What We Played: February 2025

0:00 hi everyone I'm tally this is farell and we're bard of it and today we're reprising a bit of an old series that we used to do called what we played this time we're going to focus on what we've been playing in the last few weeks just to give a bit of a highlight some games we've been enjoying exactly I think it's just that there are a few smaller games we want to give a shout out to there are some games we didn't enjoy that we want to talk about that we're not going to cover in a review format and then there are some games which have full of reviews to come so we've got a nice spread and also hopefully these videos usually do reasonably well and I think another part is as we've said in a few videos now uh the Youtube algorithm has changed and we not our friend no we're it's not a lot of people's friends uh so we're really struggling it's just it's the videos aren't being pushed anyone compared to what they were in you know January and before that so we're hoping that if a few people see these some of these games have already covered uh they just get a little more attention because we think think they're great games but first I think we'll start at the end with probably the heaviest game that we'll cover and that will be salt on

1:14 SE salt on SE is a heavy Euro in the small box it's got our favorite theme which is uh energy production love it and just before we get into anything this was a review copy by the publisher and we will be giving a full review uh in the coming weeks so it's essentially a work placement game but also a kind of action card game yeah so one of the core gimmicks that you'll probably have heard about if you have heard about this game is that you basically your money is cards with actions on them and when you pay for actions you have to spend those cards EG money so you're kind of constantly torn between basically improved action from what's on your player board uh vers being able to AFF to do anything essentially uh and yeah it's kind of a really crunchy game in small block it takes like two hours to play even at two player and what do you think yeah absolutely loving it like you said Dry energy Euros are our absolute favorite if you've got like a lovely production like this chef's kiss exactly what I particularly like about this that it is in this small box so it's pretty easy to get out at actually and put away say compared to some other yeah I think in terms ofo well storage is great I think the setup is it's not the worst but I think cuz there's a lot of cards with like two types it's it's a little bit trickier I suppose I don't it's the wor about it but this is more compact

2:45 basically because usually obviously big Euros come in these big boxes big production so I think that's really nice uh you still need a bit of table space but you could still kind of a bit more easily transport this which you can't usually say for any other Euro games but even with the gameplay like you say it's very crunchy the fact that you have to give away your money in order to do actions or vice versa every decision is pretty tricky I think there's been times when we're both like I don't know what to do yeah but what I will also say is we got to grits with this incredibly well and very easily so if you're used to these kind of Euros I mean it has complexity in the way that you play it and the way that you treat your actions but it just has a low barrier to access I would say yeah so this is actually going to be exactly what I was going to say and that if you're someone who's looking to move up to a heavy game I actually think this is almost a perfect heavy Gateway game because like you say there's actually when you go to teach it like I went to teach it to you there is a lot of different actions and it kind of sounds scary that there's like 12 13 different actions but actually they're all incredibly straightforward and like you said in our second game we never once had to check the rules for how these actions worked um only really kind of symbology on some of the cards which I think we're very quickly get to grips with as well 100% uh and that's something that really impressed me it's just a very slick I think design very

4:18 slick kind of graphical yeah uh annotation I think what I like as well is I mean we've played only a couple of games and more to play but I've never felt like locked out of things um you can always get a bit more money it just might not be as efficient but I feel like it's almost less brutal than some other games that you can easily get yourself out of a bad situation yeah I think I'm not yeah I think in the way that you can like in like sarage you can just be like done over and be like stuck because of like maybe the actions or the situation you're in whereas here I kind of agree but I do think it has a really brutal economy because like it it can be quite hard to get money particularly Because unless you have an upgraded card you can only sell like once per round uh I just think the way that things Interlink has always meant that I've been able to get myself out in various ways so for example you could um yeah without getting too much into details of the game like get one of the um cars with the resources on it like the Brine and then if you drill that out and extract it you can flip that and get some points and potentially a bonus there which can then get you something else just a way that the actions kind of Interlink and Cascade there's kind of different ways of getting money or doing whatever you need to do it's not always has has to be kind of down like a linear

5:48 route yeah um I think what I also really like is the turns for the most part are super Snappy exactly there were some instances where we were like yep done done this back back back back and actually barely had time to think about my next term before you threw it back to me which can't be said of many EUR of course this might be kind of personal uh how much people I do think it goes back to the actions being there being a lot of them but them all being so simple that that's like why it's so quick some of them are just like two seconds and done yeah so I think let's leave it there get to the other games because we'll be reviewing this properly but obviously uh two plays or so very initial positive thoughts and let's go to the next

6:35 game next up we're going to discuss our current RPG which is the wild sea so as you may know from some of our reviews in the kind of past couple of months we've been turning a bit more into RPGs uh and yeah currently we're doing a campaign of the wild sea and this was provided to us by the publisher for review so another game we'll be having a full review of at some point probably just another session or two I think uh and then we'll write it up but what what do you well actually before maybe what what you think so it's quite an interesting theme it's kind of postapocalyptic in the way where kind of vercy and overgrowth uh like Mass kind of mutation and growth of plants has overtaken the world so basically you're Sailors but you sail on the Treetops of these kind of you know uh Mile High trees maybe not that high but you know you get the idea in a kind of fantasy-esque world uh your character is a living Cactus person correct Spike spike yeah classic so yeah what do you think of the Wy then yeah I'm enjoying it I definitely think the World building is very strong here as someone that has no imagination yeah yeah great that's me um maybe that's just like down to you and how you uh describe the stories maybe it's more kudos to you or it's quite extensive right yeah so I just find it kind of

8:07 immersive in that way and I can really imagine the kind of scenarios that you are speaking about and the types of characters that you come across because like you say they are a bit Fantastical like we come across some pin wolves that had little spiky legs stil legs yeah yeah I could just really imagine them um which is more than can be said for some other kind of games like this for me it's not fantasy kind of is not typically my favorite genre um but yeah definitely enjoying it maybe it's uh I think slow is a bit the wrong word I feel like we're not getting to like it's action-packed but I feel like we're not moving the story on forward so much but maybe that's just again like group dependent yeah I think the way it's gone we kind of did the free uh opening scenario and now I've completed that and I think we'll lean a bit more into some character arcs I think some character goals and drives so it's going to be a bit more free form I think part of the the struggle maybe why it's so slow is that I think not that it should but likely it's only expected to take maybe like one session maybe you know to go through that and it took us like two or three yeah I think um to to get through uh so now it's a bit more free form or it's going to be in that whatever you do is is like what you want to do it's not on Rails anymore it's like a real

9:38 campaign if that makes sense with like a loose background um so I'm looking forward to seeing what happens but I actually have yeah I think I've grown into this RPG uh I really enjoy you know the kind of cool book itself and all the World building gives and the characters and the characterization I think there's a lot of interesting elements and actually it kind of seems daunting but it's actually relatively smooth to run in some ways I mean the core system of like just you could say uh kind of bullshitting for lack of a better word uh like what skills you're using yeah and then using that to justify rolling Dice and then the more kind of of your skills you can use in situation the more dicey rooll and it's a simple like six-sided die and then you know kind of four or five is success with the drawback six is a success and you know one two three fail I think it's quite a simple system that everyone's like gone on board with very quickly yeah and I think like also the bartering system it sounds quite like oh I'm not sure how that's going to work of like everything's kind of bartter Base but actually works quite well um so yeah so I think there's a lot to like and I look forward to yeah exploring it a bit more off the rails now I'm looking forward to using kind of the character that I created it was quite extensive to create that character and think about all of the nuances of them and I just feel like at the moment I haven't got to use it so much so I think I look forward to doing that bit more yeah like um kind of

11:13 teaser that you'll be on the hunt for your nephew's phito in the future exactly that's what I want that's my motivation exactly so that was the wildy and we'll go to our next game we're back with game three we're fortified with te and we have Megan behind us uh giving us support So this game is uh Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring the trick-taking game and this game is well on its way to being one of my favorite games of the year and probably one of our most played of the Year I'll expect by the time we finish the campaign yeah um so this is a trick-taking game kind of themed around the first Lord of the Rings book and it is very similar to the crew and that it's cooperative and you're trying to complete missions by achieving certain goals so in this one you have characters from the books and each one has a certain goal to achieve and kind of everyone around the table needs to achieve the goal in their character and you play little scenarios and sometimes it might even be restrictions but I I mean we're not like well we going to say this and then we're going to like cover more trick takers in this video and be really positive about them but we're not that big on trick takers uh historically and I just really surprised I really enjoy this we're also

12:44 not big on Cooperative games and I think there's just something really soothing about it in the terms of like the beautiful artwork and production the puzzle uh The Cooperative nature I just I really enjoy it yeah I don't know if it's for me like that I'm not big on trick takers i' everyone I've played I've liked yeah I think but just maybe it doesn't make up a kind of big part of our collection or it's not something that we're playing all the time but yeah just echo in what you said um I think it's more the we're not big on Cooperative Games part that's bigger for me but this does keep us coming back I think it's um really nice balance of you need to achieve your own goal and you pick your character based on the hand that you have so you have you know this autonomy over that but at the same time it is cooperative you can't complete your goal without your teammates kind of helping you basically everyone needs to work together to achieve it so I just think that strikes a really nice balance and the yeah the character goals are what keeps it kind of interesting because yeah the fact that you can choose that based on what what you have in your hand to try and like match the goal yeah um um yeah i' really been enjoying it yeah I just think it's just a really neat little box and there's not a lot more to say and what's interesting we've mainly been playing a two player so you kind of have like a fake third player to take cards from and deal with

14:17 uh and it works exceptionally well and I think that hasn't obviously dampened our enthusiasm but since our review which I recommend you go to check out when if you want a more kind of structured uh in-depth discussion about what we like about it uh we were also provided this uh for review by the publisher we' have since played it with multiple people uh full four and really enjoyed that might might be the preferred way to play but I think it's very close I'm not so bothered either way I don't know if you have thoughts I totally agree I actually thought it would be really difficult with for people actually obviously because you know you need to mind control more players to play the right thing but I actually didn't find it that much more difficult um yeah just adds a little bit more of a puzzle to it since obviously there's more people there that you kind of don't know what they're going to do or play but yeah didn't increase the difficulty no so I'm looking forward to playing this more I think we'll play it more with them again later this week and this is actually I think the best thing and thing I think the thing I'll end on is this is a game that we reviewed and I keep wanting to get it out and play it because I want to see the campaign through to the end and usually not because we don't want to but we just move on to whatever's next on the docket so to speak uh and this has been like an active effort to keep getting it out and keep playing it which

15:50 I think is really high bar of approval from reviewers you could say when we've got like things to get through yeah I mean the play time is pretty quick right and obviously you can choose to do as many uh chap chapters you call it right as you want you could just say let's just do a quick chapter or spend a bit more time on it so I think that's makes it easier to get out as well all right well I think we've had one trick taking game so now let's go to another one wow Skull King what can I say I knew I knew you're going to do that and I I was hoping in my head that you would do that so this is a game that we've been lowkey obsessed with ever since we took it on holiday um played it with the family yeah so just to cut in the back story is that got offered it to review uh so this is a review copy from the publisher and I was like yeah I mean we're going on Hol day it's like a little card game sounds all right let's take it now you can continue it was not all right it was absolutely fantastic um yeah yeah so it's fair play fair play it's trick taking with a Twist and that twist is that you basically need to make a bid for the number of tricks that you think you're going to win in a round there's 10 Rounds obviously that gets progressively harder to to bid how many you think you're going to win so you get to yeah take a look at your hand and make a bid say

17:21 yeah okay I think I'm going to win three tricks in this round and that is the basically the only way that you can kind of get uh the main way of getting points sorry you have to get that bid exactly right if you bid wrong even byy one number then not good uh yeah there's a few other ways of getting some bonus points but that's the main Crux of it um you can do a big gamble where you can actually bid zero that you will win absolutely nothing you can also score really big from that so or lose points really big or exactly so yeah we really love it because it's a roller coaster basically you can be on those High highs in the beginning because you beard the number right for a few rounds and then you start getting it wrong negative yeah exactly all vice versa all vice versa yeah exactly it's all all to play for even if you're not doing too well at the beginning so yeah it's very exciting game it keeps you engaged throughout and uh yeah we've just been really loving it as kind of quick game portable game take on holiday yeah so I think this is a game that's now achieved kind of legendary status with uh certain members of our family just because of the time spend on H day playing it and the highs and the lows uh my sister and her boyfriend particularly like bidding zero because you're basically playing to lose uh and you know the highs are high the lows are low so they really like that kind of gambling like tight nature of

18:51 like desperately trying not to win anything um so there's just a lot of fun to be had uh and basically the reason it's so fun is because it is just gambling but with like minimal Stakes on the line except for within the game yeah uh and yeah the reason we're going to talk about it now is just that we recently had a review of it so please go check that out it's a lot of fun and we have a guest reviewer show up in there definitely worth watching but we also showed it to your friend so you had a friend sa with us last weekend who is very into card games so we kind of showed her a range and this seemed like her favorite I don't know if she said but just um it's it's just been a game that we' introduced people and people have had so much fun playing it and like cackled and like the highs and the lows and the like groans and the cheers so 100% yeah I think she'll probably get herself a copy and she'll send it to also make a really nice present which I really agree with it's like pretty cheap as well you can get a hold of a copy pretty cheap so it's definitely worth picking up and adding to your collection of these kind of lighter just more fun silly games yeah I think the only thing to add from our review is when we played it with three it was still fun but I do think this will shine the more players you play with I do think four had a little bit more and I don't know if that's just because there's more variability and also more people fighting because I

20:23 think what tended to happen is at least in the games we played at three players two people be fighting it out usually with like one in the lead and then someone will be like down the bomb somewhere whereas I think with four players there's like more going on and like higher yeah CU this goes up to uh eight players so uh yeah I just really um I would love to get this out like maybe with the entire family play like six player game or something see how that goes that would be super fun but yeah if you're looking for a little kind of card game to play with like family or the pub game I cannot recommend skullking enough it is

21:06 terrific okay so next up we have Thunder Road Vendetta which we played um before when we got it and I personally really enjoy it I think it was on my number six of the year of the year that it came out but we got it back out again to play with some friends recently and I think it went down pretty well and this is a racing game kind of Mad Max style right kind of bit Fast and Furious everything's bit crazy everything's getting blown up exactly crashing dying yeah yeah the get the idea is to eliminate the other players completely so their cars come off the track it's dice driven and you just basically roll dice and then you can move that number of spaces and you assign one dice per vehicle because you have three and then you can add some other powers on basically but yeah it's all about trying to kind of Crash and slam and drift um yeah crashing into the other players in the hopes to run them off the road and then that's how triggers the end of the game when one player gets completely eliminated and no cars left yeah so like you said we used to just have the base game and then we ended up in the latest Kickstarter getting the maximum Chrome Edition and the new expansion Carnival of chaos which we haven't tried yet but um just because you were a particular fan and also I think we would like to do buyers guide uh in the future of everything in here once we get through it but yeah so we have a new gaming group of some green horns who haven't

22:37 played so many games uh and we've been introducing them to some kind of zany fun ones like this you know we had Lords of Vegas and then we went into Thunder Road U we've had a really good time and we've tried out some of the expansions which we hadn't before so mainly so you call it choppy shoppy yeah exactly yeah that's really great and uh yeah that gives you're basically each car a special power and also you a leader so you kind of have another special power makes things more asymmetrical and I think that's a lot of fun and quite interesting uh it kind of adds like a little bit more decision into what cars you're moving and doing with what y um I think with those cards specifically I think what I personally really enjoy I find this very thematic in the way that it's like designed and it's just kind of chaos Vibes and you really feel you're in this Mad Dash across the desert with the kind of the the additional cards which give the cards yeah which give the cars those Powers I find it incredibly kind of smart how well they tie into things are about cars yeah so it would be like okay you have extra like armor around the car or and then that will really tie into like how that car has a different power so uh if someone crashes into you then they they won't do you any damage or something like this I think they're very very like I enjoy like reading them in a way if that makes sense because I just think they're really smart yeah I think another thing I really enjoyed trying out uh the other expansion I

24:09 can't remember what it's called now but it's the one that adds kind of new tiles for everything so new road tiles and new hazards um and also new uh damage so that kind of just expands what could happen a lot further it gives you more kind of tracks to race on and I I really enjoyed the kind of Greater variety uh you never know kind of what you're going to get and it's led to some really great moments like uh uh it was me and one other player head-to-head last two in the game and she went over a hazard and then it was a pit trap which is a new one and then basically a pit trap you roll the damage die and if it matches the car that's on it it like dies uh and she had a small car so very low chance of getting that and then she rolled a small and that left me as the only player you know it's like very dramatic end to to the race and a lot of fun um and yeah just really enjoyed the variety adds in as well so now I'm looking forward to trying out the other expansions and see what they had it's very tactile as well you know the little model cars like they're really well done you have a chopper that you can use to people as well and kind of the helicopter spinning and I just really like to touch all of the pieces yeah and then the dice are nice and chunky as well just yeah really like excellent production I think the biggest negative is the kind of unpredictability of how

25:40 long game can go on yeah I think that's the only negative i' would say about it uh you know putting aside you know what you're getting going in is a game of kind of luck and ziness yeah um you know three games we've played with these friends and I think the first one was kind of like an average one second one was like really high octane yeah well that was kind of awesome cuz I I flipped an earthquake and so it moved like everyone's cars in One Direction it cut out about like three or four cars so that kind of spread things up as well but that was like very zany and like sharp and quick and explosive and then the last game we played with them that was like 90 minutes and I wouldn't say not a lot happened but it was just like very slow of people getting out which is kind of the final trigger to end the game uh and it dragged on a little bit because you want it to be short and sharp basically because there is a lot of luck so that's that's the one negative um but I think something we are looking forward to exploring more and talking about more now we come to our rolling right of this video which is Mill Meadows and this is a game that was not provided for review uh but was given to us by the publisher just because we had previously uh reviewed a game long long time ago um called Zuli and that game was actually

27:12 picked up by win uh the publisher oink and they turned it into I think it's called moving wild and shell up and sit down talked about it on the podcast and it was quite funny because a lot of people uh who' played Zuli had heard that and they thought someone stolen his idea because it's a different name uh including me so I just wrote to him and then I kind of said like I figured it out but then I said congratulations you know getting praise from sh and sit down it's a big achievement anyway so he sent us just his second game to to try out um but yeah no uh review coming basically so we played it and it's just a little roll and right um fliping right really where you're kind of flipping Tetris cards over and you're a mole and you're trying to kind of tun your way around uh the the kind of mat you have in front of you by drawing kind of Tetris grids um and yeah you're just trying to kind of gather treasure and complete objectives yeah uh it's just a very light little rolling right but I think one that we enjoyed the puzzle of yeah definitely it's actually it is actually quite challenging even though it sounds simple because the tetris shapes can only share a side always have to connect them exactly but they can only share one side and if you're trying to use them to kind of tunnel and gather treasure can actually be very challenging yeah because there's some obstacles that you want to avoid um some will give you

28:43 negative points if you go over too many some are rocks which you just can't interact with so yeah this this restriction does make it quite tricky um I think essentially what we thought was uh we definitely enjoyed it as a fliping right I think we enjoyed the puzzle it's one of those you know it's just nice to sit there for 20 minutes and do it with a tea and kind of what you're getting out of it is is a fair amount for yeah uh you know the the kind of low rules overhead um so it's a lot of fun I think it's a very good game for maybe people who kind of want to play something like this with their children uh or family I think think obviously that's also a little bit what the theming is going towards it's very like family friendly and kind of colorful yeah um because I think if you played a lot of rle Rights it's more on the simple side except for that kind of decision space in the middle uh I think to be honest our biggest negatives are probably that um the kind of objectives that you have two of every round they're kind of like quite easy to max out if you're you know experienc so that's probably better for maybe lighter Gamers um and on top of that there's only one map and I think having more maps would have been kind of better for replayability uh because you can kind of do a lot um in one game but just really enjoyed the puzzle to be honest uh just

30:14 nice peaceful time yeah there's some other kind of always on objectives right about you have to connect up one side of the river to the other and then there's some variable ones I think the variable ones yeah they they were quite easy to ma out but to be fair I still then struggle to collect treasure which you can do or connect up the kind of Daisy chains or the rivers so yeah I think it depends what you want to go for but there are some challenging elements to it but it's not like it's so challenging that like you say you couldn't play it with children basically yeah so if you're looking for something like that then i' recommend it it's very cute very cozy and yeah can't go wrong for a little roll and right really flip and right exactly here we have Brian baru and this is a game that if I made a list of most underrated games I would have it very high at the top of that list I should do that think I the only thing is I don't know how long I can make that list to be honest and then also it's a very tricky list because you always get people arguing with you about whether something's underwriting yeah 100% true true true um but I do think this is very underrated I think I haven't heard anyone talk about it like literally since it came out basically um what it is if you don't know it's essentially a trick-taking game uh kind of with yeah another one

31:46 that's true with uh an area control element to it so you're trying to become the high king of Ireland and in a round everyone's going to play a card kind of forming standard trick taking rules um and whoever plays the highest card of the lead suit will kind of claim a piece of territory and having kind of the the majority in a territory will give you points for that territory or having uh control in a lot of different territories gives you points and then there's kind of also some other little kind of tracks and mini games that go on beside it that you can play into and that is because one of the great things about this game is whenever you play a card you get something so if you play if you win the trick you get the territory if you don't win the trick which is pretty much everyone except for one player you get what's on the bottom of the card and often you'll have a choice between two options but they generally play into these mini games such as fighting off Vikings or getting married and it's just I think a terrific Gateway game I've introduced it to a lot of people as a Gateway game and we we played it with your friend recently um and it was uh her favorite game of the night I believe she said and that was compared to games like QE and Zu vadis uh which kind of speaks to how highly some people can rate it and I just think it's a lot of fun to teach as well because you kind of it's very Visual and

33:17 impactful where it's like this is the marriage track you're going to marry this lovely person if you get to the top of it over here you become very Pious over here you fight off the Vikings uh and I've always seen people have a lot of fun with it yeah definitely agree um when we played it the other day I was thinking we need to play it more often I was thinking about more people that I'd like to introduce it to now actually and um the people that we're playing with you know like board games as much as the average person they're by no means Gamers and yeah they got into it like pretty easily I think in the beginning they were a bit like seems a bit scary but l once you just start putting some card Downs first few kind of tricks super easy you don't necessarily know what the implications are but like you said the beauty of it is that you will still get something so it's not like players get blocked out if you if they don't really understand what they're kind of trying to achieve in that first few rounds and then it only takes yeah a few plays and then they're completely understanding what they need to do and where they need to go so I think yeah it is this fact that everyone always gets something because for you you know that's why I say Gateway because there is there's more strategy there than just you know you kind of you say average Gateway game but I think it's that because you're always getting something it's always positive experience you know and actually a lot of times you're playing to get that stuff you're not playing to win the territory yeah so there's also generally not a lot of bad feelings uh except for kind of more rare

34:50 occasions where you really fighting over something and they kind of outdo you um but yeah so I mean Brian buru uh terrific production um definitely I think terrific art and terrific gameplay I just really enjoy showing this to people and I've never kind of shown it to more uh non hobbyist Gamers and then not have a good time you know agree yeah yeah to add with that we'll go to our final game our final game is fractal and you might notice there is no box here and that is because it is tucked away in the basement and I could not be bothered to bring it up which is kind of a illusion to what we think of the game oh yeah okay harsh so frankal was a Kickstarter we backed a few years ago I think it fulfilled in very late 2023 and we kind of had one game and we're a bit like uh and then it's been on the Shelf of Shame for since then so we kind of committed to playing it to you know basically give it the colge try and see because yeah I mean it wasn't uh you know a small cheap Kickstarter it's essentially a 4X game and its promise is that uh kind of 4ex game in an hour is trying to kind of make its niche in in being a quick playing Forex game where

36:22 within like an hour you kind of get a full game compared to you know your eclipse for Twilight Imperium so we also backed the I think beyond the void Edition which has a kind of campaign as well as the base game so we decided to go through the campaign and we we gave it a fair go uh but we tapped out I think maybe six or seven games in yeah I think we just lost the the will to play anymore essentially and it's a bit of a strange one because we had ups and downs where sometimes we've we've had a game that was really kind of you know mechanically interesting and we really enjoyed it and then other games were so apathetic yeah I yeah such a weird one I remember the first game not loving it I was very neutral on it yeah and then when you got it back out and I saw you had it on the table I did get like a little bit of an overwhelming sense of a little bit of dread to play it just because I knew that I felt so neutral on it and just like oh yeah I can't be bothered so much and then I felt a bit bad because those first few games to play the campaign I okay there is a little bit more too than I remembered or it's a bit more interesting and like you say yeah I can play quite quickly and be over quickly and then it just drop back down again uh over time there's just something about it for me which is so flat and I'm struggled to put my finger exactly on what that is I think maybe you do lose

37:53 something that they're trying to make it be over so quick because I feel like you don't even get to build your kind of it's not an engine but you're kind of pulling colonies out to get better powers and more income but before it gets going I feel like it ends and I think that for me comes to down has been a bit satisfying I just sort of think what what's the point in being like motivated to like win it in a way yeah I was thinking about this and I think one of the issues is if you play the normal game so getting out productive colonies gives you money which generally is what you spend to take actions so how you know how many productive colonies you have out is directly linked to how many actions you can take yeah and basically everyone will always start with a productive Colony next to their home planet so pretty much anyone's first move is always going to be I move here I colonize it you know so there's also a little bit of predictability in the map in in how you're going to shake things out but then on top of that you have like the weirdness where some parts of the map are randomized yeah uh and then because it's randomized it can lead to one player having all of like the you say science Colony spaces next to their home planet the other player having none but having all the military spaces next to their home planet cuz it's random yeah so it's like imbalanced and that's like a little bit odd yeah I think what I was

39:24 trying to think about the games that I there were certain scenarios where you have to control certain territ territories to like kind of get objective tokens let just let's just call them and I was trying to think okay but that's kind of similar to when you play undaunted which I love trying to think a bit more about it as a back and forth with tug and more to kind of control these territories and the way that you do that is by kind of yeah getting your colonies out to get better Powers but again like almost by the time I felt like I'd done that maybe you'd already taken them over and then I felt like I couldn't build up enough in order to make it worthwhile and I just think it's not Snappy enough to keep my interest I know it's completely different to undaunted because obviously that's uh deck management and hand hand management and this is I mean what even is it it's kind of like action economy action economy or efficiency yeah that isn't Snappy and interesting enough like to get to that means of getting the objective tokens it needs to be like something quicker in a way that's how I think I feel about it just I think something I thought of as well is we only played it two player and I do feel like it would give a bit more at three or four player but at the same time there is no way it's good enough to essentially be worth getting out a three or four players like for us over

40:56 something else I can't imagine kind of showing that to people with I mean we've already lost enthusiasm for it I think so I think it would be a bit tricky to them be enthusiastic and try to show someone else and yeah spend precious time that we have when we invite people over on playing it I just yeah I think was while to me is I've seen people comment on BGG and be like oh yeah like this is terrific I I sold Eclipse because like I don't need it anymore what so I can have this and I'm like that's I mean obviously there's like per personal preference and maybe you know you're going over the speed of playing but it's just like I think a standard game of fractal it is going to shake out fairly similar whereas I think with Eclipse because of all the Technologies and like the way you can build your ship there's so much variety which is like it's quite strange to me that yeah you know obviously different things they're doing quite different things in in the same space but just very weird to read that I think for me maybe like the faction powers are not kind of interesting or unique enough to would ever make it even near Eclipse obviously well I think there's also an element that a lot of it is kind of they make an attempt but it doesn't quite reach like the same with the faction Powers sometimes they just not you like yeah and then it's the same with the action cards where you can kind of twice per round take these action cards and I think you know there're supposed to be these like very interesting and like enti R ing action

42:27 cards because once you take two you're out of the round but the problem is a lot of times they're very situational or they're just not quite there so then we'll look at the marketplace be like I don't really want any of these which is like a weird thing because they're supposed to be like really powerful and enticing yeah I just think it's it's a lot of a lot of like um so so nearly or not quite and I've seen a lot of people kind of say about you know is there going to be a 2.0 is there going to be like a second edition and yeah I think this game was a little dead on the Rival cuz i' I never heard anyone talk about it when it came up no and the thing is I will say that I think the production is really good it's not just like a Kickstarter someone's like randomly chucked out um I think you know the kind of production the storage the everything theyve put a lot of definitely a lot of effort into this you can tell it just doesn't quite click with us no I mean you were more interested than me maybe again this is totally personal preference cuz I I care less about like narrative and stuff there's this whole book where you were trying to like read to me like the story yeah but because everything's so the same really game to game I was just like you it's story for the sake of story it didn't M it didn't mean anything in terms of the game to me at least even I got this was a campaign even I got a bit tired of it because it was it went like so hard so quickly like there was this massive Universe we're supposed to be aware of

43:59 and sometimes because it's like you won't see everything in the campaign it's like the different choices go different routes to different missions sometimes they're like talking about people I'm like I'm not even sure we've been told who this is or like you know they're like flus are doing this and I'm like I don't it was just really went like really hard rather than keeping it simple and then it was just like you lose interest yeah and then yeah that final mission that did Us in it was also like it's like oh you're you're doing this and then like I look at the board and the objectives I'm like I just don't know how this is translating into what we're doing no no so yeah but I mean yeah so that was fral and sometimes it's a disappointment but what I'm proud of is that we gave it a solid chance we played a fair few games of it and we kind of made our decision then uh I feel like you know wish hadn't backed it but at least we gave it a go yeah um rather than just yeah having played it the once and then eventually selling it right yeah are we experiened some of it because I think we're big Believers in at least giving games multiple tries I think obviously there's different scenario so you know if you show your friend a game they don't like it then don't make them play it three times but if you buy a game I think we're very much against trying it once like yeah we've definitely had a lot of experiences games really unlock when you do get to know them I think would have

45:30 missed out on some excellent games if we didn't give them more fair fair chances played a bit more so no definitely glad that we go I think that's a big part of our kind of ethos I will say I was super relieved after that last game that you were like yeah I think I'm over it and do you know what it was I think there was that point where you got really frustrated with one of the scenarios and then it was when and I was almost ready to also like be like let stop playing like a few games back and then you're like no no let's let's do another one I was like you sure are you sure you're like no let's do another one and then that one was like quite interesting and that kind of picked it up again so it was like yeah that's the problem it was so close sometimes but but yeah so that was fractal uh definitely a disappointment for us uh but you know they're not all winners so that has been uh what we played we hope you enjoyed it uh if you have any questions about any these games let us know and please subscribe if you haven't already if you found it interesting we'd really appreciate it and we'll see you next time bye