Games of the Month VLOG - October 2025

0:00 Hi, my name is Paul Grogan and welcome to my games of the month video log for October 2025. I'm recording this video on Thursday the 30th of October and I hope to get it edited and up there this weekend. If my voice sounds a little bit horseo, this is cuz I got back from Essen earlier this week and it was a crazy busy time like most people there. Very little sleep, lots and lots of talking and lots of people getting ill. Thankfully for me, I was really ill in the couple of weeks before Essen, but I haven't come back with any Conquer like some other people have. So yes, if you think my voice is a little bit deeper and a little bit croakier than normal, that's because of it. I'm going to be talking about all of the games that I've played since the last video log, which was recorded at the very start of this month. So this is going to cover a period from the 1st of October right up to the present day. And I want to start by talking about a game called IR. Now, I did a sponsored playthrough video for this for Osprey Games. I actually played it four times in October. We're still in October, aren't we? Yes, we're still in October. I played it twice on the 2nd of October, learning it and then taking it to the local club and getting a practice game of it. And then on the 6th of October, we did another practice game and then we did the public live stream.

1:16 So, if you want to see how IR is played, this is the third game in the series from Osprey Games. First one was MV, second one was Sankor, and the third one is IR. Now, I say the third one in the series, I don't know if it's actually a trilogy or if there's going to be any more in the series. And I say it's a series. There is a common theme with these games is that they're all historical ancient societies, but they're very, very different. They are not like, oh, if I haven't played the first two, I can't play the third one. No, they are completely separate standalone games, but they are tied together in the same as I said in in a series. This is my favorite one in the series. Although I've not played Sankor. I've heard enough about Sor that it is apparently an extremely good game, but it's also quite heavy. One of the things that I was impressed by AR, if that's how you pronounce it, I don't really know, is it was not as heavy as I was expecting. This is one of many games that I've played in the last month or two where I went into it expecting it to be like a a heavy euro and it came out to be a medium to heavy euro. And that for me is music to my ears because my tolerance for heavy and super heavy games has gone down over the last few years. So IR was something that we very much enjoyed. It plays pretty quickly. I think you can probably play a game in about two hours time. And if you want to see a full tutorial and playthrough video that is on my channel from the 6th. Now, it was a sponsored video.

2:43 Please bear that in mind when I'm talking about the game. And this is Paul in the editing room. Just a slight correction that that video was on the 8th of October, not the 6th of October. There's just something about this game that just worked really well. And I very much enjoyed my initial play of it where I was just learning the game. And then I've really enjoyed every game after that. So, four games in, I'll happily play it again. One thing that's interesting about this game, the action selection mechanism is always quite cool. You basically start off with these four people on these tracks and over the course of the game, there's only four rounds in the game. At the end of each round, one of those will be removed from the game. So, at the start of the game, the players are kind of splitting up which ones move, but then after round one, one of them disappears. So, that one won't advance on that track anymore. And even on the last round of the game, there is just one of them left moving up the track. Now, what's really interesting about this game is the player interaction because certain people depending on the variability in the tiles that get laid out will have more uh more interest in one disappearing from the board or another interest in another one advancing further. So, you do get a really interesting dynamic I think within the between the players of that kind of thing. There's lots of other stuff going on as well, but take a look at it if you're interested in that medium to heavy euro game from Osprey Games. And yeah, that's on the channel. Now, the next game I want to talk about is Diwan.

4:06 This is a new game which is going to be on general release, I believe, in January of next year. It was available in limited quantities at Essen Spiel and it is a new familyweight game published by Space Cowboys and Asthma and it's actually a game which I specifically sought out to do a sponsored playthrough of because about nine months ago I did rulebook consultancy for this game. So part of my behind thescenes work is that for some publishers they send me rule books and games in advance and they asked me to do rulebook consultancy. So, not specifically writing the rulebook or editing the rule book, but more testing the rule book to see if we're able to play the game from that rule book and then give them all sorts of bits of advice on what they need to do with it, including a little bit of editing work. But yeah, that kind of thing. And when we played it, you know, eight to nine months ago, everybody I played it with really enjoyed it, and I said, "Look, I'd really like to cover this game on the channel." I'm generally known for covering the the heavier end of the game, so that doesn't mean that I only play heavy games. I do play lighter games as well and Dwan for me has replaced Tower Up as the new game that I will play with people who are brand new to gaming. So we've got a term in the industry called gateway games. And a gateway game is essentially a kind of game that you would play with people who haven't played games before to give them an idea of what modern gaming is like.

5:28 Tower Up came out last year and is a fantastic example of that. really simple rules, but also, you know, doesn't take too long to play and got some really interesting decisions in it. And Dwan for me is in that same sort of category. Slightly more rules than Tower Up, but it just plays really nicely. And there is a video on my channel. If you want to see that being played, then there is a video on my channel. 3rd of October. So, 3rd of October, there is a live playthrough on my channel. Now, I played it twice that day and also I played it again later on uh in the week because I had like an hour free and we all decided we wanted to play it again. One thing that is nice about the game is that there is a core system in there and there are different scenarios in the game. So, you can play one scenario where there's a volcano in the middle of the board spewing forth lava which changes the map. Another one in a similar way where there's the flood so there is water spreading from the lakes as the game goes on. And there's a couple of other scenarios as well, including a team-based scenario, which I found really interesting. So, yeah, that is Dwan. As I say, new game, familyweight game coming out early next year. And there is a playthrough video on the channel if you want to watch it.

6:37 On the 4th of October, I did a Patreon only bonus live stream of me playing Deckers. Now, Deckers I spoke about last month very, very highly. And again, full disclosure, I've been professionally involved in this game. I'm friends with the designer. I'm good friends with the publisher. And I did do a couple of sponsored playthroughs. This one that I did on the fourth was not a sponsored playthrough. I did it because I wanted to play the game. Uh this is one of my favorite games of the year. It's a game which I would desperately want to find more time in my life to play it more. It's fantastic solo. It's fantastic at two players. I've not played it at three or four yet. And this is was released at Essen Spiel. I'll talk about Essen later on, but it was really good to see this game being demoed, see it being played. And I was talking to some of the people demoing it about how the demos are going and they said that were people in general were loving this game. Really really thinky puzzle. And that bonus live stream I played a different deca. I played the yellow one. Now the yellow one is all about installing yellow programs which can modify the sparks. So there's various ways to deal with the sort of enemies in the game. One of the ways is that you use infection programs and the other way is that you use modify programs to basically change the sparks into one of your own programs. I spoke about Decas a lot last month, so I'm not going to repeat everything now just to say that I did play one other game of it this month because I really wanted to and I still want to play it more. Now, just before we move on, I realize that everything that I'm talking about at the moment is either a sponsored playthrough

8:09 or a game which I've been involved in and done a sponsored playthrough of. All of this was planned. I go through some weeks where I don't do any paid work whatsoever. This week, for example, I'm not doing any paid work. I got back from Messin on Monday. I worked 14 hours on Tuesday. I worked about 14 hours yesterday. I'll probably be working about 14 hours today. And probably about the same tomorrow. And none of that is paid for. All of that is background stuff that I'm doing this video. Tomorrow I'm doing a playthrough video, which is not sponsored. But it was always the plan this year that in the couple of weeks before Essen Shiel, I would knock out loads and loads of sponsored playthroughs for a lot of new hot games that were coming out. So yes, please don't think that my channel is now 100% sponsored playthroughs. It's not. And if you keep an eye on the channel over the next two or three months, there's going to be a huge amount of unsponsored or non-sponsored.

9:02 I don't know what the right dispensed. I don't know what the opposite term is. Um, so yes, that's just what I wanted to say quickly before we move on to the next game I want to talk about, which is Severton, which is a sponsored playthrough video. Now, I am a little bit surprised that Severton is not getting as much buzz as it deserves because the designer is Vlad Shiovatel and Vlad has not done a new board game for many, many, many years. And this is it. This is it. He's come back and he's got a new board game. Vlad is one of my favorite designers. Full disclosure, I've become friends with him over the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years or something like that. But some of Varger's games are some of my favorite games of all time. And he is probably still my favorite designer.

9:49 And this new game is a little bit different from all of his other ones. First of all, it's not published by Czech Games Edition. So if you're going to Czech Games Edition and looking for Vlad's new game, you're not going to find it because this one is published by Albi. And the reason for that is the game is based on a series of comic book stroke graphic novels that is extremely famous in the Czech Republic. These graphic novels or comics they've been around for decades and I think it roughly translates as the Rapid Arrows and Severson is the name of the the sort of city where it's set, but I think it's basically supposed to be Prague. And Albi, as well as being a board game publisher, are a book publisher and they do toys and games as well. they have the right to produce stuff for this game. So, Albi approached Vlagger and said, "Would you make a board game based on this?" Now, Vlad was very, very happy to do that. Felt very honored and wanted to stick to, you know, the source material of the game. But what is the game? The game is a one to five player cooperative questbased game. Now, there are five scenarios in the box. Scenario one is a tutorial. Once you've done that, you probably won't do that again. Scenario two is where the full game actually happens. And I say the full game, there are other scenarios, but scenario two is the one which has a variable setup, variable quests, and all sorts of different things to do. And that is the one that you can play many, many, many times. Scenario three again, I believe, is is replayable, but it's a specific uh quest. And then scenario four is where

11:22 it's advanced, so there's some extra rules that are thrown in there. And scenario four, you can replay that as many times as you want because that's very variable. And I believe scenario five is another fixed one. But this is on the channel. If you want to see how this plays, the video is on the channel from the 6th of October. 6th of October, there is a live tutorial and playthrough from me on the channel if you want to go and watch it. Vlad's new game. It's a kind of family plus game. It's a little bit. I mean, it'll be perfectly fine for some families, but it's not what I would call a gateway game. So, that's why I'm calling it a family plus game. For us gamers, it's going to be relatively easy, but it's really clever and interesting in the way that it works. Essentially, you're traveling around the streets of Prague trying to accomplish these missions, which involve being in certain places at certain times, carrying certain items, and various other things. Now, there are these enemies called the vaunts. Now, they are patrolling the city looking for you. And if they come across you, you've got to either hide from them, uh, talk to them to try and say, "No, he went that way.

12:26 It wasn't me." Uh, you can distract them, or in some cases, you can actually fight them. But fighting is not the main objective of the game. And even if you do fight them, it removes them from the board temporarily. They're only just going to come back again. But what's nice about this game is that every time you play it, it will be different because of the variable setup and the different missions that you can do and and how it all goes together. So yeah, one to five player cooperative family plus game called Severton designed by Vlad and published by Albi. Right. What's next? The same day that we played Severton, I believe. Or no, was it the next day? Let's just look at my list. It's the next day. That's it. The next day is the 7th of October and I did two new Essen games. The first one, sorry, one new Essen game and one new game that's coming to crowdfunding soon. So, the first one is Movie Tricks. Now, I think I spoke a little bit about this last month, but this month I've done two or three more games of Movie Tricks and there is a live stream of this on my channel now if you want to see it. This was a sponsored tutorial and playthrough from Chilify Fox Games on the 7th of October. As its name suggests, Movie Tricks is a trick-taking game, but it has some twists to it. It isn't a It isn't a simple trick taking game. This is definitely a trick-taking game plus where you are essentially playing a trick-taking game to try and win the cards for the previous round. Now, whilst that might have felt like a little bit of a gimmick at first, as we played it more and more, we realized,

13:58 wait a minute, if I put this card in here, I'm deliberately putting this card in because I know this is going to be there next round, and I want to win this one next round. So, you might put a card into a trick knowing you're not going to win that trick, but that card will then be available next round for you to potentially win next round. So, it's got various layers to it. The theme of the game is you're making a movie and you are basically taking cards and playing them into a tableau. It's a four it's a grid. Not grid, it's a it's four different rows. The first one is the can't remember. The last one is the soundtrack. The third one is the actors. First, the second one is the props special effects. That's it. Special effects or CGI, whatever they call it in the game. But essentially, you're taking these cards and you are putting them in a column and each column scores in a different way. So you've got four little mini games going on about how each of them scores. And what that means, like any good trick taking game is the cards are going to be a different value for different people. For example, the actors, you're trying to get an equal mix of heroes and villains. If you do, you get some extra points. So a card might come out with two villains on it.

15:07 And I'm like, well, I want that one because I've got four here. I've got, you know, five heroes and three villains. And if I pick up that card with two villains, I'll have five of each. that card is suddenly worth a lot more to me than it might be to you. So you might try and take it off me so that I don't get it for example. So yeah, movie tricks a not too complex but more complicated than your normal trick taking game trick taking game videos on the channel if you want to check it out and that is from Chili Fox Games. The other game that we played that day was Tranquility the Descent. Now, Tranquility: The Descent is the third game in the Tranquility series, and the designer contacted me and said he'd like me to cover it on the channel. Now, going way, way, way back when, I actually did the original how to play video for the first game in the Tranquility series. I haven't played the second one, which was Tranquility: The Ascent. And this is Tranquility: The Descent, where you're basically burying down into caverns and things like that.

16:05 This is a game which I didn't think I was going to like. Now, bearing in mind this is a sponsored playthrough video that I did, but I will be absolutely honest with you. That whole idea of we're all trying to play cards into a pattern and we're not allowed to talk to each other, but there's hidden messages that we can give to people because the order of the cards in your hand are in numeric order. So if I take a card from near the left hand side of my hand and play it and it's a number two, then you know that the one to the left of that is probably a number one. So there's all sorts of ways that you can communicate what you've got in your hand with the other players. And the reason why I don't generally like those kind of games is because I just can't play them very well. I can't get me head around them. I'm not very good at that sort of hidden messages kind of thing. But this one was fine and I didn't have any problems with it whatsoever and it was good fun. The artwork's gorgeous. The game is interesting. The people that I have spoken to that have played the other ones in the series have said this is the best one. Now, don't take my word for that. I'm just regurgitating what other people have told me. What I know is that I preferred this one to the first one, but it's been years since I've played the first one, so I can't I can't quite remember it that well, but I know that I did actually enjoy this one. So that's Tranquility of the Descent.

17:25 It might be live on Kickstarter right now. Let me just have a look. Right, I've just looked it up and it's actually live right now. At the time of me recording this video, it's got 21 days to go. So if you are interested in back in the campaign, there is a link to it in my video if you want to check that out. The 9th and 10th was all about Forestry. This is a new game that is coming out. Well, it came out at Essen Spiel, but will be released soon in various other places around the world from Pink Trouidor, I believe. Capstone Games have got the US publishing rights to it. But this is another game which was a sponsored playthrough, but we all really enjoyed it. I've played Forestry, I think three times in the last month. Practice game, learning it, uh then another practice game, and then the actual live stream. So, the live stream is on my channel from the 10th of October if you want to go and check it out. This is a mediumweight Euro game.

18:15 Maybe potentially medium to heavy. Uh maybe medium plus. Yeah, it's around that area. But this is a game, as I say, me and my friends, we've enjoyed this game a lot. So much so that the Friday before Essen, while we were up here doing another play through, the four people that were downstairs, they chose to play forestry. So, there's something about this game. The theme is nice, and the theme does come across in some of the mechanisms of the game, not all of the mechanisms of the game. I'm not going to go out and say this is the the most thematic Euro I've ever played. There are some parts of it which are thematic and there are other parts of it where are where they are just normal Euro game type stuff. But one thing that I did like about the game is that there is a lot of detailed real information within the game itself either printed on the cards with flavor text or in the rule book where it actually gives you uh you know actual information about forestry and what it is and how important it is and what they're doing and things like that. So, that's a nice touch to see that the the designer and publisher have done their research on the game and it's not just, you know, a dry themeless Euro. They've actually put a lot of thought into it. But it plays smoothly, plays in about 90 minutes to two hours. The graphic design is good.

19:30 One thing that I will tell you though, and I have worked with Pink Trouidor on this, is there were parts of the rule book which for me were not that clear. Some parts were pretty ambiguous in the way that they were worded. a couple of parts specifically. I I had to guess at what it meant, but what I've done is I've been working with them on some FAQ for the game. I wanted to support the game because it was really good game and I didn't want people to have uh to, you know, to get caught out uh in the same position as I was in. So, if you do get the game, go and check out on BGG. There is a there is a thread posted by Pink Trouidor or by the designer, one of the two uh and it's got the FAQ in there which I wrote with the help of the designer. So yes, that's that's forestry. Really good game. Definitely check that out. One of the hits for Messen, I think. On the same day as we did Forestry, we also did another live stream and this is the new game from a Porter Games and this is Norse Wind. Now Norse wind is an interesting one because I've had so many games over the last two or three weeks, all of these new games that are coming out at Essen. And I've pro you probably bored of this already.

20:38 I've been saying so far, this game's really good. This game's really good. this game's really good. Well, Norse Wind, when we first played it, we were like, "That's okay. It's all right. I can see that it's it's probably a clever it's probably a well-designed game, but it didn't give us that same sort of hit as as the other games did when we first played them." And then I played it twice again, and all of a sudden, again, I'm not going to go out and say it's the best game ever, but we really enjoyed it. So, Norse wind is a game in which you are taking cards, but the cards have got good things and bad things on them. Essentially, the theme of the game is that the Vikings are attacking and you've got to defend these four locations. And every card you take has a certain attack value on it. And at the end of the game, for each of your locations, you have to add up the total strength of the Viking attack. And if you don't have enough defense in that particular location, you lose seven points. That's it. You should lose seven points. If you do have enough defense, then you will score some points depending on how many citizens you have or villages, whatever it is, and the prestige value of that particular area.

21:51 Sounds simple, but the choices in which card you take, it's like, oh, well, there's a really good card there with space for three citizens, and it's worth one prestige, but it's got six Vikings on it. Oh no, if I take that one, I'm not going to be able to defend myself in time. So yeah, we've found it really interesting and the more I've played it, the more I've enjoyed it. It is a lighter game. It probably plays in about 30 to 40 minutes. But if you want to know more about Norse wind, check out the playthrough which is on my channel from the 10th of October. The 14th of October was a Tuesday triple bill of playthroughs. And all of these playthroughs were sponsored cuz these are all new Essen games that are coming out or did come out at Essen. And a lot of my friends and supporters were like, "Paul, you're crazy. You're not feeling very well and you're doing three playthroughs in a day." Yeah, I get it.

22:42 But I really was passionate about getting as many games covered as I could, and this was always the plan. Now, those three games were not especially complicated. The first one was Garden Lake. This is a new u Rosenberg game published by Albi and it is a five minute teach if that and a 30 to 40 minute game. It's a polyomino game. So if you don't like polyominos, you're not going to like this game at all. But the big difference between other polyomino games and this one is that the pieces are made up of seven blocks. And they're weird shapes. Really weird shapes. You're not going to be able to tessillate these pieces very well. It's really hard to tessellate them because they are such unusual shapes, but the game is actually really clever in the way that it works because what you're doing is you're placing these tiles into your grid. And unlike most other Polyomino games, any tile can go anywhere. You don't have to place it adjacent to another one. And as soon as you've completed like a column or a row or you've done a particular thing, you get access to these bonus tiles. These bonus tiles are really small ones. Some of them are just one by one, some of them are two by one, and some of them are three in an L. And those are the ones that you use to fill in the gaps.

23:53 At the end of the game, you're going to score points for every completed column, every completed row. And you're also trying to collect groups of seven uh lily pads, and groups of seven or more koiish, but it just plays really well. This is another one that I have now played three or four times, and it just got better each time I played it. Because like most games, you start to feel comfortable and you're like, "Okay, first game is I'm just learning the rules. Second game, I'm trying to put those rules into practice." And for the third game onwards, you're like, "Ah, right. Yeah, I now have some idea of what I'm doing." Even though I did worse in my third game than I've done in any of my other two games, that's Garden Lake. That is on the channel now from the 14th of October if you want to check out a new light game. I'm not even going to say light to medium. It is a light game designed by Uve Uve Rosenberg and published by Albi.

24:41 Also on the same day, Echoes of Time. Now, I spoke about this last month and I said last month that this game was disappointing when I first played it. And that's because I went in with expectations that this was going to be a medium to chunky Simon Luchani game. And it's actually a light to medium game that takes about 45 minutes. 30 to 45 minutes. Since my initial playthrough, I've played it either four I think I think I've played it four more times. And now this is a game that I like because I go into it knowing that it's going to be like a 30 to 40minute game. And it's not too complicated. You don't have to overthink it. But every game has played out differently, which is really interesting because the deck of cards that you get in this game is not that big. But every time you play it, different things will happen. It the g the the twist in the game is that every card has a two costs to play. First of all, it has the cost of you must discard x amount of cards from your hand to play the card. So the better the card, the more other cards you have to discard.

25:47 but also how long it takes that card to come into play because time is a factor. So you might have a a really powerful card that takes four turns to come into play, but you actually have the ability to manipulate time and push it along faster. It's a game about building up combos. You will have certain cards in the game that will say, "Oh, every time you do this, you'll get a point, so you want to do more of that." Or things like that. end of game scoring cards that you say, "Oh, you're gonna get two points for every card of this faction." So, you want to start collecting cards of that faction. And because the game uses quite a lot of card draw and using cards to pay for other cards, you're not going to be that much at the look of the draw. Now, you are a bit because it's a card game, but not like those games where you're only drawing one card a turn.

26:33 Anyway, Echoes of Time was released at Essen Spiel from Cranio Creations, and that video is on my channel now if you want to check it out from the 14th of October. The final game that we played that day was heavier than both Garden Lake and Echoes of Time, but it's still not really heavy. This is Railway Boom. Now, I spoke about Railway Boom last month, and I actually said last month it was the best game that I played in the month. It wasn't. It was the second best game that I played in the month because when I did my bonus ranking video for my patron supporters, it actually came out second even though I thought it was going to come out first. It's still an extremely good game and there is now a playthrough of it on my channel from the 14th of October if you want to check that out. Railway Booms originally published in 2022, but Simony Luchiani and Cranio came on board as developers and the new version called Railway Boom. Not even second edition, still called Railway Boom, but effectively it is a second edition of the game. And this is another one that everybody I've played it with has really enjoyed it. It has auctions as the core mechanism, but if you don't like auctions, don't worry about it. It isn't as brutally punishing as other games with auctions. It's fine, but it just plays really, really well. This is one of my favorite games of this year and I thoroughly enjoy it. And if you want to check out a playthrough of it, there is one on my channel from the 14th of October. On the Friday before Essen, we did a live tutorial and playthrough of

28:04 another new game that was being released at Essen Spiel, and this is Mscatonic Tales from Chaosium. Now, Chaosium uh have recently, I say recently, maybe a year, two years ago, opened a board games division, and I'm friends and I've worked professionally with the guy who's in charge of that. And they had a massive Kickstarter, which which was the horror on the Orient Express. But this year, they were releasing another game in their Cthulhu line, which is Miscatonic Tale. So, completely different game, not crowdfunding. This one was going straight to retail. It was available at Essen Spiel. are limited copies available. It's also going to be available at PAX Unplugged. Again, limited copies available and then it's going to be wider released later on. This is a lot more of a narrativeheavy game than most of the Euro games we cover on the channel, but there is still a game in there. There's a lot of reading. There's a lot of story, but the story is very good. And the core mechanisms of the game I found quite interesting. This was a sponsored playthrough video. I would recommend if you are interested in the game just watching the start because it's a narrative driven game and therefore you are possibly gonna get some spoilers for watching it. Now saying that if you watch the whole thing you're going to get some spoilers. We don't actually cover the entire of chapter one. There are three chapters in the game. Each one is probably going to take you about I think the first one is probably about four or five hours. The second one is about five or six hours and the third one is about six to seven hours. There is a save game system built into the game, so you don't have to play it all

29:35 in one sitting. But we enjoyed the story. We enjoyed the narrative. There was some questions about some of the rules. And as of today, I have been emailing Chaosium and I have offered my help in putting together an FAQ. So again, if you do get the game, I would recommend going to BGG, seeing if there is an FAQ thread. I'm going to be hopefully helping them with some FAQ just for some parts of the rule book about certain things that wasn't clear to us that we had to get answers on. But yeah, I love the sort of Cthulhu mythos as a theme. And I felt that the story was really good and the narrative was really well written. But yes, that is Miscatonic Tales. And the final game that we played or that I played, we played JP came over, we did Threshold. Now Threshold is actually on crowdfunding right now. I think it's a game found campaign. This is the next big game from Openowl Studios and we did a playthrough of it the day before I went for Essen. So this is on the 20th, Monday the 20th. We did a live stream. Now Threshold is So let's be honest about this. Open Studios are one of those publishers that I feel is pushing the boundaries of what is a board game. They've done Mythwind, they've done Stone Saga, now they're doing this one. They've done another one as well which is a solo narrative driven game which is on the way to me. I can't remember what it's called. They do different things and Mythwind there is no game like Mythwind because of just the way that it works.

31:06 Anyway, this game is kind of trying to replicate an MMO. They've made no secret about that whatsoever. They've actually been mentioning World of Warcraft in their advertising trailers for the game because it's the closest one to an MMO that I have ever played. It starts off and you're this level zero person and you get a quest to go over there and kill a couple of thieves and you do that. You get 10 XP. You go back to town. You level up. Ding. You get some more cards, right? Then you get another quest. It tells you to go there, do that. What's that worth? 10 XP. How much do you need to level up to level two? 10, right? Ding. Level two. You will play this game and within two or three hours of playing, you will have hit level four. The game goes up to level 40, but it does manage to recreate the MMO experience more than any other game that I've seen. If that's not your thing, you might not be interested in it, but it does it quite well. It does it in a very smooth, streamlined way from what I've seen. And if you want to see my video on it, why would you want to watch my video as opposed to some other people's videos? Well, we don't start at the start. So most of the other videos that I've seen, which are all very good, they start right at the start when you're level zero, taking you through the first couple of quests. We went in at level 10. So we were already a quarter of the way through the campaign, effectively. And we're having a level 10 fight. And we did that because that's what uh Brendan, the designer, wanted us to do. And I wanted to do something a bit different from

32:38 what all of the other content creators have done. And Brendan said, "Yeah, go for it. Level 10. You'll be fine." Um, now bearing in mind that is an early access copy of the game. What you see is not the final version of the game. Open studios use crowdfunding to raise the funds for the game and then they go away and they do like, you know, 15 months of development on the game to make it as good as they can be. Now, I've seen the game found campaign and it's not cheap. This is a big game which is going to have a huge amount of content. I don't quite know exactly how much content, but they did do an update either this morning or yesterday to basically say they've made a certain goal and they're now going to throw more content into the game for free. Um, so I'm I'm I'm I'm really keen to to get this because I I used to play MMOs on the computer. I lost half my life to playing MMOs at one point and it was, you know, it was a bit too much. But playing it in board game form with other people sat around the table, it was quite cool. And it was quite cool to have this sort of streamlined movement system, streamlined combat system, and just the the whole idea of it is to to play quick. Now, this the different thing with the game that I found from a lot of other fantasy cooperative campaign based games in is that in those games, you tend to move around as a group. So the group travels from one location to another and then you have a fight like um and and the rules will be will be very very different. You'll have one rule set for

34:08 the in between scenarios thing and then another rule set for what happens in an actual scenario. Well this game threshold does it a little bit differently. Basically what happens is each round the players will take turns and in on your turn you might be in a fight which means you're taking part in a combat on a little hex grid and you're moving around and you're fighting these enemies but then at exactly the same time on the same round as you're doing that I'm wandering around and maybe going to the pub or I'm going farming resources you know mining or speaking to a herbalist or something like that. So the game actually allows for all of these things to be happening at the same time. Now that said, at the moment with the current state of the game, the encounters that that player is having is scaled based on the number of players in the game. So for example, you decide you're going to go there, you're going to fight the bandits to try and recover the stolen berries. Okay? you go there and you fight x number of bandits because we're x number of players in the game, but I'm busy down the pub or and and and Dave's mining, you know, rocks or something like that.

35:23 Suddenly, you're not going to be able to survive because there's no way that you can fight like three enemies at once. But what is also cool is that I can go and join in the fight. So, one round in the overland world is the same as one round in combat. And that's exactly what we showed off on the video. JP got himself into a fight. I was busy somewhere else doing something else. And then the next round, I decided to join in on the fight. So, yeah, I liked it from what I saw. The other thing that was cool about it was the deck construction. Every time you level up or you get new equipment, no, it's when it's when you level up. Whenever you level up, you can respspec your character and the cards that you put in your deck are based on your level, your class, but also the different equipment that you've got. So, the more and more equipment that you find, better equipment has got more keywords on that allows you to construct your deck more.

36:16 That's probably the best part of the game so far. Um, but yeah, it's worth checking it out. As I say, it is quite pricey, but you do get a huge amount of content in the game. That is Threshold. That's all of the games that I have played with other people. I'm going to give you a quick list of all of the games that I've played on Board Game Arena, which hasn't been much this month. I've played a couple of games of Spellbook Solo, which I still really enjoy Spellbook, and the solo mode is good. Played a game of heat in our tournament. I think it was the last game of heat in the tournament, or it might have just been a standalone game, but it was such [clears throat] an awesome game. Um, it was extremely close between three of us who was going to win the game right at the end. So, that was a very, very tense game of heat. played another game of Ark Nova that I think was in the tournament. So, the tournament is now over. Played Feast for Odin Solo and played a game of Galactic Cruise, which I think is still in beta at the moment, but it's pretty much done. So, yeah, there are all the games that I've played on Board Game Arena.

37:09 Right, the next thing I want to talk about is Essen Spiel. And the first thing is I'm going to show you a picture on screen of all of the games that I played at Essen Spiel. Yep, that's right. For the second year running, I didn't play a single game at Essen Spiel. Essen for me these days is very very different. When I first started going to Essen 25 years ago and for the first, you know, 10 years of me going to Essen, it was all go in as soon as the hall opened, get as many demos as you can, buy as many games as you can, go back to the hotel, stay up till 3:00 in the morning playing games, then next day down, breakfast, back to the halls, more demos. I just play so many games. And now I don't play a single game. I'm I was demoing this year. I demo 50% these days. So I was demoing the from board and dice in the mornings and then in the afternoons and the evenings it was essentially and I wouldn't call these meetings but it was traveling around with my big book of all of these people that I wanted to go and see and going and seeing them and chatting with them and almost none of them there were a couple of them that you could have classed as business meetings but most of them were just catching up chatting how you doing this that and the other and during that conversation you'll have oh tell me about the secret stuff for next year. But to be fair, I speak to a lot of these people on a regular basis anyway. So, the only thing you can actually do at Essen itself is to, you

38:40 know, exchange gifts, shake their hand, give them a hug, and physically look at the secret stuff that they've got coming out either next year or the year after. So, that's what SN is for me. Uh, I have my normal meetups as well. Uh, I met up with loads of people who I see almost every year. I met up with loads of people who I've never seen before, either Patreon supporters who are new to me or uh designers, new new designers and new publishers that I haven't met before. So, you know, there's been various things like my my contact at Whiz Kids, for example, who I've been working with now for like three years and I've spoken to a million times, never actually met. So, that was really nice. And a lot of other people as well. Uh met the designer of Primal the Awakening and again, we've chatted. so much online but we've never actually met in person so that's very rewarding from a personal point of view meeting up with other content creators as well having a chat with them but every year there is always a list of people who I just didn't get chance to go and see uh and that's sad but the place is so busy um you would if I didn't demo in the mornings then I would probably have time to go around and see everybody that I wanted to see but by the time that I finished demoing had a bite to and done a few other things. There just isn't enough time to to get everything done.

40:00 But what else happened at uh Essen? Well, I mentioned that I was demoing for Board and Dice. So, I wanted to say a thank you to Chuck Casease for helping me with the scripted demo that we were using for the at the board and dice booth. And I wanted to say a thank you to Bordon Dice for having me, being very supportive, giving me lifts in from where we were staying each morning, which was which was all very useful. Uh I wanted to say a thank you Tush TV for these throat tweets because uh some of you will know that um in the two weeks before SNI was actually really ill. Um I did a lot of live streams in those two weeks but it was a struggle and sensible people would have canled but I'm not sensible and I wanted to push through but it took its toll. I was an absolute wreck for that week and a half before Essen and in fact um the night before Essen I almost didn't come. I I my my my health suddenly spiraled and I was there at two o'clock in the morning after lying there for four hours with insomnia going I can't do this and I was actually on the verge of of cancelling Essen which I didn't I did I did go um but Essen was tough for me from a from a health point of view and I've still got a little bit of a little bit of a cough now but the cough that I actually had before Essen had gone away by the Monday no by the Tuesday by the Tuesday it it had gone away. So I was like, great, the cough's gone. And then on the Thursday, it came back. So everybody who I demoed to on Thursday just had me coughing all

41:32 of the time, which was really bad. So yeah, Stevie gave me these. They really helped. Um, and they the cough was a lot better on Friday and then I think even better on Saturday. By Sunday it had gone. It's now come back. So I haven't been coughing at all in the last two days, but today when I sit down and film a video, the cough has decided to come back. But anyway, that was the demoing for Board and Dice. Uh, also went to the meet and play event on the Saturday afternoon, which is a fantastic event and a big thank you again to the organizers for putting that on. I don't I don't do it as a meet and play. I don't go there to meet people and play games with them. I go to the to to meet them and and chat with them. So, a few people came to see me, which was very nice. Thank you very much for that. And I had a chat with a guy called Martin.

42:17 He's got a YouTube channel called Painting with Martin. Definitely check it out if you are a miniature painter. Go and check his his channel out. But um I always catch up with him each year and we have a bit of a chat and things like this. Last year, I think it was either last year or the year before, he gave me the painted miniature for Terraforming Mars, the Star Player Mark, which was fantastic. Very, very generous of him. This year, he's given me, well, he took that. It's uh Tiny Epic Game of Thrones and basically the publisher sent him two copies of it and he painted the miniatures and he's given me one set. I'll put some pictures on screen now. I haven't actually unboxed it yet, but I will unbox it while I'm editing this video and I'll put some pictures on screen. So, yeah, Martin has painted these these miniatures from Tiny Epic. Is it Tiny Epic? Yeah, Tiny Epic Game of Thrones. So, that's another game that I need to get tried. Um I've heard it I've heard it's actually quite a good game.

43:09 So, yeah, I'll get round to playing that one at some point. I don't know when. Um, what else? Uh, yeah, you may have noticed gifts. Edible gifts. Um, I got a plethora of various gifts. Lots of different flavored Jaffa cakes from all around the world. Uh, some weird things from Sweden. Some stroop waffles. Yeah, gifts like this are always nice. The only box that I don't think I have here uh is the box of chocolates from Sonia, which is downstairs cuz we started eating them last night. And any that I ate while I was there. So, if you got me something and it's not here, that means it's already been eaten. I also wanted to say um a thank you to Marcel, the designer of Dutch Resistance Orange Shall Overcome. Uh Marcel gave me this book. So, this is Tales of Dutch Resistance Fighters. And this is an actual book with actual words in it. This is not a game, but this is a supplement to the board game. And it actually has a lot more historical information about some of the characters in that game. Now, I've covered this game on the channel. This was a game which I very very much enjoyed. Uh, and it's a game about the Dutch resistance during World War II. And a lot of the game is thematically grounded with stories of people, real people who were actually there at the time. So, a lot of the narrative elements of the game are things that actually happened. Uh, and this is just a source book of information filled with that sort of thing. So, yeah, thank you very much uh for that. So, the Dyson Mystics event

44:39 happens on a Saturday night. It's the Fringe event. Dyson Mystics is a club which is in a town of Bockam, which is about 20 minutes 30 minutes east of Essen. Uh, and they have a regular games club there. But every year during Essen Spiel, they run a fringe event. And this is when I first heard about this, I felt that this was really unusual. I'm like, why are you organizing another gaming event at the same weekend of Essence? That's what that when I first heard about it, I thought this is a bit unusual. Now I understand why. It's because they use the same hall that they use for their regular games group and there isn't any open gaming at Essen. So this is actually a really really nice event. There's only about 80 people that go. Tickets are sold and sell out very quickly. But it is essentially from 4:00 through till about 11. It's a it's a room of people playing games. So, a lot of people who I know go and there's a few designers there, there's a few publishers there. It's a very low-key event, but it's very, very friendly and very, very nice. And I wanted to say a shout out to the organizers because over the years since I've been doing my channel, I've kind of now got used to people coming up to me and saying, "Hi, Paul. Just wanted to say, "Thank you very much for your videos. Love your videos. Can I get a photo with you?"

45:58 etc., etc. Now, a lot of you did that. you you might be watching this video thinking, I did that. I I'm one of those people that went up to Paul and said exactly that. And I cannot thank you enough because it is so nice to know that all of the hard work and the effort that I put into my videos is appreciated. Um so yeah, keep on doing that. Uh it's really good for my ego and I really really appreciate uh people doing that. However, the Dyson Mystics organizers kind of treated me like a guest of honor, and I just I don't know. I felt a little weird because I don't think I deserve to be treated like a guest of honor, but I I was. And they were really nice. Um, they offered to pick me up from Essen.

46:48 They offered offered to feed me. They gave me a table where I could do a demo. Um, they brought a a care pack for me, which I was going to show you a picture of, but unfortunately uh the box didn't last the bag didn't last very long once once I'd got it. But on the Thursday of Essen, just as we were about to get started, they brought me this care pack, which is all sorts of treats, sweets, uh, like hand wipes and things like that. Just it is a care pack, and it's really, really good. So, yeah, thank you very much for making me feel so welcome at your event. It was uh it was a pleasure to be there. Uh and I hope to be able to make it there next year. Uh what else happened at Essen? There's so much that happened at Essen. Um but I'm I'm going to keep this fairly brief because I did two live streams from Essen. So if you go back to my channel, you will find that there were two live streams from Essen. Both of them are about 45 minutes long. And if you want to find out what I got up to at Essen in a bit more detail, then you can find out on those videos. Other content which has been on the channel recently, well, the tutorial and playthrough for a game called The Great Commission has gone live. Now, I did this last month. So, last month, Paul Snugs, who's the co-designer of the game, a friend of mine who's been on the channel many times, Paul came over and we recorded a tutorial and playthrough for this game.

48:11 We've since edited that video and it has now gone up [clears throat] on the channel. So, if you want to check out that again, this is one of my friends that has designed a game, done the thing that I've been wanting to do for decades and never actually got round to doing myself. He's designed a game, he's had it published, and it is now available. So, there there is that on the channel now if you want to see that. I also released my how to play video for the Civilian Expansion. This is a video which I created a couple of months ago and it was just there waiting until they let me release it. So, Civolution, my favorite game from last year, has got an expansion which was available to Essen. It's called Acceptance Letter and it's in a little small envelope. It's a mini expansion, but I did a video covering all of the things that's in that expansion if you want to check out that.

48:57 This is Paul in the editing room. Just remembered a few other videos that I did in the month. There was an unboxing video for the new Mage Knight expansion. So, Mage Knight: Apocalypse Dragon has arrived and I did an unboxing video of that just a couple of days ago. So, that's on the channel if you want to watch that. I also just before Essen, we did a live show talking about all of our most anticipated games at Essen. So, it was about a 1-hour live show where we talked about yeah, loads of new games that were coming out at Essen. And I did an unboxing video for a game called the Voyage Puzzle. One of the new games designed by Danny Garcia, which is out at Essen Spiel. I managed to get a copy of it just before Essen. did an unboxing video, was hoping to play it, but didn't get chance before Essen happened. Coming soon to the channel is now um tomorrow for me, which is actually probably going to be yesterday for you, is the Prague astronomical clock. I am I'm recording this video on a Thursday and I am hoping to get it edited and uploaded either Saturday or Sunday. But ally I'm going to be covering tomorrow night. So, tomorrow I'm going to be learning it and then we're going to be doing a practice game in the afternoon and then we're going to be doing a live public stream in the evening. And just going back to what I said earlier on about paid work and unpaid work, none of the work that I've done this week is sponsored. So, that video that I'm doing tomorrow night is not sponsored. I'm doing that one ahead of all of the other new games that I brought back from Essen because that's the game that my patron supporters have voted on that they wanted to see the most. So, what's the the plan for the next two or three months is that I have

50:29 a poll currently running on my Patreon page of which game do you want me to play next? And every week I will look at it and whichever one has the next most votes, that's the one I'm going to be doing. And Alloy was the clear winner. So, that is the game that I'm going to be covering tomorrow night. It will already be on the channel by the time this video goes out. Next week, Tuesday evening, Mage Knight: Apocalypse Dragon. The playthrough is happening, the game is real, and we are going to be doing a playthrough on it next Tuesday. I will be creating the thumbnails this weekend. So, if you're watching this video sometime over the weekend, then that video might be up there ready to go. But that's happening on Tuesday evening, UK time, Mage Knight: Apocalypse Dragon.

51:15 Thursday, I'm going to be playing the game Marvel Skirmish in New York, which is a new game from Lookout Games, which they've asked me to cover. So, I'm going to be doing that on Thursday. The week after, I'm going to be doing 10B, which is a a new game from Mighty Boards. Then, I'm going to be covering Primal the Awakening again, but I'm going to be covering the expansion or a part of the expansion. So, the new expansion content for Primal the Awakening introduces new hero and also biomes. So instead of just fighting on the same battle map, you're now fighting on different battle maps with different terrain types. So I'm going to be covering that later on this month. They're going to be more Essen games as well. I am going to be covering more and more Essen games over the next few weeks. And we're going to be getting back to Earthborne Rangers. Unfortunately, we were going to play Earthborn Rangers the week before Essen.

52:04 Wasn't able to. We were going to play it the week after Essen, which was basically a couple of days ago, and we weren't able to. But we are going to get back to Earthborne Rangers. and we've got two games planned for it later in November. And then I've got Gridcon. So Gridcon, the convention that me and Vicky organized together, that's what's taking a lot of my time at the moment, but that's happening in November. So there may be some live streams from the convention happening during that time. And if you're going to be at Gridcon, excellent. Patreon update. Let's give you a quick Patreon update. As of this morning, we have more Patreon supporters now than I've ever had before. Right now we have 1,253 which is an astonishing number. It's it's done really well in the last few weeks. So, thank you very much to all of you for your support. Now, I say right now we've got 1,253.

52:56 It's actually a little bit false. Well, it's it's accurate, but it's it's a little misleading because a number of people have canled their Patreon support in the last couple of weeks. That's just how it goes. But because Patreon support is done on a monthly basis, somebody who canled yesterday, for example, is still showing as an active member because they are an active member and they will be for another 29 days. So yeah, that's where we are right now, 1,253. But in 30 days from now, that number will drop by about 2025 because that's all of the people that have left and it will just take a while for the system to reappear. Anyway, on screen now is a list of everybody who has started supporting me in the last month and I cannot thank you enough for your support. I had a number of conversations with people at Essen Spiel, both people who I have known for a while and people that I've just met for the first time because I've actually been going through a lot of thinking about this over the last month or so with where the Patreon is right now.

54:06 It's such a good position for me to be in because I can afford to effectively take this week off work which which I have done and also the Essen week. So the week where I was in Essen, I did no paid work. I produced no videos on the channel apart from the two live streams and I did zero paid work whatsoever. And this week I'm doing zero paid work. And the fact is that seven or eight years ago that would have really bothered me because I would have thought, "Oh, wait a minute. I'm not earning any money at this two weeks. That's going to be a problem." Whereas, because of the Patreon support I get, I don't need to worry about that now. I can carry on doing what I need to do and I'm still producing content. Maybe not as much as I did in the time before Essen. Um, but it's also balancing it out. Um, you know, and that's that's where I I feel that the Patreon's in a really good place. I'd love to give more things back if I can. It's just a matter of time.

55:04 I've got all sorts of crazy ideas. Uh, I spoke to Rodo about one crazy idea that I had, but to be fair, I've had this idea a year ago and I'd love to make it happen if I can. It's just I don't have time to do so at the moment. Um, so yes, big thank you to all of you for supporting me on Patreon. And you know, this video is not sponsored and all of the advertising revenue from not only this video and all of my other videos goes to charity and I can't do that without your support. So yeah, thank you very much. Speaking of charities, haven't got one for you. Um, yeah, the charity money for this month, it will just have to roll over to next month. We will be donating it to charity. It's just with everything that's been going on in the last few weeks, we haven't sat down and decided which charity we're going to donate to. But I will put the call out to you as normal. If you have any ideas for good suggestions for charities that I can send the it's between500 500 and 600 pounds of advertising revenue that I make each month and that will go to a charity. If you've got some ideas, please let me know. either send me a message if you're one of my patron supporters through Slack or on email or just leave me a comment on the YouTube video and we will add them to a list and then gradually we will you know start start donating to people and and uh and going through them.

56:23 We're done for now until I get this video edited probably tomorrow morning or over the weekend and then I realize there's loads of stuff that I forgot to talk about but I can edit that in later. For now though, I will say thank you very much for watching. And if you are one of my patron supporters, you will be getting another email about the bonus ranking video. So for those of you that don't know, each month, as well as these video logs, I also do a bonus video log where I rank all of the games that I've played in the month and come out with, you know, which was my favorite one. And that bonus video log normally has a lot more a lot more detail and unfiltered thoughts on games than I share in these videos. So yes, if you're one of my patron supporters, then at some point in the next three or four days, you will be getting an email with um with a link to that. That's it. We're done. Thank you very much for watching. I'll see a lot of you at GridCon and the rest of you I will see next month. Cheers everybody.

57:19 Bye-bye.

57:40 heat.