Hidden Gems: A Board Game Podcast
A board game podcast where your hosts Chris Alley, Cameron Lockey, Jason Yanchuleff, and Bill Arney review unusual, forgotten and under-appreciated board games.
Hidden Gems: A Board Game Podcast
77. Bringing Back the Classics with Play For Keeps Games
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On this episode of Hidden Gems, join your hosts Chris Alley, Cameron Lockey, and Jason Yanchuleff as they dig into four classic re-releases from Play For Keeps Games — Reel Rivals (a re-implementation of El Caballero), Gheos, Mexica, and Bridges of Shangri La. Fair warning: these are all take-that games with a mean streak, so expect a few friendships to be tested along the way.
Check out the Kickstarter campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playforkeeps/bridges-of-shangri-la-gheos-reel-rivals
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Hidden Gems: A Board Game Podcast is produced and edited by Chris Alley, Cameron Lockey, Jason Yanchuleff. and Bill Arney in Raleigh, NC.
Hidden Gems, episode 77. Bringing back the classics with Play for Keep Games 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.
BillThis is Bill.
CameronAnd I'm Cameron. Thanks for listening to our show.
ChrisWoo. Woo. Bam. We are back.
CameronEpisode two for 2026. We are back.
Bill77. That's a lot of episodes, dudes.
ChrisEpisode two. 77. That's a lot of episodes. Yeah. That really goes to show you how, with how much fervor we came out of the gate with- and now we have just absolutely fizzled and died.
BillBut
Chriswe got the paddles out. How
Cameronin the world were we ever on pace what was it, 24 episodes a year at one
ChrisI'm not sure how our life circumstances allowed for it. Although you didn't have kids at
CameronIt was the pandemic, and we couldn't leave our houses. Yeah. 20- in 2020.
Christhat is true. Actually, the genesis of the podcast, yeah, we were coming back from Kansas, and it was around that time. I do remember that. Gosh, geez, time flies. That's crazy,
BillCrazy, yeah. It was, but it was 199- no, okay, 1999?
Chris1999,
BillI go back a ways. I go back a little further than you guys. 1999. You guys were in high school. 2019. Yeah.
ChrisYeah. It's Crazy, right?
CameronI've been married for six years now, and I have two kids, and they're almost Three and five
Chrisfive. Yeah, that's wild.
CameronPretty wild. That's what happened to our pace-
Chriswhat happened to our pace.
Cameronpeople.
ChrisYeah, I was driving back from Kansas on a road trip. We drive, my, wife's grandmother lives out there, and I was just bored, and I was thinking, and I started texting Cameron and Jason. I was like, "Hey, I was thinking we might do a podcast." And Cameron and Jason were like, "Yeah." sure. "Why not? Let's do it." And then, the rest is history, I guess. Just on a whim, honestly. Yeah. Completely on a whim. Yeah.
Cameronit's how great ideas start.
ChrisThat's how the le- the legend grows.
CameronThat's right.
BillThat's right. There you go. On a road trip, no less. That makes it even better.
Chrisright. There you go. On a road trip. no
CameronWell, I know, what half of our listeners are eager for us to get around to- Oh, yeah is our banter. Should we-
ChrisGuys, I've done so much cool stuff- in the
Cameronjump into it? Yeah, let's- ...in the last six months l- Let's hear about it. You can only pick two, though. Well- I'm gonna,
ChrisI'm gonna let you start Cameron, because, like, the last, like, two months-
CameronI've been like teasing it
ChrisCameron's like, There's something really cool I wanna tell you guys about, but I'm saving it for the
CameronI'm like, "What is it?"
Chrisliterally it's been, like, two months of, like, anticipation,
CameronOh, good So I'm gonna let you go first I'm glad I've ...built it up sufficiently. So, I've been, like, really nerding out about and it's just kind of like this fun world. I almost feel like it's, like, like, a whole cinematic universe except for it only exists mostly in books. and yet there are hundreds and maybe thousands of different works of media, based in this world Huh. It's-
Christrying. Give me a hint.
CameronOh, you want just a hint? Yeah, a- You
Chrisheard of it, yeah? Bill too.
Billmean- Possibly.
Cameronwhat, knights and kings and such?
BillI was gonna say
Christhat's kind of so I- You're gonna have to do Better than
BillBetter than that.
ChrisYeah, actually.
Cameronactually.
BillOnce and Future King.
Cameronthe Arthurian legendarium. Well, more, more So that's one of the books that I've recently got
Chrissurely you're reading an updated language version.
CameronI l- I did an audiobook listening to the Middle English cow. It was really fun. it? Oh, yeah. it, you have to listen to it quite a lot. So what we're, what I'm talking about, just to state it all plainly now, is, yeah, I'm talking about the, the world of the, the history and the legends of King Arthur. King. So the Once and Future King, I actually just started listening to a, like a a preview of the audiobook- 'cause that was next on my list. Because now that I've... So what I did is I basically, I, there's a show on Daily Wire that came out It's from Daily Wire's world called "The Rise of Merlin." And it was not what I expected. I, because I, I grew up watching, like, Sword and the Stone" from Disney, and I never really knew, like, where the source material for any of this stuff came from. So I watched this Daily Wire show. and it's good, but it was, like, the way backstory of, like, Taliesin and all, all this stuff about Atlantis that I didn't know was, like, at all related to the world of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and all this other stuff. And so that made me curious like, where does all of this stuff live, all of the original stories? What are the primary sources for- Arthur? Well, it is a rabbit hole, man. Oh, man. It is a deep hole, and it gets into like... there are, like, Oxford and Cambridge professors that, like, have their careers built on, like, translating this stuff and sorting out all this stuff. And I basically found the the oldest primary sources that, that a lot of the, like, other derivative stuff is based on is primarily, at this point, it's Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur." Morte d'Arthur, yeah. which is written originally in Middle English. it's updated. So I got a physical copy of it, 'cause I was like, "Oh, I would love to, like, eventually read these stories to my kids," which wi- I'm realizing why I will have to do when they're older because in its, you know, base form, like, it's kinda mature material, and not just from the violence. Like, there's, like, s- affairs and stuff- Oh, yeah happening and whatnot. so that's one of the books. And then, and so yeah, so the physical copy that I have is an updated English version. It's a lot easier and then the other one is Gregory of Tours' "The History of the Kings of Britain," which a lot of the
ChrisWas he really a king?
CameronOh, Arthur? Yeah.
ChrisYeah. So a lot of people say he never
BillNo.
CameronRight. Yeah. the real scholarship, this is like how mu- I've been learning a whole lot about this. The real s- scholars would say that actually the person that gets attributed to being Arthur was actually a general, like following the, like occupation of stuff like this, and so he... it wasn't the King Arthur of Malory's works- Right and whatnot
ChrisMalory's works and whatnot necessarily. He's definitely more of a historical figure, 'cause correct me if I'm wrong, but I think people that believe the legends, he's supposed to come back when England needs him the most,
Cameronthere's all sorts of like... It goes, this is what I mean by like cinematic universe. His great return. it's like everyone has-- It's like the h- the fan fiction of the like Middle Ages- more or less. Like everyone has jumped on board. The French are really involved. Everyone loves these stories. Everyone loves the knights and has their own people that they their, that are their favorites, and they've all contributed to it in various forms and poetry, there's, you know, all these derivative stories, and it all gets weirdly mushed together in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur." Yeah. So his is, even though it's the most complete work, it's actually a compilation of like all these other collections of all these and in some ways it's actually not that well composed. There's like co- there's like duplicate stories- and stuff Yeah ...like that, that like get randomly told again, and there's stories that get told like out of order where like some- someone who like died already, like c- is like alive.
ChrisThe textual criticism of Arthur and-
CameronY- Yeah. So it's it's fun, just like this fun world to live in, but there's a lot of other stuff that's, that's been created out of it. Yes. And not least, the Disney movie Sword in the "Stone"- Sword in the Stone is really- which I'm mostly familiar with.
ChrisThere's one thing in my mind right now that if you're not gonna mention, I'm going to, but--
CameronWell, and yeah, I guess obviously this, you know, this Daily Wire story, like I c- I don't know if they're gonna make more seasons of it. Like it was extremely well made. Mm-hmm. So I hope that they do. Like I think they did a good job with the casting a- and all that stuff. But, and then because I want to have something that I can share this world my kids before they're 17, like I think "The Once and Future King" might fall into that category. Mm-hmm. And I-- and just reading the be- the beginning of it, it sounds like something that he could follow along with. It's more like dialogue than... Like Thomas Malory's w- stories are just like, "And then they, ran off and had, great strokes and feigned and foiled, and he knocked him sore off the back of his horse." Like
Billyeah, "The Once and Future King," I think Merlin would turn, Arthur as a child into different animals to teach him life lessons and story lessons. That's
Cameronis the D- So- From the Disney movie, too. yeah. I think that was the source material for the Disney
BillDisney movie. Yeah,
Cameronyeah. It kind of felt that way- when I was listening to L- Yeah the intro. Okay, so what's the thing you're
ChrisOkay, so I have homework assignment for you. Okay. Bill, I'm wondering if you've seen
BillOkay.
ChrisSo there is a movie from the early '80s, probably '81, '82 if I had to guess, that's based pretty strongly on the Le- Morde Arthur source material called Excalibur? Have
Billit. Have you seen Excalibur? Oh, yeah. yeah. That's got
Cameronlike I've heard of it. but I don't think I've seen it.
BillI'm pretty sure. No. Yeah, I know I've seen it.
ChrisOkay. Well, it's actually most of the actors are English. It's got Nigel Terry in it. It's got- It's actually got, Patrick Stewart in
CameronOh, okay. When
Chrishe was younger. Um, Liam Neeson is in it- I believe that when he is much younger, obviously
Camerona series or it's a movie?
Chrisa Movie. Okay. It's not for children. really dark and really intense. Great. But it attempts to tell the whole story in the length of one movie, which is ambitious. But man, it's so good. Okay. The last, like, 20 minutes when, I kind-- Yes. When Arthur sh- has his showdown with Mordred. Crazy. And what happens with Arthur and what happens with Excalibur and the way they resolve that, if you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about- and how they tie it together with the score.
CameronOkay
Chrisis just perfection- Yeah in my opinion from, like, a cinematic
CameronGreat. I'm pumped now ...it's an adult. Yeah.
Chrisyou can't watch it with your kids and, you know, your wife might not
Cameronit.
Chrisit either.
CameronShe d- Casey doesn't watch TV with me anymore, like- Yeah, it's, all too
ChrisBut dude, it's awesome. Okay. Like, the whole- quest for the Grail with Percival and trying to--
CameronOh, it includes the quest for the Grail? Yes. Okay, 'cause that, this is where I was gonna go next. I don't wanna go too long on my segment, but I'm excited to talk about
Christhat. Watch Excalibur- if you've never watched
CameronI, It's on my list 'cause I, I al- I started looking, like, to see if there were any other ones, and this movie Tristan and Yseult, came up, which is, I am pretty sure that's not the exact names of the knights in Malory's work, which is, Sir Tristram and Queen La Sut. I- I s- yeah, Yseult. But I think it, it's a romance story and in fact, the movie has, my gosh, I'm sure his name will come to me, but he's a pretty well-known actor. so that-- so there's those movies, but the thing I wanted to talk about with The Quest for the Grail" is like, the only thing I knew about "The Quest for the Grail" was the Monty Python- movie. Right. Which obviously I knew was a, a parody and a mockery of the real story, but it never actually followed the real And, and this is the, the sort of like cool thing that I would pitch to people, is there's a new book that's out by a guy named Malcolm Guite, who's a, he's an English poet, he's a songwriter, and he's been an Anglican priest, and he's-- I th- I thought he was involved in education It's at, you know, Cambridge or something like that. Yeah. I think he, I think he just like went to school. But he is in the process of creating a four-volume series, in poetry in a, in the form of an English ballad, of the Arthurian legendarian. Yeah. And His first book is out. I meant to bring it with me 'cause it's a beautifully, i- illustrated book it's a beautiful book called "Galahad and the Grail." And it's- Yeah And it goes through the Grail narrative
ChrisNeeson as Galahad. he? In, Excalibur. Okay. Yeah.
CameronSo, but it goes through the whole story, and it goes through the Grail knights, which is like Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, and Sir Percival, plus Sir
ChrisIsn't Galahad the green knight, or am I misremembering that? No,
Billhe had the affair with, Guinevere,
ChrisNo, you're thinking of
CameronLancelot had the,
BillLancelot, that's, that's-
ChrisOr Lancelot I'm sorry.
Billyou're right. You're right, yeah, Galahad was- Lancelot was
Chrisgood one. Percival is, like, the only, like really- noble one. Yeah.
CameronGalahad is the, the pure knight. Or whatever, the holy, the, the holy knight. but the thing that's so cool about it is that, like, I, and which I did not expect, is there is real, like, there's, like, real Christianity represented in the pursuit of the Grail. And the, and it's even this-- The themes are even present a- and almost a little surprising in Thomas Malory's work, 'cause he was not, as far as I know, like a- religious
Christhat caught, you know- they say caught Christ's blood, right?
CameronRight. but it was just surpr- I think it was just surprising because the story shifts, and you actually see these knights who have been in pursuit of their own glory and their own winning the praise and worship of other people actually go, "Oh, I have to, like, humble myself sacrifice, really in a way that, like no one's ever gonna see, in order to make, you know, make the right decisions." And they end up actually, like, in, in a lot of ways, giving up the glory of their knighthood and in the end either perishing or- Mm-hmm or, or- Yes being a hermit and a, and serving the church for the rest of their lives. Which I was like, "This is, that's really interesting." You have, like... r- or they're, facing their own sin, and they have to, like, really repent and go, "Oh, this is the person that I've been, and I have to be a different if- person if I want to achieve the So I was, really enjoying, you know, that element of it too.
ChrisI've got another homework assignment for
CameronOoh,
Billokay. You
Chriswill, l- will like this. So I have a game, I don't know why I bought it, I've never played it, but it's a co-op called "Tainted Grail." I'm sure most people will have heard of it. It's very popular- from Awaken Realms, actually. that basically just goes through the Knights of the Round and the Grail- Oh, sick retrieval process and fighting all kinds of horrific monstrosities.
BillAwesome.
ChrisVery cool. Yeah.
Cameronand stuff. Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause th- 'cause then that's what that, that's what happens in the course of the Grail quest is they're tempted by
ChrisYeah like
Camerondemons and
Chrismovie condenses down probably like, 500 pages- Yeah of stuff into like 20 minutes in the movie, but yes.
CameronOkay. You know the,
Billspank me."
ChrisYeah. he's
BillYeah,
Cameronwas talking about the... I did actually re-watch the movie- and was like, So but what's, what's great though is when you actually understand and have a familiarity with the source material- you get actually a lot of more jokes from- the Monty Python movies. Even the whole like Lancelot killing everybody, 'cause there was a whole thing- in the story about Lancelot killing people he didn't mean to kill. So th- it's, yeah, it's good stuff. Anyway, that's what I've been nerding out about.
ChrisLove it, dude. That's awesome.
Billhave one thing to jump in. I've been, up to my eyeballs listening to the History of English podcast, which is really super fascinating. And, my- Of the English language? Of the English language, going all the way back to the very roots. And I'll try to say this quickly.
Chrisno take your time. We're in no rush, Bill.
BillOh, okay. All right. the Grimm's brothers really played a very key role in understanding the evolution of our, our language. One of the brothers was looking for all the fables and, you know, is the one who created the book. But the other brother was really, looking into the origins of words, how they worked together grammatically, and really how they evolved from older languages on. And of course, his was based in the German words, but he ended up, coming up with this concept, it's now being called Grimm's Law, but how like consonants invol- and vowels evolve over time, with languages and how they co-opt other languages and stuff like that.
ChrisInteresting.
BillInteresting. and it's super fascinating, but in, in some of his episodes he will pronounce, you know, old English, middle English, and modern English and like said the Lord's Prayer in one of them. Okay. And then he'll, he will call out, and this, there's like really weird conversions like K switches, switches to S- Right ...and some other things. The other part I will say that is makes it more complicated than you think it would be was, like conjugating verbs. our hard one is just left over from the very early ages of the English language is to, be the am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been sort of thing. Which is, you know, it's like
Cameronimpressed with how quickly you just rattled off that entire list.
Billthis. Right. But I mean, that's the whole thing conjugating, right? But all those words are different. when you think- Right like when the, you talk about the horse run, a horse will run. But I mean, it's basically-
CameronRun,
BillRun, ran
ChrisConjugate those verbs.
BillRun, ran, runs I guess- yeah is all, is what it's reduced down to. And there's a name for it and I can't remember what it was, but because we had a bunch of different languages that were coming together, English started simplifying things and so whatever the concept of those words, it started happening around that time. But Middle English and Old English like the word run still had, you know, eight different versions of it.
ChrisHuh.
Billkind of things. And so when you start changing other words in your sentence to match like time tense- sense and stuff like that, like our first drink is called Et Tu, Brute? So, so, Brutus was actually his real name, but Brute- Oh, our cocktail. Yeah, our cocktail. But, you call him Brute in the Et Tu, Brute because of the conjugation of it, and it's like the change is a word in the sentence, and you change the suffix of it because of that kind of construct, which I think is kind of weird. But, if you listen to the first eight episodes, I think it's, it starts getting into, you know, the, the, the three things. So here's a pop quiz. from Old English, Middle English, and Modern English, where does Shakespeare fall?
ChrisI'm
Cameronbetween which
Billwhich Which, which,
Chrisgonna go middle
CameronI was gonna say between middle and modern
BillHe's modern, but
ChrisOh, he's considered modern?
BillYeah, it's 'cause-
Cameronhe would've been the one that influenced- like, modern English As we know it,
ChrisYeah, but-
BillYeah. it's really hard to-
Chrisno- nowhere near the way that we talk. I mean, you have to- study Shakespeare to understand it, you know? Like- True passages. But then again, we've created words like skibidi, so, you know, what do we know?
BillRight. One of the premises he starts with is like any language over 1,000 years, that if you went back in time, you probably couldn't understand them. Yeah. And so, Shakespeare is kind of within that timeframe, I guess. And so, it's really hard to understand, but you probably could. you s- when you start going back into Middle English, you really don't know enough unless you study the- Yeah the mechanics of it to tease it out. completely different language.
Cameronfor sure. Like, when I was listening to Mallory, like, I, I actually didn't ex- I didn't know what to expect. I just, sometimes I just jive into stuff. But there were a lot of times where I was "I don't really know what this phrase means," but after you hear it enough in like 25 different contexts, you're kinda like, "Oh, it means like, like a passing..." It w- He would say like, "A passing fair lady." And you're like, "Okay."
ChrisOkay."
CameronWe would be like, "That's not very beautiful," right? But- I think it actually does mean, like passing is like, oh, that actually does mean- Ah ...like very, like a very, Interesting beautiful woman. Mm-hmm. Right? Or, 'cause it would be like, "Oh, we had a p- the, the... And then he had a passing good time or passing good cheer, And you're like, "Okay." That's... 'Cause we would say, oh, a passing is like, eh." Yeah, right. Meh. It was fine. Right? But it was like, no, this is a superlative.
ChrisYeah, right. so interesting.
CameronSo are you enjoying our Hidden Gems, an ep- a podcast where we talk about- The, people eat this up nerd stuff.
ChrisBill, I think you should go next.
Billright, 'cause you have so much. All right. I'll try to- I have- Mine's kind of a- ...not
Chriswhole lot,
BillI- mine's a, a request maybe to a, a talk to have on our Discord channel because, Chris squashed me from talking about all the board game conventions I've, I've gone to, uh, over the last, you know, six months. 'Cause I, I went to the, our friend Jeff's con here in, uh, the Raleigh area, Friends Across the Board- Yep which was awesome. Prior to that, I went to, um, to St. Louis to Geekway to the West. yep, yep. And then I wanted to mention, 'cause I, this was like one of the funnest four days I think I've ever had in my life was going to Origins with you
ChrisYeah, man. that was, so fun So. We gotta go back. That
BillThat would be. That would be just absolutely fun.
CameronI'll go. I'll be a vendor, but I'll go.
Chrisgood point. We should
Cameronshould- We should do that.
BillYeah, yeah. That would be great. yeah. but one of the things that jumped out at me was how each one of These board game conventions had very different personalities. I mean- Mm they're very different experiences. I'll start with the Friends Across the Board. everybody brought just awesome games. Like, I mean, I can't believe what people will spend on a game.
ChrisYeah, you were telling me you played the, like, colossal version of,
BillKing Ludwig. Uh, Mad King Ludwig. Yes. Oh, yeah. the, the towers on it were, I don't know, a foot-and-a-half tall kinda thing. That's great. It was like, wow. You have room to store this kinda thing? But it was... It ended up being fun. and I mean, like, I won't go through all the games, but the- just walking around
ChrisDo it. We're in no rush, Bill. Go ahead.
Billgonna write this. Chris, you made me wait longer than two months. So I'm not gonna remember. there's the, the cities one where... I'd have to look through my-
Christhat
Billyeah. I appreciate that.
Chrisjust telling you,
Billdid play Dark Tower at it, which was really
Chrisso what did you think?
Billthink? I liked it. I thought it was... I mean, it's kinda gimmicky.
ChrisDid the skulls spill out
Billthe- Oh, yeah, skulls, yeah, everywhere. we won pretty easily, and I don't know what level we were playing it at, but, you
Chrisyou know- what we're talking about Cameron? Describe it.
BillThere is, like, a-
ChrisIt's a... Oh, it's a remake of a old game Did You play the original?
BillI did not play the original,
ChrisThat surprises me, actually
BillI think it came after my time Was that before your time? No, I think it was a little bit after. I think it was, like, I was probably in high school or something- Oh, okay when it came out.
ChrisI mean, you wouldn't play Dark Tower in high school?
Billschool? Oh, I would've, but I didn't have rich friends like
ChrisOkay. Not in Cullowhee. No, not in
Billdid Oh, yeah. Calloway. No, not in Calloway. All right.
Chrisright.
Billbut it's, like, a, a big black tower, like Orthanc, it's, like, sitting in the middle. It has, electronics in it, and- it is wild. And f- I think you have to have four players, but y- it's probably best at four players. But you're n- each player is north, south, east and west, and the tower has three different levels with a door facing And as you play, you have a region in front of you that's, that's your north, south, east, west region. something will happen that will activate the tower, and it will, like, spin around, and it has, skulls in its chamber. And the skulls will drop out on your land. And I can't remember if you can move them or they stay where they are or... I can't remember exactly how it works, but getting skulls on your land is not a good
ChrisIt's not, it's just in general Not
Billa good thing. And, they will attract monsters and/or bigger monsters when it comes time to fighting things. But I enjoyed the fighting mechanic. I... Everybody's asymmetrical in that, you know, you could have an elf or a wizard or, you know, fighter,
ChrisYeah kind of thing. Mm-hmm.
Billand those were kinda cool, and they kinda synergized some together. Even though we're in our own regions, we could help each other out. So yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was great.
ChrisThat's awesome.
Billyeah, that was fun. but I will also say, there was a lot of, people putting out the looking for a player, you know, tokens on it. Yeah. So it was just very free, very easy to go to. Now I'll go to the, St. Louis one. St. Louis was awesome. it pr- felt like it had at least, you know, really close to as many people that were at Origins, which I was shocked.
Chrissmaller.
BillOh, than Or-
ChrisI mean, yeah. It would be bigger than Friends Across the
BillOh, yeah. It was, like, 10 times bigger,
ChrisI guess I'm thinking in my mind- compared to, like Gen Con or-
BillOh, yeah. It's not,
ChrisBGG Con or
BillCause Orig- Origins wasn't super big, but- No n- it was, yeah. so it, yeah, might even been bigger than Origins. But, they had a nice checkout library, but the thing that they really, spend their money on is the play to win library. Yeah. So they have a huge library in there that's, you know, y- if- if you play it and you turn your name in at the end of the c- convention, you have a chance to win the game that you played. Okay. And that's what almost everybody was doing kind of thing. So you would go, at least in the, in... There was a, a bunch of conference rooms or a bunch of, yeah, rooms that they had. The bottom one that was right next to it, that's like what almost everybody was doing. And the weird dynamic about that is there weren't that many flags up asking for players because I guess everybody wanted their game, which kinda just- Yeah it changed the personality
Chrisjust, it- changed the personality. Huh. yeah I can see that. Yeah.
BillI see that, yeah. so when I walked around to other rooms, I think those were people who either brought their own games or pulled things over, but it just, it wasn't as welcoming if you were a single player kind of thing-
ChrisMm.
Billwhich I thought was and then I'll compare it to Origins. Oh, yeah. which the biggest difference here was, like, the vendors, I think at St. Louis, it wasn't very big at all. it was probably- Yeah I don't know, 200 square feet. Yeah. Origins was Huge it was absolutely huge, and that was almost, like, the biggest draw of it. I mean, the, the play-
Cameronthe, room Taken up by-
ChrisFuzzy dice and stuff ...foam swords
Billand right All kinds of weaponry. Yeah. Yeah. And it was awesome to walk around. and I thought that was really cool. But, it was almost like it was less focused about actually playing the games and just kind
Christhe games and- 100%. I'm glad you said that. I feel like you go to Origins, we played games when they were there, but Origins is more about experiences.
CameronI was gonna say, we were focused a lot on the, like- Play- sign up to play this epic game- Yes that's led by a guy at a
Chrisplay this really cool D&D Monster Mash game- or this cool scenario that you're never gonna play ever again. You can only play it here. Scenarios that- are really cool. Or, you know, remember we did, like the, like The- Starship- Yeah Fleet Captain- deck thing where you kept saying, "Hold onto your butts."
CameronYeah.
ChrisCause you were like the pilot
CameronYeah.
ChrisYeah. Yeah. So now when I drive the car and I, like, take a turn too tight or something and everybody kinda, like, slides to the right- I always say, "Hold onto your butts" And Talia's like, "I hate it when you say
Cameronyou say that." I
Chrislike, "That's Cameron's fault."
Cameronthought that was a Samuel L. Jackson
ChrisSamuel L. Jackson thing. I got it from you,
CameronOkay. All right.
ChrisOh, yeah. Mm-hmm.
BillAnyway, anyway, I guess my quest for, question for the Discord is for people who've been to other places, and are there other personality types out there? 'Cause I mean, I wanna go to another convention and it'd be kinda cool to say, "Hey, this one's really cool because X"
CameronX-"
Billkinda
ChrisKind of thing. For sure.
Billanyway, so that's my sharing.
ChrisLove it All right. Am I next? It is your turn. Oh, boy, guys. I had so many things I could talk about. I had a hard time narrowing it down to two. But I won't take too long. it's been a while since we recorded, know, we'll take our time here. So I've got a game to talk, a video game to talk about. and I've got a book to talk about. All right? So the game I'm gonna talk
Cameronword book or a
ChrisIt's a picture book. It's a really cool one though. I- think
BillOkay, wake me up when you're done.
ChrisI think when I'm done talking about it, one of the two of you will be intrigued.
CameronOkay. All right.
ChrisJust one? Okay. All right. Jason definitely would be if he was here, but, we're gonna talk about the video game first. So Cameron, I think you'll actually be really interested in this game. Sweet Because I know that you like Brotato.
CameronMm-hmm.
ChrisOkay? So I've- played a game recently, it's probably the most addicted I've been to a video game in a while, and it's called Ball Pit, or Ball X Pit, or Ball Cross Pit. I've heard it referred to all different ways.
CameronAll
BillOkay? You mean that thing that gave my kids funky rashes when
CameronYeah,
Billthey when I let them do it at McDonald's?
ChrisWho knows-
BillOh, yeah.
Cameronthing Cameron, you're like a seven-year-old- you would love this. They,
ChrisYou
BillThat they've what, maybe legal now? Ball Pit.
Chrisread
Cameronin the house. Ball pits.
ChrisBall pits. Yeah, so Ball Pit, I would describe it as a combination between, like, Vampire Survivors or Brotato- Okay and, like, a tower defense game, kinda like Plants versus Zombies or something.
Cameronwe like tower
ChrisOh, really? Tower defense. So the idea is Well, there's two parts to the game. I'll explain the first
BillIs this a Switch game, by
Chrisis, this a Switch game by any chance? It is, but you can get it on multiple different- Steam? Yeah, for sure. You can get Okay. So basically, your character, and you can play as multiple different characters with different abilities, but you're at the bottom of the screen. You're in a hallway, and you're moving up the hall, and the enemies are coming slowly down the hallway towards you, okay? So this is kinda like the tower defense part, because as they're slowly coming down, if they reach the bottom of the screen, they hit you. So you're trying to blow 'em up before they get down there, okay? But the Vampire Survivors part of it is that as you kill them, they'll drop little things that you can use to upgrade your character, and in a very Vampire Survivors theme, you can, like It's like alchemy. It's like, "Oh, I'm gonna take this sandstorm and just combine it with-" flaming maggots, and then you've got like maggot tornado or something, right? Yeah. So it's, like, making all these crazy powers. And so as you progress and you stay alive, you get access to more and more screen-clearing awesomeness, is really the best way I can explain it. Yeah. Because the way it works is vampire survivors can get a little bit boring in that you're just moving around the screen, you're evading. Brotato is very similar. You're not really aiming, you're just moving around, Right? In Ball Pit, you're very much aiming, but the way that they space the enemies out, it creates gaps Or you can actually create your own gaps by eliminating people. And what you really wanna do is shoot the balls in those areas where they bang around and ricochet multiple times. Cause you can get the balls like stuck in behind them, and it'll like bang. And as it's-- every time it hits, it's firing off your supers. Oh, So you're getting all these crazy explosions. Yeah. And you can clear like a, f- a, a wave with like a really cool series of shots, I guess- would be the best way to explain it. so that's fun, but get this, but wait, there's more. Okay? So once you finish your run, either you beat the boss at the end or you die, you go back up to the surface 'cause you're underground, you're in the pit. And it's a city-building game. So you have plots of land, and as you level up and get more money, you can buy more plots, and you're planting trees, and you're placing rocks, and you're placing fields, and you're also placing buildings, but you have to construct the buildings. This is so crazy. And the way that you construct them is you get a one-time shot after every run where you have, like a, a reticle where you aim. And then when you shoot, all of your unlocked workers run out in that direction, and they start ricocheting- off of everything in your city, and every time they hit a building, they contribute to its construction. So it's like once this building gets hit 25 times, it's built. And now it gives me a bonus, like I might shoot faster, or my shots are stronger, or I might... it upgrades you it upgrades you, right. And your city gets huge, and you unlock, like, 15, 20 people. So you're firing out 20 people, and you can get upgrades where they speed up, so they're like bang. and they're just hitting all kinds of stuff. And you're getting all these resources. You're getting all this wood and all this brick, and you're building buildings. You just have to see
Cameronsounds sounds- really
BillIt sounds like a dopamine overdose. It, 100% is.
ChrisSounds really cool. Sounds like a dopamine overdose. it 100%
BillI'm hearing Sim City, I'm hearing Angry Birds. Yes. I'm hearing Ricochet. I mean 100%.
Chris100%. Like, it is one of the coolest... as I get older, I find myself really craving new things. 'Cause, you know, when you've been doing this nerd crap as long as we have, you just have seen it, you know what I mean? And I have not seen that. Okay. You know what I mean? And I was like, wow, something fresh. Something original, something different. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just really cool.
BillThat's awesome.
ChrisSo yeah, Ball Pit, check it out. All right. Now my book. So I took a trip to France with, Cale and Talia couple, about a month and a half, two months ago now. It's been a while.
BillYour new graduate.
ChrisNew graduate. Yeah, my new graduate off to UNCW. And I read a lot of books, and I wanna talk about the one I liked the most, and that is, I'm gonna show you guys even though they can't see That's, Eight Billion Genies- Ooh ...by Charles Soule. It's a graphic novel. So the premise of this book is that All of the sudden, every person on planet Earth, all eight billion people, gets their own personal genie who appears to them- and says, "You have one wish." But everybody has one. Yes. Yeah, you can see how this could go sideways immediately. Wow. Okay? And interestingly, this isn't really a spoiler 'cause this happens in like the first five pages, but it sets the framework. The main characters are in a bar, okay? And the bartender, the owner of the bar, when this happens, almost immediately spends his wish without really thinking a lot about it seemingly, and says, "I wish that anything wished for that happens outside of this bar will have no effect on this bar," Is what he wishes for. Man. So basically, that bar becomes like- Oh, wow ...a safe ha-
CameronOh, wow.
ChrisBecause as you can imagine- your f- your thought process would be, "Well, I mean, I'd wish for a billion dollars," but if everybody in the world has a wish- yeah. ...will a billion dollars be worth anything? Right. And you can see how a lot of wishes are wasted. People wish for crazy things, and the book explores all of this-
CameronOh, no
Chrisin, in crazy detail. The imaginativeness of the book is really interesting. Mm-hmm. Just, like- considering all the weird things that could happen. But it takes, I wouldn't say a serious turn, but it becomes interesting because as the book progresses and the consequences of all of these wishes begin to manifest- dynamics start to evolve in that people that have held onto their wish now become very important- Oh
CameronOh
Chrisvery influential because now they have a wish still. Right. Whereas most people don't. Right. Right. And so that creates a really interesting
Cameroneconomy becomes, like, around- It's really
Chrisinteresting you should use that word
Cameronyou have.
Chrishow much power you have. Yeah, Cause it almost does become like an economy. It's like you have really something of value- Mm-hmm you know, that most people don't, 'cause you, you can wish still. Whereas people, most people probably use their wish in the first five minutes. Right? And then the last thing I'll say about it is it obviously does explore why did this even happen? Mm-hmm. Who are these genies? Why are they doing this?
Cameronit good to ha- use a wish? Like, I could see all the directions
ChrisIs it good to ha- use a wish? Like, I could see all the directions this could go. It's really cool, man. The genies are really fun because they look cute. They're kinda like round, rotund-looking, and you can tell- whose genie is who because when they manifest, they look like the person who they belong to. So they'll like be wearing similar clothes- and their hair will look the same. Right. And They're like, "Hey, you wanna use your wish now?" And they're like, "Aw, darn," you know? And they just kinda like hang around ...and interact.
CameronThey don't all sound like Robin Williams?
ChrisYeah. Well, in my head maybe. I don't know. But that's all I'll say about it 'cause I don't wanna spoil it obviously, but, "Eight Billion Genies."
CameronChris, I have too many Arthurian books to read. I can't read your graphic novel, but it
Chrisvery long. dude. it's really fun. Like, honestly, it's one of the best ones I've read in a while, so. Awesome. Check it out.
Cameronto
Billthat's a really interesting thought experiment 'cause I'm trying to think through all the, I don't know, he- heuristics and those, the things that people do, and that are negative that they- Yeah just because somebody else is getting something good, that they wanna I don't know, sometimes that makes people feel bad about themselves or the fact that they are in competition and- Yeah yeah, I could see that humanity would have a difficult time with that power.
Chrislet me just tell you. So at the end, at the beginning of every chapter, they show a picture of the Earth- like from space. And underneath the Earth it shows how many wishes are left.
CameronLeft.
ChrisAnd it shows the
CameronOh, no. Um,
Chrisno. And the population- decreases
Cameronsignificantly-
BillMm-hmm
Chrisover the course of the
CameronI can only
ChrisYeah, it's really kind of... It's wild. It's a wild ride.
CameronAll right.
BillThat's crazy.
CameronWell, friends, this is how you know we love you. We come back, to do an episode for you, and you, get 40 minutes of banter.
Chrisyes That's fun.
Billfine
CameronWe did come here to talk about games Mm-hmm We promise. We talked about a cocktail
BillLet me Well, yeah, I'll, tell you what it is. It's very simple. It's a gin and tonic, but I'm starting with our theme because we are kind of reviewing older newer versions of older games. Yep. So I'm starting with the classic gin and tonic with, Bombay gin, and I'm gonna go to newer gins as we go through the evening, and you will have multiple drinks. But so by the time we get to the third
ChrisHoo boy
Billand, and Chris was talking about naming drinks. I'm calling this Et Tu, Brute because- in our game sometimes people felt like they were getting ganged up upon,
ChrisThat's true. So-
Billso That's true. So- Yeah,
Christalk more about this I'm sure. Yeah, Sure.
Billyeah. Anyway. Cheers.
ChrisAwesome, Bill. Thanks. Cheers. So yeah, just a quick primer, for the game. So as Cameron mentioned, we were reached out to by Play for Keeps Games. they're a, a newer publisher here who's kinda bringing back these classic old dusty Euros that kinda had their heyday in like the early 2000s and the late '90s, putting a new coat of paint on them and trying to introduce them to a newer audience who is more into these multiplayer solitaire experiences, and bringing in some good old nut-kicking- player interactivity- make you wanna backhand slap your neighbor kinda games.
CameronOr, you know, just blow up all of the stuff that's giving them
ChrisExactly. Sorry. I'm sorry. Okay?
Billpoints. Exactly. Sorry. I'm sorry, okay?
CameronI'm I'm not bitter. You're
ChrisI'm not bitter. You're not bitter. Uh-
Cameronbest friend, Chris.
ChrisYeah, but no, we keep telling ourselves that. But yeah, we appreciate them and, as of the time that this episode drops, there will not be a lot of time left on their Kickstarter. I'm talking like a few days. So we're sorry that we were so late, but hey, we got it in before. It, truth be told, a lot of activity actually happens in the last 48 hours on Kickstarter 'cause people will like, you know- bookmark it and say, you know, "Remind me," and then they'll wait for the campaign to almost be done before they decide to pull the trigger.
CameronYeah.
ChrisSo hopefully with this coming out right at the end and it kind of getting in people's minds, hopefully it might push some people over the edge to to back- Yeah and to support them because, there's some good stuff in here.
CameronYeah. and just so you know, there will be a period of time, after the initial campaign closes where they will be accepting late pledges. they wanted us to let you guys know that just in case you happen to be listening to this episode, after it closes up. so you can still jump in but we've, we're excited about doing this because, we've never really worked with like a, a publisher or anything like that before. We're not really into doing sponsorships or anything like that, and we're getting copies of these
Christhey usually don't do these kind of games.
Cameronright. And w- because they reached out to us and they were like, "We're doing-- we're, you know, re-releasing these games," we're like, "Oh, these games actually fit what we do on this show." so we agreed to, you know, get a couple free games, a partnership to talk about the games that, that- Yeah that they're doing.
BillLet's go.
ChrisReady? Should we get to the games?
Camerondo it Let's do it.
ChrisLet's do it. All right. So first up for review, "Real Rivals. I will go ahead and point out before we get into the review, this game is a re-implementation of an older game called "El Caballero," which was published in 1998. BGG ranking for "Real Rivals" obviously is unranked 'cause it's a new re-implementation, but "El Caballero" was ranked 4,367 on BGG. Designer, Wolfgang Kramer, very well known to us, well known to you, very famous designer. All right. So like I said, this is a re-implementation of "El Caballero." Of the four games we're gonna talk about tonight, this one is most definitely the one that has the most differences. Some of these differences may come up in our review, but for the purposes, for our purposes now, I'm just gonna talk about generally how you play "Real Rivals." And I will say "Real Rivals" is a much more streamlined version of "El Caballero." Okay? They've simplified a lot of things. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. Maybe. We'll see. All right. So Real Rivals" is an area majority game of sorts where you're trying to take control of lakes. So the way the game works is you're gonna have a hand of tiles. that are numbered one to 10, and that number on there is how much influence that tile exerts. So the 10 being the strongest, the one being the weakest. At the start of every round, you're gonna draw four tiles and you're gonna play one of those tiles face up in front of you in a turn order, okay? Why that is significant is if Cameron plays his eight and I am also holding an eight, I can't play an eight that round. You cannot match the same number as somebody else that played that same tile earlier in the round. It's important to understand that once they're played and placed into the play area, they're gone, so you only get one chance to play your 10, your seven, your two, whatever, okay? so once we've done that phase, starting with the player who played the highest value tile, you're going to place, landscape tiles into a central display in the middle of the table. So these landscape tiles have two main things on them. They either have land or they have water, and then within the water, they may have fish in them, and then within the land, it might have birds on it, okay? And those are important for scoring purposes. So you're gonna place your tile onto the board, okay? Somewhere in that grid, right? Wherever you desire to increase your land or increase your water, and then the tile that you play to determine your turn order, you're gonna place it somewhere on that land mass. It doesn't have to necessarily be attached to the tile you just placed, although it often is, okay? But you can play it anywhere. So let's say, again, I play the 10, that's how much influence I'm exerting on the lake that 10 is facing, okay? So as the board grows, your water masses are gonna get bigger, your land masses are gonna get bigger. The way the water scores is you get one point for every tile that makes up one large lake, plus an extra point for every fish in the lake if you're the person who's exerting the most influence on the lake, okay? And that could be through just one tile or a sum of multiple tiles, but your sum cumulative number is higher than anybody else's. If somebody else is also exerting influence on that lake, they will also score points, but they only score points equal to... Well, if they're in second place, they'll only score points equal to how big the lake is. They ignore the fish, okay? And then while we're talking about scoring, I'll just mention the other component really quickly, is that the land masses that kinda come in between the water areas, you don't face them... Well, you don't exert a numerical influence on them, but you can look at them. okay? So everybody gets a pair of binoculars, and you can put that binocular on one of the edges of your tile and you're kinda looking in that direction, and if it's looking at a land mass and it has birds on it, you'll score two points for every bird on that land mass that you're looking at. Okay? Is that all making sense so far? All right. So now I need to talk about a couple of more very important things. Very important, okay? So this game can be a little mean. It's nothing personal though, Cameron. But it can be a little mean in that if a tile gets bordered by water on more than one edge, it is removed from the w- And when I say tile, I'm talking about your personal, like, influence tiles, not the landscape tiles. But if a tile that you have that's exerting influence on a lake gets bounded by water on two edges, it's removed. Okay? That can really sting. All right. And We'll talk more about that in a little bit. But the game does give you some mitigation factors. So in addition to the binoculars that I mentioned, you also start the game with a barrier, okay? And any time on your turn, you can place a barrier along one of the edges of your placed influence tiles, and it will protect you if somebody tries to put water along that edge to where it won't knock you out. Okay? You can get more of these either from getting knocked out, you can take a tile or binoculars, or you can choose to not place your tile on the display and take a barrier and a binocular as an optional action. Okay? That's generally it. The, the game takes place over seven rounds. At the end of the fourth round, you'll do a scoring. At the end of the seventh round, you'll do a scoring, and then once we do those two scorings, whoever has the largest sum total wins the game. That's generally how you play Rail of Rivals. How was that, Bill? Are you impressed?
Billam impressed.
ChrisI do good? Okay. Fishing for compliments.
BillYeah.
ChrisAll right.
CameronFishing for
ChrisFishing for compliments. Fishing for compliments.
Billafter all this time off, you can still nail
Chrisstill got it, guys. I still got it. That's why this is why the people keep coming back for more. These excellent rules explanations and me talking about these books that nobody gives a crap about. All right. And
Cameronand to be clear, this is r- if it's not clear at this point, this is Reel Rivals, R-E-E-L- Yes because it's a fishing themed
Christhemed game. All right. Who wants to go?
BillOh, everybody's looking at me. I'll do it. one of the things that first jumped out about, jumped out to me about this game was just the look of it. it's, all the tiles have a fun and playful look. Yeah. Um, they, it's, uh- Clean very clean.
ChrisIt's not busy, yeah.
BillAnd as you can kinda tell, the rules are pretty simple, especially compared to, El Cajero. For sure. El Cajero. and, it doesn't belie the, the strategy that's can be there and/or the, the interactions between players that can make you feel really bad by the end of the game.
ChrisOh, man. ain't kidding. um,
Billman. Rain check. but yeah. no, and I think it's, I think it's a, it has a great look to it. I will say, it's an, an interesting progression, especially when you go first, because you're always two tiles away from being knocked out. Yes. Because if you put a, a terrain tile down and you put your influence tile down, somebody can put a tile next to the terrain tile, and then the next person can put one next to your influence, and you're out that first round. Yeah. So
Chrisand you Can't do a thing about it. Right. Unless you place the barrier, but you only get one of those- ...for the whole game.
BillExactly. And if you're first, they could just do it on the other side, right? Right. 'Cause, and
ChrisDepending, yeah.
BillRight. So, so anyway, there's just a, a, lot of, I don't know, play and pray, I guess, kind of part, points
Cameronof it.
ChrisYeah. I'm glad you mentioned the placement process because it is interesting in that, you know, intuitively you would think, "I wanna be on really big lakes." with Lots of fish in it, right? Because that's where I'm gonna score the most points. But if you do that- you're also allowing more real estate for people to jump in and challenge you. Actually, our last game, Jason and Cameron actually had a really large lake between them that they were kind of fighting over. Right? So that kind of incentivizes somebody to maybe come after you- Yeah and try to get you versus, you know, do I just kind of close off this small lake with a fish in it and then nobody really cares and I score five points or- Yeah you know, and just kind of be happy with that? Yeah. there's things to think about there, for sure.
CameronYeah, I've, I, agree with that. I mean, I, th- and I agree with the thoughts about the look of the game. I think the, this one looks so much better than El Caballero. Oh,
Chrisnot even close. Yeah
CameronI would say that I enjoyed El Caballero more than this, but that's mainly just because of, you just take- Taking- ...taking the ax to my giant 10-point scoring lake, like, on your last turn and leaving me with nothing, so that you could actually ultimately not win the game.
Christhe game, actually. yeah. yeah. My thought process was, at that point- Actually- I was in first score Cameron was in second, I thought. I had a chance to knock him out of a 10-point scoring opportunity. The problem with that was, is it gave Jason- sole ownership of that lake, which had a lot of fish in it, which actually made him end up beating me by a point. Yeah. And I was so salty about it, I ended up throwing the score pad in his
Cameronin
ChrisI actually meant to throw it off his chest, but it just flipped out of my hand-
Cameronflick and it just- Off of his skull ventured into his Thankfully Jason wears glasses, so you know.
ChrisI assaulted
CameronYeah.
ChrisSo I'm sorry, Jason. You know, these kind of games are gonna bring that out in you sometimes, you but-
Cameronbut, at the, the, r- the reason I was joking about that was because the approach that I took, actually the first time that we played, when we played El Caballero, my strategy was more like, "Eh, I'm just gonna be, I'm just gonna be second place in like seven different places."
ChrisYeah.
Cameronand, it was like two-thirds of the way through the game that you guys started to realize that, like, oh, like Cameron's actually gonna score like a lot of points. Yeah. Because I was like getting four points here, and five points here, and four points here, and I didn't have any big chunks, but I was just picking up little points all over the place, and I think you can do that in this game. Yeah. especially with,
ChrisTry to fly under the radar a
Cameronbit with how competitive it is, like people don't want-- People try to like close off, you know, w- the lakes and don't let them get that big because of the risk that it poses for, Well, there's not that many opportunities to jump in on a lake and be competitive-
Chrisyou can make it smaller at least.
Cameronbut you can make it smaller at least. Yeah. Yeah.
BillNo, it's hard to relate the, I don't know, the narrowing of the strategy when, once you start getting into the game because you really are looking for a safe spot, right? And that's- Yeah and that really narrows down the board- It does to a couple different places. And yeah, there's a moment where you're thinking, "Gosh, I really wanna get on that big lake." But if you're exposed, you just kinda know that you're not gonna, you're not gonna be in there at the end, right? 'Cause it's, there's no reason for somebody not to take you totally out. Yeah. So it's, I don't know. Every turn I felt like, "Okay, how can I put something down that's gonna still be here when it gets back to my turn?" Kind of thing.
Chrissure. Yeah. It's hard in a four-player
BillYeah. And that's hard in a four-player game,
Chrisit's hard. The- there are some things that you can do S- so just, we try not to talk too much about strategy, but try to just give you, like, a sense of how it works. Like, if you place your influence tile to where it's like sticking off of the board a little bit- to where, it takes a little bit more to get to you. Or this is one thing I saw a lot of people doing, which makes a lot of sense, building next to somebody else's influence tile. right? Right. If you can get flanked on either side by tiles belonging to other people, you're never gonna get knocked out. Well, maybe, unless it wraps around behind you- which can also happen, but it makes you safer, right? Yeah. So there are some interesting little tactical things you can do that are protective. However, you still just need to understand that the risk is still there, and we'll talk more about that. At least I will. But- ...yes, I agree with you.
BillI wondered if this is a better game at three. I mean, I w- I bec-
ChrisLess time in between your turn? Exactly. Yeah. You do feel like a sitting duck in four players sometimes.
BillExactly. 'Cause if two people d- any of the other two people decide that they're gonna take you out kinda thing, then you're done-
ChrisYes Well, Let's just talk about this for a minute, 'cause this is my biggest con in this game. And I think it's worth reiterating, is yeah, and it's the thing that worries me the most about this game is especially, if, you know- it's like you just said, Bill, like if the other players at the table want to, they can knock you out and there's nothing that you can do about it unless you've played your one barrier. Right? But even still, I mean, if they conspired against you- if they were like, "Okay, Bill's on this lake. It's scoring him like 12 points. If we don't do something about that, he's gonna win. Cameron, you place here, and if you place there, then I'll place here and we'll knock him out." Like- I don't see how you prevent that in this game. Like that can happen, so you just need to like know that's like, now the trade-off is that might not be advantageous for you on your turn. Like you're foregoing a point scoring opportunity for yourself just to deny them. But if it pulls them back 10 points and you know they're gonna win otherwise, then it's probably viable, right? So- I don't know, man.
Billit- Mm-hmm
Chrisit's slippery slope, I think.
Cameronlike, cause to that point, like it, it puts players that have much to lose in a position where like maybe it is worth taking your turn, you know, instead of placing your influence token to like go get another- Yeah barrier. I'm not gonna say this out. 'Cause I think had I done that- because I had actually, the, the one that you took from me had a barrier But you were able to creep around
Christhe,
Camerona- That's right to another face Yeah. and then place a water token next to it and take it out. So like if I had been more conservative, I could have protected that, and that was on me, right? But I got greedy and I wanted to, you know, I, or I didn't see it coming and so I didn't worry about it, right? Yeah. so you do have to kinda like make that judgment call of like how much does it matter to you
ChrisYeah. I'm glad you mentioned the null action, 'cause I don't think we were appreciating enough. 'Cause I mean, I can think there were a couple of rounds at least where I had played my one or my two. Mm-hmm. I'm not really signif- you know, exerting a lot of influence. Maybe I'm putting it on a lake that's worth two points. Maybe it's just better to discard it and take the tokens, you know? And, cause you can score a lot of points on those birds. Right too, with the binocular scoring, you know. And like you said, you also get a barrier that might save your life later in the game. So it's a good thing that option is available, I
BillOne, one thing that's a little corner case in the rules is, I, didn't realize this, but you can put a binocular, if your influence tile faces a, an island in two different ways, you can put two binoculars on your same thing- Score twice and score twice. Yes. and at the end of the last game, I ended up taking out my own tile to get a binocular, and I think that I had a place where I could have picked up an island that had three birds instead of one, which I just didn't even think about, right? Oh, yeah. So I did change my end game like six points, but it... Anyway, but that's, yes, there's some creative things that I think you can do with either doing, getting rid of, discarding your own tile or doing it in such a way that you take out your own tile-
ChrisYeah And get Thinking outside the box. Yeah. there's more depths to mine here, I think. it- this isn't like the deepest game, and I will go ahead and say if you've played "El Caballero," you need to understand that they took a lot of things out. So I would say that maybe the depth of decision-making here isn't quite as deep as in "El Caballero," but I will say "El Caballero" is kinda fiddly as heck, you know? And kinda needed a player aid even, that they didn't include 'cause it's just an old game. And I just remember it not being smooth. And this game plays really
CameronYou're talking about with the like rotating your tiles- Yes and the tile counter.
Chrisguys do I have? And then how much influence am I gonna adjust? I mean, the decision space in "El Caballero" is deeper.
BillAbsolutely. I
Cameronwas gonna say, that was one thing that I did miss was like you did have this like resource pool and when it was your turn you could like, choose how much influence to spend. You could set the dial. Yeah whereas this, I think I felt a, a couple of times a little bit paralyzed of like, okay, I've got four tiles I can choose from, and these are just the numbers that I happened to draw. And so it's like I can either play my 9, 10 or just play a 1 this Whereas in, in Caballero, you can say, "Well, I feel like I wanna do this
ChrisYeah.
Cameronso you had a little bit more control to, like, dial in your moves. But as you were saying, there's trade-offs to that because it adds this layer of complexity that, I don't know, maybe even almost takes some of the fun out
ChrisMaybe it bogs it. down. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Big thing to discuss,
Billso. Yeah. to me, I liked El Caballero a, a lot because you're given 10 cards that d- determine turn order, but on a, a sliding scale, y- you get, your influence points that you're, that you would put out to take a, a land mass, are inversely proportional. 'Cause if you get a one, you get like eight influence, but if you play a 10, you only get two.
Chrisit's the El Grande- card play-
BillExactly mechanism. So, I mean, yes. So w- just suffices to say it's just a much deeper game. It is. the-
ChrisI think a lot of people that play El Caballero and play this will be like, "What is this?" this? isn't an El Caballero." Yeah. No. know? Cause it's missing that depth there.
BillYes, Yes, and so it's like for, it's for two different situations or two different kinds of people who like a lighter strategy or a deeper strategy, so yeah.
ChrisYeah. Yeah. Final thoughts it?
CameronYeah.
BillMe again?
ChrisThere you go ...Do you want to start? I
BillIf I have to start at the beginning. So, I mean, I enjoyed it. I mean, apparently I'm terrible at these games 'cause I won none of them. I'm kinda like Chris. I don't think Chris won any either.
ChrisThat's not true. I won Gaos.
BillOh, did you? Okay. All right. I didn't win any. I, I do feel like it's a, it's a fast game. It's a fast teach game. I like the look of it on the board. it is... How do I say it? I- sometimes it's hard for the, either the take that or the negative feedback games for me to truly, truly enjoy, and I don't necessarily gravitate towards th- those. But, I mean, I enjoyed this well enough and, if somebody brought it out, I would play it. not sure I would own it, but I think I would play it. So I'm gonna give it a four
ChrisNice. Okay. Cameron?
CameronCool. Yeah. so yeah, I guess between the two of these, I, won El Caballero, which was, surprising. because I believe the, that one w- the first like five minutes of, or the first 10 minutes of the game, I was going, "I don't know what I'm doing." It was like the first three turns, and somewhere around the middle of the game, I started to go, "Oh." and, and- Yeah. and, dialed it in and was able to pull out a W. and this one I was, I was enjoying. And I do think I appreciate the simplicity of this one, and certainly the look. the the graphics are beautiful in Reel Rivals. and I enjoyed that, like
ChrisMm-hmm.
Cameronand of course I love fishing. I- guys, I've not been fishing this year. Oh, yeah ...And I'm-- Yeah. Like, and I-- my brother's m- he's usually my fishing buddy, and he's building a house, and so he's just been like super tied up. And so, like, even just play- like the, the, what is it you call it? Like the, like vicarious experience. It was just like nice to be somewhat near a fishing-like activity.
Chrisit, like activity.
Cameronso yeah, I think Reel Rivals is great. I liked the addition of the, the barriers and the- binoculars. thing. That was a good, I think it was a good implementation. and adds a, another whole layer of, complexity to the game that's nice. another layer of options, I guess. So yeah, I would, I would definitely play this one again. yeah, I think I have positive enough, of ex- feelings about it that I would give it a four. Mm-hmm. Like this doesn't feel like a meh- Yeah like leave it game. There's certainly no... I don't have any negative, real- really negative there's more to go with a four.
ChrisLike it. oh, I guess since we haven't done an episode in forever I'll talk really quickly about our scoring system. if you're new, welcome. We are trying to do better. Maybe we'll release an episode before Christmas. But, hey, look. we're, we're entertaining. we're trying to entertain here, okay? So we grade on a one to six scale, one being the lowest, six being the highest. If we give a game a one, that means we don't like the game because from a mechanism standpoint, we think there's something wrong with it that makes it not a good playing experience. From a design standpoint, it just seems off, maybe broken even. Or it's not a game. Or game. Thank you. experience,
Cameronan
Chrisyeah. activity. Experience, yes. a two, it's a game. It's a perfectly fine game, it's just a game that we hate. We don't like it, we don't enjoy it, we don't wanna play it. Three is the meh game. It's just fine. It's not bad, but it doesn't really excite us. It's just okay. four, these are good games. These are games we like. We then, look into exploring more. For me personally, this is a game I would keep. Five, these are the really good ones. Excellent, above average. Think about the game a lot, think about how we could play it more, how we could play it differently. It's on our mind. We just really like it. And then six are our favorite games. This would be like top 50 games, right? excellent, all-star. top 100. yeah. yeah. Right. Yeah. Top-- well, no, for Bill, it'd be top
CameronOh, That's right. He's only
Christhinking of it backwards. For me, it would be top
Cameronbe top 50. Yeah.
Chrisbut yes, so that's our scale. So I'll begin by saying that generally speaking, and this is just a personality thing, and I'm sure a lot of people in our Discord are gonna eye roll and be like, "Chris, you're such a wimp." But I don't really enjoy games that have tear-down mechanisms. You know? And I don't mind area control. I think we talked about this when we played- Rail Rivals last time, is that to me there's just something... Huh? Oh, Yeah. Yeah. There's something that feels different about somebody moving into an area and overtaking me in influence points or majority that doesn't bother me as much as somebody just taking something off the board- Right. Yeah ...that I placed or built. I just don't love that. And you need to understand that can happen to you in this game, and you also need to understand that if it happens to you, especially at the end of the game, you're probably done. Like, you're just toast. Yeah. Right? Like, in our last game- it happened to Bill and Cameron. Yeah. Cameron got nuked on the lake. Bill got nuked on a bird scoring, and they were just basically out of it. So, you just need to know that. Now, having said that- I do think that this game at least gives you some decent mitigation factors, although if the table conspires against you, you still might be screwed. But anyways, through clever placement of your tiles and what you place adjacent to, and placement of barriers, you can protect yourself to a certain degree. Not to mention, I didn't even mention this in the rules, there are a couple of tiles that let you place two landscape tiles out to where you can also do some clever things there to either score more points or be protective. So, I was intrigued, and I will say I kinda bounced off El Caballero kinda hard. I don't love it, but I like this one more. I like the more streamlined nature of it. Plays faster. Borders on filler. It could be if- everybody knows it. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's literally pick your turn or place a tile. It's not complicated. Oh, 100%. but I appreciated that, So, I am also going to give it a four.
BillAwesome.
CameronSweet.
ChrisYeah.
CameronWell, guys, just be glad Jason's not.
Billthink expectations-
Chrisbe glad Jason's not here.
Cameronhere I think Jason- It would, it would not be fours all the way around.
Chriswould have been fours all the way around No, I think he would give this a four.
CameronOh, that's true. He had h- more thoughts on Caballero he hated Yeah. All right.
ChrisThose are our thoughts on Real Rivals. Zoom
CameronZoom. It's like, are you making sounds of- Is that a drag? Zoom. Yeah.
BillYeah. Gate. Me gate,
CameronI said gay. me say gay. Oops.
Chrisa
CameronThis is what happens when Bill brings a bunch of Yeah gin on a Thursday night recording
Chriscocktails to the resort all the wheels fall off. I'm never gonna get through the rules in Shangri-La. I'm Screwed.
CameronYeah. We're recording.
ChrisAre we rolling? Okay. Oops. Oh. Geos. Geos? Do we know?
CameronI don't actually know. I don't either. Geos. We've been saying Geos I think.
Chrisbeen saying Geos, Geos, I think. That sounds right to me. All right. Geos, published in 2006. At the time of this recording, its BGG ranking is 3,719. So high.
CameronSo high.
Chrisyeah. little bit higher than El Caballero.
CameronOn the border of c- can Hidden Gems cover it- Right.
ChrisRight. Yeah, this is pretty prime coverage, I would say. Top 2,000, we try to stay out of. Designer, Renee Wiersma. This is his only significant design. He has, like, one other entry on BGG I've never heard of. It's, like, in the 20,000s, so it's pretty much this is for, him All right. Brief rules summary, summary for Geos. This is a little... This game is also really simple, but it's a little bit confusing to explain, so I'll do my best. I'll try to just keep it to the high So I think the first thing that I need to say here, and it's very important to understand, is that Geos is a shared incentives game. Mm-hmm. So unlike Real Rivals, where I'm blue, like always, or Jason is green, or Bill is red, or Cameron's yellow.
CameronWood color.
ChrisI've got everybody's player color memorized. this game, you have civilizations, and you should think of the civilizations as companies like you would think in a train or a stock game, and every civilization or company has five cubes associated with that match that color that you should think of as shares, but they're, like, your people, your population. Okay? So Cameron might have two red cubes, one blue cube, and one yellow cube, and that means he has varying degrees of involvement in those three civilizations. The more cubes you have of a certain color, obviously the more invested you are in a certain civilization, the more you would like to see them do well. But it's shared ownership, shared incentives type of game. Okay? So the way this game works is very similar to Real Rivals and we're gonna be building out a board, but instead of the tiles being square, they're triangular, which is unique, and you lay them edge to edge, and they have also either water or land on them. And through the laying of these tiles, you're gonna create land masses, okay? Continents. You may also create islands, which are smaller units of land. But basically, you're gonna create these land masses, and when you do that, you have the option of starting a civilization on them, and basically you'll just plop a disc down on that cover and say, "Okay, I'm starting the red civilization on here." If on that land mass there's a wheat symbol pictured on it, which would've been on the triangular tile somewhere, you'll take that number of followers equal to the number of wheat symbols of that civilization that you established. Okay? Alternatively, after you place your tile, instead of starting a new civilization, if you don't do that, you can just take a cube from any color civilization that's been started and add it to your supply. You don't have to have any kind of... There's no criterion for that. Nothing is stopping you from grabbing any color as long as it's started. Okay? So like I said, that's basically your turn. You're going to have a hand of two s- two tiles. You're gonna play a tile. You're either gonna start a civilization or you're gonna take a cube from one that's already started, and you're gonna draw back up to two So you may be asking yourself, Well, when does it get interesting?" Okay, well, well, before I get into that part, let me explain how it scores. Okay? So there are three main types of sy- symbols on these triangular tiles. There's wheat, there's swords, which is important for warfare, and then there are cups. It's important to understand these tiles won't have all three of those symbols on them necessarily. Some of them might just have a wheat and a cup or a wheat and a sword or whatever. The, the distributions are different.
CameronMm-hmm.
ChrisBut the cups are important for scoring, and the way that works is that, and I really wanna emphasize this point, when you trigger a scoring for yourself, so this game is interesting in that it gives you three scoring tokens, and anytime on your turn, you can say, "Okay, I'm gonna score for myself." And you'll basically look at all of your colored cubes, you'll look at the continent they're on, and you'll look at how many cups are on there, and you'll score that way. So let's say I have two red cubes, and on the red continent there are two red cu- two cups. That means each red cube is worth two points, so I'd score four points for red. So You'll do that for each one of your civilizations. And like I said, you trigger that. You make that happen for yourself and yourself only, and you can do that three times in the game. Okay? Now, let's talk about the interesting parts and when the swords come into play. So through the placing or replacing of tiles, you can c- cause two things to happen: a war or a migration. Okay? So like I said, you can actually pull a tile out and replace it with another tile, and if when you do that, you take two continents that were previously separated and you join them and those two civilizations run into each other, that creates a war. And basically the way it's resolved is whoever has the most sword symbols prior to the fusion wins that conflict, and that civilization is wiped out, and every cube that's owned by every player at the table of that color is removed and put back in the supply. That civilization can be restarted, but they're wiped out. It's important to understand that if you trigger a war or a migration, and this is important too, to do that, you have to spend a cube out of your supply. So you can't just willy-nilly start making chaos happen. it costs you. You have to spend a cube- to do it. Okay? And then really quickly, migration is basically if you take a large mass and you split it in half, the population has to choose which way they're gonna go, and they'll move in the direction of the, the most wheat, basically. If that also forces them to migrate onto a continent where there is somebody else, they just die.
BillMm-hmm.
ChrisCause they're traveling and they're tired, and they just get wiped out regardless of swords. Okay?
BillI wanna say something real quick. You may have already said it, but I wanna s- point out that the tiles are triangles. Yes. Right. So you, when you picture this in your mind, so I don't... Did you say that already? I did. Oh, okay. All right. 'Cause it... That really has a kind of an impact on how these- Oh, yeah islands look, because if you're, if they were square, I think they would just behave way differently than- It
Chrisjust behave way differently. It wouldn't work, yeah. Yeah. I think You make a good point. There's something about the triangular nature of the building to where- It's hard to explain, but you don't get adjacent immediately. So now you kinda... I don't know, it's hard to explain. You kinda have to work towards these fusions or wars, but-
BillRight. Like, the islands are more linear than they would be, I think, if they were blocks, so,
ChrisYeah. So
BillSo anyway. go ahead. Yeah. Sorry.
Chrisoh, so one other thing I should quickly mention, there are a few tiles that have these temples on them or these ziggurats. Within the stack of land tiles, mixed in are six, scoring tiles that basically, if you have influence on land continents that have these ziggurats on them, you'll score points. But it's also an end game trigger, so the game will end in one of two ways. Either all six of those scoring tiles have come out, or every player at the table has used all three of their scoring tiles, and then once that's happened,
BillIs that true in the second I think it's not true in
ChrisThat is f- the old edition
Billold edition is that way. I don't think the new edition
ChrisI'm having a hard time
BillI think that's what Jason
Chrisbut- Reference the updated rules- on, Play for Keep Games- Kickstarter page for any changes- cause admittedly I'm having a hard time remembering, but-
CameronYou know, I don't know You're looking at me like I know. Because
BillI think you and Jason had a discussion
ChrisWe did. Well, it's a minor point. It is a minor point. So we won't worry about it. But yeah, just, you know, the rules are on the Kickstarter
CameronThe game does end. Game does end. It has, it has an ending.
Chrishas an ending. Sometimes painfully.
CameronYeah.
ChrisAll right. That's enough about the So we'll go ahead and start talking about Gaius. Cameron, what stuck out to you? What'd you like?
CameronYeah. I think it's interesting that, that both this game and Real Rivals involve this, like, tile-laying operation. and this like you're building out shared map, right? Because It, it functions very differently with it being a shared incentives type of a game. Oh,
Chris100%.
CameronAnd you're, looking for these opportunities to, to get more than one, more than one token. What are the, you know, bit. What are those things called? Share. Yes. Right? It's like how do I, how do I lay this down in such a way that I can get two cubes, not just one? Or how can I make sure that I get in on, like, the land mass that's looking like it's gonna be the, like, the big one? Right, right, Right. And you're also-- you're, you really have a limited set of choices in terms of which-- like, what's on the tiles that you're holding. You only have two tiles and you can rotate- Yes those tiles a bunch of different ways to, you know, attach it to the building of this land mass. But there's like a-- There's a lot to think about. There's like a timing thing to think about. When should I place this down? Should I-- Because if you just plop something down, the- someone's, gonna go, you know, after you and potentially pick up what you were planning, right? nothing is necessarily yours or safe, especially the, the momentary scoring tiles. Like, when you have those little, I don't think-- I don't maybe you didn't mention those- Oh, yeah. but there's
Chrislittle temples.
Cameronthe little temples that are associated with each of the different, symbols, the wheat, the swords, and the cups, and if you place one of those down, you get an, an immediate scoring of- Yeah those, the, the quantity of those symbols on the, the land mass. Yeah. So there's a timing thing of like, Well, when do I do those?" You know, Do I place this one down first and then drop that?" it's all s- all these sorts of things that you're thinking about, which is interesting. And then I enjoyed the shared incentives thing because what ends up happening inevitably is there's like I become more heavily invested in, like, last night I think w- we played, it was like, oh, h- I had black, right? And so I was a- You did ...I was able to get two black cubes, and then, like, Jason had green, and so-- but he had built it up to where it was like they were worth a lot. So when I had an opportunity, it was like, "Well, I'm gonna get in on green too."
Chrisgreen.
Cameronin on green. Yeah. And so, because I know that Jason's not gonna let that go
ChrisWell, unless we knock him down. Right.
CameronBut he's- That's the thing about these games-
Chrisbut that's the thing about
Camerongonna defend it
Chrisis it's any shared incentives game, right? If Jason's scoring triple what you're scoring, he's getting the better of it, right? Right. So y- like, while, yeah, you should piggyback on it if there's nothing you can do about it, eventually you wanna try to do something about that, right? Because- he's just getting ahead, right? You know?
Cameronbut you can jump in on it at even, like, just in a short-term capacity because you, you
Christo
Cameronthose- So sorry, I'm out. you have those, your own personal scoring tokens, so if you can, like- Place out where, yeah, where you can, like, get a lot of points even if, yeah, you eventually hope that it falls or whatever. Yeah. you can get it while the getting's good.
ChrisYep.
BillSo I wanna come back to the triangle tiles- Yeah because they are kind of a f- fascinating way to represent the landscapes, because one of the tiles will have, like, a, land in the middle, but on all three sides it'll have water. So if you wanna break up a continent, that's the perfect tile to drop in the middle- Yeah because it'll break up any continent. Exactly, between all of them. but as Chris pointed out, when you do that, you give up a share in something else. Yeah. and that's becomes a really difficult decision. And in the case of Jason, was kinda kicking our butts 'cause he did have three greens and he was raking up points on it. Yeah. I was getting a lot of those tiles, and of the games that we played out here, this is the one I wanna play again the most because I feel like there's, like you're saying, there are some, some strategies I guess I was s- slow to kind of, I don't know.
ChrisThey're hard to see. Yeah. This game is a little opaque. That's us- It is that's a good thing. But I get what you're saying, like it's hard to see it. what you can actually do. You-
CameronMm-hmm.
BillRight. Yeah. N- yeah, not only that, but then, cause I didn't see it, but, I did think about the cost of it because it was like, okay, I will sacrifice some points for myself, but I'm helping Cameron and Chris, and of course, I never wanna help Chris. So that was always... But, the, there were other times where I was thinking about that. That certainly played in your mind, again, especially in a four-player game, that it's, it becomes a... But I will agree with Cameron also that I really like, stock market games or shared incentive games like this, and I think they're, I think they're really cool
ChrisYeah. I'll piggyback off your statement about the tile laying too, because I did find it interesting in, like, thinking about how you build out your continents and your civilizations, especially ones that you're, the most interested in. It's tricky, right? Because All three of those symbols have importance. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, you're like, "Man, I kinda want some wheat on it so I can get more than one cube." And then I'm like, "Okay, well, I gotta get some swords on it." Cause if I don't have swords, then if somebody tries to merge with me, I can't protect myself. And then you look down and you're like, this continent's not worth anything." Yeah. Right. Like, I'm not scoring any freaking points, right?
CameronCause I don't have any cups. It doesn't matter how big it is. If it doesn't have the cups, it's not- Yeah worth that many
ChrisBut if you make a continent with a bunch of cups on it and no swords on it, you're just asking- to be invaded, right? Because if they merge with you and kill you, now everybody on that continent is scoring all your cups that you were scoring, right? So it does put you in a good bind of trying to balance population versus protection versus actually scoring points. that was the biggest mistake I made last night, was... 'Cause I felt like I was flanked on both sides by black, which you two were primarily invested in, and Jason had, like, a mega-continent somehow that we let him get, which was stupid. But I just kept trying to, like, think of ways to break y'all up And I kept, like, getting swords or trying to, and then I just-- but I wasn't scoring points. I had no cups. right? I wasn't really thinking about that. So yeah, it's a balancing act for sure.
CameronAnd we were t- we were talking a little bit about this, that the-- and I don't know if this, like is a shift into cons necessarily. You guys tell me what you think. Which, which is this, this reality that, like, in order to really make moves, like, the most important moves I think that you can make in Gios, like, you kinda do need to be taking the moves where you're, like, starting wars and merging stuff- Yeah, sure and splitting stuff. I think that's very central to, to this game. But it costs you, man. It does. Like it is-- when you think about, the fact that, like, when you take a-- it's only when you take a turn that you can take a, a token, and that's, that is core to how much you're able to score on your turn. So unless you're doing something that's, like, vastly increasing what your own territories are worth, you-- by giving up that token, you're giving up the ability to score points. Right. So unless it's worthless, which is what makes it easy to give those up, I was able to replace a tile one time because it was like I was invading you and I- Yes and I had one of your tokens. Yeah. I was like, "So I'm gonna give-"
Christake your stuff- Yeah and merge with
CameronY- Yeah. I was like, "I'm gonna give this up. I'm gonna take your stuff." Yeah. "And merge with you, 'cause I have a bigger continent." And then, so it only makes it easy when that's the scenario. But when you aren't holding that many, and you-- When we say you're getting these cubes, you might have, like three or By the end of the
ChrisYou're not, you don't have like 12 in front of
CameronYou're not collecting, like a ton of these, so giving one away- Yeah is a painful choice, unless you can somehow get an angle on it where, like, it actually isn't costing you that much or it's costing you less than what you're gonna gain by replacing it. But if you're just playing a defensive move and you're just gonna give away one of your tokens- 100% and and you're not gaining points from that, that is painful to do.
ChrisAnd I you could even say, "Well, I know I'm gonna blow up blue, so this turn I'll take blue so then I can then turn in blue to make this move." But- you've spent a turn not building towards something positive for yourself just to tear down, which again, may not be a bad strategy, but it's, like you said, it's costly. Like, you would much rather Unless somebody just has a mega continent and you're trying to break it up. Like, y- you don't want to be spending your cubes on migrations and wars unless it really makes sense
CameronWhat you. really want is to figure out a way to make other people
Billdo the
Cameronthe dirty work for you.
ChrisHuh. Billy, look how you got thoughts.
BillOh, no, not really. But I will reinforce the cleverness, I think, of the iconography that they put on there and the balance of the three that are out there. And you didn't mention the ziggurat, but- I didn't well, well, in the three. But, when the, progression markers that, you know, the, the six markers come out, you s- you score the ziggurats as well- Right which is also important. But I felt the balance of all of them was just designed really well. I mean, just I think it made it a, a tight game, 'cause it... I totally agree with you on just thinking through, "Okay, I've got these in my hand. How do I make it work the best with what's out there on the board for, to, accomplish what I want?" So love that part.
ChrisI will say, while we're on con-ish things, and this is kind of in v- the vein of what we're talking about It does feel like that if two people especially, like you and Bill, kinda get a really big land mass formed with a lot of swords on it, it's just really hard to break that up. You know what I mean? And like, I even tried. Like, there was one time, like, you know, I played it, tried to force a migration so that I could, you know, hopefully or maybe Jason can move in and like maybe attack and break it up, and this isn't a bad move, it's the right move, but Bill in his turn basically just undid what I
CameronOh, right?
ChrisAnd so I was like, okay, I spent a cube." Cubes are important and valuable, and I wasted a turn. I didn't accomplish anything and I lost a cube. And so it does feel like that if a mass gets to a certain size with a lot of- like, offense on it, it can just be hard to break it up, especially if two people, because you and Bill were working together, right? Like- Right. if Bill couldn't save it, then you would, right? Mm-hmm. 'Cause you both had two black cubes, you were equally invested. You were both raking in on it. You had no reason to see it fall, right? Right. And so I think if you find yourself in those situations where you're not in those partnerships with somebody- and you're the outside looking in, you can just find yourself in a, a lost situation Lying there where you're just- kind of drifting in the wind, you know what I mean?
CameronMm-hmm. Yeah.
BillNo, that's absolutely true. That reminds me of bridges.
ChrisYes. we'll talk about that
Billlater. That
Cameronwe're definitely gonna talk More about shared incentives with Bridges.
Chrisgonna talk more about Sheridan's City than Bridges. Yeah, Yeah. But that was so much better, right?
BillAre we ready for final thoughts?
CameronYeah.
ChrisAre we ready for final thoughts? Uh, I-- ...Let me mention one more thing real quick, which is actually a pro since we- jumped to cons kind of quick, but I wanna mention I just really like the player-controlled scoring in this game. Because it does introduce a nice tension point. In that if you don't get all of them played before the game ends- they're not nearly as valuable as they would be if you triggered them. So you're feeling this tension to get them scored before time runs out. But why that's interesting is the longer you wait to play them, in theory- The- more value they'll probably be worth. Right. Because as more tiles get added, more cups come out- Yeah the scoring potential increases. But if you wait too long, A, you may not be able to play them all before the game ends, and then B, if you get too greedy and you're like- "Well, "Okay, I'm gonna place another tile here and wait one more turn and then score it," somebody might break you up- Right before you score it. And I like things like that. Mm-hmm. This, like, decision point of do I just do it now and maybe score a few less points, but it's safer, or do I push my luck and try to get a little more out of the stone? I think those are, like, clever design choices,
CameronI agree. I agree. It's, it puts a weight on your, on you as a player- right? Like, it's not just fixed. It's not just, oh, well, it's where-- it, as best as I can do by the time that X round comes up. It's like, do I push my luck or not?
ChrisYeah.
BillAnd I got caught with that, so yes, I agree with that
ChrisYeah, it's a thing. Like, unlike real rivals where you're like, "Okay, we're scoring at the end of four and seven." It's set in stone. Here, it's very- fle- it's variable. Right? you decide-
BillRight? when you score, right? So- Yeah. Cool.
ChrisAll right. Cameron, kick us off.
CameronSure. I-- this one, I think the only thing I can say right out of the gate is, like, I left my plays of this going, like, there's more here. There's a lot more here that, like, I haven't worked out yet. I think I came close to winning the first play. You
ChrisI made a move at the very end of the
CameronYeah. I was- ...that
Chrisme over the
CameronEveryone was fretting about me, and then Chris dropped the bomb on the last turn. as usual. And,
Chrisin these games,
Cameronthese... yeah, like, and it's tough. The, it's h- it's tough to like feel gr- like, great when you have games that have this kind of like, these take that things. Well,
Christhat taking away thing I was talking about earlier- Right Does it feel good? It's not warm fuzzies, is it, Bill?
Cameronnot warm fuzzies. Yeah. Yeah. It feels good when you pull out, you know, a good result and you're able to make some good decisions and other people can't, you know, make it work out for themselves. but I feel like from a s- from, like, a strategy, perspective, this game's deep.
ChrisYeah, for sure.
Cameronthere's a lot to think about with this game. There's a, a big decision space. Like I said, we talked about the whole, like, choosing when to score and play it safe or not. I like that. And, yeah, I mean, I think- theme-wise, it could be an abstract game, honestly. Yeah. but yeah, it's-- I think it's, I think it's a well-assembled game. I think there's a lot to think about, and the pace isn't too bad, honestly. So gosh, I mean, a rating? It's hard to- Yeah. 'cause this is definitely in the category of like, I, you know, I don't wanna say that like I love it, but I really v- like appreciate what it's doing, and I think that puts me in the like you gotta give it a four- territory, right? if I come away from a game like thinking about it, being like, "What would I do next time?" It's like, okay, well, you're not talking about a three.
ChrisPlus you're just good at these games. I feel like in the games that we play, this is the genre that you just tend to be the best at.
CameronI did really well in all the plays-
ChrisAny of these
Cameronlike- of these. Like I was not a stinker at any of them
Christile placement- area control things. You're like a savant at these games. I don't know how you do it.
Cameronat them. I don't know how you do it, but- Had everyone, had ev- everyone biting their nails at every play, which was, which felt nice. It's-
Chrisis why I had to blow you up.
CameronYeah. Well, You know-
ChrisI had to bring you back down
CameronYou gotta do it. so yeah. So I mean, this is a four. I think, I would definitely play it again.
ChrisFor me, I'm very conflicted about this game. It's interesting that we're talking about this one right after Real Rivals. That might have been by design. 'Cause They do share a lot of similarities. All of these games do, but these two in particular I feel like share a lot of similarities. They're very similar in some ways. You know, I had mentioned in Real Rivals that the thing that bothered me the most about Real Rivals is it felt too easy to blow up somebody's control tile. Which worried me, but not enough to where I didn't give it a four, 'cause I felt like it had clever stuff going Gayos is like on the other end of the spectrum, where it almost feels too hard to disrupt. Defensive. If you're not on top of it, and maybe we were just-- maybe I was just playing bad, I don't know. But I did find myself in this latest play just in a situation where I just could see no way out for me. I just wasn't in the right incentives. I wasn't synergizing with people. I tried to get in with Jason, but even being on green, like Jason had three cubes and I had one, and I was like, "Well, I feel safe with Jason right now, but I can't remain in this relationship because he's just getting the better of it," right? I need to try to break that up, too, and I just found myself trying to... Felt like my paw was caught in a trap, I was trying to gnaw it off. I was like, "How do I get out of this?" I was like, "I, I can't make any progress." And so, yeah. And like I said, spinning the cubes to try to disrupt the balance is costly, and it didn't work out for me in that game at least. So I don't know. I'm so on the fence about this game because I can appreciate the cleverness that's built into the design, and I'm not saying it's a bad game by any means. I just don't know how much I personally like it. So I think for now I'm gonna give it a three. I prefer Real Rivals.
BillReally?
ChrisI did. I don't know. Maybe it's just the clean, streamlined design nature and... I don't know. Gayos is From a design standpoint. But I don't know, I just had more fun playing Real Rivals, so
CameronI certainly-
Chrisreally- I'm gonna give it a three for now.
CameronI certainly like Gaelis more than Rail
ChrisInteresting. Yeah, I mean, I get it. but yeah. I don't know There's something, the sauce, something's missing. I don't know- for me.
Billanyway. Okay. I mean, I liked it. I liked the shared incentives parts of it. I liked the stock market part of it. I, I did find that sometimes I got... Well, in this last game, I got frustrated with just the tile draws, which I think I just had a particularly- That was another thing yeah, particularly-
Chrisyou only have a hand of two.
BillRight. Yeah.
ChrisRight? So you're very restricted in what you can do,
Billright? You get stuck with- Right.
ChrisI'm glad you mentioned that.
BillYeah. 'Cause I wish there was a, twice a game that you could discard one and draw another or whatever. Yeah. 'Cause I had the, for a very long time, the, the water on the three edges, which really doesn't allow you to build anything. It's one to blow things up. I do wanna mention, in the previous version there were eight turns versus six, and, I can see where somebody said, Well, this is going too long. let's cut it down to six." And I could, that, that kind of makes sense, and it is a, it's a short game, so this is almost filler-ish too, in a way. Yeah. I mean, 'cause it it goes pretty quickly. However, we did play it at the eight turn level, and I felt like once you started getting in that six-ish time, turn timeframe- Yeah people started-
ChrisShenanigans.
BillShenanigans yeah, shenanigans happened. Yeah. And it, and I think
ChrisIt's like they stopped it when it was getting ready to take off-
BillYes, possibly yeah Yeah. Yeah. So, even if you get it, maybe you just play it with eight turns. But- Yeah it also makes it less expensive for you to do those shenanigans and pay that one share because you've got a couple more turns to break it up or make it back up.
Chrisin your bank.
BillMore, yeah, exactly.
Chrisyeah.
BillExactly. So-
ChrisIt's a good point,
Billso just thoughts. it isn't necessarily affecting my, my grade. I do also think that this is probably a game if you have people who've played it, like three people who've played it five times, and then somebody comes to the table who's never played it before-
CameronOh boy it's
Chrisplayed it before, you know. dead meat.
BillYeah, not only dead meat, but it could also affect everybody else's gameplay because inadvertently that person could just be giving the game to somebody and- Yeah you just don't know. So this is probably a game you wanna grow together with kind of thing, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Yeah. but anyway, I still liked it. I give it a, I'll give it a four, but I think somebody can come up to speed probably pretty quickly after two games, three games, and it plays pretty fast that I think they could be playing with everybody else,
ChrisNice.
BillAnd those are my
ChrisGood thoughts. Yeah
CameronGreat.
BillAnd those are our thoughts on, what's his name? Guia? How do you pronounce it?
CameronYeah,
Christhoughts on, what's his name? Gia? How do you pronounce it? Yeah, I just realized we hadn't made you say it yet, Bill.
CameronGios. Those are our thoughts on Gios.
BillThat's the game.
ChrisGios. Awesome. All right. On to number three. Over halfway there, Bill.
BillYay.
ChrisYay. Yes. Mexica. a classic. Published in 2002. At the time of this recording, any guesses? BGG ranking is
Cameron2,817. Okay. No.
Bill3,722.
CameronOh, wow. Oh, wow.
Chrisa classic game. This is part of a series of games known as the Mask Trilogy. If you're an old fart like me- you would know that. they got- rebranded later on, as, you know, Cuzco and, Mexica and whatever the other one is. I'm trying to remember now. But anyways, I'm rambling. this is a Kramer and Keysling game. Okay. so good pedigree there, Mexica. All right. Brief rule summary for Mexica. So Mexica is truly an area control game in the truest sense of the word. When you think about area control, that's this, okay? There's none of this kind of, like, destruction and taking things away. It's all about overtaking, okay? So that's the, the feel in Mexica. So basically, the way this game works is you're playing on a really large island, okay? And the island is broken up into, like a grid with multiple squares, and basically what you're doing is you have one little player pawn that's running around the island from square to square, moving around, dividing the island up into sections or segments through the placing of canals or water. okay? So that's the idea. And you do that through an action point system. So in Mexica, you get six action points to spend, and everything that you do costs a varying number of points. But generally speaking, everything is one action point. So if I place a water, that's a point. If I take one step on a, to an adjacent square, that's a point, okay? Things like that. There's some variation there, but generally speaking, okay? Just understand you've got a pool of six points. You can spend those six points in many different ways. Once you've used up your six points, your turn is over, and then it goes to the next person, and they use their six points, okay? So Let's talk about the things you can do. So as I mentioned, you can lay water. You can do this anywhere on the island. You can just drop water down and make it happen. The reason that you're gonna do this is you're trying to segment or partition off different areas of different sizes, and that's important because in the bottom right corner of the board, there are these little tokens that have different numbers on them, like four, six, eight, 13, and basically if you enclose by water an area that is exactly that size and your worker is in that enclosed area You'll score points for that area when you enclose it, okay? By placing that token in there, and the bigger the area, the more points you'll score when you do that, okay? So that's one thing you can do, okay? Now, this island is pretty big, okay? And you may be asking yourself, "Well, gosh, one point for every step that I take, I'm gonna spend all my action points moving," okay? And you will at first, but as the game advances, it introduces some clever mechanisms to where you can move real fast, okay? So first thing is, when water is placed down on tiles, those tiles are impassable unless you build a bridge on them. So if you build a bridge, you can then step on that bridge and then cross it. However, bridges have another function, and this is really important, is that as the board expands and grows, you can travel from bridge to bridge, multiple bridges
CameronBecause of the boats.
ChrisBecause of the boats- because of the boats that are tied under the bridge. Thank you,
CameronGet the theme in
Christheme in there. So you can actually, once a lot of bridges start hitting the board, as long as the canal ways are connected, you can travel a lot of space really fast in this game, and then they even take that a little further. Remember I said this is on an island. If you're on a bridge connected to water that runs into the ocean, you can take your boat down that canal, and then you can actually go around the island, and this is all one action point, re-enter through another canal, which might be on the opposite side of the island, onto another bridge over there. So you can cover a lot of ground really fast in this game once it starts to build out, okay? And then the last thing that you can do... Well, two more things, two main things. exerting your influence. So everybody starts the game with a pool of temples, and there are four values, value one, two, three, and four, and you get a certain number of each of these. Everybody has the same number of value fours, value threes, et And what you're doing here is once you've partitioned off those areas of those different sizes, you can then, if your chieftain is in there, you can build temples in that area. And if I wanna drop my value three temple, it costs me three action points. My value two temple costs two action And what you're doing when you're building temples in there, that's how you e-exert control. So once a scoring happens, you'll look at all the temples in there and you'll count up how much they're all worth, and whoever has the highest value of temples in there has the majority, and they'll get the most points. Second place will get second place points, and the third place person will get third place if there are even that many Okay? And then lastly, you have an option in this game of instead of expending all of your six points, there's a pool of action tokens. There's 12 of You can choose to forgo up to two actions and take two action point tokens instead. And so basically what you're saying is, "I'm not gonna spend this action or these two actions now. I'm gonna use these later." And you can have numerous of these. You could have six, seven of them. And on your turn, you can spend as many as you want. So let's say I had six action tokens. On my turn, I could theoretically spend up to 12 points of action points on my turn if I used all those tokens on that So there'll be two scorings midway through the game. Once all of the, they're called like calpulli tokens, the area enclosure tokens hit the board, you score for majorities. You put out more of those area enclosure tokens. Once they're all placed, you score again, and then basically whoever has the most points wins the game at that And that's generally how you play Mexica. Good job. All
BillGood job.
Chrisright. Bill do you think about Mexica? Yeah. These games all have a theme. Yeah.
BillBill Yes, sir What do you think about Mexico? Phew. This is, this was another one that was brutal. Yeah. Excuse me. These games all have a theme. Absolutely. excuse me. what struck me most about this game was the strong beginning, middle, and end components of this game. as you alluded to, at the beginning, you're kind of by yourself, you're feeling kinda sell- safe. you're kind of trying to establish your area and racing to try to make the biggest you can for your score, and you're kinda looking at what everybody else is doing and saying, Well, can I get to 12 before Cameron does?" Or whatever. and, that changes really quickly. I mean- Yeah. Yeah when, once that's done, the mobility that you mentioned there, and especially when you're stocking the action points, can r- really change things super quickly. 'Cause even though you establish your area and you're the person who scores a few points when you first establish it, it's not yours. Nope. And you re- Nope yeah, and you really have to pay attention to who can get there, how many points you have in it, and kinda math it all out in your heads a little bit. And then who can who can you target and snipe something from them? So, yeah, I... It was a very cool sort of, progression, I guess, of tactics, I guess, as you start the game.
CameronYeah, that's the wild thing about you know, these, Especially when you have the-- like you, you were talking about, you have the incentives of like, you can get, these certain number of points for, for making the area that has, like, 13- Yeah or something like that. However, 13 is, like kind of a big area to defend.
Christo try to control it,
CameronSo, like, if, there's a lot of, s- there's a lot of squares where, a tower can be placed. So, if someone else can jump in there and if, and it also depends on how do you leave the borders of it arranged.
ChrisHow easily can people get in there ...and challenge you? Yeah.
Cameronand then where do you leave your guy, that was an interesting, tactic that we discovered- Yeah is
Chrisa bridge? Right. Just leave your guy in the right place, then, like, it doesn't matter what it- where someone leaves. Like, if you're
CameronRight. If you just leave your guy at the right place, then, like, it doesn't matter what it, where someone leaves. Like, if you're standing right there- Yeah then, then they can't get in and mess with your stuff.
ChrisOr maybe you stand on the bridge that somebody's standing in front of. Right. And you're like, "Oh, were you wanting to leave this area?" on your turn?" Yeah. Sorry." Right. I guess you're gonna have to teleport out of here." So, I didn't mention that, but there's an action you can take where if you just can't escape-
CameronYeah
Chrisyou have to spend five action points, but you can basically warp anywhere on the board, Yeah ...but it's- very costly. Yeah. But You can actually- maybe force someone to do that if y- you- just won't get out of their way, basically.
Cameronthen- you're in the situation of guessing, do I think that this is actually gonna be worth it for anybody else to do? I actually had an area where I think I roped off the 13 section or a 12 or something- big like that, and, and I actually blocked it off entirely
Christhe only way to get in was to
CameronWhere, the only way for me to even get out was to... Yeah, I, that's what it was. I, plopped buildings all around the exits, and then I teleported out. Yeah, right. And I was like, "Well, great. No one's gonna, no one's gonna do that." And then Bill And then Bill did it. And then took it, away from me.
ChrisSo-
BillSorry. So
Cameronsaid that's the, the peril of, like- the, the, the big spaces like that. Yeah. So you do kind of have to like, jump into your, to your spot and then sit on it and place as many of your buildings out as you can f- feel like you can afford to do it. but you can't just, you know, load all of your towers into one area. either. Yeah. You have to go in and try to take stuff away or be second place or whatever in other zones- Yeah or you're just gonna let people run away with
Christhat's where people, I think, go down the tubes in this game, is they get really caught up in, "Okay, I want this really big 13-point area. Oh, he came and overtook me. Now I need to go back and try to overtake him." And you exert so much influence in there You haven't left yourself much for other places. So there is a certain tipping point in this game where you kinda have to be like, "Okay, I'm just gonna let him have it. He's overpaying for it anyways." Right. Like, I'll just take second place points and exert influence elsewhere, because I think people tend to undervalue the low point areas. Right. But I'll try to explain this in a way that makes sense. Like a, f- a four-square area, when you close that off, you've got four squares, right? Well, one of them is taken up by the scoring marker. One of them is taken up by you, 'cause remember, to place influence there, you have to be physically standing in it. Right. So that only leaves two places for control. Right? So if I just drop both two of my ones- I now- have spent- little influence point-wise, and I have a lot of my big tower still, and I've, I'm scoring four points. With minimal investment. Yeah. Right? So it really starts to get tricky in that, okay, I spend two points of influence on towers to score four, and then over here I spent 12 points of influence to score 13 points. What's better, right. And So somebody who's smarter than me has probably mathed that out.
BillMm-hmm.
ChrisBut there's like decision Right?
CameronThere's an efficiency game.
Chrislike, Yeah. that's probably what- Well, or even just like-
BillYeah, the whole sunk cost heuristic there is like, "Okay, I've invested so much, I'm not gonna lose it now." And it's like, yeah, that's a totally
Cameronor even just, like, the amount of that it costs you on your turn to, like, move back to a place that you've already placed some influence and then left. It's like, Well, it's probably, you know, there's some calculation there of like, Okay, well, should I just stay close to where I am, not spend my whole turn going back to somewhere else and blow up Chris' junk?" You know? Like plop, plop a big tower in there.
ChrisYeah. Th- this area control is so clever 'cause it's area control with a spatial aspect. There's like- limited real
CameronYeah.
ChrisA lot of area control games, like Axis Allies or whatever. You can just dump guys in an area. Just keep keep dumping them. In this game, there's only so many spaces. Right? right? And so you can get really clever. People tend to really value their, like, tall four-point towers- and they're powerful. But if you just play a lot of your cheapy ones and take up a lot of spaces and you're not leaving spaces for people to place, you don't need to use your four-point tower, right? Right. You've gobbled up the real estate with cheapies, right? And so you can-- that's another way you can kinda go about it, right? You can be clever with your temple placement
BillRight.
CameronI really loved the, like, r- boat bridge jumping element. there. I thought that was, like, so clever, and I found myself just, like, staring at the canals to try to, like, plan clever routes or even to design routes. Yes. Right? I would like-
ChrisI drop a canal here, and put a bridge here, now I can get all the way over there.
CameronYeah. And I would like try to, like, plan that for, like, a couple turns ahead of time, and it was a it was, like a very interesting thing that allowed you to plan multiple advance, which is, I think, where you wanna be. I mean, there's a reason that been reprinted several
Chrisreprinted
Cameronwe're talking
ChrisYeah. Yeah.
Billyou wanna be. Like, there's a reason that this game has been reprinted several times. Like- Mm-hmm it's, it was constructed by, like, a pretty great game team. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, are you showing your hand already,
Cameronshowing my hand a little bit. Yeah, I had fun with
Chrisalready?
BillWell, I gotta at least bring up Jason's experience, 'cause I think when he started, for some reason, he wasn't able to close off an area for himself or, like, his main one got sniped from him really early. And so somewhere in, excuse me, mid-game, he was like, I'm out of it." And, he was like, Nero, hand me my fid- fiddle."
Chrisdon't agree with that at all.
Billreally? No. No.
ChrisJason. But anyway.
BillWell, I'm putting words in his mouth. So, so he he may, he may beg to
Chrisremember this conversation coming up though, yeah.
Billyeah. So I don't know if this, that's an element of this game. I don't know if he fa- he really had a way to get back in or not, but I don't know if
ChrisI think people tend to overvalue a couple things. I think people tend to overva- I'm saying like, I'm talking like I'm a savant at this game. I'm not. I've just played this on BGA a few times- and I've learned things- since I've played it. People tend to feel like, I think that, Well, if I don't enclose some of those really huge areas, I'm just out of this game." That's just not true, I don't think. I think, again, people tend to not appreciate the importance of the small areas. And to be honest, while enclosing and scoring is important, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do it and it has value, the area control is what really matters in this game- That's where you score the most points is controlling areas. So I think like saying, "Well, I was trying to work on that 13 and then he jumped in and did it f- before me." Ah. I eh, I Just don't really s- see that as a big deal personally.
CameronIf you could go in- Certainly not and control-
ChrisYeah
Cameronother areas or
Chrisother areas- Or just go right next door and then close a five, and then- lock it down, you know? So you scored three points for making it, and you scored five points this round and in the next scoring. Mm-hmm. That's 13 points. You know?
CameronSure
Chrisanyway. It's my thoughts. So.
CameronThere was that other thing that came up that, like, with, I think in that scenario his tactic was like, "Well, I'm just gonna try to, like, rope off this, like, remaining large area." And I can't remember whether or not it actually worked out that way. It did. He didn't come back to win- He ended up
Christo win, but he scored a ton of points.
BillMm-hmm.
CameronYeah. Yeah. He, managed to block off, like, something like a 18 or
Chrisarea. Yeah, I didn't mention this in the rules, but at the end of the game, all areas will score, even ones that aren't pre-announced by the Calpoli tokens in the bottom right corner. Any area, regardless of how big or small it is, if people have influence there, it'll score at the end. And so-
Cameronwas just, like, plopping, like, tall towers in
Chrisand there's a lot of them ...Yeah, you can place your towers in such a way to where the possibility of it getting chopped or made of a certain size is impossible. And so it, you can kinda manufacture a really large area at the end of the game. And he did that.
Cameronis a good like Hail
ChrisWhich is a good, like hill- Yeah, it was cool ...tactic. Yeah. Yeah. just another strategy, right?
BillYeah. So I thought that was kinda
ChrisBill, you have anything?
Billdon't know. No, I don't think so. I mean, it's, like I said, I thought the progression of, the beginning, middle, and end game was cool. I mean, the end part, I don't know how to say this. I won't say it's long, but it was interesting, but I guess partly because of what Jason was doing, that we were all focusing on that big area. Yes. And the three of us were really trying to chop it up, and Jason was doing a really good job blocking it. So he- Yeah. He was sitting. Yeah
Chriswere just kidding. yeah.
Billmaybe we got a little chunk of it, and it might've been worth way more, but
CameronOh, it was up to, like, 32 at one point. Right, Which is why we were l- not panicking, but like, "Yeah, we're gonna, like, we're gonna
BillYeah.
ChrisYeah. we gotta break this up. Yeah.
CameronMm-hmm.
ChrisYeah. I will say one other thing really quick. This is like a small thing, seemingly small, but I think it's really clever, is the ability to bank action Can really be strong- at a key moment in the game. Yeah. S- it can even be jarring when somebody does a 12-action point turn, and you'll find yourself feeling like, "God, this just feels unfair." Mm-hmm. Like they have extra turns, and you're like, "Oh, wait, they don't have extra turns." They have not been using turns- Mm-hmm earlier when I was doing other stuff, to now do this really awesome thing that they're doing right now. Right. And so I think that's just cool, right? And it's a choice, right? Because you'll be wrestling with, "Okay, are these last two points what I'm thinking of doing really worth it, or should I just bank?" Right? Sometimes it's worth it to do what you're thinking about doing, to try to grab an area or enclose another area. But sometimes it's like, "You know what? I think I'm just gonna bank these actions try to use them at a better time." That's just nice. forgot about that. It's a nice design
CameronIt is. yeah. It is such a great, like it expands the decision And introduces delayed gratification.
BillOh, yeah. I mean, 'cause if you're sniping and you have 12 and you, and you- Yeah and you move one in- into somebody's 13 area, and you can drop like two four towers. Yeah. I mean, it's, that could be- That's a huge- It's a devastating bomb drop
Chrisswing. Yeah. Any, any big cons before we move into final thoughts?
BillNo, but you addressed it. I don't know if there's a situation where you can be out of the game early. and that was just... I think that's Jason and my superpower is thinking we're out of the game often and still actually really being in it
CameronDoes-- Your superpower is discouragement? Yes.
Billdiscouragement? Yes. I discourage myself- thinking, "Oh my gosh, this game sucks 'cause there's no way I can win it." And then at least at Ken's house, there's a, you know, I win 50% of them and it's just the whole perception of it all. Yes but I'm just having strong empathy pains for Jason, 'cause he was over there. He's like, "God, this game sucks."
Chrisgame
BillCause, because he, 'cause he didn't feel like he could get back and compete.
ChrisYeah.
CameronWe don't have to worry about how much we're picking on Jason- 'cause I'm pretty sure he doesn't listen to the podcast.
ChrisAnd He's not here.
Bill'cause I'm
ChrisRight. exactly. All right. Do we want final thoughts this baby? Yeah, Yeah. You're leading with final thoughts?
Cameronyeah. You're leading on final
ChrisOh, I am. I am, I am, You're right. Oh. Yeah, this game's good. I like this game a lot. Like most games, the more I play it, the more clever it seems to me, and the more that I see. That's a good sign. That actually doesn't always happen. A lot of times when you play a game, the first time or two you're, like, real high on it. And you play it a few times and you're like, "Ugh, this game isn't as good as I you know? This game was actually different. The first couple times we played I was like, "Oh yeah, it's good. this is good. like at a four, you know? And I played it on BGA a few times, played it with different people at different levels of experience, and then I was like, "Whoa, there's layers here that I'm not even grasping." You know? And then kind of seeing those strategies holding action points, how much is enough, how much is too much, how can I control as much area as possible, moving around, like s- breaking up... There's just-- I'm not gonna rehash it all with y'all in the review, I'm just making the point that there's depths here. ...And I really enjoy it. I know that some people, Ghidora particularly, has mentioned that he doesn't like this game because he feels like Terra Nova does the same thing in a much more streamlined fashion. And they are very similar. I would argue, though, the games of Terra Nova that we play go really long. But that's because we lock up.
CameronAnd It feels a lot more prickly than yeah this game ever did.
ChrisAnd that's probably why he likes it more, too, because it-- Terra Nova's a very mean game. This can be mean, too, but I guess I'll just keep it brief and just say I feel like there's enough differences between the two to warrant owning both. they feel different enough to me, and I just really like the action How am I gonna spend my action, the banking actions, you don't do that in Terra Nova. And so I just think... actually, I think this game is great. And so I'm gonna give this game a five. I really like this game a lot. Solid.
BillOkay. Well, I'll have to say I like it, too. I mean, just to add the thinking through the canals, um- Yeah and how just things are constantly evolving because other people are dropping bridges, people are trying to find access into yours or when they do something it opens up something into theirs.
Chrisidea of what- you're gonna do on your turn will radically change- turns. Exactly. Yeah. Totally.
BillSo, I mean, that, that feels good in any game kinda thing, 'cause it's the no two of these games are ever gonna play the same- kinda thing. it's funny, 'cause I think, I feel like I'm gonna give it a four, but this is one of the reasons why I kinda hate ratings, because I feel like all four of, I mean, all three of the games we've rated tonight are so totally radically different fours because they're just such different games. Yeah. And it is really all about the content of what we've talked about and what do you wanna do and what do you wanna play kinda thing. But- Yeah I'd play it again. I just feel like I'm so bad at these kinda games. But, I mean, I think it's cool and it's a, tight design and, it's cool that you played it on BGG and that you've, B- or- BGA, yeah board g-
ChrisIt's a nice- implementation. It says it's in beta, but it runs great. yeah, I'd recommend it. it's fun.
BillSo yeah, a
ChrisThere are some sharks on there, though. Oh, boy.
CameronOh, man.
BillI bet. that
ChrisThat, if you wanna try to figure out if you think a game is all luck- Mm-hmm or if it's really skill-based- Yeah ...if you're ever questioning that, just play it on BGA and it will answer your question 'Cause, dude, I got waxed a couple times. And I was like, man, there are things I am not
CameronYeah. And
Chrisyou get better, right? You, like, learn, Like- Right and so that implies that there's more meaningful decisions here going on than I was even appreciating.
CameronYeah. yeah, my, my final thoughts on this, I liked this this was a lot of fun. I think I won. Yeah, You did. did, I win? You did, I think so. I think
Christhe first time,
Cameronone of the ones I won. Yeah. and- yeah,
Chrisme out
Cameronjust, like the, the whole river,
ChrisNo, we tied
CameronNo, we tied. That's what it was. We tied. We tied. That was a, it was a wild game.
ChrisIt was. I couldn't blow up of your stuff,
CameronI was, sad that last night, we were not-- we were supposed to play it one more time on, on BGA, since we needed to be remote, and I had a shop injury. I had a, I had something sh- shoot into my eye and
ChrisWearing glasses I was
Cameronsafety glasses and all my safety equipment like normal. And, and I was in so much pain- Ooh that I literally couldn't do anything all evening. I just had to go to bed early. I had to go, "Guys, I can't look at a computer." Like, I just, Like, li- listened to my audiobook until I went to sleep.
Billmake it sound like it was the Kennedy bullet- Dude. 'Cause I mean, as I... That, that piece of thing had to go behind you and then forward. I saw this
CameronAnd I didn't do hardly anything today and it got a scratch on my eye. It was like- So we were supposed to play it last night and we just didn't get to. So I'm looking forward to getting another opportunity to play it. Yeah. but for, yeah, for all the things that, that Chris has said, like, there's just so much depth to the decision space Even w- any time that there's, like, a board where you're dividing it up totally, whatever you want to do. Yeah. I feel like it's such a wide decision space. You can-
Chrissandboxy in a way. Yeah,
Cameronyou can do whatever you want and it's all up to your design. And then once you sort of- Your imagination Yeah. Once you you, get the canal system laid out and you've got some other people are pr- you know, plopping bridges there, you can start thinking ahead about what... "Okay, Well, how could I ma- get, give myself access to that area with, if I place a bridge there, then I can just like, go zip, zap, zoop and just, jump around the board this way and I can do it in three moves and then I can place my three tower..." Like there's just... I love being able to think ahead- Mm-hmm on my turn like that and then when you actually can get it to happen. Now you might get some surprises, like Bill coming in swooping in and taking your 12 away from you. That might happen. Sure. Um, but that's the cost, right? y- of being adventurous and this sort of thing. And this game like has it, so it's been a while since I've, I've- Found a game like this that I'm like, would really enjoy playing again. This is definitely a five. Oh, nice. Wow.
ChrisOh, nice.
Cameronthink it's also excellent. I think there's a lot of depth here to explore. I, I'm pumped that, Play for Keeps bringing it out for new audiences
Chrisenjoy. Yeah. Awesome.
BillCool. That's awesome, Cam.
CameronAnd those are our thoughts on Mexica.
ChrisMexico. Nice. And fist bump. Hey, I thought Chris was giving me a fist
Cameronand fist bump. Hey, I thought Chris was giving me a fist bump. I was pointing at you. It's your turn.
BillI
Chriswas pointing at him. It's your turn.
BillOh, yeah. Oh, my God.
Cameronof Shangri-La. people
Chrisworry, I'll preface Are we
Billfour bottles of gin.
ChrisWe're rolling. Are we rolling? Bill's not ready. Not ready.
Billready.
ChrisBill's trying to get his homework done before the morning bell goes off. It's 7:55, Bill. Algebra's in five minutes. All right. So yeah, so while this won't necessarily be a formal review, we are just gonna briefly rehash our thoughts on the Bridges of Shangri-La. So we've actually reviewed this. If I was smart, I would have looked at what episode it was before we started rolling- but I forgot. So it's somewhere- In that card there in the 20s maybe,
CameronThat long ago?
ChrisWe actually did it with Ghidorah.
CameronOkay, yeah. Which was fun. Oh, that's right.
ChrisThat's right. and if you wanna hear a more exhaustive coverage of the rules and a more thorough breakdown of our thoughts, you can go there. But it is fun to revisit games sometimes, so we played this one again. just gonna talk briefly about what we thought. So just real quick, Bridges of Shangri-La published in 2003. At the time of this recording, its BGG ranking is 1,813. Designer, the ever controversial Leo Colovini people love him, some
Cameronpeople hate them 37. Episode
ChrisEpisode 37. Thank you, Cameron. All right. Very quickly, "Bridges of Shangri-La" is an area control, kind
CameronSettlement Simmons?
ChrisSharon Stones? No. Well, yes. yes, I'm sorry. Definitely Sharon Stones, But basically you have a lot of villages on the board. Every village is made up of seven spaces. You're putting disks in those spaces, and at the end of the game, basically you look at all the villages and you count all of your disks, and whoever has the most wins. So in a way it's, you're trying to control territory, but it's not like Mexico where you're... Well, it is like Mexico when you're overtaking people.
BillBut
ChrisI'm just gonna shut up and explain the brief rules real quick. What were you gonna say, Bill?
BillWell, it's the masters. Doesn't that matter? I mean, it's the masters
ChrisYeah, Yeah, the masters the, scholars. Or the students rather. So basically, every village is connected on different sides by removable wooden bridges. And so on your turn, you can do one of three things. You can either place a master, a disc, in a village where you already have a master, or you can place two students on top of masters in villages that you have presence, or you can do a journey of the students. And that's why the students are important and why you want masters to have students, 'cause that's how you propagate. That's how you spread out, right? So your students are the ones that move. Masters don't move. Masters can get overtaken, but they don't move. So your third choice is you can do the journey of the students, and basically if the strength of the village you're moving from, which is number of discs, is higher than your destination village, when the students land there, they either occupy empty spots in that village that match their symbol, or they will kick out masters of other colors. Okay?
Billstudents.
ChrisOr students. R- Or, both, right, Both. Yeah. And when they cross that bridge breaks and that crossing in that direction at least can never happen If the journey happens from a weaker village to a stronger one, the only discs that replace are if they go into empty spaces. But it's important to understand that this can be a useful move in that if you're worried about that village coming the other way and overtaking you, you can do a journey across that bridge even if you're not gaining anything on the other side to break the connection- so that they don't come across and overrun you. Okay? So that's the general idea. Okay? And like I said, we reviewed that previously. You can hear our full thought. So in our revisiting, what were just a couple of the main things that really stuck out to
BillIt is really hard. it's, the thing that jumps in my mind is just talking about, or is the thing about Mancala and the way that, that kinda things pile up in, I don't know, buckets, and- Mm how you have to think multiple turns ahead. Yeah. Because if you migrate from one city to the other, you really have to think about, you know, all the cities around it that are just gonna be the echo migration back to you. You gotta think about who is on your city with you and, and- Yeah what are their incentives
ChrisThe right left binding is strong in this game.
BillYes. Yes, exactly. and really the finding and building partnerships is so, so important in this
Chrisgame. Mm-hmm.
CameronYou really cannot ignore the shared incentives element- For sure And it's-
Chrisshould exploit it, actually. Well,
Cameronfor sure. Yeah. But you also, it's a knife's edge, right? Because if the person that you're working with is ahead of you, or if you work with them too long, like eventually, like that's the whole trick about these shared incentives games is like you're still playing to And so if you just c- make ever- every move, like a friendly move with someone else at the table-
ChrisYou're not distancing
Cameronn- you're eventually gonna have to backstab them. Right? Yeah. Or you're not going to win. That's right. Right. Because every time you're gonna be benefiting that person in the same way and you're not gonna create a gap in points between you and the other person. I mean, I think I won the, the
ChrisYou did
Camerong- Yeah ...when we played, this one. You beat me out. I like to point that
ChrisYou eked me out- again
CameronAnytime I beat
ChrisWe tied in Mexico, I just wanna say. Chris
CameronChris was also my bosom buddy in this one. We were. We worked together a lot. Yeah. And-
Christo your advantage more. It was pissing me off. Because one thing that is clever about this game is of the three actions, two of them add tokens to the board, the other one does not. So really, what you really wanna be doing is placing masters and students, and then riding along when somebody else makes the journey
Cameronmake someone else do the journey- move for you.
ChrisBecause doing the journeying doesn't add discs to the board. Right. Right? But sometimes the journeying is important in that, like, if you don't do it, then you're gonna get overtaken by somebody journeying onto you. So you're trying to op- recognize those opportunities where you're like, "Okay, Chris is really in a bind. I know he needs to move, and I know he's gonna move on his next turn, so I'm gonna jump in there, 'cause I know he's gonna do it." Right. And because he needs to. Mm-hmm. Right? So piggybacking off of those opportunities is really where you get ahead in this game.
CameronYeah. And you can like, it's like you can like read the tides Yeah. Right? Like, like, oh, there's some like, there's some movement on this little island, 'cause that's how the, villages are represented on the map. They're like at the top of these little pillars. And so you're like, "Oh, there's people piling up there," like, I'm gonna jump in there." Yeah.
ChrisI want in
Camerongonna stack... I've got a, I've got a couple in there. I'm gonna put the students on the top of mine too, and then- and then when we go, we'll go, and then I'll get copied over onto the, onto the next village. Yeah. And then I don't have to be the one that pulls the trigger either. So yeah. It's the- i- it's a balancing act for sure.
ChrisYeah.
BillI sometimes, well, I felt like this can end up with a, a runaway leader sort of thing. Mm-hmm. And I know you're gonna tell me, Well, really you need to think about cutting off bridges." What-- 'Cause we g- you can get a large city, and a large city could just really walk through the whole board if you let it- Yeah kind of thing. And it's- True it, and it's a hard thing to do when you have a city there that's like, "Okay, I'm gonna sacrifice X number of my students to s- to wipe out this bridge, and I'm... It's really gonna take a bunch of points away from me, but it's gonna save it, from being totally wiped out." And, I don't know. When y- o- once you get to that stage, you really have to have a strong enough presence somewhere else to be competitive, and if you don't, and you're, like, just cutting bridges to save yourself from this big thing- Yeah it's almost like you're already behind the wheel- Right kind of thing,
Cameronwell, the co- the most costly move in the game is taking the, breaking bridges
BillRight. Right. And it's a, you know, save your butt kinda move, but it's- Yeah it is necessary sometimes,
Chrisbut- Yeah
Billit's al-also a sign that- You don't
ChrisYou don't wanna be doing it all the time.
BillRight.
CameronIt's wild too, 'cause like I found that there's, there's kind of a, a tricky decision space about even when do you place a master, because you start the game with s- masters out on there. Pretty populated. Yeah But But when you, take your turn, if all you're doing is placing one token it doesn't feel like you're making as much, like, momentum- Yeah. like building as much momentum as when you do, as when you place out two. And then when you, and then when someone does the journey move, if you're copying over, like that is placing out more tokens. And at the end of the game, as we said, the total number of points is how many tokens are visible from the top down, right? Yeah. And, and and in multiple spaces across the board. So, placing a token and having them moved for you is like the most optimal way. Placing the two students and having them moved for you to copy over to other villages- Yeah is the most, like, optimal way to play. But what-- there's this other thing that happens that I think is worth mentioning, which is that you only have a certain number- Yeah of tokens of each symbol. Yeah. So, you might start the game really leaning heavily on multiplying these, like two... I don't remember what the symbols are,
ChrisYou and I were doing
Cameronyeah, these two symbols. And then-
Chriswe had a train
Cameronso then once you do that two s- two, three times or something, I can't remember how many you have, but you end up where you're like, "Okay, well I only had six of
ChrisI don't have any more of this disc. Yeah
Cameronhave to actually take the master placing move in order to, like, dip into a new category of token symbol. Yeah. And, And, if you don't time that very well- when you start making that switch to place the masters, you won't be in a position to where you can seamlessly start copying over, your new symbol, whatever it is, light bulb
Chrisis- Yeah
Cameronover to, new areas. So that's a, an interesting kind of balancing too, is that you will run out of tokens if you just keep copying the same ones over.
ChrisThat's a great 100%. I'm glad you mentioned it. I was going to if you didn't. Yeah. it. you definitely You'll run out of point scoring ability and it's a little bit of a liability- if you're not more diversified in your presence- on the board because you won't be able to score and you may not even be able to
Cameronyourself. It might be too late- Right. yeah, y- to diversify into a different symbol- Yeah 'cause they might already be out
ChrisPretty cool.
BillYeah. it's a pretty good design element, 'cause I feel like it, it kinda limits your success. 'Cause
CameronCause they could have just been
Billholds you back. it's like you just can't ride that one
ChrisThese people have... Their usefulness is used up. Yeah. Right. You gotta figure something else out
Cameronthey didn't have to do that. They could have just designed it to where it was just, they were all blank and if you're blue, then they're all your tokens- are blue. Right. But they didn't do that, then it creates this whole separate element to the game that is not able to be
ChrisRight. Nice. Okay. You wanna give a final thoughts- on this one real quick too? All right, Bill.
BillOh,
ChrisYou look like you're in pain.
BillI am. this was a little bit like going to the dentist office for me, Dennis. Mostly just because I, I wasn't good at it. And the other part of it was that, Cameron and Chris really early on, did get a very powerful city, and then we were playing with Ken, and Ken and I just never kind of s- synergized very well. Mm-hmm. and a big component of this game is almost kinda like mind reading the person that you are, you know, sh- having a shared incentive with. Because- Yeah. For sure you think sometimes, Well, if I put this here, then he's gonna do this and it's gonna protect us or whatever." And then you realize, well, that's not really in his best interest, 'cause he went somewhere else, and then it ends up being or could be, like, a wasted move or your city could get wiped out because he didn't add another, token out there to give you, like, equal masters on another city that was gonna be taking you over or something like that. But it could be-
Cameronbe sitting to the right of the person that you're a part in a partnership
ChrisYeah. no, yeah. So
Cameronso that they have to do the bridge when it's their turn.
BillRight. Or, but if you're to the right and you do something and then you think they're gonna do something else and they don't, then you're kinda screwed- Yeah kinda thing. Yeah. so, but anyway, so I don't know. I think this is probably a, a great game. Uh, um, I'm just n- I don't know. It was just hard for me to play it just because it was a lot of, like, loss. It's like, okay, there, there, goes the other thing that I just laid out there. I don't know. I mean, from, a game perspective, it's a four, but I don't think I really wanna play it again. So, kinda thing. So it, I mean, cause it's a great I think there's a lot of people out there that like this game. Oh, yes. It is designed really well. It's a really tight game. It was
Camerondon't have to feel bad about giving th- that type of review. I've given, like, 10 of those throughout this podcast of just being like, "I know this game's really well-made." yeah.
Billme." yeah. No, it's, this is, yeah, this, this stings a little for the whole d- whole time we played it. It's just like,
CameronThat's, fair, Bill. No judgment.
Chrisyeah.
CameronWell, if it's-- if I haven't tipped my hand too much already, I liked this one. I felt like I, I grokked it. Sometimes, like, that is the main thing that, like, affects It's like, do I understand what I'm you know, or do I just feel kind of lost in trying to do the best that I can the whole time? And I feel like I understand, this game. And I Don't think I've dialed it in or anything. I think I did when-
Chrisdid win- You did it beat me by a point or two ...It
Cameronvery, like, minor, you
ChrisI did the work for you one too many times You exploited me. I
Cameronsaid I
Chrisactually
Cameronyou like a fiddle,
Chrisdid. And, and did I
Camerondid. and
Chrisnot, in the middle of that
CameronYou acknowledged
Chrisit was my turn and I stopped and I was like, "I'm- "Bro, you're
Cameronyou're setting me up every time." he,
Chrishis-- what he wants too much." And I knew it. Yeah. In the mo- I recognized it and it ended up costing me at the end. But yeah, you were just doing a good job of, like, reading my mind, you know?
CameronIt was, yeah. There's a lot of... I think that was, like, the, the thing is, like, there is so much, like, reading of tea leaves, kind of. It's like you're looking at this whole thing You're like, "What do I think is gonna happen over there, or I think is gonna happen over there?" And then how do you set yourself up to where whatever happens, like, you're in A good position. I think that was a fun exercise, for me in this one. And I think, I can't re- I,I'm sure the Discord's gonna be like, "But you hated this game the first time." You know? "You just liked it because you won." Okay. maybe that's true. I actually really don't know what I, what I said back in episode- I thought I said similar ...37. Andy probably has it written down. We can check
ChrisI
CameronBut yeah. but I had fun with it this time. I think I understood it, perhaps better than I did in the past. I think it's a good game. It's, good that it's being reprinted. Yeah, I'm gonna go with a four. Sorry, I didn't say a
ChrisWednesday number. Okay.
BillTo, to talk about what Cameron just said, when-- if you put something out and you, and your move, Cameron, creates a city that has, like, one more master than the city next to it, and Chris is to your left and it's his turn, then it does put a real dilemma on Chris because we can take the city now, and if I wait a turn and I give the other two people at the table to put their two masters on it, we can't. So it, it really does put, you know, him in a bind- For sure 'cause it was like, "I gotta strike now or maybe I won't."
ChrisThere were so many times I was in that position- where I was like, "I don't wanna move. I wanna place a token like Cameron just did, but if I don't move, Bill and Ken are gonna build up and they're gonna come in on us," Right. So he was, like just putting me a bad spot almost every turn it seemed. But what was crazy about it is I was benefiting too.
CameronRight.
ChrisYou were just benefiting, like- Just a little bit more, and that ended up making the difference in the game. So, yeah. Yeah, I'll keep it brief. I think the game is solid. I'm gonna give it a four. I gave it a four last time. My thoughts haven't changed on it. I know some people think this is, like, the holy grails of, games- and it's just, like, the greatest design ever, and it's clever. I'm talking like I don't like it. I do like it. I guess you hear from different people like, "This is a six, and how can you not see that, you moron?"
CameronYou're like- "What am I missing?" You just don't like- games that are overly hyped. That's why we have this
ChrisIt must be. I don't know.
CameronLike,
Christo me, you know what this game reminds me of? Die Dolmengotter.
CameronOh, man.
ChrisIt's very similar, very abstract. Yeah. Interesting, clever. It just... I don't know. It doesn't... For me, it doesn't have, like, those real high, high- moments, you know? I'm, feels like it's enjoyable, you know? I don't know. I don't know, h- I don't know how else to say it other than that, other than to say that. It's really solid. I have fun with it. I would play it again. I think it's a good game It's not in my top 100, Yeah. But, like, I think it's fun. you I can say if you're thinking about backing it, there are a lot of people in our Discord that think this game is the best thing since sliced bread. Yeah. So, you know, just take that
Cameronwill. That was why, Ghidorah, chose this game I think,
ChrisYeah. He wanted to be on their episode with us just to talk about
Cameronthis. Yeah. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah. It was a fun
ChrisAll right. Well, I guess final closing remarks. Actually, let's just do one more thing. Bill's like, "Can we be done? It's late."
Billlate." It's where my-
ChrisAlmost 11:00. But, let's just order them really quick. So for me-
CameronOh, rank
Chrisfrom- most favorite to least favorite, I would say Mexica, Bridges of Shangri-La, Real Rivals, Gaius Or are we completely opposite?
CameronNo, yeah. Now Bill has to do his next.
BillWhy do I have to do mine next?
Cameronnext? Because that's normal, board game turn order.
BillOh. wow, okay. Yeah, I, was gonna go GEOS, Real Rivals Mexica, s- Bridges of Shangri-La.
Chrisnext. Why do I have to do mine next? Because that's normal- Oh board game turn order. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I was gonna go Gyos, Real Rivals. Uh,
CameronMine would be Mexica Bridges of Shangri-La, Gios- Real
ChrisWell, that was worthwhile. See, we Didn't match up We
Camerondo it exactly
ChrisYeah. Interesting. Yeah. So if you've like, liked what you've heard here, maybe these games are totally new to you, maybe you know these games really well and you're just really interested in getting a new skin of paint. Like I said, Play for Keeps Games, their Kickstarter is running, but literally you've got like probably three or four days when this episode drops.
Cameron25th is the last day. I don't know how long the period for, late pledges will run, but they will have a period if you wanna
ChrisOh, they are gonna do that? Yeah. Oh, good.
Cameronit's gonna be a couple of weeks or something like that before the pledge manager closes- Okay and then they're going toward, like production and
Chriseven still, They like it. You know, it's helpful for them to get a good feeling of how many units and how good it, they think it's gonna do. The last few days also are really exciting for them. It tends to spike up- a little bit in the last 48 hours. if you're on the fence and anything that we said maybe would make you consider backing one, two, three, or maybe all of these, you know, give them some support. It's... They are a rare breed, I will say. I don't know them personally. I know, Cameron, you've dialogued with them some, but amongst all the hubbub of the new shiny and the games with the bajillion components and, games that cost $120 and, you know, I'm not saying I don't like those games. I own some of them and they're fun, but a company who is wanting to go back to these classic designs with player interaction and trying to, quite honestly, expose a lot of people who are new to the hobby. I mean, honestly, there are a lot of people that have only been playing games four, five, six years, maybe
Camerondon't know what it's like to play games where you take each other's stuff and crush each other's dreams and Have you really played a game unless you just feel like you've swiftly kicked your friend in
Chrisyou, really played a game unless you just feel like you've swiftly kicked your friend in the nut sack?
CameronYou gotta go back to 20 years in
Chrisin our day when we used To play, you
Cameronyou just slap each other around the whole time I, will say, I mean, we've talked about this- Make each other wanna swear
Chrispodcast, but the hobby in it as a whole has really moved away from player interaction more towards multiplayer
BillYeah. like wingspan. For better or
Chrisworse. What's that- All the wingspan, Yeah. Like, This is my engine. This is my tableau. I'm doing my thing. You can't mess with my stuff. You're doing your stuff and then we'll just see who did the best at the end." That's very popular right now. I'm not saying there's anything against it, but you know, kudos to them for bringing these games back, 'cause, if you've not played games like this, get ready.
Cameronthis'll test friendships.
Christhis will test friendships. Yeah, they're In your face-
BillMm-hmm
Chrisf- from the get-go in some cases. So yeah,
CameronIs it more risky to talk about politics at dinner with your family or play these games? know, Who knows? Or play
Chrisof Shangri-La.
BillYank your neighbor.
ChrisRight. Shiv your neighbor. That's right. Exactly. Shiv your friend- All right. Anything else, guys?
CameronI think the last thing that I'll say is we're really appreciative of, the folks who have continued to support us on Patreon, even since we've come back with our new arrangement with the podcast after our long hiatus. it just helps us keep the lights on and continue to periodically release episodes. we just really appreciate you guys. If you're interested in supporting the show in that way, you can certainly go over to patreon.com/hiddengemspodcast. And there's a bunch of episodes, o- on there. We used to do a podcast called Backstage. I think there's over 30 episodes- Yeah of content there that you could check out if you want to support the show. You're welcome to do that, we appreciate it. It is not necessary for us to pay our bills. I think we're already, like, covered for that. but we do really appreciate all of our patrons. And I think the other thing that y- we want you to know is that you're welcome to join the conversation over on Discord.
ChrisYeah, that's definitely the best place.
CameronThat's the best place to connect with us, with our other, fans. we've got a great group of people there that love to talk about these games. We know that they've already been talking about the games that we've covered on this, this episode, and so it's gonna be fun to kind of keep that conversation going as, we release this episode and jump in on the chat
Chriswe're gonna try to do better, I promise. I know we said that, grain of salt. I work for the federal government, okay? So you can imagine how that is, right? now, all
Cameronwild over
ChrisIt's been hard, you work's been tough, but, you know, we'll try to get another one out soon.
CameronYeah. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of Hidden Gems Podcast. i'm your host, Cameron.
ChrisThis is Chris. And
Billand this is Bill.
ChrisWoo.
CameronThanks for listening.
ChrisThis episode of Hidden Gems, number 77, was recorded in Raleigh, North Carolina on August 20th, 2000. I've got 2025 written down in my notes. 2026. Hidden Gems is produced and edited by Chris Alley, Cameron Locke, Jason Yanchuleff, and Bill Arney. Our Board Game Geek Guild is monitored and managed by honorary Hidden Gems team member Ghidorah. Our Discord channel is monitored and managed by honorary Hidden Gems team member Snoozefest. Our show's logo was illustrated by designer and artist Kaitlin Nieto. Check out her work on Instagram at @itskaitlinnieto. We would love to hear from you. Feel free to join the discussion on our Discord channel or 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.
