Episode 377: Diplomacy - The Golden Blade, Luz, Fruit Island, Altay - Seafarers, Brave & Bold

0:04 Pickax.

0:12 Hey y'all, it's time for rolling dice and taking names. This episode has a laundry list of games including Altay Seafarers, Bold and Brave, Diplomacy, The Golden Blade, Loose, and Fruit Island. Speaking of laundry, I wish Marty would do some sometimes instead of playing so many games.

0:35 Hello and welcome to Rolling Dice and Taking Names. This is episode a three 77. The Emperor Arrives. My name is Marty.

0:44 I'm Tony.

0:45 The Emperor Arise is the name of a song from the soundtrack of Return of the Jedi. So, this might be the first John Williams song we've ever used. I don't know why it applies to this episode because y'all were not covering any Star Wars games.

0:59 Well, we always mention a Star Wars Unlimited play. So, you know, that'll sneak in here. But, u Michael Pennington, a British actor died. And he is known as the gentleman that when Darth Vader arrives on the uncompleted Death Star, looks at him and says a quote. A lot of people know that. Um, make sure I get it right y'all cuz I will screw it up and then we'll have all these Star Wars people writing in. The Emperor asked the impossible. There you go. He is the character known as Moff Gur. J E R J E R R O D.

1:39 All right. Now, I'm curious. Have they done a Star Wars unlimited card? What? Say spell that again. Moth is Moth is two Fs, right?

1:47 Yeah. And J E R J E R R O D.

1:52 There is one. Jar Gerrod. The flavor text for this is we shall redouble our efforts. There you go. Oh my gosh. Get this, dude. This is from the next set. It's not even out yet. It's not Oh wow. Ash's set. It's in the starter deck and it's a green black and it does if you would create a number of tokens you may defeat this unit if you do create twice that number of tokens instead. Oh my

2:22 wait a minute I'm trying to understand this. Hold on. If you would create a number of tokens tokens can be experience or whatever.

2:30 Anything.

2:31 Shields, credits, whatever. If you do create twice that number of tokens instead, h I'm not I'm not f how is that going to work. I'm I'm not I'm not seeing how that is. If I create an experience token, all right, or if I say, oh, you can create a credit token right now. If you would create a number of tokens, I would one defeat him. You'll create an extra one. But you know some you know one of the cunning cards where it's I think it's like pay five create three credits make six credits out of that.

3:04 Mhm. But if I've got that on the table and I play that. Oh and I defeat I take him off. I take him out not you. He's in front of me.

3:14 Yeah. You choose to defeat this unit. So if you take an action to create any token X-wing fighters TIE fighters

3:23 destroy that and double it spy. Yeah.

3:25 Yeah. That's That's pretty good right there. That's a good card. And I'm already building credit decks in Star Wars Unlimited. So, with my Vader JTL card leader, I believe he's green black. Oh, and that's part of the starter set, too. H Can you buy starter? I mean, if you if it says starter, are they ever in packs or do you always have to buy the starters?

3:50 Initially, they aren't. They might eventually put them in booster packs, like reprints later on, but the only way to get this is in the spotlight decks.

3:58 In the spotlight decks. Okay. And I I'm sorry, I'm using old terms, spot starters. Oh, I'm liking this. This is going to make that one pop even more.

4:06 And it only costs two.

4:07 I'm liking that. All right.

4:09 Yeah. Think about it. If there's But there's some situations where you can create like multiple experience tokens, double the number of experience tokens you create.

4:17 Oh, yeah. There's uh one that I was reading today. create an experience token for this one and another experience token for a unit. And I was like, wait a minute. Okay, if I'm doing that Oh, man. That's four experience.

4:32 Yep,

4:33 man. Four shields.

4:35 Yeah.

4:36 Okay, that's going to be a Okay, you're gonna have to go You're gonna have to go villain. You can't be that hero player guy you are.

4:43 No. What What's my deck now? My deck is villain.

4:45 I know it's villain. I'm just, you know, I'm trying to make you sound good to the audience. I'm trying to make you sound like you're all heroic.

4:51 I play whatever whatever is most fun. I I'm not married to heroic or villainy. That's cool. That's interesting though. That's interesting that Okay, y'all. We didn't know any of this. So, that was totally off the cuff. Didn't know that was coming. That's very interesting. I didn't realize they had already teased some cards from the upcoming set.

5:11 That's nice.

5:12 I didn't either. Yeah. So, yeah, he um he was in a lot of movies. British, very famous British actor, Shakespearean actor. So, but I just remember when they announced him and he said Star Wars, I looked him up. I said, "Oh, yeah. I remember that guy, you know, when he's standing there on the Death Star. You know, we will redouble our efforts." Okay. Okay. Very good. Well, see, see how relevant we are.

5:36 We We got lucky on that one. So, we're coming off of Mother's Day weekend and uh had all the family over. Few episodes ago, we covered the game Got Five, which is the deduction game with the real colorful tiles that we all like. Tony's not a big deduction game fan, but it only plays four, but I had four people that were interested. That was Vanessa, my sister, her daughter, and Travis.

6:01 How old's her daughter now?

6:03 Sophomore in high school. Wow.

6:06 Sophomore, junior, something like that.

6:08 Dude, you're getting old.

6:09 So, I taught them all. lot of thought. Let's let's see how this goes over a hit all around the table. They loved it. Absolutely dubbed it. One of the things is because it's so straightforward.

6:23 Mhm. It is

6:24 on the game play. And so then it's just like oh well this is just kind of straight me trying to figure out and as we played it was my sister won and I said I said there is kind of one drawback to this system is like there could be a luck of the tile that comes up. She said oh 100%. She said a tile came up that basically revealed the rest of my tiles for me. And so she said, you know, I got lucky on that one. Still, that's one of those games that, you know, you you play, you reset, you go again. It's it's really cool. Another one that we played though, we got sent by uh OP Games that came out in 2016. It's called Cork. Q R K.

7:01 Okay.

7:01 I remember playing this in Charlotte at Tantrum Con with the Rouses from Blue Peg, Pink Peg. This is a silly almost beer dexterity game. Each player is given a cord that's attached to a cork. There's a little mat in the middle of the table. Everybody places the cork on the mat and takes the other end of the cord. One person has a cup with two dice in it. They jiggle the dice in the cup, put the cup face down, then lift it. If the sum of the dice is seven or it's doubles, everybody else must jerk their cork off of the mat before the person with the cup captures any of them.

7:44 That's the game.

7:45 Okay, that's the game. Hey, nothing wrong with that.

7:48 If you get cap if you get captured, you get a point. If the person with the cup doesn't capture anybody, they get a point. If you jerk the cork off when you're not supposed to, they get a point. Person with the lowest points wins. As soon as somebody gets to seven, you see who has the lowest and that person wins.

8:05 Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. You threw me for a loop. If So, if I jerk my

8:10 If if I lift it and it's not doubles or sevens and you and you pull it off,

8:14 I get a point.

8:15 You get a point.

8:16 And I get a point if someone captures my cork, which therefore I'm getting the point. Therefore, and whoever has the lowest wins. I'm with you now. Sorry. I was expecting the flip of that. So, as you were talking, the brain was automatically mirroring the image, which it shouldn't have done, but I now completely understand what you're talking about.

8:33 That's $20. It's a Walmart exclusive.

8:36 It's a silly game, but I It's one of those things I told Travis, I said, "This is like, you know, with your friends at beer game." I'm like, "Oh, yeah." Yeah. That's what said. He said, "The problem is that people be knocking their drinks off the table, jerking stuff." So, you know, I was doing things like, you know, I would when it was my turn with the dice, I would I would lick the cup and then go like I was going to capture it to try to, you know, to get somebody to, you know, pull the the cork off. So, you do these little mind games, too.

8:59 Isn't there a penalty? Let's say you did that mind game and you actually slammed it and it was not.

9:03 Well, then yeah, then then I'm getting points. But as long as I don't actually capture anything, if

9:08 I make the motion like I'm going to, you can do that.

9:11 Do that jerk motion.

9:12 Go. So anyway, two two simple fun games that uh that went over well. So that's Cork uh by OP Games. Been out 10 years, but this is one of those things. Yeah, I'm throwing in my I got like some drawers of just party games. Keeping it in there.

9:28 Well, so for our Mother's Day, um we went down did a little um Donna's mom came up. We did a little babysitting while they went to a wedding and um we were down in Jacksonville. And I was asked on Saturday night when it was just us and the crying, screaming baby, um, what did I bring to play? And I said, absolutely nothing. They go, what do you mean nothing? I said, I didn't bring anything. What did you bring? Well, you're supposed to bring the games. I said, when was that ever written? When am I the responsible party here?

9:59 Since probably how many years you've been doing it, and it's kind of expected like it is at my gatherings. My sister gets here. So, what are we playing today?

10:06 Bought her mother. um Sky Joe so that she could take it with her on trips. And I go, "Didn't I just buy you Sky Joe?" And she's like, "Well, I thought about bringing it, but I figured you were coming. You were going to bring it." And I said, "When were when are we going to have the availability to play a game while we are taking care of this screaming child?" And it's just like, "Okay, fine." And I said, "Well, did you bring your tablet so that we could play Sigrada online?" And I go and Donna goes, "Did you think he would bring his tablet for two nights?" I'm like, "No, I didn't bring my tablet for two nights. I don't need to bring my iPad." There was no reason for it. I had to bring my work computer. And she goes, "Did you even put pack of cards in your um book bag?" I said, "I have not put a pack of cards in my book bag." So, I disappointed everyone at the table over Mother's Day for not bringing any games or having a pack. Usually I do have a deck of cards in my work book bag, but I haven't put one in this bag yet. Do you do you have a pack of uh 52 playing cards sitting around?

11:07 I mean, it's sitting around at the house, yes, but I don't carry them with me.

11:10 You don't carry them with you? I mean, you're sitting at an airport by yourself because you're traveling for work and you need to play solitire or something. No, you break open the switch.

11:18 100%. I break open a switch or a book. Yeah.

11:21 Mhm. Exactly. So, yeah, I let everybody down, but h they get over it. They'll they'll they'll figure it out later. bring your own games.

11:29 Speaking of Sky Joe, so I've had a couple game nights here with some guys from church and one of the guys is absolutely in love with Sky Joe. Every time we get together, want to play Sky Joe. So he had a birthday party this past Friday. It's like, well, I know what I'm getting him for his birthday. So ordered a copy of Sky Joe and I gave it to him. He's like, "We got to play. We got to play." So I teach everybody Sky Joe that night. The the only bad thing is with Sky Joe with the max number of

11:55 eight people, it took forever. I told you that you told me that because I guess I didn't think through the process of the fact is is

12:04 basically when you start reshuffleling the deck, the only thing left in there are high card, yellow jelloss, and reds. And eventually just somebody's going to go, I just want this to end. I'll take the lowest jello I can get sort of deal. more strategy comes into being able to clear columns quicker if but you've got to be on the right side because if you go through 10 12elves and you and you know and you're got to wait for seven you can't get to

12:31 six of the discards.

12:33 So yeah, you're you're you are all messed up and and Donna's already she looked at me the other day and she goes, "I've been done with Sky Joe for a while. Do not break it out."

12:42 Sky Joe is over. Yeah.

12:44 Yeah. She said, "Well, let's let's go to something else." What one reason why I got Sky Joe because I'm sick of playing it. It's like here you can have your own copy. You you play as much as you want. I also taught everybody wits and wagers and that went over. Vanessa is not a fan of wits and wagers. Come to find out we were playing and she's like just bet everything. Just just get this over with. I don't care. Wow. Not a fan of witch and wagers. No. And it was funny. So it was uh it was a lot of South African people uh at this party

13:19 and one of the one of the questions I asked I was going through to find stuff that was kind of appropriate. So a lot of these are you know just now living in America for like four or five years. So I asked them it was like what year did John Smith land in James Town? That was fun. But one of the questions was and I couldn't believe it was as of 1990 in South Africa how many years had apartheid been going on?

13:42 Wow. Oh, and they all got in their little discussions group and I mean one of them just nailed it. They said, "Yep, I know partid started this year and it was 42 years." So, I mean, they they knew their South African history, which is cool. I would have been going I'm I don't know.

13:57 332. I don't know.

13:59 I would have I wouldn't even had a clue what to guess on on something like that.

14:04 Have you noticed with your wits and wagers edition, and I need to look at this. I need to update my wits and wagers cards. Dude, I'm having to was going through and like this doesn't apply anymore because the state is 20 years old. This is 20 years old. You know, it'd be things like which state has the biggest population? It's like I can't do any of these cuz it's changed in 25 years. Mhm. I mean, I like the mat. And then, you know, at your Halloween thing, Bert created his own questions that were relevant for us to play. So, that was nice. But yeah, you know, I'm going on Amazon right now and I'm looking for Wits and Wagers expansion packs. Oh, Just One's gotten a refreshed party edition. Cooperative.

14:44 Okay. So, the third game we played on Mother's Day was Just One. Wait a minute. Just One is cooperative.

14:48 Yeah. No, it's cooperative. It's refresh version. They've done something. Let me see what they've done here for refresh cards.

14:55 They've Well, first off, they've colored the writing tablets so that there's yellow, red, pink instead of white. They're all different colors.

15:04 All right.

15:05 And then let's see what else they've done here. I'm not seeing anything else they've done. real fancy. So anyway, oh, it looks like they have instead of markers, they're pencils. Interesting.

15:17 I don't know how you do that later.

15:19 I don't know how you'd write on the

15:21 Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

15:22 I don't know.

15:23 It's dry erase markers now. So,

15:26 yeah, I I know we're playing it at work come June, but I'm out of town going on a business trip, so I can't help them play just one, but that's fine.

15:35 You're planning There's a plan to play just one. Oh, they have team building sessions. Um, yeah.

15:43 Yeah, we don't do that.

15:45 Yeah. So, anyway, wits and wagers. I tell you what, yeah, that's you got to update those cards. I got to figure that out cuz you're right. Other than that, it's like I don't know if this really applies.

15:57 Yeah, that's why I was going through a lot of them cuz a lot of them were one of them was had to do with like Academy Awards, but the the date was from like 2004. and it's like, well, this can't apply. So, I couldn't, you know, typically you're supposed to take one card and do all seven questions. I couldn't do it. I was having to go through and just handp pick cards that that of things that hadn't changed.

16:18 I wonder if North Stars put out anything. I mean, I'm trying to see when was the last time an expansion. I'll have to look that up and deal with that on my own time and not our listeners time. Shall we move on?

16:29 Yeah. All right. So, you know, we did the uh summer movie preview. So, I've already started watching summer movies, and the first one from the list is Mortal Kombat 2. For those who are wondering, after the really stinker of Mortal Kombat 1 from 2021, Mortal Kombat 2 is much better. Much better. It's campy. It's fun. It's It's just a good popcorn flick. There's some decent fights. Carl Urban does amazing as Johnny Cage. So, I don't know that you need to rush to the theater to see it, but it's definitely going to be worth streaming, especially if you got made it through Mortal Kombat 1. Trust me, you'll like the second one better. And then tomorrow night, we're going to go see uh Sheep Detective. Vanessa is pumped about that one.

17:13 That That one does look fun. I did see where my third pick in the selection has grossed 143 million so far.

17:20 That was a nobrainer third round pick. Noer. I mean, I knew that was going to do pretty good. that that one will maybe carry you. The other two are obvious. They're going to make money. This is probably going to be the one that just like pushes you right over the edge.

17:36 Yeah, Devil Wears Prada, too. Still haven't gone to the theater to see it. Don't know if I will. Donna still isn't on the um theater bandwagon very much, but I'll get her there eventually because I still I mean I know Project Hail Mary is coming to digital and and rent, so we may do that. But um Tuesday, you got to go Tuesday. But I don't even know if they do 50% off Tuesdays anymore like they used to. Tuesday night movie theater nights. I have no

18:00 uh my theater. They don't they don't do that. It was just best night to do it. But it's one of those things where

18:05 Yeah.

18:06 I got a question for you. What is everybody upset about the movie about Michael Jackson? I keep seeing people are upset about Michael Jackson movie. Do you know? Can we talk about it here? So, so critics are upset because they feel they didn't tell the full story of some of the controversial stuff that Michael went through later in his life. The movie, I think, only goes through like the early 90s, 89, 90, and stops there. So, fans of Michael absolutely love it. If you notice the audience score, it's amazing.

18:37 It's the critic score that that didn't like it. They felt like, hey, you know, what about all this other stuff? So, I felt like they felt like it was just a a fan flick as opposed to a real documentary. And the fans were like, "Well, cool. That's exactly what I want to see." I still want to see it,

18:55 but I I don't know that I'll see it in the theater now, but that's that's the hubbhub of

19:01 the the friction between the critics and the fans.

19:04 Well, okay. I'm sorry. We're the theater. I mean, we're the movie makers. We know what's going to make mo money. So, okay. We're good to go.

19:12 Yeah. And it's doing good. It's making good money.

19:14 Yeah. I haven't read any reviews or anything on it, but I had heard that there was some I'm just like, "Yeah, whatever." Okay, fine. There's problems. I'll wait for it to come to um HBO Max or wherever the heck it comes next.

19:26 Yeah.

19:26 So, you like Mortal Mortal Mortal Kombat 3 and I appreciate your review over there and how you two and how you how you linked it all back in. You need to get over there. Yeah, I saw that.

19:36 Get over here. But yeah.

19:38 Yeah. Exactly.

19:40 Yeah. It's Yeah, it's um I can't say anything cuz there there is an iconic moment in the movie where I just almost like stand up and it's because I'm a huge fan of the first one from the ' 90s. Okay, I can't count the number of times I watched it and I had the soundtrack and we listen to it all the time, but there's at the very it's at the credits. There's something in the credits that happens that I just go to I just absolutely love and it's silly, but I still got into it.

20:06 Hey, there you go. All right. Very good then. All right. Well, we got jeez, how many games in this one? One, two, three, four, five games to cover this episode, so I guess we better get started. Shopportalames.com. You've been listening to the show. We're going to say the same old thing about all the games that Ignosi has over there from Niroshima Hex Anniversary Edition, The New Army, Wireman, Race to Berlin, Bohemians, Niroshima Hex Battle, and then of course Robinson Crusoe Adventures on Cursed Island. He's got a lot of free stuff over there as well that you can check it out. Resurgence little worker placement game that was under the radar. We talked about it here on this show. Head over to shopportalgames.com.

21:04 All right. An extremely popular board game that has been around for decades. Diplomacy. It's the game where you lose friends. Basically, you're playing as as nations in Europe. And it's a lot of negotiation, backstabbing, working together as allies, going against your allies, etc. But Tony, you said that you've never played the full game of diplomacy, correct?

21:28 Yeah. If you're losing friends and as few as I have, I don't think that'd be a smart choice on my part.

21:33 Or you play it and then you ain't got to worry about having to be with anybody anymore. You can just be the hermit the way you want to be.

21:40 Oh, that Oh, that is a thought.

21:42 Yeah, there you go.

21:42 Good. Mhm. The way I like social deduction, I know this isn't social deduction, but every time y'all talk about it,

21:50 it's one of the things that I really dislike about these types of games where you have this discussion going on that, oh, that's part of the game play. Oh my gosh, make a decision and just do it. It for sure is a lot of that. I've only time I've played was an online version of the game

22:08 uh where people were chatting with each other, you know, secretly and making all these alliances and stuff. Anyway, Renegade Games has released a game called Diplomacy the Golden Blade. The goal of this game is to give you the feel of Diplomacy, but in a much shorter time. This plays two to seven players. Why you never play with two? Don't ever play with two. That'd be silly. two to seven players and it can take anywhere from 30 to 105 minutes. Obviously, that's where the more players the more discussion and stuff. We played with floor four. This is from designer Rosco Shock. Now, if you look at this game on the table, you would not think it's diplomacy. There are no maps. It is a very small table space. It's literally just cards that you are playing in order to take actions.

22:57 And a lot of this game is built around discussion and talking because somebody is trying to level up one of their domain markers, either army, political or fleet, up to level three. And that's by doing that by getting cards into play in your tableau. So at the very beginning, everybody creates a little area in front of them that's going to have a row of army cards, a row of political cards, and a row of fleet. And then you've got these markers above the columns level indicating whether you're level one, level two, or level three. If you get two cards, like two army cards, that's level one. Once you get to the third, you're considered level two. And if you get the the six card, that's considered level three, which triggers the end of the game. That's the whole goal.

23:46 But that is done through some creative card play. And each of us have cards in our hand that we're going to be able to play on our turn. But Tony, what I think is really interesting about this is these command cards that you're getting ready to put into play. There are some restrictions of how you can play those because basically you're playing against the player to the left and the player to your right. You'll take one card and put it between you and the person to the left, one card between you and the person to the right. But Tony, there is a restriction on the card that you can play. You can only play a card that you are of equal power to that person to your left or your right. So for instance, let's say I have army or greater than. Sorry, you're absolutely right. I didn't qualify. Equal to or greater than

24:32 those those players. So for instance, I have my army card sitting out there and I have an army power of two cards. That is a power level of one. As long as Marty is of the same power level, he can also play army cards or orders against me. I'm sorry, not army cards, but orders that are of the army order method. So, in other words, a card like an army card such as sabotage. As long as I play sabotage order of army and Marty plays a similar army, as long as we're equal, we can both play those cards. But if I have a greater power than him, then he cannot play that. And that's part of the strategy that's going on here where you are trying to level up to keep people from playing these cards against you. Meanwhile, if you're leveling that up, the fleet cards have similar powers, capabilities possibly that can help offset that. But meanwhile, you are also looking at what's going on to your other side.

25:35 there. There's a lot of balance that you have to pay attention to in this game, which was something I was not used to. I was thinking, okay, how am I going to balance this out between who's to my left and who's to my right? So, let's talk a little bit about these order cards. There's the army orders. Talked about one already. And each person has the same type of orders. No, nobody's decks are different. So, there's four army orders, there's four fleet orders, there's the political orders, and then the promises. political orders or there's only three of them. And then my favorite promises. This is where all the going after one another comes in where they kind of work together

26:13 or align with the Yeah. Yeah. You you were trying to make these deals about what are you going to play? Now, you may be wondering, well, Marty, what exactly do these cards do? Just let me give you some examples of what these do. For example, Tony mentioned sabotage. That is if I play sabotage against Tony and it's not blocked because Tony could actually play a card that blocks cards too. So there's a way to block orders that's played against you. But if it's not blocked, remove one unit of your choice from the power grid of this neighbor. So if I'm successful, I can remove any unit from his power grid, army, fleet, or political, which would reduce his power. Uh, another one is, hey, you can block certain types of orders on this front. And if you do, opponents draw one unit card from the library. So, let's feel like if Tony's going to come in, I think he's going to do something. Maybe I want to block it.

27:05 If I'm successful, he still gets to draw a unit card. Fleet cards also have the way to block, but they can do things like draw one unit from the library. This can never be blocked. So the the unit cards themselves are one of one of three types, political, fleet, and army. And that's what you're going to put in play to increase your strength. That can be done by playing one of the political ones is proliferation. Discard one unit card, then deploy one unit card from your hand to your power grid. And also in addition, at the end of the round, you can add a everybody gets to add a unit card to your power grid anyway. So, the game is going to scale over time. It's just going to you're going to continue adding cards. The thing is though is once you realize somebody may be getting close to level three in one of those areas, you all have to work together to try to stop that person from doing that. Maybe you're ally allying with the person beside of you. Maybe you agree to play a promise card, which means if both of you play it, this neighbor may resolve their order on this front against your other neighbor. This is how they can skip around the table and possibly against go somebody else. Or if two of you play the promised card called a cord, then both of you draw two unit cards from the library. So you're aligning, you're blanking alliances. Maybe you say, "I'm going to play an accord." And then snicker cuz you really don't and you actually end up attacking them instead.

28:33 Mhm. Tony, that's the probably the aspect that you said that you weren't that crazy about this whole thing of I'm going to do this and you're going to do that and I'm going to break these promises. And so is a very much a social type game as the strategy is really more mental strategy against other people than it is about the actual playing of the cards themselves. Now, I don't mind the aspect of backstabbing one another. That's that's that's the game. That's part of the game, right? It's the long out long drawn out discussions and based on how we were sitting at the table unfortunately you and I couldn't discuss because then it became a 2v2 type game.

29:12 I feel like this game should be sitting at a round table you know

29:17 to where I can lean to my left, lean to my right because to be honest with y'all, I know this sounds silly, but if there's a lot of space between between the players, you kind of miss out on negotiations or or doing that. And I'll admit that there were times when I'd like have my hand up [snorts] and I would flash mark a card and hope that his eyes would focus in time to be able to grab what I'm getting ready to play or what I think we should play. Especially when it came to the promises cards, right?

29:44 And then you know, oh wait, oh Marty's got this going on over here, this army. Well, Bert, if you don't do anything about him because I cannot hurt him cuz he's got me beat. You need to do something. And what do you mean by beat is maybe there's a card you need to play against me. However, my level

30:01 on that type of card is higher than yours. So then you can't,

30:04 right? And and case in point, you're sitting over there with a higher army knowing I cannot beat you in army and that I would play the the the card the the army order cards. So now you can think, well, maybe he'll play a fleet card to try to randomly strip something from me. And now, oh, I can block that fleet card if I have that capability. So, if I want to, you know, uh, do something that, uh, takes one random do block eight. If not blocked, take one random unit card from your neighbor's hand. So, I'm trying to whittle your hand down. Well, maybe you can play something that can be blocked by something else, right? Which is blocked by um, uh, censure. And, you know, censure is down in the political side of things. So now you're thinking, "Oh, I need to play censure." So if I block you in political where you can't play that card, then it's kind of like, okay, well then I'm only going to play army order cards that let me just run with this.

31:01 And I know that was convoluted and everything, but it's the thought process that you go through while you're playing this game. And keep in mind, the rules state you've got five minutes to make this happen between between turns and hold people to that.

31:14 Yeah. And I think I think the more people that play, I think you would need a timer uh just sitting out there. And by the way, conversations can be private. There's no reason why I couldn't say, "Tony, let's step away from the table. I want to talk to you about something." I mean, that stuff that stuff can happen. I know in games of thief that I played, you have not played thief, but that sort of thing was happening, too. Thief is somewhat like diplomacy. So, you're working together, working each other, and all this stuff, making private deals and all this. I think the thing with this game is I don't have time to play thief. I don't have time to play diplomacy, but I want something like that. That's where golden blade comes into play because it is a lot quicker. Oh, I didn't mention I should make a point. Tony said that everybody has the exact same cards in your hand.

31:58 After you play them, you get them back. It's not like you lose use them, you lose them. It's not like say Concordia where you have to do something to get your cards back into your hand. At the beginning of every round, you always have all your cards.

32:10 And the other thing, let me correct also the number of cards in the order cards adjust based on the number of players. So there's there's the versions that there's only a two-player game just so people understand because I did say there are four of these. There's not in a standard game three uh three and up. There's like only three cards. But anyway, continue sir. I'm sorry for interrupting.

32:28 That's it. It's just the fact I just want to emphasize the fact that you always have your cards that you can return. It's just that you know that hey I know I'm keeping the guy in my right from pay playing any of these cards because my level is higher than him than that which means I ain't got to worry about that card that card or that card but only these other cards and and so it's that sort of gameplay just back and forth until eventually even though you know it's crabs trying to crawl out of a bucket and we keep pulling each other down, somebody's going to somebody's going to crack it and get to the top and end up winning the game because again at the very end of the round, everybody secretly takes a unit card, puts it in front of them, then turns it up, and then adds it to their power grid. So, your power grid's just getting stronger over time anyway, till eventually it'll just trip and somebody will hit the level three. And once that happens, just game's over. That's it. That person won.

33:18 All right. So, for someone who's never played Diplomacy, I don't like these kind of games. Uh, from the standpoint of like I've already discussed, I don't mind the backstabbing and all that, but the discussions and things like that, I'm it's not something for me. Nothing wrong with the game. The game was fun. It was fun to be strategic at times with one another. I think that with the right crowd, this would be a great game. And I do think that if you break, for me personally, if you break the five uh or play with six or seven people, yeah, this I'm out. Don't even bother asking me. But you want to play with four or five, that's the sweet spot, I think, for me. But all in all, I mean, fun game, but not something that I'd be looking to be put on the table. I think for me too, we didn't know how to start, right? It was like, okay, what card are we going to play at first? It's like, well, we have no alliances. Everybody's on equal footing. So Bert and I kind of said, hey, let's just get more units in our cards. And we played the accord card or both of us agreed just to add some more units in our hands. So you don't really don't feel like you want to come out swinging at anybody too early. So everybody's kind of playing it safe. And it was at what point do you pivot and change from that? And I guess it's when you see somebody getting an advantage over you potentially, uh, that's where that sort of thing starts happening.

34:34 So, here's the thing. It's got to have the right group. Just like with diplomacy, if you've got the right group, I would say give this a shot. It is a small box game. It the teaches just a few minutes at the most. The cards are very easy to understand. How the cards work are clearly written on the cards how they work. So, that's easy to follow. Again, I would employ a 5minute timer. Somebody just put their their phone in the middle of the table with a timer and hit start each round just to keep it from dragging on too much. That is Diplomacy: The Golden Blade from Renegade Games.

35:13 Fiveminute initiative begins in three, two, one.

35:19 Fruit Island by RER Aysia. This is a six and up game. So, six years old and up. You are cute little monkeys running around an island and [snorts] you are trying to collect fruits off of trees and take those back to the take those TR take those fruits back to the stand and save them before a big angry gorilla captures them and takes them from you. The mechanism is fairly straightforward. You're going to pull a disc from a bag. You will take a look at that disc and is a certain type of fruit. You place it on the correct tree. You may move your monkey one to three spaces.

35:59 It's a circular track.

36:01 Yeah. Circular track. But it does have some spokes that lead to the fruit stand. But if the gorilla gets pulled, the gorilla will move a certain amount of spots. And if he lands on you, guess what? He's going to steal your fruits that you did not bank at the fruit stand. Straightforward game. Bag pulling mechanism. We're not talking a heavy thinker here. We're just talking about a good family weight, young family weight game.

36:26 This is considered my family's Kitia's first game.

36:29 Really,

36:30 I'm saying that's what this is. It's like if you want to introduce kids to Ryan and Kenitia, this is the way you do it. You bring these fruit that you pull out and you're putting into trees. Once it's full, at the end of your turn, you can move one to three spaces clockwise or counterclockwise. If you end your turn at the base of one of those trees that's full, you collect all those fruit tokens. However, like Tony said, they're susceptible to being stolen. There are certain tokens in the bag that you would pull that will move that gorilla one to four spaces and when it moves, that token just goes away, but and then you pull another fruit to replace it. Now, sometimes the gorilla will be told to spin the other direction. So, you have to keep the facing of the gorilla important. It's always going to move one direction unless it's told to spin. And then obviously if you got a lot of fruit, try to rush back to the center and save it so that it can't get stolen.

37:22 It's really that simple. And I'm serious. It's like my first Canitier game. This is what this would be for your six to sevenyear-old. It is extremely straightforward that where if you have kids, the the art is cute. It's really easy to understand and this is this will be a good game for them. For gamers, probably not so much because there's not really a lot there. It's just pulling tokens and and putting them on a board,

37:48 right? And you know, for you and I, we've got the new grandkids in the family here. As they get older, this is something as you know, you and I can induce them to from a pressure luck type of advantage. Let them figure out some thinking processes behind it. Introduce it to them. Shoot, this is, you know, five. I think of the game and I know it's nothing like it, but I think of the collecting of spin the dial, put the cherries on the tree. Remember Hi Ho Cher?

38:14 Yes. Yeah.

38:15 Okay. I know this has nothing to do with that, but that's just what it made me think back to the the game where I would have okay when I would teach Rebecca about something, but this is this puts a little bit more pressure from the simplicity of hi-ho cherio. So yeah, I mean I see this coming in as you know uh those those new kid games introducing them with a little bit more complexity than those types of games, right? Break the ice or any of that kind of stuff.

38:43 Yeah. Yeah. So again, very familyfriendly game. It could be your parents first Canitzia game if they aren't any gamers. It's really that straightforward. So, you may not want to pull this out with your group of gaming friends, but for for kids and everything, it's a great little game to pull out. It's a it'll I don't know if it' be a classic Canitia, but it might be a great family game that you keep on your shelf. So, that is Fruit Island from Analog Game Studios.

39:14 Five minute initiative is complete. I've always been a fan of the DC Universe and there have been some games in the past that we've tried. I know the deck building game from I believe it was was it Cryptozoic? They had a a DC deck building game that was okay. So, I'm always looking for a good DC themed game. Well, there's a new game that's going to be coming out at Gen Con uh that we got a chance to play. the it's from publisher Resurrection Games and the designer is Brad Xander and we got in touch with him was talking he said hey you know let me send you guys not a prototype this is actually what the the final product's going to look like he sent us a couple of the characters that's going to be in this brave and the bold bag building combat game uh this is a two to six player game where just as it says it's bag building you're going to be adding tokens to a bag that you're going be pulling from in order to activate abilities, to heal. Each character has its own unique powers, but the goal is to fight each other, take somebody's health all the way down to zero. And that again, that's done by this clever bag building mechanism. So, it's a very common mechanism. The goal is very common. What's unique to me, Tony, is the fact that, okay, all these characters are going to be very unique.

40:42 We've only seen two. We saw Lex Luthther and Superman. Those are the two that we got, but we got to play through the game and uh we've been talking to Brad one-on-one some of the things that we found and everything and he's been really useful and he's going to have a big push at Gen Con with a bunch of demos and stuff that's actually people can sign up for and if for a Gen Con event if they're interested in seeing more about it.

41:05 So, one of the first things is because when you introduced this to me, you were talking about think of dice throw, right? to try to help people understand what what this game's about. And it's okay. So, you don't have dice, but it's similar based on what faces you get on the dice. Here is based on what tokens you pull out of the bag will determine what special abilities you have, what speechs you can take. And now, one thing that is very different than from dice throne is dice throne has a limited number of pool here. As Marty was stating, you know, you're building a bag of tokens and you can keep pulling these tokens out as long as you want. Just keep going, big guy, unless you create a crisis by pulling out up to three tokens and then everything that you've worked for is now gone.

41:55 Mhm.

41:56 That's the risk. That's the push your luck aspect of this game,

42:00 right? Yeah. There's crisis tokens is seated in the bag and you pull three of those. Basically, what happens is you don't get to activate in your special abilities. You get do some basic damage and then buy some cards because some of these tokens are also just resource tokens that you can use to spend to add more tokens to your bag. There is going to be a common pool of tokens that each of you share uh that's pulled from a bag and uh that's set out in the middle of the table. These are kind of basic tokens that you may already have, but they're like doubled, maybe double health or double resources that you can add to your own bag, or you pull from your own pool of special tokens that are for your character to add to your bag. But the thing is though is at the end of the round, you have to check the number of tokens you have in your bag. And once you cross a certain threshold, you have to add additional crisis tokens to your bag. So the more tokens you add, the more crisis tokens that will be on in there. The tension of the game is I have this really cool ability that I want to get. I need three of this token, one of this, and one of this. So you start pulling tokens out of a bag. It's like, oh man, I'm one short. I'm one short, but I've already pulled two crisis. Do I pivot and maybe activate another ability that's not nearly as good, but at least I can do something with it? Or do I take a chance, try to get what I want, knowing that I might pull the third crisis token. Now, one thing I do like

43:30 over this, Tony, is as I'm pulling things out of the bag, I know what's left in there. As we were playing, we said we like that better than dice rolling. Every time you roll a dice, you have a chance of getting something that's always going to stay the same. With bag pulling, you know, the chances of getting what you want are going to increase with more tokens that you pull. I'm with you on that from the standpoint of what you know is in there if you can remember because as you go along, Marty, this bag is going to get full as you keep buying more and more re resources. Now, I did like the fact that there was some culling involved that with your character. I didn't think I saw that with Superman. I was playing Superman.

44:08 Mhm.

44:08 And so from that standpoint, it was like, okay, this is this is a nice feature, you know, that you can call those jets, but and I like how it was themed around Superman and his capabilities, right? I I like how they've done that kind of research. I also saw that with Flex Luther, and I was like, okay, I see what they're doing here, how they're going to do that. Can't wait to see what the other heroes or villains are going to look like from that standpoint. Um, and I like

44:32 you love that term from that standpoint. That is the third time you've said that in like the past two minutes.

44:38 That's your catchphrase.

44:39 Sorry. It's my Well, it's neat. It's neat. Leave me alone.

44:45 Yeah, it's been a long day.

44:46 I was looking at the uh uh Superman. So, some of his abilities, heavy punch, orbital combat, shockwave punch, heat vision, speed blitz. So, he's all about power. He's like, you know, if he hits you, it's going to hurt. Now, there are there are ways to heal. There's ways to boost damage. Again, it depends on the character. I was talking today with the designer and he was telling me, "Oh, you know, with the Flash, the Flash, you can't push your luck too much." He's his more of, you know, bob and weave, quick moves, little quick actions here and there, whereas Superman is like, you know, just pull a ton of tokens, just do as much damage as you can at once. So, they're trying to make it so what each character is going to feel totally different. So, the game at Gen Con is going to come with it's going to it's called a combat vault. There's eight characters in there including Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman, Lex Luthther, Dark Side, Clayface, and Cheetah. So, four heroes, four villains.

45:49 So, a lot of choices, Tony. And what I also like too is, you know, with Dice Thrones, each character had like a little carrying case. So, if you want to, you can pull a character out, just play with that one. This is the same way. This is a little bookshaped or graphic novelshaped sort of like box with a magnetic closure that holds your bag, your tokens, cards, etc. that you will use, which also every uh character also has uh like event cards and you merge the event cards together. At the beginning of each round, you're going to turn over event card, which is usually an advantage for one person or the other. Yeah. So, the phases of round pretty simple. You're going to draw till both of you want to stop. you move to the combat phase. That's where you're going to take any tokens that were drawn, use those to activate abilities, calculate bonuses, calculate damage, deal damage to each other, heal, etc.

46:39 Then the final thing is going to be uh your power up phase. The resource tokens that you drew, you'll have a resource pool to spend to buy other tokens to add to your bag. Do that thing. It's called rebalance where you check to see if you need to add more crisis tokens to your bag. take all the tokens that were pulled out that were drawn, put them back in the bag going again. So every beginning of every turn, the bag is going to be refilled with everything. So you always will have access to everything that is there. Rinse, repeat till somebody uh hits zero. And now Tony, I will say there's a lot of icons in this game. Uh there is a ton of icons with how abilities work. Some of the icons have boosters on them or bonuses, etc. There are player aids for the general gameplay plus character player aids that expla that explain how each of these abilities work too which was really helpful. So there's a little bit of learning curve at first understanding how the iconography works.

47:40 The quick thing is that all the icons you know fit on the board. You can pretty much match them up and say okay I'm going to put five of these Superman symbols here and I get this right. Mhm.

47:50 So, I mean, that's pretty straightforward from that st from that standpoint. I'm I'm going to keep saying it just to irritate you. I know you'll cut it out.

48:00 It is so funny.

48:01 From that standpoint, I would play this again.

48:04 No. Um, [gasps]

48:07 so we've seen a lot of these games from this from, you know, bag pulling. I almost did it. We've seen a lot of these games.

48:16 Yeah.

48:16 And I mean, we've seen dice thrown. There was one where you were putting faces on dice. It's been a while since I've played that one. I forgot what the name of it is where you were putting the various uh it was a hero based game like

48:27 oh well I remember Dice Masters that was kind of build your bag, pull dice from the bag, roll uh that sort of deal. It has it it has that same feel. The the only thing is this is very deterministic. You know, the token that you pull is that token as opposed to oh there's a chance I could roll this when I get pull the dice out of the bag. And I think that's the big difference for people to understand.

48:51 Your luck is in your draw, but you know that you're not going to be drawing luckily getting three purples and two blue dice here. You're going to pull out the chips that have this one symbol on it. You know, when we were playing this, you're right. The the learning curve, what does this symbol mean? How does this apply? You got to think strategy-wise on building the bag, especially when you're going against different villains and heroes. I mean, and another thing is it's not going to be over that quick either. I mean, we were at 60 hit points and it, you know, we were doing, you know, five, eight damage, but there were some capabilities that let Superman had flight that gave him a special bonus.

49:34 So, I think it will be interesting to see how they continue to develop this game. They've even mentioned it on their website about there will be possibly more. So they always, you know, they're not going to paint themselves in a corner with this bag building game.

49:46 Yeah. And again, like I said, it's not just two-player. You can play uh with multiple players. When you do that, your life is actually decreased from 60. So you it's just less hit points uh per character uh when you have uh something set up like that. Again, the production is really good. The art is really really good. It's it's your classic superhero style. The Combat Vault looks like it's going to be just a nice collection uh in itself. I I think there's gonna be a lot of people that's interested in this at Gen Con. It's got a big IP. It's a popular IP. I I think when people realize, oh, it's, you know, a Marvel Dice Thrones was a huge hit. That IP was really big. So, it's kind of I think it's going to have the same impact except the fact it's not DICE and it's DC. So, it's really going to separate itself from that other product as as it's kind of its own thing.

50:39 So, last thing I'm going to say on this, so if it sounds something that you know might scratch the itch for DC for you, go take a look at it. Gen Con if you're there. If not, comes out September 4th to retail. So, you know, be sure to sign up on their website for notifications and all that fun stuff to be able to get updates on what they're doing and what they have planned in the future.

51:02 Yep. And they're looking at possibly doing like competitions, like having a very competitive scene, uh, where you maybe go to stores, compete against each other. They have some big ideas for this. I don't know what else other characters they have beyond this this vault that they have coming out at the beginning, but I'm sure there's got to be some in the works. So, again, that is Bolden the Brave from Resurrection Games.

51:29 So, I don't know if y'all know about this, but Miniature Market has a YouTube channel. What they do over there is they do some playthroughs of the some of the games that you're they're selling. There's some live streams. Uh you can see how some of the games work. So, head over to YouTube and go uh subscribe to their channel, Miniature Market, and you can see some of their playthroughs, and you might see something there that you like. And if you like it, you can head over to miniaturemarket.com, check out their daily deals, sign up for their newsletter so that you can hear about all those upcoming deals that are happening. I always reference prices over at Miniature Market. They have some of the best prices online. And they've got that really cheap shipping of only $5.99. And if you get over $100, it's actually free shipping.

52:14 And don't forget, they have that option that when you pre-order something or order something, you could put it on hold if you don't want it right away. Continue to put several things on hold until you trigger that free shipping, release it, and it'll get sent to you right away. So, to find out about all that, head over to miniaturemarket.com. Back on February 11th, 2025, Rolling Dice and Taking Names did a review of the game Alta: Dawn of Civilization.

52:46 Ulta, like the makeup.

52:48 That's Alta, not Alta. A L T A Y.

52:52 Is it Alta or Alt?

52:54 U L T A. Alte.

52:57 No, I'm saying A L T A Y. Is that Alte?

53:01 I thought you were talking about the makeup place you started. Figure it out. Alta is u ta.

53:06 Yeah,

53:06 but this board game is a a l t a y. Is it alta or alt?

53:12 Yes. We'll [snorts] leave it at that.

53:14 All right. Thanks for listening.

53:19 Well, I don't know which it is. Put it in Google, not translate. Put it in Google pronounce for me and let that let it tell you what it says. I don't. Anyway, we've got the expansion Alta Alte seafares expansion designed by Roberto D Magello Megalo Magio and Fabio Miorana, you know, with AI. We really should let that do the pronunciations, you know, and just give up. You know, 13 years ago when we started this, that was not such a thing. Now there is such a thing. Now, there's no excuse is what you're saying.

53:58 There is an excuse, but there's no excuse for us getting it completely and totally wrong.

54:02 Uh, Roberto, who we basically meet with every year at Gen Con, that's the gentleman that we see. Yes, he's the designer of this game. Uh, really nice guy. When we played this game last year, I really liked it because it's an area control game that's driven through deck building. Everybody starts with certain faction cards. They're all a little bit different each other. You're going to have 10 cards in your hand. Play five cards. Resolve resolve those cards. The goal is to be able to collect resources to get more settlements on the board so that you can move out from your settlements, take over territories, get some victory points, fight each other. All for the goal is at the very end of the game is whoever can have the most victory points which is typically attained by controlling a lot of areas

54:45 and getting those victory points or building the level three cards which if you want to understand how Donald Civilizations play go listen to that. We'll talk a little bit about how the seafares expansion works, but I want I do want to refresh that was one of the things that in in the original I liked was the fact that this area control or this battling was so simple, so straightforward and I never felt like that we were picking on one another. It was the fact of how do we take advantage of the location we had on the board. you know, we needed to be able to branch out, but we may leave oursel exposed, but but okay, so you beat me down. I'm going to go beat you down a little bit. Oh, let's go over here and um pick on Marty for a little bit. But I never felt like we were teaming up like you can do in some of these control type games.

55:31 Yeah, I do like the combat, too, in that you have combat and defense cards in your hand that you can add to your deck. Everybody starts out with a few, and when you say, "I'm gonna attack somebody," if you're adjacent to somebody, it's like, "I'm going to move in." Well, you're going to get strength points based on the number of settlements that you're attacking from. The defender gets points, defense points based on the number of settlements in the area that's being attacked. But then each of you can play cards from your hand either with swords for the attacker or shields for the defender. Ties go to the defender. Uh otherwise, the attacker wins and the loser is basically just going to lose a settlement in in the attack or the defense. If the attacker took uh won the defender, they're going to lose one of their settlements. So, if there's multiple settlements there, they don't lose the entire area. But people are doing this is because they're trying to move into an area to take it over because each of these areas are a certain type of terrain, forest, mountains, etc. that produce a certain type of resource. And you can add cards to your deck that will say, "Oh, look.

56:34 If you happen to have a settlement on this type of area in a forest, instead of getting one tree or one wood, you're going to get two wood if you have a settlement in there. So, by owning certain zones, you can get bonuses to get more resources, which you're going to want for these level these level one, level two, level three objectives, which are powerful objectives that give you special bonuses. And the ultimate objective is just in-game victory points. Now, in the original game, there is this beautiful board has the different terrains on it, the mountains, the farmlands. You got some mining going on. But we also notice that there was these islands surrounded by water that there was no way to get to them in the original game. We didn't have boats. We didn't have the ability to sail across the seas. So guess what happens when the seafarers expansion lands? You get boats. You're getting some boats. And you're also getting a new faction which I mean high level. Um, we didn't get to play. Uh, Mark got to play that. So, I don't I don't feel like I can explain it very well. I just know that they have these special abilities where they don't really need boats.

57:50 They have mermaids or mermaids.

57:52 They got mermaids or dolphins or something that take like the boats

57:57 that take like the boat and you get a new board.

58:00 Yes.

58:00 So, the the expansion is a brand new board or you can play on the base board the new faction and then like you said, everybody gets wooden ships. So, what's cool is about having the seafares expansion, everything in that box can also be used with the original board and the ships would be used on that from what that one island spot. But in the new board, every region is an island. So, you need ships to go from one place to another. One thing I did like about the ships, Tony, is you have cards that could put a ship in play. Awesome. If you want to use that ship to build a settlement on the other side that's adjacent to the that uh ship that was used, you can. But that ship is removed from the board. So it doesn't stay. Do you know why?

58:45 Why?

58:47 Because in order to build a settlement and they did

58:50 well, yeah, it had the rules. But if you look in history, and this is something from Roberto, good job, buddy. They would take the boat and use the wood from the boats to build the settlement. Theatic look at him.

59:02 Yeah. Very good point. Good point. So the boats that were used for sailing are then used to establish a settlement on the other side. Boats can increase your reach to an island like on the other side of the board if you can have adjacent lines of boats going through the seas. But then boats can also initiate combat. If you have a line of boats that goes out to an area that you want to fight if it's adjacent to one of your ships, you can use that to attack, which will give you a plus one attack. But once you do, that ship will be removed. But Tony, the great thing about initiating an attack from the sea is if you lose, you don't lose one of your settlements. That is good. That is a good thing. Now, you know, you could also there's a card that gives you the capability that would allow it's called I think it was the explorers card there.

59:56 There's the ship rights, the explorers, and the astronomy. These are the new cards.

59:59 And one of them allows you the capability of putting crew on that boat.

1:00:05 And if you have a crew on that boat and you go into battle or if you go out and put that, you know, use it to explore, you lose the crew, not the boat. So that's something that you have to take, you know, say, okay, how do I want to use this? Do I want to really just keep sacrificing the boats or do I want to have crew on the boat? So So that's part of the thought process of as you're expanding from your your various harbors that you now have. Yeah.

1:00:33 Now this game Yeah. Go ahead.

1:00:35 I was going to say and on your turn, you're talking about the these cards that are in play. So like a good deck building game, you have a market. Uh, in this game, all cards are part of the market. It's always the same cards. You have these new cards they were introduced. These cards have different cost. Typically, food, wood, stone, etc. The more powerful the card, the more resources you're going to need. But if you can't generate all the resources at once, I do like this, and this is from the base game. You can have cards that you can put in play to store resources.

1:01:07 So, when you generate a resource, if you don't use it, you lose it. But if there's a warehouse that you card that you have, you could put it in your tableau and it stays there that will have spots for adding additional resources and at any time you can pull those resources off, use them, and then take that card and it goes to your discard pile. So, it has a good mechanism for carrying resources from one turn to another.

1:01:30 I also like the from, and this is something we said in the original, I like the leveling of the technologies or the the buildings. I like how you can use certain ones that will give you an advantage. Like I had a series where I could discard a card to draw a card. I could discard a card to now play a seaf farer or or or do a sailing action. All that's been taken into account. And also, you know, from standpoint, why would I build two of those and you wouldn't? I knew I'd get you. I was waiting on it. I was going to go for it.

1:02:02 I don't know if it's intentional or just just a static nail. Anyways, go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and jump to it unless you have something else to say. But so for the expansion, is this a an expansion that you if you enjoy Alta,

1:02:15 would you get this expansion? For me, I think you should because well, it opens up the islands on the original board. However, I was not a fan of the new board like I was the old board. I felt it was a little bit more restrictive for the advancement and the attacking that was going on. However, I'm going to caveat that it did give us the ability that if Marty was on the far side of the board, I could now reach him because of the boats where I couldn't always have to rely on the other players. If I wanted to do something now, I couldn't say, "Well, why aren't you taking care of him?" Then I can do it myself now. So, it's I hate to say, you know, I mixed feelings on that, Marty, to be honest with you. Do I Did I like the new board? Yeah, but I You know where I'm I know it's I'm I'm chewing on my words here, but I It didn't grab me like I thought the new board would, but I appreciate having the boats.

1:03:17 Yeah.

1:03:18 Because it let me take care of something. And on the baseboard, you may forego boats. you may not buy the cards

1:03:25 that allow you to get the uh the boats in into your deck because you don't use them a lot. It's it's that one basically center island. I'm looking right now at miniature market. The original game you can get on market for $35. The expansion is 28. It's not a cheap expansion and you must have the base game to use this expansion because all your faction bits and other cards, market cards come from the base game. I think it is something to consider if if you don't have either one. I don't think you need to get both right off the bat.

1:04:01 Instead, just get the base game. But as we said in our very first uh review, that island did kind of create a problem because the person on the other side of it was kind of isolated. Now, they did have a promo pack of the seafair cards that you could get that help you traverse it, but we didn't have that at the time.

1:04:23 Mhm. Okay. I I don't know that you would I don't think you need to rush out and buy both at first. And if you have the base, then just consider, do you think it's worth the extra board and uh a lot of the card the new faction and the new faction is all about water. If you're going to play with the new faction, you might as well use the new board.

1:04:43 Got to play.

1:04:44 Yeah. Got to play with the new board. Yeah. I so and I can see in the old board by being able to place the boat there on the around the island since that lake or that little whatever the little sea around the island it wasn't I don't think it was broken up. I can't really tell from the image I'm looking at that immediately opens up everybody's adjacent to you now.

1:05:07 I'm with you there. I agree with you on on that. You know, you don't need it right away. It's a good addition. If you enjoy an altas in your game mix, I would say yeah, look into this. Get this expansion because it will add a new faction and it does add a unique way to play the old map and get a new map. So, yeah. Yeah, you you really need to consider it if you have Alta on the table.

1:05:31 Yeah, I'll tell.

1:05:33 Yeah. Now, I I will say the expansion and maybe it's just because we it takes a while to move. The game took longer. I felt like the new board was a longer game than the original board because to go from island to island, you do have to establish that sh that shipping route, get the the ships into the water where that wasn't needed on the baseboard. You could just move willy-nilly easily. here. There's an extra step to be able to move from one land mass to another,

1:06:03 be able to expand your empire because if you don't, then you may not have the resources that you need to do the various levels on the buildings so forth and so on.

1:06:11 Yeah.

1:06:12 Yeah. And I did like the fact that we did play with the rule where if you have any leftover resources, and this was optional, that you can then turn those in for coins and five coins equals a resource. That was very beneficial. And I would recommend if you play this game, use that use that method because sometimes you you would hate to get a ton of resources and then just go to waste. Uh that also speeds up the game. So we were a fan of the base game. The seafares adds more. If you're a fan of the base game, take a look at it. Make that decision for yourself. See if you think it's worth, you know, 28 to $30 to get that extra stuff. And uh and if you do, uh let us know your impressions of Alt Seafares from Aries Games. 5minute initiative begins in 3 2 1.

1:06:59 So we've built our gaming career on being card players here at Rolling Dice and taking names. And anytime we get to play a trick taking game with a slight twist. We are all in. No, not that game. We already talked about allin. We're going to talk about loose designed by Taki Shinszawa from Yellow Games. This is a trick taking game where you as players are going to try to bid on taking the right number of tricks based on the cards in your hand. But here's the twist, y'all. You don't know other than the colors the rank of the cards because guess what? You don't get to see the ranks of the cards. You're only simply playing based on the colors played. So there's the twist to this game. All the other rules for trick taking games apply. There is one trump.

1:07:47 It's the yellow suit. It never changes. Somebody plays a colored card, you must follow suit if you can. The only thing that you know is what other people have. Not all the cards are dealt out.

1:08:01 Mhm. So, you don't have complete knowledge of what's out there. So, the tough part is is you see what everybody else has, then you have to make a bid. You have to make a bid of the number of tricks that you're going to take. Now, you could uh bid something else. There's the these are the tricks are uh number of bids you take are based on these tokens that you take from a pool. You can take another token to say I'm going to I'm not sure but I may take one more than what I said. Now that's a safer bet but it's not going to be worth as many points in the end. So that's why you might not want to do that especially if you're playing catchup which Tony uh we had to do in this game because this is a game that that took a while to really get. Once you hand your you get your 10 cards, you hand them off to somebody to your left. They're going to sort sort the cards for you from ascending to descending or vice versa and give the cards back to you and then you just pick them up. So you never see what the cards you just know that one side is low, one side is high and they're sorted by colors and each of those are sorted low to high within the color set.

1:09:07 All right, that's the game y'all.

1:09:09 That's it. I mean, we have told you the entire rules and then you just start playing. So, Tony, the big twist is I don't know what I got and I don't know how to bid. So, I'm going to try to bid based on this and then try to deduce what's in my hand based with what's been played so far. And a lot of I mean, you'll have to be reading your opponent. So, there's there is some reading of people's faces in this to be honest with you. Like when you maybe said, "I'm only going to bid two." And we all went, "You crazy." Were we bluffing? It's

1:09:41 like

1:09:41 I think you should bid higher.

1:09:43 Okay. Yeah, just take two.

1:09:45 You're just going to take two? Fine. You go right ahead. You going to get three. I will say this is a very challenging trick-taking game because from a standpoint of getting someone to go set or trying to short suit someone or all the rules that that are in your brain from trick taking this is more difficult because once again not knowing the rank is going to be you may say okay I think I'm not going to take this trick and everybody who played suddenly is now below you and you're like oh man I got this trick and you're like I didn't this card was I went on the low end. Haha. It was the second highest one in the suit. So, you really don't know.

1:10:23 So, once you get to the end of the round, you're going to be playing over four rounds. If you bet without the safety bead in the first round, you're getting 10 points. And if you bet with a safety bead, you get you get five. And then the points increase each round. So, they go from 10 points to 20 to 30 to 40. If you won with a safety bead, you get half of those points. So, as you play the game, it gives you kind of catchup at the end. But how it's played between each round does not change at all. So it's not like the rounds get progressively different or anything. They're just played the exact same way. So Tony, as a trick-T game, we've played so many. Where does this fall for you in the so many games that we've played?

1:11:03 Oh, I enjoyed it. Now, I do want to point out now because we didn't mention this, I don't think that if you don't make your bid and you know any in our trick taking games, you will get a zero or or nothing. Oh, that's not the case here. If you don't win your bet, you lose five points for each trick above or below the number you bet. Whether you took a safety bead or not, that's how you can really mess up other people. I will just say as far as games, we just talked about Allin. I really enjoyed that game. That was fun. I'm not a big fan of not knowing the rank of cards,

1:11:40 but this one was so generic on difficulty. I didn't have a problem with it. Now, would I play this over a basic deck of Opa? It'd be tough for me to get on the table with my gaming group. They'd want to play Opa or Bottle Imp or any of the other ones. Okay. How about you?

1:11:57 Yeah, I I was going to say it's like a mid-tier trick taking game. Uh, for me it I enjoy the twist and I appreciate playing it for the twist, but if I had my plethora of trick uh taking games in the drawer and I open it up and this one's in there, I would probably reach for something else first in case I just wanted to introduce something new that's really kind of wild that nobody has ever seen before.

1:12:21 So that is loose from yellow games.

1:12:24 5minute initiative is complete. All right. Over the past few episodes, you've heard us talk about or I've talked about Marty's just jumped right in here. My new e-win desk. That is one that telescopes up, goes up, goes down, goes left, right. No, it only goes up or down. And let me just say, I'm still enjoying it. It's still nice and clean. I did put down a mouse pad because this the noise was driving me insane. Mari said you can do this on your app. Yeah, it sounds like me scratching and being a DJ anyway.

1:13:01 The surface works. A mouse will work on the surface, but yeah, little cushion or something. Yeah,

1:13:08 I need a I need a little cushion. I need a little grace here.

1:13:12 So, they sent this over. I I know I've said it, but and we've said it about the chairs. They are It's so easy to put together. These things are very well manufactured, straightforward. Now, I'll admit the instructions on the desk there's a little challenge. I put the legs on backwards, but you would think I would have noticed that, but I didn't. But I had to take everything apart and put it back in, right? But just pay attention to what you're doing. Don't be an idiot. I will like the quietness of the thing that moves up and down. Now, I will say that the lights that are flashed around it looks really cool, but I'm in here by myself, so I'm not really sure what benefit that is for me. But, you know, hey, it looks good in pictures I can take. I like the size of it. Pretty good solid size. And probably one of the other features is on the back of it, this thing has a separation between the desk and where the cables run. And I don't know, I guess, Marty, I think your desk has this, too, where you can run the cables between two sections of the desk. Is that right?

1:14:13 Mine has pre-cut holes that you can run cables through. But does yours have a cable tray? Like a cable tray or cable run?

1:14:22 Yeah. And last time we talked about the cable tray is really nice. Unless you have monitor things that hold up two monitors, then it's too big. It's really nice. So where you have holes, I just have a whole lever that um can fold that you can push the cables down so it's easy to get to, easy access. Real solid desk here. Once again, three save features um for the various heights that you would want to use from sitting to I don't know why would I need three. Let's think about that. One for when you're standing, one when you're sitting. What would What would you use the third one for, Mark?

1:14:53 For different people that may want to use your desk.

1:14:56 Nobody else should sit here.

1:14:57 I'm just saying if there's other people that want to use it and they're different heights, they could do it.

1:15:02 That's a good thought process. You got kids. This is their home. This could be you could put down a nice mat for them to be able to write on. Do the kids still write in school?

1:15:11 I know they're trying to get back to that from a report I heard.

1:15:15 Well, it's about time. Well, they found out that Oh, yeah. Writing things is actually a good way to learn more so than typing.

1:15:22 No.

1:15:25 It's so funny. I I was listening to NPR and it was like, you know, after after 15 years of studying, we've determined writing was actually a really good way for kids to retain stuff. Wow. Thanks for doing all those 15 years of disservice to the kids who weren't writing during that. Oh, and by the way, if you have to write it out, I don't think you can press a button and bring up uh co-pilot and say, "Write out this paper for me."

1:15:50 Yeah, that's true.

1:15:52 Anyway, so let me ask you something. If I wanted to go out to the site ewinracing.com and let's say I wanted to order something, is there any way I could get a discount?

1:16:00 You could. If you had gone prior to Mother's Day, you could have gotten a 15% off discount. And I'm sure they're going to run. I think I know. And I'm sure for Father's Day, there's going to be a similar discount. and a back to school discount. But why would you use just 15%.

1:16:15 I think I should I think I should get more. How about if I want 30%.

1:16:18 Well, if you do, I know a place that you can use a very special code called RDTN. That'll get you 30% off anything over at the EWIN website. So, go out there, put something in your cart, type in RDTN as special promo. Boom. 30% off. We just saved you a ton of money. If it's a new chair, if you're thinking ahead to, oh, yeah, they're going to go off to gra I mean, graduation just occurred for the colleges. Now, you got a whole bunch getting ready to move into it. So, you need to be thinking ahead from that standpoint. Or maybe I don't know. They've you've graduated.

1:16:56 Oh, I should have a I need to have a counter.

1:16:58 The bail. You should have the bail.

1:17:00 That was for anyway. No, it was Mario. It was a ding for neat.

1:17:03 So, anyway, head over to Ewin. put in code RDTN to pick up a great desk or chair.

1:17:09 So, I see in the show notes you're watching the floor. New series is on. I've

1:17:14 watched one episode.

1:17:15 Oh, that's it.

1:17:16 One episode.

1:17:17 I have watched six. I am up to date.

1:17:19 You are up to date. All right. Well, let me just say about the first one. So, the new um Territory Freeze.

1:17:26 Mhm. which, you know, it's been a while since I watched the first one, but if I remember correctly, territory freeze. You can, if you win three in a row, you can freeze the territory you're in, and no one can come battle you until everyone has battled. Is that correct? Do I remember that card?

1:17:42 So close. At the middle of the season, the person with the most wins gets the territory freeze and can't be challenged until after the randomizer has hit everybody at least once.

1:17:55 So, what do you think of that? I love it. Uh, right now it's it's created some interesting dynamics right now because as of this recording, next week is when the territory freeze kicks in

1:18:07 and Roblo said we're doing something special. Basically, the randomizer will only select those who want to go for the territory freeze. Okay.

1:18:16 So, for those who already have some wins and they want to try to get more wins than everybody else, they could be thrown back in the pool into the randomizer to get them reselected.

1:18:27 So, you get to raise your hand, say, "Pick me, pick me, pick me," and you go back into the pool.

1:18:31 Okay.

1:18:32 Yeah.

1:18:33 Cuz they weren't really sure how that was going to work. I I like how they gave them that capability to go back into the pool. That's pretty cool.

1:18:39 Yeah. Yeah. So, no, it's it's uh still enjoying it.

1:18:42 Now, what I don't like is all this crap about alliances.

1:18:45 Yeah. that came into play last week and I think it's going to come into play next week. I It's too much. We talked about diplomacy this episode, right? There's some diplomacy going on. I don't need that. I don't need that in the floor. I know it was happening in previous games, but why are they having to bring it out? They were doing diplomacy to try to kick out the what they felt were the uh more challenging people. You know, that was happening, but why bring it to the light of everyone? You don't need to

1:19:12 drama.

1:19:13 I don't want to hear that drama. Is that drama? They're trying to create drama. And this this show doesn't need drama. It's just fun by itself. And Robo is just the best host. The absolute best. He loves doing this. And people, some people just get so smitten with him. It's so funny.

1:19:31 What was it? The was it people's sexiest men that he's never won or something. And that was from the first episode that I' that's the only one I've seen. And he was having a bl that was pretty good. I like that. But I'm with you. Yeah. The Roblo. And then when they were doing the Lord of the Rings category in the first episode.

1:19:47 Yeah.

1:19:48 Wow. I was out. I mean, I got some of them, but those people floored. Haha. Me on how many characters they knew. How did when it happened, how well did you do?

1:20:01 I did pretty good.

1:20:01 Do you remember?

1:20:02 I played the card game, so I did pretty good.

1:20:04 I played the card game, too, but I couldn't remember all those people. I couldn't remember the elves to say I feel like I got nothing over here. Pass. Pass. Keep going. Let's go. Let's get to a Lux or Yeah, whatever his name was. Lertz. Yeah, Lux. Oh, we had some game in the show. Lose. Lux. Lose. There you go. So, yeah. Okay. So, I need to get back to the floor. I think Donna will She didn't like last episode or the last season, so maybe she'll like this one better. We'll see. We'll see how that goes. still playing Guild Wars, but Guild Wars 1 on mobile devices. I'm first off, my eyes aren't good enough for that. My I could you my gosh, I just can't fathom how to be able to click and choose certain people and hit the right buttons at the right time. I know I got a touch screen. I don't see how this is going to work. I'm surprised, too, when they said that. So, Guil Wars 1 is going to be on mobile this summer. But here's the thing is if they can get it on mobile then like put it on my Switch.

1:21:08 Get Wars one on my Switch because that could be that could be a blast. I've uh uh so Gil for Guild Wars one they have the thing called Reforge mode. I've created a character in that because now there's a pre-searing dungeon and so I purposely rolled a what's called a reforge character so I could access that dungeon. haven't got to it yet. But then in uh post searing, there's also another some additional content. So, I think it's it's cool. Now, they're adding brand new content that's never been in the game and just to give something to do.

1:21:45 And I don't know, man. It's still

1:21:47 it's nostalgia. It doesn't look as good as the second one and stuff, but it's so simple compared to number two that sometimes that simplicity is just nice.

1:21:59 Mhm. I mean, go out, kill stuff, com move forward with the story.

1:22:05 Yeah, simplicity is sometimes best, especially for us at times. Guil Wars one on mobile. I just do not see him playing on my Pixel. Even with the Switch though, I mean, is handheld control. Could you

1:22:19 I mean, you

1:22:20 Well, I mean, they have controller support.

1:22:22 They have controller support right now and it actually works. Okay. So, you can use you can use a controller on your PC to play and it it works. Okay. I've tried it. Oh, and by the way, uh good friend uh Berky from Game Toppers reached out to us and he said he wouldn't mind working with us again. And Tony, he's teased something uh to us. He's got a uh a big deal in the works for his tables and his mats.

1:22:52 Mhm.

1:22:52 And y'all just need to stay tuned. And I'll just say this right now. I'm I'll be dropping some coin, Tony, because the thing that he's working with, I'm going to want some mats of that stuff. I'll just leave it there.

1:23:09 Me, too. We know that the table toppers aren't for everyone, but the mats are the mats are what I think probably the nicest mats we've experienced uh in the gaming stuff that we've dealt with. It's just they're the triple stitch. They clean up nice. They're stain resistance. They survived many many salsa spills at Kudobas here. So, when he brings out these new series, when he launches this um as a I don't know if it's going to be on kick kickstarter or gamefound.

1:23:42 Well, well, there's two things going on. One, there's a Kickstarter coming up, which is Matt's only,

1:23:47 but then he has an announcement

1:23:49 announcement

1:23:50 beyond that Kickstarter of a company he's working with to create some additional products later on this fall.

1:23:58 And we know y'all are sitting there saying, "Why should I care?" Just pay attention to Berky. You know, it's quality stuff. So, be sure to um when he starts putting out some stuff on that certain things, hey, something's coming. Pay attention here. Maybe sign up for a newsletter over at his at game topperslc.com and see what he's got coming your way. Especially Oh, mats. Oh, love them. I love those mats. And you'll hear more about it here.

1:24:26 Future Marty here after this recording. The news we were talking about with Game Toppers actually dropped. Game Toppers is partnering with Asmo Day to come out with the line of Middleear products. This includes mats and tables and we are super excited about it. Berky showed us some of the early concept designs and art and everything and it looks absolutely amazing. I am pumped about this. This will coincide with several other products that Asmo Day just announced partnering with. One of those being like Restoration Games with their Lord of the Rings themed game, plus the upcoming Lord of the Rings Ascension game. So, a lot of Lord of the Rings stuff coming out and Game Toppers is going to be providing incredible accessories to play those games on. Stay tuned for more information.

1:25:16 So, keep rolling dice and taking names. Hey y'all, thanks for listening. Head over to our website, rolldenames.com. Go join our Discord channel. Follow us on social media. If you want to, you can always support the show over at byandmoonpie.com. And we'd love some ratings. Spotify, iTunes. Anything that you can do to help us out, we'd really appreciate it.

1:25:44 Hey, Marty. Yes.

1:25:46 Why did Anakin Skywalker cross the road?

1:25:49 I don't know. Why did Anakin I don't know. Why did Anakin Skywalker cross the road?

1:25:54 To get to the dark side. That's the best one you could find.

1:25:58 How does Darth Vader like his toast?

1:26:00 How's that?

1:26:01 On the dark side.

1:26:03 So, it's all dark side references.

1:26:07 May the forks be with you.

1:26:08 Oh, well, it was worth a shot.