[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome everyone to so very wrong about games.
[SPEAKER_01]: A board gaming podcast about board games.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Michael Walker, and I'm joined today by my good friend and co-host Mark Howe this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said my name.
[SPEAKER_01]: The convention draws ever closer.
[SPEAKER_01]: It advances a day every day.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's weird that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And proving my parents wrong, they always told me I was too unconventional.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is one ticket available for Kongrette, so very wrong about games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes good vibes only translate to human rights board game, Jamboree.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're looking forward to seeing everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's coming up real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just in ten days from now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So today we're going to talk about the games we played this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some news and why it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then our feature game, which is Shackleton Base, a journey to the moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mark, where did you play this week?
[SPEAKER_00]: But another game of Kthulu Death may die, fear of the unknown.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was the same scenario we did before, so this is Dracula's castle inhabited by the cultists worshiping Nile of Otape, and they do not like each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a classic vampire on cultist type situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the vampires aren't necessarily what you'd call a cute and cuddly, but they're more inclined to help you than they are the cultists because, you know, if you're a Dracula, you want to live a long life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't necessarily want the universe to be devoured by some great old one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Plus, you like the quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're doing it like you're doing internal rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these cultists come in and they start doing with their tambourines and their tombs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're beer kegs, holding keggers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this time we really got to lean in to some of the unique special abilities that the various adventures have because the way it works in catholic definitely die it's a co-op it looks like a standard dice fest but you're not actually spending a whole lot of time checking dice there's a little bit of dice checking
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's more about advancing the special victory conditions through each custom scenario.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the scenario adds a considerable amount of variety to what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, this one happened to be in Dracula's Castle.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's an entirely new exploration deck.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an entirely new half of the bad guy deck is determined by this scenario.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other half being the great old one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on top of that, there's the asymmetry offered by the investigators.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in particular, Huey's investigator had this ability to drop barricades between various elements of the map tiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: And initially, this was just standard barricade stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he spent most of his time upgrading that ability.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the end of it, number one, we were all dropping barricades.
[SPEAKER_00]: And number two, we could walk through our unbarricades.
[SPEAKER_00]: And number three, enemies would take damage as they tried to get past them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: On top of that, I was playing Harry Houdini who could just swap positions with any figure within range three.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was me all along and my channel in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was mostly serving utility function.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting people who they needed to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd be in a place that was relatively safe and another person would need to get to an objective space, but they were
[SPEAKER_00]: around the corner and seventeen enemies, and they're like, well, I could move to you, but I'm like, no problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would just swap places.
[SPEAKER_00]: We worked out really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: We almost won.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of those great, uh, close to the wire finishes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I find that in the loop death may die.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody either dies relatively early when you haven't made much progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: or it goes down to the wire and in this particular case we needed to do about six more damage to the great old one and we ran out of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: We effectively spent too many turns advancing the scenario conditions to make the great old one vulnerable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great time was had by all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always love finding the new stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an endless amount of new stuff to be had.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have the first effectively four seasons of content.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were released in blocks of two, which is to say the first two kick starters, worth of stuff, which is an endless mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I said before, I narrowly dodged the bullet by not pledging for the third kick starter and who knows when or how that's ever going to be fulfilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Kavillut, I've made eye, remains my favorite of the co-op mountains of plastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of genre because it does some interesting things structurally and it knows how stupid it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: People underestimate the virtue of knowing how stupid they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't over interpret the meaningful eye contact I'm making with you Walker.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: That almost be hurtful if it was from anybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is my Rob Davio, Eric Lang, and Marco Portugal worked on the later versions published by Simon Kthulu, Death Midie.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, in Death Midie, normally what happens, Mark, is you pass the giant, and my main giant, I mean, giant stack of characters round.
[SPEAKER_01]: People usually leave through and pick one that looks cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, because you're playing the same scenario twice, were people looking for skills that would help them in this particular mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you mean like specifically making strategic choices?
[SPEAKER_01]: I was wondering.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we failed the first time with the two Louise and myself and the two Louise and myself just took the same characters again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, partially because we were kind of enthusiastic about them anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now granted the special abilities of specifically the two Louise were a little bit tricky to trigger, but they very much like them as characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I stayed with Houdini because I both liked them as a character and because I
[SPEAKER_00]: found a special ability very, very useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Huey was playing with this character for the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, graphically, she's like a young woman with a cricket bat, but her specialty is in making all these barricades.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she basically makes fortification.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a little bit of a head fake, you know, you look at the picture and you look at the beneturn, you figure
[SPEAKER_00]: They might have brawling or they might have toughness or something of that nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't notice as early how you would graph the represent somebody with that, but maybe something with more of an engineerish vibe, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: At any rate, we were very pleased not only with just the effect that Huey's character had on the game, but just seeing the kind of effects that they were willing to experiment with with character specific abilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't regret taking the same character over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was very pleased to see Huey added to the mix.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got Dune in Perium Uprising to the table again.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is signed by Paul Drenin and put out by Darer Wolf.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's sort of like the next iteration of Dune in Perium.
[SPEAKER_01]: They add some stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: They, you know, some of the conflict cards are different.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's new spies that you can put out.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of different changes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Extra modules you can do as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And good times were had by all two new players to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They both very much enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it happened in two of my battles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mark where I had twice the strength in combat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the intrigue cards came out and I lost both fights to do two different people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: People are going to say, well, Mike, you should just have intrigue cards of your own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike, you should have intrigue cards of your own.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or Mike, you should look and see that they have intrigue cards.
[SPEAKER_01]: But nonetheless, I can see how that was always rubbed on me the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And but I can this is what I immediately said to Huey.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, there are people that enjoy this kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This sort of take that or surprise look what I had card mechanism.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is just a game that does that.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are tons of games that don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: This game does.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still enjoy playing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a game-based.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a worker placement game based on the Dune franchise.
[SPEAKER_01]: You play a card and place a worker at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The card symbol must match the place that you're putting in the worker.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's all sorts of interesting things about having space, having the right reputation, getting victory points.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot to like about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Entry cards sometimes are a pain in the butt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a question, and this is about personal preference.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think it seems fair to say in the abstract that it is often not necessarily always a virtue to have the possibility of someone with the weaker strength coming out on top in the context of a contest or whether it's economic or conflict based on what have you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you have preferred personally being on the losing end of that fight if just picking one example dice had been the reason why you lost?
[SPEAKER_01]: If I knew DICE were always going to be rolled, then that would be fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just the fact that you have no idea what kind of card.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if they just reduced it slightly, instead of having like adding eight, maybe they have the cards that add, you know, three or four, I say, instead of these like, sure, eight to ten extra swords to a battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, the main reason, because one of the big changes to uprising is the fact that the conflict cards have suits now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone's dealt one at the beginning, and when you get two cards of the matching suit, then you get to cash that in for victory point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And victory points are pretty big deal in this, because it's a relatively low-key game.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ten victory points triggers the end of the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: and on four players, you already start at one or two.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so long story short, you know, I gave up a lot of the battles and I just waited for the cards that I wanted, I said, okay, I'm just gonna save my troops and go in big on those ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I did, and it just didn't pay off.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I, and you lose all the troops that you commit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of those turns might just be pretty high stakes, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of those turns of building up those troops and taking actions to get them out into the fight always did do do they didn't treat Kurds.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a certain dynamic, and I'm not defending the way it's particularly instantiated in Dune Imperium uprising.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still haven't played.
[SPEAKER_00]: I keep meaning to, because, you know, it's pretty popular, and I really didn't like Dune Imperium, but I'm curious, I like to see systems iterate even when I don't like them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I, if they come out with a fourth, fifth, sixth edition of a study in Emerald, I'll play it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cheerios to see how it changes, but
[SPEAKER_00]: It reminds me a little bit of your description of the battles a little bit of the vibe of Sengi, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because in Sengi, you have to get your ducks in a row, or accept the fact that the fight could admit of wild swings of fate.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are things that you can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Resources you can acquire, specifically diplomacy cards in the context of Sengi, to hedge your bets, to make accommodation for how the dice come up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes with new players, especially if it's, oh, you know, you just won that fight because you're rolled well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, I didn't care about the role because I had done my prep work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that they will the legends like, oh, you won because you won all your risks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, no, I won because I could take all the risks because I'd set myself up that I was okay dealing with the downsides.
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of dynamic, if properly calibrated, I very much appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If not properly calibrated, the values are off, if the valuations are off, if the resources are off, it can just be frustrating and arbitrary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's also another entry card is if you get X number of victory points from those ones that you purchased, I don't know if you've played, if you spend a bunch of money, you can just buy victory points.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's also another entry card is if you get X number of victory points from those ones that you purchased, I don't know if you've played, if you spend a bunch of money, you can just buy victory points.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: you randomly just happened to draw that card off and that's the way you were getting victory points.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd heard that they introduced that element in uprising because I believe that in the base game purchasing those victory cards was not a good idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't costed properly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But trying to make it more relevant by virtue of a random entry card doesn't seem like well, no, they hadn't in the base game as well because I mean when upstairs and played the steam and they had the exact same card.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just like, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just happen to draw this one that into a way that you just happen to be playing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to get more victory points because it's on top of that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because someone hits ten that will end the game and then everyone plays their
[SPEAKER_00]: even more intrigue cards that have all the endgame conditions like you might let's just that's a particularly calibrated to an oil on mr. Michael Walker so you hate that stuff yeah so so even though you were the first to get to ten guess what that out on mine like again like that that they're being a trigger for the end of the game being potentially independent from who wins doesn't bother me in the slightest
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but just the fact that it's such a small threshold, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's ten.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, anyway, sometimes, anyway, that is doom, imperium uprising.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I used to say the game put you in a bad mood.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know, because how much everyone else was enjoying it, I don't mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fair enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I finally got to play Innovation Ultimate.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the fourth edition of Innovation and there's been a lot of design and development work going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Full disclosure, this was published by my friend Chris Chesapeake, he also did a lot of development work designed by Carl Chatech published this year after some successful crowdfunding.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have played every edition of Innovation now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every time it's one of those things where I'm not going to assert that the game is perfect, but I'm completely floored at the quality of the development work.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that happened in Innovation Ultimate, this new Prothedition, is instead of this being a civilization table-building card game that goes up to ten ages, it now goes up to eleven ages.
[SPEAKER_00]: But very frequently, the game would end in the middle of age five, six, maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought, oh, eleven-thage, how often is that going to be relevant?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't immediately apparent how it would become relevant in our play.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the one play that I've now played a fourth edition, it came into play because what happens is there's this new keyword called junk, which basically just means remove out of the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not permanently, there are things that can bring them back.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are a whole bunch of technologies and innovations
[SPEAKER_00]: that effectively junk entire ages.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, get rid of the five deck.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay, we're going now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is both thematic and leads to interesting dynamics in terms of play.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's thematic because sometimes there's a technological innovation that completely obsoleses vast structures or vast sets of other innovations that would have been progress at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you've got the cotton gin and that's going to wipe out a whole bunch of other possibilities in terms of
[SPEAKER_00]: weaving technologies, just to pick one random example.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we found ourselves accelerating not at a breakneck pace, but faster than you normally would.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you still get a sense of arc, there was still a sense of development, but it just progressed much faster as a consequence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And another thing with that allowed
[SPEAKER_00]: to do is it really made some decisions very pointed because you'd be in a position where you might be inclined to activate a particular innovation or dogma it as it's called in innovation you dogma cards you don't activate them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in so doing you would junk an entire era of cards which would then allow your opponent to leapfrog
[SPEAKER_00]: straight into the next era, faster than they would have otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you really don't know whether this is the thing you want to do, whether it's worth the cost.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I very much appreciated those decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: On top of that, there have been so many alterations to cards, such that people have played innovation a lot, who, you know, remember how gunpowder works off the top of their head, who have improved memorized how pirate code works.
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot of these cards have been changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the more abusive ones now become self-scoring, so you only trigger them once and then they leave the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is sometimes for the best.
[SPEAKER_00]: Innovation remains though, at its core, a very chaotic, very opportunistic game where you have to remain flexible
[SPEAKER_00]: Caesar opportunities when they present themselves, and internalized their different ways to get to various victory conditions, or even just various ways to get to the same victory condition.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the style of game that can completely go off the rails, but have done very, very well, I very much enjoyed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that innovation ultimate, as instantiated in the fourth edition, is definitely the best version of innovation by far.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not enough that I would necessarily say to everybody with innovation, third edition, you should junk your copy and go get the fourth, but I will say this.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that's been done several times over the course of the re-publication of innovation has been an attempt to make the expansions more easily integral.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of the problem was that the first expansion innovation, called Echoes, is arguably the most complicated of all the expansions, so they kept introducing other expansions, but some of them were simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: But relied on some of the mechanical complexity of echoes, so you can involve them without involving echoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But by involving them, you necessarily blew up the range of keywords, so the point where it was very, very involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And innovation is already sufficiently difficult to internalize game, proved daunting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the portion of people have played a lot of innovation, but have never played the expansions, or certainly not explored them very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's gotta be very, very high, probably higher than many, many other games of similar or even greater complex race for the galaxy here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Excellent example.
[SPEAKER_00]: So imagine if the overwhelming preponderance of people who had all these race for the galaxy expansion, it's just never involved them in the base game, because they just played the base game.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's also a testament to the quality of the base game innovation, frankly, that you don't feel like you're seeing the same cards over and over again, and the same effects, the same dynamics, the same board states,
[SPEAKER_00]: So at any rate, a new round of rebalancing, a new round of development has been made to make implicating involving the expansions easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am curious to see how it shakes out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am more optimistic now about being able to experiment with the new expansions than I ever have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the past, I've looked to see what has been done to make them slightly more smoothly integrated into the base game.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, oh, that's clever.
[SPEAKER_00]: not necessarily going to rush out to try it, but now I'm actually very curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on top of that, innovation ultimate has introduced another expansion that is explicitly those simplest.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's finally a very explicit sort of, oh, you want to try something new, start with this one, instead of being forced in many cases to start with echoes, which is just a really, really bad way to start with the expansions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So innovation ultimate, I would mainly get it to the table for quite some time, it did not at the point, it impressed me
[SPEAKER_00]: in terms of both the, once again, the core quality of its gameplay as well as the continuous development work that has gone in, innovation ultimate aka innovation fourth edition, very highly recommended.
[SPEAKER_01]: This week's streaming game was Leviathan Wildes with the new expansion that just was shipped out via Kickstarter or crowdfunding anyway, called Deep Vale.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is designed by Justin Kempainan and published by Moon Crab Games.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the expansion doesn't add very many new rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's mostly just more different Leviathan's Leviathan wilds the game, much where you're jumping all around these giant corrupted monsters, shattering crystals to a probably kill them, but you know, bring them to natural peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some others cure them, but yeah, mostly it's a violent end.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to do this, you have a deck of cards that is both a, is a joining of the character you choose and the class you choose them to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you mix those together and you have this unique deck in your jumping around, crashing crystals, helping each other out because a lot of cards that you have are any climber or at any time type thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you say that the Leviathan's are sufficiently dangerous that they might bring you to a house of pain?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just so just so then you jump around and you jump around
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in order to get down, would you first have to jump up and then get down?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of getting down, the cool part about the first, the first Leviathan that you fight in this new expansion is you start up on the top of this ledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to drop down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the interesting part, it's very much like sentibles of the multiverse.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that you have, you know, these very, very decks that you're making and then you have the different Leviathan decks that also mix it up every time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this particular one, not only drop it down for front, but you have to get down to the very bottom, you have to grab this key, because you have to enter this deep veil through this gate that you can't get through.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you get drop down, you got to get this key, and you got to bring back up to the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the unique part about the Leviathan deck is that it has all these cards that keep pushing you down.
[SPEAKER_01]: especially if you're in the bottom four rows so once you do get down there either a to break crystals or to get the key then man do you have the fight to try to crawl your way out of that pit and so a couple of those had problems doing that you pretty well have to just
[SPEAKER_01]: give up a whole turn of just, you know, sacrificing cards or whatever you need to do to get up high enough that you can get out of there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very last.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I had gone one to one more player, we would have lost.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome, but at the very end, jumped across, broke the crystal, saved, saved, saved, saved the Leviathan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, those are some of my favorite dynamics in Leviathan Wilds, because as you've remarked a number of times before, you know, the fundamental rhythm of a co-op game was kind of set up by pandemic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not the case that they're all like pandemic, but nonetheless, there's a kind of comfortable structure that accords to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the key things that separates Leviathan Wilde is the spatiality of the Leviathan.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the fact that there is this notion of climbing up and falling down and how that interacts and gliding and jumping in a variety of other movement effects.
[SPEAKER_00]: And any map that really leans into those elements, I very much approve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this just blew that apart because
[SPEAKER_01]: Because like, turn one, this is what I did.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just sort of stepped out one and dropped right to the bottom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, took one point of damage, but then I was there getting the key and there's a lot more gliding in this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because like, like we said, we started at the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, gliding, there's a lot more gliding being done, a lot more dropping.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, the life and wilds definitely check it out if you haven't played yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great cooperative game.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's new expansion now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get to play line of fire, burn the moon.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a review copy we got from the publisher.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is by Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson.
[SPEAKER_00]: They of undaunted.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is very much kind of undaunted to the lean batler card game sort of deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very evocative of undaunted structurally in terms of the rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very similar to undaunted.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in terms of play experience, it is very different from undaunted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I come in before, I like seeing systems iterate.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the reasons why I like the Undaunted series so much because they keep doing interesting things with the core undaunted formula.
[SPEAKER_00]: North Africa introduced vehicles in a very interesting way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Battle of Britain is very, very different from the core undaunted formula while nonetheless using the core card system and now we've got line of fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the way line of fire works is everything is cards, but the cards are also units and instead of being deployed on some sort of hex grid or something that's effectively a hex grid in case depending on which undaunted game you're playing.
[SPEAKER_00]: you deploy them to one of five lanes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to take control of something, you just need to have more presence in that particular lane.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some non-units that provide presence, but mostly it's just a number of units.
[SPEAKER_00]: The key thing that I found the most counterintuitive, but enjoyed grappling with, was precise to that dynamic that units are cards now, because before an undaunted, you use cards just to activate chits that are on the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now that they're all cards, if you've only got one card in your deck, that is effectively useless, because you can't get it to the table,
[SPEAKER_00]: and then activate it because you need another card in which to activate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically everything needs to work at a minimum of two.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can activate it once every time you go through your deck.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the deck building choices were different now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The exception is, this is a true of units.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then on top of units, there are all robots that are being deployed to IO, it's too inhospitable for humans.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also get to get human cards that do special effects that are not correlated to units present on the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example,
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a human card that just does damage to a unit of your choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: No attack roll needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: No calculation of strength required.
[SPEAKER_00]: But your opponent has an identical card.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you play that card instead of just doing a damage, you can cause them to get rid of that card that does one damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's this weird calculation about you want to get that card first.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do get the card first, you're going to be able to use it before your opponent strips it from you because they might counter draft the same card.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, some of the special effects are really different from any other undontered game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they very much appreciated that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also just really appreciated the fact that one of the elements that I often disliked in undontered scenarios doesn't occur.
[SPEAKER_00]: So most scenarios in the core undontered games involve you
[SPEAKER_00]: running a unit across some sort of dangerous field of fire so that they can control some area of the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now there's no run up period.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is often interesting and a challenging gameplay experience to try to determine how to move out your units.
[SPEAKER_00]: But by the same token, sometimes it's just well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to expose them to fire for a couple rounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just how it's going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now because you're just deploying them to a lane, it feels like the risks are more evenly distributed because you don't have to worry about them just being sitting in no man's land for a little while and getting shot at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, functionally in terms of the tempo, you still have all the quality stuff from undotted.
[SPEAKER_00]: It still has the same excellent initiative system that I think is peerless in any other board game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It still has a lot of the interesting elements of units being able to do different kinds of actions depending on what you need them to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now there are interesting support units like for example, there are these artillery robots that buff the attack value of everything else that happens to be in the same lane.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are defensive robots that increase the defense value.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really appreciate the changes to the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are now no dice, it's all strictly determinative when launching an attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously because it's a deck builder, there's still going to be lots and lots of randomness about when you draw cards and how, but you don't have to worry about rolling a detend in order to try to inflict damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very, very big on line-of-fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it does a really good job of a little bit of streamlining, but also opening up the design space of undonted, while presenting it in a smaller package.
[SPEAKER_00]: This takes place in the same universe as undonted, twenty-two-hundred, that being colistow, but, as I say, a complete redevelopment of the core mechanisms.
[SPEAKER_00]: My understanding is, is the Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson have plans on using the system in other theaters, and so I look forward to seeing what happens there, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So both decks are very similar and you're both drafting from the same pool.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not drafting the same pool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very similar to the undontered games in that there is not a whole lot of force asymmetry and you would have your own supplies from which you will be getting cards.
[SPEAKER_01]: So have you played Convoy from Portal?
[SPEAKER_01]: I have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so do you see any similarities at all?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they both have lane battler elements, other than that, not really.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it depends on how much you want to lean on the lane battling elements.
[SPEAKER_00]: In terms of the fundamental card dynamics, I don't see a whole heck of a lot of similarity, but it has been a while since I played Convoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's line of fire, burnt moon by Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson put up at Osprey Games this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking forward to more places, I'm looking forward to more in the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed undaunted, I highly recommend it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have not tried undaunted yet, I definitely think that you can do no wrong with either line of fire or the undaunted games.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to play rumble nation again.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is designed by Yogi Senichi and put out by hobby Japan and I'm just, I'm enjoying every plane of this game and I'm looking forward to using as a filler when everyone knows the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can see that it drags out a little bit longer if you're introducing new people because it almost seems like an actual full game because they're trying to grasp why they're doing certain things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when everyone understands the basic, you know what, you're just, you're going to be pretty out troops.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to resolve itself and the game will be over.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once everyone gets on board with that, I think you can get through game much more quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just think it will play much better.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's rumble nation, you're rolling dice, you get to reroll if you want.
[SPEAKER_01]: you use like sort of can't stop sort of your manipulating these dice in a way you want them to be either you know X number of troops in seven or you use these two dice instead and you're putting X number of troops in three you know just manipulate the dice you want and then once everyone's put all their troops out you start at territory to and move through twelve
[SPEAKER_01]: and there's this very interesting sort of reinforcement rule also if you win the territory you get to move two troops into every adjacent territory where you at least have presence and so this interesting puzzle of figuring out which territories are very important to have troops in and and thinking you're going to win that and then just trying to get troops around it so you know winning that key territory
[SPEAKER_01]: is useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And anyway, you have to at least get some troops around there as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also cards that you get to play instead of playing out troops.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's also a sort of expansion where you have samurai as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, enjoying rumble nation, glad I had it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also on board game arena.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get to play a glorious trio of dexterity games.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was marvelous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Played iron forest, junk art, and crash octopus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what you call a good day.
[SPEAKER_00]: The trifecta.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've talked about all these games before on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Iron Force is by Brian Gomez, put it by Brain Games.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a pseudo kind of redevelopment of ice cool, which is also a game series that I highly recommended.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pieces are marvelous in that they allow for very, very accessible trick shots.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time to get trick shots in some of these games requires play after play after play after play.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of those cases where I sometimes you, you lay things out and it's like, look, here's the thing that you can do with that too too much difficulty, they're like, well, not like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean, like, okay, let me try again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me say, no, normally it works better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trust me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Normally, just yesterday I did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do it this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can't do it all the time, but you know, you can do a hook shot, say for example, I wanted to go through this door and then I wanted to bank right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I flipped the piece, it did exactly what I said it was going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so instant credibility, that was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing about Iron Forest, which we always say is trust the launcher.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to trust the launcher.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was really cool because in this particular scenario, it's a scenario-based game, which definitely adds to the setup.
[SPEAKER_00]: The setup and Iron Forest is no joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: the green team, which starts out on the bottom half of the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a multi-layer board that are these rocket boosters that hold up the top part of the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bottom team basically wants to get their pieces in rooms alone with no enemy factions, and then they get to just drop out a little marker to indicate that they're advancing their victory commission.
[SPEAKER_00]: They also leave behind elements that prevent their opponents from pursuing their victory conditions in the form of little dice that can be eliminated by running into them.
[SPEAKER_00]: With the other team wants to do,
[SPEAKER_00]: is they want to do a launch action from a room with no opponents.
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically we're all jucking for territory, like trying to eliminate units so that they wouldn't be blocking our ability to pursue things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other team needed to go high and then go low and go high and go low.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you just kind of trust the launcher.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, it's, I emphasize it so much because it's an indication of the quality of iron forest.
[SPEAKER_00]: So often, whether it's crossbows and catapults, whether it's any number of other Dixterity games or even non-Dixterity games is a physical gimmick that mostly works once you get used to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in iron forest, the launchers are darn near perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: Set them to maximum extension and they will get you to the top level.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to overshoot.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're only going to undershoot if you don't trust the launcher.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're still room to aim it well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like for example, my colleague, my teammate in Iron Forest because it's a team-based game.
[SPEAKER_00]: When using the launcher every time they did it, they hit an opponent unit that was on the top level.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like an assassin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was marvelous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the pieces in Iron Forest are absolutely glorious and it works extraordinarily well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Iron Forest is a brilliant, very very hobbyist dexterity game.
[SPEAKER_00]: A little bit of a shame about the setup and a little bit of shame about the somewhat restricted player count.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's a team game, you probably want to play with two or four.
[SPEAKER_00]: three or five isn't probably going to work but for three or five you could play junk art or crash octopus so there you go what you did which I did I also played crash octopus and junk art played crash octopus with the house rule that every time you lose a piece of treasure you get a at some point
[SPEAKER_00]: later on in the game you get a free bonus move, which I enjoy because it's a little bit of a consolation and also makes the game a little more dynamic, because otherwise when playing Crash Octopus you pretty much spend your entire time fucking treasured towards your boat rather than moving your boat around and I find that if you're moving your boat around a little bit more
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes Crash Octopus a lot more tactical and I appreciate that on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So far, I have to say, I'm, I think my house role is an improvement.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also always very nervous about this because I don't like trying to fix games, especially when I like the base game so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't want to presume that I can make these things better.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So far, I'm appreciating the house role.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have yet to see any serious problems that I'm going to keep trying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: and junk art in many ways I think is the definitive stacking game because of the quality of the pieces and the fact that every time you play it you get three different scoring conditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them are real time, some of them are semi cooperative, some of them are drafting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great how the junters interact with each other and yet don't interact with each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well put.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is a trifecta of excellent hobby, dexterity games, iron forest, crash octopus, and junk art.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you recommend it in all cases?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love dexterity games so much, Walker.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can I hate sports so much?
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet love dexterity games so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here we are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lastly, for me, I played a new game from Luce Magnus Studios called The Breach.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is from the same company that gave us black rose wars.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like an overall light sort of comparison.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels a little bit like black rose wars.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're moving around different rooms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Each room has a special ability.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a PVP.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're trying to take each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in this one there are NPCs out there that will kill you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the theme of the game is that you're hacking into a network trying to steal secrets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here there are enemy figures representing ice.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's basically exactly like netrunner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think the theme really comes through because like when you try to do some sort of programming type virus thing that alerts them and they send something to stop you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so these, you know, manifestations of security show up in your room.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would encourage all the netrunner fans just think we're talking about netrunner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just netrunner the game yesterday, netrunner the board game.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I enjoy it a lot of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we talked about, it's everything you get to do on your turn is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has this very interesting sort of action mechanism where you're moving these cubes around all the different actions you can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if there's more cubes there of the right color, it's more powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you have to sometimes have the spin actions to move cubes around and you have to get the deck of cards that is only for your character and you're trying to put these viruses around on the board because you have the surround pieces of information with viruses that allows you to pick it up and you have a little scoring card you need a certain combination of different colored program pieces
[SPEAKER_01]: All of that is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just it feels as though on your turn you're not doing anything either you're covering from taking damage or you're manipulating your cubes into an arrangement that will help you do something or you're being bogged down by NPCs that stop you from doing what you actually want or the map has revealed itself in a way that you can't get to where you need to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like a lot of negative things, but overall I feel the game is very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: We played it at four.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel that it might move a little quicker and have better flow at three or two.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has this interesting tagging system where you attack the other players.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could knock them right out, but as long as you do a little bit of damage, you put a tag on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they do get knocked out, you get to copy a piece of their information, which will help you get towards your end goal.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that part is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's to like about it, looking forward to trying it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: To be perfectly clear, we didn't finish our game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looked like what was going to happen was odds were excellent that the game itself was going to win.
[SPEAKER_00]: odds are that's probably what was going to happen because one of the most interesting aspects of the breach is how the enemy AI evolves.
[SPEAKER_00]: The system naturally gets stronger, the enemies get more potent, they get more dangerous, and eventually a guardian spawns who's kind of the boss and operates under their own routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this particular case, what the boss did was goes around and squashes your spawn points.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once they're no more spawn points, the game is over and the system is one.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way into the system anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was all cool that was the matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The system works somewhat cleanly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit of parsing of icons and understanding priorities, standard problems more endemic in co-op games, where there's an enemy AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: But nonetheless, all of that was good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the threat ramped up very precipitously, if anything, too quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, in games of this elk, the enemy is just failed to generate any teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you feel like you're just spending a lot of time pushing pieces around for no result.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here at least that wasn't that problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ice is deadly, it does pursue you, it is a real threat, and then it's something you have to overcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Walker is exactly right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I enjoyed everything that I was doing on my turn.
[SPEAKER_00]: It said, I never felt like I was really making any progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, turn to turn was like, okay, I can do this thing, I do this other thing, and I'm interacting with these cool mechanisms.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have I advanced my interests?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the turn is fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really feeling it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I set myself up for doing it next turn.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there any realistic plausible version where in the time allotted, I'll be able to get even halfway towards my victory condition?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm still enjoying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we played for about two and a half hours and then we called it because we're like, look, the conclusion that we reached tentatively is that we really have to spend more time attacking each other because the penalty of being knocked out is not too bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: In its case, dependent like their other variables involved, but mostly involves respawning.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then you get a reduced turn later on.
[SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, the benefit of attacking another player is definitely strong that I think that that is often the quickest way to pursuing your own victory conditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we were a little too reticent to do that at the outset.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a common thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We generally are conservative a lot, and on top of that in the first play, our first impulse is necessarily go pound the crap out of somebody else who's our neighbor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm cautious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm somewhat optimistic about the breach, but I'm very cautious about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can this cohere into something that is a reasonably good flow of play and a reasonably good arc and a reasonably good playing time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I fear that an equally likely consequence will be that a lot of the bits are really cool and well done and the turns are fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's not strung together in a solid game experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not uncommon for studios like Ludus Magnus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they put out a lot of stuff in development and refinement and polish isn't necessarily their strong suit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the first time designer, Michele Morecini.
[SPEAKER_00]: But nonetheless, we were all enthusiastic about the things we were doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the individual things are happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just a little bit concerned about the overall structure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the flow, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you get two actions on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it could even be more and more you.
[SPEAKER_01]: The more advanced you get on your endgame condition, the more actions you're going to get.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, it's a puzzle every time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So turns aren't quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the downtime is huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then once everyone has done their, whatever how many actions they get to do, there's another whole phase where we're all revealing a card to get the AI going.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I really feel as though it would be interesting if there's a way you could reduce that a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like some sort of action you get to so it's not as painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when compared to other games of the Silkware at the end of players' turns, the enemies have to activate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking in particular of Streetmaster, which is probably our favorite of that version, but that moves along and a much better clip in the flow of significant.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of downtime in Streetmaster as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Four is not its ideal configuration, but they've managed to get the enemy activation to feel less like a chore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of that is structural, part of that is just how the AI works, but yes, I share your concerns as well as your optimism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because a lot of tracks for the AI.
[SPEAKER_01]: and that's what makes them stronger and almost every card advances that track so that means four cards advancing those tracks every turn and like you said it it ramped up so quickly that there's nothing we could do yeah in theory the cards are calibrated to the number of players and so
[SPEAKER_00]: One hopes that the design impetus was to try to make sure that the AI advances at a roughly comparable base regardless of player count.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the AI ramped up very quickly, and I wonder if more aggressive attacks against each other would have made our victory conditions progress at a comparably faster pace.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the breach.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the breach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally for me, I played another game of a gentle rain.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the solo-tiling game by Kevin Wilson published by Incredible Dream Studios.
[SPEAKER_00]: It encourages you to adopt a sort of quiet, contemplative, relaxing pose.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a cozy game, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure they would want to apply that buzzword.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing though.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll repeat what I said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Abstract puzzles that make me want to count symbols and try to evaluate whether a particular tile has been exhausted from the inventory is not exactly the vibe that I would associate with a cozy relaxing experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if I'm just not in the proper mindset or have you or if it's just ad copy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said before when I talked about it for the first time, when playing a game I like to meet it on its own terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if the opening paragraph set up says, you know, make sure you're comfortably seated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stayed up, stretch out your shoulders, and I try to get into, it's okay, I'll play along, and you know, I tried to meet it halfway, but again, it's a spatial puzzle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a solo-tiling game where sometimes in order to make the proper play, I feel like asking myself,
[SPEAKER_00]: is this tile remaining in the inventory which makes me want to do a thorough exhaustive count of all the tiles that have already been played which not a huge number but looking through it doesn't tiles and say okay has the tile with clockwise from the top white purple yellow and orange yet been flipped this one is no no no no no no because that's the that is what you need to know in order to make
[SPEAKER_00]: the optimal decision, or at least even approaching the optimal decision in order to place tiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: If not especially tedious, but as I say, it just really runs counter to the vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so consequently, I know that I'm playing so optimally because I refuse to do those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to flip tiles and see what's what and try to set myself up for a probabilistic success, but at the end of the day, maybe I was doomed to failure and I should have really
[SPEAKER_00]: taking that into account by doing that painful counting anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an okay solo puzzle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me have your like surface, you know, there and then make a spreadsheet.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not selling it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're really not selling it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: In order to make, in order to guarantee the highest probability of success, that does exactly what you'd have to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really runs counter to the whole vibe that it's trying to sell, which makes me feel uncharitable towards it as being some sort of cross-marketing copy instead of a genuine attempt to evoke a mood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably unfair, but that's where I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a gameplay experience as a solo puzzle, it is small.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a tiny little box.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can play it on a relatively small surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: It requires next to zero set up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's got a lot going for that sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a solid ten to fifteen minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to get too wrong on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as I say, the copy, the marketing copy now is starting to great on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a gentle rain by Kevin Wilson published by in Critical Dream Studios, twenty twenty four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the games we played last week, now a quick break to pay some bills.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're back, and now on to the news, and why it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: So once again, SwagCon, congrats over and wrong about games, sometimes good vibes only, trans-rights a human rights board game jamber age, like twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, in Kingston, Ontario, if you've got your ticket great, if you don't have a ticket to one of attend, there is one left, as of right now, on event bright.
[SPEAKER_00]: Link in the episode notes below.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are very very much looking forward to seeing you all in Kingston and playing a lot of games and playing a lot of games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember you'll be taking our games.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm packing away some of our games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of really games.
[SPEAKER_01]: We started with the boxes, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: People think, oh, this is just way for us to get rid of a trash.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's lots of really good stuff there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guarantee you you're gonna be blown away guaranteed guaranteed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guarantee you are the course of the weekend at least five times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you say, are you sure?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer will be, yes, take more.
[SPEAKER_01]: My news is all about reprints.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been talking about pitchcar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I play it once long ago and want to play more.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're reprinting pitchcar.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will be available again, but not.
[SPEAKER_01]: not expansion seven not expansion seven expansion six yes expansion eight absolutely expansion seven no luck no bueno and that is the loop expansion so they even said that they're going to have like a whole bundle a bundle deal yeah that will be I'm sure about five dollars probably
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're off by five or five bucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll get you though.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're off by a factor of one hundred Walker for shipping.
[SPEAKER_01]: So more pitch car is better pitch car and then we have some Reiner Knits your reprints.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just talked a few weeks ago about playing raw the dice game.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is now going to reprint more you know, tool artwork because he does all the artwork for raw recently, so he'll be doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then right, right now, it's a game that I have not played before.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm interested know if you have played at Mark.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have called Rhineland or now.
[SPEAKER_01]: The board I looked at some pictures just see it's like I don't have I played this before when I usually when I see a pictures like yeah, okay, remember this No clue maybe I did play it But I'm not really like I haven't played it with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is one of the lesser appreciated runner-knotty games.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's great now at a glance I got rumble nation vibes Anything to do with that whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you only mean there was like numbers and it looked like you were putting a troops on these numbers Yeah, there's numbers and you put things out they're all the same
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't say they were.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just mean that I had this vibe.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are numbers and major things out of this, basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rhinelander is frequently, and I think, with some degree of accuracy, compared to a very, very, very, very distant cousin of Tigris and Euphrates, it's got kind of a similar vibe in that.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a river.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure there's a river.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and actually yeah, I'm crossing that river sometimes a little bit difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a game where you're building up kingdoms.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not really sharing watch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more straight area majority area control for those kingdoms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then those kingdoms merge with great difficulty and with a large amount of planning involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I say with great difficulty, I just mean that there are these
[SPEAKER_00]: frequently these fraught borders were like pseudo demilitarized zones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the dynamic is not entirely unlike that of Titus and Fradies where you have two large kingdoms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're probably the kind of blows you just don't know when.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a matter of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rhinelanders got kind of sort of the similar vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I played the turn of the century face to face version, which had these gloriously armored horses that made them look like magical unicorn slugs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, well, no, they had these weird horns on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they had these like weird little
[SPEAKER_00]: plastic extensions that kind of made them look like they had slug eyes, so we just call them unicorn slugs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm very pleased that Ryan Lender will be coming back in the print.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look forward to it failing to meet its audience yet again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's an under-appreciated run-in-connected title.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, good.
[SPEAKER_00]: The twenty-fifth century games is bringing the mess.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I was going to ask you whether you're excited about it or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So two reprints.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was like some mumbling about a surprise third game that will be added to this grouping.
[SPEAKER_00]: So who knows what will that be?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a testament to Reiner Knotia as a one-man franchise.
[SPEAKER_00]: that he is just constantly being like, oh, this, no one has the right to this, no one's got to all right to that, no one's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's always on the move.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to respect the hustle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: A reprint for me, there's going to be a new edition of junk art.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very glad that it's coming back to the print.
[SPEAKER_00]: The previous publisher pretzel games is no longer with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it looks like the same glorious wooden components past editions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to wonder, because they did put out after they did the wood and the plastic version.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The publisher says they're going to be using wood.
[SPEAKER_00]: There might be some changes to previous cities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cities are basically the scoring conditions you have for the different games that you play for junk art.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some new ones as well, I'm very much looking forward to more junk art.
[SPEAKER_00]: More people need to get exposed to junk art.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fact that the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only were the pieces wood, but the whole case it came in was also wood.
[SPEAKER_00]: The original one, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They then did a plastic version.
[SPEAKER_00]: They then did a less expensive one with wooden components, plastic bases, and a more conventional cardboard box.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the addition I currently have for what it's worth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally there's going to be expansion to Carnegie.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's going to be a new map in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: More offices?
[SPEAKER_01]: That was just going to be crowdfunded.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel so it will be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other good because you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting loans.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone loves them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone loves those.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is the news and why it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: We now move on to our feature game, which is shackled in base, a journey to the moon.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was designed by Fabio Lopiano and the story of Manjoni originally published by Sari, we are French in Europe in twenty twenty four.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Lopiano and Manjoni collaborated before on Autobahn in twenty twenty two.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've also co-designed a Baghdad, the city of peace, which is yet to fulfill from crowdfunding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very curious to give that one a try.
[SPEAKER_00]: Autobahn was one of our favorite games of twenty twenty two, and it's a game we still have a great deal of affection for now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nistory Manjani co-designed both twenty-eighteen's Newton and twenty-twenty-three's Darwin's journey with Simone Luchinani.
[SPEAKER_00]: I constantly forget that he co-designed Darwin's journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fabio Lopiana originally came on to the swag radar with twenty-seven-teens Colomala, which is a design we absolutely adore both in its first edition as well as its glorious second edition.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also designed the twenty-twenty's Merve and twenty-twenty-twenty-four's Sankore, Sankore, along with Mandela Fernandez-Grandon, which are good examples of Lopiano's heavier designs that didn't really do it for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of setup-a-l-i-cons, a lot of much to do with nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Functional, but not really to our taste, certainly not to the level of Kalimala or Otobon.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also designed in twenty-nineteen of Regusa,
[SPEAKER_00]: And in twenty twenty three three ring circus, the latter of which with remote condority, walkers a little more big on three ring circus than I am, but I think that Regusa and three ring circus are examples of some of the first later designs that don't really do a whole heck of a lot for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, all of that having been said, Walker, why don't you give us an unhelpful summary about what one does in shackles and base?
[SPEAKER_01]: In shackles and base, you're a part of a lunar death cult.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is one.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is on the moon to summon the giant space millipede.
[SPEAKER_01]: You will surround the crater with your father's feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And begin the summoning ritual and you will be throwing pods filled with calmness to sacrifice the almighty millipede into the crater.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we may have been playing different games, Walker.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a hundred percent sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you not surround the crater with people?
[SPEAKER_01]: I did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did we not fill the crater with colonists?
[SPEAKER_01]: In one sense, I suppose we did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And did we not summon the giant?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember the giant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember they're being labs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember the game wanted me to buy lots of cards and I remember constantly being unable to because it wasn't enough power.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that because of the millipede?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, exactly so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, kill them.
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes perfect sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in Shacklin' Base, the game comes with these seven corporations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And every game you'll be using a subset of three of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is going to sort of push you in different directions on how to score points.
[SPEAKER_01]: We invite you in goals by purchasing cards and doing corporate actions during the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: In every game, though, you will be populating the crater with buildings trying to get your majority in rows and columns and manipulating the astronauts on the board and then back onto your player board to score even more points and get discounts.
[SPEAKER_00]: So call this the sort of modular setup that we've seen before in other heroes like in ethnose and setty.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't modular in the sense that different players have different mini games.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not modular in the sense that different players have different powers.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is modular in the sense that everyone will be playing with the same subset of asymmetric things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the context of ethnose it was
[SPEAKER_00]: The, the different suits that you had in the given game would be randomly determined at the start.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the context of setting, you're going to make contact with different aliens, the each introduce very, very minorly different ways to score points and different decks of cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: And check out them bases very much in that sense because you're going to three corporations, three decks of cards, all the cards are going to come from the corporations.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no generic set of cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are generic corporate actions you can do more in that little bit later when we talk about the some of the other mechanisms.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a whole bunch of extra added components that they might introduce in terms of tokens that go on the board, other resources that they can generate, other avenues towards points and mid game goals.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you do get a fair amount of variety built in to Shackleton base and a fair amount of expandability if and when they ever turn their attention to expansions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I want to talk about the production first of all, which I think is they did a great job.
[SPEAKER_01]: All the components are high quality.
[SPEAKER_01]: They all come in these tuck boxes, which makes tear down and set up much, much quicker.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have the sort of like generic, like we said, the base game stuff all in boxes, so you get that out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you pick your three corporations, they're all listed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on top of that, that each corporation comes with a sort of sheet, nice thick cardboard, not cardboard, it's heavy card sheet, card stock, card stock sheet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you give someone in the card, you give them the tuck box and they could just follow the set up rules and get that ready, even if they don't have a game works.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the
[SPEAKER_01]: The turn structure, the round end, and the end game is all printed on the board, which makes the entire game play that much faster.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your player boards are dual layered, dual lit, dual layered.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of these things lead to a great experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, setup and tear down is absolutely facilitated by virtue of the tuck box system.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really think that anything with whether it's the same degree of modularity or the same style of modularity,
[SPEAKER_00]: games should really be leaning into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that we're in the new horizon where it used to be the games came with nothing towards organization and they started including plastic baggies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, more and more games are leveraging punch board inserts or cardstock tuck boxes or what have you in a way to make the game set up easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, seven empires by MacGuritz did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We reviewed that a few weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very much in favor of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It facilitates things, especially when you have all these different disparate components that will be very difficult to track and store otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because while you're setting up the mining corporation, you don't need the robots getting in the way, nobody needs that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it works very, very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on top of that, they've really done a good job of distributing the information.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that this corporation set up information is all distributed in the corporation reference sheets was exactly the right call.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nine times at a ten,
[SPEAKER_00]: I never want the information to be spread out amongst multiple documents.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in this context, they made the exact right call precisely because during setup, you just hand somebody a sheet and that's that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They take care of setting up that corporation, all the information they need is there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even during the game, all the cars are listed on the back and also during the end of the round phase, there's some some corporations that have the maintenance that's on there as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you just quickly go through and do what you need to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, at no point was I ever uncertain, even, you know, ten minutes in my first game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was I ever uncertain about where to look to find the information that I needed?
[SPEAKER_00]: With Spectacle card work, with Spectacle token worked, about how an end game goal worked.
[SPEAKER_00]: The iconography is not particularly burdened by a complex set of interactions, but suffice to say they've done a very, very conscious conscientious job of how to present the information.
[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of the iconography, because there's a game called series by our tipy games that did the same sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had these
[SPEAKER_01]: In Chaoclombase, there's sort of three main categories of actions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have this giant picture for each of the three sort of sections where you're going to do stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that just makes the iconography that much easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you get a bonus something, it'll just have a picture of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you'll know exactly what you get to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: What type of action you're going to be able to do, series did the same sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was all sort of under these umbrellas, which just made the game flow that much easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's core.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be doing eighteen actions over a course of a game of shackleton base and there are three colors of astronaut and there are effectively three different actions you can take more or less and one of those actions is just I'm not going to be taking an action give you three dollars and said an astronaut to my home board and do nothing and corporation action
[SPEAKER_00]: And corporation action.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to say, let's talk about later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, corporation action.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you do get to experience a fair degree of variety nonetheless in terms of doing various things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the core action selection is just very straightforward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spend a worker do a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you get a slight Benny from spending a worker of the right color, but you never really feel all that hamstring.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if you made the wrong call as to what grouping of astronauts you ended up with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very seldom in the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually, you might be short on resources.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might be short on availability of something else you need to get done.
[SPEAKER_00]: But seldom is in the case that you looked at in your work as Zach into with these guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a very, very simple straightforward action selection mechanism.
[SPEAKER_00]: No weird combinatorics of dice placement or worker placement or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about the corporation actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there are a whole bunch of different ways you can get them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kind of fall from the sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is an action you can do with your worker to just take three corporation actions, failing that they just get generated kind of by accident in a lot of different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is actually where I think some of the focus could have been tightened a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are your thoughts on the corporation actions?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a great part of the puzzle to figure out how to get them and how to use them effectively because a lot of them are tied to the reputation track.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a track along the side of the board and the higher you are in this track, the more variable corporate actions you can take.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then like Mark said, because they called corporate actions, guess what?
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to do with the corporation boards.
[SPEAKER_01]: And each one has a core thing that interacts with its board in a certain way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like I said, trying to figure out the puzzle of how to
[SPEAKER_01]: incorporate these at the right time because there's sometimes a little bit of a race to get to the goals and or some of the recipe fulfillment corporations to get those before the other players.
[SPEAKER_01]: So trying to get those before everyone else sometimes it's important.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's broadly speaking two categories of corporate action.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a corporate action that actually interacts with a corporation and then there's a corporate action which is kind of all just take something from the reputation track.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a kind of prestige reputation track to get on the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the corporate action that you get access to at the start of the game is get to reputation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a little disappointed that the uniqueness of the corporations was kind of diluted by the prevalence and utility of the corporate actions associated with the track.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you an example.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll probably talk about how the fundamental board presence works in terms of activating various hexes on the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the things you can do
[SPEAKER_00]: is you can jockey for positioning, try to make sure you can do it on your own terms and send an astronaut to activate some hexes on the board that might give you some resources.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alternatively, you can generate a whole bunch of corporate actions and just funnel those into the reputation track corporate actions and just get some resources that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a little less interesting, it's a little less cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the corporate actions that are actually corporate actions are really neat.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I want to get a new building for my robot, or I want to send a building to Mars, or I wish to build a farm, or what have you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those rely not so much on the scarcity of corporate actions, which tend to be a number of ways to get them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they rely on a hard bottleneck of how often you've been able to get the corporation specific resources.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not suggesting that you should have been able to get the corporation specific resources through a corporate action, but the thing is there's such an asymmetry, there's such an imbalance between how many corporate actions you get and how many of the corporate actions are the genuinely interesting corporate actions that I feel a little bit disappointed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have liked the balance to be shoved a little bit further along maybe if the corporation specific resources were discouraged at a slightly higher rate and then it'd be spending more time interacting with the cool corporations rather than just banging a track for another piece of metal.
[SPEAKER_00]: True, if you get high enough on the reputation track, you can get those corporate tokens, which just further doubles down on the importance of climbing that track.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's not, I'm not asserting it's too powerful and that's not powerful enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm asserting that too often your corporate actions are less interesting than they could be.
[SPEAKER_01]: I agreed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Mark said earlier that
[SPEAKER_01]: that there's no asymmetry, but you do get these agency leader tiles that give you it's just a minor difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: You said there was no asymmetry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just saying that corporate actions are the cool, the different corporations are cut above.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your standard garden variety asymmetry, which checkleton base also has.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you dare miss.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I was saying and you were comparing them to those other games that have severe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can tell you're thinking of this one as very similar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we didn't do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We insert this at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't do our mistake.
[SPEAKER_01]: I misinterpreted a game that we talked about last week when I read the rule book.
[SPEAKER_01]: We played Planet Peter and sometimes when there's later games like that, I assume in my head that I know how there to be played.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's often harder with later games.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I scan the rule book just to confirm that's the way it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Mark doesn't agree, but there is a way to scan this particular part of the rule book where it might it might on a quick glance confirm that you can flick the disk on either side.
[SPEAKER_01]: and that is not what you can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you flick discs in planet PETA, you must flick them face up and then after you flick them as long as the bad guy is not in that sector, you may turn them face down.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been your unrelated space game digression.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, I realized it because we got to keep things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to wait until we played planet PETA again.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the agent leaders are based on different countries and they give you sort of their double sided so it mixes up even further and they give you some sort of minor advancement during the game that you will forget about and never use.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish that my boy, Maxim, played more to my play style, but I confess that Lena Yuhenson from the European Union was very much to my taste because she allows you to get a free corporate action just by paying a little bit of money when you're activating the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I made some comments about the board that caused a fair degree of spielcus and I don't understand why.
[SPEAKER_00]: My comments about the board, the shared board, the crater where apparently we're worshiping some giant millipede, all this is news to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is room in each hex for maximum three buildings.
[SPEAKER_00]: A triple building, a double building on single building, just there's a number of domes that every building has.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can only ever have one building of yours in a given hex.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the board gets activated through one of your workers, basically every hex that that worker is facing will activate and discourage something depending on what color worker you sent to go out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There I find the color of worker matters far, far, far more than the color of worker anywhere else.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's far more consequential.
[SPEAKER_00]: In part because
[SPEAKER_00]: I talked before about how difficult it often is to get these corporation-specific resources.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty much the best way to get corporations-specific resources.
[SPEAKER_00]: Send a blue worker to go activate a row of taxes on the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are present in the hacks, you activated it for free.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not present in the hacks, you have to pay some small amount of money to somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I initially was presented with how this works, I thought that there was going to be protracted periods throughout the game of jogging for or protecting your position in terms of maintaining your majority and your presence in various hexes on the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a period of jogging.
[SPEAKER_00]: It tends to be very, very brief and very determinative.
[SPEAKER_00]: because if you are focusing on contesting say a four hex row, the building restrictions are such that I can look and see and say, oh, okay, well, if I build this one building here, there is no way for anyone for the rest of the game to take this row from me in terms of majority.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Walker has already put his big building out somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_00]: The massive six building, they can go wherever it wants, so long as the X is empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Huey meanwhile has built a single building in two of the hexes, so we can't build anything else there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other hex is full, there we go, the row is locked down.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a thing that happens near the end of the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not counting the two mirrors expansion either.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also not counting the presence of farms which will gum up spaces and the hexes and you can use defensively to guarantee a rope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this isn't even a major criticism.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is more player interaction on the shared board of Shackleton based and there is in many, many, many other heroes of comparable weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just hoping that this was going to be an evolving area majority contest instead of a thing that you can easily calculate out and round one and be done with.
[SPEAKER_00]: for one particular row.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Row by row, but you don't need more than one row very often because every row can be activated from two ends and at the end of a round, any worker that went to activate a row, that worker gets to go live with whoever has the majority of buildings in that row.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'll just stress from the outset.
[SPEAKER_00]: It often makes sense to go activate a row where you don't and never will have majority, because it's not a huge opportunity cost, especially if you're getting in the astronauts you need elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very easy to take in more astronauts than you can house.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's worth emphasizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that I thought it was going to be a constant fight and a competition and it turns out that the resources over which you are fighting are sufficiently plentiful you don't have to and the geography of the board is sufficiently easily locked down that it's an easy calculation and can be done relatively trevially in early stages of the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: So is it there and does it introduce competition?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but not as much as I would have liked ideally.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do believe it's different every time though, but I this latest game we played I thought it was very interesting the fact that the one before that we all built our big building and then once again in this most recent one none of us built that is turning you and I did fight over that one roll a little bit you eventually like you said locked it down around one and round one but then in round two didn't even get to use it that is true
[SPEAKER_01]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I think that doesn't incentivize building up more than just the one row.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this particular game, it was very odd the lack of building.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that one row was completely built up, but then we just sort of stopped.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's a building here and there, but everything pretty well happened in that one row, which was different than all the other games we played.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, it's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: The competition over the shared space evolves differently from game to game.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I said, I just wish there were more of it, and I wish that it evolved more dynamically over the course of all three rounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because so you've got six workers every round.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just want to get back to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just so people sort of have a feel of how it works.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the very beginning, we're all going to be drafting these shuttles and there'll be a mix of, you know, what workers you're going to get.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll be like either two yellow, two red and two blue or there'll be some mix with some money and resources mixed in.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you draft them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you try to pick the one that you think you need the particular colors for, because like Mark said, the ones you place on the rim of the shackleton crater are the ones where is the color is most important.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other where else you can place almost any color, you won't get a minor benefit, but you can still place any color.
[SPEAKER_00]: In many contexts it's marginally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then after you have that, not only that, but it will also dictate the turn order.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you get into the action phase where you're going to be playing these astronauts into the different
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, action areas doing what it says and then there's a maintenance phase where you're going to have to pay an amount of money, which is sometimes not trivial.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's based on how many buildings you've put out and how high you are on the reputation track and for every credit that you can't pay, you're going to be moving down on that reputation track.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the maintenance costs are no joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's pretty well calibrated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, overall, I like almost everything about Jacqueline Mace.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's extraordinarily well done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that this design team is one to absolutely look at for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the reasons why I'm so keen to try their game about Baghdad, because I think that when Lupiano and Manjona get together, they make good things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've come, I think I've now come to accept Jacqueline Mace for what it is, and for giving it for not being what I wanted it to be, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do really like the variety that the corporations offer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of them are just various flavors of turn in the corporation's specific resource to satisfy some recipe to get points.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you introduce at least one of the genuinely interesting corporations, I think that is enough to justify the overall structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the Mars Corporation so far as my favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: because with the Mars Corporation, what you do is you spend the Corporation's specific resource to literally take a building from the board and send it to Mars for potentially huge point benens as if you get your ducks in a row.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as the interesting challenge of doing that, there's the interesting timing issue of how do I want to benefit from my building being on the shackleton crater, how do I want to benefit from my building being in Mars, et cetera, and that dynamic, I think really leans into something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it can also open up some tension about potentially, it doesn't always shake out, but potentially,
[SPEAKER_00]: over more competition over the main board.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, in context, I'm willing to accept the fact that the track of the race has more player interaction than a lot of its peers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just part of you, imagine there's a version with you yet more.
[SPEAKER_00]: My favorite is SkyWatch.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's going to be a tile put in the middle and it's going to tell you what hex is going to get hit by an asteroid and it will blow up that hex and all the hexes around it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless people, you know, advance the track.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the first step of the track is getting to see where it's going to land so you don't even know where it's going to impact.
[SPEAKER_01]: The next one is reducing it just to the impact text itself and then at the very end it doesn't hit it all and then you get to do all these other things while that's happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's pretty well done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that I like about the Skywatch element is that your ability to interact with corporation is less limited by the scarce corporation resources than the other ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, every time you want to send a building a Mars, you need a Mars ticket and Mars tickets are very, very hard to come by.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're not going to be interacting with the Mars board very often.
[SPEAKER_00]: The SkyWatch board though, the Corporation-specific resource, if you will, is the ability to advance on the SkyWatch track.
[SPEAKER_00]: But once you have advanced to a section on the SkyWatch track, every corporate action you can use thereafter can be to progress the SkyWatch projects.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which cost resources, I'm not saying it's free.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the bottleneck is not as directly tied to the Corporation-specific action.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, you get to use your corporate actions more liberally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's sufficiently remunerative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was initially concerned when Skywatch first came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like we're going to randomly discover that a whole bunch of our buildings got nuked and there was no way to control it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The actions are sufficiently remunerative that you probably don't have to worry too much about being the path of the asteroid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I particularly like the combination of Skywatch and Mars because you get to know where the asteroid is landing
[SPEAKER_00]: and then if people aren't pulling their weight on the Skywatch project, you just get them off-shacklets and crater and don't worry about it anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right, then we have a couple, old school where we're like, corporate is very quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: There may have a couple that are just recipe fulfillment, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The, the salarium research and the moon mining is just, you know, there's stuff out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It needs particular resources.
[SPEAKER_01]: You pay, you get some credits and victory points back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we have the Artemis tours, which is, I find very interesting, but is very,
[SPEAKER_01]: dicey.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the car.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just need the right cards to come out because the corporate action allows you to allocate tourists to cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the cards need to come out and the the card display is too small.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish it were bigger.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the scarce resources getting tourists and then the action lets you manipulate the tourists to put them on the cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there needs to be a constellation of relevant factors and it's worth play.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something lets you cycle the cards.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also like the part where all of the tours go back to the board at the end of the round and then depending on how many tours came out, they're all going to be worth a certain number of victory points.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that was very interesting as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then lastly, we already talked about the Mars one, and then we have the evergreen farms, which we're putting out these green houses, which we've already talked about, sort of gum up some areas because they don't really belong to anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they do very much give you a source of victory points for winning that role or call them that is now gummed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: You forgot about the robots.
[SPEAKER_00]: The robots are like, by buildings that might be the most boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: That may be a forgotten one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's only slightly less boring than just the recipe for film at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, you're going to be at three of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's chemical.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, I wish the card cycle a little bit more as I say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate the interaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish the little bit more all that had him in said.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is a very solid, very worthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: medium weight euro that leverages its modularity very well and is very well managed in terms of information flow so it's easier to get to the table and easier to teach than a lot of comprehensive weighted games and so it is one that I would happily play at any future opportunity on the quick
[SPEAKER_01]: Quickly on the subject of teaching, I would definitely do babies for a shackleton, like the Rubel Scissor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely play with my homework.
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely play with corporates.
[SPEAKER_01]: They suggest for your first game, because there's a lot going on and play with the basic ones first, so you get to know the mechanisms of the base part of the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a tremendous difference between the level of emphasis that Rubel's place on recommended first setup.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all played those very late games of like, look, we strongly recommend that for your first fifty-four games, don't play with the minor asymmetry of the player powers, because it will overwhelm your feeble gamer brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, you, on the other extreme, you have Shackleton base that says, ah, we recommend for your first game, you play with these three corporations.
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to be far more than static about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to resort to the level of emphasis that I seem to recall from some of the CG-eve-lotic-of-audible games, we'll like, look,
[SPEAKER_00]: where they, they pretty much say in the real book, look, we know you've been lied to before and we know your experienced gamers trust us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You really need to play with these three for your first game.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very lastly, if I really like the sort of the decisions of what buildings to put out because not only do you have to win
[SPEAKER_01]: The majority out on the board, there is a lot going on in your player board.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's giving you income, it's giving you end game scoring.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I really want to put this building out for end game scoring, but I really need to put this particular building out, so I go into majority here, or there's not enough room here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's this constant figuring out exactly what to do, love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like you said, Chuck's in base, glad we have it, and I'm definitely going to be keeping it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's gonna do it for this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for joining us for so very long about games.
[SPEAKER_00]: We appreciate you're deciding to spend the time with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to find out more information, you can find all the relevant details on sowronggames.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: We hope to see you again soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care of yourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care of your hobby and thank you rules, explainer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peace!
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to sober and wrong about games, or gaming podcasts about board games produced by Michael Walker and edited by Mark Pickle.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find all our information at sowronggames.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to what the city, for allowing us to use their most excellent song, FLS, as our interview can find them at what does it eat.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: We hope to see you again soon, and as always, I'm trying to be right to, but remember, you're so very well.