Brown. So it's kind of clashes and doesn't look realistic. So we'll see Casey might make me take it off, but I was, um, I was billed with Baggins, the Hobbit version of Bilbo for Halloween. back when those movies came out years ago.

HGE67_Chris:

Nice.

HGE67_Cameron:

all right. Well, we have an episode about,

HGE67_Chris:

I got one more.

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh, you have one more. Okay.

HGE67_Chris:

I threw in

HGE67_Cameron:

sorry. You said, you said two games. So I thought that was the two. Go ahead.

HGE67_Chris:

since Bill isn't here to like talk about a whole bunch of stuff nobody cares about. I'm

HGE67_Cameron:

just loaded up for yourself. Okay.

HGE67_Chris:

joking, Bill. I actually really enjoy Bill's banter. He makes me laugh every time. He just says all these really fun things

HGE67_Cameron:

We're going to have to have a big session for, for Jason when he gets back.

HGE67_Chris:

Jason's in Iceland, bills at the beach. And so we're trying to get another episode before Halloween. So Cameron, I like, let's just knock it out. So you get to hear us yapping all night as my kids like to say. but I'm going to mention one more game really quick. it's a game called the pedestrian. as it turns out, this was not intentional, but it's kind of funny. It turned out this way. This game, you also play as a stick character, but it's not a combat game. The pedestrian is a puzzle game. I guess I'll start by describing the aesthetic because it's very unique too, is your stick figure guy is moving throughout the world, running back and forth between signs. Okay so like signs that might be on the wall in a factory or like street signs if you're outside, signs on billboards and buildings and so you're moving back and forth between these signs trying to get somewhere. And that's all I'll say about that because that's a spoiler if I told you any more. But you're stick guys trying to get to a final destination. And the way that you do this is that in each sign there are ladders and doors or whatever, but what makes the game interesting is you will often be in an area where you'll have multiple signs. And what you have to do is you can actually grab those signs and move them around so that doors will line up and when they line up you can move through the door. there's obviously a solution. So the way that you order the signs and going through the doors in the right order, or going through the right door, will enable you To escape, basically. Because you might need to go through this door to get a battery, which you then plug into this, which opens this, so that you get a cable and connect it over here. There's just a lot of that kind of like, engineering going on in your head. Of like, okay, I go in here, now I pick this sign up, move it over here, now I come out through here, go in through here. so that's the game.

HGE67_Cameron:

Okay. at it. I'm looking at it. Yeah. So it's, you're a stick figure Oh, maybe I'm looking at the wrong way. Is there another thing called the pedestrian?

HGE67_Chris:

No, uh, not that I'm aware

HGE67_Cameron:

looks like it has something to do with signs. Oh, I see. It, it's just like got this, uh, 3D thing, but you're looking at a, Sign. Correct. You're playing your dude running around on the

HGE67_Chris:

On the signs. But it's interesting. You should mention the background because. The background is just the background, but sometimes when you do things in the sign, it will cause things to happen in the background that can allow you to access other signs that you need to escape.

HGE67_Cameron:

I see. So you're the dude on the sign. You're not the first person view of the camera.

HGE67_Chris:

you are the first person view of the camera, but you're controlling the guy on the signs. It's, uh, It's weird and that's actually a really good swag way because the last thing I want to mention the main reason I mentioned in This game the puzzles are fun But I feel like what really causes a game to stand out is when it has that whoa moment like the witness does When you realize you can do something in the

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh my God.

HGE67_Chris:

you're like what? So in the pedestrian When you're at the very end of the game the last puzzle or puzzles puzzle slash puzzles I just can't say a lot about it because it'll spoil it but it was so Cool, and I guess what I can say is kind of a teaser without being spoilery is it's really meta

HGE67_Cameron:

OK.

HGE67_Chris:

and once I finally Figured out what I was doing and what it was trying to get me to do I was like, wow, this is one of the cleverest things I've seen in a puzzle game. Uh, I wish I could say more about it. You just have to trust me, but it was really meta and really mind bendy. And when I solved it, because it took a while, It's one of those that like, you have to figure out what is the game trying to do with me here. It was really

HGE67_Cameron:

satisfying. And you played it on switch.

HGE67_Chris:

played it on the switch, dude. It's so cool.

HGE67_Cameron:

Dude. cool. I'm gonna, this looks like my type of game. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this and I'm gonna play it with, with

HGE67_Chris:

with Casey.

HGE67_Cameron:

This is the type of thing that she and I love to do together. We did mist

HGE67_Chris:

a game y'all can play together.

HGE67_Cameron:

like, it looks like you can like cos solve it. Like you don't need to be both controlling it to enjoy playing together.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

Wow. Cool.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, but if you get to that final part right before the game ends We should talk about that again, because it was just, man, really neat stuff.

HGE67_Cameron:

Sick.

HGE67_Chris:

The Pedestrian.

HGE67_Cameron:

All right. Sweet.

HGE67_Chris:

Yep. Now I'm done.

HGE67_Cameron:

Okay. So, yeah, so we're talking about 30 minute or less question mark games. what should we even say about that? I mean, obviously the, the sort of question mark element of it is that these games are Purportedly on the box, 30 minutes or

HGE67_Chris:

That's what we

HGE67_Cameron:

claim is there. We're going as we play these games, like, can you, is that true? Are we definitely going to be able to play in 30 minutes or less?

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah the genesis of this episode was that because we knew we were gonna be pushed for time with the Jason going to Iceland, Bill being gone, you with limited

HGE67_Cameron:

2, 000 kids. Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

I was like, what can we do? And I was like, you know what, why don't we just do an episode where all the games say

HGE67_Cameron:

are supposed to be short

HGE67_Chris:

in 30 minutes or less and see if that holds up, right? Because as, I mean, most gamers know the box will lie.

HGE67_Cameron:

Right. It'll

HGE67_Chris:

say 2 5 players, but it really doesn't play good at 2. Or it'll say it plays in 45 minutes, it plays in like 2 hours and 45

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. Or if you ask Ken, it's just us taking too long and maybe sometimes that's true.

HGE67_Chris:

Ken, our historian, will chime in on Discord and tell us how long we took on all of our plays. Um,

HGE67_Cameron:

useful when you're trying to assess things like this.

HGE67_Chris:

like this. Yeah, when I said that, uh, She, what was that name? blue skies was borderline filler game. He was like, actually, we played it an hour and 45 minutes. And I was like, Oh my gosh.

HGE67_Cameron:

was like, oh my Foot, foot and mouth.

HGE67_Chris:

Exactly. Exactly. But yeah, so that was the idea for this episode. So it's going to be fun to test that theory. So we're going to go over three games that say 30 minutes or less in the box, and we'll see if they're true to that.

HGE67_Cameron:

Sweet.

HGE67_Chris:

But before we do that, um, we did have a cocktail tonight and, the cocktail I chose is in line with the theme. it's a cocktail that you can make really quickly. All right. It's

HGE67_Cameron:

seconds or less? I mean,

HGE67_Chris:

fast, right? So it's called the Kentucky Colonel. So basically all it is is two ounces of bourbon and then half an ounce of Benedictine.

HGE67_Cameron:

What is, what is Benedictine?

HGE67_Chris:

It's a good question. So Benedictine, is a liqueur, and it's kind of like a honey, herby, type of liqueur. It's almost kind of like Jägermeister, but not as overpowering.

HGE67_Cameron:

So it's, so it basically, uh, turns. It's essentially a riff on an old fashioned, it sounds like, because you have a, you have this sort of herbal bittery sort of component along with a sweet component combined with bourbon. And you garnished it with a lemon

HGE67_Chris:

A lemon, a lemon slice. Yeah, there's no sugar. So, uh, old fashioned, you know, you use simple syrup or sugar as a sweetener. Um, this doesn't have a

HGE67_Cameron:

sweetener. So liqueur is not

HGE67_Chris:

liqueur is kind of a natural sweetener, but it's not as strong. It really, this is just really augmenting the bourbon more than turn it into a whole another drink. Um,

HGE67_Cameron:

Bourbon with a, with a lemon slice in there or a bourbon and a little bit of sugar. Cause that's, I mean, we, I could start talking about cocktails, but the bitters play an important role. If you just sweeten the bourbon, it's actually not, it's kind of gross. If you just put a sugar cube in with a little bit of bourbon, it's yucky.

HGE67_Chris:

my wife loves this drink. And again, it, it's. Super easy. You just put those two things in a mixture. You start with ice and then you strain it.

HGE67_Cameron:

That's great. Enjoyable. Refreshing. Thank you.

HGE67_Chris:

Okay. Last thing, folks. One more thing. This is big news. I'm super excited. So I have convinced Cameron to do a top 50 list. It was much

HGE67_Cameron:

was most persuasion. If you like top numbers of things of lists, and aren't on Patreon. Boy, do I have a list.

HGE67_Chris:

I do.

HGE67_Cameron:

Is it a good one? Who knows? We're going to start with my worst games. We're going to tell you why I like them.

HGE67_Chris:

why I like them. My worst games are all the ones that I

HGE67_Cameron:

true. My worst games are all the ones that I rated like a 1. And who wants to listen to me talk about that? But, this was just a hard fought list to put together. I agonized. I told Chris like 10 times that I'm not good at making lists like this. of things, but we worked together and he walked around his room and was like, Cameron liked that one. Cameron liked that one. And he wrote them all down and sent them to me. I was like, okay, I can order these. I can at least do that.

HGE67_Chris:

sent them to me, and I was like, okay, I can order these. I can at least do that. I could see how it could be intimidating to just recall from memory. Like, how am I going to remember,

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

know, like I can just walk in here and look, you know, but I just went through the room and I was like, okay, I think you liked that one. I think you liked that one. I just texted them all of them.

HGE67_Cameron:

Especially when you have the, recall of a lab mouse, like I do. I'm so terrible people at, Remembering facts. It's really bad. I'm very bad at tests because I can't like bring the exact thing that I need to remember to mind when it's just random facts, when it's like synthesizing things, like I can, like, I'm pretty smart on those things, but when it's just like, so when you're trying to ask me about a game that I played, like I mean, some of these games, it was like 10 years ago, we were playing them regularly and I'm like, all right, what is that one? I'm like looking him up on BGG and I'm like, I don't recognize any of the things happening in these pictures, but I know that I vaguely remember enjoying that

HGE67_Chris:

that.

HGE67_Cameron:

So that's how bad my memory is. but we did

HGE67_Chris:

did it. So,

HGE67_Cameron:

we have this podcast. If you don't know, there's another podcast. It's only available to folks that are over on Patreon. So if you're a new listener to the show, you haven't checked out Patreon, it's hidden gems. Uh, sorry. It's patreon. com slash hidden gems. Yep. Podcast. And we have a podcast called Hidden Gems Backstage. We talk about all sorts of stuff, but recently we've been doing these series where we talk about top 100

HGE67_Chris:

going through our top 100 games,

HGE67_Cameron:

And uh, we talk about other stuff on, on the Backstage podcast from time to time, but right now doing a lot of these, uh, podcasts. Top lists sort of things. So if you want to join up, you can join from anywhere from 2 all the way up to 15. If you do the 15, that's a gem miner. And what we do for those folks is we actually, get their feedback on a game, let them choose a game that they're gonna, that we're going to review on the podcast. Show they review it with us and we talk about their thoughts, bring them into the

HGE67_Chris:

thoughts. And we, and as a matter of fact, next episode. We're doing that.

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh yeah, that's right. We recently decided that that's not a one, one time and done thing. It's more like a once a year thing. If you stay on with a, as a gem miner for more than a year, we do it again.

HGE67_Chris:

that benefit,

HGE67_Cameron:

do it again.

HGE67_Chris:

yeah, we're gonna be doing that one again So i'm excited about that And just for a little bit more detail we'll be doing since it's just the two of us We'll be doing cameron's 50 through 41 And so I don't get off sync with jason and bill. I'm actually a little bonus I'm gonna do my 5. 101 To

HGE67_Cameron:

Okay. How high does your list actually go? You do like the

HGE67_Chris:

like the 120s. And so, you can see the games that just barely missed my top 100, which are the ones that just missed the list.

HGE67_Cameron:

That's a fun way to do that. Cool. So there you go.

HGE67_Chris:

Alright, is that enough yip yapping?

HGE67_Cameron:

Should we, should we talk about some games now?

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, let's do it.

HGE67_Cameron:

Sweet. New York, London, Paris, Berlin, cities of the world, full to the brim with tourist attractions. In cities, you design and build each of the cities for yourself. Each round, you expand your city, positioning attractions close to each other, building big parks and placing terraces close to the water. As you build the city according to your vision, you find what should be the best spots to place tourists and score points. However, each turn, you need to make choices, adjusting your plans according to the tiles drawn. Will you get the perfect tile? Who knows?

HGE67_Chris:

tile? Who knows? Oh, well done. I don't know how you do it,

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh, I don't know. I don't either.

HGE67_Chris:

You're the only one that can do that and not get us in trouble.

HGE67_Cameron:

Hopefully, hopefully we didn't just get

HGE67_Chris:

remember one time when you did that New Zealander accent and I can't remember

HGE67_Cameron:

Someone commented. Somebody

HGE67_Chris:

Somebody emailed us like.

HGE67_Cameron:

I think it was in Discord.

HGE67_Chris:

and they were like, you did that really

HGE67_Cameron:

Like, good job

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

doing the New Zealand accent for an American. It's like,

HGE67_Chris:

for an American, it was actually kind of believable. And I was like, okay, shoot.

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh man. Yeah. I try, I

HGE67_Chris:

done. We're trying to mix it up. It was

HGE67_Cameron:

It's alright.

HGE67_Chris:

All right. Game number one cities. I would like to emphasize that this is not the new city. So there's a game that just recently has come out from Devere called cities. This is not that game. Okay. This game is much older. You might also know that this game was reprinted as a game called Limes, which is very similar to Cities. I've not played it, but I read about it, but it's not exactly the same game. Okay? It's the predecessor to Limes, but they're, they're similar. Okay? So Cities was designed in 2008, published by Z Man games. At the time of this recording, it's BGG ranking is 3, 980. Designer this game is Martin F. That's how he's listed on the box and on bgg martin f He doesn't really have any other real significant designs. He does have one other game i've heard of but i've never played called oklahoma boomers it's a game that i've wanted to try but I don't own but I have heard of that one. All right brief rule summary for And these should be pretty brief because as we said, in theory, these games play in under 30 minutes. So I'll try to just hit the high points here. So cities is a tile lane, game where you're putting tiles into your city to try to make your tourists. As happy as possible. Okay. So the game components for cities, you have 24 tiles. Everybody has the exact same tiles and they're numbered one to 24 and you have seven tourists, which are basically just seven meeples. The tourists are important for scoring, but let's just set that aside for now. I'll talk about that at the end. Let's start with the tiles. So every tile has a certain makeup. Okay. So it's, it's split into four quadrants and you have four different types of terrain that can be on a tile. You can have water. You can have cafes or terraces. Those are red colored. You have attractions like buildings and skyscrapers, and those are yellow in color. And then you have parks, which are green. And those different Landscape types will be in different distributions on the tile. So, for example, you might have some tiles that have no water on them at all, or you might have some tiles that have two water squares on them, and they might be orthogonally adjacent, or they might be diagonal to each other. And then you might have a green square, park square, and a yellow attraction square. They're all just kind of different. But it's important to note that everybody's set of 24 tiles are identical. So, my number 7 tile looks exactly like Cameron's number 7 tile. Okay. So what's going to happen is someone is randomly going to pull out eight tiles from the stack face down. And that will leave that person with 16 face down tiles. And this person is going to be the caller. So that person will then take three tiles out of the stack randomly and announce them. So I might be like tile seven, 11 and 20. Everybody will then find those tiles and they'll position them in front of them. This will be your starting setup. Okay. Those tiles will touch corner to corner, however you want to arrange them. And it's important to remember that you are building a four by four city. OK, so once you're done, you will have a four by four grid of tiles. You can't place in such a way that you would extend beyond that four by four dimension. So once everybody has their initial setup, the game is simple. The caller will draw the top tile off of their stack. Let's say it's tile seven. I'll say seven. Everybody will find seven and then they will add it to their grid. They can rotate, turn the tile however they want. The only thing is is that it has to be added in such a way that it is orthogonally adjacent to at least one previously placed tile. And it stays within that four by four confine. That's your turn. With one exception, the tourists. So I'm going to go to the tourist at the end. The tourist is something you do in addition to placing the tile. Let's just go through the tile placement first. Once all 16 tiles are placed the game will score the way that scoring is done Is in the basic game the yellow squares So the attractions you basically add up all of the squares that make up the game Your connected yellow areas, and you get one point for every square in that large connected yellow blob, basically. Parks are similar. All the green squares that you manage to put next to each other to make up a large park area, you'll score one point per square in that green part. The cafes or the terraces are different in that what they want is the cafes want to be looking out across the water, right? It's like thematic, right? So he wants to be looking over the water. So what you do is from that cafe going in an orthogonal direction in each way, you get points for every water space that you see from that. Terrace until it's interrupted by another structure like a park or a

HGE67_Cameron:

or

HGE67_Chris:

building or something like that. Now where it gets a little bit more interesting, I just talked about the scoring, but in order for your yellow areas, your attraction to score, your parks to score, or for a cafe to score, it has to have a tourist in it. So the way this works is that when you place a tile, you then have the option of doing one of three things. You either can add a tourist to that tile that you just placed. You can relocate a previously placed tourist on the board onto that tile you just placed, or you can move a tourist that you previously placed one step orthogonally or diagonally onto another square, adjacent. So it's like it's traveling or it's walking through the city. And the reason again you're doing that is that in order for an area to score, it has to have a tourist in it. If you have a big connected yellow area, attraction area, and it has no tourist in it, it won't score you points. So not only do you have to be thinking about how you place your tiles, but you also have to be thinking about how do I get tourists into these areas by the game end so that I can score them. Okay? And that's generally how you place cities. There's one variant with some advanced scoring that I won't go over now, I'm sure we'll talk about it in the review. that adds even more to that because that's very, it sounds very basic and it is, but we'll talk about that in a minute, but first, before we do that, since the theme of the episode is 30 minutes or less, we're going to put these games to the test. Okay, so did you feel like in our plays of this, in our experience that this game come came in at the 30 minute or less mark?

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, it's funny, we were talking about this and I was like, well, I guess we should have, timed every game. So, you know, maybe we'll get that data from, from Ken and the discord when the episode comes out. Uh, and I, and I'm, I know we're picking on, we're picking on Kim, but it's actually like pretty useful in the scenario that he, that he,

HGE67_Chris:

good data.

HGE67_Cameron:

that he does that. but I'm pretty sure that we know that it comes in at least at that. Maybe not with the teach, but, um, um, I think that's never implied in the, yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

if I, I'm almost sure of that. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

it's fair enough to say that because I'm pretty sure we played the game two times in the normal fashion and one time with the variant in the course of the same evening and we still played a different game that same night. So that's only what, you know, an hour and a half, let's say of, of gaming. So that feels about right. but can obviously will back us up on, on that, but yeah, so I think it definitely meets that, which is cool.

HGE67_Chris:

Totally agree. Yeah. This is one of those games. If you didn't pick up on it from the rules, it's very multiplayer solitaire ish, but because of that, it's one of these games where everybody's acting at the same time, right? I draw it. If I'm the color, I draw a Tyler by finds the town. Then everybody's placing it at the same time. There's no downtime. It's not like, okay, I got to wait for Cameron to place his tile. Then Jason's going to place his tile. Now everybody's doing everything at the same time. And because of that, the game just moves faster. You're always doing something and nothing is slowing you down. Everybody's just kind of going at the same time. And so we can talk about multiplayer solitaire later. Some people can't stand that for me, if it's a short game. Like a filler game? I have no problem with that. Uh, it doesn't bother me. In like a two and a half hour game, I don't like that. But this game, it just plays so fast. I would say we probably played it in like 20

HGE67_Cameron:

minutes. we talked about the whole difference, I think at one point between tactics and strategy and like strategy meaning like there is. At least some element of you kind of have to watch what your neighbors are doing in order to have an advantage and understand where the game's going. That doesn't matter in this in this one. It's it's pure multiplayer solitaire. You it doesn't you don't even need to look at anyone else's plate. You know, the rest of the time, except for to maybe make yourself feel Better or worse about yourself.

HGE67_Chris:

Right. Right. Like how in the world did he get that

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but this one, you're like, you're, your decision is okay. I'm going to pick up this tile. I have to place it. Where's the, the right location on the grid to place it. And then what sort of, uh, orientation in 90 degree

HGE67_Chris:

I twist it? Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

to place it.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. And I will say, you may be saying to yourself, well this sounds really simple. And it is, but I did like the addition of the tourists. If this game was just placing the tiles and then scoring everything on your board, it wouldn't be nearly as good as this little, just, it's little, but this little extra added wrinkle of having these tourists that you have to get on the board and in the right places. Cause you're going to have more than seven areas that can score, but you want to get your tourists into the best scoring areas and it takes a little bit And figuring out, okay, if I put this tile here, can I put them on this tile and then move him over to this other tile that I priced earlier that doesn't have a tourist on it, because now this tile or that tile is kind of a good scoring opportunity for me. And I need to get somebody over there. Right. And so you kind of have to plan that out in addition to where am I putting my tile, but then also what am I going to do with my tourist move? Right. Which I thought was enough to make it interesting.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, I did think it was interesting that, that it, the way the game is set up, you're not. always able to place a tourist. So we didn't talk about this, I think, in, in the rules, which is that, you can only place a new tourist on the tile that you just placed, right? Which is what. makes it a bit limiting and what forces you to have to choose. When do I place a tourist versus when do I move a tourist to a different location? Uh, and, and I thought that was an interesting element of, of the game because you almost do kind of want to. Your tourists out there because the risk of not getting them all out there is actually like the worst thing that could you could do with them

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. You don't want'em sitting on your table at the end of the game, that's for sure.

HGE67_Cameron:

Right you would rather than be at least somewhere where they can score one point You know, even if they couldn't be in a more ideal position where they can score more than that

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, and I like to the starting three tiles one thing that's important to understand is When you put those starting three tiles out tourists can't go on them

HGE67_Cameron:

right?

HGE67_Chris:

So if you want to score anything on those in any way You have to walk tourists onto those tiles, right? So you need to be planning for that, right? If I'm going to use these tiles for some sort of scoring potential, how am I going to get tourists on there? Right. So I just think the tourists were a nice touch, not super complex, but it just gives you just one more little thing to think about that just doesn't make it just pure tile lane. Right. Which I think would not be as engaging, you know,

HGE67_Cameron:

I agree

HGE67_Chris:

I think we need to mention the variant. This is funny when we played this with bill one time, well, he played it a few times with us. That was that night we played it several times and he was like, ah, how much more could this really add? So basically the variant just increases the scoring complexity. So I'll go through it really quickly. Basically everything is the same as before with some exceptions and that the yellow scoring, in addition to being a large blob. You get extra points for every cafe next to that yellow

HGE67_Cameron:

area.

HGE67_Chris:

So not only are you trying to create large yellow areas, you're trying to now border them with red areas. The parks likewise want to be bordered by water. So you want a big park area, but you also want to try to surround it with as much water as possible. And then where it really gets tricky is the terraces or the cafes. They look out across water and parks. So you can get a really long line of water in parks, you can score a whole lot of points that But, it just makes the game more complex. Right? So what did you think about that variant? Did you like that?

HGE67_Cameron:

You know, I think I, I think I did, and not least because it's very enjoyably thematic. It is. Like, you definitely have

HGE67_Chris:

but it was easy to remember because it makes sense.

HGE67_Cameron:

that's right. that's the kind of stuff that when it, when a designer like adds something to a, to a game, it's, it makes it feel less Pasted on, right? It's not just, okay, these are abstract sort of colors and they're sort of arbitrary or whatever. And like, now it just, it feels like something that makes sense. And so that's almost more enjoyable, but from

HGE67_Chris:

have to struggle to remember it, right? If, if it makes sense, it's easy to remember,

HGE67_Cameron:

right. If yeah. it's the attractions and the, and the shops go together. Right, right. Which is what you would want. You go to an

HGE67_Chris:

want to be near the shops

HGE67_Cameron:

gonna want a snack and you wanna like, have a thing, you

HGE67_Chris:

walk through that cathedral,

HGE67_Cameron:

Or if you're gonna be at a cafe, you would want some. Scenery. It makes the cafe experience more enjoyable. It's like, ah, I love it theme. So, so that was pretty cool as, as far as like enjoyment of the scoring mechanism. I mean, it, it definitely makes it more interesting

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, and harder. And

HGE67_Cameron:

harder. Right. And, and I think that when. You know, it's kind of like, who, who are you playing with? Right. If you're, if your group is a little bit more used to playing some of the more technical games and like this, you know, maybe you don't like ramp up to it. Maybe you just throw them right in, throw them right into the advanced situation. and I think like probably like we, if you had told us that that was just how the game was played, I think our group, I think we probably would have been

HGE67_Chris:

Just fine.

HGE67_Cameron:

Um, and maybe not. Maybe Bill wouldn't have been thinking what he was thinking before we played that person. Cause I, I don't remember what his position was after we played the advanced version. Colin was kind of wished maybe he'll chime in on the discord and tell us what he, what he thought as well. But I wonder if it changed his opinion once we actually did

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, and I think I do remember him saying, I know for sure he said, I don't know if I'm gonna like this. Cause it just seemed like more complexity for complexity's sake. But after we finished, he was like, wow that really changed it. And he was like, I think I

HGE67_Cameron:

Cause, well, we were wondering,

HGE67_Chris:

to think about.

HGE67_Cameron:

we were wondering if the distribution of the scores were changed between the regular version and the, and the advanced version. And I think what we found is that it actually did. It made it more difficult enough that you had to be more skillful. Careful planner, in order to make it happen where you're getting the compounded sort of advanced points versus just the sort of basic points. I found myself, I think I remember like getting like a little bit overwhelmed and I didn't score as many points. In the advanced fashion, as I meant to, because I think I got super fixated on like getting the shops and the cafes next to one another. And I forgot about the parks and the water thing and like all that

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, it's a lot to keep in your head and, and, and actually, I guess leading into cons a little bit, cause we've been talking about some good things. This is such a minor con, but I will say, I do think in the advanced scoring At least in my opinion, this is my opinion. It did kind of make the cafes way, way more important.

HGE67_Cameron:

yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

know what I mean?

HGE67_Cameron:

is about the cafes at

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. Like the yellow and the green areas, if you can make a big one and each that's great, but I think everybody was trying to make those really long lines of sight across

HGE67_Cameron:

Because you could turn each one of them into like five, six points.

HGE67_Chris:

a crap ton of points. Right. So. It kind of all becomes about terraces at that point, which maybe isn't necessarily bad, but I don't know. It, it takes away from the yellow and green areas a little bit, which makes you maybe thinking a little bit more one dimensionally. So, I mean, that's something to consider, I think.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, that's fair enough.

HGE67_Chris:

Was there anything else you didn't care for in this game, or?

HGE67_Cameron:

I mean, anytime you're playing a game that's entirely cardboard shits, like It's a little bit like,

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah,

HGE67_Cameron:

you know, I mean, not, not everyone can have like a castles of Burgundy advanced super 200 version like you have in like every game, but it would have added something. I think

HGE67_Chris:

It came out in 2008 and it looks like it right I mean this game looks bad Yeah, I mean, it's ugly the art. It looks like

HGE67_Cameron:

Almost like they like went on Google images and just like, that's what I did. Like the poster eyes effect in Photoshop on everything

HGE67_Chris:

looks like Photoshop. It's

HGE67_Cameron:

just

HGE67_Chris:

Guess the game I would compare it to it'd be like food chain magnet. That's what the tiles look like. They look like prototypes So for some people, and I get this, it's fine. I like a game to look good. But if it doesn't, and the game is good, it doesn't bother me. But I am sure some people will look at this and be like, I'm not playing

HGE67_Cameron:

Ha ha ha.

HGE67_Chris:

because it just doesn't look good. OK, and you should know that.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, it makes me wonder if it was the sort of thing that like, They were like, you know, we're, we'll invest the extra money, once it sort of picks up and we need to do a reprint. And then it never picked up. And what this game got lost or whatever is this, it

HGE67_Chris:

get

HGE67_Cameron:

did get reprinted, did

HGE67_Chris:

Well, limes. So I'll talk about that at the end, about where you can find it. And I think it addresses some of these issues. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

Cool.

HGE67_Chris:

Anything else?

HGE67_Cameron:

what do you think? Should we go and just do final thoughts?

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, I'm ready.

HGE67_Cameron:

Alright.

HGE67_Chris:

Okay. So, I'll begin by saying I'm just a sucker for these kind of games. I really am. And examples of this would be Fits, which we recently reviewed, and Take It Easy. These games are very similar to that. Take It Easy especially. It even has that kind of similar thing of like the caller who draws the tile. Everybody finds that matching tile. Everybody places it. Very, very, very similar. Okay? So I'm just inclined to like these kinds of games and I like this game. Okay. But when you have a lot of games like that, that you like, you can't help but compare them, right? Avenue would be another one. We've never reviewed on this channel. Oh, it got rethemed as like Kokoro or something like that. I like games like this. This game is good. I'm giving it a four. I like it. I'm going to keep it. I think it's got a place. I would pull it out and play it occasionally, but the reason I'm not going to rate it higher is it's just not as good as those games. If you know what I mean, I think take it easy and fits, especially our. Just kind of like next tier for me while this one isn't quite there, but I will say that it's different enough from those games, especially with that tourist placement mechanic that I, I like this game. And so because of that, I'm going to keep it. It plays well under 30 minutes, I think. Uh, it's enjoyable, it's light, it's breezy, you can play it, uh, easier mode, like you mentioned Cameron, for a more casual crowd, you can play it more hardcore for a more hardcore crowd, so I think it has a place. So, cities, I'm gonna give it a four.

HGE67_Cameron:

All right. So, yeah. So my final thoughts are, you know, I feel like, I don't know, maybe it's because I haven't been playing quite as many games. Uh, and when I have, it's been. you know, some of these more serious titles that are longer plays and stuff like that. But I feel like earlier on in this podcast, we talked a lot about the concept of filler games, right? and maybe it's because back then we were, we were getting like a larger group of people together at, at a time. And the concept of a filler game was like more important. We saw more of these filler games coming to the table. And I feel like, It's an important thing to talk about in a podcast episode about games that are 30 minutes or less because we would have said that's the definition of a filler, right? And I feel like this fits that mold like pretty well. it, it's not a huge lift. It's not a huge teach, right? And you can get through it. It's. Um, you know, it's pretty like accessible, let's say from a complexity standpoint. and I think even if you are playing at the sort of advanced level, like you might not perform as well as, others, if you're not a quick learner, let's say, but, correct.

HGE67_Chris:

mean, yeah, if you're not good at, like, spatial things, this game will not, you won't do

HGE67_Cameron:

right. But in terms of difficulty. It doesn't rise to the level of like half of the games that, that we play in terms of like the, the full, full length feature games, right? So, yeah, anybody can play this. And so I, I like that. And, and I do feel like because the time commitment is non intimidating, It's so much easier to say, I like it, right? That was what I came up, came away with from it. Cause it was, I mean, I was thinking about, we finished the first game. It was like, you, all right, not like, do you want to run it back? Cause like we had to run it back cause we were preparing for the podcast, but like, it didn't feel like a big lift to run it back. It was like, okay, cool. Yeah, let's do it again. And that's what you want. You know, that's what you want in a game like this. That's meant to sort of play this role. And honestly, I kind of wish that there were more games that. That. You could say that about right where it was just easy to be like, sure. Yeah. That's well, we'll do it again. That's fine. Cool. Um,

HGE67_Chris:

reset everything, you know, just.

HGE67_Cameron:

So yeah, I mean, I think this is an easy for, you know, I know we always like hate to be like on the same score on things, but we had a good time with it and we, we, it was casual. We were having side conversations where we were playing it and like, those are just, it's just hitting all the right notes, you know, for, for that filler game status for us. So.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, there's something about this game, like the take it easy, the fits, this game. there's an energy at the table that happens in these games, and I can't quite explain it. But

HGE67_Cameron:

it's like what you want to happen at game

HGE67_Chris:

that shared joy and suffering when you don't get the tile you want. And then you, the elation when you do get the tile you want and everybody's just kind of like feeding off each other. It's just like a good

HGE67_Cameron:

We even had some of those moments where it was like because of however, you know, each individual person's multiplayer solitaire was happening. It was like a tile would come out and be like, yes, that's what I needed. Everyone else goes, uh, Yeah, that's fun.

HGE67_Chris:

in our fits review and I, I'm just finding, I enjoy games like that more and more because. Hey, I like to win as much as anybody and I like to cut people's legs out, but you don't need, not every game you need to be like trying to crush your opponent. Sometimes it's just fun to suffer and rejoice together corporately, you know, even if you're kind of all doing your own thing. And it's just fun. I just feel like the mood always comes up when we play games like

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right. So, Cities. Can you get it? Where can you get

HGE67_Chris:

You can. So I got some good news. So there are copies of Cities available at Noble Knight Games. So Noble Knight are our partners, our sponsors. We appreciate them very much. They do have copies available pretty cheap. So if you want to try out Cities, you You can get it from them. And if you would, we would appreciate it. If you would use our discount code, that is summer gems, 24. I can confirm that that is running through October the 10th of 2024. So that code is still active. You can get 10 percent off of your order. There are also, six copies on the BGG marketplace as well. That are pretty cheap. And then I will also mention this game was reprinted as limes. I read about it on BGG quite a bit and the game is very, very similar, but the designer made quite a few changes about how scorings take place, how things are laid out on the tiles. And so, while it's basically the same game, he just tweaked some things that in his opinion makes the game a better experience. I've not played it, it does look better. Limes is slightly higher rated than Cities, so you may just want to jump right to Limes if this sounded interesting to you, because in theory I guess it's a better game, but Like, we can only speak to cities. Um, but just, you know, take that for what

HGE67_Cameron:

what it's worth. Yeah. And you know, okay, I have two comments to make about this one. I bet doing a Limes review would be a fun backstage episode, right? Because it's like we gave it higher, higher marks, but the way, you know, the sort of new version of it is this other thing, but we're probably not going to revisit it on the show if we're real. So like maybe a fun backstage thing to do. All right. Well, those are our thoughts on cities. The scene is China in the first century BC. The Great Emperor Xi Huangti unified the formerly warring Chinese provinces under his stern rule. He has ordered the building of a Great Wall to protect his fledgling empire from raiding Mongols. The players take the roles of regional nobles eager to impress the fearsome ruler. Whichever player contributes the most to building and manning the Great Wall will earn the Emperor's favor. will you use honor and ingenuity to build the longest wall section, or guile and trickery to disrupt your opponent's progress? That's it.

HGE67_Chris:

So peaceful. This must be a really peaceful game.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, it's definitely not about war and trickery. When

HGE67_Chris:

gets along

HGE67_Cameron:

it

HGE67_Chris:

and doesn't hate each other.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. Wrong.

HGE67_Chris:

Wrong. Great wall of China. Published in 2006. Man, we're going back here 2006 and 2008. I was in medical school

HGE67_Cameron:

Wow. long

HGE67_Chris:

time ago, man now getting old Published by fantasy flight games that might surprise you but this is back when fantasy flight was doing that silver line of games So there were like smaller box and not these really big huge dungeon crawl monstrosities that they kind of are more famous for At the time of this recording, this BGG ranking is 4, 073 and designer, the great Reiner Kanizia. As you know, we love on this podcast, we played a lot of his games on here, reviewed a lot of them.

HGE67_Cameron:

we know how many we're at now?

HGE67_Chris:

at now? I don't know, but I would bet we're probably in the 10 to 12 range if I had to guess.

HGE67_Cameron:

Andrew! We need a stat!

HGE67_Chris:

help us. Andrew is our, uh, is our historian. Um, statistician, maybe, maybe it's more appropriate. Yeah. All right. Brief rule summary for great wall of China. Great wall of China is a competitive card playing game where the players are going to be adding cards to wall segments basically in the construction of the great wall of China. Okay. So all the cards in your deck are basically wall segments. Your cards have different abilities or things that they do, but basically you're constructing the wall together. Okay. You're doing this corporately. So what this looks like or the way this works is is that you're going to have a cup of victory point shits. Okay, and you're going to randomly draw out two chits at a time and you're going to place them on the table And you're going to leave enough space to the right of those two chits for players to lay cards So let's say in a four player game a four or a five player game. You're going to have four rows Okay, so you're going to have two Two chits per row, they can go anywhere from two points up to seven points. So for one row, you might have a four point shit and a five point shit. Another row, you might have two threes, then another row. You might have a seven and a two that we'll get to that in a minute. That's where it gets really interesting. but you get the idea. Okay. So that's going to be laid out on the table. That's the display. And then everybody is going to start with the same deck of 20 cards. Okay. Everybody's deck is identical. but to start the game, you're going to shuffle that and you're going to draw five random cards. So everybody, while their decks are the same, everybody's going to have a different starting hand of cards. That's known only to them. I'll talk about the cards and what they do at the very end. Let's just talk about what a turn looks like. So the first thing that you're going to do on your turn is you're going to assess the walls. to see if you are controlling any of the walls. And basically what that means is, do I have the most points of influence exerted upon one or more wall segments? if you do, you will get a victory point ship from that wall, but I'm going to stop there cause I'm going to do that at the end too. Let me talk about what a turn looks like. And then I'll talk about how you resolve that, but just understand that. To determine whether or not you get victory points for a wall segment, that is the first thing that happens on your turn. So before you play cards, so basically. In order for you to score a wall segment, you have to play cards. It has to come all the way back around to you and you still have to be in control of that wall segment. Okay. That's the main thing you need to understand. Okay. So on your term, what do you do? in classic Kinesia style. I love this man. You have two very simple options on your turn, but Very challenging options. You can either draw a card and you might say, well, that doesn't sound hard. Okay. When to draw a card is a hard choice in this game. So you can either draw a card or you can play a card or cards to a wall segment. And then you, again, after that can draw a card or again play cards to a wall segment. So you could draw, draw, you can draw, play, you can play, draw, or you can play twice when you play cards to a wall segment. If you have matching cards in your hand, you can play, Any or all of those cards at one time. otherwise you can only play one card at a time and that is your turn That's what it looks like So as I mentioned after you've played your cards if it comes back around to you and nobody has exceeded you in strength At a wall segment you will get a victory point shit at that location What's interesting about that is that shit gets placed onto one of your cards and then that subtracts From your strength for that segment because remember there's one more shit there So let's say I have a strength of five and the next closest person has a strength of four It comes back to my turn. I'm winning that wall I take the three point shit and now my strength goes from five down to two and so the other person who was competing with me or people will Be ahead of me now at that point. Did I say something

HGE67_Cameron:

No, I just, it's just every time you say chit,

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, I

HGE67_Cameron:

becomes more difficult to understand the, the word that you're saying is chit, chit,

HGE67_Chris:

Get a chit pool.

HGE67_Cameron:

This is a, this is a family friendly podcast. We were

HGE67_Chris:

talking about when We were laughing about Oh yeah, when we reviewed Burgu and we were talking about pulling onion chits.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yep. It happens every time. This is, it's an audio format and it's a, you know, it

HGE67_Chris:

how the points work, basically. So now let's talk about the cards. Alright, so this, this, this, this. This is interesting. All right. So in everybody's deck they have seven one value cards So these are the weakest cards strength wise and they just count for one, but there are seven of them It's the most numerous card in your deck So if you have a hand of five cards and four of them are ones You could lay all four of those ones onto one segment of the wall, so they're not without their usefulness Okay, you have three gates which are of a value two for control of a wall segment. And then everybody has one watch tower, which they've three value card, which exerts three points of influence on a wall segment. Everybody has five infantry cards and their deck. And the way these work is, is by themselves are just worth one point of influence. However, if you play them together as like sets, they compound with each

HGE67_Cameron:

other. Mm

HGE67_Chris:

Okay. So. if I played three infantry cards to a wall segment, the first one would count for one, the second one would count for two, and the third would count to three. If I added a fourth, then the fourth one would be worth four. So you can see they get stronger as you play more of them to a segment. The cavalry, there are two of these in your deck. This is an interesting card. It's worth two points of influence, and it has a special ability in that you can play it and it doesn't count as your action. It's like a bonus action where you can really, Jump on somebody in an area and put a lot of points of influence down really fast.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, that's the horse.

HGE67_Chris:

horse. Yep. And then the last two cards, boy, these are zingers right here, folks. Okay? The Noble and the Dragon. So if you play the Noble, he in and of himself is only worth one point of influence, but what he does is, he turns every card in that row, yours included, and any opponents that Makes that value of that card worth one. All cards are one regardless of abilities or strengths or

HGE67_Cameron:

whatever So it's just total, sheer quantity.

HGE67_Chris:

Yep, it's just quantity of cards at that point. But again, every player only has one of these each. This is a card you will track

HGE67_Cameron:

What does the dragon do?

HGE67_Chris:

The dragon again each player only has one of these you play the dragon on top Of any card and it negates that card. So you could play it on top of somebody's noble and now all the cards are what they were worth again before, or you could play it on top of a watchtower going from three to zero. Things like that, all kinds of shenanigans.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

So basically we'll go around and around like that until somebody runs out of cards or every chit has been claimed, every chit has been claimed. once that happened, everybody else gets one more turn and then we'll evaluate the walls one more time for majorities and then whoever has the most victory point. Chits,

HGE67_Cameron:

tokens. Should we just say tokens? tokens.

HGE67_Chris:

I can't help myself, the game, and that's generally how you play Great Wall of China.

HGE67_Cameron:

Cool. Well done.

HGE67_Chris:

Thank you. Alright, question, does Great Wall of China play in 30 minutes or less?

HGE67_Cameron:

Hmm, that's a great question. It

HGE67_Chris:

a good question.

HGE67_Cameron:

Could you play it in 30 minutes or less? Maybe, maybe if you're like pretty familiar with how to play, uh,

HGE67_Chris:

uh,

HGE67_Cameron:

yeah, but I think it's important to note that unlike cities, when it's time to play, like it's your turn, everyone else is waiting, right? So this is more turn based and it's not, and this is the reason I think that it would probably take potentially longer is. Like Chris mentioned in the rules, it's Not obvious what order you should do the things that you should do on your turn or what you should do. And particularly

HGE67_Chris:

you should do it.

HGE67_Cameron:

And particularly because it can change depending on what the person before you just did. Right. Because it's a constantly changing board and you're sitting there evaluating like, okay, could I take the majority in that one? Should I invest in this, you know, section of wall? Should I try to go for a section that's sort of, uh, uncontested. Yes. Uh,

HGE67_Chris:

kind of not worth a lot. Maybe I won't run up against

HGE67_Cameron:

Should I intentionally just go for second because no one else is going for second in that column type of thing. And there's a lot more questions to consider and your hand changes depending on if you're drawing cards, it changes from round to round. And so, It changes in strength. So maybe you have weaker cards, you know, this time around, and you've used your more, your heavy hitting cards, or maybe you just drew a heavier hitting card, in the previous round and now it's time to use that one or whatever, like there's a

HGE67_Chris:

draw again and Make sure i've got the firepower I

HGE67_Cameron:

Exactly. There's just a lot of different things to consider and that can slow your play down and that can slow the whole game down. If you're playing with people who are skilled.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. This is just classic Kinesia. I love this about the man. He's so good at this. This game is so simple to understand. I mean, it's a step up from cities for sure,

HGE67_Cameron:

but I

HGE67_Chris:

I mean, I wouldn't play this with like, My ants or anything, but

HGE67_Cameron:

you know, maybe if you got some good.

HGE67_Chris:

yeah, I mean, if they,

HGE67_Cameron:

sharp ants, yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

if they, you know, enjoy this, none of them do enjoy these kinds of games, but what I'm saying is it's not hard,

HGE67_Cameron:

right?

HGE67_Chris:

but you will think hard at times in this game because while the choices are simple, do I play a card? Do I draw a card? The choice of where to play, where do I want to get involved? Do I want to fight with this person or

HGE67_Cameron:

Mm hmm.

HGE67_Chris:

for this chip? Do I just want to try to shore my hand up a little more? Cause that's a big thing. I think the card draw element here is really fascinating because

HGE67_Cameron:

it costs you something.

HGE67_Chris:

well, it's your action. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're taking time, right? So if you get a big hand of cards. You have more ammunition, so to speak, to reinforce yourself. If somebody challenges you, but the thing that you have to understand, like Cameron, you just said, if you're drawing cards, you're not doing anything on the board, so you're not being involved. And by extension, you may be giving other people something much easier, right? If I'm just drawing and I'm not fighting with other people. Some, somebody might be pulling up a four point shit uncontested,

HGE67_Cameron:

All right,

HGE67_Chris:

right? So you're constantly doing that, like give and take of, Oh, should I try to get in the mix here and try to fight with this person or do I just draw again?

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

And then I think we have to go here because this is like a big part of the game, right?

HGE67_Cameron:

I think I know where you're about to

HGE67_Chris:

yeah, these high point value chits with a crappy second place point value, Let's say it's first place seven points second place two points,

HGE67_Cameron:

right?

HGE67_Chris:

and you get into a Tussle with somebody then you start to play the game. So this is what?

HGE67_Cameron:

gets pot committed, right?

HGE67_Chris:

So this is what game is referred to as sunk cost fallacy and in a lot of ways Great Wall of China is sunk cost fallacy the game

HGE67_Cameron:

Right.

HGE67_Chris:

Because you'll get into a situation where you're looking at the other guy and we're like we just can't keep doing this to each other Like it's like mutually assured destruction You But if you're playing with Bill, he's like, I'm not stopping. You're going to have to stop. And if you keep playing to a spot and exhausting your cards, and then you come out on the short end of that stick and you end up getting the two instead of the seven, you've killed yourself. Right. But if you're afraid to get in those mixes and you just give somebody that seven point chip easily, that's a huge gift. Right? So I've said a lot there and I want to let you interject, but I just wanted to lay out those scenarios because. I find them fascinating from a design standpoint and they lend to really hard choices, right? I

HGE67_Cameron:

I think that the thing that comes to mind, for me, when I, when I'm thinking about this is the, the, the tendency for. Situations to come up especially with turn order where it's like, I'm not going to do anything about it, but you can't let that guy do

HGE67_Chris:

it. are

HGE67_Cameron:

you seriously going to just let him just get away with that? It's like, I know you're only going to get the two, but like, you can't just let him have you been counting how many points he's already gotten? He's way ahead of everybody else.

HGE67_Chris:

of

HGE67_Cameron:

who's actually. Calculating all that stuff, which, but I mean, it is possible. Like if you had a really sharp brain, you could count and like have a decent track of where everyone's actually at and who's really in the lead. I'm not able to do that. So I just have vague ideas of where people are. And speaking of which I actually thought I was doing like super great when I was playing this game, I thought I was in the lead and everyone kept talking like I had like some, you know, crazy lead and I didn't

HGE67_Chris:

mean,

HGE67_Cameron:

I think it turned out that I was actually in like second or something like that, but I thought I was like way ahead. Cause everyone was like, Oh, you got to do something about Cameron. And he's over there, you know, racking things up, whatever it is, the most, the most fun that the most fun was that I was just kept going after Ken. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, we kept getting into fights together. I was like, dude, it's not intentional. It was just, you know, we're going after the same things and I'm winning. So

HGE67_Chris:

It is. I will say maybe it's not as fun when it's happening to you. Maybe it is dependent on your personality, but it's really funny seeing two people just going back and forth with each other over a really high point shit because one, they really want it. And two, they just don't want that. The leftovers, right? They're like, dang it come hell or high water. I'm winning this thing and I'm not backing out. And the other person's like, I'm not backing out either. And it just comes like this territory war. And it's just like, I'm sitting back with my popcorn, watching this

HGE67_Cameron:

Right, while at the same time you're over there pulling over a free, four value token.

HGE67_Chris:

okay, I'm just gonna jump on this four that nobody cares about and break that in, you know Which I was trying to do a lot of that. I didn't win though, but in that particular game, but it is just It's a good decision Again, it's that sunk cost fallacy dilemma of figuring out, do I just need to give it up? Right. is the writing on the wall? Am I seeing that? I'm not, do I keep just fighting with this guy and making us both play cards and I'm still going to come out on the short end of the stick? When do I stop here and start to invest in other places and just let him have it? Or when do I dig in and be like, no, I think I can take this. Right. it's just a fun back and forth, I think.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. And it's interesting too, how there are scenarios sometimes because there's, I think, how many lanes are there? Is it like five or

HGE67_Chris:

on player count, but in a four to five player game, it's four lanes basically. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

But yeah, there, there will be situations where like there's a couple that are being sort of, you know, that are contested. There's, you know, hot battles going on and you're like, I'm not kidding. You're not going to make it a three way, you know,

HGE67_Chris:

Although that did happen

HGE67_Cameron:

Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But there are,

HGE67_Chris:

got in three way fights over some stuff. But

HGE67_Cameron:

there are times when it's just like, okay, there's just one person on, you know, this, this lane. And there was a couple, you know, points, point tokens on the table. And, It's worth it to just be like, well, no one else is in there. So yeah, sure. It's just a three, but you know, I'm not, I'm not even going to try to like take, but just by plopping a one in there, I could be picking up points. And then you do, because by the time it comes back around, the person that was, you know, going after the five token to begin with, Gets their five token. And then over everyone else is like, well, it's only three. Like I'm not going to jump in there and go after Cameron. He's already got two on the board and whatever. And it

HGE67_Chris:

so bad. You're like, am I going to see? He's going to get that with a one card, a one one point card. Should I fight him for it? But then I'm like, am I really going to get in the, you know, a fight and match over one, two or three

HGE67_Cameron:

why don't I just wait until the new tokens get drawn and just go after whatever's there, whatever, keep my cards all fresh. Maybe I'll just. Pass and just draw this round or something like that. And like, that's where all that decision making comes in.

HGE67_Chris:

Dilemmas abound. Right.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, I enjoyed that process. Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

I did too. It was angsty and at times

HGE67_Cameron:

It's like what you want from a Kinesia game. I actually didn't know that this was run at Kinesia until you just until I was just looking at the back of this box right here.

HGE67_Chris:

yeah, it's, it's angsty and uncomfortable at times. but it's some really just clever design, I think.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

I think we have to talk a little bit about the cards too. I mean, they're just, there's some real zingers in here, the fact that you can throw your three value watch tower down. And a couple of Calvary and be like, I've got seven points of influence on the seven point shit. What are you going to do about it? And then somebody nobles you and you go from seven points down to three points. You talk about a zinger, right? Like you can just get wrecked in this

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. Or like the warrior things, too. I mean, we're talking about the value of those cards when you stack them up and they start because they multiply. Right. It's like it's like two is worth three. Two is worth two

HGE67_Chris:

worth one. The second one is worth two, the third one is worth three.

HGE67_Cameron:

Individually, right? So your total, right? So by the time you place the second one, your total value for those cards is three. When you place the third one, your total values were six. Yeah. So and that's and that's powerful because you're getting six out of only three cards.

HGE67_Chris:

Unless somebody nobles you. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

always a risk.

HGE67_Chris:

risk. There's always that risk, right?

HGE67_Cameron:

Or for that matter, if someone dragons, yeah, puts one of the dragons on there.

HGE67_Chris:

So I do like games they're they're only. I mean, they all have their own usefulness and power, but I did feel like we were all kind of like, okay, has Cameron played his dragon yet?

HGE67_Cameron:

right? A little bit

HGE67_Chris:

played his noble yet? And you're tracking that because if you get in a tussle with somebody. You need to understand what is still in their deck now Just because you know, it's still in their deck. It may not be in their hand yet

HGE67_Cameron:

Right.

HGE67_Chris:

Right, so you can take a chance and be like, well, I know bill hasn't played his dragon yet But he's still got like 10 cards in his deck. Maybe he hasn't drawn it yet Do I even want to risk it and just kind of go for it here? And so you're just kind of playing those mind

HGE67_Cameron:

games. Right. Yeah. It was fun. That is an enjoyable thing to try. And it's not like too much card counting, right?

HGE67_Chris:

No, no, it's just 20 cards, yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

Anything that we didn't like about it?

HGE67_Chris:

didn't talk a whole lot about the end of the game, but I do want to reiterate that the game will most likely end when somebody runs out of cards. And it's important to understand that these victory point tokens are pulled at random, okay? And they're, they have varying distributions, and in one of our games we played, it just so happened that at the very end of the game, once I was out of cards actually, I think I triggered the end of the game, two seven point chips came out on the same location. That's randomness, that's games, I get it. But it was a little bit deflating to know that I couldn't go there. And the two people that were going to get there were both going to get seven points. I was just like, Oh God, are you kidding me? And that ended up deciding the game.

HGE67_Cameron:

Mm hmm.

HGE67_Chris:

You could argue that's fluky. And it was because there aren't a lot of sevens. It just happened that two sevens got drawn at the very end of the game in the same spot, but a seven and a six could come out in the same spot or a seven and a five, even. And you may not even be able to be involved there and that could decide the game, right? So there's a little bit of in game randomness that, it could just happen, you know You just need to know that and just be okay with it, especially if you come up on the short end of the stick of

HGE67_Cameron:

the stick of that. Because I, I do think it's a valid concern, but there is this other element of like, you kind of just have to watch out for it in terms of how you play, which is you do have this opportunity throughout the game to play multiple of the same card at the same time. And I think the risk of that is that you could be milling yourself out ahead of other players Thanks. Thanks. Because not everyone is going to do

HGE67_Chris:

valid.

HGE67_Cameron:

So that's, it's just a tricky thing. It's like, it's a cool boon in terms of an option. To play if that, if, you know, it could be a strong move. If you happen to have the same cards in your hand to be able to drop them all at once. And that's a power move, right? And it could get you a lot of points that you need at the right moment. But there is a risk associated with it because you could be in a position and not be able to play at the later parts of the game.

HGE67_Chris:

game. That's a really good point. I, I'm glad you mentioned that because there's this also. Angstiness in a lot of games. This one included where it's like, do I throw a lot of cards down and guarantee my victory, but what you really want to do is you want to win with as few cards as possible,

HGE67_Cameron:

It's like the efficiency

HGE67_Chris:

right? So you're kind of incentivized. To not do that. But if you don't lay down a lot of cards, you're kind of inviting somebody to challenge

HGE67_Cameron:

right?

HGE67_Chris:

And so, yeah, there's a, there's, there's a balance

HGE67_Cameron:

there. Mm hmm, right?

HGE67_Chris:

Of like trying not to mill your deck, like you said. and I did, I put myself in a position in that game where I went really hard in a lot of places, ran out of cards, and then some really good ships came out at the end. And I just couldn't compete for them. Cause I know cards, right?

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

What about you, man? Was there anything you didn't care for in this game?

HGE67_Cameron:

You know, I don't know. I mean, I feel like it kind of hit some of the, some of those same notes of like the length of the game was not too long

HGE67_Chris:

for us it wasn't 30 minutes, but I think for some groups it could be. We were just agonizing over choices in this game,

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. Not really. Yeah. I guess I don't really have any like, like sort of glaring cons. Does that mean we should go ahead and do final thoughts?

HGE67_Chris:

it. I think you get to

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. I'll, I'll start this time. So yeah, for, for me on this one, you know, when I reflect on it, like I found myself having fun playing this one, the, it had just enough of that, competitive, take that sort of fields to make. To make it fun for the group, if, if I remember correctly. And like, everyone was being lighthearted about, you know, kind of getting whacked every once in a while with, you know, some competition over these things. And, because the scoring is concealed, right? Once you pick up your, your tokens, you turn them over and put them in front of you. So all, you know, is like how many. tokens. Each player has, I thought that was good and it left a little bit of mystery because you don't know if it's, if they're holding a two or a seven under there, like, and like, again, again, unless you have like perfect memory, which who does my memory is horrific. So but the feeling that I remember having in our plays was it was just kind of fun. It was like, Oh, just wait, just wait till I, it's a little, it's my turn, you know, like that kind of feeling. And it's like, Oh, what are you going to do to me? You know, I'm like, I'm exposed, you know, I want these points, but you, you're going to try to take them away from me. Like that's fun. Um, so yeah, so for me, I mean, it kind of hits those notes. again, it's this, kind of low. Investment game again. Once again, I think this one, it might be easier to learn than cities.

HGE67_Chris:

Well, it doesn't have nearly as complicated scoring. Right, right. The scoring is easy

HGE67_Cameron:

couple of decisions like that's Kinesia for you, right? It's like, it's like here, you're going to hear, you're going to play this game and you're going to make two decisions every turn. Um, you know, maybe one, right? Because like, I mean, sometimes drawing a card is not a decision, right? Eventually you can get just low on cards. It's like, I have three cards and none of them are going to work. So I'm going to draw. it was fun. So, and it's almost a no brainer when you've got a game that, I come home from games and it's the next morning and my wife's like, how's games? And I. You had a blast, you know, it's like, all right, well, if I had a blast, that's at least a four. so yeah, I'm going to go with a four for this one as well. It's a good one.

HGE67_Chris:

Good. Nice. Not quite a five, huh?

HGE67_Cameron:

I mean, I guess if I had to constrict my rating just for these filler length style games, it probably is in that five territory, among, filler games.

HGE67_Chris:

but just overall.

HGE67_Cameron:

overall, I think. Yeah, I think I'm comfortable with it at a four.

HGE67_Chris:

I'm

HGE67_Cameron:

one.

HGE67_Chris:

with it as a 4. And I, this is why I'm going to try to explain this as best as I can. I think in the past on the show, I've been very guilty of probably overriding games because I fell in love with the cleverness of the mechanism. But personally, I don't love the game as much as I thought. Think that I do I think a good example of this and this is ridiculous because this game's in my top 100 I love this game, but ponzi scheme would be a good example This game is in my top 100 games of all time. I haven't talked about it

HGE67_Cameron:

I thought you gave Ponzi Scheme a

HGE67_Chris:

I did

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

But I think in retrospect I should probably give it a five and the reason for that Is that i'm not always in the mood to play ponzi

HGE67_Cameron:

Scheme.

HGE67_Chris:

Cause Ponzi scheme stresses me

HGE67_Cameron:

out.

HGE67_Chris:

and it stresses people out.

HGE67_Cameron:

right?

HGE67_Chris:

And so for me, I have to be in the mood to play Ponzi scheme because it just. it's stressful. right? But it's so freaking cool as a design. Like the design of Ponzi scheme blows my mind still. We played it not long ago and I was like, this game is awesome. It's just so neat. But like yesterday, if somebody was like, we played games and they're like, do you want to play Ponzi scheme? I'd like, ah, no, you know? Yeah. And I

HGE67_Cameron:

like, do I want to raise everyone at the table's cortisol levels? Like

HGE67_Chris:

And I think this game is really similar. There would be some nights where I'd be like, yeah, let's play. And there'd be some nights I'd be like, uh, no.

HGE67_Cameron:

yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

Because this game with that sunk cost fallacy thing, if you get into a pissing match basically with somebody over a wall segment and you come out on the short of the stick, it doesn't feel great, right? And you're thinking, I just should have got out earlier. I knew it wasn't going to get it. I didn't give in or now I got this crappy two point chip and I've used like. Eight of my good cards and you're just like, and that's not bad,

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

but I just have to be in the mood for that. You know what I mean? And some days I am some days I'm

HGE67_Cameron:

a

HGE67_Chris:

So from a design standpoint, I think this game is brilliant. As most of his games are I think a lot of people really like this game I really like this game, but i'm gonna settle on a four based on my personality And what I know that I like right and so i'm also gonna give it a four, but i'm glad I own it I think it's cool game.

HGE67_Cameron:

No, I feel I feel that I definitely feel like because we were talking about this recently I think about hoity toity. Yeah, and how like You can get, Raiders, Raiders remorse, right? Where it's like, Oh, I think this is cool. Like, I think I like the idea of this thing. Practically speaking, can I realistically rate a game this highly when I'm not actually going to play it as often as my rating would suggest? a

HGE67_Chris:

should be like, a 6 especially, should be a game that I'll like, Always want to play no matter what, you know what I mean?

HGE67_Cameron:

yeah, absolutely.

HGE67_Chris:

But it's so hard not to get swept up in like cleverness and be like, God, this is just such a cool idea. It has to be this score,

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. I mean, literally, like I think that's that's such a great way to think about it, too, because like, for example, and I feel like this actually holds true in our group. Like any time that we don't have a game, let's say that we have to play or we don't have a ton of time. And we Pretty much in our group, if, if we say had like 45 minutes and be like, let's just play a few hands to teach

HGE67_Chris:

yep and every

HGE67_Cameron:

every time we'll, we'll all agree of that. And if there's only three of us, it's like, you want to play? I guess like we would do that. Right. Even if we can't play a whole game, because it's just fun to play a couple of hands. that's powerful.

HGE67_Chris:

yeah

HGE67_Cameron:

So I get what you're saying where it's like, no, you kind of do need to. Actually want to play, to

HGE67_Chris:

be in the right head space for this game. Yeah. Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

and for that matter, when a game has like this, this game, it's fair enough to say like, has some take that

HGE67_Chris:

Oh, a hundred percent. You have

HGE67_Cameron:

to, to have a group that can take people getting after you. Like we have, we've played with some people in the past. I'm not going to name names. But who like, you know, who like don't handle it well when someone comes after them, right? Or when let's say they lose hit points, right?

HGE67_Chris:

knows who that person

HGE67_Cameron:

everyone knows who that person is in their group and they're just like I come to game night And I don't want you to whack me and and ding me with stuff And it's not fun for them. you don't want to have a person that comes to your game table and then leaves going like, well, you know, that hour and a half that we were playing a game, and everyone was just ganging up on me the whole time. You know, and they feel bad and you're like, well, I don't want someone to come in the house and leave and not have had a good time. So, no, I get that. I think that's a really valid thing to factor into a rating.

HGE67_Chris:

Well, if we piqued your interest and I hope we have, I've got good news yet again. This game, despite how old it is, it's pretty available. So there are copies of this game available at noble night. Again, our sponsors for pretty cheap. Again, our discount code summer, Jim's 24 and get 10 percent off of your order. And there are also 20 copies on the BGG marketplace, I think for like as low as six bucks. I mean, this is a small box game. And again, you know, we would love it if you'd use noble night, cause there are our sponsor and they're really cheap on there and you get the discount, but. This game's just affordable, basically. So if you want to give it a try, if you've not tried out this Kinesia, especially if you're a Kinesia fan, I think you got to give this one a go.

HGE67_Cameron:

Cool.

HGE67_Chris:

one's overlooked.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, absolutely. Not a

HGE67_Chris:

a lot of people talk about this one. From

HGE67_Cameron:

our podcast is about.

HGE67_Chris:

what we're about, man. That's why we exist. Exactly.

HGE67_Cameron:

Unusual. Forgotten.

HGE67_Chris:

All right. Well, those are our thoughts on Great Wall of China.

HGE67_Cameron:

Nyet is trick taking card game in which your teammates trump color and points earned change each round based on what you and the other players don't choose. Play your best cards, guess your opponent's game, form masterful block with teammates and win coldest of waters. Accessible and clever, Nyet will delight fans of classic card games and beguiled players looking for something new.

HGE67_Chris:

Nyet.

HGE67_Cameron:

Nyet.

HGE67_Chris:

It's

HGE67_Cameron:

I don't know what

HGE67_Chris:

complete set. Published in 1997. What grade were you in?

HGE67_Cameron:

Bro, 1997? Uh, like 6th grade?

HGE67_Chris:

We're gonna have a sophomore in high school. Racing motocross published by yellow. Most recently at the time of this recording, it's BG ranking is 1, 929 Designer, We love him around here. Stefan Dora did a whole episode on him. Next episode, we're doing a whole episode on him. Get ready.

HGE67_Cameron:

It's been making games since before I knew what Russia was.

HGE67_Chris:

right. It's incredible. All right. Brief rule summary for yet. So Niet is a trick taking card game that takes place in two phases. We have the Niet phase and then we have the card playing phase. I think it makes the most sense to start with the trick taking phase and explain how that works. And then we'll go back and talk about the Niet phase, at the end. But just understand that the Niet phase of the game happens before cards are played each round. Okay. So, Yet, as I mentioned, it's a trick taking card game, and this one follows pretty standard conventions. Okay, so in this game, we have four suits. Each suit is numbered 1 to 13, but there is a catch here that in each suit, there are three 1s in each color. So those 1s obviously are the weakest cards, while the 13s are the strongest. However, it is likely, not guaranteed, but likely, that that some of those ones might be something we refer to as super trumps. Okay. More on that later. Okay. But basically the way this works is is that the player who has the lead will play a card to the table. The next player's in line. If you have that color of card, you must also play that color. That's known as following suit. If you don't have a card of that color, you do not have to follow suit and then you can play off suit. And that includes playing Trump. And you will have trump color in this game I'll talk about how that's determined in a second and basically trump cards are the strongest cards And only trumps can be beaten by higher trumps if they're played to a trick And the highest cards again are the super trumps. And we'll talk about those more a minute. When we get to the Nietzsche phase, when you catch a trick, it will be worth a certain number of points, but there's one other catch. Remember I mentioned that every suit has three ones. If your team, again, this is a partnership game. I'll talk about that in a minute too, within the Nietzsche phase. If your team catches a one in a trick and it came from a player on the opposing team. That card also counts for points. That's known as loot. You're catching loot. Okay. And that's good. If you can do that catching ones that your opponents are forced to throw into tricks. Okay. But that's basically the trick taking trick taking is pretty straightforward. So where does Niet get interesting? Well, the whole emphasis of the game is on the Niet phase and it takes place on this little board. So before any cards are played players in turn order, Okay, we're going to be placing chips on this board that determine the parameters of the game. Okay. Or of the hand. Okay. And it will change from hand to hand or round around. So let's just go through them one at a time here. So one of the things that you can influence Is what is the trump color going to be for the hand? So on this board every trump color is represented and let's say it's my turn If I play a chit on the red color on that board what I am saying And this is important to understand is that red will not Be trump for this hand i'm getting

HGE67_Cameron:

will nyet

HGE67_Chris:

So the way that works is, is that once every color in the Trump row is covered except for one that will determine it. So if three of the four spaces are covered and green is left showing green is Trump for this hand. Likewise, the super Trumps are also represented and whichever color of one does not get covered up, Those are the ones that will become the super trumps. And again, those are the strongest cards in the game row three. This is an interesting one points. So there is one, two, three, four and minus two. So what this determines is, is whichever one of these numbers is not covered up. That's how many points each trick in each Luke card will be worth. That hand very important and I will emphasize that there's a minus two here where tricks and loot cards caught can actually lose you points Okay And then the last two rows Well are also interesting but quite a bit different one is the discard row What is left showing will discard how many cards, one or two cards, can be discarded from players hands. And they're like, if you are able to discard ones or not, things like that. And then lastly, and this one can be really important at times, is determining the first player. So you will play chips on this board and say, okay, Cameron is not going to be first player this round or Jason is not going to be first player this round. If I cover them up, whoever is left showing will be first player. And this is important for two reasons. One, they lead the first trick, but even more importantly, the first player chooses who their partner is going to be for this hand. Okay. Very, very important to understand that. That's generally how you play Nyet. You do that phase, the parameters will be set by the players, then you'll play out the hand. You'll do that with every player dealing twice. And then at the end of, those rounds, most likely this will be a four player game. Eight rounds of play. Whoever has the most points wins the game.

HGE67_Cameron:

Mhm.

HGE67_Chris:

All right, Cameron,

HGE67_Cameron:

Mhm.

HGE67_Chris:

does Niet play in 30 minutes or less?

HGE67_Cameron:

Uh, no. Nyet. Nyet.

HGE67_Chris:

Not even close. Right?

HGE67_Cameron:

I mean, no, I think we did a little calculations and we've proven that it's mathematically unlikely.

HGE67_Chris:

you

HGE67_Cameron:

probably.

HGE67_Chris:

were trying to, to prove somebody wrong, sure you could, but in normal circumstances, This game is not coming in another 30 minutes.

HGE67_Cameron:

not coming

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, no freaking way. I mean, we weren't even close and just for example, let's say on the net phase, when we're putting the chips down In most groups, I would say best case scenario. You're getting all the chips down and establishing the parameters and probably two minutes. If you're playing eight rounds, that's 16 minutes. If you get them down in three minutes, that's 24 minutes. That leaves you like 15 10 to 15 minutes to play eight hands of tricks. There's just no way this game is well over an hour.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

Okay. So it's a longer trick taking game. 30 minutes. That's a lie.

HGE67_Cameron:

now. Is that fine? We'll see.

HGE67_Chris:

see. Yeah,

HGE67_Cameron:

but, it is, it's a bold claim and, and it's one that, at least from our perspective, is pretty unfounded. and that's coming from a group of people who love trick taking games. That's why, about every other episode, we're reviewing another trick taking

HGE67_Chris:

personal favorite of yours. Sure. You love them.

HGE67_Cameron:

I mean, I, I, I absolutely, the genre is one of my favorites for sure. I'm, I'm always interested anytime it's like, Hey, it's a trick taker. I'm like, sweet. Sign me up. I'll play. So then, then the question becomes, all right, so what's interesting about this game, if anything, and what did we think of it? since we, since it failed the 30 minutes or less claim. I feel like the thing that we have to talk about next, well, and you tell me, like, maybe we could, maybe we save it for later. So there's this Niet board, which is, which has got a lot going on and there's a lot of decisions there. And then there's the like, all right, how do you play your cards out? Right. What's, what's unique about that versus other trick takers?

HGE67_Chris:

I mean, I think the net board, right. Is that's the

HGE67_Cameron:

That's the better part of the game. I mean,

HGE67_Chris:

So yeah. What'd you think about it?

HGE67_Cameron:

So, I mean, obviously there's a, there's a lot of different decisions to make. There's an interesting thing going on in terms of the order in which. you might prioritize the different things that, that you have to make decisions about covering up. Right? you got a player order, you got whether you discard any cards and how many you've got trumps, super trumps and,

HGE67_Chris:

of the points. And

HGE67_Cameron:

then how is it going to score? And so I think, I think there's, there's so many, I have an order in my head. I wonder if it's the same. Order that you have in your head in terms of the priority of them, because I don't think I don't want to like say it. And I feel like it's a risk in terms of like saying it for people that might play because they might hear the review and then try to play the game. And then they're like, well, Chris and Cameron said that this is the order that you should that you should prioritize these. I just would almost say this is the order that like they tend to be prioritized.

HGE67_Chris:

I think I know what you're saying. I think, so you're talking about like trumps and super

HGE67_Cameron:

talking about like trumps and super trumps being first? It shapes the direction of how the hand's going to go. Because that's really where you're going from. You're looking at your hand of cards and you're going, How do I want to play this hand? what's going to be most beneficial to me and my partner, right? And so you're like, well, what do I need it to definitely not be?

HGE67_Chris:

That's the thing That's the thing that's interesting about this board is you can't You can't control what is going to happen You can lead it in a direction, but you can certainly control what's not going to

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, it's like, it's like you're picking the lesser of 25 evils.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, right. So, and I think that's got pros and cons and we'll come back to that. It's one thing Jason mentioned, but I will say the more that I played it. I feel like where I placed on the board and what I chose to influence was very much dependent on my hand. So there were some games certainly where like, I was like, okay, I'm going to influence what the Trump and the super Trump is. And there were some hands where I didn't do it at all. I just ignored it

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

Because

HGE67_Cameron:

you're evenly balanced or

HGE67_Chris:

various different reasons, right? So one of them might be. I know I have a really weak hand, right? So maybe I am placing more on the start player spaces.

HGE67_Cameron:

Well,

HGE67_Chris:

Well, why would I be doing that? If I had no, I have a weak hand. Well, if I can make myself the start player. If I'm looking at like Jason and Jason's covering up the minus two, he's covering up the one because the chips you place on the board, this is important. Have your picture on them, your player picture. So you can look at the board and see where people have been influencing and that can communicate to you the strength of their hand. So while my hand might suck, If I'm detecting that Jason maybe has a good hand, if I can work myself in the first player, I'm going to choose Jason to be my partner. Right. So while I do agree that Trump and super Trump, alterations or controls seem to be where a lot of people were going, I don't think that's universally true. I think depending on your hand and the circumstances, you may want to go other places, um, to see other things happen. Right.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, no, I, I agree. And I think like there were, there were times when, when I was looking at my hand, I was almost going like, man, okay, I, you know, I'm, I'm going to be able to make one play on like what Trump is not. And I'm looking at my hand going, okay, I, I have like two reds.

HGE67_Chris:

right.

HGE67_Cameron:

I'm going to get off suited on that real quick. Hopefully. Maybe instantly. Let's see. I re I really need two things to happen and anything else I can kind of just wing. I need. red to not be Trump and I need to discard two cards because if I can start the round like that, I know that I've got probably some trumps in my hand and I know that I can discard the two reds that are in my hand and I'm start the round off suited. Right? And so from a trick taking perspective, you could be at least a pretty strong

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I will say, I think we need to talk about the points thing. cause you know, if you're spending a lot of time. Trying to control that you have a strong hand this happened to Jason one time and it was quite hilarious, honestly, It cost him the game But I think we need to talk about it because I think it tainted his view of this game and I can see where he's coming from but I think it just Emphasizes the point of how every row is important. Yeah, you could have a loaded hand and he did and I think all of us picked up on it pretty quick And he was winning and so We made all the tricks worth minus two

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

and it wrecked him, right? I

HGE67_Cameron:

think it wrecked me too because I think it was he and I were like contending for the lead back and forth Well, we were like in the top two and it was like maybe he's gonna win or maybe i'm gonna win And then ended up being a minus two.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah, so I think while it is important to be like I could have a really good hand here I'm going to try to get the trump colors. I want the super trumps and if you could make that happen, but if you neglect You Determining what the points are. You're really good hand could actually turn into a devastatingly bad

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah

HGE67_Chris:

And so then Jason was like, ah, that sucks. And I'm like, I get it. I'm not poking fun at Jason, but in those moments you have to say, okay, instead of covering up green as being not Trump, maybe I should just cover up the minus two to make sure I don't get screwed here.

HGE67_Cameron:

To just make sure. Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

You're doing that instead of something else. Right. And that's where the hard choices come

HGE67_Cameron:

in.

HGE67_Chris:

I've like trying to prioritize. Which of these can I not have happen to me? Right?

HGE67_Cameron:

there still is this other component of, you have to play skillfully, right? but yeah, the, this game is only unique because of this net board. So yeah, no, I think it's, I think you're right. it's this weighing of like what matters more. And that's, that's what makes it so

HGE67_Chris:

I think it's the, it's the major selling point, but I will say it's not all roses, so I guess it's a little, at least for me, a transfer into a con

HGE67_Cameron:

Sure.

HGE67_Chris:

because yeah, it's not perfect. So let's just give another scenario. Let's say. Like in the Jason example, I recognize that Jason's got a really strong hand, right? I figured that out based on how he's placing on the board and He's winning and I want to try to pull him back and I managed to make Tricks worth minus two and I'm like, yes Got him, but then You end up being first player Cameron and you pick bill to be your partner Now I screwed myself Right, I did all that work To make tricks minus two. Cause I knew it would hurt Jason. And then I ended up being partnered with Jason, right? And that wasn't my fault, right? That's just kind of how the board shook out because you, you do these manipulations in a turn order, right? So you can't make everything that you want to happen, happen. And so while I might've got what I wanted from the points, now I've partnered with Jason and I've hurt

HGE67_Cameron:

right?

HGE67_Chris:

And so that. Those kinds of things can happen in this game and it's not super satisfying. the way the partnerships shift in this game, I can kind of see what he was trying to do, but it didn't always feel great. And then specifically at the end of the game too, which I'm sure we'll talk about. that was also an issue, but I don't know. What'd you think about that?

HGE67_Cameron:

no, I mean, the scenario that that is still tender, let's say for me, is. The, the reality of that partner shifting thing, which can result in, like, for example, in, in the game that I was referring to earlier, where, it was Jason and I basically contending for the top spot, we're, we're first and second. And then I can't remember exactly what it was, but basically it was like, you forced us to be partners. Somebody forced us to

HGE67_Chris:

I took the first

HGE67_Cameron:

right. And, and right. And you intentionally chose. I think whoever it was, Bill or somebody.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

so that Jason and I had to be partners. Well, I was screwed at that point because I was in second already. And so we're going to get the same number of points no matter what quantity of tricks we took. And so it was like, great. So I'm, I'm going to play this whole round. I'm locked in and basically just sending, yeah, I'm sending Jason across the victory line. Like that stinks. It

HGE67_Chris:

does. It's really important to understand that in this game, that when you get into the final round, if you're in last place, You can't

HGE67_Cameron:

you can't run.

HGE67_Chris:

It is impossible for you to win because you're going to be partnered with somebody

HGE67_Cameron:

who's ahead of

HGE67_Chris:

That person will be ahead of you and partners always score the same number of points You can't win And like you said cameron you were in second But because you got partnered with the person in first you couldn't win

HGE67_Cameron:

and it wasn't my choice. And I knew that like if Jason, if Jason or I had had the opportunity, the one thing that we wouldn't have done is choose each other. Yeah. Because that would've been dumb,

HGE67_Chris:

right? You

HGE67_Cameron:

right? I mean, I mean, maybe Jason would've chosen me, but he would've had no incentive to,

HGE67_Chris:

to. And I can hear people out there saying, well, that makes the choosing of the first player in the last round really important, and it does. But again, remember, you can only choose who won't be. You can't guarantee it will be you. And when it's not you making the decision, you don't know whose team you're going to land on, right? And so I did find every time we played this, there were always people that were just really unhappy. With how the game ended because of how they got partnered up they couldn't win.

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah,

HGE67_Chris:

I mean that that's just a problem And you can also say well just don't put yourself in that situation of being in last But I mean like you said Cameron you were a second and you couldn't win just because of how you got partnered up

HGE67_Cameron:

and you could have even like, because there's only, you know, four spots in the, first row of the net board, like you could be in a turn order situation where you just, you can't even influence it at all. So, yeah, I mean, that kind of stinks. It, it's tricky though, because like, I, I do wonder, like, would the game be significantly different if you, let's say, just Blocked off that whole line and said, we're not going to play with it. We're going to choose permanent partners and play the whole game. Like, would it be better? I don't know.

HGE67_Chris:

know. Yeah. It's taken away a decision space. But one of the nice things about partnership games like teach you and I are partners. We're partners the whole game. We win or lose together. Right. we can make a comeback. Right. Right. And yet you can't come back in the last round. If you get partnered up in a, in a not ideal way, right? And so it just, you're playing that last round out and you're trying to do the best you can, obviously, but it just doesn't feel good to know you're eliminated before the game's over. So it's not good. It's just an inherent weakness of the design.

HGE67_Cameron:

say Yeah, I feel that.

HGE67_Chris:

So, yeah, I mean, I think the board has good parts. The reports are like there are parts that are not perfect, right? left me feeling You know, like I wanted a little bit more I guess

HGE67_Cameron:

I want to run back to this, concept that you mentioned in the rules about the one cards. We, you know, we were talking about the whole how the card play goes and how, it's sort of just standard trick taking play and like, this is a little bit of an exception to that where you have these ones that are like, they're basically a

HGE67_Chris:

they're liabilities, yeah. If your partner doesn't catch them, Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other team's getting

HGE67_Cameron:

Right. so it's this other thing to think about you have to figure out how to chuck them in When you're definitely winning the trick, let's

HGE67_Chris:

And recognizing when that's happening. Right.

HGE67_Cameron:

because they are a liability because if you end up having to play them For example, in tricks where you just have to follow suit and it's the only card that you have because you've been waiting and holding out for this opportunity to get rid of it in a favorable scenario, then what happens is that your opponents get not one trick when they take that card, but two. Right. And that's, that sucks.

HGE67_Chris:

Especially if tricks are worth like three points per, right? Yeah. Yeah, it can just totally Turn the game around, right?

HGE67_Cameron:

So I just want to mention that as this other thing. I don't know if that it's necessarily a con. In fact, I think in terms of gameplay I think it's actually a pro because because it made that stage a little bit more interesting The deck is obviously different. It's not just there's only one right? There's multiple of these and so they're like landmines that are kind of sprinkled throughout The game and it makes gameplay more interesting from trick to trick. So

HGE67_Chris:

How am

HGE67_Cameron:

how am I going to manage them? And for that matter, when it comes to, you know, you're looking at your hand, but while you're choosing the things on the net board. And so there were times when I was like, I, I really need to be discarding at least one card, if not two, I really would rather do two because I have a bunch of ones. And the. They're not super

HGE67_Chris:

Well, I was just getting ready to say I'm glad you mentioned the board again, coming back to the board. I do feel like the discard row tended to be the most neglected one. It was just kind of like

HGE67_Cameron:

I, I cared about it a

HGE67_Chris:

Okay, so maybe I wasn't picking up on that because if I had a hand where I had no

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah.

HGE67_Chris:

I was like, okay. I want the spot where you can't discard ones. Cause there's one that like,

HGE67_Cameron:

someone's sitting there with

HGE67_Chris:

but it won't let you discard one. Because my hope is I get partnered with somebody that doesn't have a lot of ones, and then that just gives me and my partner more potential to catch ones from somebody's got to be

HGE67_Cameron:

someone's stacked

HGE67_Chris:

Right. And so I don't want them to discard them. I want them to have them and have to figure out what the heck to do with them. Hopefully I don't get partnered with that person. Right. Again, that's just, you won't know, but that's just another little nice addition to the board. to make things work in a direction you might want them to go,

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah. Yeah. Cause, cause they're, they're pretty valuable. Like when you can, when you can force, your opponent to have to throw in ones and

HGE67_Chris:

they have to follow suit, yeah.

HGE67_Cameron:

tricks. Yeah. Like that's, that's gold right there. Especially if you're playing a round that's worth more than one point per trick. So I just wanted to throw that back out there cause we, we kind of glossed over it, but it is an important element of this game that's different from a lot of other trick takers.

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. I totally agree Final thoughts time?

HGE67_Cameron:

Yeah, sure. Okay. Once you're on that,

HGE67_Chris:

Alright, I'll start us off. So, as Cameron mentioned, we love trick takers around here. we play them a lot, they're just fun. They're really in vogue right now, and for good reason. I think more people are learning about them. I grew up playing them, but they're just really hot now. This one's an old one, though. I mean, 1997. and I will say, Similar to slough off, which is also a door design that's older, this game is not perfect. Okay. I do think that there are some Unsatisfying outcomes that can happen on this board. I think we've outlined in the review. I'm not gonna rehash them However, I do think there's some really fun things that happen on this board, too And just trying to work things out to your advantage as best as you can Right. Making sure that some things don't happen that could ruin your day. You know, you just have to think that like every time you place a chip, you're like, what do I really have to make sure doesn't happen here? Right. And then just, you know, hope everything else works itself out in the wash, right? So, all that to say, again, I liked this game. I'm glad I have it. I enjoyed it. It's not perfect. It's not one of my favorite trick takers, but it's a good one. I'm going to give it a four. I think it's fun. Four, fours across the board for me today. I mean, this is good. I liked it. and I'm glad I have it. I can tell you, Ken and Bill think that this game is awesome. Unbelievable. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill has this way up on his top 100. And I'm saying that not because I think their opinions are wrong. I'm giving different viewpoints that there are people in our group who think this game is incredible. And again, I think it's very good, but there are just a couple of things about that yet board that I don't love, but I think it's still great. So I'm going to give it a four.

HGE67_Cameron:

All right. Very cool. so for me, like we said, I mean, we talk about a lot of trick takers. It's become probably my favorite genre of games to play. I'm always up for trying a new one. And this one was a pleasant surprise. I hadn't heard of it before. And one thing that we didn't mention is. This print I just looked at the box. This one was reprinted in 2015 and it's it's got like pretty good artwork

HGE67_Chris:

It's a nice

HGE67_Cameron:

nice design, you know, it's got the kind of like Cyrillic Imitation font going on and like it's got this sort of like Russian theme and whatnot Yeah, it's like pretty nice. So like I'm probably going to pick this one up, because I really liked it. I mean, I had a lot of fun with it. We played it many times. in fact, and just prep for this, Chris was like, Hey, do you need to play any of these anymore? I was like, I mean, I would play and yet again, like if you just want to, you know, and we did, and it was great. We had a lot of fun with it. I think, more favorable about this one because I just think that, like, a lot of what's going on with it is, like, just fun. Yeah. And, man, it's just so important, uh, I feel like it's almost, it's more fun than it's complex. when I think about other trick takers that I've played, like Ghosts of Christmas, which we talked about and like all love Ghosts of Christmas is way more complex than this game in terms of scoring and thinking and all the things you have to think about. Whereas like, this is like, Almost about as straightforward of, trick taking as you can get with this, unique twist on it. And I think that's great. I think it's fantastic actually. And so my rating on this is actually I think comfortably in the five range.

HGE67_Chris:

range.

HGE67_Cameron:

Um, it's been a while since I've given a game a five, but I had so much fun with this one and. yes, did I even experience some of the unfortunate, things that can happen with the way that the, pairing, uh, partnership stuff goes like, yeah, but it's one of those things where like, it didn't bug me as much as I thought it might. you know, when I thought about it, I'm just kind of like, you know, I feel like this is the type of game that you can just go in and just have fun with it. And. And, and everyone's sort of feeling lighthearted about it. So, yeah, so I feel good about giving it a five. I'm probably going to get a copy of it and show it to my friends. I just recently realized that some of my like pretty close friends all actually like, trick takers, uh, a lot more than I thought that they did because, because they kind of like. gave me squinting eyes and poo poo eyes about, uh, trying to learn, teach you. Um, I'm still working on about

HGE67_Chris:

Teach you is more, way more complicated

HGE67_Cameron:

I learned that they really like a game that I'm going to talk about in the backstage episode. So teaser.

HGE67_Chris:

In your top 50.

HGE67_Cameron:

So yeah. I'm comfortable giving it a five and like, I enjoyed it and I recommend it.

HGE67_Chris:

Nice. Okay. Well, I might have some bad news for you here, buddy.

HGE67_Cameron:

Oh, no!

HGE67_Chris:

While this game is not that old, this print run did. Do really well. There are no copies on noble night. There are four copies on BG, but they're high. for whatever reason, this game has gotten a little bit rare. You can certainly borrow my copy if you want, but, I imagine this will get reprinted at some

HGE67_Cameron:

point. Okay.

HGE67_Chris:

This game pushes the limits of, I think what qualifies for our show. It is rated BG, which is well outside the top thousand, but people have heard of this

HGE67_Cameron:

game. I

HGE67_Chris:

I mean, it, It's not like, and yet I've never heard of that. A lot of people have probably heard about this one. It's just older and again, 1997. It's kind of fallen out of memory, given the craze and trick takers to more modern design. So I think it was worthwhile, but all that to say, I wouldn't be surprised that they reprint this one at some point, but for now it's a little bit. Hard to come

HGE67_Cameron:

it looks like this reprint is like close. It's like nine years old

HGE67_Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. It's time for another one. Okay,

HGE67_Cameron:

All right, well those are our thoughts on yep

HGE67_Chris:

nice

HGE67_Cameron:

thank you for joining us on this episode of hidden gems. If you like what we're doing here, please remember it's a huge help to us. If you would leave us a rating or review on your podcast platform of choice and follow us on our various social media accounts, these simple things can make a difference for the show's exposure. So more folks can enjoy exploring games with us. Check out the BGG guild. If you want to interact with us or share a game that you think is a hidden gem. And if you're so inclined, please consider supporting the show over at patreon. com slash hidden gems podcast or purchasing hidden gems t shirt on our website at hidden gems board game podcast. com slash store. Until next time, I'm your host, Cameron.

HGE67_Chris:

this is Chris.

HGE67_Cameron:

And no one else is here. Thanks for listening.

HGE67_Chris:

67 was recorded in Raleigh, North Carolina on September 15, 2024. Join us again in three weeks. As we again, take a closer look at the game design catalog of the great Stefan Dora while our three games up for review, reach the heights of the fantastic Hellas or Medina. Or will they suck like Tonga Bonga? Tune in to find out. Hidden Gems is produced and edited by Chris Alley, Cameron Lockie, and Jason Yonchelev. A 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. Our show's logo was illustrated by designer and artist Caitlin Nieto. Check out her work on Instagram at It's Caitlin 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 Hidden Gems dot podcast, and X 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.

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Cameron Lockey

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Chris Alley

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