Designer Series: Justin Jacobson & Rob Daviau - The King's Gambit

0:04 Pickaxe.

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0:27 Welcome back everyone to Rolling Dice and Taking Names. We have a very special edition here today. We are joined by two of the most prestigious people in the gaming industry, two of our favorite people. What do you mean eh? These are the These guys are amazing. We love having them on. And the best thing about this, I'm going to throw an old joke in here, we're not recording anything on their hard drive, so we don't have to worry about it crashing and recording multiple times.

0:53 Oh, yeah.

0:54 Rob Daviau, and then you introduce your counterpart, sir.

0:57 Uh yeah, I had totally forgotten that you had done that we had to record a podcast twice. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that back.

1:03 Uh I've never done that.

1:06 Yeah.

1:06 [clears throat]

1:07 Over here is Justin Jacobson. Say hello, Justin.

1:09 Hello. I'm never going to live that down. It doesn't matter what I do from here on out. That's That's my legacy. Yes, it is.

1:17 you today, Justin, and said, "You ain't got to record a thing."

1:20 I ran That was I ran out of memory. I was working on an old computer and I ran out of memory like during the show, essentially, during the recording.

1:28 Now, for those who don't know, these gentlemen are from Restoration Games. And typically, when we have these guys on, it's usually for a Kickstarter or some culinary genius from Rob. In this case, it's probably going to be both, Tony, because when we have them on, we usually end up talking about the exact same things anyway.

1:47 [snorts]

1:48 Yeah, so Rob, what is in the kitchen? What you been cooking?

1:51 Uh I had a party for about 60 people earlier in the summer. And I made about 300 mini cupcakes in 12 different flavors. That was my what I did last month. So.

2:06 Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's like a lot That's like a 180 for you cuz usually it's savory. It's a breads and and cooking meats. And you went bakery? Treats? Sweet?

2:17 I never really see like you watch cooking shows people say, "Oh, I'm not a baker. I'm not a dessert person. I'm a cook." Like they're It's the same thing to me. So.

2:25 Yeah, but you didn't Did you have Did you get to eat one at least or not?

2:28 I I I ate very very few. I mean, I was making them over 4 or 5 days. Type 1 diabetic, which is why he asked. Um so, I would like sample little bits and pieces. I did not sit down and have all 12 different flavors at once when they were all done. So.

2:42 So, I have I have a good story to tell. Uh literally last night I was My mom was coming over and uh my mom and my stepmom are vegetarians and I don't cook for vegetarians ever.

2:57 Rob has though. Rob's done it a few times. And so, I I messaged him uh urgently and said, "What the heck can I make for some vegetarians for dinner?" And so, he gave me a quick little recipe for cauliflower steaks, which they turned out quite well, by the way. So, that was good.

3:12 Excellent.

3:13 Try that. Now, Rob, on those 300 cupcakes, did you fill any of them? You know, where you pull out the center, fill it with a jam or

3:20 No, one of them was a bit of a poke cake. So, I have to say I made all the components. Everyone was a different sponge, like an actual cake, a different topping, and a different frosting.

3:30 Mhm.

3:30 And sometimes they had multiple. And then my wife, Lindsey, who also works at Restoration Games, is an award-winning cake decorator. So, I got to the point after spending about 4 or 5 days in the kitchen and I said, "Here you go." And she decorated them all.

3:43 Okay. And what's your go-to frosting? Swiss buttercream? What what's your go-to?

3:47 I did a Swiss meringue buttercream, I think is a base. And then for about seven of them, and then five of them were bespoke. It was a cream cheese frosting, there was a mascarpone frosting, there was Uh I don't remember now. It was last month, but but they were they were not just like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, like one of them I wanted it to taste like the forest. So, it was a dark chocolate cupcake with a chestnut rosemary frosting, and then toasted pine nuts on top.

4:17 So, Tony, I see we we missed a golden opportunity. So, since we last time we had you guys on, which I gosh, I guess it's been a while, we started doing a segment called taste buds, where people send us stuff and we try it on like we did to you guys that one time when you were here.

4:33 years ago.

4:34 Yeah, so um

4:36 That was before the segment had a name.

4:38 Yeah, exactly. So, now we have a jingle and everything. We could have had Rob send us all cupcakes, and then sit here and try them for taste buds. That would

4:47 a bunch frozen, so you know.

4:48 Dang it. Oh, we'll have to have you back back on later for doing that then.

4:54 Yeah, so Justin, what was on the cauliflower steak? What did you uh slather it with?

4:58 Uh I'm so I didn't slather with anything. I seasoned it, but I served it with a a gremolata, a gremolata.

5:05 Oh, gremolata.

5:06 It was good. And then I also made uh I've been wanting to make it for a while. I feel like I found this recipe during COVID and like haven't had a chance to make it. Finally going to do it is a I've heard them called like TikTok potatoes or thousand layer potatoes. Basically, you slice potatoes like super thin. Uh it's slather them in like uh beef tallow or duck fat or some really rich fat. Layer them in a loaf pan. Bake them at 250 for 3 hours. Then you put another loaf pan on top and put some weights on and put in the fridge so it compresses overnight. Then you slice them into like little, you know, bricks basically and then you deep fry them.

5:52 And they're just super like rich and, you know, but crunchy.

5:56 I saw the picture and I'm like how I thought it would be bake them and press them but I I you you surprised me with deep fry at the end. That one that one got me.

6:04 They were really good cuz it's funny I said as I was making them I was like I'm never making this again. This is such a colossal pain in the butt. And then while we're eating it I was saying yeah, I don't think I'm making them. And everyone was like really? No, not not going to make these again? They they really liked them so I was like all

6:20 I'm shocked potatoes covered in animal fat and then deep fried were good. That seems unlikely.

6:27 But that's kind of the point though, right? If I if I just took regular french fries are pretty good but they were quite good I have to admit. So.

6:34 All right, I'm going to try that.

6:36 That sounds good. Well, I tell well what's funny is so hey, stuff we're trying is not as sophisticated as what you guys did but my wife and I have never together made homemade banana pudding. So we decided to try that this past week. I know Tony's crazy southerners have never made banana pudding. We found a recipe and it was absolutely amazing. It went over extremely well with her family. We went down to Mississippi and it was uh We will be making that again soon. So if you like banana pudding I got to get a recipe for it.

7:06 I love banana pudding. You know there's that uh stall at uh PAX Unplugged in the Reading Terminal Market that is literally just banana pudding.

7:15 Mhm.

7:16 And it's really good.

7:18 One of my favorite desserts. Now here here's the question though is what was the base? Was it Nilla Wafers or graham cracker or

7:25 Ours was Nilla Wafers. I mean what else would it be?

7:27 Well, I said graham crackers that's what it could be. Some people swear to the graham I'm like please no. It's got to be Nilla Wafers. You got to have something to hold up to the nana pudding.

7:38 And we put in cream cheese in this too which was really good.

7:41 That sounds good. I'm not a big fan of bananas dessert. And given that I have to take insulin for dessert, like banana pudding. I've had a couple bites, I'm like, okay, that one's for you.

7:52 But the great

7:52 That's like my wife. She says, can we make bananaless banana pudding? I went, I guess not.

7:57 Okay, she's smart. I like her.

8:00 That's called pudding. Wait, with vanilla wafers.

8:05 Not besmirched by bananas.

8:08 Oh my gosh. All right, so the reason why we have you guys on is because you have a massive Kickstarter that people have been buzzing about for a very long time. This is called The Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit, which is based on game back from Rob when 20 what?

8:30 2001. 2000 or 2001, I'm not sure which.

8:32 25 26 years ago, which is considered by many a grail game. It's a Star Wars themed game, and if you've never played that or what this game is going to be, Rob, give us an just a 30,000-ft level of what is Queen's Gambit and what is The King's Gambit going to be? What type of game is this?

8:52 Before he goes there, I've got a pun that is killing me.

8:55 All right, go for it.

8:56 This is the one Kickstarter.

8:59 Really? You You interrupted for that?

9:02 Well, it's not a pun. I had to.

9:04 How long did you work on that for?

9:06 Yeah.

9:07 Like a

9:08 10 seconds. 10 seconds.

9:11 All right. Um it is very very strange to be doing a restoration of a game that I did a quarter century ago. And when I did it, I was around it. Really, it was Craig Van Ness did it. I named it and did some playtesting and a little bit of development. I think I wrote the rules for it or something. But I was around for it. And it's 25 years later, I'm still working on making games. That's pretty cool. Um

9:35 Mhm.

9:36 So, Queen's Gambit uh was a game that came out to tie in to Phantom Menace episode 1 cuz that was going to be the biggest movie ever. Um but unlike most Phantom Menace games which had to be done like right when it launched, this one came out like a year or two after it when the movie was finished which made it better cuz often when you're working on a movie, you're working off of the script or a rough cut and characters change and things change and so you you have to guess it. And this one I remember Craig had a I think a bootleg DVD that he had picked up where he could just watch it and watch it. And if you remember the end of Phantom Menace, there were three through four scenes being cut. There was Queen Amidala and a bunch of palace guards were trying to storm the palace in Naboo and meanwhile there was a diversion out on the plains in Naboo where Gungans were fighting droids and then Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Darth Maul were fighting in the power generator and then Anakin was trying to go up and destroy the control ship to shut all the droids down. And what Queen's Gambit did was created four different battlefields that you played cards to and you tried to not lose any and win some until you achieved your victory condition. So, you could play a little over here, a little over there and then your opponent plays over here and you need to respond to it and meanwhile Anakin was sort of like a

10:55 [clears throat]

10:55 a clock that if and when he got to the droid ship, it became nearly impossible for the bad guys to win. Not impossible, but you know, 99% of the time they would lose. So, they had a clock against them before they got there and it had a um three battlefields and in the middle was a three-dimensional palace. Piece of cardboard held up with plastics the bottom, middle, and the top floor that the figures were moving to try to get to the throne room on the top floor and off to the side was just thing with all these miniatures where fighting on the plane. And when the Jedi or Darth Maul finished their battle, they could run into the palace and help what's going on. So, it is a lot of miniatures, a lot of spectacle, uh lot of dice rolling, card play, um and it just sort of was fun. It works.

11:47 Like you're just kind of feel like you're in a movie and it feels very Star Wars and you get it. Like it's not a It's not hard to pick up and play and I think it's just proven to be like popular from how it looks and how it plays.

12:00 And so now, you've basically taken the foundation of that game and uh put a new IP on it.

12:08 Yeah, this one is Lord of the Rings. This one started in February of 2024. About 2 and 1/2 years ago is when it Yeah, you know, we started pretty soon thereafter. Um so, what we did is we wanted to create a card-driven, dice-driven, four battlefields, two battlefields going at the same time. The third one is when it's resolved, it comes and help and the fourth one is a timer. And so, where we ended up with the King's Gambit, this recreates it kind of compresses time a little bit, but it's the ending of Return of the King where you've got the siege of Minas Tirith and the Witch-king comes through the door and Gandalf's there and then the Riders of Rohan appear on Pelennor Fields and Witch-king's like, "Hold on, be right back." And he goes out to Pelennor Fields and there's a battle there and then

12:56 [clears throat]

12:56 a little later and this is often It was on screen in the movies. We're doing it off the books. It's off screen in the books. Ships come up the river with reinforcements and the shadow forces are expecting it to be the corsairs of Umbar and much of stuff, but instead it's Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli who had taken over the ships and that's what kind of causes them to route. Meanwhile, Sam and Frodo are going to Mount Doom. Now, they don't really show up in the books. They show up like 10 days later, but we put it back. We compressed it here. So, we took the the um palace and that became Minas Tirith. And that is the victory condition for Shadow. They want to go up and see you know like the top though. Well, it's not the top. It's the fourth level. When we made it actually seven levels, it was about 3 ft tall. So, we um

13:44 And like it took 7 hours to play the for them to get to the top.

13:48 to the top like it was like a real-time sort of game here. Um Pelennor Fields is the Gondor battle where you have the forces of the free people fighting the forces of Shadow and there are three encampments on the back row of Shadow. And if the free people can destroy those encampments, they have sort of broken the reinforcements and the morale of Pelennor Fields. Then you've got the Great Port where you have Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli that are trying to clear out all of the corsairs to come help on the battlefield. And the forces of Shadow there can either try to fight back or just slowly get on the docks and try to get away to like save and then you've got Samwise and Frodo going up to Mount Doom. And so there's two victory conditions for either side. The Shadow forces can win by getting up to the fourth level of Minas Tirith or by corrupting Frodo. Get him down to zero will.

14:44 And the free people can win by destroying all three encampments or by getting to Mount Doom and throwing the ring in without running out of will. So, there's a ring victory and a military victory for each one. And that's what a lot of a lot of what we've been doing over the summer is getting them to end at approximately the same time. Um and that's the real top level and it it has a lot of s- more changes under the hood like Lord of the Rings is a little more complex license than Phantom Menace. So, we got a little bit more depth in there, but it still has cards, it still has dice, it still has miniatures. Um we got this cool new momentum system and resolve and things we can do a super nerdy deep dive if you like, but I you know, that is that's it at a top level.

15:27 Just I remember sitting at a ball game at Gen Con in 2024 you leaned over and whispered and said, "Guess what?" What? It's like, "We may be working on a Lord of the Rings game." and I went what? [screaming] And then you told me what it was and I thought that is so cool. So, I've been really excited to hear about the progress and see it and see you guys really start releasing sketches of it and everything like that. It just looks absolutely amazing. So, uh you all have been putting in many years of work towards this thing. So, I know people are going to be really excited to see it.

16:01 Yeah, it's funny. Uh

16:02 [clears throat]

16:02 I I might have told this maybe at like even our blueprints, but this was the game that I pitched Rob on the idea of Restoration Games with.

16:11 Mhm.

16:12 Cuz it was the I when I had the idea for Restoration Games of like taking old Grail games and bringing it back, it was Queen's Gambit was the game I was thinking of. And uh we were looking at a license. I wanted to do James Bond cuz I'm a huge James Bond fan. And uh Rob was like, "That I like the idea for the company, but maybe like, you know, slow down a little bit. Let's start with something a little low-hanging fruit or whatever." So, it's always sort of been in the back of the mind, you know, um something that I really wanted to do um both you know, everyone. And uh it was a matter of trying to find a good license for it. And um you know, when we when we started the company like the idea of doing a Lord of the Rings game was like who you would you wouldn't think that would you know, never entered your mind that that could be a possibility.

16:59 But then obviously, you know, we've had a lot of success over the years in the interim and you know, as we built up our reputation and obviously working with license wars on unmatched. Um and then ultimately, it was kind of a really quirky He should tell this story, Rob. This is pretty funny.

17:14 I mean

17:14 How we actually came to get that that license in the end.

17:18 Um yeah, they it was February of maybe it was March, end of February 2024 because I was at the Can Festival in France, which I always want to say Can cuz I think it sounds fancier, but no, they say Can. Um which is if you haven't been it's a lovely convention. It's quite big and I was a guest there and I ended up having breakfast with someone who I had worked with on Pandemic Legacy season 1 and then he had been a different place and now he was at Asmodee. And he said, "We're thinking of redoing The Queen's Gambit for Lord of the Rings." And I think he wanted Craig and I to do it and I said Craig's back at Hasbro, he can't do it. And he's like, "Would you be interested?" I'm like, "Can we do it together like Restoration Games?" I said cuz Justin will kill me if I do a Queen's Gambit game and just on my own as an independent designer.

18:09 Well, the fun fact at that literally at the same time as they were having this conversation, we had a proposal in directly with Middle-earth Enterprises to do a Lord of the Rings Queen's Gambit. Uh and what when they had this conversation, it was just sort of serendipity that it happened at the same time. And I have to say so credit to we were working with Space Cowboys and Asmodee, you know, the parent company for them that they would be willing to to enter into this sort of like joint venture, right? Um and it's you know, there's obvious it's hard working with anybody when you're working outside your own team, but um the way uh we've been able to structure it and the the way that uh the things we've been able to do that we might not have been able to do uh and importantly, at the end of the day, when this game comes out, so that for to to get clear for 1 second here, we're doing this sort of deluxe edition in the Kickstarter. Uh we have two separate editions. One's called the limited edition. One's called the Mithril edition with everything in it.

19:16 Um, and then, uh, Space Cowboys is going to do a retail edition

19:21 [clears throat]

19:22 uh, that they're going to release worldwide. Uh, and so, to be you know, if we were just doing it ourselves, we would never get that kind of reach with our retail. We'd have a big Kickstarter and we plan to have a big Kickstarter here. Um, but then we would put the game out. It'd probably do pretty well. Um, but certainly nothing that can approach the kind of distribution that Asmodee has. So, to be able to to do sort of have the best of both worlds there is just really great opportunity for us.

19:49 So, when y'all were first started working on this, what do you think I mean everybody knows Lord of the Rings um, beloved franchise and you know, what do you think was the biggest challenge in this game to bring that license to the game other than pissing off a bunch of geeks?

20:06 Um, well, I I ended up doing uh, Trivial Pursuit Lord of the Rings 20 25 years ago when the movies had come out. And I'd been I'd always been a Lord of the Rings fan and I've read the trilogy a couple times and The Hobbit and I even read The Silmarillion like right out of college. I got a history degree so that was easy to plow through at the time. I don't think I could do it. So, I already had some knowledge and then I did uh, the Trivial Pursuit and suddenly I got I'm not Stephen Colbert but also I got a lot more knowledge than I would expect and it's all kind of stuck in my head so tried to be authentic as possible. I remember like taking out the books and double checking because this was this in the movie? Was this in the books? Like it has to be from the books and when did this happen and reading like what dates people were in different places and figuring out different names of things and then trying to basically get the scale to be right. Like when we first started it had a little bit of oh, you needed Grond which is the battering ram that they get through the gates.

21:08 We need Grond and then the gate has to have hit points and it has to be seven levels and it has to be all this and as Justin said like you got through the gate on round four. It was like a 35 round game. Like it was Oh, we're like, okay, so everything just got distilled and got distilled and got distilled. And it's a board game, so it's not a simulation. It's always an abstraction to some amount like what can we take out? What assumptions are we making? Um we had rules at one point where the heroes like Théoden and Éomer could sort of become leaders of units and then they could go off on their own and it was really cool and it was just like three pages of rules and then we got rid of that and that cleaned up the gameplay and everything cuz at the end of the day we didn't want it to be a 4-hour game. We wanted it to be feel like Queen's Gambit. Like you're rolling dice, you're taking chances, high moments happen, different things, you know, from the books or not from the books or different history. And so we wanted to kind of keep things moving. So even though it is big and there's a lot of spectacle, I have taught this game 75 to 100 times to different people and I can see people when they sit down like I'm not going to be able to play this, right? I've gotten people who are casual game players.

22:19 By the second turn of the first round they go, "Actually, this is actually really straightforward." And you know, are having a good time.

22:25 Yeah, did you uh with that, you know, talking about, you know, your love of the the lore and everything and knowing a lot about it, did you run into the situation where it's like, "Hey, when you we want to do this and you have to run it through uh Middle-earth and they were like, well, that didn't exactly happen that way or you need to tweak this, tweak that." Did you run into those sort of issues?

22:46 No, it's funny. I think I think we we did a really pretty good job. Like uh I I wasn't certainly at Rob's level. Uh I have to say this caused me to reread the trilogy and I had not I I don't reread in general. Like I I can't think of another book that I've read more than once. Uh you know, I read it back in the day and loved it and watched the movies, watched them all the time, blah blah blah. But again, this license is specifically for the books. Um it'll be interesting to see, you know, if things people point out like, "Oh, this isn't right." And be like, "Yeah, it is. It's in the book. It's not the movies." Like the outer wall of Minas Tirith is is black, not white. Like that's kind of like a classic one. We have the this big 3D black outer wall, and we've had some people say, "Oh, shouldn't this be white?" And it's like, "No, no, no." Um so, uh but it caused me to reread uh the books, which was great because it reminded me like I had forgotten how well written they were. And it's it really made me appreciate the two different uh media that they're in, right? Like the movie is not a book.

23:44 They're very different things. And the writing is so great, but you know, if some of these long speeches that are in the books wouldn't work in the movies. And so, a classic example of uh Éowyn when she goes to defeat the Witch-king really gets compressed down into that one epic line in the movie of uh I am no man. Well, in the book, it's a longer speech. She says, "No living man am I." You know, "I'm the son of I forget the names, but you know, this is this whole long speech." And it's great in the book, but not in the movie. You know, it wouldn't work in the movie and vice versa. But, uh basically, I think we did a good job of getting it to a point where we everything was pretty much The one thing that we had trouble with uh is they're very particular about spelling. Uh and I mean, so like a lot of the names, Éowyn and all the, you know, Théoden they all have uh diacritical marks on them.

24:36 Um uh er lots of things have to be capitalized. Uh like Orc is capitalized. So, when you're designing a game, Rob and can speak to this, but when you're designing a game, you just you don't want you're not worrying about what should I capitalize or what the spelling and all that. You're just getting names on cards, and the names are like the first thing that come to your head. Um you know, we we had a name like uh you know, ladders was literally the name of a card called ladders. And you know, that was in there for a long time. Like that's not going to be the final card. Um and so really it's just when we first sort of hit that approval process, a lot of it was like here's all this stuff that you misspelled. Here's the you know, the marks and the capitalizations and all that you need to do. So, it was a lot of that going in and then the funniest thing is all those diacritic marks break all the the Google sheet like math that we were doing and programming we were doing to to get the cards into the into the prototypes or whatever. So, it was that's where the sticky part was it felt like.

25:36 Like we were saying Sam, they want Samwise. Like just little things, but not not big things. Like we worked I would occasionally throw a fit in a meeting. It's like, "Can't we do this?" I'm like, "No, you can't." That's not how it happened. Like you know, like a like a 4-year-old like telling a story or something. And I So, we got the the larger beats right. We did have some like spelling and diacritic in some things that we needed to clean up in there. Also, the card that was ladders is no longer in the game. So, if you're wondering what that card became, it became on the cutting room floor because it was a broken card where the orcs could go up in Minas Tirith by just leapfrogging over the walls and the free people never defended. You can't like block the breach and then do do do. Like it was it was just a bad card.

26:18 This was back when we had all the layer levels and we had all the gates and all the So, I actually um you know, I was thinking about this the other day is from where we started the prototype and basically it was and we had the hexagons that we have on Pelennor Fields the same hexagons on Minas Tirith and we're like what we kept doing is sort of kept zooming in instead of trying to fit the entire Minas Tirith on a game board, we zoomed into sort of this one part of it that represents like how the shadow is doing as they're pressing up in Minas Tirith. And so, by zooming in then we didn't So, some of these other things were patches like the ladders and, you know, uh stuff like that were patches for trying to make the game fully zoomed out. Once we zoomed in, we could just focus more on that that gameplay.

27:04 Yeah, I forgot because there were so many spaces. Like, we're all talking about all the stuff that went wrong. But, welcome welcome to game design.

27:10 We needed all these rules. Like, some orcs would run up and then the reinforcements would be like rounds behind. So, at one point we experimented with Oh, orcs can move any number of spaces as long as they can, you know, like line of scrimmage almost. Like, as long as they can catch up to other orcs. You send a group and then you go through. And it didn't work and And then eventually be like, "Remember when we had ice skating orcs?" Cuz that's what it looked like. They just

27:33 They just skated their way up.

27:35 So, as you're designing the game, I mean, you talked about the cutting room floor. Did any characters, you felt like, get cut that shouldn't have been cut? Or did you like really fight for certain ones? Or you're just like, "Yeah, he's okay. I don't I really don't need I don't need her. I don't need him."

27:51 Um Éowyn is in there. She's not represented as a figure cuz she's hiding um as one of the Rohirrim. Uh the only character that got cut, it was Grond, the Battering Ram. The only characters who were never in there at any one point They're in there, but not in his Pippin is in Minas Tirith talking to Denethor, and he's not really in there. So, he's in there, but offstage. And Merry is with Éowyn, but it's not listed that Merry's there. So, Merry and Pippin are not in the game, but they weren't they weren't cut. It's just It was It's more of a military game, and they just didn't have a part in that military battle.

28:28 So, I'm looking at the uh the uh Kickstarter right now where you have Minas Tirith. It looks gorgeous with the models on the the hex map. So, it in this, where where is Samwise and Frodo? Is that Are they on a off on another board or something like that?

28:43 side of Minas Tirith. You can see that there's Minas Tirith. You can see that there's Mordor over there. So, the boards are set up and you have Minas Tirith kind of going up in one corner and Mordor going up in the other corner.

28:53 Okay.

28:55 And then there's a path like with different choices on it leading up to Mount Doom and there's a figure for Sam and Frodo in there.

29:03 Okay.

29:03 So, to be clear that's not in the image that's on the preview page. That's what you're looking at, right?

29:07 Okay.

29:08 Yes.

29:11 Yeah, so for those who are wondering we are recording this like 2 weeks before it launches so we haven't seen a lot of the material except what's on Kickstarter.

29:18 So, does a skull spin on Mordor and marbles roll down and try to hit Sam and

29:25 No, that's that's the expansion.

29:27 Okay.

29:30 That's by the way for everybody that's another game they've designed that they brought back. Fireball Island so just I'm sorry. I had

29:36 That's a stretch goal.

29:38 That's a stretch Oh, I got another stretch goal for you but that is um

29:41 So, well sorry uh real quickly I talked about we could talk about it some more but the the Minas Tirith or the sorry, the Mithril Edition uh that we're talking about is sort of like this fully blinged out like over the top everything in it uh does have a little red tea light that you put in your three-dimensional Mordor so it glows red.

30:02 Yeah. So, just to explain the difference

30:04 Doom area.

30:05 All three versions, retail, limited, and Mithril have the exact same gameplay. Exact same cards and I believe the same art.

30:12 Same art, yeah. I think there's some card treatments in ours like we're getting like foil on some of the cards that kind of thing but

30:18 What you're looking at is the retail version will be a little bit smaller um and some of the components will be different. Like what might be cardboard in one place becomes plastic, becomes metal. Right? Or foil treatments on things as you

30:33 Yeah, the the big difference between the retail and the limited edition is the those three-dimensional set pieces um and the larger boards. Um, so none of that per- none of that I should full caveat like everything subject to final license or approval, you know, before we go to to manufacturing so there can still be changes but fairly, you know, essentially locked in at this point subject to that. Um, so the boards are a little bigger and those three 3D set pieces are are in the limited edition. And then the Mythril edition has all of the both the deluxeification, the sort of material upgrade like Rob was talking about, some metal, some plastic, you know, things like that, some extra figures so there's we we actually give you an Éowyn figure in the Mythril edition so when you reveal her, you can swap out this Rohirrim figure for an actual Éowyn figure, things like that.

31:27 Uh, there's an alternate Witch-king sculpt, some stuff like that. And then, uh, some extra pieces or components like add-ons like card sleeves, dice trays, things like that are also in the Mythril edition that are not in the other editions so.

31:40 Mhm. Mhm. Game mat?

31:43 So the the the one thing we're doing, it's not quite an add-on. Um, so the way we're structuring it is uh, there is a game mat. It is a full 3x3 ft by 5 ft neoprene play mat, double stitched.

31:58 Yeah, it's neoprene mat.

31:59 it's a full table um, and it has this beautiful artwork with like Mordor and the shadow sort of on their side and then Minas Tirith uh, the free people's sort of landscape on the other side. And then you put the three boards in the middle. Um, so what we're doing is we have again not as an add-on, no add-ons in this and only four pledge levels, well five. One is I want to back for the minimum and then do it in the pledge manager later. But then we have the limited edition, limited edition with play mat and then the Mythril edition and the Mythril edition with play mat. And uh, those are the only four options. There's no add-ons, there's no retailer pledge level. We're not doing stretch goals. Uh a lot of this is because just the nature of that Mythic Roll edition is and then a lot of that is just the way, you know, things were structured is the way we are able to present them, you know, when we're when we're putting the game out in the in the campaign.

32:55 So, I would like to say and Justin correct me if I'm wrong cuz you're the man that who does contracts.

33:00 Oh, now I'm nervous.

33:01 No, no, I I'm 98 for 99% certain.

33:03 Okay.

33:04 Our licensing deal or partnership with Asmodee is we get to do this Kickstarter and then make just a little bit more that we might sell at conventions or on our store, but like this is it. Like if you want the more deluxe version like the limited edition Mythic Roll edition, like it's basically now or maybe you get lucky cuz we have like 100 at Gen Con or something like that that we can sell, but we have a very and then we can't make any more. It's like a one-and-done type thing for us.

33:35 Uh

33:35 Yeah, so that is correct. Again, the limited edition is truly limited to the Kickstarter. That's all we're doing. And when I say Kickstarter, I'm including the pledge manager afterwards, but no extra copies, not available later, not to be reprinted, none of that. The Mythic Roll edition, we have in the agreement we're allowed to produce a limited number of extra copies that we are only allowed to sell on our web store and at conventions. And because it's only us that's allowed to do that, we will be selling it at a higher MSRP. So, when the campaign launches, you'll see the pledge level price and you'll see the MSRP. And I know in a lot of campaigns that we've done this is like, here's the MSRP, but obviously you go to a lot of the retailers, some of the online retailers, you can get it for cheaper. Um that's not the case here um because there is that's not available in distribution. We do not have a retailer pledge. I fully expect there will be some retailers who will buy plenty of copies and then turn around and sell them at higher prices because they won't be available anywhere else.

34:35 So, you know, whether that's Game Steward who we've worked with before, uh Miniature Market, or some of these other retailers, I'm sure they'll be there, but they won't be at lower prices because they're not getting them at a discount.

34:46 So, I want to bring that up, not like, "Buy now, you know, operators are standing by." But I think some people are like, "Oh, this looks great. I'll just buy it next year or

34:53 Yeah, I mean, creators have sort of trained people to like that that it's okay if you say you want to wait and get it cheaper later, that's fine, too. And then they try and entice them with, you know, whether it's uh exclusives or special editions that weren't available, that sort of thing. But here, that's really the only option.

35:11 Yeah. That's our contract. But we we make way for the retail edition. So, you can get the retail edition. Hopefully, it does well for years and years. And it just won't have some of the dimensionality, and it'll be a little bit smaller, but it'll be the same game.

35:22 Well, I think that's a really good plan because, you know, a lot of people are like, "Oh, this looks amazing, but I can't afford that. I'm not going to pay for that sort of deal." So, I I love the idea that it is going to come out to a distribution in a smaller retail box for those that's like, "I'm really interested in it. I want to play it, but not enough to, you know, go after the limited or whatever like that." So, I think that's a really good marketing move on on y'all's side, too. So, if you were like, "I just I just can't get it." It's like, "Well, no, you can. It's just going to be coming later." Um speaking of this, the the timing, what when are we looking at possibly y'all's version coming out and then retail coming out of that?

36:01 We hope you will get next Thursday. That's really when it is.

36:04 Okay. Okay, that's great.

36:06 Yeah, so we are um uh be- because of the nature of the licensing and and when they want to get the retail edition out, which I'm not sure I can speak to that, so I won't say anything, but uh we are committed to getting a fulfillment at least started, you know, obviously, there's always a few stragglers at the end, but fulfillment done uh prior to the retail release. Although again, it's not as big a deal because it's a different edition, but it's still something we want to at least write there, right? So, we're looking at October of next year. Which normally, you know, you talk about a year later, that's that is a very tight window for a Kickstarter. And we've done about a year for some of them. Some other projects have been more challenging. This is certainly a challenging project. There's no question with these big 3D pieces and all this, but because we knew we had that deadline, we put in so much time beforehand. And because of the license, you know, we have to work with the licensor and get all this stuff approved, even to show it on the Kickstarter, we have so so much more done, um, you know, before the Kickstarter starts than we normally do. Normally, uh, we'll we like to get that feedback and we'll be making changes and putting all the finishing touches on it. And we won't be going to actual manufacturing until could be a few months after the Kickstarter's done. Here, we're planning on going to manufacturing pretty quickly after the campaign is done. Uh, and so they are working on manufacturing files and print files now, in fact. Uh, that is what they're working towards now because all the Kickstarter stuff, essentially, had to be done in enough

37:36 time to get approved to use on the Kickstarter.

37:38 The big thing on something like this is making tools for plastic and licensor approvals, and we've done both of those things.

37:44 What I'm hearing is then, gameplay, everything's good. You're you're ready to push the button.

37:49 Ready to push the button.

37:50 Funny, good thing you asked that today and not yesterday.

37:53 Yeah.

37:54 Today was Today was pencils down day.

37:56 Yeah.

37:57 Oh, okay.

37:58 again, we were

37:58 I mean, we worked to we worked to the, you know, to the limit, to the deadline, so.

38:02 Oh, I mean, I would take years more with any game I have, like just to be sure. But like I've learned like you you it doesn't make much of a difference. You would be moving stuff around endlessly and making little tweaks and you'd just be fiddling around with it.

38:16 I do want to mention, you know, one of the things I do love about Kickstarter, um, Um, and I know Kickstarter sometimes gets a bad rap. I know plenty people like it, but plenty of people don't. I do really I personally really like Kickstarter both as a creator but also as a backer. One of the things that I think is unique about it is unlike even like a pre-order, right? Um, you it's the communication with the backers which and the backers are the people who are most interested in your product, right? Like lots of people might see a game on a shelf and say that looks cool and buy it, but these are people who are willing to go to your website and invest that time to look at your project, ask questions, you know, post comments, and then hopefully, you know, give you their hard-earned money a year in advance, right? Uh, and so one of the things I like about is to be able to get that communication with those people. And that's why I say well, in the past we always use that as an opportunity to get that feedback and incorporate that. So, I mentioned that obviously a lot of this stuff is all done, but it's not fully done. And I do want to say like if people are interested and when they go to the campaign I I don't want to give the impression that everything's done.

39:19 It's signed, sealed, and delivered. We can't make any changes. So, you know, do give that feedback and let us know, you know, what you think about things and, you know, there there might be certainly some things we can't change just because of the the timeline or because of approvals or things like that, but hearing that information is always good for us.

39:38 Does Kickstarter now allow uh, multiple payments over time?

39:42 Yeah, they do have it's called a uh, plot. I forget what the L stands for. Something Yes. Anyway, they have payment over time. Uh, we will be doing that in this campaign. Um, I don't know the specific terms of what we're doing, but there's several months worth that you can spread it out over.

39:59 Excellent. Excellent. Cuz in something like this, I know a lot of people are like, "Oh, when they come out the you know, the Awaken Realms version, the huge big box thing, people like, I'm I would just want to pay it over 4 months sort of deal." And I really think that's a good option, especially for what might, you know, the Myth Roll um, edition. Speaking of which, is this Mythic Edition stored in one box?

40:21 No, neither limited edition and the Mythic Edition, two boxes.

40:25 Okay.

40:25 Um, and essentially the game basically the game play is in one box. Uh, which is roughly the same box that the retail edition will have. It's roughly the size of a Thunder Road Maximum Chrome box, if that helps. It does fit on a Kallax. And then there's a second one, so the two will fit in one Kallax cube, which has the the three-dimensional uh, pieces um, and some of the other stuff in that box. And the reason why we did it that way is because that lets us keep it so that there doesn't have to be a ton of assembly when you're putting this together. The one thing we knew we didn't want to We didn't want to have to you have to build a thousand-piece LEGO set before you play your, you know, 90-minute or 2-hour game or whatever it is, right? And so most the pieces are largely pre-constructed. It's really as simple as like stacking a tower of three things high, sliding another thing on, doing the same thing for Mount Doom, and then you're done. It really I was So, we need to give a shout-out here to Stephen Baker who's been on the team with us.

41:26 Yeah, you can talk about it. He's an amazing guy, but he designed all this stuff.

41:30 Mr. Stephen Baker. He was my boss at Hasbro for years, and he works with us at Restoration.

41:34 He designed a little game called HeroQuest. You may have heard

41:37 HeroQuest and Battle Masters and a bunch of other stuff. Um, but he is a miniatures aficionado. I played a ton of Napoleonic miniatures when he lived close to me 20 some odd years ago. Um, but he also knows plastic and molding and sculpting and engineering and all of this. So, he not only put it all of this all of this dimensionality is like, I got it. But he was smart enough to say, we need to start now. We're like, you're crazy. We don't need to start. We needed it to start now. He was a hundred percent right when we needed to start. So, like he would make videos of assembling and making it. So, yeah, we wanted the pieces to be big enough that it was like four pieces to build each thing. Which means you need a big box. Otherwise, you know, if you're breaking them down into individual wall pieces, you have 40 and it takes forever. But if you have a box that big, you can't fit it all in one box and so on.

42:28 Um So, we've we have thought all of this through, mostly Stephen.

42:33 Yeah. My favorite Steven story about this project is uh we were trying to get prototypes ready for Gen Con. And we wanted them to look, you know, good. And so, we were going to 3D print all the miniatures cuz we had again done all that legwork ahead of time. They'd been approved for the prototype for Gen Con and all this. But we had to get them done. So, we were looking at like an outside service and Steven says, "For the money that it would cost us to get this printed by an outside service for like we were getting like six prototype copies, we can buy three sort of top-end Bamboo Home 3D printers and I'll just do it." So, that's what we did. And he had he converted his like half of his office into this 3D server farm and he took some video and it's like it was they were running like 24/7 spitting out these miniatures. It was crazy.

43:27 Uh but they did they look really good. So.

43:30 What is the boiler plate uh on this game? Number of players, time to play, etc.

43:36 Yeah. Um it is two different sides. So, it can be a two-player game. It could be a four-player game. It can be a three-player game. So, um I wouldn't go like where you have eight people on a side. There's just not enough. So, basically, you can play 1 v 1 or 2 v 2 or 2 v 1 and it works fine. And then we did uh succeed in doing a solo play version.

43:59 Yeah, David Turczi uh is This is a funny story, too. So, uh when we announced the game over on BoardGameGeek, David Turczi just said, "You know, I wouldn't mind having a crack at this." Meanwhile, before I saw this post, so Suze is always asking us to do a solo mode cuz it's you know, it's it gets it more people interested. There's plenty of people who like solo gaming. I like solo gaming. So, it it increases, you know, obviously the demand there when you're doing a Kickstarter campaign. When we started this project, like the one of the first things we said, "Suze, we're not doing a solo mode for this." And so, we just never even talked about it again. We were pretty adamant about it. And then, David Turczi posts, "You know, I wouldn't mind having a crack at this." So, I reached out to him and he he said, "Yeah, I'm interested." So, I sent him a prototype and he came back and he came back with this pretty interesting system.

44:46 It's like a an automa type system, you know, where it's there's a deck of cards that are simulating what the player might do. So, it does play solo, which also means you can play you can play two players against the solo mode. And which is good like if it's, you know, you have like a parent and a child or whatever. And you want to play together cuz maybe you you don't feel like it'd be a fun match up playing against him. So, it is one to four. We say 90 to 150 minutes. I candidly, it's uh there can be some big swings in this game. So, you can have a short game if if things go badly and you don't react well. And I'm probably on the outer limit. There's some, you know, longer games if people are playing very defensively and, you know, Samwise and Frodo are taking the longer route, as long as possible route in Mordor or things like that.

45:34 For what it's worth, we say 10 and up on the box. I think that's about right again. You know, if if they're a savvy 10-year-old, they'll do all right with it to Rob's earlier point. Casual players seem to do real well once you teach it to them.

45:50 And what's the teach time? I know that's can be it depends on your audience, yada yada yada. But generally, Rob, you have a lot of experience. How's that running?

45:58 the way I explain it, I said, "I'm going to teach you 80% of the rules in 20% of the time and then I'm going to teach you the last 20% of the rules in 80% of the time because basically at the heart of it it's in rounds. Every round is four turns. You go back and forth. And before the round starts you put four cards face down and those are going to be your action cards you play in the game. Your first turn, your second turn, third turn, fourth turn. You sequence that order. But each card has two actions. So when you turn it over, you decide if you're playing the top or bottom. Um so we're just going to do that until a victory condition is triggered. Now what do the cards do? They activate units, they activate figures, they activate heroes. Heroes have movement, they have attack dice, they have defense dice, they have range. Um most of them one hit and they're done. You have a score to squad of three orcs, they take two damage, you take two orcs off the board.

46:45 If you have a good agent, you get hit points, right? And so like you end up with health if you're a catapult or Aragorn or Gandalf or something like that or an encampment. Um you will have objectives at the beginning of the game. You will have five objectives. This might guide your philosophy of whether to take the safe route or the risky route or focus on Pelennor or the Great Port at the beginning. Um when you achieve them, you will get like a bonus and you will get something called momentum. Momentum is good. You use momentum to basically if you do something good on a turn like defeat a catapult, you'll get a momentum. You spend momentum on future turns to have bigger turns. So you won't get more turns if you're if you know Queen's Gambit, you used to get more turns for doing stuff. This you just get to have bigger turns. That is 80% of the game.

47:31 That might even be 90% of the game.

47:33 The cards that you play, are these like one and done or you just always have a hand of cards and you pick four to play?

47:40 So you will at the beginning of the game there's two decks of cards. You'll draw four from each and they're like slightly different um areas of act. Like one's more heroes and one's more Minas Tirith. You can play any four down and then your other four go to the side. At the end of the round you'll refill back up to eight uh hand of eight, but you have to take two cards from each deck again. So, if you're spending all the cards from one deck, eventually your deck becomes like 6 2 and you have to spend the other ones. Um just to even it out. And when the deck is over, most of the time when the deck ends the game is over just about. Um but in the case that it goes extra round, you reshuffle them and you just you just keep going. And most cards say something like activate Aragorn or activate two heroes or activate three row hero squads. And activate means move and attack. Sometimes it will say move Aragorn and then attack a number of times. So, that he only moves once, but then he gets to hit people.

48:37 So, then the other rules are things that make it Lord of the Rings like a Gollum Sméagol track. As you complete objectives and spend momentum, you're pulling Sméagol one way or the other as the ring lures him and that affects going through Mount Doom and then how units get from one board to another either through card play or at the end of the round and how Frodo moves at the end of the round. It's a bag pull showing how much will he's losing or if you get lucky gaining. Um things like you can't you can't move through walls in Minas Tirith, but you can attack over them. Um that's almost all the rules. So, there was your teach rules at 2 minutes.

49:16 Yeah, that sounds good. Let's go.

49:18 Uh how long is uh the battle resolutions? Does it take a while or pretty quick?

49:23 No, this This is based off of Queen's Gambit. So, it is you roll attack dice, defender rolls defense dice, you subtract the difference and the remainder is hits. So, some cards will give you rerolls. So, the attacker will roll and then choose to reroll. They're pretty friendly. You get to reroll just the dice you want. Some cards like you improve your dice. There's three levels, lower, middle, and higher attack and defense dice. So, if like, hey, you get to attack with this thing and you get to improve a number of dice, you take the next level up and improve them to make your dice pool a little bit better. but it's like I got five hits, I block three, I take two damage. That's other than rerolls, that's basically that's basically it.

50:00 Yeah, it's very much I mean that's why there's over 100 miniatures, right? Like there it's a war of attrition. And the orcs get to keep coming back out, by the way.

50:09 Oh, yeah. Orcs

50:10 there we didn't talk about the asymmetry, but I think that's one of the really cool aspects of the game is um the the shadow people, so the the free peoples have uh what is it? Six heroes. Uh the shadow forces of shadow only have the witch king, but they have orcs and they have an orc reinforcement board or orc board, that I like to say. Um that basically when your orcs die, they go back there and they can keep coming back out, which is so eventually they're going to wear down, so uh obviously the free peoples need to be careful cuz uh with very few exceptions, you know, when uh their their figures go out, they don't come back, so.

50:48 So, yeah. Orcs don't even roll defense dice, that speeds it up. They just run out, kill one or two figures, all die, run out, kill one figure, die. And it's like, but they can make that trade all day long. Right?

50:59 And then of course uh I don't know if we mentioned it yet, but the heroes all have special abilities. Uh they give you flavor, but also will tweak things. So, for example, uh normally when you activate a hero, uh you move and then attack. Legolas can attack first from very good range and then move afterwards. Or if Gimli's adjacent to uh more than one shadow force, he gets uh what is it? Rerolls, so stuff like that.

51:23 So, Sam and Frodo are trying to make progress up up Mount Doom. Is there anything the shadow can do to hinder their progress?

51:31 A couple things. What I like to say is you have control over the battlefields, other than what the dice do. And you have [clears throat] influence over Mordor. So, as you complete objectives, you will get either good tokens or bad tokens to put into the bag. So, if the Shadow forces, I don't remember exactly which gives Whisper war, but let's say you defeat Gimli and Legolas, you get to put some real negative tokens in the bag. Um so, that is how Shadow can do it. Completing objectives to kind of pollute that bag. And we talk about orcs coming back either to Minas Tirith or to Pelennor, but you can also take some orcs out of the game. These don't come back to put a patrol in Mordor. And if Sam and Frodo enter a space with that, it's like an extra minus one to the will. It's like a permanent minus one token while they're there. So, you don't want to put all your orcs over onto patrols over there cuz you'll have nothing left on the military front. But you probably want to do some when you think, I think they're going this way or that way. Okay, I'm feeling pretty good militarily. I can take three three figures out of the game out of 45.

52:39 Yeah. So, you get you can probably take three, six, nine, 12 out. After that, you're starting to be like, I don't know if I have enough figures I need to do over here.

52:47 Okay.

52:48 And then of course on Mordor, there is different paths. That's obviously the free people's players deciding what paths Frodo and Samwise are taking. You know, there's a more perilous path that's quicker to get them to Mount Doom quicker, but they're more likely to lose will. Or there's a safer path where there it's less dangerous, but it's going to take longer. And so, one of the things that you they can do is you can do is you can see like oh, if I complete this objective and I'm putting good tokens in the bag, maybe I can risk that quicker route. Or the opposite, right? Like if there's some Shadow players completing objective and there's some bad tokens in the way back, maybe I need to take the safer route and try for a military victory or play defense over in Minas Tirith to keep the orcs from storming the top. And see if I can hold out long enough to get Samwise and Frodo up the long way.

53:38 So, you've mentioned this bag a a times. What exactly is this?

53:42 Um it's a it's a cloth thing that you put stuff in.

53:45 Oh, okay. All right. Tony, any questions?

53:47 It is a bag pull. So, at the beginning of the game you seed it with tokens that are some minus one, some minus two, and some zeros. So, when

53:57 So, that's how much will they're going to lose.

53:58 That's how much will they're going to lose. And if you go into a space that's really dangerous, you might have to draw four tokens. And if you go to a space that's not dangerous, you'll draw one or two. So, you'll still take a hit, but a little bit. And then the free people draw one out, and then they can decide to get rid of one that they drew. So, I'm like, let's get rid of this minus two. So, the bag is sort of going in the favor of Frodo as you go cuz you're going to be taking out the um the tokens you don't like. But, you also can by completing objectives can put in minus threes or plus twos or plus ones. So, you can it's like a blackjack deck. You're trying to get it into your favor so that you when you draw it, you know, it's it's the odds will be in your favor or against it. Now, the other thing that I alluded to quickly, but it plays a big part, is there is a track that has Smeagol at one end and Gollum at the other.

54:47 And at the beginning it starts pretty close to Smeagol. I think it's six spaces long. Um and it goes plus one, zero, minus one, minus one. Maybe it's five spaces and and minus two. And so, what happens is after pulling tokens out of the bag and you say, "Oh, I'm going to lose three will." Oh, wait. Smeagol is plus one. I actually that I get one back because Smeagol's like, "Hide, hobbits, hide." And then but if it's at minus two, that's when Gollum's like, "Go in there. Go in there. It's great. Shelob's She's She's waiting for you." And at the end of every round, it moves one closer to Gollum automatically.

55:25 And there's spaces on the Mordor board that will shift it also.

55:29 Yeah, if you take the fast dangerous route, it shifts over to Gollum even faster. Right? So, you're going to be getting this minus two on top of what you draw. So, what does the free peoples do to do that? Every time you spend momentum, which you get by killing things with hit points and completing objectives and occasionally from an action card. When you spend it, for everyone you spend, you pull it in your favor. So, completing military objectives, completing killing key figures, playing cards lets you play this tug of war with Sméagol and Gollum, and that's a big part of what both sides can do to control the Mordor battle. Like, the bag's going to be the bag, but if you're like, "Okay, and I'm going to spend this two momentum and move it down there cuz you don't have any momentum right now, so you can't move it back, and it's almost the end of the round, so you're going to have to draw with a minus two as opposed to a zero, and that's going to hurt you even more."

56:18 And that's just influencing what's happening in Mordor. You're not necessarily controlling it. So, the better you do in the military game, the more it will affect uh Frodo's will.

56:29 But, none of this is hidden, you know, no hidden movement or tracking, none of that. It's all open.

56:34 18 20 Mordor games. At one point, it was a Stratego game. Like, which one's really Frodo, and you were moving various things up. We tried so many things in hidden movement and we just made it, you know, this is where we ended up. I like it.

56:49 Well, good. Pencils are down.

56:51 Pencils are down.

56:52 Good good for my mental health.

56:54 Yeah, my mental health, too.

56:56 Uh so, well, I mean, so pencils are down. So, is there anything that you can tell us beyond this and coming in 2027 and any hints of anything? I'm sure you got already got stuff planned out.

57:07 You talking about non King's Gambit stuff now, right?

57:10 Yeah. Yeah.

57:11 Or expansions to King's Gambit that you haven't even talked about.

57:15 So, there's no plans to do any expansions to King's Gambit. I'm not even sure, honestly, how you would do it.

57:20 The Scouring of the Shire. Thank you.

57:24 Um that's a little 18-card microgame. No, I'm just kidding.

57:27 Yeah. Yeah.

57:29 Uh well, we just did blueprints, uh which is our seminar that we do at Gen Con every year. Uh, we announced a bunch of stuff, so there's not much more to announce beyond that. Um, so we have stuff coming up for Unmatched, obviously. Uh, next year we have, uh, Study in Terror, which is our third Unmatched Adventures, which is the cooperative mode. Um, we haven't announced too much of that, uh, just some teasers. Um, uh, and then, uh, we also have, uh, Once Upon a Time, is, uh, our regular four-pack that's coming out next year, which is Mulan, Snow White, Pinocchio, and the Big Bad Wolf. Um, and it's supposed to answer the question of, "I don't know I don't interested in Unmatched, but I don't know what sets to get."

58:14 So we used to either used to direct people to Battle of Legends, which is now, you know, three volumes, and then we stopped making those cuz that was confusing people. I'm not sure Battle of Legends volume one is the best intro set. It obviously worked for plenty of people, but it wasn't designed, you know, with that specifically in mind. We we decided it would be a good idea to design something that's like, "This is a good set for people who want to try it out." Um, you know, it still plays really well for the competitive players and all that stuff. Uh, but it's much more straightforward. Um, everything is sort of easy to parse and all that. Um, really exciting characters though. I just we finished our card council on it today, which is where we go through every single card online together, make sure the wording's all right and all that stuff. Um, the art looks amazing, I will say that. I can't wait to announce the artists on this set.

59:07 Um, and then we also What?

59:09 know if I'm upset or grateful that I'm no longer invited to card councils.

59:14 Uh, and then next, uh, in 2028, we are doing Slay the Spire, uh, which I'm sure Rob will be happy to gush about, although we didn't We haven't announced anything other than it's a four-pack.

59:25 It's a four-pack based on the first game. You figure out who the player

59:28 Okay. All right, got you. That's cool, though. That's very cool. Well, then you had to follow up with the uh the next uh Slay the Spire 2, so there you go. Which I see Justin playing all the time on Discord.

59:41 That's true, yeah. Uh I mean, everyone on the team is big Slay the Spire fans, so Rob uh Wait, what's the I told this story before, but it's funny. Is uh when we were pitching the license to them, they were like, you know, they won't like license a lot of stuff. There's the one board game, uh and that's it. And they're like, we, you know, we want to make sure the people who are working on the game are like real fans or whatever. So, when you send us the proposal, put in like the people who are going to be designing the game, how much time they have in the Slay the Spire. And I said, oh, not a problem, good guy. Don't worry about it. So, it's like Rob had like 2,000 hours in the Slay the Spire game.

1:00:17 well well above 2,000. Which, for those of you, 2,000 hours is a full year of work at 40 hours a week.

1:00:24 So, anyway, it was pretty funny. Uh so, needless to say, once uh we confirmed the license, the decks were designed like in 3 days. The first drafts. Of course, they all changed, but, you know.

1:00:35 Yeah.

1:00:36 Sure.

1:00:36 No, I mean, Slay the Spire is what got me through lockdown during the pandemic, right? Like, you know what? I can just play a game. I can just play a game. I can just play a game.

1:00:44 I was just going to say uh you know, we're working on Omega Virus. Uh that's actually getting closer, so that's definitely in the works. Um Trying to think if there's anything else. We have a really big announcement coming. I think it's going to be later this year.

1:00:57 something.

1:00:58 Yeah.

1:00:58 Make that announcement. Uh Thunder Road, we launched Ignition this year, which has done well, and we have something called Interstate Colosseum, which is not a not a legacy game, but a uh campaign game that you're going to play where you like play a couple legs of a race and, you know, make decisions in between. Um that was going to be out this year, but we did Ignition, and so it got moved out a year and then so we're picking that back up like a couple weeks. Or by the time you see this a week.

1:01:32 Okay. And I noticed on the website that there are various games that have the read more text to them. Notably Dark Power and some of the Thunder Roads and that's just possibly in the future or anything going on over in that front?

1:01:47 Well, we have so Dark Return to our power we have the expansion Expeditions expansion that we kickstarted is actually going to be fulfilling pretty soon. I think it might even start like next month is what we're on pace for but certainly shortly. Um and that is a really cool expansion. So Dark Tower fans if you didn't back the campaign check it out when it comes out cuz it is by far my favorite expansion really cool heroes. Um and then as is my tradition I literally kept Noah on after a call you weren't here Rob. I said I have an idea for a new expansion for Dark Tower. So it's still it does really well for us. It's very popular. It's my favorite game of ours that we make. Although King's Gambit might take that over. I really do enjoy it.

1:02:30 I really like King's Gambit. Like usually when I get to this part in game design I'm I'm really really tired of it. And I can't wait for it to be done. This I'm glad that we're no longer trying to solve its problems. Like that that relief is is is still there. But I will gladly have like watch people teach it and watch people play. Sometimes get done again like I can't even teach it anymore. I can't watch it. Like I watch so many games this week like you want to learn a game? It's something I worked on. So I'm very excited about it.

1:02:57 I don't know. I think you should have made Minas Tirith and Mount Doom motorized and everything like you did for Return to Dark Tower where like little things shoot out and smoke plumes

1:03:05 someone at Gen Con who is a friend of mine who became obsessed with at some point on the little prow of Minas Tirith you know that sticks out of the front that we have a a Google clock like Dennis or that goes off the edge.

1:03:19 know the fire?

1:03:20 And I was like, yeah, yeah, haha, great. And he kept saying like, no, no, here's what you do and you put a track in like I think he was serious.

1:03:27 And you're about that.

1:03:28 And I'm like, you're like a YouTube comment section that just is in my face like talking about this sort of stuff. I'm like, I'm not doing that. You do it. Get home, mod it, put up a video, get fans. He's like, I don't know how to do that. I'm like, there we go.

1:03:41 Well, I mean, one of the best quotes you ever told us is, "Hey, you bought the game. You play it however you want."

1:03:46 You play it however you

1:03:47 I just gave you the blueprint.

1:03:48 Yep. There you go. You play how you want. These are the rules if you want to change one, it's yours.

1:03:52 Tony uses that line all the time in game

1:03:55 Well, someone For those who don't know the story, someone came up to me like I don't know, 10, 15 years ago at Gen Con and they were so sheepish like, "We bought this game we really like." And I'm like, "Oh, great. Thanks." They're like, "But there's this one rule we changed." I'm like, "Oh, what one?" And they're like, and I forget the game or something, but they were real sheepish that they changed it. I'm like, "Cool. Does that work for you?" And they're like, "Yeah." I'm like, I'm not going to break through your window and start shouting at you that you're playing wrong. Like, you if I do my best to make a rule set that I think will work for most people and if it doesn't work for you, just just change it. Just go for it. I don't like this card. I don't like this expansion. I don't like this rule and if it works for the whole table, fantastic. Maybe it's a better rule. Maybe I just missed it.

1:04:35 Yeah. Well, it's like, you know, game night all over the country people sitting there, "Well, if I was designing this, I would have done this different." Well, fine. Go do it, you know? You bought the game. It's yours. Have fun.

1:04:46 And to Rob's point, you know, it might be a perfectly viable way to do it. I mean, sometimes I mean, not everyone plays games the same way or has the same interest or taste. So, like a particular rule that's we think is good because we're designing towards a particular experience is not that person's preferred experience. And so, if they change it to a way that suits that better, you know, great.

1:05:07 Mhm.

1:05:07 Yeah, and I just remember some game I worked and someone's like, "You know, I was I've been thinking about this game." And I again, I don't remember what it was like. I was wondering why you didn't do it this way, and they named the rule like, cuz you weren't around telling me that's a much better thing than I did. They're like, you didn't think of that? I'm like, no, I thought of 10,000 other things. I just missed that one. Like, where were you?

1:05:26 Okay.

1:05:27 So, it's your fault. So, yeah, it's your fault. So, Monopoly DVD, no resurrection of that one.

1:05:33 You know what? I barely remember the rules, but I remember being pretty proud of what I did with Monopoly DVD.

1:05:39 I tried to get that off of, yeah. I tried to get that off of eBay multiple times. I was like,

1:05:43 Yeah, and I don't even know if you can play anymore. Like, the So, DVD players have

1:05:48 DVDs are back, Rob. Why don't you tell him?

1:05:51 That there was like a standard of what DVD players had to do. This like random access, and it would do things. Most of them this point, this was in the odds, they were already like phasing out. So, every manufacturer was cutting corners and not making them up to specs. So, I remember when we'd do a DVD game, we would send it to a company, which I'm sure doesn't exist anymore, that would test the like alpha build or whatever, the like before we went live, on like the top 20 DVD brands and run diagnostics to see like where that we were getting bugs. Like, well, it doesn't work on number 16, but that only has a 4% install base. And having to decide like what were acceptable bugs and all of this.

1:06:32 I'll tell you one thing I'm excited about. I mean, I love Lord of the Rings. I love anything Lord of the Rings, and I think it's really cool that uh Middle Earth Enterprises has been opening up a lot of doors to different companies for making different things. Just last week, Tony and I played uh Lord of the Rings Circle of Conflict, uh the game from Bonacore and Nicholson, uh the the roll and write game. Of course, you got the trick-taking game, you know, which is a big deal. You've got now, you've got um Burky from Game Toppers uh basically the license to come out with Lord of the Rings mats and everything like that. So, for all of the Rings fans are living large right now.

1:07:08 Yeah.

1:07:08 And then uh talk of Peter Jackson getting the rights to Silmarillion. I don't know if you all saw that.

1:07:14 I I did not.

1:07:15 Well, that is actually worth three movies. I I struggled a little bit with The Hobbit being stretched out to three movies, but

1:07:22 I'm I'm curious how Hunt for Gollum's going to be, but you know, we'll see.

1:07:25 Yeah.

1:07:26 I mean, they're basically they're taking what? A 10 to 15-page, is it even that long story in the book and making a full movie out of it?

1:07:33 We'll see, I guess. I I enjoyed The Rings of Power. I know some people didn't, but I really enjoyed that series, so.

1:07:39 Is that done? I I started watching it a couple years ago, and it's not that I didn't like it, I just kind of forgot about it, you know, wandered off to other things, and I thought about it last month. I'm like, how did that end up? Did they like wrap up or is it ongoing?

1:07:51 no, it's uh so they're they're through two seasons now, right? And I think the third one

1:07:55 third one coming.

1:07:56 Coming, I knew that, but I really enjoyed season two.

1:07:59 Mhm.

1:08:00 I liked it better than the season one, actually.

1:08:02 Woah. Hot take.

1:08:04 Yeah. [gasps]

1:08:07 All right, before we belabor the point around here and, you know, uh I don't know, fall down, get eaten by some orcs or whatever whatever we could do now. Um The Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit goes live September 29th. If you unfortunately are hearing this too now, you were too late to go get the special King's Gambit Gandalf on Shadowfax miniature that was out there. Wah wah wah. Just curious, will you be able to get that later?

1:08:37 So, the short answer is no.

1:08:40 Okay, there we go. That's good. We don't need to go any further.

1:08:43 Yeah.

1:08:44 Wow. Okay.

1:08:45 But I I want to just clarify that so there's there's two special promo miniatures. There's the Gandalf on Shadowfax is just an alternate sculpt. There's Trust me, there's a Gandalf in the box. Uh and it doesn't have a game purpose, it's just, you know, cool. Uh similarly, there's a Witch-king uh figure in the box. There's an alternate Witch King sculpt that we gave out. So, there's an alternate Witch King sculpt in the Mithril edition, but there was an alternate casting, I guess you would say, of the regular Witch King figure in a different material. It's sort of a smoky translucent

1:09:21 Ooh.

1:09:21 plastic that was only available at Gen Con, and that's only available there. Again, we're not allowed to

1:09:26 I should have gone to Gen Con. Dang it.

1:09:28 we're very careful. Like, it's purely cosmetic. It is no nothing necessary for gameplay. Listen, we got to market this stuff. That's how you do it.

1:09:38 Like, you know, you want to market it and get people excited by giving them something, and then other people who didn't get it get frustrated that they didn't get it, and always always hemmed in. All right. So, if people want to follow you guys, I guess they can head over restorationgames.com. I'm sure all of your socials are there for people to follow you on various every everything that's out there, I assume.

1:10:02 I would say the big thing is our Discord. It's a very active Discord. It's really good. I know there's a lot of people in the King's Gambit channel on Unmatched. Obviously, if you're into that and you're not on there, like, I don't know what are you even doing. Um

1:10:14 Just fine, thank you.

1:10:15 Yeah.

1:10:17 And I guess the important thing is I don't actually have to do the social media anymore. So, uh we actually have someone that we have a I forget what her title is, but Missy, she's great. She handles all the social media stuff now, so I don't have to touch it.

1:10:29 That's that's awesome. I'll tell you next time next time we're doing a taste buds. I need some cupcakes. We'll send you up some liver mush.

1:10:36 I had liver mush. I ate it before. I liked it. If I didn't know what it was, I would have liked it more. Like, I got to say the the branding is is off. It's like when muskmelon got renamed honeydew, right? Like, that is like liver mush needs to just needs a little bit of a reposition.

1:10:53 If you could only change one of the words, you could only change one of the words. Which one would be the one you would change?

1:10:59 Ooh. Is it the liver or the mush?

1:11:01 No, tastes Yeah, it's I call it like, I don't know, North Carolina pâté, right? Like, you know, Carolina pâté. Then you like that.

1:11:09 That's possum on the side of the road.

1:11:11 It's actually marketed on the on the stuff is liver pudding. I don't know if that is much better, either.

1:11:19 But But if if you were in North Carolina for the past weekend, I believe it is the September uh 22nd weekend, the Livermush Festival is going on. So, you can come down and spend an entire day enjoying the various

1:11:34 Yeah. Salisbury, North Carolina.

1:11:36 It's like an invitation to get gout, right? Like, it's just nothing but fatty animal food. Uh what was the other thing you gave me It was It was so salty and salty.

1:11:48 peanuts. Was that it? Oh.

1:11:50 Oh, right.

1:11:51 Oh, snot in a shell. Oh.

1:11:54 Again, wrong way with the naming.

1:11:56 Boiled peanuts. How would you even clean that one up?

1:11:59 Yeah. No, snot in a shell.

1:12:02 Oh, snot in a shell.

1:12:05 Okay. Fine. Fine. We'll do your cupcakes. We'll do the cupcakes. I'm okay with that. Oh, as always, Rob, Justin, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's always a blast. We need to have you on more often than just when you do a big Kickstarter.

1:12:19 Anytime.

1:12:20 You know where to find me. Just email. There's nothing I like more than talking about me. So, it's great.

1:12:28 And there's nothing more people like to do is listen to you talk about yourselves. So.

1:12:32 Yeah.

1:12:33 [clears throat]

1:12:33 How How are those Red Sox? I haven't been following baseball.

1:12:36 Yeah, so if you had asked him at the beginning of the summer, he'd have a very different story.

1:12:40 No, is that a serious question?

1:12:41 Yeah. I don't know. I haven't followed base.

1:12:43 The Red Sox came out of the gate losing horribly. They fired their manager, entire coaching staff 3 weeks into the season. Brought in their AAA manager who brought it up. and by the end of June I gave up on them cuz they were 12 games below 500. They are now They were the worst record and it was at the halfway point of the season. I said, "Okay, there's nothing you do." They are now 13 games above 500 and have a 99.9% chance to make the wild card. They're like they just need to win like one or two more games. They won in July what was it like?

1:13:15 It was yeah.

1:13:16 They went like 28 and three or something like that. Like in And even for those who don't follow baseball, a good winning percentage is 600. So, [clears throat] you know, you might go on a streak and win like eight in a row or 10 in a row or something like that. But to go and I don't have it exactly right where they were winning like 94% of their games over the course of a month. It was the best month they ever had, I think, in 120 years. Of course, I had canceled my subscription and given up on them entirely and I am completely afraid to get the subscription again cuz I know my canceling is what caused it. Um cuz I'm a total rational person.

1:13:51 All right. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on and remember go over to Kickstarter, Lord of the Rings: King's Gambit. Now.

1:13:59 See you.

1:14:00 Bye.