Let's Talk Board Games #15 - Pax Unplugged + Holiday Games

hi everyone my name is money and I'm Naveen from before you play and Welcome to our holiday episode of let's talk board games where we pretty much just give our quick thoughts and a few games that we've been playing recently yeah it's December so we have a couple games that really make sense during the holiday season as you'll see soon a couple games that uh we just have been playing recently that do not have to do anything with the holidays right but we just decided we can lump it into this uh like Olympic hole and so uh today we are going to be uh talking about these sweaters also if you notice that Monique and I are wearing matching ones yeah this is from themeps.co they are sponsoring this video and this is the new winter holiday design last year we actually wore the design from 2021 this is from 2022.

yes this is an advent calendar a board game Advent calendar every day until uh meeple day which is uh the meatball holiday in December now if you're not familiar with the meeps they are a us-based board game related apparel company all of their products are handmade Plastics free they have a wide variety of products and they partner with various content creators to feature their brands as well their products come in a variety of different colors as well as different fits including women's fits for more information we've left a link to the web store down below and thank you to the meats for sponsoring this video alright now before we get to the games we do have a couple of things that we want to talk about uh the first thing is we recently hit a milestone on our Channel and we wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everybody because over the weekend I believe our Channel hit 50 50k yeah which is a really large number um in our opinions you know this is a pretty significant milestone for us we're not usually ones to kind of make a big deal about that sort of thing yeah but at the end of the day this is something that we attribute to all of you out there who watch our Channel you know obviously you wouldn't be here without you all watching yeah first one we set out to do the channel we just basically said okay we're just gonna start putting some videos up and over time it just kind of snowballed and of course with covid you know there's lockdown so we had more free time yeah and then we just found more and more passion to to kind of put out these videos and really enjoyed it it's something that we get to kind of work on together you know so we really really are very thankful to everybody out there for subscribing for commenting for liking our videos yeah yeah and just for you know telling us whenever we see you at conventions right is very sweet and very nice of a hold of you yeah now I'm doing this full-time full-time yeah Monique's doing it quite the journey yeah and like David was mentioning we went to a lot of convention and we were very fortunate to be able to meet a lot of people who watch our Channel and so if we met you at a convention thank you you know for saying Hi and um we never really consider people who want our channel to be fans you know like you all are our friends you know we're very very grateful uh to have your support so that's it we just wanted to say thank you thanks now speaking of conventions Monique recently went to Pax unplugged in Philadelphia she went solo this is your first solo convention yes uh I was not able to go because uh I had to stay back for some work because we went to essenceville yeah so I took a good amount of time off for that so I was not able to get that extra time off from this one did you say my first solo convention does it mean that there are more to come I like going to them this particular one I couldn't get to I can't guarantee that yeah I mean that is the nature of our jobs now you know if I'm doing this full-time I do have more uh flexibility in being able to go to these things and unfortunately intervene does not so I went to Pax unplugged um last week and it was it was quite the experience going without Naveen I was really really nervous about it actually I was secretly very anxious about it Naveen knows this but nobody else knows um I was not 100 alone though I did have two of my cousins who attended and I was able to spend some time with them but for the most part I took like almost zero footage because I was very much so in the moment of the convention because you should be and just enjoying the experience if you have no idea what we're talking about by the way Paxton plugged is a board gaming convention that happens always at this time in Philadelphia and uh Pax actually is I believe a video game convention and so the reason why it's called Pax unplugged is because it's pretty much dedicated to tabletop and I think RPGs yes maybe open RPGs I believe this was my third time going I've gone twice before yeah and so a couple of highlights for me is um you know some of the watch it played team are there I think the only two that we were missing were Naveen and Chaz so this is the first time that Rodney went to convention in a while that wasn't for work you know who's just there to play games to enjoy yeah so it was fun being able to see everybody there I was able to go to this game is broken live show which was hilarious of course if you're not familiar with this game is broken they are a uh a comedy board game podcast uh featuring Matthew and the brothers Murph uh Paula Deming as well as uh Dave luza I believe and they were wonderful um and in terms of games I only played a few you know it was pretty much a world it was a whirlwind of a weekend yeah it always is for you it always is and I never really get to play as many games as I think I'm going to but some notable ones are fit to print that's a game that was recently on Kickstarter designed by Peter McPherson who's also the designer of tiny towns and so that's actually a game I got to play twice the second time was in this large group setting it's like I guess a variant where you play in teams where one teammate kind of runs back and forth collecting tiles because essentially in this game you're you're trying to map out a newspaper oh okay I actually don't know anything about this game okay yes yes it's a game where you're trying to create a newspaper uh spread and it's played over the course of three days but the the article types and ads and all that stuff that you're going to be arranging are these like polyamino tiles oh cool and you Gathering them and then placing them on your newspaper is all real time you have like four minutes to do all these things okay but there are all these rules for how you can place them well if you can't have like two ads next to each other or something like that okay you can't have two the same color thing you can't have two photos next to each other and there's a lot of things to consider and so I thought the team game was quite fun because I didn't have to do the Gathering I could just yell at the person like hey we need more photos so are they literally like on a table away from you and yes there's a broken communication going on because there are a bunch of tiles on a different table and so one person has to run back and forth collecting I need you to get me an ad yeah it's this big and the person at the table is just arranging them so that was a fun and funny experience and uh if you're wondering by the way if the flat out team is good at this game yes they are they are amazing at this point oh you played against them they were one of the people at our table um it's funny though because they lost even though they were doing so well they just felt like they were doing good you have to have enough ad placements ads don't actually score you points but whoever has the least amount of ads on their paper is just immediate immediately uh at the end of the game they're just disqualified okay so that was fun cool I also got to teach my cousins how to play title blades better Festival which was cool and the last night at the convention we played games in a group setting with uh the guys from clavery as well as Russ from for tits and giggles and we played a game called Fork which is a prototype right now it's a trick taking game about the food chain which I thought was really interesting it had great artwork nice and that's designed by Tate Wu Ilia and Tyler from copyright also taught me how to play no thanks which was interesting because that is uh that's a pretty classic game good things about it yeah we recently covered um Empire's end which is very much so based off of the bidding system in no thanks I I liked it that one was a hit with pretty much everybody around the table you're basically trying to like give up things so that you don't have to take negative things yes yes you don't want to take the cards okay because they're gonna add to your score and you want to have the lowest the lowest score okay uh it's really interesting the the dynamic on the table in passing on cards or taking cards is really fun yeah because if you have like uh three for example three cards in a row of consecutive numbers then you only score the lowest the lowest value so if you have like a three four five yeah you have to okay or like a 21 22 23.21 and 23 the 22 comes up everybody's like don't give it to her but then they don't want it because now they're going to score 22 so it's like Oh okay that's cool yeah yeah nice and we play a fun facts which is the most recent installment of the party game series I believe it's just one so Clover and then now it's fun facts I don't think they're all designed by the same people but uh yeah yeah and I really like fun facts it's probably my favorite uh of the three really because it's more just getting to know that people are on the table and there's not much of a hot seat like there is in just one okay you know I really enjoy dress one I really enjoy silk Clover so you think this one is better than both of those they're it's different um in the fun facts of each round you have a question and everybody writes on the answer to their question on their own uh board thing and then you pretty much just play timeline with it so if it's like uh how many years do you think it would take you to walk from here to Australia that is not a question the questions are not like that I don't know what where that came from it's more like okay I think one of the questions was like how far do you think you could throw your shoe there we go that's something doable it's more about you okay so you write down how far you think that is and then you put it face down and you put it in the middle of the table and then when it's my turn I I will put mine in the middle of the table either above yours or under yours depending on if I think I can throw my shoes oh I see okay yeah and then the next person might put theirs either above yours in between ours below ours so everybody's just trying to size each other up yes okay yes and you decide the metric like a lot of the questions are open-ended so it's like do I think it's in yards do I think you know what I mean so you kind of determine all that it's really fun and by the end of it you uh you know a little bit more about each other okay yeah so that's called fun facts I think that's called fun facts um and yeah that was a really really fun one interesting otherwise that's it that's all the footage I have from the weekend uh it was really really fun and thank you to everybody who said hi if you attended if you went what were your highlights at Pax and what games did you play I'd be very curious to hear uh about your experience so feel free to leave us a comment down below all right so let's talk about some games so seeing as this is the holiday episode we would love to hear what games you enjoy playing around this time of year uh whether it's a winter themed game or a holiday themed game that you really enjoy we'd love to hear about it so please let us know in the comments down below otherwise we recently post posted a playthrough review for a game called winter which is for us I guess pretty much kicked off the season right yeah I mean technically it's not winter until the 21st but sure no I mean it's cold it's pretty cold in L.A and cold it's 49 degrees cold here yeah that's that's winter yeah as for us we are playing a few games to kick off this season that we recently played and uh this is a game called unlock kids we talked about it in our last let's talk board games episode I think right before Thanksgiving right and we kind of mentioned that we were going to play this with my nephew who is six going on seven yeah and at the time when we were talking about it we had only played it just the two of us so we didn't really know what it was like uh from a kid's perspective and so now we know it was a very it was it was a very good it was a very good session I think he enjoyed it yeah but it was a very loud experience you know so it was at like Thanksgiving so the only thing is like there's a lot of people there yeah so it's not like you just took them like on a random like Tuesday afternoon or Tuesday evening sat them down so I think just the energy of like being in the room yeah like brought his energy levels up yes so it was like hard to kind of truly like reel them in and be like hey we're gonna play this game these are kind of the basics of like where you're gonna need to understand yeah and then like like go ahead and have fun let's see what you do so yes there's a little caveat there there's a little bit of yeah of course and he's six years old you know every kid is different um but I think he enjoyed the experience there was a lot of guiding I had I was very much like what do we do with the wood and he was like I'm gonna hammer it and every time we like pulled out a new uh card it was a very it was a screaming experience but we made it out in the end we only played one of the scenarios because was sufficient yeah but um yeah he he enjoyed it I can't tell if he enjoyed the game or if he had just enjoyed playing the game with me right but I guess at the end of the day it doesn't matter right you're doing something with him or with the kid it's off screen so there's a lot of kids it was a hit I think now something we are doing this month that we talked about for half the year I feel like we've been wanting to do this for a couple years yeah we finally got it we got one and it is the exit the game Advent calendar we finally found it on Amazon one day I think when we were coming home from message BL we've been trying to find this game at like all the conventions that we went to and they never had it um I think they pretty much sell out like immediately they had an ad Essence bill but it was all in Germany it was all in German that's right and they couldn't even tell us like where we could get it in English so as much as possible we try to avoid buying things especially board games off of Amazon and this one is very language dependent it's a very dense story where you're going to be reading like sheets of paper reading riddles different things like that so uh yeah you will need to know the language typically for this yeah there's some great apps though by the way that help you translate so don't let me discourage you if you can only get the German one maybe it'll work for you but for us we really wanted the English one it might be tough just because of the way that you have to puzzle through the uh the the puzzles if you're not familiar with this at all exit is a cosmos product it's a line of like Room Escape style games where um you have to solve the mystery usually in about an hour uh and it requires you sometimes to cut and stuff like that this is the Advent calendar version of it where you have a small puzzle every day for 12 days 24 days what am I talking about and so we've been going through this we've not been very good at doing it every single day well she was at Pax yeah you know we had that package during December you typically start on December 1st and then you go all the way to the 24th so we have been having to do some double time days yes uh but it's very very fun this is definitely highly recommend we're not done with it yet so we will let you know how it goes by the end yeah so far so good yeah all right finally the game games Naveen would you please do us all right we felt it was very appropriate to start with this game of all games we are wearing Christmas sweaters and holiday sweaters right this game is called ugly Christmas sweaters ah these are not ugly these are not ugly but I like these sweaters this game the theme is you are crafting different uh ugly Christmas sweaters this is designed by Hunter R hennigar and it's published by Penthouse games Penthouse games yes they say H2 games on here but Hen House games uh this is a trick taking sweater crafting and kind of car drafting game where essentially what you're trying to do is score the most amount of points in a style that is Trick taking where you're going to be playing cards out to the table so that whoever plays the highest trick gets their first selection of these different sweater components that you get to draft as you start to draft the cards that you had just played become now the new drafting uh stock for the next round so there's kind of this element of put a card in play I don't don't really care about winning it because I'll take any of these sweater components but now that this card's in play on the next round I know I really want that card so I'm going to try to really uh play a trick that's really of high value to try to score that one or take that sweaters basically come in a left shoulder right shoulder and a bottom side and then there's different scoring parameters depending on the round yeah yeah it's so different it's not a standard trick taking game in the sense that you lead and everybody has to play the suit if I'm leading with a card the card is going to be of a certain color and there's also a certain symbol on the card everybody after me just has to follow either the color or the symbol the symbols are going to be Christmas related stuff like Christmas trees and so there's a little bit more flexibility in terms of following and of course if you can't follow with either one of those two things you play any card from your hand but like Naveen said all cards played are going to go into the draft pool after we all draft our cards the way that you determine who gets the draft first is based off of these other card parameters that they call the super Trump and the Trump but really it's like the trend and like the uh I wrote called the the best print or something right it's going to be a specific number so let's say the the number it wants you to play as a five whoever plays a five gets the twos first right right right yeah because the cards are going to go from like I think it's from one to twelve but for every every round it the five could be considered the highest valued card yeah and if multiple people play a five then whoever played later gets to choose first if nobody played a five then the next stop is going to be a certain color of card and they're on ends as soon as either all players have exhausted their hand or somebody has built uh completed three sweaters and you can try to build as many as you want but as soon as a third one has been built that ends around and then you go into scoring you score your sweaters depending on different types of parameters the number one thing being is it a complete sweater of all the same color or symbol that kind of thing there's also a uh a card that's going to give you additional bonus points for having a certain symbol and everybody also has a secret santa card that gives you an additional a secret supportive objective it kind of gives you a reason why you're trying to select certain cards other than the public objectives yes and so this is not a full thorough review of the game we've actually only played this at two players right we can't really give a good feel as to how this game is truly gonna play I think that it's really A four player game yeah because the two and three player game are variants and unfortunately in a two-player game you're pretty much splitting the entire deck and having to play two hands each and actually Naveen was particularly excited to talk about this game so much so that we ran around the house looking for it because I misplaced it yeah a second and he he had to talk about this game today for this video what are your thoughts okay so the two-player game uh having all the cards all at 48 or 48 cards split between the two players it's just a lot of cards in your hand uh so in a trick taking game it's really hard to do a two-player one yeah uh very well I I could see this being really good at four players obviously we haven't played it yet but we do have family coming over that will be willing to play this during the holidays so maybe we'll give you a little update as to like how it plays at four but in a four player game now you only have nine cards in your hand from what I uh remember you have nine and then you draw one yeah so so there's gonna be a little bit more uh kind of like these are the cards I have versus like these are all the cards I have so trumping out of in a two-player game was very kind of simple um and so it was not as Dynamic and just managing physically you know 18 19 cards in your hands just quite a bit any trick taking game that is ported at two I have found to not be very good right there are some trick taking games out there that are two player only that I really like but this one was for the reasons that you mentioned was very um lackluster I suppose yeah just I you had too many options in your hands and so like to guide yourself down a path to be like these are the sweaters I'm gonna craft it's like I'll I'll get something I could see in a four player game where it's like I really need that purple yeah upper left shoulder sweater that has a bell on it that's the perfect card how the heck do I win this right with just these nine cards I have yeah yeah that seems way more Dynamic than a two-player game yeah at the end of the day the two player game is the decision making is just meaningless it becomes meaningless because of all the options and like I guess I'm just gonna make all these sweaters right so uh reading the rules and just kind of knowing what the game entails it sounds like it's going to be interesting but we'll have to update you later have you played this game before we would love to hear your thoughts and how your experiences went uh this is a game that we picked up actually at a local convention yeah convention just at the flea market on a whim and so I'm really looking forward to trying it out again so that is ugly Christmas sweaters all right next up we have another trick taking game and this is another one that's not going to be a thorough review because we've only been able to play it at one player count so far and it is ghosts of Christmas now uh this is a tricked in game that's designed by taiki shinzawa and with art by Maria sorticon by the way because they're beautiful in this game and it's published by boardgametables.com and so if you're familiar with any of the other boardgametables.com titles we've featured some of them on our channel before they are very very high quality in terms of production and this is no exception small package but good amount of gaming yeah it's pretty crazy although the two small is really pushing it in terms of the contents that are in here there's a lot of components in this game and it's a really tiny box but anyway this this is a tick taking game about uh the Ghost of Christmas Past present and future yeah like Like A Christmas Carol right that's what that yeah Eli sees things from the past into the future and his present state is kind of a grump so they're trying to change that yeah so really it's just interesting and that's the whole Twist on this trick taking game um in this game everybody has a tableau where they can play a card to the past present and future and in the middle of the table are um these three dials that correlate to the past present future as well and so the way that the game works is there's a bidding component but really you're doing the actual card playing portion of it uh the first player who plays a card can play it to any of those three areas the past present or future and if it's the first card in that area say I played a green suit to the present I'm going to Mark the green suit on the present dial and now for the rest of the round or a trick everybody else who plays to the present must play Green if they have it yeah so just because Monique played something to the east of the past yeah so the present does not mean on my turn if I'm next I have to now follow into the present right but if I did I have to play a green if I have it in my hand if I don't then I can play something else there yes uh but just because she played in the present does not mean I am not allowed to play start something in the past or in the future yeah you can always play You're gonna end up playing one card in each past present and future in that one hand or round I confuse those two terms yeah and you can play them in any order but like Naveen was mentioning if you don't have a card of that suit you can play anything um and red which is the heart suit is considered the Trump so once everybody's played three cards each to their tableaus the hand or the trick will end and uh you go into scoring and the way that scoring works is starting with the first player you score the pass first and so regardless of what it says on the past dial you're going to score the trick depending on what card the first player led with in the past yeah there's this little black pawn that that's gonna signify who is the person you're assessing from yes so let's say it was Monique in the past then you if she put a yellow in the past then it then you're gonna assess all yellows yes so say for example I was a first player and I started playing on the present but Naveen played a green card in the past right when it came back around to me to play a card to the past I didn't have a green card so I played yellow so the thing is because I was technically first player when we go into scoring we're going to score the past as if I led with yellow even though Naveen was the first player to put a card there the dial says green everybody was required to play Green but because I didn't have green I played yellow and so in that hand whoever um played the highest yellow card is going to win it yeah it's a little wonky concert just in words just talking without it actually like present in front of you um so we do encourage you to kind of research just a little bit further you lay it on tabletopia it's on table Topia uh you can't play it there it's very clever once you score that then whoever won that that the past will now start the present they will have the pawn yeah they'll have the pawn and whatever they played in the present will be the leading suit and then you kind of score it from there each time you win a trick either past present or future you're going to get a wreath that's going to go on top of a door because before you do this whole song and dance you have to bid on how many tricks you think you're going to win that hand at the very beginning of the round yes when you acquire all 12 cards you're gonna look at your 12 cards and you're gonna declare I'm gonna win six tricks with these 12 cards yeah so before any cards have been played you're gonna determine uh how many you're you think you're gonna you're gonna win yeah so then that's why the strategy comes in like sometimes you want to win tricks sometimes you want to position yourself that you don't win tricks right because there's a very specific uh scoring parameter if like you're completely perfect on your guess then you'll score a 2x on what you get so yeah let's say I guess going into the hand I'm going to win five tricks if I perfectly win those five tricks then I get five rates five times two I get ten points so it's like it's like things like that that you have to kind of be cognizant of at the very beginning of the game so you sometimes you want to win hands sometimes you want to lose but sometimes how do you get the onus off of you because like you don't want to be the winner so yeah there's a lot of like strategy and card counting that goes into the game yes in general it is a very wonky concert it took some time to kind of switch your brain into thinking the way that it scores yeah but I really liked it we only played it at three um and so we played it with Michael no Michael from the from the moonrakers video yeah and so he kind of made a really good point uh he was mentioning that at three it feels like the the spread of the cards is not as dynamic because it can be a little bit lopsided yeah over the course of the game we were kind of playing it where you know a lot of times one person had a lot of the strong cards there was a hand where I had like five five or six of the trumps and a bunch of 11s and twelves and I was like yeah I'm gonna win eight of these yeah like I know like and each time I only had like two of the Trump cards so I always had the low scoring cards the issue with that is I you can only bid so much and if you are correct it it still limits there's a roof to the amount of points that you can score because your hand is so low if you have a lot of really high scoring cards it's high risk High reward right you want to bid high but you also want to nail it so that you can score so many points because points are based off of how many tricks you actually win so there's kind of that aspect but in general it requires you to card count quite a bit if you want to be really good at the game yeah that's not something I do even though you really should yeah you're like I've seen the 11 Green out so I know I'm good with this 10 greens yeah like that you know Michael was quite good at it I think he kind of like figured out the order of things like pretty much immediately but it is very clever and something that if you enjoy trick taking highly recommend you try it yeah I think I'm I'm excited to play it at the the full four player count because uh I would like to see more cards distributed and kind of that challenge of now with all these cards distributed how do I guess ahead of time and how do I maintain control because there's only past present and future it's it there's something about a three player game that felt like almost like an even split of that versus uh three things that you can score but there's four players right you know it doesn't make sense yeah yeah yeah yeah so I don't know I'm excited to play it I think we will probably play this again and update you guys uh let's say doing everything anyway that is ghosts of Christmas all right next up is not a holiday themed game but probably something you can play over the holidays if you enjoy playing at two this is a two player spin-off of one of naveen's favorite yeah this is a splendor duel yes uh designed by Mark Andre who is the original designer as well as Bruno cathala uh published by Space Cowboys um and this is a two-player only game hence the duel yes uh based off of the I think 2015 design Splendor I think so yeah Splendor is if you if you don't know uh kind of my history of it it's one of the games it's probably the game that got me into the hobby maybe it's a tournament winner I've got a hats off this audio uh yes I did win a tournament once yes yes um but anyway this is uh the game that basically got me into the hobby the original game what this is uh based off so I got lots of uh lots of appreciation for Splendora we still have it um we both still really enjoy it there's all there's always been this debate debate let's say it's not size I guess but we both really enjoy Splendor and it's just such a great game to to reel people in to board gaming right yeah yeah my cousins really loved it uh pretty much anybody I teach it to yeah um is excited about it and they want to play it again back to back so and so they made a two-player only version of it and uh basically if you're familiar with Splendor it feels like the same game with a few changes to make it specific to two yeah one of the changes is there's now this board where you put all of the gems on and uh when you collect gems you're not just collecting like was it two of the same color or three of all or the gold in one Reserve yeah you have to collect them in in in a row or column or diagonal line all touching each other right right there are also pearls that's a new type of resource a resource that you can get that some of the cards are going to require and unlike the gems you can't get cards that will just give you a a perlet like if you build a red card uh then like now you always have a red yeah to pay towards new cards yes yes yeah and they don't have that for pearls in this game there are now three different ways that you can end the game you can either have 20 Prestige points total you can have 10 Prestige points but all in one color or if you're the first person to collect 10 crowns because some of the cards are gonna have crowns on them then that person wins and so it kind of has an interesting Dynamic of this like uh multiple ways of winning so you're always kind of on high alert right yeah yeah you can still only uh Reserve or have 10 of these uh the tokens the coins to be able to use to pay I felt like in this one uh there it was harder like you you really do have to collect more cards to be able to use those cards to pay for the next set of cards um sometimes in regular Splendor like I just find myself hoarding gems and then hitting on the really powerful like very sizable valued uh cards and so this one I tried to do a strategy like that and I got I got nowhere it's because you can't just choose what color gems you want yeah like you have to the thing is when you're when you're taking three in a row on this board you're gonna remove the middle ones quite quickly yeah and so you'll just have these like one sports yeah Sports gems and you can't refill them unless you kind of decide to at the start of your turn but now your opponent will get what's called a um a privilege privilege a privileged token thing which is like a plastic scroll and that'll allow them to just turn it in for any one gem that's on the board right so you're kind of like playing this game of chicken like who is going to refill the board first right yeah because at the beginning of your turn you have the option of repopulating the board so once you spend some of the gems that you've collected to buy or build cards yeah those now go into a bag right and then you kind of Shuffle up the bag so at a certain there's multiple times in our in our place where nobody wanted to be the one to give the other person access to these uh these tiles yeah so we're just kind of like trying to stand be like what can I buy with this limited supply to the point where I was like all right well now I have two gens none of these costs two gems all right I guess I'm gonna have to refill it so then you kind of uh you just kind of refill the board uh in this like you follow this pathway yeah that that's that part of the game for me that refilling the board yeah I like what it makes you do but the physical act of like okay one two three you gotta like yeah do like 18 you know 18 gems out onto the board that was a little bit of a slow down a little bit of a slug for me personally okay I didn't mind it so much I didn't really really maybe it's the fact that it's called privilege but uh in any case there's also the these abilities that the cards have so if you claim a card you can immediately do something like taking another turn or a stealing a gem from your opponent that's right so there are these new aspects to the game that the original game does not have at all yeah and I think that all those things put together the new victory conditions the um the abilities really make it an interesting play it too yeah I think they did a really good job I enjoyed it I liked it um I think we both asked ourselves at the end of it like do you would you rather play the two player Splendor game like just base blender or this stuff like you could ever play I think for me it's still just a two-player Splendor oh okay I do enjoy this one I think the question was does this replace regular slender for you for a two-player experience I know just in general just in general because for me I have two different answers in general I this does not replace Splendor for me but if I were to play it at two I would prefer to play the the Dual duet the Dual version so you and I are split on that yeah maybe because I have such an affinity for a base Splendor like for the for the original game yeah to me I'm like it plays fun at two players it does play fine at two but I think this raises the state two player only games we're pretty much traveling or something and for us travel size games are a big deal yeah not bad right pretty good yeah pretty good this is Splendor in this Tiny Box yeah so you get the full yeah you can you you get a full experience out of this like little tiny thing yeah so anyway that is Splendor duel uh this is something that I am happy to keep in our collection for uh ever it's a long-term game for me it's a nice two-player version of a game that we love so all right our next game is a game that we've also talked about quite a bit and so we will keep this brief because it's not holiday themed but it is one that you can play over the holidays because with your Gatherings yeah it's ready set back so this is a game if you're not familiar with it it's probably it's designed by John declare published by AEG and this is a horse racing simulation game yep uh that's that's pretty much it in a nutshell yeah trying to make money yeah you're at the racetracks and uh there is a board that has a bunch of horses and somebody usually is rolling dice at time calling out the numbers of the horses and moving them forward on the track and this is all done in real time there as the person is calling out these numbers and the horses are moving forward everybody else is kind of waiting and deciding on which horse to bet on on this large betting board yeah it kind of almost looks like a like a modified craps table to fit this game where every player is going to start with a certain set of bidding tokens uh they they go from like two to up to five and so there's different multipliers on that board so if you see that the six horses way out in front obviously every role is independent of each other yeah but you're like well it's out in front so maybe I do want to bid and think that this six horse is gonna is gonna finish first um so you're basically just trying to play the odds and try to score the most amount of points or make the most amount of money yeah real-time fashion right because spots are competitive meaning if I think the six horse is gonna get first and I want to get a 5x multiplier I better be the first one to put a chit down on there otherwise it's out for me yeah nobody else will be able to place a chit now and there are a lot of little details that make the game particularly fun including if the person rolls doubles then the horse can move forward a bonus number of spaces depending on how difficult it is to roll their number yeah because the the uh the horses move in kind of a crap style yeah um like the statistics statistics yes yeah are based off focus yeah so like a two and a twelve are the hardest things to roll um so the two and three represent one horse in the uh 11 and 12 represent the other horse and so if those ever rolled back to back they would really kind of push forward because the probability to do that yeah yeah that's what it is so if you roll a seven twice in a row there is no bonus for that so that's something you have to kind of weigh when you're making different bids there's also prop bets so these are like at the beginning of the game like a certain set of cards are gonna be dealt out and these prop bets are going to change from round to round and so it could be like I think the the Blue Horses which are the lower probability horses are going to finish before the Seven Horse yes and if you do bid on that and you're correct you'll get a large multiplier yeah based off of your bid and of course as soon as a Horse Pass a certain point then no more betting so all bets are off right before that line everybody is like really trying to get their last bets in so it is quite exciting um it's played over the course of several rounds and each round people get kind of a bonus thing to help them in the next round so it's really quite fun um we played it enough now to be able to kind of talk about what the experience is like I will say it's very group dependent it's also a very specific experience as you can imagine you know you're not going to play this at two you're going to need a group setting this is really like for a gathering of sorts yeah and uh in my opinion it the experience really is is um almost created by the person who's rolling it's driven by that person yeah each time you played we've been very fortunate to have somebody who's very good at that role extremely good at that role and it makes it so exciting there is an app for it so if you don't have somebody who can roll the dice there is an app where some there is a voice somebody voice calling out those numbers and you can change the speed so if you want a more panicked kind of you can you can have it where every half a second a different number is being called or rules so that's something to be aware of right we did listen to it though and it's not quite the same right it just doesn't have that energy of a live caller there's something about seeing the dice rolling and in your brain trying to interpret like a five and a one that's a six like and then like you doing that versus like somebody just saying six eight yeah nine and you know yeah because you're like really listening to that app and so the table talk might not be there right and there's a lot the excitement is it builds upon uh The Experience on the table so that is the only thing but um we both really enjoy this game and it's gonna stay in our collection for those specific moments yeah so we can bring it up so anyway that is ready set bet okay the last game that we wanted to talk about is back to a Christmas themed game this is Holly Jolly this is from 25th Century games uh we just covered uh ghost of Chris not Ghost of Christmas uh the ghost look handy game oh yes that was there um their Halloween one this is a release for Christmas or during this time it is designed by pen Ben pinchback and Matt riddle and it's a two to four player game where you're trying to collect different things from a Christmas tree to score the most amount of points you're trying to pluck off ornaments and also take gifts from under the tree yes the way that game works truly is there's a Christmas tree set up and it's all with cards you know all around the tree are ornaments and at the bottom of the tree are either uh Christmas gifts or stocking gifts and stockings are always placed face down and in the middle of the tree are either tinsel it's like a three a three card configuration of tinsel slash lights and so truly the way that the game works is on your turn you're gonna take one of the three face up cards from the tinsel Christmas lights um display and all these cards have valued values on them numbers on them so the card that you take you're gonna place on top of one of the three cards that are in the middle of the tree now after you place that you're gonna add up the values of of all of the cards on that display area of the same type so if you played a tinsel card you're going to add up the values of just the tinsel that are in the middle and then you're going to take an ornament if you can that is of the same value of that sum or if there are no ornaments of that value you're going to take one of the gifts from under the tree if it says 0 to 5 value then you're taking it from the left side and if it's six or above you're taking it from the right side and so ornaments are going to score depending on what they are like um the Snowman I believe scores if you have the most amount of snowman it's Four Points each if you don't it's two points each there are some that are set collection there's a there's a Santa that only scores you one point but you can take a gift from under the tree when when taking that ornament and then there are also these rocking horses that all score differently depending on which one you take and of course the Christmas gifts under the tree will also score you uh whatever the points it says on there yeah their base values or there's also like a set collection like if you collect the stuffed animals yeah stuff like you get the elephant yeah the unique animals and you're able to collect them all then you get either zero like five or fifteen points yeah you're able to get them all together it's that collection and then the stockings whenever them and the funny thing is some of them contain coal zero points yeah yeah so that's the game in a nutshell at the end of the game you know to this I I don't know I don't know what this game is gonna be like because the thing about holiday games is you know you never know what you're gonna get some of them are really not bad and some of them are really not good some of them are playing up the fact that it's more around the holiday than the game but uh we actually really enjoyed this one yeah I I was I was into it yeah in particular was really into it you know we set it up and I was like I have to know I have to know what kind of a game this is going to be and as soon as we started getting into it I was like oh this is this is strategic yeah and it's also very cute it's a lot of math you're just constantly like okay if I place this what's the sum going to be which card am I going to be able to get but for a holiday game this is actually not bad there's a good there's a good element of the the math that like when you select one of the three displays of the tinsel or the Christmas lights it's like okay what am I leaving behind for my opponent because I know that they have they're collecting this set so if I leave behind this four which I don't really want to that's gonna be perfect math for you to pick up the another continuation to that set yeah so maybe now I need to cover either I have to cover up some of your math going into your turn yeah or I need to take that card and do something for myself so that I can kind of mess with what you're able to take on me that's right right so I thought it was pretty clever yeah they're just something about uh just kind of placing cards in the middle of the tree that kind of was like oh this is a little bit strange but by the end of it I was I was so yeah in terms of longevity I don't know how long you know it's gonna be something yes but it was an enjoyable experience good job experience yeah this is a game that I enjoyed more than the other 25th Century games that came out I think it was called Christmas lights that was kind of like a Hanabi uh putting down the lights in a certain order version this this one I this one I I hover that one yeah yeah that is Holly Jolly uh and I believe that covers it that's all the games yes some of the games that we enjoy playing around this time of year by the way our gingerbread house I think that's what it's called yeah we did a playthrough of that a couple of years ago I think on Christmas Day and um as well as dead of winter yeah to play another winter during Halloween and Christmas um and there's another game from Calliope games called I think it's called 12 Days 12 days yeah that's again that we don't actually own but uh we all we've always heard so much about that game I'm considering that it was like the holiday themed game for a while yeah and when we finally played it that game is good yeah if you can get a hold of that one yeah I would highly recommend well thank you all so much for watching our video if you have any games that you enjoy playing around this time of year please feel free to leave us a comment down below and uh we enjoyed reading them yep thank you so much again to the meeps for sponsoring this video if you want to check out their apparel there's a link in the description down below we are again supporting the Advent calendars which is new this year yes uh and thank you all so much for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it if you'd like to see more like this in the future please consider subscribing thank you bye foreign