Update Vlog - October 2024

0:00 welcome to the Jong games update Vlog for October 2024 today I'll be talking about a few different things and I do want to mention that if you'd like to listen to this episode in podcast form you can gain access to that as well as a bunch of other exclusive perks by going to patreon.com jongetsgames the other perks involve watching my dozens of opinions episodes where I talk about the things I like and don't like about all the games that I play and you can also watch some videos early and advertisement free all right let's now jump into the general updates and I have two of them and the first of these it's actually going to start as a bit of a a thank you and then also just a general broadcast um I've talked about spring cleaning a lot and that is my card game that realistically only exists because of several people you know me I designed the game Jessica she made it the reality like the physical box doing all the graphic design as well as the art Direction and all that kind of stuff but also uh new Mill games or I guess uh little dog games as you can see printed on the outside of the box uh little dog is essentially an imprint of new Mill which is a publisher that's run by a friend of mine and you would not be able to buy spring cleaning right now if it wasn't for Daniel uh he made this process so much more possible which is really exciting and one of the reasons I'm kind of saying this right now is because well he just put out a big pre-order campaign for four more card games that he is selling through new Mill um and on top of that you can still order spring cleaning barely uh as of this moment there's like 30 copies remaining which is kind of mind-blowing to me so it's definitely going to be selling out at some point uh sooner or

1:31 later I'm not sure how soon it's going to be but um it's definitely gone down a lot recently so if you're interested in it there's not that many copies left over but also if you are interested in it and other really fascinating trick-taking games there are again four of them that just went up for pre-order and I really think you should check it out I mean sure I'm just kind of chilling for a friend right here but also it's for a friend who uh you know did a huge thing for Jessica and I getting our game out there and I think uh that he makes some really fascinating card games um the other update is also very similar I'd like to talk about uh another friend of mine who is another reason why spring cleaning exists and that is Taylor rener uh you might be familiar with him he has the Taylor's trick-taking table YouTube channel which is excellent if you want to learn about anything card game related it's really funny stuff honestly and Incredibly informative and Taylor is a friend of mine we've played tons of games together we've talked development we've uh designed alongside each other in a lot of ways I helped develop his of what's left which turned into Sears catalog and because of working with him on that spring cleaning exists so this is yet another person uh in my life where they are instrumental in making this card game a reality which is really exciting and the reason I'm mentioning Taylor uh not only because he's an amazing person but also he just started running a Kickstarter campaign for four games that he designed and it's called zoo and more and it's this amazing package and I just want to give it a little bit more attention I have backed and I played a couple of the games so far um so it's essentially four four different standard

3:01 decks with completely different art for each one of them that's kind of based around the game itself so in some ways you're buying a lot of standard deck card games but you're also buying this fascinating rule sets that um they work with each other and um there's like a metag game that I just tried last week where you can play with all four decks at once uh essentially playing a bunch of different games all at the same time there's just some fascinating stuff going on here uh there's Bug House millionaire which I think is hilarious because Bug House chess is the only way that I will play chess it's essentially two versus two realtime chess and Bug House millionaire is two versus two realtime uh climbing and shedding but then the theme of it is bugs trying to buy houses because they're not millionaires so it's like the the the real estate market for a bunch of bugs uh there's also hodg Podge dodgeball which I've not played yet but it's also designed by another friend of mine uh DJ and uh that one is a a game about raccoons and again I haven't even tried this one yet but it looks fascinating chai jazz is also a game I haven't tried but looks fascinating and then finally short Zoot Suit is a game that I played many times as Taylor was uh developing it uh designing it to get it to completion and that's a game all about shorting yourself and that deck is hilarious because it's a bunch of bears wearing suits that get shorter the higher up the rank so like the ace I think the bear does not have pants on at all which is just really hilarious so anyway this update is kind of like me just broadcasting about the cool stuff that some of my friends are doing and it's not something I want to necessarily

4:32 make a habit of it just happened to happen that two of these were happening right now and I really wanted to uh let you know about it so that maybe you could check it out I'm going to put links to both of these things in the description if any of it fascinates you and again uh there's not that many spring cleanings left which is uh really exciting uh I I'm curious to see what happens once those are all gone so that's going to finish my general updates and that means we can move on to the next segment which is the shifting shelf this one is not going to be as long as it normally is I only have nine new games to talk about and then only two uh games are leaving the collection uh that was a little bit rough uh I felt like I should probably have removed more considering nine have arrived but it's getting really hard to actually make a lot of these Cuts but let's talk about the games that are leaving first uh the first one of these is Chicago and Northwestern this is a winom game that came out a long time ago but then just got reprinted by Rio Grand games I actually just got a pile of train games that came over from Rio Grand and pretty much all of these are for sponsored tutorial playthroughs so I made one for Chicago and Northwestern I've actually played that game before about a year or two ago and it is a pretty straightforward Cube rails type game that does not have any auctions which normally would engender me to the game uh but now after playing it a couple of times it's just not clicking with me the way so many of the other train games are on my shelf I actually have expanded my train game shelf in our overall collection to the point where like I have to make some serious Cuts because I don't actually play train games that often you know know at our house like putting it into my bag so I'm

6:02 trying to be uh particularly choosy and uh Chicago and Northwestern didn't quite make the cut for me although uh one of my good friends loves it so like it's one of those games that I think is somewhat polarizing uh the other game that's leaving is really old I think it's like 24 years old and it's called morisy or maybe Mor isy so this is a game designed and published by corn van morsel I bought it from The Geek market for a pretty reasonable price mostly because it looks like a curiosity um it's one of many games that were published uh back at that time by koali games that come in a cylinder like a tube essentially with the art kind of wrapped around the outside and I've been curious about these for a while and then I was able to pick up morsy for a very good price and I was able to play it once and uh just to uh shill it a little bit I talked about it quite a bit in one of my opinions episodes back when I played it because I talk about every game that I play for the first time in my opinions episodes uh but the short version of it is I enjoyed it it was funky we played it four players it's essentially two games in one like you you play both of them at the same time where there's this sort of worker movement game going on but then there's also a network connecting game and they are tied together because the worker gets you the resources to actually do the network but the workers in the network don't actually interact in any way Beyond it just being a resource acquisition system and it's a race game the rules are very straightforward uh and I enjoyed playing it but I got to be honest with you it's a weird shape it takes up a surprising amount of space on our Shelf and I think my curiosity about it is not going to get it to the table enough times to have it really be

7:32 sticking on the Shelf like I would not mind playing it again but I also wonder if I wouldn't mind not playing it again uh I only played it the one time and it was a really interesting experience but again I just need to start making some hard Cuts uh part of me almost came here with zero games leaving but I really have to remove some when we have nine coming in so let's actually talk about those now in alphabetical order the first of these is age of rail South Africa along with the expansion uh alagan and papa La Papa uh so I back this one a Kickstarter uh got it from Capstone games I backed it uh a while ago a year and a half ago something like that I can't remember exactly when um this is a renamed kind of reimplementation of South African railroads which is one of the more beloved Winsome Cube rails games from way back I think this one came out in 2012-ish something like that so I haven't actually tried age of rail South Africa just uh yet the rules are 99.8% the same between these games there's like this one in itty bitty little rule that changed that really isn't going to impact anything and I am curious to I will say since I backed this one I've played a lot more Cube rails games and train games in general and I've started to feel like the the core idea of uh South African railroads is not necessarily my favorite essentially where one of the actions you can pick on your turn is to start an auction that everybody is going to be um auctioning on uh that being said unlike Chicago Express which I've kind of grown away from this game does have like a big payout that dutes at the end of the game which is fascinating so I'm not saying I'm like bummed that I got it I'm really happy that I did and I'm really curious to try it and also to show it to some of

9:04 my friends you know in real life sitting down at a table uh to see what they think because I've pretty much only played these games or this one in particular online and uh the boards are beautiful I also bought the expansion as I said with two extra boards with slightly different mechanics going on there I mean again I think it's like 98% the same game just you know different maps and having a different map is going to have a very different feel for sure like one of them has all the companies radiating out from from one position and another one has all the companies going from the East over to the West whereas the standard game of U I guess South Africa age of rail South Africa kind of has the company starting everywhere and kind of converging into a central point so I'm looking forward to giving it a try uh after that we have campanil which is a game that I learned about on the hidden gems podcast um I've talked about them a lot in these shifting shelves they they've got me to buy quite a few games this is a very small card game little box the production value is is honestly pretty terrible the card quality is really not good but the gameplay looks fascinating and I was able to pick up a copy for what I thought to be a pretty reasonable price this game is like I think 20 years old or so and it's a really straightforward game of um kind of hand management and shared incentives a bit while you're trying to go for majorities you essentially have a hand of cards that you can then play out to extend the height of various Towers I haven't actually played it yet so I don't remember all the specific rules but that is one that I'd like to try now that I have a copy of it I just you opened the box and I looked at the cards and I was like wow the production quality of games was uh a little bit different or I think a little bit wider a long time ago after

10:36 that we have game that I am so excited about I've played it once it's an expansion it's carcassone Snakes and Ladders I talked about this one in one of my games radar Vlogs back when it was first announced and I remembered thinking I think this is actually going to be really fun and so I was able to hunt down a copy of this one it is very very very hard to get a copy of uh but I was able to get a copy it's essentially just a different scoreboard all the rules to carcass are the same but on that scoreboard there are snakes and ladders like the kids game where if you land on the top of a snake you fall down and if you land at the bottom of a ladder you go up and I've been able to play this one once it was two players and it was super cool I talked about that one quite a bit in an opinions episode that might not actually be out by the time this update Vlog comes out so if you are a patreon packer um it's coming soon I promise because I I have a lot of very fun and happy things to say about this hilarious expansion I can't believe it works so well after that I got a copy of giraffe which is the only splotter game I currently own I learned about it a couple of months ago it's a really light game for splotter like I've played food chain magnet and I've played Horseless Carriage and I played uh the Great Zimbabwe and i' I'm sure I've played a couple other ones I like splotter in general Antiquity that's one that I played as well but they're big games with very complicated rule sets and then I learned about this one which is this kind of silly random but there is definitely thinky stuff going on Race game where you build a track as you were actually racing um this is another one that I've I've talked about recently in an opinions episode that might not have gone out yet um but I played it once and

12:07 I want to play it again because we played something slightly wrong but even though we played it slightly wrong it was really fun it was a really fascinating experience after that we have Endeavor deep sea which is the second Kickstarter game that I backed that I'm talking about today I feel like I backed this one years ago I didn't actually look it up to see when the kickstarter campaign was for this maybe it wasn't that long ago but it feels like it's been a really long time I liked Endeavor when it came out in like 2009 it kind of hit our game group uh quite a bit it was getting played a lot and I I didn't love it but I liked it there were a couple things that that didn't really work for me then a new version of endeavor came out like six or seven years ago or so it was a fancy deluxe version and it changed a few of the rules and I actually like that version significantly more but I never owned it I just got to play it once now here comes Endeavor deep sea and it is a different game like they changed a lot of rules again but the base the core ideas of the game are still the same but the theme is completely different instead of colonialization and all the evils that go along with that it is now about exploring the deep sea and doing research on the deep sea and doing science on the deep sea uh it's very explicit at the start of the rule book that you're not um exploiting anything you're not removing anything from the ocean you're just looking around uh learning things and uh trying to essentially impact in a positive way these various areas there's a whole bunch of scenarios you can play cooperatively and solo I haven't tried it yet it just arrived a couple days ago I punched it yesterday I read the rules and I was like this seems cool I remember why I paid a bunch of money to get access to this game although I probably won't have a chance to play it for a little bit um after that there is

13:37 Marcato dboa which is a game that I really like and I feel like I am one of the few people out there that really like this game uh a good friend of mine Matt who's been actually in a lot of the playthrough With Friends videos he uh owned this game in fact he actually got a free copy because he was a play tester and he like won a play tester Tournament of it which is fascinating anyway Matt has had a copy for years I play his copy many times and I really like it this is a hidden training game it's a hidden cubells game in a lot of ways I think it is all about shared incentive with an incredibly streamlined rule set and it did not land for so many people like most of the feedback I've seen about this game about other people talking about it is that they were disappointed they thought it was not that interesting like it was there wasn't that much there and I wonder if part of that's because it has liboa in the title and it's also designed by vitala certa but also uh julan pombo and I think a lot of people expected a heavier more complicated intricate game because lizbo is in the title whereas this is a very streamlined game about shared incentives that is like 30 minutes to play and I love it I think it is such an amazing game like just incredibly elegant it does exactly what it's trying to do very well in my opinion the decisions are arduous like there's tons of tension in this game and it honestly fascinates me how much I like it compared to most other people being pretty shrug on it but anyway I was able to pick up a copy of this one for like $8 because again it just did not do that well for some reason and I've been keeping an eye out for a cheap copy so I have it and I put it right there onto my train game shelf even though it has nothing to do with trains

15:08 it it scratches a similar uh itch in my brain uh after that we have a game that's brand new I was I was honestly a little surprised it showed up it is SEI uh which is the search for extra terrestrial intelligence I did not go to Essence Spiel this year I I cannot go every year I I probably can't even go every other year it's an expensive trip to uh be gone for a week and California is very far away from from Germany even though going to Essence Spiel is super fun I will definitely be back there in the future but I was able to get a surprising number of games early that were releasing at Essen and this is one of those uh I did put in a request for it a couple of months ago and I didn't think it'd go anywhere and then like two weeks ago so a week before Essen uh it just showed up and I was like holy cow this is like one of the hottest games that's going to be happening at Essen that hasn't even happened yet so I punched it I learned it and then I got to play a three-player game of it uh and I talked about this one a lot in opinions episode that again I don't think has quite come out by the time you are uh watching this update so if you're a patreon supporter there's a lot to be said about CTI that's going to be coming uh the really quick version is I played it once it was surprisingly long but I really enjoyed it it's this game about searching for extraterrestrial uh intelligence it very much has a hard science fiction Vibe which really Rings true to me because that was like the only kind of thing I read as a teenager and I've read the entire sci-fi selection at our library and as I was punched punching this out and reading through it I just got really giddy about it because of that connection and I played it once and I I really like the way it works like the core of this game is multi-use cards in a pretty

16:39 fascinating way um at the midpoint of the game you actually discover alien life you flip them over and you're like what did we find and it doesn't drastically change the game state but it is definitely interesting and it changes some of the rules overall I've only played it once this is like a ludicrously quick first impression um that I'll go into a lot more detail into in my opinions episode uh but I liked it I'm really happy that I have it uh I haven't had a chance to Play It Again it did take us 3 hours the first time we played it but I think part of that's because I was not a very confident teacher of it now that I am I think it would go much faster uh but also it was a very fast three hours like I was I was enjoying it and fully engaged the whole time um we have two more to talk about the next one is sncf which most people probably know as Paris connection um this one is originally published by winom games as sncf and uh it got picked up by queen turned into Paris connection which is a very lightweight Cube rails game you know stock grabbing but it also has hidden stocks going on it's a super fast game and Rio Grand has picked up the rights to it and they put it back out there as sncf which was the original title and I haven't had a chance to play this version I've played Paris connection a couple of times and I liked it uh so I'm looking forward to cracking this one open I keep looking over there because it's like in a stack of train games off to the side in my studio and uh I am probably going to be doing a sponsored tutorial video for this one as well finally there's Southern Pacific which is very similar it's also in the stack of games over there this is also a winom title that has not been printed outside of winom until now Rio Grand picked it up I played this one several times online it has some really fascinating ideas going on of like

18:10 inverted shared incentives where companies actually make areas worse when they kind of collectively come to spots um it has uh a player order which is actually company based as opposed to player based so that's a little bit unusual for cube rails games in general um the payout structure is kind of interesting too there's a lot of control as the uh the president um I've enjoyed my plays I think it's a pretty fascinating game and I'm very very likely going to be making a sponsored tutorial of that one as well so you can learn a lot more about that um also for what it's worth I talked about that one a bunch in an opinions episode as well all right that is all the new games and the uh games that are leaving and it's now time to finish this up with the upcoming schedule so looking forward towards the next four weeks later on this week I'll be putting out a video for a train game it's prair railroads which is yet another one of these games uh that was sent to me by Rio Grand um this is the first time I got to try it and it has a fascinating card Action System which I've not seen in any other of these Cube rails games uh that's going to come out later this week and then next week we're going to have the first friendly ties episode in quite some time we're we we accidentally went on a bit of a Hiatus and we're hoping to get back into slightly more regular schedule with that one uh we are going to be talking about the world series of board gaming which is uh a convention that Nick has gone to several times he did very well this year and we figured it'd be fun to just pick his brains and learn a lot about about it so that will be coming out early next week the next video coming out next week is Ultimate Voyage uh I just wrapped this one up a few days ago it is a medium to heavyweight Euro game that has a lot of theme as well you are essentially in

19:41 charge of a treasure Fleet it's 500 years ago in Japan and you are um sailing out you're making trade relations you're fighting you're doing a whole bunch of different stuff in this game um there's quite a lot going on and I'm looking forward to getting that one out so that people can uh dig into it with that video uh that one is coming out next week next Tuesday particular and then I'm really hoping to put out a new games radar Vlog later on that week I kind of skipped over one a couple weeks ago I just didn't have time to work it in but I'm hoping to make that happen here or I can talk about a bunch of new games because obviously Essence spel just happened so there's a lot of new games out there to learn about uh then for week 43 I'm going to be doing a sponsor tutorial for Mad Cola which is a manala game uh so one versus one but it has a uh Madhatter Alison Wonderland theme and there's a whole bunch of cards that you can play wacky effects different things on the monola board I actually uh did rulebook proofing like I I I helped them make the rulebook for this one I did not write it but I I did a bunch of editing for it um so as always I'm I'm super biased for a lot of these things but that one's coming out from jwi City uh in week 43 and later on that week I'll be putting out a video for uh Battalion War of the Ancients which is a new uh kind of warish game from Osprey games I'm looking over here because it's literally here off screen I just finished making this video it's pretty neat you are making units with these different ranks you're putting order tokens and disorder tokens down you're moving them around the tiles kind of Nest into each other um it has a pretty streamlined overall rule set I was able to film a full two-player game of this one in about an hour so um that one will be coming out in about two

21:12 weeks uh then in week 44 I'll be putting out a sponsored tutorial for clandestine which if I'm being honest I don't remember much about I said yes to doing this a few weeks ago I thought it looked pretty neat um but I don't remember any of the mechanics so I'll be learning about this one soon it's actually right there on a stack of games I'm going to be jumping in and learning that one probably tomorrow and uh putting out a video for it in in a few weeks uh the last video I'm planning on doing in you know this next four-week chunk is a playthrough With Friends video of tales of the Arthurian Knights this one is going to be a sponsored video for Wiz Kids games this is essentially a sequel to tales of the Arabian Knights and I'm really excited about this one because it looks like I'll be bringing in one of my oldest best friends who like um gave a speech at my wedding and all that kind of stuff he hasn't been on any of these playthroughs Friends videos before but he taught me tales of the Arabian Knights 15 years ago and we played it a bunch 14 15 years ago so he was the first person I wanted to ask to see if he wanted to join in for this new version and he was very into it so I'm planning on recording that one relatively soon it hasn't happened just yet and the hope is that it actually goes out in uh week 44 um in about four weeks from now um it was pretty important uh to make this be a three player playthrough just so you could see a lot of the interaction between the players in this highly narrative overall game so so yeah that is the current schedule at least the the my my current plans for the next four weeks it's very likely I'll squeeze a games of the month Vlog in there at some point maybe in like week 43 or week 44 uh it's also possible some of these things might change uh sponsored videos oftentimes

22:43 have mobile uh release dates overall but yeah this should give you a decent idea of everything that's going on so yeah I think that's going to bring this episode to a close uh I don't I don't think it was uh as long as a lot of these are um I wasn't really sure what to talk about in this update vlog and then it occurred to me like you know I definitely want to give thanks to Daniel and new Mill game/ littleg games for spring cleaning and I also want to give thanks to Taylor and I just think it's a great idea to to give a little bit more attention to these ongoing projects that are happening from people uh Who I Really respect and uh who really make some awesome things happen all right I think that is going to bring this episode to a close as always I'd like to thank everyone who's been supporting this channel including these producer level patreon supporters if you too would like to directly support the channel in the creation of future videos just like this one then please go to jungus games.com Support also if you enjoy this video then please click the like button for it down below as well as the Subscribe button for the channel thanks for watching