Monthly Live Q&A - Ask Me Anything - January 2026

2:27 Q&A. We are live. Good evening everybody. Thank you very much for joining us for the first of a series of 12 Q&As's for 2026. We are in January already. 3/4ers of the way through. Scary. Uh, let me know if you can hear me and see me. Okay. And you may have noticed. Slightly different setup. A few things have changed. I'm using a new camera. It might power off in the middle of this stream. If it does, I've got a backup. I've got a backup camera there. So, we are running some tests on the new camera that we got. The quality should be much much better. Um, but it is having the tendency to shut itself down randomly. So, um, yeah, we are good. Thank you very much for joining us. As always, the format of these shows is two parts. We are first going to go through all of the questions that I've been asked over on the Board Game Geek Guild. So, if you have asked any questions there, we'll be we'll be going through those first.

3:21 Thank you very much to those people who have asked questions first. And if you want to know how to ask me questions in advance, the best way to do it is to head on over to the guild on Board Gamegeeek, guild number 2258. And normally about three or four days before these Q&As's, I put a thread up and that's the best place to ask me questions. Please don't just go to the guild and start asking me random questions. I do try to keep all of the questions for these Q&As. Otherwise, I'll I'll never get anything done. And then after that, after we've been through all of the questions that I've been asked in advance, we are then going to be going through all of the questions for people that are watching live that have any questions. So, if you are watching live and you do have any questions for me, please put them in the chat. Start with the word question and then Vicky will transfer them to a dock and we'll get to them later on. I will also give you an update on the contest, give you the winner of last month, tell you who's won this month. If you can hear a child wailing in the background, it's Thor. Thor is having his moment of wailing. We just ignore him. But I don't know. Right. So, without further ado, let's crack on. Is my keyboard working? Yes, my keyboard has not been working today as well.

4:25 We've had one of those days today where lots of things have been failing. So, the first question is from Asaf from Easy Board Games, who might be here in the chat. I've not seen him, but he might be here. And he says, and this is a bit of a leading question because he knows the answer to this question because I sent it to him last week. He says, "I don't know if it's been asked before, but can you walk us through the process of how you create your how to play videos? Tomorrow morning, fingers crossed, I should be releasing the how to play video for Speak Easy. I've been working on it for the last couple of months. and Asaf has been helping me with various technical issues that I've been having with all sorts of other things and being a shoulder to cry on when I've needed it in the last few weeks. And he's asking me what my process is for creating how to play videos. Now, I've been thinking for a while of actually creating a video on how I create videos, but I've never got around to doing it yet. I think it's a 13step process, and I'm going to go through it very briefly, but we're not talking about the live playthroughs here. talking about specifically the how to play videos that I create, which are the ones that are, you know, fully scripted, filmed, edited, all of that stuff. And the Speak Easy one comes out tomorrow. So, the process is first of all, I've got to get the game.

5:39 Physically, I've got to get the game. Although, to be honest, I could potentially learn the game by reading the rule book and playing it on Tabletop Simulator before it arrives. But the start of the process is me getting the game, me reading through the rule book, or being taught the game, and me learning how to play the game. And ideally, and in most cases, I get one to two practice games in beforehand because those practice games allow me to think, oh, okay, right, if I was teaching this game, how would I teach this bit? I also get to know which bits are important and which bits are need to be reminded. find any areas where you know if if a person has the same question over and over again I will know that that is a particular tricky part of the game that is worth reminding people or having an extra example.

6:27 Also part of my process is that I generally speaking try to join the community for the game whether that be a Discord server board game or anything else and I scour Board Gamegegeek and the Discord servers and Facebook groups for the questions that people have. So all of those questions that people have, no matter how good your rule book is, when your game comes out, there's going to be people with loads and loads of questions. So I keep an eye on those groups and I find out what are the questions that people are asking, whether they're clear in the rule book, but they just needed extra clarification or maybe things that are not clear in the rule book and I seize upon those and I think right, I'm going to mention that in the video because they're the questions that people are going to have. So that's step one. Step two, I then write a script. Writing the script takes a long time depending on how big the game is and how complicated it is. To give you an idea, the script that I wrote for Speak Easy was took me probably about between eight and 10 hours. And my scripts do take longer than some other people who create how to play videos. And that's because a I don't just follow the rule book. I don't just get the rule book and go, "Right, I'm now going to teach the game in exactly the same order as the rule book."

7:38 I actually come about it from a how do I think is best teaching this game and that means moving some sections around. Also, I'm not very good at ad libing. I've got better over the years and I have been through various speech personal speech therapy to stop earming as much as I used to. If I go back to watch my live playthroughs or even my Q&As's or even my video logs from two plus years ago, I used to m a lot and I've basically managed to retrain myself to not as much as I used to do because it really bothers me when I hear people. So script writing, it is literally a script. It's not a list of bullet points that I then have on screen and I go, "Right, there's a bullet point. Explain that bit." No, for my how to play videos, it is literally scripted absolutely as if it's a film to the letter. So, that's step two of the process. I've actually forgotten what some of the process is here. I did I did write this all down for Asaf earlier on.

8:42 Um, I'm just going to pull pull up the message that I sent him with the full details of my process. And this is probably going to be half of the Q&A. Thank you very much for watching. Um, and I hope this I hope this is useful information for you. I should post this on the guild as well. Yeah, I probably should post this on the guild. So, where is the process? I sent it to him a few days ago. Where are we up to? We're up to step two. Step three, I think, is is um getting the script approved. So, one thing that I like to do before starting filming is to get the script approved. So, I send it to the designer, I send it to the play testers, I send it to the publisher and I send it to my patron supporters who know the game and they help me with the script and they add comments to it and say, "Paul, you got this bit completely wrong or I struggled when I was learning this bit. It might be good to add an example here." So, I actually get help from various people while I'm writing the script. So, the script is all now done. It's approved.

9:39 It's it's pretty much good to go. Then what I do is I Here we go. Get the script check. That's the step four. I film all of the still images. So, a lot of people might not realize this, but my how to play videos are essentially hundreds and hundreds of still images stitched together. In most of my how to play videos, there is actually no video. Apart from the bit where it's me on camera, all of the stuff that you see about the game is just still images. It's effectively stopotion photography is what I do. And if something moves, it's because I've moved it, taken a shot, moved it, taken a shot, moved it, taken a shot. There is almost no video in any of my how to play videos. So, that's the next stage. And for Speak Easy, that took me probably about 20 hours. I think maybe 15 to 20 hours, just looking at the script, taking all of the still images, moving things around. And while I'm doing it, that script that I had written, I tweak it because as I'm filming it, I think, oh, actually, it would be better to do this.

10:43 So, I I I'm constantly changing the script as I'm going through the process. Right? Then what I do, step five of the process, is I sit down with the script and I record audio, placeholder audio. So, not final audio, but I literally sit there, read through the whole script, and record it as just placeholder audio. I then step six, I create the first draft of the movie. This means putting the placeholder audio in and taking all of those still images and literally making the movie. Now, that is probably the biggest part of the process. And for Speak Easy, I think that took me about 15 to 20 hours. Yeah, maybe about 20. Maybe the still images was maybe 10, 12 hours. but creating the video, stitching all of the still images together, doing all of the color corrections, adding in all of the digital animations, the whole thing over a placeholder audio. So that's step six.

11:37 Then what I do is I save that video. So I I create that video and that video is effectively I mean that video could be the final video except there's no me on camera. So I'm not on camera. Every scene where I would be on camera is just a blank screen with words saying me on camera. But effectively that is the video. That video then goes off to the same people. It goes off to the designer, goes off to the play testers, goes off to my Patreon supporters. And I try to get it checked by a combination of people who know the game really well who can help me identify anything which is wrong. And this is really important, people who don't know the game. So I generally try to find a few people who don't know the game at all who watch my video and then at the end of the video I say to them do you think you could now play the game and most of the time they say yes but I felt this part wasn't as clear as it could be or I got confused by this bit because you said this here and then you said something slightly different here whatever we go back we improve the script and we change it and we try to make the best video we can. So that's step eight is get the video checked, make any changes to the script. Step nine of the speak easy video was done on Monday morning.

12:51 On Monday morning, I sat here, I got all of the background stuff ready. I got my teleprompter up and I literally sat here for two and a half hours recording the entire video. which is a combination of the scenes with me on camera and every scene where I'm not on camera, I'm still here recording it because that means the audio is all recorded at the same time. So when you're watching one of my how to play videos and you're watching the scenes, which is basically photos, the audio is recorded four, five weeks after I actually took those photos. It's not like most other people who create videos who are doing the the camera whilst also talking at the same time. The audio and the images, there's weeks apart. So that's step nine is recording the me on camera part. And I also do some re-shoots. So again, even at this late stage, and this happened on Monday, I was filming the final audio and I went, I think this bit could be clearer, but I'm going to need to do a re-shoot. So, I went back, set things up, did a couple of extra scenes, re-shoots. Uh, and thank you very much again to my patron supporters because a couple of them suggested some extra scenes that I could put in. Then I create the final video.

14:07 That was done on Monday night, Tuesday morning I think it was. And then that video is right now it's finished and it's being checked. And it's been checked and there's been a couple of errors found and I'm about to do do a new version and the final version of the video should be rendering tonight. So before I go to bed tonight, there will be a final version of the how to play speak easy video, which again I will send out to my patron supporters. I'll send it to Viddle and then tomorrow morning the video should be live. There you go. That's uh yeah, that's that's a very very long answer to the question, but please let me know if you found that interesting because that's basically my life. That is my process that I use for creating my how to play videos that I've been refining for the last 11 years.

14:55 Nobody else does it like that. It takes a huge amount of time. Why do I spend so much time making those videos? Because I wouldn't be happy any other way. It has to be done in a particular way for me to be happy with. But thank you very much for the uh for the for the question and yeah, I hope I haven't bored you. So, next question from Stuart and we're going to be mentioning Stuart later on. Should board game boxes include the playing area measurements alongside player count and play time? Stuart mo mostly plays solo and he can barely fit games on a 3x5 table. This is a question which was actually asked last year because civil evolution from deeprint games actually printed and it wasn't on the box, it was in the rule book, but it printed this is the size of play area that you are going to need for the game. And I was asked should all games include this? And I'm in two minds about it. I'm happy that Civilian included it. I think it was a useful thing to have in there, but I don't think it's going to become a standard. Maybe it should. May maybe this is this is the new thing because the side topic here, and I don't want to go down this rabbit hole because I'll be here for another 10 minutes, is games are getting too big. We're having too many boards which are bigger than they need to be. sideboards that are bigger than they need to be and then another sideboard with some tracks on it. Oh, and a player area that's just huge. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm playing Speak

16:26 Easy tomorrow afternoon, which is a Vital Larda game. It's a heavy game. It is going to take up a lot of space. What I'm talking about here is your standard 90minute mediumweight Euros that are just growing and growing. Oh, and there's an extra bit. Oh, and then there's this here. Oh, and there's a display of cards here. Oh, and then there's this. The size of games is just getting bigger and bigger with unnecessary add-ons and complications. But yeah, whether I think should game boxes include the playing area, I'm going to say yes. Let's say yes. I don't have the power to change the world. Um, but yeah, I I think they should. I think that would be a nice addition somewhere on the back of the box. Number of players, play time, you know, complexity rating or something like that. and the size of the area that this game takes up. What do you think?

17:18 Let me know. Next question for Bart. Bart says, "What makes this hobby interesting for him besides the games themselves is learning about different excuse me, different kinds of card stock or how Chinese New Year influences the delivery of my Kickstarter. Do I have a favorite non board game fact that you have learned from being in the hobby? It's a very good question because over the last 10 years I have learned so many things about such very very specific things that I've had to become effectively an expert on or very very knowledgeable on in order to be able to understand it in order to be able to then use it. And my knowledge over the last 10 years has increased so much on a wide variety of things from cameras, camera settings, microphone settings, soundproofing, um, streaming software, so many different things. I've learned a huge amount about how printers work in terms of the CMK settings and how that actually works. And I'm like, well, how do you get orange when the printer has only got cyan, magenta, yellow, and black? H how do you get that? Well, you mix colors together. Um there's a huge

18:49 about a thing about when you're creating your own CMK settings, it's always best to do them in multiples of 25. And I spoke to somebody about how that works and how that works with the printer. And I found that absolutely fascinating. So, there is a huge amount of knowledge that I've learned through my job about board games. Some of it not related to board games. You did ask for a favorite non board game fact that I've learned for being in the hobby. I mean, my my brain is just overwhelmed with with all of the things that I've learned over over the years. Um, so yeah, I don't know if I have a favorite one, but there is there is a lot that I've learned. Also, do I have a preferred ratio of points earned during the game versus points from end of game scoring? Personally, I don't have any preference whatsoever. I am more than happy to play a game where there is no end of game scoring and literally we just earn points during the game and that's it. Or I'm happy to play a game with no scoring in the game and all of the scoring is at the end of the game.

19:58 Now, Bart says, "I think it's important to explain this ratio when teaching a game." Now, I remember a couple of weeks ago, I did a live playthrough of the Voyage puzzle, which if you're interested in seeing the Voinich puzzle being played out, and it wasn't a sponsored video, which means you get our absolute honest thoughts on the game at the end of the video. So, even if you don't want to watch the playthrough, but you want to hear my honest thoughts on the game, the Voyage Puzzle, go to my live stream from a couple of weeks ago, skip to the end and we talk about it there. But I'd played a practice game of that game in the afternoon. And then when I sat down in the evening to teach people how to play the game, I did exactly what Bart is recommending is saying, look, you're probably going to earn about this amount of points during the game, but just to let you know, you are going to earn double that probably at the end of the game. I think that is really useful to know when you're playing a game. I was asked a similar question last month or was it the month before of what's a good winning score in this game? I think that's also a really useful thing when you sit down and you play a game for the first time and somebody says to you a good winning score is 250, you're like, "Oh, right.

21:16 So, when I do this thing on turn one that gets me two points, I shouldn't worry too much about it." Whereas, if you go into a game going, "Well, the winning score is 30 and you've got a card that gives you two points." it suddenly, you know, it makes it it uh the relative importance of these things I think is is useful to know. Next question from Carl. What new games are you most looking forward to covering this year? There's a few that I'm not allowed to talk about, but of the ones that I am allowed to talk about, I am extremely excited about Lands of Evershade. Lands of Evershade I will be doing the official how to play video for, that's not why I'm excited. I am excited about this game because it is from the same designer as Tainted Grail and ISS Vanguard. This is his next big epic narrative driven fantasy campaign game. It's going to be amazing. I've played a demo of it. It was amazing. So, I'm very much looking forward to that one. There's another game that I'm also very much looking forward to, but I don't know that much about. It's Hub World Avalon from Earthborn Games. I'm going to be doing some videos on that, but from everything that I've heard about it, that looks exciting as well.

22:24 And there's lots more that I'm not allowed to talk about. I can't remember which ones I am and I'm I'm not allowed to talk about, so I'll probably best not saying anything. Um, but there's lots of great games coming out this year as as there always is. Next question from Dan. Dan says that he's recently watched my best games of 2024 video, which if you haven't seen it, it went live in December. So, in December 2025, I created a video on what my favorite games were of 2024. And Danny's saying, "You stressed multiple times in the video that these games were your favorite and not the best. What do you see as the distinction? Is it because you can see other games are better crafted, but you don't like them as much, or are you going by consensus, or a combination of the two?" Dan says, "I've always considered best to be purely subjective. So favorite and best are pretty much synonymous. And you're not the only person who thought that down. I've had a number of I'm going to say constructive criticisms on that video from people saying, "Paul, why do you keep saying that these are your favorite games and not you are not the best games? Surely the two things are the same." The reason why I did that is because of what happened in 2023.

23:38 So, at the end of 2024, I did a video on my best games or sorry, my favorite games from 2023. However, I initially went into it thinking that these are going to be the best games. Now, if I was to do a what are the top 10 best games of 2023, there are two games that would absolutely be on that list. Hijgemony and Nucleium. There is no doubt in my mind that Hijgemony and Nucleium were two of the best games that came out in 2023. Hijgemony is probably in the top three of the best games that came out in 2023, but my favorite games are the ones that are more suited to me, the ones that I enjoy playing the most.

24:41 And that wasn't Hmony and Nucleium. And I feel that I was able to make that distinction between what is the best game and what is my favorite game. I I feel that I was able to do that. I think some people might not be able to do that or they think, well, if it's not your favorite game, then it's not the best game. But that's what I was trying to do. And I didn't want to have those bad feelings that I had when I rated the 2023 games because Hijgemony and Nucleium for me came out I don't know not even in my top 25 of my favorite games. I'm not sure certainly not in the top 25%. So that that's what I tried to do. I might still do the same next year because for me best game and favorite game different things. What I haven't done is I haven't gone back on the 2024 games and reordered them based on which one I think is the better game.

25:41 But essentially, I felt that I was able to appreciate what is a better game even though it's not particularly my particular style. Right. Next question from Adam. Have you ever hosted, planned, or participated in a games night centered around a theme? If so, what was the theme? And what would be the first three games that you would choose? So, no, I haven't done that. I have never hosted a games night centered around a theme, but every year on May the 4th, we play Star Wars games. So, it's not a games night, but it is a games day. And we've been doing that for the last four years, I think. Now, also starting last year, March 25th, Tolken day, Lord of the Rings Day. And that's going to be happening this year, Wednesday, March 25th. Set your diaries.

26:36 Take the day off work. We are going to be hosting a Lord of the Rings day here at Gaming Rules HQ. I'm going to be playing War of the Ring. We might also play Fate of the Fellowship. I'm not sure what else we're going to play, but we've done those two days. We also talked about doing a Star Trek day because I think I found out what Star Trek Day was. Was it Do you want to just look it up? I think it was September 8th. Somebody in the chat will tell me. Um, there is a there is an official Star Trek Day as well, but that's another IP that I like that I have a lot of games for. So, yeah, we we have we have themed days where I have multiple games. And in terms of Star Wars games, I don't think I own a bad Star Wars game. So, it's really tricky to choose because Rebellion is fantastic, which I don't own. Rick's got. Imperial Assault is fantastic, which I don't own. Rick's got, but there's lots of other Star Wars games that are just great. Outer Rim is fantastic.

27:31 Next question. Uh, September 8. I was right. Thank you, Derek, for letting me know. Next question from Gavin. What do you think is the hardest part of designing a board game? Coming up with the idea, tying it to the theme, getting the me I'll say mechanisms, getting the mechanisms right, play testing it, or selling it. So I can speak about this because technically I am a board game designer according to board game geek and I have my name as a design credit on a game. But what I will say is that everybody in life has a different skill set. Some people might find it difficult to come up with an idea but would be really good at implementing that idea. Other people might be really good at coming up with the ideas. Me I got loads of ideas for great board games. getting the mechanisms right, play testing it, and then selling it. Ah, they're all different skill sets. So, for me, coming up with the idea, again, I've got a number of ideas that I think would make amazing games, but if you're a games designer and you've already done all of your great ideas, uh, what do you do? That is probably a a good question for, you know, I I could contact Matthew Dunston, David Tury, you know, all of these people. Contact Viddle. where do you come up with the ideas and things like that? Find out which bit is the hardest for them to do. I might do that, but yeah, I from my point of view, I've got all the ideas, but I just haven't got the skill set and the

29:02 patience. Well, I have loads of patience, but I don't have the time or the effort to go through multiple iterations of play testing and everything else. I just don't have that. Next question from Corey. How do you feel about selling or getting rid of out of print games? Is the FOMO too much for you to cull your collection of a game that is out of print? With your connections, you can probably get the game again if you regret your culling decision. Well, it's a good question and I've thought about this earlier on today and I I don't think that it would affect me at all. So, I I got rid of 75 games last year. Well, probably more, but I I I put 75 games of my collection into the Gridcon charity raffle.

29:50 Some of those games were probably out of print games and some of them Yeah, I'm I'm Yeah, definitely. Some of those games were definitely out of print games. And I don't just mean out of print because there's a new version. I mean out of print, gone. No, probably be never coming back. and some of them were not out of print games. And I don't think that I felt any different. If I'm going to get rid of a game because I don't have the space and I'm not going to play it and somebody else will appreciate it. The fact that I'm getting rid of an out of print game doesn't change my opinion at all. Let me know if you're watching live or if you're watching this back afterwards. Let me know. Would it change your decision about whether to get rid of a game if it was out of print and therefore you might have difficulty getting it again? Personally, I have never gone out to get back a game which I got rid of because there's just too many games. So, yeah. Uh, right. Next question from John. John, this is a kind of similar question. John says he's got several games in his collection that he owns for nostalgia reasons. He doubts to ever play them again, but he holds on to them because they hold a special plate in his gaming special place in his gaming memories. Magic Realm, Gunslinger, Down with the King, Blood Bowl first edition, etc. Do I have any games in my collection that I am holding on to for nostalgia reasons? And what are they? Now, this question has been asked before, but I'm more than happy to answer it again because it's been a couple of years since it was last asked a few of them. One of them is my

31:21 original copy of Through the Ages. The original original original through the ages from a company called Czech Board Games 200 five I want to say €30 terrible terrible quality lovely grass glass beads but the rest of the game yeah it was their first game it was Lar's first game it was going for like200 at one point when people were desperate to get hold of it in the attic I'm keeping it for nostalgia reasons because that is one of those pivotal games. I mean, through the ages, this is in my top three, top four, top five games of all time, and I'm never ever going to play that particular physical version of it, but I'm keeping hold of it for nostalgia reasons. Also, the copy of Xbugs and Munchkin from Steve Jackson Games that I was demoing when I met Vicki. Well, I'm not getting rid of those games, and I'm definitely not going to play those games again. There's not many others to be honest. Um, there is a game in the attic called Tide of Iron from Fantasy Flight Games, which I am still keeping, and one of these days I might get round to playing it. I've painted loads of the Little Soldiers. I spent dozens of hours painting all of the Little Soldiers.

32:36 I've never really played the game, but there's there's a few that I'm keeping for nostalgia reasons, but that's uh that's that's two of them. Next questions from Ronald. Now, these are simple questions. Quickfire question time. Undaunted or quartermaster general? Quartermaster General. Easy. Exit or unlock? Unlock. Easy. And do you like flavored tea or standard black tea? Standard black tea. There you go. If only all questions could be as easy as that. Thank you, Ronald. And I'm not going to go into any more details. I'm just going to answer them as they are. Next question from Adam. Are there any games that you would like to see remade as a legacy stroke campaign style game? Now, I saw this last night when you asked this question a few days ago, and I've forgotten to think about it. Any games that I would like to see remade as a legacy stroke campaign style game? I mean, Terraforming Mars Legacy is coming hopefully. But I'm really curious about Terraforming Mars because one thing that I didn't like about Pandemic Legacy is it wasn't realistic. So, what I mean by that is you play a game of pandemic legacy and all of the viruses are spreading and you're building all of the buildings and you're getting rid of them and everything else and then game's over and then you play game two and sure something has happened in the game and there is a sticker that's been put on the board. But game two, everything kind of just resets and you just play a game again with four

34:08 new diseases spreading. And I'm like, what? And this is my concern with Terraforming Mars Legacy. And I I don't know any details about the game, so it might not be like this. But I don't want a game of terraforming Mars Legacy where you terraform Mars and then you you change something or you save some things or you put a sticker on something or whatever and then you play another game and the planet's untraformed and you play it again. I'm like, "No, if I'm going to play a terraforming Mars legacy game, I want the terraforming of Mars to take the whole game. I want every single thing that I do to stay. I want persistence with the chain. If I build a greenery there in game one, I want that greenery there on game two. I don't want it magically disappearing. So, I want my legacy games to be ones where whatever you do is a permanent change to the game effectively. And that means that it's going to be very difficult to design because these games are designed to not be legacy games. They're designed to be here's a standalone game. Terraforming Mars is going to take, you know, eight to 10 rounds, whatever. And then at the end of the game, the planet is terraformed and then that's it. It's game over. So yeah, I might have to have a think about that one. In fact, that might be a good question for the guild.

35:35 Yeah, let let's let's let's get on over to the guild and we are going to add that question there. Chrissy, if you are watching, we can we can do this. So guild number 2258 on board gamegeeek. Head on over there in 105 minutes time. There will be a question on there which is from Adam saying which games would you like to see remade as a legacy stroke campaign style game? because I can't answer it myself. Right, next one from Bob. What is the maximum number of simultaneous games that you are comfortable playing on board game arena asynchronously? For Bob, it's two if they are medium to heavy. Thank you for all the great content you produce each. Thank you, Bob. Um, for me, it's probably about three or four maximum. I can see myself being in a game of Great Western Trail, uh, Mariko. What else do I play on board game arena a lot? There's a game that I play on board game arena all the time. I can't remember what it is. Um, maybe a game of heat.

36:43 Yeah, I could probably see myself being in about four games on board Game Arena and maybe a game of Terraforming Mars on the side as well. So yeah, probably four or five games. What I can't do is be in the same game twice. My I've tried that and my brain doesn't work. I remember once I was in about four different games and I was in two different games of like Marico or something and it's not like I I don't think I can remember what I'm doing in that particular game. But as soon as I load up the game, I I must be storing some memories of what I'm doing in that game somewhere because when I go back into the game, I'm like, "Oh, yeah." And it kind of comes back to me a bit. If I'm in two different games of the same game, my brain just implodes. I I I can't do that. I I would not be able to do that. Next question from Nicholas. I notice when he So, this is from Nicholas. I notice when I play story-driven games like Kings of Ruin, particularly darker ones that feel consequential, I get nervous making story choices, and I'm often concerned I'm making the wrong choice or just have to mull over my choice for a long time.

38:02 How do you feel about choices like this in board games? Now, I think this is the question that I asked you to ask me because, and I don't think I've spoken to Vicki about this yet, but it's something that I've noticed myself has been a growing issue for probably over a year now. And every time I get this issue, I think, oh, it's that again. And it's been getting worse and worse. And I've not I've not actually spoken about it. So, this is the first time that I'm speaking about this and it's exactly this. Now, when we're playing cooperative games like we're playing Aimonia with Mark, Sally, and Vicki, and we've played other campaign games together, but even in Earthborne Rangers that I'm playing with Steven or even in other campaign style games or even non- campaign style games if I'm playing them with other people. probably about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, I started deferring any decisions in the game to other people. Now, part of that was because I just want them to enjoy the game. I'm I'm more than happy not even playing in a game sometimes and just being there and helping people enjoy the game. It's why why I like demoing so much. I don't mind not playing the game and just kind of running the game. And there's been so many times where I've been doing that and therefore letting other people make the choices, but then I started thinking about it more

39:34 and it was exactly the same situation as you described. I was actually getting nervous about the decision because I didn't want to make the wrong decision. And a part of me, a part of my brain was not able to disconnect the game from real life. I should be saying, Paul, it's a game. It doesn't matter. Just make a choice. But I I wasn't able to. So, every time I've kind of, and we'll talk about this afterwards, but I think Vickiy's probably noticed the fact that I've been reluctant to make decisions in games and just let other people make those decisions. And it's because it's the nervousness and it's the it's the anxiety of making the wrong choice. And yeah, I wish I could just switch off my brain and say, "Paul, it's just a game, make a decision, and move on." But I don't know, sometimes I just end up rolling a dice because I don't know what to do. Um, yeah, that's where I am. And I and I don't know how many other people feel the same. I really wish I was the kind of person that could just go, "Yeah, whatever.

40:44 Make a decision. It doesn't matter." And what I really like about a lot of these modern campaign style games or narrative driven games that we play is I'm going to say there's no wrong choice. It's not like the old Fighting Fantasy books where you're like, do you want to open the left door or the right door? I'll open the right door. Right, it's a dragon. You're dead. It's not like that. A lot of these games have branching story lines and it's like, okay, well, if you did choose that, if you did decide to steal from the, you know, the beggars, then you're going to lose some reputation or something like that. you do gain some money. Uh or if you decide not to do that and you help the beggars out, then you're going to gain some reputation, but you're going to lose some time because Okay. Right. Yeah. There are implications of your choices and it isn't always just, you know, the one sort of true path kind of thing. Anyway, that's that. Next question from Ray Manacon, what's that? 42. Manacon 42 are the dates are Friday 24th of July to Monday 27th of July. If you were thinking of going to Manacon this year, which is one of my favorite conventions in the UK, happens in July. It's the dates have moved. Last week they had to move the dates. So it's now July 24th to July 27th. Am I going to attend? Yes.

41:56 What is the furthest that you've traveled to play board games? Well, the furthest that I've traveled in order to play board games is probably Essen. I mean, I have been to Gen Con and I'm trying to think, probably Origins was further away, but I wouldn't have said that I went to Gen Con to play board games. I went to Gen Con to work for a company demoing games. And the byproduct of that was in the evenings I might play a game. Whereas when I used to go to Essen as a just an attendee, I would be going to Essen to play board games. So probably Essen. Uh Ray's final question is if she can make it to Bacon, can we play Voidfall again? Yes. On one condition. If you see an opportunity to attack me because I've left myself vulnerable and I'm just hoping that you don't attack me, you need to attack me.

42:56 If you promise to attack me, then we can play voidfall again. Right. Next question for me, Lane. Uh this this might wind up being a follow-up to Ray's question. Gen Con in Indie is right after Manacon. Is it? Oh, it is July August. Okay. So, because Manacon has moved. No, I can still do both. I can get back from Manacon and get on a plane and go to Jenko. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, um Elaine says, "I mentioned before that I might be going to Jenon this year. Do I know more about that will happen? Not yet. I'm hoping to find out in a few weeks time. Basically, there is a publisher that I am speaking to. They are interested in me joining them as being part of their demo team. That's my only real opportunity to get to go to Gen Con.

43:44 They're going to let me know in a few weeks time. So, cross your fingers. I might be at Gen Con. Um, if I will, will there be a meetup for supporters? Yes, absolutely. And in fact, even if I'm not at Gen Con, we should organize a meetup for Patreon supporters. So, if you are a Patreon supporter of mine and you are going to Gen Con, we should do something. Even if I'm not there, we should organize a Patreon supporters meetup because I tell you what, when you send me all of the photos of that meetup and you're all there, it will just really really warm my heart. So, yeah, let let's do that. Next question from Jesper. First one is a follow-up question from September's 2025 Q&A, which is fuel and is supposed to be starting their crowdfunding of the Danes in Q1 of 2026. As I know your passion for a fee froin, have you arranged any playthrough or content? If if yes, please share any info. So, I have written to them twice already about my desire to cover the Danes expansion for feast, which is no longer an expansion. and it's going to be a standalone game.

44:49 I have written to them again this morning. I am on the verge of them probably getting quite annoyed by the fact that I keep asking, but I am desperate to cover this game because I love Fast Forin and I've been waiting for the Danes to come out for so many years. So, I have written to them again this morning and said, "Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, could I be considered for producing coverage for this game because I really want to um I've not heard anything back yet, so we we will we will see. I I do want to and I am trying my best to make it happen." Second question, in Q2 in 2026, Frick's Games are supposed to be starting their crowdfunding campaign of Terraforming Mars: The Legacy of Mars. Do you plan to play the four missions together with the same group? Okay, so there's four missions. Is that all?

45:37 Doesn't seem very much. Do you plan to play them with the same group? I think yes. Has that group already been assigned? No. I am aware that there is going to be a Terraforming Mars Legacy game. That's it. That's all I know about it. So, no, I haven't got a group together for it, but I will very likely play it with the same group. Question three. The third big crowdfunding campaign is Roxley's Brass Pittsburgh. According to my earlier Q&As's, I'm not into the brass series of games, but if you could, which city would you pick for your own brass version? Brass Columton. Yes, Brass Columton. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we had canals or or certainly brass west country cuz we had the canals and then the canals um stopped getting used and the trains came along. So, yeah, I mean that affected the whole of the UK.

46:25 But yeah, definitely brass West Country with Colton being on there. Next question from Paul Snugs. Given the incredibly fast rate that new games arrive and need your attention, how often do you find yourself thinking, "I'd really like to play that again, but time passes and you never get around to it because of the next incoming games." Paul is asking me how often that happens. I'm not lying when I say daily. Literally daily. Because I live in this house. I see all of these games around me and I go, "Oh, I'd actually like to play that one again and I'd like to play that one again and I want to play that one more and I want to do a whole campaign of that and I want to play that one again. Am I going to?" No, because I don't have time. So, it is a daily problem and this is my job. I don't have any other job to go to apart from spending 70 hours making a how to play video.

47:17 As a consequence, what do you think your average number of plays for games that you really like actually turns out to be? Well, it depends. So, there are certain games that come out each year that I do manage to get 10 plays of. Voidfall, I think I've got 10 plays of Voidfall. Civil, I think I've got 10 or 12 plays of Colution, but they're special games. your standard Euro game. If I like it, like really like it, I'll probably get three or four, which might not sound very much. And if it was up to me, I'd play it loads more. SETI, for example, I did a solo playthrough of Seti on Saturday. I think that was my third game of Seti, maybe fourth. I would be happily playing Seti another 10, 15 times. Just just don't have the time to do it. I am just if you're interested Monday, a week, not a week on Monday, this coming Monday, I will be doing a live playthrough of SETI with the expansion three player game that's happening on Monday. So yeah, probably three games. There's there's many games that I have covered that came out at Essen last year, which I've played two or three times that I would be happy to play again. But the reality is I might never get round to playing Or again. I might never get round to playing Covenant again. I might never get round to playing Voyage Puzzle again. Fa Swamp I do want to play again. That was my

48:48 favorite one of that crop. Uh Forestry, I think I've played that three or four times. I probably won't play that again now. So yeah, it it's rare that a game will get more than three or four plays. Next question from Monica. If you could just drop everything on the spot, where would you have retreated to and what would you do? And do you sometimes find yourself waking up in the morning thinking today I just want to do whatever? So two questions there. The first question I can answer that quite easily I think. Um, but just before I answer that, I want to say that I'm the kind of person that doesn't need to go away.

49:33 I mean, doctors might have a different opinion, but I enjoy the comfort of my own home with my kettle there and my tea bags and my cats and my board game collection. And if Vicki is here, or if she's not, if she's at work and she comes home at lunch, I like that. If I had more time at home where I could just relax and enjoy myself and do some painting and do a bit of gardening, I'd be fine with that. I don't need to go away to some exotic climate country or or anything like that. Um yeah, I just I just, you know, enjoy the things that I' I've got here. saying that uh not scuba diving, snorkeling with tropical fishes has been one of the best experiences that I've had. I felt myself very relaxed and would just happily do that. Unfortunately, you've got to fly a long, long way to be able to do it. But we managed to find some really good snorkeling at a particular location in Egypt in Charal Shake. And we were quite lucky. Well, quite fortunate because Vickiy's parents went away to Charal Shake for snorkeling. And I'm right in thinking that there were no real fish around where they were. Whereas the hotel that we chose, I say we chose, we did look into it a bit. It was amazing.

50:52 I mean, literally amazing. You you just went in the water and straight away there were hundreds and hundreds of fishes everywhere. It was fantastic. So yeah that is that is something that I have really enjoyed doing. Um yeah do I find myself sometimes waking up in the morning and thinking today I just want to do whatever. I mean yeah we won't go into too many details about how my life is at the moment but if I was to tell you that my list of things to do is about a hundred long and um it's been like that for a couple of years. I I I don't have Yeah. there's just too many things going on and too many things that need to be sorted that I I don't have the luxury unfortunately of just having a day where I can do whatever. Now, there are some days where I will say I'm going to do a live stream of me playing talisman digital, you know, I find enjoyment in certain things, but there's uh yeah, I I don't I don't have that. I'm normally already got a list of things that I want to get done that day. Next question from Roger. If you suddenly had a few hours free at home to play a game that you like, would you rather play solo at home using the physical game or solo on the internet or multiplayer on the internet?

52:08 I'm assuming that the solo mode is Paul friendly and that the internet is a good implementation. And why? I tell you what, Roger, that is not an easy question to answer because it really depends what mood I'm in. So, I'm just thinking of things that I've done recently. There is a huge benefit to me playing a solo game, a digital adaptation of a solo game. So, recently I've covered Talisman Digital recently solo play. That was really good. also terraforming Mars on the app. And I am going to be covering Terraforming Mars again probably next week because Colony's expansion is out, I think. And that's really good. And the reason why I like them is because I don't need to coordinate it with anybody else.

53:00 Whenever I decide, oh, I'm going to play a live stream. Let's say for example, tonight I fancied playing Terraforming Mars. Now, I always prefer Terraforming Mars multiplayer. So, let's say I posted on my Patreon supporter Slack channel and said, I'm going to be doing a live stream of Terraforming Mars tonight. We're going to be live streaming it. Who wants to join me? So, suddenly I've got a whole load more admin I'm planning to do because I've got to find some people and then I might have more people that apply than we've got spaces. Then we've got to work out how we're going to talk to each other. So, we have to get them on the Discord server. And some people are not on the Discord server, so we have to set them up. Then we have to do some audio tests beforehand to make sure everybody's levels are right. All of that stuff is taking up effort and time in my brain. Whereas when playing it solo, I just go, it's just me. I don't have to wear the headset. Um, I can just, you know, play the game. So there is a lot of there is a lot less effort required in playing a solo implementation of a board game on in digital format because I don't have to physically get the game out.

54:09 which is why I did Talisman digital and not physical. Now, if we just go back to Saturday, I actually thought to myself on the Friday, I've got the physical game of Talisman and I've got the expansion. I should do it physically. I'd prefer to do it with the physical game, but there's two reasons why I didn't. The first one is the game would have taken a lot longer and I was on a bit of a time limit. The digital implementation because it does so many things for you. The game does go quicker. The second reason is when I'm playing the digital implementation of a game, I don't have to worry about missing a rule or getting a rule wrong because it's doing it all for me. And the third reason, even though there was only two reasons, the third reason is I was doing SETI that afternoon. Now, SETI was going to be with the physical game. So, what I'd actually done is I'd started setting up SETI when I did the stream of talisman. And if I had have played physical talisman, I would have then had to clear the physical game of talisman away and then get the physical game of Seti out. So, yeah, it really depends. It really depends what mood I'm in. But over the last 6 months or so, I have been leaning more towards doing less things with other people live because of the added overhead of technical issues, complications, time and effort and things like that. That said, I do play a

55:40 lot of online games on Board Game Arena asynchronously with my Patreon supporters. And just a shout out to all of my patron supporters that are playing games on Board Game Arena because although I don't join in that many myself, to see that there is a huge community of Gaming Rules patron supporters that are constantly playing games against each other on Board Game Arena asynchronously is fantastic. So, thank you very much for that because again that that is very heartwarming to see. Next question from Cat. Happy New Year to Paul and Vicki and Loki and Thor and all of our stuffed animals. Thank you very much. Question one, have you ever had a game that you spent a fortune on getting all of the expansions, the card decks, and then you realize you don't enjoy it anymore because it's got too overwhelming when you and then you sell it?

56:27 I mean, there are there are games that I have in the past spent a lot of money on. I'm in the fortunate position these days where I generally don't buy my own games, but there was a time in the past where I had to buy all of my own games. And there are games which I have spent a lot of money on. Not I I don't think there's a game that I have spent, you know, like $500 on or something like that. You know, these big Kickstarters that all in. I don't think I could bring myself to do that. Even now, if I was just a games player and I didn't work in the industry, I don't think I could back a game at $500. I don't think I could. Now, that said, I do have some games that are that much, but I don't play them enough to get that amount of value out of them.

57:18 There are games that I have spent a lot of time and effort in learning and dedicating myself to it and creating player raids and you know making my own 3D terrain for it and then realizing actually I don't like this game. This game's not very good. So yeah, I have done that before. I think I'm better at that now than I used to be. I get very obsessed with certain things and if I say, "Oh, I've just bought this new game and it's got, you know, trees in it." Right? That's it. I'm going to now buy a 3D printer. I'm going to now print a load of trees. I'm going to spend the next six months of my life dedicating myself to making the most realistic trees. But you haven't played the game yet, Paul. Yeah, but don't worry about it. I'm going to have these amazing trees. It's going to look fantastic. And then you play it and you're like, "This is the worst game I've ever played." Um, yeah, that that was the old pool. New Paul doesn't have time to get that obsessed with things.

58:07 Not that obsessed. So, uh, if so, do you regret it? Eg. For me, I loved the initial Lord of the Rings LCG, bought a heap of decks, and then I got too busy and overwhelmed, so you sold it. Yeah, I can see that with certain games where there ends up just being so much content. For example, Aon's End. I've got all of the content for the first three waves of Aon's End, and there's like seven waves now or something. There's like double the content I've got and there's already an overwhelming amount of content. But yeah, I don't think it would get to the point where I would sell it. I would only sell it if I wasn't playing it and then I I wouldn't I wouldn't regret it.

58:53 Question two, what's your favorite franchise, Marvel, Star Trek, or Star Wars? Probably Star Wars, I think. I mean it is close but ah yeah I'm gonna say Star Wars but there are bad parts of Star Wars there are also bad parts of Marvel and there are also bad parts of Star Trek but the good parts of Star Wars. Yeah I'm I'm going to say Star Wars. Question three. You haven't really said much about Gridcon. How was it and did the changes that you made with the entry tickets work? Um, I think what you're referring to, K, was the changes that we're proposing for next year because we didn't make any changes last year, apart from the fact that the website crashed, which was still a mystery, still unknown. We still don't know why it happened. So, we had to change the way that we sold the tickets and it did work. It was just a huge amount of more effort for me. Um, that wasn't a a change that we wanted, but we are proposing some change for for next year. But how was Gridcon? I thought I thought we did talk about it, but maybe we didn't. How was it? Well, it's a thing of the past now. I think it was good. Um, yeah, it was it was quite stressful. Um, I wasn't in a in a good place in the week before because of lots

1:00:24 of things going wrong, but I think overall, I think we both run a successful event and people enjoyed it. We raised £6,100 for charity, which was fantastic. So, thank you very much to everybody who contributed to that. I got rid of 75 games from my collection. So, that gave me a bit more space for new games to arrive. And yeah, I think overall, I think the event was a success and people enjoyed themselves. Um, as for whether we enjoyed it or not, we don't do it to enjoy it. We I mean, it was great to see people and see a lot of people having fun. Um, but yeah, it's it's it's very stressful and a lot of work. Right, next question. Uh, from Monisa, you are one of the most experienced people in the board game content creation scene with years upon years of content creating and gaming. Do you have any tips for people that aspire to do what you do? Gosh. Um, not everybody can do it, but also anybody can do it. What you've got to do is you've got to find something that you're happy doing and don't go into it for the wrong reasons. Don't go into it thinking, "Right, I'm going to create another dice tower or I'm going to be the next shut up and sit down because it probably won't work." You need to go into it and accept the fact that no matter what you do, the success of your channel might be

1:01:56 out of your control and you might create amazing content and it just might not get the views or anything else. It's just it's just how it is. It's very very hit and miss. It's very much sometimes down to the look of the of the draw. Obviously, you there's there's I'm not saying it's completely random as to whether your channel's a success or not. I'm just saying that it's not fully under your control. There are a lot of factors out there about whether things are going to work out for you. Whatever you do, don't go into it thinking, I'm going to do this so that I can give up my day job. Because right now, and I said that I think I talked about this last month, the fact that I am one of those content creators who has turned a hobby into a full-time job. Not everybody can do that. Most content creators are doing it because they want to create content.

1:02:55 It's fun. They enjoy doing it. For me, I don't have any other job. This is my job. But like I mentioned earlier on, I'm not just a YouTuber. I'm not just creating playthrough videos. A lot of the work that I do is behind the scenes. We do a lot of game testing, consultancy, play testing. There's a lot of behindthescenes stuff that a lot of people don't see that I do, which is all part of the the job that I do. The videos are a part of it as well, but there are also a lot of content creators who are doing it full-time. And I think if you're somebody who's thinking of getting into content creation, you might be looking at all of these people and go, "Well, hang on a minute. None of them have normal jobs. They're all managing to do it. I want to do it as well." And you might think it's actually really easy, and it and it's not. So, um, yeah, the that that's I've got a million tips, but that's probably one of them. Question two, have I tried Kingdom Legacy?

1:04:01 Have I heard of Kingdom Legacy? I think I have. I think I've heard of it, but no, I haven't. I haven't played the game, so I don't have any thoughts on it. Do I plan to if I haven't? I don't have plans to. Next question from Patrick. You usually have guests on for playthroughs, but we seldom know anything about them aside from their name. I'm pretty sure several of them have been on multiple videos, but could you give a brief intro to them, thinking like a 10 to 20 second blurb, how many times they've been on before, or how you know them? We already know and love you, so help us to connect uh if only briefly with the other voices we'll be hearing for the next few hours of the game. Nobody has ever asked that before. I will ask them. I I I I don't mind it. I think it's a good idea, but I also don't think doing it at the start of a video is the right place. So, for example, tomorrow, who's coming around? Stuart and Dan. So Stuart and Dan are coming round tomorrow afternoon and we are doing a live playthrough of Speak Easy.

1:05:07 We've known Dan for a very, very long time. In fact, I'll tell you something about Dan. When I decided many, many, many years ago that I was going to start making videos, I still had another job. I borrowed a video camera and we experimented one afternoon downstairs in our dining room. It was me, Vicki, and Dan. Dan was there for the very first video that I filmed. When was that? I mean, 12, 13 years ago, 14 years ago. Wow. Uh, yeah. So, yeah. So, we've known Dan a very, very long time. Anyway, Dan's coming over tomorrow. What I'm getting around to is I agree with that. And let me know if you're watching this video live or you're watching me afterwards. Let me know what you think. Are you interested in finding out a little bit about the people that I have around the table?

1:06:04 Here's my counterargument to it. I think it would be weird. So, if we sat down tomorrow and I said, "Hello, welcome to a three-player playthrough of Speak Easy. I'm joined this afternoon by Dan. Dan, tell us a bit about yourself. I I I don't know. What do you think, Vicki? Shake it ahead. So, yeah, I I think it's a great idea. I think I like it, but I don't think doing it at the start of a playthrough video is the right place to do it. But if I don't do it at the start of the playthrough video, where do I do it? Because I don't have guests on for my Q&As's, my vlogs, or or anything like that. I want to pursue this more. I want to know what other people think. So, please let me know. Leave me a comment on this video and Vicki will tell me later what people are saying in the chat. But I I wanna I want to unpick this a bit more.

1:06:55 Uh, next question from Dillwin. Since the beginning of gaming rules, which video are you most proud of? Which one would you like to redo if you had the time and the inclination? And which one was the most challenging to create? Would it be the script, the shooting, or the editing? I can answer the last one of those first and that would be A on Trespass Odyssey. So I didn't just do one video for A on Trespass Odyssey. I did five. I did the official series of how to play videos for A on Trespass Odyssey. There are five videos. Each one of them I think is between 30 and 45 minutes long. So if you put them all together, it is the longest single video. Even though it's not a single video, it's five. But you need to watch all five to learn how to play the game.

1:07:45 That was the most challenging one. It was um the game itself is one of the most epic complex games to play with so much going on. And the reason why that was the hardest video to create is not just the fact that it took me 150 hours or 200 hours. I I lost track of time. Um, but it's the fact that the rule book for the game isn't very good. That's that's generally well known. The rule book is all over the place. There's also the rule book's very unclear in a lot of places. and the amount of time and effort that I spent in learning the rules of the game in order to create the videos.

1:08:40 There was one contact that I had at the publisher who is no longer there. He's moved on, but we came we became friends. I must have been speaking to him for on average two hours a day every day for a month with questions about well what happens if the BP3 card is over there when I manage to ah well that does this ah yeah but that's not what it says here oh well we're going to need to speak to ah what right I remember once we ended up the the entire conversation over a period of two weeks went on for about six hours there was about this sixh hour back and forth dialogue with other developers getting involved about something which in the video is a two second scene and I spent six hours because I wanted to make sure that this video was absolutely correct and what I'd found by working on the video and diving in into as much detail as I do that I'd uncovered a part of the rules which didn't actually work and they were like ah yeah so Yeah, I I I spent so much time and effort on that video and yeah, so I I guess that might be the one that I'm the proudest of. Uh unfortunately for me, those videos didn't perform that well. It is a very niche game and I think the people who've got the game, the people who've watched those videos have said, "Wow, these videos are just superb and fantastic."

1:10:11 So, I'm very proud of the work that I did on those videos because I had to put in a huge huge amount of effort in order to unpick the game and translate it into into video form. Which video would I like to redo if I had the time and inclination? Probably the one for Liz Boa. Now, my video that I've done for Lisboa, people say is amazing, right? I don't like it. I I it it's like just over 20 minutes. And if you go back to my channel, eight, nine, 10 years, the how to play videos that I did back then were very different from what I did now. But the Lisboa one, I wasn't happy with that video because what I did is I did teach the game in like 20 22 minutes or something like that. So you might think, well, that's great.

1:11:04 But I kind of followed the same structure as the rule book after saying what I said earlier on. And I shouldn't have done. I shouldn't have explained it. Going back and looking at the script for that Lisboa video, I'm like, "No, that's not how I should have explained it. I should have explained that bit first and then gone backwards and done that." And it would have been a 40-minute video, but it would have been a much much better video at properly explaining the rules. But the fact that so many people have said that the Lisboa video is amazing. I've not learned from this, but what it's told me is that all of that effort that I go into with my how to play videos to make sure they're clear, the structures right, and everything else, it actually doesn't need to be. Because if people say my Lisbboa video is good, when I'm saying it's not good, I have a different perception of the situation.

1:11:54 Next question from Rafa. As shelf space for board games becomes more and more limited and with so many great new games being released each year, many board games, or maybe it's just you. No, it's not. It's not Juju. Um, oh, maybe it's Juju that struggle with space and end up selling very good games to simply make room for new ones. Yeah, I'm I'm in the same situation except I'm not selling them. I'm giving them away to charity raffles. But I am now at the point where the games I'm getting rid of are at least good and some of them are very good. And you might think, well, why am I getting rid of very good games? It's because I just don't have time to play all of the ones that are very good. What advice would you give for managing a collection while still keeping up with new releases? You just have to let things go. You cannot keep all of the games. And I I I struggled with this for years. Vicki spent years and years and years saying, "You've got too many games. You've got too many games." And I was like, "No, you're wrong. I don't have too many games." I literally could not acknowledge the fact that I had too many games. And then probably about three years ago now, maybe three or four years ago, and this is down to my personal situation changing.

1:13:12 I was looking around. I was started to get fed up and annoyed because I ran out of space. I've got piles of games there, piles of games there, and I just had to get over the fact that there is no point me keeping all of these games. Now, I could probably get rid of, don't get too excited, 300 games tomorrow, right? I could get rid of 300 games from my collection. My collection is about 750, 800, maybe. I could get rid of 300 games tomorrow and I'd be fine. I'd still have 500 amazing games and I would likely not miss them because I would never play them again even though a lot of them are good games and you just have to accept that.

1:14:00 There's a couple of ways of doing this. If you want to keep up with the new releases and you have disposable income and you are in a position where you are able to buy 20, 25, 30 new games each year, you're going to have to get rid of 20 or 30 new games because you just don't have the time to play all of the It's not just about space and storage space. It's about the time to play all of these games. I know some people with collections of 2 and a half 3,000 and I'm like I've got 750 and I don't have time to play 90% of these games. So if you've got 2 and a half 3,000 and let me know if if you are one of those people with a collection which is like let's say one and a half thousand games or more then yeah let me know why. you know, is it the same reason that I used to keep everything cuz I like having a collection? I don't know.

1:14:57 Let me know. Second question from Rafa, and this is the last question from the ones that I was asked in advance. For those of us with limited time after work and when work already feels like a heavy euro game in terms of mental effort, do you have any tips on how to enjoy learning new games without it becoming overwhelming? I'm fortunate to be part of a weekly board game group where people are always happy to teach new games, but I'd be interested to hear what approach you'd recommend. So, I'm going to drag Vicki into this because Vicki is the perfect example. Vicki gets home on a Friday night after a hard week of work and just wants to sit and watch telly and do a jigsaw because mentally burnt out, spent so much mental effort on that day. me when I had another job.

1:15:50 Nothing more I would like on a Friday night to dive into a medium to heavy euro game. And it's I don't have any tips on how to enjoy that because you either do or you don't. And there are people I know, I mean Vickiy's not a big gamer, so that's possibly an unfair comparison. But I know people who enjoy games as much as me that on a Friday after a full week of work, they don't want to sit down and learn a heavy euro game on a Friday evening. Me, I love it. So yeah, I I don't have any tips. There's nothing that I can suggest that will help you get to the stage of being able to enjoy it if you're tired apart from don't do it. Right? If you know you're exhausted, play something fun. Get Tower Up out or you know something else. Don't sit down with the rule book of a new heavy euro and go right this is what we're going to do tonight because it it's not going to be enjoyable. So don't force it if it's not gonna it's not going to happen. Right. We're going to have a small break now. We have now finished with all of the questions that have been asked in advance. Thank you very much for that. We're at quarter past 6. Shall we just say no more questions? Right, no more questions. For anybody who has asked questions, we are now going to be going through all of those. Thank you very much for those people who have asked those questions.

1:17:19 But we're going to have a short break and we'll talk about the contest. So each month as part of these live Q&As's I give away either £50 or £75 of games vouchers from Games Law to win. It's very very simple. There is a link in the description of this video. Vickiy's going to put it in the chat right now and all you need to do is you need to click on the link and fill in the form. And the secret word for today is well I was going to have it something snakes. Snakes. Okay. Snakes is the secret word for today. So all you need to do is click on the link and put the word snakes as the secret word. And at the start of the next live Q&A or the the day of the next live Q&A, I'll do the draw and somebody's going to win £50 or £75 of Games Law vouchers.

1:18:18 What makes the difference whether it's £50 or £75? Well, these videos that I create are not sponsored. All of the advertising revenue goes to charity. So, I don't make any money out of these videos, these live Q&As that I do. And the only reason I'm able to do all of this and half of the other content that I produce is thanks to the amazing support of my patron supporters. So, a huge thank you to all of my patron supporters. And as a way of saying thank you, if you do enter the contest, you get extra tickets. And if you are a Patre supporter and you win, you get £75. If you are not a Patre supporter, you can still enter the contest and you still have a chance of winning. And sometimes a non-patron supporter does win, but you get £50 and yeah, good luck to everybody uh for that. Now, what I will say is that those vouchers are for games from Games Law. Games Law are based in the UK.

1:19:14 There are there is a possibility that Games Law might not be able to ship to your location, but we'll work that out later on because there's all sorts of things going on in the world at the moment. The winner of last month was Stuart, who we mentioned earlier on. So, congratulations, Stuart. Um, Stuart now is going to have to sell a game to make space to get a new game. But yes, let me know. Stuart is a patron supporter. So, Stuart has 75 pounds of games law vouchers. Uh, and as I say, it's a free contest. Doesn't cost you anything to enter. In fact, last month we had more people entering than ever before. I think we had 260 people entering the contest last month, which is fantastic. So, yes, please do that. Please enter the contest. Right. So, live questions. Here we go. I've not seen these before from Brian. You did some BGG Hall of Fame videos. BG BGG is adding more games to the Hall of Fame. Were you asked to do any more videos? No. Did you Will you do any? Uh, I've not been asked. So, there you go. So, it's as simple as that. They They didn't ask me this year.

1:20:19 So, yeah, I' I've not done any. Next question from Brian. Is the Highland Cow New? Does it have a name? Uh, it's not New Brett and Chrissy gave it to me at Gridcom. I don't think it's got a name, but I'm thinking Hannah cuz it's a Highland cow. Hannah the Highland cow. Is Hannah all right? Is Hannah work? No. Vickiy's not sure. Let us know. Let us know what you think. Uh, the Highland coup. It's a Highland coup. Um, yeah. So, yeah. doesn't have a name yet, but I I think Hannah, but yeah, let me know. It's got to be a H. Heather. Oh, was it Heather? Oh, I think we already called it Heather, didn't we? Oh, we did. Okay. Heather. Sorry, Hannah. You're not Hannah anymore. Yeah, Heather. Her name is Heather. Thank you very much.

1:21:12 I knew it began with a H. Right. Next question from Frank. Uh, any news about your new Patreon goal? Will you announce a new one if the old one is fulfilled? So, yes, if you're wondering why it says, oh, and there were more questions that I was asked on the guild. Okay. Right. I'll go back to the guild at the end of these live questions and we'll answer those ones. So, yeah, if you're wondering why it says road to freedom and there's a bar, my next Patreon goal, and this is this is your fault for watching last month, it was a question about what is my oldest game that I have in my collection that I haven't played. And it's a game called Freedom in the Galaxy from 1979. And I just said on a whim, if we get to 1400 Patreon supporters, I will do a live playthrough of Freedom in the Galaxy. As of this morning, we are at 1,311.

1:22:05 So, we are having more people join the Patreon all the time. We are having roughly the same number of people leave the Patreon, but overall, it is slowly growing. But yes, if you like the content that I create and you want to support me on Patreon and help me get to 1400 Patreon supporters, we will do a live playthrough of a game which has been out of print for 40 years and nobody I don't think has ever done a live playthrough of it before, ever in the world, and the designer is still alive and still designing games. Will I announce a new one if the old one is fulfilled? Yes, I will probably come up with some other crazy idea for 1500 patron supporters, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Uh, next question from Malikite. If you could only play campaign games like Tainted Grail and Earthborn Rangers or Euro games like Colution and Galactic Cruise for the rest of your life, which one would it be and why? Oh, that's not a fair question. I love both of those.

1:23:01 It would have to be non- campaign games. I mean, I I love campaign games. They have given me such a rewarding experience for playing them. But if you're going to make me choose between campaign games and non- campaign games, it would have to be non- campaign games because

1:23:27 because there you go. Because I'm sure I've got reasons, but I Yeah. Uh, any news or updates for the next GridCon? Um, we haven't even had the meeting with the hotel yet for a debrief. We have provisionally booked dates for the next Gridcon. We haven't announced them yet, so don't get too excited, but yeah, we we just need to get through January, February, and then we'll sit down with the hotel and we'll work out what's going on. I have already been speaking to people like Hashet Games. Hashet Games were there as an exhibitor on the Saturday. So, I've been speaking to them about whether they might want to come back. I've also been speaking to some other designers, publishers about what they want to do. I've even had some publishers offer to send me stuff for the charity raffle already. So, um yeah, I'm in discussions about various things that might be happening, events, but it's it's it's still a bit soon. So, yeah, we're still going to be running it. It's just we Well, yeah, we are going to run it even if it's just me.

1:24:32 Um, next question from Jackie. Are there any sneaky info secrets releases you can tell us about for 2026? Well, yes, there are sneaky info secrets. No, I can't tell you about them. I get I'd get in a lot of trouble um if I told you about them. When I'm allowed to tell you about them, I will tell you about them, but at the moment, I'm not allowed to tell you about them. Why haven't you made any games yourself? Says Trevor. Well, that's a very, very long story. I spent probably 20 years of my life wanting to design my own game. And I spent so many years trying and trying and different ideas. And I've got things scribbled down. And I was designing games, you know, back in the 80s, just scribbled down ideas of things. There is one game that I actually did finally finish and design and produce produce like and it was playable. It was all right. It was a six out of 10 game. It was yeah, but I realized the amount of time and effort to actually go through this process to design a great game.

1:25:37 Going back to what I said earlier on, different people have different skill sets. I would class myself as a good games developer. I'm good at taking people's ideas and looking at which what doesn't work. Um, but actually going through the process of designing my own game is like, yeah, I I just Yeah. So, yeah, it's not as easy as you might think. And I still have what I think are some really, really good ideas. I just need to find a designer who's willing to take those ideas on and actually do something with it and turn it into a into a game. Next question from Julian. Do you think the hype of the hype timing of some board games, eg press releases, sending copies to reviewers, is sometimes too early, eg, Mage Knight?

1:26:23 Yes, sometimes it is. However, with regards to Mage Knight, and since we're talking about Whiz Kids, we've also got to add in Star Trek Captain's Chair. And this is not me saying this as any kind of excuse. But there is stuff going on in the world at the moment which is affecting the board game industry with regards to tariffs. Whether we're on, we're off, are we on? Are we are we 50%? Are we 100 million%? Are we oh no, 0% tomorrow, oh no, next day. It it it it's crazy. It it really is. And a company like Whiz Kids who gets their stuff produced in China is in a really difficult position where they're like, "Right, we've got a plan. It's going to be produced here. We're producing this many copies. Then we're going to ship it to there. Then it's going to go to shops and oh what? Oh, it's going to cost people 50 quid to get a get oh wait hang oh hang on a minute. They they can't do it. And they're not the only publisher that's done this. Everything gets delayed. Everything gets pushed back. So there's been a lot of problems. because there's been a lot of unknowns and there's a lot of mitigating factors.

1:27:38 If it weren't for those mitigating factors, Mage Knight Apocalypse Dragon would have been out six months ago, I think. Uh, and the Mage Knight uh not the Mage Knight, the Star Trek Captain's Chair. I think that would have been out by now as well. But yeah, that that that's one of the reasons. And I'm and I'm saying that as a as I say, not as an excuse, not to defend them or anything like this. And I'm sure other publishers do things differently, but there's so much uncertainty in the world. And when you're talking about huge amount of games, we're not just talking 500 games here. We're talking about thousands of copies of games, it has a massive impact on it. But yeah, sometimes releasing like a video too early, and I've I've done this before. There was one game which I was asked to do a video on, and I'm not going to say what game it was, but they wanted the video done by a certain date. So we we did the video, and that's fine. And we're like, so when's the crowdfunding campaign? Oh, it's going to be in a couple of weeks time, right? And then it got delayed and then it got delayed and then it got delayed and eventually the crowdfunding campaign went live I think 3 months after I'd done the video and it's like well everybody's forgotten about it and I'm not talking about the Warlock of Fire Mountain game by the way if you're interested in that. The Warlock of Fire Top Mountain game, the Fighting Fantasy Quest game I think it was called. Um, that's going to Kickstarter next week.

1:29:02 Either Kickstarter or game found. I think it's game found. So, that one I mean that that's not the one I'm talking about here. That was special circumstances around that game. Why I did the playthrough video, but yeah, if you're interested in that that fighting fantasy game that I covered a couple of months ago, that's going on Game Found 27th I think it is. Um, yeah. So, yeah, marketing is not my area. Next question from Froo. In line with the game footprint, what information do you think should be on every box that isn't currently? Oh, what should be on every box? Well, I really like the old Avalon Hill games from years and years ago, which had the little bar chart of complexity, length, solitire, play, and everything else that grade your game, you know, tell us how complex it is on a scale of 1 to five. Then again, are publishers going to be honest? We already know that publishers, some publishers are less than completely honest when it comes to play times on boxes. I've seen a few games where the play time is just nonsense. Like absolute nonsense. And I and I don't just mean first game. I mean, I've played this game five times and we're still playing it in double what's printed on the box. that means what's printed on the box is wrong and is misleading. So yeah, I don't know.

1:30:24 The more information we put on the box, the more we are potentially subject to marketing. And when we go back to the old Avalon Hill games that used to have those, I don't think any of those were on there from a marketing point of view. I think they were honest. They were like, "This is how complex the game is." And yeah, now I think PR people would get involved and it might not be completely truthful. Next question uh from Marie, are you going to take your exceptional shuffling skills to Vegas? So Marie has been watching my old playthrough series of the Pathfinder adventure card game Dragon's Demand where I did an entire solo playthrough of the Dragon's Demand. And it it this is this was hilarious because what happens is every time you play a scenario of Dragons of Pathfinder Adventure card game, you have to build the location decks. So each scenario that you play contains a number of locations and those locations each are made up of a set of cards. So, you might have the docks, and the docks is made up of three allies, two weapons, one armor, a spell, and three monsters. So, what you have to do, and it takes ages, but you have to go to your collection, you have to get all of your monsters, shuffle them together, pick three, get your weapons, shuffle them, pick two.

1:31:48 So, you literally build up your location deck based on your collection, and then you shuffle all of those cards together, and that's your location deck, right? So, setup for the game does take quite a while. Anyway, my character started off with a rapier and over the course of the campaign as I was increasing my leveling up my character and doing all of this stuff, I got a plus one rapier. So, because I got a magic rapier, I therefore discarded my current rapier. I didn't need it anymore. I've got a better one. So, what happens is that rapier, that old card goes back into my collection. You know what's coming? At least half of the games that I played, there's my rapier again. So out of this big deck of weapons, half of the time I kept finding my rapier, and it just kept showing up every other scenario. It's like, "Oh, there's my rapier again. Do I want it?"

1:32:42 No, I don't. Um, yeah. So, I can shuffle the same card to the top of the deck five times in a row. Next question from Megalodon. This isn't a paid video, I don't think. Can you give me your opinion of Uprising? It was a paid video. Yep, it was a paid video. And if you if I mean I'm hoping it's clear because in the description of that video it says it's sponsored. When you watch the video it should come up with paid promotion in the top left corner. And we were very clear at the start of the video and at the end of the video that it was a sponsored video. I'm sure we were. So um yes. Yeah. I'm I'm what I'm confused by is that you didn't think it was a paid video even though we've gone to so much effort in saying that that it was a sponsored video. So yes, that means I can't really give you my honest opinions on Uprising because that would be um morally wrong. I think suffice it to say that if you watched that video and you saw us both having a really good time and really enjoying the game, then that was not an act. And I'll leave it at that. Next question from Jackie. Will you be covering Nucleium Gibraltar this year? I haven't heard back from Board and Dice yet. I'm hoping to because I do cover most of the Board and Dice new releases, but I haven't been able to get hold of Board and Dice yet, so I currently don't know if I'm covering it or not. Next question from the sweeps.

1:34:05 Examples are helpful when they strengthen what is discussed in the text. Yes. What I dislike is when an example teaches a rule that is otherwise not discussed. Do I agree? Not only do I agree, but whenever I see a rule explained only in an example, my blood pressure goes up a notch. I get so angry about it. as a professional rulebook writer, editor, and reviewer, whatever. Then, yeah. So, I'm I'm with you on that one, and I don't want to discuss it too much more because I can already feel I can already feel the uh the stress building. Yeah. Please, please, please, if you are a rulebook writer or editor, do not put the actual rules of a game in an example. The rules of the game should be clear and the example should be an example and it should be possible to read a game without uh read a rule book without reading the examples and still learn how to play.

1:35:05 Next question. What is your favorite use of a game in a movie, book or TV show? This is a question from ZLN25. What is your favorite use of a game in a movie, book, or TV show? I'm not sure. I I mean, I understand the words, but I'm I'm not sure I understand the question. I'll come back to that one in a minute. Remind me if I forget. Aiden, looking forward to full board gaming next week. Are there any other big games you're looking forward to playing after Elder Scrolls? I I mean, most of my plans for full board gaming are full. I mean, Elder Scrolls is going to be fantastic. We're playing a full campaign, three player Elder Scrolls, split over two days. I'm also playing, what else am I playing? I'm playing Terminus. Um, I'm playing Recall I'm probably going to take Labyrinth and probably play the new Labyrinth. I think I've got things planned at other times as well, but no, no other big games planned. What? Yeah, a full three-player campaign of Elder Scrolls, which is honestly going to take us about 15 hours, if not more. That's probably enough. Uh, next question. Here in Los Angeles, they are showing the three Lord of the Rings movies in theaters separately showing not all three in a row. Are they doing the same where you live? Yes. Uh, will I be attending? No.

1:36:25 So, yes, theaters in the UK, because it has been 25 years, I think, are showing the Lord of the Rings movies and they're showing all three of them. I only found out about this recently. I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan. The movies were amazing, but yeah, I I don't have the capacity at the moment to take three three and a half hours off three times to go and see the movies. We have them at home. I want to watch them again because it's been a while since I've since I've watched them. Um, but yes, they are they are doing it at cinemas in the UK. Next question. Your opinion regarding The Mountains of God and Gilded Realms. tanks. Yeah, sorry. I I I I I don't have any opinions on those things because I I I I not heard of them. I don't I don't know what they are. Next question from Monica. Do you feel some games give you some tools for real life like focus, problem solving, or any other skills honed due to a specific game? Yeah. So, there's a there's a whole extra discussion. I I think games do give you tools for real life in two main ways. The first way is the game itself. So if you're playing some kind of resource management, uh not necessarily worker placement, but one where you've got restricted time and restricted rounds and you've got to be efficient with your actions and things like I think that does I think that teaches you skills in a game. If I know

1:37:56 that the objective of this game is to get to 10 points and how do I get a point? By building a table, well, how do I build a table? Well, I have to go and buy some wood and then I have to turn the wood into a table. It gives me, you know, a logic problem to solve so that you're never going to be in that situation in real life, but you might be in a similar situation in real life where you're like, I need to get this. How do I get that? I need to do this and I need to do these steps and this order in order to do that. And if I've got to do it by a deadline, then I need to be efficient. But I think board games also teach social aspects as well. So the things that you can learn from playing games around a table with people, you learn social etiquette. You learn all of that kind of thing. I think I think board games can do that for people as well.

1:38:46 Next question from Frank. How long did it take you to set up your studio for the speak easy how to play with all of the thematic things in the background? Well, I did it on Sunday and you've not seen this yet, but I mean, if you're one of my patron supporters, you have access to my how to play video for Speak Easy. You will have tonight anyway, but you've had access to an early draft version. It's hopefully going to be out tomorrow. And I I went to a lot more effort than I normally do with setting things in the background. Some of those things are still here, but it probably took me about an hour and a half. And I I did that on Sunday. I spent I spent a lot of time on Sunday preparing the studio, getting the camera working, and everything else. Um, and I'm really happy that I did it because I think it looks really good. Um, and there's some Easter eggs in the video as well. So, when it comes out, and I don't literally mean Easter eggs, when that video comes out, look closely. See if you can spot some things in that video that I have I have sneaked in there.

1:39:48 Next question from Lilmons one. Are you worried that when you finally get Blackstone Fortress all painted and ready to play that the game will be terrible for you or not? Have you already tried it once or twice privately? So many years ago during lockdown, one of my patron supporters, I think it was Andrew. Yeah, I think it was Andrew. We played it on tabletop simulator. We only played it for a couple of hours. We only played a bit of a scenario and I loved it. So, I already know that I'm going to like it and I know I'm going to like it more when I've painted all of the miniatures and all of the scenery and the terrain and yeah. So, yeah, I'm I'm I'm not nervous that I won't like the game.

1:40:34 Next question from Monica. Have you ever made a big purchase for yourself for your birthday? either game related or non-game related. A big purchase for myself for my birthday. Not really. I mean, I don't tend to do things at birthdays and Christmas. For example, that camera, which is looking at me right now, was £999. I didn't wait for my birthday. I didn't wait for Christmas. I wanted a new camera. I bought a new camera. Some people would have said, "Oh, I want a new camera. Maybe I'll get one for me birthday." Um, and again, I have to say a big thank you to all of my patron supporters because it's your financial support that helps me buy new equipment for the studio, whether it being cameras, lighting, new computers, all of that sort of stuff. Um, so yeah, I I don't think I've made a big purchase for myself or my birthday, but that is the last big purchase that I've made, not counting the car. Yeah, the car was a bit more expensive than £999.

1:41:39 Um, next question from um PB Micros. The road to freedom tracker is zooming along. Have you penciled in a date? No. Um, because to be honest, sometimes over a month the net change between the number of patron supporters I have, it can be anywhere from minus2 to 25. So, literally when I do my monthly video log at the end of this month, I think I've overall with all of the people that have joined minus all of the people that have left, I think it's a net plus eight at the moment maybe. But who knows? You know, I might do this video now. You might all be watching this video and think I'm going to support Paul on Patreon. I might have had 10 new Patreon supporters while I've been doing this video. I don't know.

1:42:25 Probably not. But what I'm saying is my Patreon growth rate is nonlinear. Some months it will actually drop, some months it will go up. On average, at the current rate of growth, if we look back over the last six months and extrapolate it forward and draw a line and get out the, you know, rulers and stuff, roughly speaking, I think it will be about eight or nine months away. But we we won't know. So, I'm I'm not penciling anything in. In fact, I'm not going to pencil anything in until we reach the goal. At the point we reach the goal, that's when I will pencil something in. The good news is I've already found somebody to play the game with. Steven, who is part of my Earthborne Rangers campaign, Steven owns the game. So, Steven has a copy of the game. He tried playing it once about 40 years ago and has never gone back to it.

1:43:24 I've never played it. So, yeah, I've already found another person to play with and uh yeah, I'm I'm actually looking forward to it. And it might be this year. It all depends how well the Patreon does. Um, right. So, I need to go back to Well, let's go back to that question because I I think I I I I'm still not sure I understand the question. Anybody who's watching me live now in the chat, can you please tell me what you think I need to answer for this question? And the question is, what is your favorite use of a game in a book, movie, or TV show? Are is the question about in which movie, book or TV show did a game appear? And which is my favorite one? Something like Stranger Things. Stranger Things has a lot of references to D and D and you see them playing D and D in it. Is it is it that kind of thing? If so, one thing that inspired me when I was a very very young teenager was ET. So the movie ET and the book ET at the very very start of ET they are playing D and D and I was a D and D player when ET came out and that I remember the feeling that it gave me.

1:44:50 It made me feel, wa, this is actually bringing D and D into the, you know, people might look at that and wonder what that is. Now, it didn't have anywhere near as much impact as Stranger Things because Stranger Thing really brought the whole focus onto it, but they were playing Dungeons and Dragons at the very start of ET and that I'll never forget that. So, board game geek. Yeah. What movie book made use of a game that left an impression? We'll say ET. We'll we'll say ET. Did you know they were playing D and D at the start of ET? You remember ET? Yeah. Yeah. The very literally the opening scene. It's only in it. Uh there's something about because Drew Baronmore was in it and it's something about they get a portable hole and do something with a portable hole. Something like that. Uh right, I'm just going to go to my guild because apparently there are questions on the guild that I forgot to copy over to my document. So, apologies for that. Here we go.

1:45:49 Did I just copy the ones from the first page and then forget to copy the ones from the second page? Yeah, I think I did. Okay. Right. Second page. Here we go. From Mouse Muncher. I know you enjoy Roads and Bows, but what has been your experience of other games by Splatter and which do you like best? So, Splatter games. I could talk for 10 minutes about splutter games, but I'm not going to. My experience with Splatter games has been very hit and miss. First of all, they're very expensive. The production quality in general has been pretty terrible in the past. Not all of their games. Some of them are quite good. Their rule books are not great. Their games are fairly unique. I find them personally a little bit too brutal and a little bit too if you don't do this exact thing, you are completely and utterly screwed.

1:46:42 So, my experience of some of their games has been good. Some of my experiences have not been good. I'm not keen on some parts of their games. I remember I have an experience once when Indonesia came out. So, the first printing of Indonesia, don't know when it was, 15 years ago maybe, but I had friends who bought it and they brought it round and I played it. I hadn't got the faintest idea what I was doing, right? The other people that I were playing with much cleverer than me, much better at games than me. And Indonesia, I think, has aspects of 18X in there, I think. But anyway, they were they knew what they were doing and they were playing it and they were making really clever moves. And I hadn't got a Scooby. I I was just like, look, I don't know what to do. I'll just I'll do some random stuff. I'm there for the experience of playing this game for the first time to see whether I'm going to like it or not.

1:47:44 And I won. And I shouldn't have won. There is no way that somebody who doesn't know what they're doing making almost random moves against people who are clever, who've played it before, and I'm like, I still don't know how that happened. Maybe I was cheating. I don't know. So yeah, my experience of Indonesia was I've played it once and I won. One of my favorite games that they've done is The Great Zimbabwe. I think it's a really good game. I think it's extremely clever in the way that the mechanisms work. But my one experience of playing the great Zimbabwe is that I won easily and managed to get four times the points of anybody else.

1:48:30 And apparently that's because I got a broken combo on the first round of the game. Now that broken combo is so powerful, it is up to the other players to have prevented me from getting that combo. And I hate that in games. I absolutely hate that. If you are going to design a game where there is the potential for a particular combo to be so overpowered that whoever gets it will win and your design choice is that oh well it it the other players should have outbid you and not let get let let you get that. No, that for me is a bad design and a design flaw. So, as much as I liked the great Zimbabwe, it did have that in there. And when I wrote on BGG about this or I spoke to other people, they were like, "Well, the other players were stupid. It's their fault. They shouldn't have let you get the combo." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no." So, yeah, my experience with them has been hit and miss. Bus is very good.

1:49:34 Bus is an extremely good game. But yeah, their games do tend to be very tight, uh, very brutal. Next question from Owen. You mentioned this week during a gameplay session that the game was great and you didn't and didn't require an expansion. Uh, SETI. Yes, I said SETI is a great game and it has an expansion. The expansion makes the game better, but you do not need the expansion to play the game. And I went on this big rant about how some people when an expansion comes out say this is a must-have expansion. You cannot play the game without it. It's like the game's fine. It's just better with the expansion. Do I have a list of five games that have essential expansions that you would not play the game without? Not right now. Um because we're overrunning and I need to go get some food and I've got an unboxing video at 8:00. So what I'm going to do, let's turn this question into another question for the guild. So question for the guild is give me a list of games where the expansions are.

1:50:37 Well, you see, Owen has said essential expansions that you would not play the game without. They're two different things because once I have played SETI with the expansion, I will never play with the expansion, but that's a different thing to it being essential. Let's start a thread on be on on the guild and let's get people's thoughts. But I think there's two different things here. We're talking about an essential expansion because it fixes something. That's what I mean by essential. But then again, essential could just be it makes the game better. Let let's have the discussion on BG. Next question from Peter. Curious if you will be covering the new Cloud Spire content. Yes, and in fact, I've got a date booked in for near the end of February. JP is coming over and we are going to be covering the new Cloud Spire content. I do need to go back to Chip Theory Games though and let them know. Cloud Spy was my favorite game of 2029. Uh, sorry, 2019.

1:51:32 Um, Frank, how stressful was the creation of the how to play video for Speak Easy? I tell you what, until the last couple of days, it hasn't been stressful. Stressful is not the word that I would use at any point of creating the Speak Easy video. It's been a huge amount of work, but none of it has been stressful. the last two days, however, where I've been having camera issues, rendering issues, and right now I wanted the video done and dusted and it's still not ready. Uh, and it would have been ready, but I'm live streaming and I only have one computer, so I can't live stream and render a video at the same time. So, I've had to pause the rendering. Vital sat there in Portugal going, "Paul, where's my video? Where's me video?" Um, and I'm here doing a doing a live Q&A. So, yeah. Have I got any other how to play videos booked in for the year? Yes, lots. I have Avalon, the Riven Veil, I have Lands of Evershade, I have Hub World, um, Adelon, and I got some others as well, I think.

1:52:34 Yeah, I've got loads of playthroughs booked in as well, but the how to play videos, they're the ones I've got booked in. Another question from Frank. Would you say the actual rule books uh would you say the way that actual rule books look so the writing the layout the images and so on has significantly changed over time? Yes, the simple answer to that is the layout of rule books has significantly significantly changed over time. And yeah, if you if you just download the rule book for Freedom in the Galaxy from Board Game Geek and compare it to any modern rule book, you will see how things have changed. Frank says, "Would you say that watching a how to play video substitutes for reading the rule book?" Depends on the how to play video. One thing that is um how do I want to say this without upsetting anybody?

1:53:25 One thing that I'm not going to say bothers me. I'm not going to say irritates me, but it's those videos that you see online that say, "We're going to teach you the game in six minutes. We're going to teach you a Lerta game in six minutes. And I get it. It's more marketing. It's them trying to get you to watch their video instead of, "Oh, Paul Grogan's done one and it's 45 minutes long. I ain't got time for that. There's another video here saying, "Learn how to play this in six minutes. I I'll go and watch that one." You can't. It's just It's just you you cannot learn how to play Speak Easy in six minutes. And I'm pretty sure there will be a video out there probably from one of my friends saying learn how to play speak easy in six minutes.

1:54:14 My point is you cannot learn how to speak play speak easy in six minutes. You can get an overview of the game, sure, but you can't learn how to play it. The how to play videos that I now create, not the ones I used to create years ago, but the ones I create now, I would say are a substitute for the rule book, except when you've got like here's what these 20 tiles do. I'm not going to explain what every single one of those tiles do. I'm just going to say there are these tiles. What they do is is explained in the rule book. So yeah, you will still need the rule book. What is your rule of thumb for deciding exceptional or age cases that you don't cover regarding the content related depth of the rules?

1:55:00 Yeah. So there is one thing. So again referring to speak easy. There is one tile in speak easy or one card. There's one icon that a load of people have got loads of questions about and every week somebody asks the same question about this icon on this card because it it isn't clear enough in the rule book. I don't cover that in the video. And the reason why I don't cover that in the video is because I don't cover any of the actual icons or any of the effects. I cover the main actions and I cover what some of the things do, but I don't cover every specific icon. And there is one in particular and I need to remember what that one is because I've forgotten it. I need to remember it for tomorrow's playthrough because it's probably going to come up. But yeah, I don't go that detailed into it. Now, I did say that it's time for no more questions, but then Adam popped in and said, "With the rise of digital adaptations of board games across various platforms, great for long-distance gaming, it feels to me, this is Adam, that actual physical copies of those games are being played less and less. What are my thoughts on this? And do you also feel that digital games are killing off their physical counterpart? Right, I'm going to do a video on YouTube and I'm going to go digital games are killing off their physical counterpart. See how many game views that gets. Um, so my thoughts on this are games are being played more and more by more people around the world. So I don't think that digital games are killing off their physical counterparts. I don't think.

1:56:32 Now that said, Through the Ages digital, I don't know anybody who's playing the physical version of Through the Ages anymore. But if we look at other digital adaptations of board games, like all of the games that we're playing on board game arena, the Terraforming Mars app, I don't personally feel that that is killing the physical counterparts. I don't feel that it is causing people to play less and less games in person. I think it's enhancing the hobby by g giving people the ability to play more games when they wouldn't normally be able to play games. Let me know if you agree or disagree. I am always curious to hear your thoughts. So, to summarize, we've got a contest. We're giving away £50 of games vouchers from Games Law or if you are a patron supporter, £75. All you need to do to enter the contest and enter the giveaway is there is a link in the chat right now. There is also a link in the description of this video. You click on the link, you put the word snakes as the secret word and then in about a month's time I will do a draw and somebody's uh somebody's going to win some money. And while we have been live, Ken Cams played board games has joined as a new patron supporter. Uh there's a guy called Dan Weisman who's joined as a patron supporter.

1:57:58 Dan who's coming over tomorrow. Thank you very much, Dan. Um yeah, so we've we've we've gained two new patron supporters while we've been live. We might have lost two patron supporters, but you know that that's how it goes. I get all excited when I get an email saying, "Oh, you've got a new Patreon supporter." So I go to Patreon and I say, "Oh, I've got a notification. Oh, somebody's left." So that's the way it's been going at the moment. Every time somebody It's like It's like a board game collection. It's a one in one out policy. Um, but yeah, thank you very much to you two for for joining the Patreon. We are slightly closer to the 1400 Patreon supporters. Right, just before I disappear, I wanted to let you know at 8:00 tonight, I am going to be doing a live unboxing. The video is on the channel now ready to go. I'm going to be doing a live unboxing of the new Labyrinth game from Awaken Realms. I have been sent a pre-production copy of the game. It's a massive box. It's got 3D terrain in it. It's going to look fantastic. I don't know yet, but we're going to be unboxing that at 8:00. So, that's in just over an hour's time.

1:58:58 Also, tomorrow afternoon, Speak Easy. We're going to be doing a threeplayer live playthrough of Speak Easy tomorrow afternoon at 2:00. And then on Friday, we're going to be playing a three-play game of Malice of Light Adventures, which is a prototype copy of a new game from um Adam and Brady Sadler with designers of Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game, Heroes of Teroth, and various other games. So yeah, full content and as mentioned earlier, Seti with the expansion that's happening on Monday. This is what happens when I finish work on a how to play video is I I've got time to do lots more playthroughs. So very excited about all of those. Lots of content coming to on the channel and uh yeah, we're all done. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to give the video a like. Subscribe to the channel if you're not already subscribed to the channel and I'll see you next time. Cheers everybody. Byebye.