Gezockt! 10 Spiele im Fokus! Viele SPIEL 26 Neuheiten
Transcript
So, hello and a warm welcome. In exactly two weeks, we will already be at Spiel. That means we might be doing a hall tour then, or probably around 4 PM. Well, no community meetup anymore, but yes, it will be great. I'm super stoked, I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be terrific and, well , of course I'm curious about the games , but I'm just looking forward to meeting so many of you there. So, if you see me and want to chat, please feel free to say hello. Uh, a thumbs up is already great. A quick hello is awesome. A conversation. It always makes me happy; if I have time, I'm more than happy to take the time. You can also feel free to tell me what your highlights or secret tips are there. And uh, yes, I just realized with a shock, I thought, oh, I don't have a video for today, what am I doing for " Played," the dwarf weapon, and I think on September 18th. I did the last " Played" episode. I need to make sure there's power quickly, so we don't end up sitting in the dark, and that was a while ago. Since then, I've played a lot. I think the only overview video since then has been that one; basically , there was a short "Played" about the Pegasus novelties. We'll go into a bit more depth here, and at the turn of the month, there was a "Played." Time just flies by. I wish a day had 72 hours, I've been saying that more often lately , then I could manage everything I want to manage, but yeah, that's why it's not going to be—I'm not going to— well, no matter how long it takes.
There will be ten games today, and I will probably do another "Played" tomorrow, not Saturday, because Hesi from Frost will be here. That means, unlike on Tuesday at Skellig Games, I will then present the Frost Games novelties to you with Hesi and also Spartakus, who will be there too. I've already written to a few other publishers, right? If it still works out spontaneously with them, you are welcome to come by. Otherwise, maybe next year as a bigger event, like a whole week with a publisher every day showing their novelties, that would be pretty great, I think. And no, that's not a shimmer deck, it's just the wallpaper, where a KDM stood for a while, that wore down the wallpaper and yeah, so there's still a lot to do, a lot ahead. The reason I'm showing you this photo now is simple: I talk about Patreon and how it's super important, and that a lot is possible thanks to this support. And today, some new tech arrived. Here is this package, and here is one of the stands. I have new lights , but actually—I can show you this, then you'll see a bit of what it really looks like in here. Um, this is the normal setup, where the light simply stands there, the one you see here on the right. Above that is the camera rig , the microphones hang there, that’s the other light, and I always sit, you know, over here on the other side. That means the light always comes just from the front. And for me, well, that always bothers me a lot in my videos. I don't know how you feel about it, but this corner here sinks a little bit into darkness. Even when I hold things up to the camera, the light always comes from the front. I hold the item up right here. That means the light
hits against it. Some reflective light comes from everywhere, and that’s why I just said I need to upgrade a bit so that I also have light behind me, and that's why I now have, you can see it here, right? There is one lamp, and here you can see the other lamp that I put up there on the Kallax shelf. It still needs power, and then I'll get light from here too, and that is, well, it was just Amazon Prime Day. Unfortunately, there wasn't a big discount for business accounts, at least not for these things, but these are the kind of things I can keep investing in thanks to new tech, because there are many people who support me on Patreon. Of course, the contribution isn't just so I can constantly invest in new tech; it's also just to help finance general living costs, but whenever there is some leeway and I think I have a need, I treat myself to something new.
Although I always try to buy high quality, so not just the cheapest thing available, but rather looking at what is good and then preferring to wait a week longer, or a month, or half a year . I mean, the camera hanging up there is a 4K camera from Sony, which was uh, well, it was quite expensive at the time, which I was able to finance thanks to a Christmas campaign, and the microphone here too, right, is a Shure SM7B. I will hopefully use that for 20 years without needing to buy anything better for this type of video. When I'm on the road, I need different gear for videos. When we're with several people, I need more of these microphones. That means you can basically keep investing more and more into better things. But with some things, like this mic for example, it just exists, and it will probably never break. That's why you don't need to buy a new one for ages. Also this light, right, the um, the uh left one of the two, I bought that 8 years ago before I got the camera, because I asked around and people said: "Yeah, you can spend 10,000 euros on a camera if you want." Your videos won't look any cooler if you don't get better lighting. That's why I bought it back then relatively cheaply for half the price, just for 500 on eBay. Today, the one on the right, you can see it looks similar, it has about the same performance for my purposes here and was significantly cheaper. So the whole thing keeps evolving, but if nothing breaks, these are things you can use for 20 years, because the light just makes things bright and great. And that's why I also think the microphones hanging there, they are just microphones that have partly been around forever, but microphone technology doesn't improve that much if
you only need it for this specific purpose. That's why, once you've got something good—and these are actually relatively affordable Audio-Technica directional mics, both the right and the left one. One of them is hanging directly above me. That is what you hear when we have livestreams, so that people don't have to wear microphones. I'm starting with the games in a moment , but it's just a setup that is very convenient, because no one has to clip on a microphone here and somehow forget to turn it off when they go to the bathroom and stuff like that. We just don't have those. The sound isn't perfect, but I think for a live setup it's already very good, and it's all equipment I could afford thanks to all the Patreon supporters, and that’s the only reason I can do all of this. I am super grateful for every single person who supports me. I am super grateful that I can do this work because it is simply my absolute passion. I’m totally fired up about it and, yes, without your support, this wouldn't be possible at all, and I just wanted to show you what, you know, where the money actually goes and also what my setup looks like. So, this thing you're seeing right now, where my camera is attached. Actually, only one of these microphones is supposed to be attached to it. This is an overhead microphone stand. I have three microphones on there, plus three arms, plus a camera that is also bigger and more expensive than normal cameras, and there are three counterweights attached so that it all stays up. And yes, that’s definitely a great thing, and a huge, huge thank you for that. I just wanted to give you a little insight, and yes, accordingly: It’s currently running, did you notice? We’ll show the Patreon October graphic. And the
goal is actually—and that is a lot— 22 in one month is a lot, but I think we started at 304 or something. That means in 8 days, seven Patreon supporters have already joined, and that means we are now 22 short of reaching the goal for this month. I'm already looking forward to when we hit 333 this year. But if we manage to do it during the post-game, that would be totally awesome, right? Of course, the long-term goal is to have many more people join who say, "Hey, the content is super great." And so that I can just —you saw the room just now—it's actually just a kitchen where I set up a studio for myself. The long-term goal so far, I would say, is medium-term. There are definitely possibilities in the immediate, not immediate, but in the near future. And where is it here?
Exactly. Accordingly, I definitely want to say thank you again to Natalie, Florian, Leana, Sel, Holge, Dirk, Ralla , Birge, Cookie Crumble 79, Kiwi, and also Michaela. A huge, huge, huge thank you for becoming new Patreon supporters . It's been a while since I last said thank you, and yeah, I unfortunately have to keep promoting this because it’s simply the absolute financial foundation of this channel. I always try to make it as pleasant as possible and wrap it up nicely, but it’s just something that's important, and I’m truly grateful to everyone who supports it. If you've been thinking about it, like, "should I do this?", please feel free to go ahead. You’re definitely part of a super cool community and can sign up for the November con '27, or the April con, February con, or March con '28. If more people join Patreon, I can offer even more cons. I could host one in January; May would be no problem at all. There just has to be the demand for it. There should always be enough people at these cons, after all. So, long story short. Let's get to the games. As always, these are just my personal impressions, often first plays , sometimes two or three games played.
I actually always try to get every game back to the table as soon as possible to deepen my impressions. Now we're just briefly at the Spiel. It's so much . I always try, but I don't always succeed. And these are just subjective first impressions. Whether I liked or disliked a game might depend on the group or my personal mood that day. I’m just going into a bit more detail about what I found good or bad, and where and why. I've already talked about some games or made a video on them, but maybe you haven't seen that video. You might prefer a 5 to 10- minute deep dive into the game. That's exactly what we're doing now. And I'm also keeping an eye on the chat on the side. Um, I can also show you what we'll probably be playing tonight. Maybe Not Perfect, that just arrived from Edition Spielwiese. Oh, where is it? Then, uh, a Top 10 BoardGameGeek game, I think. God is here. This will also very likely hit the table tonight.
What I also find super hot and exciting are the Unlock New Game Adventures. They are fantastic. By the way, you can see here, it's reflecting a bit, the promo card for Dungeon Fighter that will be available. And what I'm looking forward to most of all is, that the Tea Time expansion is here. Really awesome. Maybe my personal gaming highlight. I have to see, and yes, I will also be appearing briefly. Um, it starts soon. By Sunday at the latest, there will be a preview recommendation video every day for the Spiel fair. That means we will definitely start with the expert videos, although I would really like to play Grinille before that, but it is not here right now. Vincens took it with him. I'll have to see. I actually want to get that out relatively quickly because time is running until the fair, but there will be more videos, so feel free to write what you might want to see a recommendation list for.
Currently planned are expert, connoisseur, family, coop, two-player, solo, those are the preview ideas and then maybe some little gems or specials if I discover enough of them. Um, feel free to write in the comments what you want to see. And yes, I've only been on air for 10 minutes, but I would just say let's start with the games, specifically a novelty from a few years ago, not for this year, but I wanted to discuss it in more detail. Yes, already , I don't even know how many years it's been, but I'll see that in a moment. 225 from last year. I finally had Catan Connect on the table, I already showed it in the monthly review. Let me just check if the right display is up. Yes, it is. And the image is correct too.
Klaus Teuber, Benjamin Teuber, well, Klaus Teuber with Catan. Benjamin Teuber probably developed it further. It says four to six people per box, probably. I played it at the Stadt Land Spiel event, and there you can just, uh , basically make this row as long as you want, and you can put 20 people in a room, 100 people in a room. We could set it up here and play with six, eight people. You can set it up at your place . We could play a game of Catan Connect with the 51 people currently in the stream if everyone has a set at home. And this is using a panorama view, so it is a bit not quite straight. And if you look at that, can I zoom in here? I hope the technology is working. Yes, it is, a little bit at least, right? So here on the far left, that's me and Hilko. And this here, the left one here , so take a look here, okay? This right here was Hilko’s play area, and this right here was my play area. This over here was the play area of my neighbor to the right. This was the play area of my neighbor to the left, and then there was actually an app on the table here that just, you know? So here, this was, for example, the moon side and this was the sun side, and there was an app that said, okay, we’re all rolling a five, then we see if we get yields from the five. That means everyone, the whole table takes their five-yields, and then , if it’s currently the moon side’s turn, everyone on the moon side can do their things. That means they can trade
, they can build things. At the beginning we had 40 seconds, which was very long. 30 or 20 seconds would have been enough, and then it’s the other side's turn, the dice are rolled again, everyone takes their yields again, then all the moon players can play and do their things, then the dice are rolled again, everyone gets yields, then it switches to the other side. If I manage to build from my area into a neighbor’s territory, then I get, I’ll clear these arrows, points on this track that goes up to 18, and whoever reaches 18 points first ends the game. There is also the longest trade route here, that is also only between me and the person directly opposite me. Largest army, right? Cities and settlements all give points, and then you play until someone has reached 18 points, and when someone reaches that—Hilko, the person opposite me, managed it one turn before me. I could have easily done it on the next turn if I could have built something else, but I didn’t get a chance, and I think the other side was the starting player too. This isn’t photographed from my perspective, and yes, it was good, it was nice, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there had been 10, 1,000, or 5,000 people sitting in this room. Uh, I would just, I mean I was at the very edge, but suppose I had been the player here in the middle.
Then I could have interacted with this person, with this person, with this person, with this person, and with this person. So, in principle, a six-player game. I have nothing to do with anyone else. That means I’m just playing a six-player game with various people and someone over there in the corner can finish before me, and then I just say, "Okay, congrats, I could have just won it next round too, but there was nothing I could do." That can definitely be quite nice as an event, if you have many Catan fans, where you say, okay, let’s all play together somehow. I’ve played it now and I’m glad for the experience, but it’s not something I would need to play all the time. But if I were a huge Catan fan, maybe had a big family or a circle of friends or housemates that had drifted apart, and Catan was our thing—I mean , it's a chic game, but I hope you know a few other games, too. Then this would be a way that I could still play it with my friends in France, Austria, or Norway, once a week, once a quarter, or something. So, it’s definitely a pretty nice thing, and that is Catan Connect. Then let’s move on to the new releases, and specifically one of my personal highlights of the fair.
Sure, it goes a bit in the direction of Take Time, but it is also different and independent. It’s from Nerdlab Games, you know? They have Christian Kudai, some of you who know the gaming world will recognize the name. They made, for example, Agent Avenue and Mindbar, which are just big hits, and yeah, now comes The Beat. I have to say, nothing against Dani, I think it's a nice cover in itself, but I don't think it's a good cover for selling a game, because if I see it on the shelf, I think you really have to convince people that it’s a good, great game, because it doesn’t look very appealing at first glance. But that is the game, and the basic principle is that we are a rock band, and it’s also like this: we are basically playing a campaign, 26 missions, there’s always a little backstory included, and it’s actually really nicely done; we just enjoyed reading them. I made it to level 9 out of 26 with Markus, and I think we played the first level eight times until we managed to beat it. After that , we got through relatively well. Here is the story, um, right there in the middle. I don’t even know if you can see it better on one of the other photos. Maybe here a little bit, if we zoom in there. Uh no, we're playing cooperatively, all together. We all have a card deck, so it must be 3 x 5, 15 cards. We have 3 x 5s, 3 x 4s, 3 x 2s, 3 x 1s. And sometimes there are symbols on these cards, like this arrow here, just a hint symbol. We have a card here in the middle, Roswell Rave.
It says we're only allowed to fail once out of six cards we play in total. We have to play two, uh, exactly. Meaning exactly with the target value of nine, which is right here. And we have to play four louder. That means we need to have more than nine. And yes, sometimes there's a little twist here, for example, saying you have to play the guitar solo, a special card in between, and there's an extra card revealed from the event deck every round. That one is relatively large here. It's about 30, 40 cards or so, right? Sold out. Only cards that are already in your stage area may be played. That can be pretty tough in the first round. And then I just have my cards in my hand. The trick is also that each of us plays one card face down, and you aren't allowed to communicate about your cards. But you can slam your card on the table and maybe say like, "Oh, I'm playing a five here." Or place it a bit more gently to signal, "hey, a lighter move, like just a one." Um, I think we play that intuitively right. I think we've always managed quite well, and the cards that were played are then revealed. But I can also, if I throw my card into the middle and then Markus throws his card, I think to myself the display and such, I'll change that again. Once a hint has been given, you're not allowed to change it anymore. That means if I had a four lying in front of me, I could turn the four to the right or to the left, signaling that I'm playing a card that is higher or lower than the four.
And once I've done that, I'm not allowed to take my card back into my hand. But the others can obviously do something with that information, and then you have to, right, the two of us, if we want to get over nine, we have to play cards higher than nine and each of us can only play one card, and we, um, yeah, the question is: how do I know what the other person is playing? It actually worked quite often, surprisingly. The, well, it’s like this: the cards I’ve played stay face up, and there are always three cards already out at the beginning anyway. So here, I had the 122. That way, the other players know, okay, the chance that someone plays a 2 isn't high, that they play a 1 is possible, but also more unlikely than anything else. And the longer a round lasts, the more I can naturally deduce what the others are probably playing and what they have in their hands. Once the last card from the draw pile has been picked up, everyone also knows what cards the others still have in their hand. Then you can actually plan relatively accurately if the other people are good at playing along. And I played this with Markus, it worked great. Some tasks are sometimes just impossible to complete because there are too few songs. Then you have to add an encore, which lets you bring another song into your deck that you can play, because if you run out of songs and haven't finished, you lose. But if you take an encore, you have to play it and you have to manage to complete it or not, so you have to stay within those parameters. And that can sometimes be a tricky decision, since we might just run out of cards, and this mix of: "We have to anticipate, communicate a bit about what we want to do." We have to consider when to give a hint, when to play loud, how to implement the twist
of the current stage, and how to deal with the limitations imposed on us by the event. I thought that was very well-rounded. It worked well, well, we were just two players. We played it all evening until 3 in the morning because we had so much fun with it. It was really a blast, and if it hadn't been 3 a.m., we could have played for another 3 hours. However, I wondered how well it works with more people? Because with two, I can imagine, okay, you can calculate that quickly. With three players, you have different song cards, which means the range of numbers you have to reach is different and it worked well. I played it at the Spieleburg with four players first, then with three, and it worked well in every configuration. I still wonder how it works. I asked myself that back when we demoed it in Berlin, but it worked well. It's super fun. It is different from Take Time. Both games can definitely coexist side by side. I don't know if I would bring The Beat: Roxers of the Galaxy to the table right after playing an hour of Take Time. But I am someone who has played a lot of Take Time. I've played 400 games of Take Time, which just means I really like this type of game. I also liked Bombusters, for example, which generally goes in that direction, I just liked it too. And if you are one of those people who say: "Hey, I liked Bombusters, I thought Take Time was even cooler.""Or who say: I thought Bombusters was really great.""I liked Take Time too, didn't think it was as good, but I enjoyed it." Then The Beat is definitely a game you should try out . If you didn't like either Bombusters or Take Time, it's possible that you might still like this one because it works a bit differently. Of course, if
you just know that this type of game isn't for you, the chance that you'll like it is significantly...well, it's likely you won't like it, but you can hopefully judge that for yourselves. But for anyone who says Take Time is the greatest game in the world and it has so much depth and this and that and I can calculate everything. The Beat does that on a different level. So it could be that with time, you realize it is much deeper. It could be that you say it's actually a bit shallower, a bit trashier, because there's more randomness, time will simply tell. But I know that I had a lot of fun, that Markus had a lot of fun, and that the two people I played it with at the Spieleburg really enjoyed it. I was, well, I was skeptical after our demo session in Berlin, but I liked it. Uh, if I were to make a list now of games I've already played, um, and that I would recommend for the fair, I might still do that. You can let me know if you want that. There have really been quite a few games, and as I said, a few more are coming as well. Um, it would be right up at the front. It would be in the top 5, at least in the top 3.
Maybe it would even be number 1, I don't know, but it’s definitely easily in the top 10 and really a highlight for me. I can highly, highly recommend it. It was a lot of fun, too. Thanks to Nerdlab for sending it to me in advance. And yeah, that is Rockstars of the Galaxy. Then I played Jurassic Zoo at the Stadt-Land-Spiel event, I also briefly showed it in the monthly ranking. I played it with an Erasmus group where Hilk and I were pretty much the only two who spoke German, the others came from all over the world. There was Vietnam, Paraguay, it was very international and it was a lot of fun, it worked really well. Everyone liked it, too. I mean, I liked it, but also the people there, they were at the Stadt-Land-Spiel event after all. That means they enjoy playing games in general. It didn't seem like they were hardcore gamers who were super deep into the hobby, but rather the type that meet up and enjoy playing something together, and that’s exactly what it is: enclose dinos, fence in dinos, collect points— that’s the title. M here we can see the basic game, and that is we have a whole deck of cards. Two cards are always flipped over. Here we have a 3 x 1. It just means I can now draw a 3 x 1 enclosure on this board. If it had been a 4 x 5, I could draw a 4 x 5 enclosure here. Up here are three achievements laid out. The first was connect the left side of the board to the right side of the board. This one was something like be the first to enclose
nine Triceratops, and the top one I think is be the first to circle two, I don't know, visitors or centers or something, and that is my board, and assuming I had started and the first card was a 4 card, then I could have just drawn a 4 enclosure here. So, and then I always get, I can always circle the dinos up here in the area when, like here, I simply have one dino alone in an enclosure. Here I also have a dino alone in an enclosure. Here is also a dino alone in an enclosure. Just like here. I think here too, if that’s one line. And not here, for example, right? Here I have two more T-Rexes; they really want to be alone, they also don't really want to be free with these visitor centers in, well, so , you should definitely keep them separate. But I can also later, uh, well, I could have, for example, drawn a 2x5 enclosure here in this area and then later also a 1x4 enclosure here that just separates the whole thing. So I always have to draw the basic shape, but I don't just have to put them next to each other. They can also somehow intersect and influence each other. The main thing is that I manage to, oops, cut the visitor centers off from the dinos and wait, now my technology is letting me down a bit here. I hope you don't see it the way I'm seeing it right now. Oh, I'm sorry. Um gone, so
we'll improve everything in the future, right? So I basically always want to have these visitor centers alone, I want to have the dinos alone, and I also have to think about how to fulfill the contracts as well as possible, and yes, I can also sometimes, four times in the game, I can change a die with what's written up here. I can do a plus -1, but I also lose points for it. My name was also Benosaurus Rex here and that was fun. That was, so if I were to make a video about the most accessible, short-term games that you can just pull out and play with people who also say, oh, rules, and don't need to, and just want something short and simple, but still good. One in the round, when we played six, of course you play completely in parallel alongside each other, everyone thinks, you ask if everyone is ready, then you continue. You obviously have these goals in the middle, right, that you don't fight over. Basically, whoever fulfills them first, the ones up here, they get, you know, extra points. After that, they are flipped over. Everyone who fulfills them later gets a few less points, but everyone here was eagerly drawing, doing, and working. So that, I could play that again right away. The back has a different board with some different dinos. It's also super simple , not rocket science; anyone who has played a lot won't find anything fundamentally new here, but the way, so in this combination, I haven't played it like that before and yeah, I have to say, that was nice. That was just right for a city-country game event, for a lovely Sunday afternoon with coffee and cake, when you just want to do something with dinos, or if you have kids or people who don't play much, even in a group of heavy gamers, I think that would be interesting. It wouldn't be something I'd make an
appointment for just to bring it to the table with my heavy-gamer friends. But as a closer, as an in-between game, or while we're waiting for someone, it can definitely work well. Then 60 Below. I think there are other videos on that by now. I think Rado did something on it too, but I had one of the world's first copies on the table. Alexander Pfister and Peter Prinz were in the stream, after all. They mean this is one of the very first ones that went out, so that's what you have on the table now. In the session we played, we had both authors plus someone from the publisher —not the EP Games, they just distribute it, in quotation marks. It's actually from Nanox Games, they're the ones who essentially make it. It's a bit of an Austrian connection in the board game world, and Nanox Games also comes from Austria. We played it under supervision, which is always good, especially when a game is new and hot, because we naturally want to get it to the table quickly, but don't want to play anything wrong, and we learn it that way. Of course, there are still things that always slip through. You know how it is yourselves. Expert games : learn the rules, watch a video, read the rules, play, read the rules again, see what you did wrong. Hopefully you find all the mistakes, then play again, then eventually play it right. That's why they are expert games, because they aren't always played completely error-free right off the bat. And I've experienced this with the biggest experts, where even I eventually said, "But it's different here, right?""It should actually be lying this way," and they go, "Oh, really? Okay." Yeah, cool . Play it again. So, uh, I find it very difficult to be condescending and say, "But you have to do it right." You make one thing with mistakes. It just always sneaks into such games, which is why you want to play them a bit more often.
I just couldn't bring it to the table again due to time constraints. Presumably, when Flo is back, it will be one of the first games he'll want to play. Let's see if the timing works out . And I like it very much. I, um, think you can absolutely feel the Alexander Pfister DNA, just here in this market where you have workers that you can acquire. We play a total of six rounds. At different times, we have various scoring phases where we want to have done certain things in the game to varying degrees of success so that we get few or many points for them. And depending on when we score, in which phase, we get more or fewer points for it, but some things can only be scored in specific phases of the game. The board, well, it's a bit of a, uh, specific theme, isn't it? After Mombasa or that other game, you don't want to step on anyone's toes, and that’s all a bit tricky today, which is right, because you always have to implement such themes well. Here, it’s just in the Arctic, so you don't hurt anyone thematically. Of course, in terms of artwork, it’s a bit boring, just these white spaces. But as Age of Steam players, we appreciate that the whole thing is very clear and legible. The exciting thing here is that it's a worker placement game where I have workers I can place, and then they're there. They stay there for the rest of the game. Only if I occasionally have an ability where I might be able to move someone somewhere else, then I can do that. But then my spot becomes free again. I can expand these bases, and the expansions are really exciting, you know? That's what you see here at the top of the player board. Um, they provide points, they give me certain advantages, and they ensure that I can get storm cards out of my deck. So I
definitely want to expand these bases. But that costs a lot of money, you know ? Similar to Great Western Trail, you also have these specialists here, and they bring you symbols. And it's always the case that certain game effects depend on: How many wallets do I have, how many of these radios do I have, how many of these—what was that?— hammers do I have, you know? These are basically a bit like the engineers in, uh, Great Western Trail, which I can use to move trains. Um, can I then build bases and get some resources. And you have—I have storm cards lying over them now—usually you have bases here that allow for certain actions, depending on: how many symbols do I have lying here, how many symbols do I have here on my cards? And there's this card-revealing mechanic that feels a bit like a push-your-luck mechanic, but it actually isn't, because with push-your-luck, I can basically lose everything if I do too much. Not here.
Here, I always reveal one new card from my deck. I also don't have a hand of cards or anything; I just have a deck of cards that's well shuffled at the beginning. There are five storm cards and five normal expedition cards in it, and I want to improve my deck over the course of the game so that I maybe draw fewer of these storm cards and more of these expedition cards, but at the same time, I might want to have these expedition cards, because to buy new cards, I need energy, and I primarily get energy from the storms, and partly from the secondary effects of the normal expedition cards, but even there , I can only play three cards at the start. Then usually, a little piece is in the way here, which would just be in this area. For me, it has already moved over to here. That means I now have 1, 2, 3, 4 slots here where I can play cards. If I were to move this piece even further, I would have a fifth slot , a sixth slot, and—no, I don't want to move it. Uh, I'm not doing that either. Um, and eventually even a seventh slot where I can play cards, and that's obviously quite nice because then I can play more and more cards.
But I also always have these three storms in the deck, and I can play those too. And simply by saying, "Okay, here with these station upgrades," if I build them, then I can take storms out of my deck, so I draw them less often. That's actually quite cool. We only play for six rounds. If I spend a relatively large amount of time unlocking these upgrades, it obviously means, okay, I've done that, I have storms out of the deck, I might draw other cards that benefit me, but then of course I haven't unlocked the other advantages I could have gotten. And these are definitely interesting decisions, because you can thin out the deck significantly if you want, and quite quickly, so you have few storms. But you can also say, "I don't care, I'll work with it, I even need it, I'll balance it out and would rather see what the other station advantages bring me." And overall, that's definitely nice, this mix of. I have my board here . I am unlocking the ability to play more cards here, so I can also get some benefits or victory points. I have bases up here that I can activate if there is no storm card on them, and I can trigger specific effects depending on how I have developed everything here . I really want to build many bases, but it costs a lot of money and I need the corresponding tech points for it, because I also want to build on these landscapes here, for which I again need many tech points; but as always, I need everything and actually want to do everything. But I cannot do everything.
I have many different action spaces, and you can bring new action spaces into the game. That is also how it is, I bring action spaces into the game. Fellow players can then use them directly if they want, but they might have other plans. That doesn't necessarily mean that just because I play an action space, the player after me will use it directly, because maybe it's good, but doesn't fit what they wanted to do right then. You have to think again: do we do it now anyway or not? And that was quite crunchy, it felt good. We got into it relatively quickly. But we also had supervision, meaning we were simply watched by the authors while we played, and they definitely told us if we did something wrong. At the beginning, we had the player board parts that everyone has; we just didn't have the right color codes because we didn't even see that there were color codes on them, but it worked out anyway. It wasn't anything that would have majorly broken the game . It was definitely good. I'm curious where it ends up in the end, whether it goes more in the direction of Great Western Trail or more towards Boonlake.
I currently feel it is somewhere a bit in between. I am curious how high the appeal is to bring it to the table again. I will definitely bring it to the table again, but it's just the fair , and there we naturally played many new releases. I have to see when it can hit the table now. I still have it here , and well, Flo will definitely want to play it. That means we'll check it out. We will play it again here. I am definitely up for it. That was really crunchy. I have already played a few expert novelties. I also saw it in the monthly ranking. It was right up there near the top. It wasn't more, because the game needed a bit more space, but it was definitely among the top titles here, was right up at the front, and I liked it a lot. If you generally like Alexander Pfister designs, the chance that you'll like this game is definitely high. If you say that you haven't been able to do anything with Pfister games so far. It has so much, well, Peter Prinz—I don't know who exactly developed what and where—but you can definitely feel the strong Alexander Pfister signature. And like I said, if you haven't been able to get into his games before, this probably won't convince you, because it does feel just like other Pfister games do.
Even though it still introduces its own unique elements. So, if you like it crunchy, if you like nice interlocked mechanics, if you also like it a bit interactive, although the interaction isn't that big, then it's definitely worth checking out. I think this is something many people already have on their agenda and want to try out. So, I definitely liked it a lot. Then we played Mountain Goats Legacy. I've already made a video about that. The normal Mountain Goats is just a game, you know, where you, I mean, basically like here: We have these mountains: five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I have four dice, I have my goats at the bottom, I roll four D6s, and depending on the numbers I roll—if I roll four fives, I can move up 1, 2, 3, 4 steps here. And when I’ve reached the top, I can take one of these cards that always has five points on it. And there , if I'm already standing up here and I roll even more fives, then I just get one of those cards every single time for every five, until the deck is empty . And those are of course only five points, if I, no, that doesn't work. If I roll tens here with two D6s, I can manage it, so I couldn't roll four tens in one throw, but here it's just, you know, one step. On the second step, I then get ten points, and if I then stay at the top, I just keep getting ten points over and over. But other people naturally think it's annoying that I'm standing at the top. That's why, if Andersen rolls a ten and then another ten, he gets the ten points because he’s at the very top. Any number of mountain goats can stand anywhere. Only the very top has space for one goat.
That’s where you kick the other one off. This means, if I'm at the top, I’ll get kicked all the way back down here and would have to make those two moves again. Or even if I'm on the five , I fly all the way down here and then have to make those five moves again from there. And you play until three card stacks at the top are empty. Or if I manage to get one of each set here, so a five, a six, a seven, an eight, a nine, and a ten set, then I get this special card here, which gives me 15 extra points. If you manage that again, or if you manage to do it, you get 12 points, then nine, and then six. And when these are all basically empty, the game is over. This is just standard Mountain Goats, clearly inspired by Can't Stop, but it’s its own thing because I only roll once and then I can do something. In the normal game, it’s also like this: ones are just garbage; if I roll two or more ones, I have to keep one of them. I can turn the others to any number. So, it's pretty cool, like a joker; I can take whatever I need. I just play it over and over like that without much variety . Mountain Goats Legacy is a legacy game that doesn't break anything. That means you don't destroy anything, you don't stick anything on; you have a little mini-campaign, a mini-story that is told to you, and in principle, it's like this: I can't turn it right now, but normally I have this "ones" rule.
If I roll two ones, or three or four, I can turn them to any side I want. I just have to keep one. Now it's like this: we have this little board, and it says that the one is replaced by a goat symbol, and the goat can always be a one if I want, or I can say the goat is a three in this case, right? That's the bottom right card, or I can trigger the effect of the left goat. With that, I believe I can simply place a goat anywhere. So, even going up to a ten with one goat die, where I would normally need two dice for that. And after we finish a mission, the winner gets to choose, I think from two cards or two options—no, from two cards—a new one to replace one of the two existing cards. That means constant variation without anything being ruined . And so every campaign, which consists of 10 missions lasting 25 to 35 minutes each, can play out differently because you always have a different combination of cards. Also, a significant new feature is that at the beginning, there's basically just a marker over the 9, and it initially says whoever has the most cards from this stack gets eight extra points. That naturally creates a run on the 8s. When we've finished a mission, usually a new story element is added. Then this would basically move over here. So it would now lie over the 7, and something new would be placed here at the 9, and just like that, we have a special rule for this 9 slot and a special rule for this 7 slot, and once you're in the third mission, something else goes over here
too. Then we have a special rule for the 5s, 7s, and 9s. We always have a small change here like this. Essentially, that's it. Of course, there are various things you can get. There are a few boxes containing things you don't know what they are, and they change the game a bit more, but usually only for one or two missions, and it's a super simple family game. It remains a super simple family game. Every Pandemic version is significantly more complex than this. But where I would naturally say with normal Mountain Goats that I've played it twice and it's always the same, as is usually the case with games, here I have replayability thanks to this campaign. I would really like to play through it. I can say that everything I've unlocked in a campaign, I can also bring to the table later when I just want to play the whole thing. That's why you can use it to play a perfectly normal Mountain Goats, plus all the variations included . And yes, as I said, you don't ruin anything. You can simply reset it. We played through it in one day because I knew exactly that if I just brought it to the table and we played a round or two, I’d just play the first three missions with the group, with the group , with the group, with the group. But I would never reach the end. That’s why I was very happy. We were at the Spielburg game night, uh, that Power immediately said, "Yeah, I think it's super nice, let's play another one," and Benjamin, who was also there, said, "Yeah, come on, one more game, just one more." And when we were at mission 4, I said, "This is fun, right?" It would take a little longer now, but it would be cool if we played through it, and so we played it through. I wouldn't recommend that to anyone, doing it all in one evening—I mean, we took about
6 hours. I also timed it, and each round took between 22 and, by the end, 40 minutes. It really starts to wear you out after a while. I would recommend you don't look at it as some hardcore challenge, like, yeah, we have to power through it. I mean, if you want to, you can, but play it spread out, like one or two missions a day or one each day; then you're super relaxed , super chilled, and you can definitely enjoy it. But it is, of course, a super simple family game. I roll dice, I combine, I roll, I just get points, done. It’s nothing more than that. So if you're expecting something, you know , like Pfister-style or anything, that’s definitely not what you’ll get. But the fact that you don't destroy anything, that you don't just write on it, and that it just always has this variation as you play through it, I personally find mega. We all enjoyed it, even in the last game, because our feedback is positive all across the board, so I can recommend it to you. It’s coming out as Mountain Goats, Mountain Goats Saga from Ostia Spiele. The original is also by Stefan Risthaus, who, for example, also made something like Ark RD, right? Some might perk up at that, but this version wasn't developed by him. Two other authors did that, likely in the end, once it was published, together with him. I liked it, it was a lot of fun, and also, I said at the beginning, you know, Patreon support is super cool, feel free to join in. If you say that's not my thing at all, and you say I'd really like to buy games locally but I don't have a game store near me, then feel free to use the Spieleoffensive partner link spiele-offensive/BSB. If
you use the link and see my nice face —hopefully my much slimmer face on the landing page—then for every purchase you make, I think there is a 5 percent commission. That should even work for Spieleschmiede. So feel free to use it when you buy from Spieleschmiede, and if you buy online, as I said, the only thing that really matters online is the price. I look at where I can get it cheapest. That's where I order, or where I've had good experiences. I mean, we have bad experiences with every shop. I hope, of course, that you have had predominantly positive experiences with the folks at Spieloffensive. Um, then feel free to use the link at Spieloffensive. I would really appreciate that. Many of you are already doing that. I can take a look and see what has been ordered. There's usually a new order every few days, but if you're ordering online anyway and it really doesn't matter to you where you order, then, as I said, feel free to use Spieloffensive and this link.
Bookmark it, type it in so often that it pops up on its own via autocomplete. That definitely always helps the channel a great deal. Then Minikin City , which I also played at Pegasus. That's already available in stores now too. It’s been in the game book for two days now. That means if you ordered it, it will be delivered soon, and if you haven't ordered it, you might be able to order it now after seeing this post. It is a game for two to five players, created by, among others, Simone Luciani and, I guess, Mur Verdier. The thing is, he’s a French author, and when I played Minikin City, I rudely pulled out my smartphone halfway through the game to see if this monsieur had perhaps also made Faraway, because they feel quite similar. So, if you like games like Faraway or Castle Combo, then Minikin City might be a great game for you—which surprises me to say, as I had looked into it a bit beforehand. Of course, it’s a game you have to have played yourself to be able to describe it well, to be able to understand it. I didn't really get it from the description or the manual and thought, that doesn't look so great, but Simone Luciani's name is on it, which doesn't really mean anything now.
He has had a few things where even a Flo would run away screaming. Pegasus is releasing it. They don't just have highlights either; there are some things where I've asked, why are you releasing this in German? But I'm not in a position to be able to do market analysis. They know that much better than I do. And Minikin City, yeah, I looked at it because I really wanted to play it at the Pegasus press day. It's just that calling it a trick-taking game sort of raises false expectations. It's a game where I have cards in my hand. There are cards laid out. I think always a majority of players, right? These are the ones, basically, right? So here are my hand cards. Here are I can't really make a circle around it now. That is the card display. These here are cards I've already played. Similar to Everdell or Triggerw, this is my city that I'm basically building in front of me and the row that is here , I'll just point my arrow along there, the one lying up here. So the row, this , this color is basically trump. So, if I play them—and unfortunately I'm colorblind, I hope these are the right colors, because yeah, it's about the colors and I—well, I play these face down in front of me, we all reveal them , and if I'm the one who played the highest card, then that means, for one thing, I can place my marker up here at the top. That means I get this reward in the form of three points and three Minikins. And then I'm also allowed to place this card here into my display as a third card. And these cards, similar
to Faraway, can—but don't have to— provide symbols up here, right? Some cards just have them on there, others, as you can see, do not. And with the symbols, it's a bit hard to see now, it's just like this: per set of these four symbols I get, I don't know, four points or something for it. That's obviously a good thing that this card gives me two right away, because then I obviously complete the set faster. But to trigger this scoring, there is this round spot on this card and this other round spot on that card. That means to activate the scoring on this card, I need these Minikins, which unfortunately you can't see here. They are just tiny wooden markers, like mini creatures that live in this city, and only when they are on there does this card get scored. If I don't manage to get the Minikins on there by the end of the game, then this card could give me 40 points, which would be a lot and probably isn't even possible. I just won't get them because I don't have the Minikins on there. This means I have different levels where I—and what’s also important—if I didn't play the highest card, if I finish last in a two-player game, then I have to put my marker down here. You can already see that down here, I usually don't get anything. That means being second is garbage. You always want to be first.
You are at the mercy of the luck of the draw. No, well, yes, but no. Because the person who finished second is allowed to place two markers down there . But here we have cards in the display that can have great symbols or scoring on them that really help me because I have matching cards in my hand for them . I already have matching cards in the display. I get the first pick when I finish second. This means that as the second or last player, I have no advantage up there. Ah, I get the cool card. But it also means there are no automatisms in this game. I have to think about which card I want to bring into my city. I have to play it at some point, and I have to see when I play it , because maybe it helps me at some point or helps me take first place or not. Maybe I just happen to have the right card right now. I don't have to follow suit either; I just play the card I want to place in front of me.
And of course, I have to see which card I can get into my city, which card might get me the one from the center I want, and which card might get me the advantages on these current round cards I need right now, right? Because, well, we know we've just played two rounds, and we know that the next color played will be this one, which is pink. With my pink 16, I have a high chance of landing up here. It's reflecting unfortunately, um, and getting the reward then, but I was allowed to pick one of these cards at the end. And as I said, it reminded me in terms of gameplay, decision space, depth, duration, and everything of Faraway and Castle Combo, without it really having anything to do with those games, other than the fact that we're collecting these, you know, uh, symbols and that we have to build up scores, and those two games already have a huge fanbase.
But there are many people who think they're great and if you like those, then I can only really recommend, play Minikin City. I was positively surprised by it myself and I've only played it with two people. No idea what it's like with four or five people, that's something we'll have to find out . I don't even have it here yet. Actually, a box from Pegasus was supposed to arrive this week, but it's already Thursday. Let's see when it comes and um yeah, so I can recommend it to you. It's definitely a cool thing . Then Cyberpunk, the Trading Card Game . That is sort of just coming out now. At the Spieleburg, it feels like there's a trading card night every evening when it's not a game night. Lorcana, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic, Star Wars Unlimited, everything is played there. That means if you're from Göttingen, then, you know, feel free to stop by and play your TCG of choice. Cyberpunk is already, I think, ancient, and this Cyberpunk 2077 is somehow the newest thing from 6 years ago, which came out as a computer game totally buggy and is now supposed to be quite playable, and is still considered one of the best games in its genre. I have it too, I've played it for an hour, I thought it was really nice, but I just can't manage to sit down in a concentrated way for a few hours to play something like that.
I have far too many other things to do for that. Above all, playing board games, making content for them, doing research. I would like to, but I think my video game days are over, but I have it, I can play it sometime, just like Baldur's Gate 3. I want to play that sometime, too. It's also considered one of the best games ever and, yeah, long story short, Cyberpunk the Trading Card Game. Here you can see it, a pure two-person duel game, that's why there's currently a hype in the community, like Andy, the quasi TCG expert from the Spieleburg, with whom I also played it. that there, do you want to play, do you want to take it with you? You can take it, you can play it. I was like, maybe I can manage this next week, or do you want to play it now? I was like, well, I have time, though I just got home from work, am hungry and want to eat, but yeah, I'll sit down, right? Because I almost always accept an offer to play, and so we just taught it to ourselves. We played two rounds right away, and kept checking the rules during the first game, but the rulebook is only a double page, so it's manageable. The special thing is that it's not just a duel game about "I'll crush you, I'll get your 20 life points down," like we know from all these games, but you see these dice on the table, which made people say, " Oh my god, keep the dice out of my TCG, how are you supposed to play that competitively?" I can imagine that it might work somehow, but whether it does or not, I don't really care. These are, um, what were they called? They are dice. They have some other name in the game, but they are dice. And I basically have a roleplaying set of them, a D4, a D6, a D8, a D10, a D12, and a D20. And it's just about, when it's my turn, I can take actions, play cards. In principle, just like in LCGs
or Star Wars Unlimited, I can turn cards from my hand into resources. They need, as you can see here, this money symbol. I'll show it again, here's a money symbol, then I turn it into a resource. I lay it face down in front of me and can trigger it to generate resources to play cards, you know? Up here are the costs it takes for me to play them. There are characters, there are reinforcements, and there are events that I can resolve. And when it's my turn, I do everything I want to do, until I say done and it's the next player's turn. The goal is to be the first to have seven dice, and every round when it's my turn, I have to take one of my dice, roll it, and place it in my area. And then, after I've played all my cards—or even during, the order doesn't really matter—I can just say, "Hey, I'm attacking your die, " and then I simply have it, unless the other player can defend somehow because they played a blocker that can intercept it, or they can play an event to prevent it. But to get a die like that, I have to exhaust one of my characters, and I can't, for example, with Andir. For instance, I can't say I'm attacking your guys, because they’re all standing upright right now; they aren't exhausted. Only when a character has been exhausted can you attack them. That means if I use him to steal a die and I get it, which is usually relatively easy, that character is in danger because then the other player can pounce on them and clear the board, so you have to decide: do you really want that? And the values of these dice, I think that represents the city's reputation that you have, and you want to have a lot of that, because some card effects say if you have a high reputation or more than another player, then it's cool. Other card effects say have little, have this much , or have less than the other players,
and then this or that card effect triggers. And of course, in the TCG, you'll be able to build decks later that work with that, which ensure my values stay low so I get extra great effects, or maybe I can just steal certain opponent dice. I think there are quite a lot of possibilities there, but on Board Game Geek, if we take a look, it has a 6.6, and after playing twice, Andy and I find that way too high, by a factor of about 2. I would have given it a 3.3 instead, because it’s really just playing a card, I attack you, or I play two cards here, but they all have too little strength. I can't attack any of yours. Oh, you're stealing my dice. Oh, I can't do anything about it. I think the base game just isn't that great in that regard. Presumably, when it comes out, you'll be able to build cool combinations where you can do something really neat with this dice mechanic.
And I find that—well, if I played more TCGs, I think I would find it exciting if that works. I always silently assume that the people who made this game. And for a TCG like that , you always need a big release plan and a strong license, a proven concept where it ultimately works well and maybe doesn't hook everyone, but maybe people jump on it and say, "Awesome!" Because we saw with the example of Orshot that it's simply—well, it's financed through crowdfunding every now and then. I don't know if there will ever be another crowdfunding for it, but in regular retail, it just kind of disappeared, and it’s not being played at the Spieleburg either. I don't think it's even being sold much or anything anymore. It just lacks a strong IP, and yeah, it needs a strong IP to have a fighting chance. If you are into TCGs and you’ve selected that in a few days, weeks, or maybe already, then please feel free to write in the comments how it went for you.
Maybe even when one or two sets are out , I’d be interested to know what the general feeling is from the community. So, then we played Wolfsmond, a quick sip to oil the voice. Palm and Lukas Zach. I love both of them, they are great, wonderful people. Always nice conversations with them. I used to think their games weren't really my thing. Let's put it that way. I was completely turned off by all of it, like dwarves and stuff, I really can't get into that. That changed, even though I discovered it very late, through Aventuria and then, of course, through stories like Dorfromantik, which is absolutely divine. Even the new version. There's a lot going on here. Um, with the South Seas, it's magnificent. I hope to be able to play through it before Spiel, and of course, tomorrow, I think starting tomorrow at 6 PM or 8 PM the promo card will be officially revealed, then I'll hold it up to the camera. Um, but yeah, Boss Fighters QR is also great. I'm also really looking forward to being able to play the expansion again. Now the two of them have also joined the ranks of authors who have made a "Love" variant, and I’ve already done a bit about Wolfsmond and shared a bit about it too . Um, I played it with a friend from the Spieleburg who comes from that area and still knows them, and she said, " Wow, you already played it? That's great." So, yeah, I was totally turned off, and she just said, "What is wrong with you?" And I, it was unfortunately just packed up at the Spieleburg, but it was just game night on Thursday.
Last week, when I got back at 6:30, I said: "So, here it is, let's play this today." Because I always want to play things I don't find that great with people who absolutely love them. And we played it in a group where it was generally well-received. That's what you do in the game Love Letter, you know it. You have one card in your hand , you draw a card, you play one of your two cards, do what it says and that's it. If you kick someone out with your card effect, that's good. If you are the last person in the round, you win and get a heart, and when you have collected three hearts, you have won. If all cards have been played, all 18 that are in the standard Love Letter, then the round is over. Then you look at who has the highest card in their hand, they have won. The Princess is the highest card. Super great. I keep it the whole time, of course, but if an effect forces me to discard it, right? Because I have to play the card, I have automatically lost the round. That is the basic concept of Love Letter; there are many other cards that have other effects. And this one does something similar, only it takes much more preparation. That still annoys me a little bit. A game that's okay, and I was also laughed at quite a bit: "Look, it's super simple and all," and I said: "But didn't we just, shouldn't we have taken out three more cards?" Oh, that's right. So you, you always have to lay out one card per player first, then you have to divide the card deck into thirds. Before that, you have to pick out the moon card, the new moon card, the "whatever" card, and the werewolves . And then you have to divide the piles into thirds, mix the full moon card into the last pile, put the "now comes" pre-moon card on it, then take the second deck, put that on top, then place the "werewolves among you" card on it, then take the first deck, mix in the werewolves, put that on top too, then the three cards are placed in the
middle, and then you get your cards. It's not rocket science. It takes two to three minutes to get that done. But it also takes about two or three minutes to deal the cards and just play another round, and yeah, then the question is, what makes this game so special? Well, we have, a, the Werewolf is always in the first third of the cards. None of us can have it, if we've set it up correctly. But we know that once about a third of the deck is gone and the Full Moon card appears, or the card says, "Ooh, the full moon is near, the Werewolf is among you," we know someone has the Werewolf in their hand. That's why we also have a way to get rid of it. I can, I might have three cards lying in the middle, you can see that there in the top left or top center. Um, instead of drawing a card, I can trigger the effect and say, I'll take the card and lay one in the middle , just swapping them out. I don't know what I'm getting, but I simply have a different card in my hand. With that, I can of course bluff, so they think, "Ha , Ben just got the Werewolf and now he's discarding it and now it's in the middle." I always said I want to see it once; there's a card in the last third that simply says if you have the Werewolf in your hand and this card is revealed, you win. I've played it a few times, and I've never seen it. Of course, in the game with Alice, ha, I managed it. Here I have it in my hand.
That was pretty epic, because normally you want to get rid of it, if you can't get rid of the Werewolf, because it also has this Princess effect; if I have it in my hand and I have to play it, have to discard it, I simply lose. Then it was always lost beforehand because of that. The person was kicked out. It actually worked out once, in I don't know how many games I played, a few, and otherwise, here you see, for example, the Spies. There is also, for example, the one that says I can guess someone, "I guess you have a three," and if you have a three, you're out. Here's the Spy: If I have it in my hand and someone plays this Guard and says, "I'll guess for you, you surely have the three," and I say, "Nope, I don't, but I have the seven.""B, you're out now," because, well, the card says: If I have it in my hand and I'm guessed— well, not if the seven is guessed—the person who speaks is out. F, of course, also implies that you actually always have to guess the seven. The question is whether you want to, whether you always remember to. And the cards just have all sorts of effects, naturally, which are also interestingly different than in Love Letter, where I can sometimes take cards back from someone else, where I—there's all sorts of things—where I can discard a card again to take another turn, and so on.
But it is and remains just a Love Letter variant that is a bit more complicated. Whether it's necessarily better because of that, I don't know, but in any case, more interesting things can definitely happen than in a normal Love Letter. So, if you were to lay the two side-by-side, Love Letter is probably the simpler, more beginner-friendly game. However, if you've played a lot, Love Letter might wear out sooner than it would with Wolfsmond. That's why it could very well be the more interesting, exciting game, but sometimes it's the simplicity of a certain game system that makes a game so good and so special. And time will simply tell what comes of it— well, Love Letter will prevail anyway, as it's the older, much better-known game—but whether this will have standing alongside it or whether it will just disappear like many other Love Letter games and no one will talk about it in two years, if you get the whole thing, and some people will get it, right? Pegasus, the two authors, some people will just put it in their bag without asking and say, "Oh, we're for Love Letter, totally cool combo."
Feel free to write a comment under the video on how you found it. That would definitely interest me very, very much. And yes, regarding the Love Letter variant K-Pop Demon Hunters, I've already somehow—I actually already talked about it, but we played it again at game night. It doesn't say it anywhere, but wait, there in the middle , it's also a Love Letter game, right? Seiji Kanai, you know right away, he makes Love Letter, right? It's based on this, somehow. I have—well, I saw the artwork for K-Pop Demon Hunters in the game for the first time, somehow a girl and boy band battling each other, and one group are demons, they have, somehow, demon hunters. Maybe I'll look into that sometime. But even what I've seen in the game now, that doesn't mean Benjamin should watch it. But feel free to write comments: whether you say you really like it, or if you say your kids would like it more, then you have to have time for that. Um, the special thing about this Love Letter variant, and I only noticed this after playing it multiple times, we also played it with five, so the maximum number of players, is that no one gets eliminated , and I haven't seen that in many Love Letter variants. It's actually a team game. You play in teams, there's this microphone marker in the middle, and certain card effects that would normally kick people out just say here: "Move the microphone 1 to 3 steps in your direction." Should the round end normally because all the cards are gone , you check where the mic is. Is it on 1, 2, 3 on my side, or 1, 2, 3 on the
other team's side? Then you get that many cheer markers. If you have five cheer markers or more, you have won the game. Period. Or if you manage during the round, through card effects, for the microphone to effectively leave the field because it would slide past the three, then you get three cheer markers and have won the round. So it usually doesn't take that many rounds, and yes, here I would say that Wolfmoon definitely has the more exciting card effects. Here, too, because there are naturally two teams, here is team so and so, there are simply two eights, two highest cards. There is a backstage card, so a card that is just out and where you can also swap cards, and I really thought the card synergies were great. I thought it was great that no one gets eliminated. That is, I think, what I liked most about the game, the artwork, I really love that. This thing with getting the three microphones. Yes , so if I had the choice now of which of these Love Letter variants I would want to play, then I would probably-I am the Ben says it's really good. Okay, that you are a Cape of Dem Hunters fan, I have to look at that. Yes, but that's there too. And if you also say perhaps you have kids who find this totally great and who otherwise don't play at all, maybe you can get them with this.
That can definitely be possible. And then just a quick note again, no, not a note, I already had a note. I have a thumbnail, I have to write something so that people click on it, and it shouldn't be too clickbaity. That's why I just wrote Game 26, my hype title unfortunately flopped, and that brings us to Fragments. That flopped so hard. It already flopped back then in the demo version that I played and streamed . You can watch that if you don't want to be spoiled at all. And I took photos here from the demo version, so you won't be spoiled for this game either. I will try to do everything so that you can still play it, but you don't need to worry about spoilers, because I've —so what is Fragments? That's a puzzle for later. Fragments is essentially a kind of adventure puzzle game. It's right here, you know? As you can see from the screenshot from my video where I played the demo version of the greenhouse. You have pieces that have puzzle elements, and you can put them together, and it's a bit like a point-and-click adventure, you know?
Watering can under the tap, then the watering can is full, turn the watering can over, connect the watering can to the flower, turn the flower over, flower grown, flower great, feed the flower to the hamster, hamster happy, mission accomplished. That's roughly the level we're at here. And then we have the instructions here that explain all these symbols, which I also didn't find that great in the demo game. I had a lot of questions and question marks left over about when I can flip what and how, and when something counts as connected. Everything is in there, but questions still arise, and we have a small storybook—um, where I've said this is all from the demo case, no spoilers for the real game—and um, you can always see these symbols here on the side. Whenever I see this symbol in the game, I'm allowed to read the corresponding story entry, and this story entry usually tells me which fragment or which die-cut piece, which punch-out sheet I can pull from this pack, from which I can then punch out the parts without turning them over.
And then I have them and have to think about what I'm going to do with them. And sometimes it can also be that I make progress just by looking, you know , combining, how do I lay this out so that it makes sense. But sometimes I really have to pay attention to the story, what the story tells me, because that can also help me with it. Sometimes the mechanic where you can flip the map tiles is used quite nicely , especially in the big game. But what was actually really annoying? I played it with Mario; we played as a pair. Marius, a father of two children, I think 6 and 9 or 7, something around that age. And um the story was roughly on the level of—if I were to abstract it— "here is the manor house, it's fenced in so nicely, and I miss my dog.
""Oh, I hear my dog squeaking.""It sounds like he’s trapped in a drainpipe behind this wall, and I have to get in there somehow." And that was it. That’s the level we’re on. It doesn’t become anything more than that. And then we have tons of characters. I have Schupti Wupti here, and Huptiupti, and Tumtiumpi, and Humpi Flumpi, and Tumpi Flumpi said that Humti and Wumtium did something, and you always have to go back to Flumtium, and wait, who was that again? So many names keep popping up where you just say, who was what again, where do I have to go now, and who do I have to interact with? It was like what my math teacher always said about his math problems: read, solve, process. So, maybe you’ve played Star Wars Unlock before. There, it was also the case that the puzzle was on one card and the solution was practically right next to it. And it's the same thing here. For the vast majority of things, while I was reading the text aloud, Mario was already puzzling and laying things out, just looking to see where the tabs fit together. Okay, zap, done. Every now and then you have to combine things a bit, think. There was one big mission that was basically our challenge that we had to do. That one took us some time. Even there, we failed at the same thing we failed at in the Exit game, namely that we simply didn't flip a piece over where the solution was hidden. That happened in this game, which lasted just over an hour. The only moment where it got somewhat interesting—and I didn't even think that was well done, apart from the fact that we didn't flip it, but also how it was...well, it wasn't bad, let's put it that way, but not something where you'd
say, "Wow, really good." And I had a bit of hope here that it would be a bit like Behind meets Unlock, and it wasn't . The story wasn't good, and this was supposed to be the big little game. The riddles, the puzzles, weren't exciting or interesting. Overall, it was just a flop for me, and Mario felt the same way, as I said, it’s like we’re reading an interactive story where we read a bit, do a little something, read on, do a little something, story over. Maybe good with children, and of course children are all different. Mario said no, because for one, it’s not exciting what you do there. B, uh, all those names, well maybe children know every detail better than we do, and, uh , it's a shame, because I love Beyond, I love the Unlock series, I had hoped this would be a best of both worlds.
It’s not. I'm curious to see if I get some mail from Pegasus this week. I hope the big box is in there. I think it’s coming out for the Spiel fair. That means maybe I can get my hands on it after the Spiel, maybe Pegasus will send it to me. I still want to try it out, but I definitely wouldn't buy it myself. Where I would say about an Unlock Game Adventures, I'll buy that immediately, and I've simply bought many Unbox games over the last years. I don't want to spend money on that. But I hope, of course, that I can play it, because there is this big box with I think five cases, and I can just sit here and tell you, guys, the demo case, that was nothing. That case didn't go over so well with us either, but in the big box there are five cases. One, hm, two so-so and two really good ones, then that would be something, which is also always subjective. It could look completely different for you. It could look completely different for you because it’s exactly your thing, but I have the hope, you can’t just play through it so easily. It's not super exhausting or anything, unlike "Vor Gericht," which I also have here and which is an absolute hype for the fair for me, but I haven't gotten it to the table yet because I haven't had the group or the time for it. But this Fragments unfortunately completely flopped for us. Of course, many people will still be curious. I had that with me at the castle last week too, where someone said, "Yeah, super hype, I definitely want that," and I thought, " Ah, I would have liked to have given it to a colleague from the castle," because he likes things like that and I would have just been interested in his opinion. How does it go over with him?
Does he have the same experience, or does he say, "Ben, what is wrong with you?" That was a blast. Even if he had played it alone, or maybe in a group, his feedback would have really interested me a lot. Unfortunately, he's stressed with exams right now, so it's not working out, and it probably won't happen before the fair either, but I am very curious about other opinions. Some bloggers who were there, or press people who were at the Pegasus press day, also caught it. Accordingly, you will surely see other opinions on it somewhere. Unfortunately, I don't follow everything, and as I said, I have very little time for it right now, but if you see a description or review somewhere, feel free to link it to me; I'd love to see what kind of content other people have made. And Fragments, as I said, 60 to 75 minutes, I think; that went relatively quickly, and if we had turned over all the pieces we were allowed to turn, it would have definitely been an hour or less. Yes, that, um, you have to puzzle there.
Accordingly, already seen earlier. Feel free to put a puzzle emoji in the comments if you've watched up to here. Yes, one hour 11, that's actually okay. I'll just check every now and then. Um, if someone should ever, uh, become a Patron during the stream, if I see it, then there will also be a Hallelujah. So, uh, no, feel free to drop by there. As I said, feel free to write the emoji in the comments. I have asked 1,000 other questions in between. I'm also very happy to answer those. That is always very exciting for me. It is very exciting for everyone watching this video later. And those were ten games now. Took an hour, so 5 to 6 minutes per video. There was a bit of preamble, too. I think I still have 20 games that I need to talk about and for which I won't manage to make a video for each one. That's why there will probably be a "zockt" stream tomorrow. There will be a "zockt" stream on Sunday, probably Monday too, until I'm through with them . And by then, I'll be playing new games again. So, it's just not stopping right now. Feel free to check that out as well. I always love hearing from you . I'm happy that so many of you are watching. Go ahead and leave a comment, everyone who is here. Just write what you were doing while watching this video, or anything really. Let me know, it's always great when I get a bit of feedback from you, and we'll be playing tonight. I'm not at the game castle because game night is canceled there.
That means we'll be staying here for now. Maybe we'll move to the game castle later, but I suspect we'll be playing a GOD game. And I've got Take Time now; I don't even own Take Time myself, even though I feel like I've played it 500 times. I brought it with me, we'll definitely play it today, and then I'll be able to report back to you on it. I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you so much for watching. That's it from me. Take care. Until—I want to keep going, but I have to stop. Take care. See you soon. Bye.