Episode 375: Wispwood, Moytura, All In: Predictions, Arkham Horror Investigator Decks & Torchlit

0:04 Pickax

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0:44 I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book.

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1:02 Now streaming only on Disney Plus.

1:10 Hey y'all, it's time for Rolling Dice and Taking Names. And y'all better hold on to your britches because this episode is chalk full of game reviews. Marty and Tony review Mura, Whiskwood, All-In Predictions, Torch Lit, and I will join Marty for a review of the new Arkham Horror Investigator decks recorded from the North Carolina State Library.

1:36 Hello and welcome to Rolling Dice and Taking Names. This is episode 375. Holy cow, 375. Summer breeze. My name is Marty. Take me away. I'm Tony. I am surprised we have not used summer breeze makes me feel fine.

1:53 Well, I'm sure we have, but we had to do it. I mean, there's plenty of seals and cross obviously. I mean, our over in our discord channel, someone mentioned, you know, seals passed away, right? Or was it cross? Seal

2:05 one of them.

2:05 I can't remember what I don't remember.

2:08 If you're listening to this podcast, the music we listen to, people are dying. Okay. I hate to say it.

2:14 Yeah. So, it's funny after after that happened, I went, "What's their biggest songs?" And it was like Summer Breeze, obviously, and I think there was only maybe one or two others that I knew that I'd never heard, but no, we've never used Summer Breeze. We've used Hot Fun in the Summertime.

2:30 Did they do that?

2:31 No. Sly and the Family Stone. I'm just doing a quick search on our um Excel spreadsheet that has all the songs on it.

2:37 Yeah.

2:38 We didn't do anything. We did not do summer breeze or we forgot to write it down here. But I don't. But yeah, SS and cross they were a big name. Big name.

2:48 Nope. Nope. Nope. This is her. This is her greatest hits album. I'm skimming through. Nope.

2:56 It wasn't Seals. It was Dash Cross that died at age 87.

3:02 Nope.

3:02 Man, you can tell we've been on vacation. We are so prepared and ready to go.

3:07 Nope. Even when you look at their greatest hits, it's Nope. Nope. Diamond Girl.

3:13 Okay. Diamond Girl was the other one that I knew. These others, no clue.

3:17 Well, I look at the Sals and Cross greatest hits album cover and that is so iconic. My sister had this album and I just remember that um you know these two bearded guys standing out on the beach um holding it looks like a guitar and a mandolin. I don't know. Y

3:35 and in front of a music stand

3:37 for some odd reason. I remember that very well. And I'm going to go check while you get get us started here. I'm going to go see if the Hall of Fame finish their videos game who won. But I'm going to go check that and we can put that also talk about that today. So we are I'm telling you man, we are prepared. Let's keep doing vacation. Well, let's let's explain why we are like, "Guys, what is going on?" Because Tony and I over the course of two 2 and 1/2 weeks, have been traveling. You traveled for a week. I was in Oregon for a week and our paths have not crossed hardly at all. We do have show notes and then we start talking. We go, "Oh yeah, we should talk about that sort of deal." So, it's like, "Guys, shouldn't you do a take two?" We don't do no takeos around here. Please, please. That's for amateurs. We're nowhere near amateur.

4:27 Well, 13 and a half years, we still hadn't got rid of the amateur status.

4:34 Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. They have not. Okay. So, we're good to go. Let's keep this Let's keep this uh show on the road. I do want to talk about go ahead jump into a game. And I'm going to go ahead and say this warning. Uh I I need you to do something for me.

4:47 Me.

4:48 All right.

4:48 The listeners. Okay.

4:50 You personally, you me. Me. He's pointing at me, y'all.

4:53 I took Sky Joe with me down on our trip to play with some uh my mother-in-law and some friends of her. Um they came over and you know, Sky Joe, simple game, right? Put 12 cards out

5:07 face down.

5:07 Face down. Everybody knows about golf. Flip two over on your turn. You can either take from the discard pile or draw from the top. And if you um take from the top and you don't like it, you discard that card. If you do like it, then you place that card that you have on any card that you have in your tableau. Three rows, four columns. Straightforward. I mean, that's the game. You're you're flipping it over trying to get and if you get three of the same number in a column, you remove that column, put it in the discard pile, put the card that was the that you were going to on top of it so the people cannot get what's underneath it. Straightforward. Biggest thing that you have to teach people is that when you flip over your last card, you sum up the numbers. Everybody gets one more turn.

5:53 But if you are not the lowest to score, your score is doubled.

5:57 Yeah.

5:58 That is a huge difference between Sky Joe and what every people call golf. There's just a basic golf game that doesn't have negative numbers. Distribution's different. So we're playing this and long story even longer. So

6:13 yeah, it's like my gosh, I thought it was going to be a short episode.

6:15 Yeah, I thought it was too. And I guess maybe it's an an age thing and we are getting there, but they would take the top card off the draw pile

6:25 and they would look at it and hold it in front of them and not show anybody. And I'm like, just put the freaking card down. We're all going to see it.

6:32 That bothered me too because they I taught some people that had never played before and it was keeping it like a secret. I guess it builds anticipation around the table, especially for the next player. It's like, am I going to get that card or not? Sort of deal.

6:46 I've seen it in it was an age thing and these people were over 70, right? And was like, oh, oh, what am I going to do with this? What am I going to do? Well, first off, you're going to show everybody and then you're going to put it in your tableau or not. Okay, it's quick. Pick a card, replace a card. Next person. Sky Joe should not take an hour.

7:12 An hour not for just one round, right? To complete the whole game, multiple rounds

7:17 to 100 points, right? I'm like it. And I'll admit it was seven people, which I do not like playing above six.

7:25 Oh no, dude.

7:27 Eight.

7:28 No, that is way too Man, you are just some serious downtime then.

7:34 Oh, yeah. That's a lot of reshuffling of cards, too.

7:38 Okay, let's just move along here. Let's just get to I got I'll be honest with you. I rushed to the end so the game would end sooner.

7:47 Good. So, it's funny. So, when I when I taught it, and this was with four people after a couple rounds, pe people eventually got it. If they flipped and saw like a seven or higher, unless it matched something that they were trying to do, they just immediately discarded. So, they got the speed of the game at that point. I think the decision was if it was three or four and it's like, oh, you you know, gosh, you know, it's getting late in the game. Should I should I risk it at this point?

8:14 Yeah. But one time I flipped over a 10 and I replaced a lower number with the 10. And and the people look at me, why would you do that? I don't understand that. And I'm like, so I could possibly replace a column because nobody else around here is going to be taking my person to the other side is not taking a 10. So why would I not take the 10?

8:39 That's what makes it harder with that many number of players, too. To me, four is perfect because you can take strategies like that of like, I'm gonna gamble that, oh, I'm showing two tens right now. I'm I'm gonna take a chance that the person to the right of me will will draw a 10 and they're not going to keep it. Even though it's going to let me clear a column, I doubt they'll eat it themselves. Mhm. Yeah. The problem I have is my wife Donna is sitting she's my discard and she knows what I'm playing and therefore I'm mucking with her game as well. And now that we're at this level, she's like, "I'm not giving you this." And I go, "You don't have time. I'm telling you, you don't have time. Go ahead, put it over your girl.

9:27 So, we were having fun with each other on it. But, you know, Sky Joe, great family game. Um, oh, and the other thing I was doing is I was helping somebody. I was like, okay, that is the seventh eight that's been shown. You're trying to collect a column of eights. You have two. Seven have been either on the table or discarded.

9:48 Wow. You were counting with seven people. That's impressive.

9:52 Well, I was trying to help some people out as they're they were doing their strategy. Okay.

9:56 I was also trying to speed up the freaking game. Let's go, people. Flip the card over and then then taking the card and just flinging it at the discard pile.

10:05 There's some etiquette here, people. Come on. Come on. What are you doing? And and Well, I can't reach the cards. Can you Oh, I'm here. Let me just Do you want a card or not? Let's play Let's play

10:15 Let's play flip seven.

10:16 Flip seven. Yeah, exactly. Let's play flip seven here. That one didn't go over as well.

10:21 Oh, with a vengeance didn't go over.

10:23 That one did not go over as well.

10:24 Oh, because it's with a vengeance because it could be pretty mean. Uh, such a good game. Such a good game.

10:31 It is such a great So, Sky Joe's great game. Flip seven with Avengers. Great game. We played that. They didn't like it as much. It with seven people as well. That was a little too much in my opinion. Um, I don't even know how many you can play flip seven. We played it with seven anyway. was not they didn't feel the suspense as much, but I felt it was played really well because you didn't have the repeats as much and you had that where someone flipped seven, scored like 85 points plus 15. It was huge number and boom, game over like that. So, I thought that was great.

11:04 Yeah, that is nice. In fact, if y'all have ever played Flip Seven with the Vengeance, would you like a copy? If so, we are giving the one away thanks to OP Games that makes Flip 7 with a vengeance. After we covered it in our show, they said, "Hey guys, since you've covered it, you think somebody in your audience would love to have a copy?" I said, "Please, with the how big Flip 7 was, and we told them this is the way to play it." Of course they would. So, here's what we're going to do. Typical of our contest, join our Discord channel. You go to rollise techchnames.com. Got a link to join there. If you're in there, there is a contest section and I will just post if you want to be entered to win a copy of this game, just give a thumbs up. We make it as easy as possible. The only stipulation is from OP Games is it needs to be in the 48 contiguous states because they are shipping it themselves and covering the shipping. So again, Discord channel, look in the contest area, give a thumbs up, and this contest will end May 1st. That gives like a week and a half after this episode drops. So hopefully you'll have listened to it by then. And if you're here, nice thing is Tony, if you're in the Discord channel and haven't listened to the episode, you'll still see a notification that there's a new contest going on without even listening. Another reason to join our Discord. And I'll go ahead and tease. Next episode, we're giving away a big game that we covered in episode 374.

12:32 Nice. Don't run those contests at a time. Draw it out. Draw D draw them out there. I like that. Make people have to come back and listen for more. Unless you join the Discord channel. Then you don't have to listen at all and just wait for the contest things.

12:44 That's right. Turn notifications off. Well, turn notifications off of everything except the contest area. That's how you do it. or subscribe to our newsletter. Just kidding. We never did a newsletter. Thank gosh there were people that do newsletters. Could you imagine you and I doing a newsletter? I could I could do it now because of AI. You like to write? I I like to write. Okay. But there's just too much other stuff on the table for me right now. All right. So, let me tell you about something that I played while you were gone. Uh this is a new game from Pandasaurus Games called Tico. It's designed by Jerome Cleet and Nicholas Malay. Now Tony, I love doing this this way for you have who have not played the game. So this is the way to test how well I explain a game to see if you who have never played can understand it.

13:34 Okay.

13:35 All righty.

13:36 All right. To 30,000 ft level drafting tiles, placing them on your player board where your player board consists of five columns, four rows, 20 tiles. You're gonna draft those, place them on your board. Guess what? If you place them a certain way, there's a way to do some scoring. There's some in-game objectives that are random every game. If you achieve those objectives, you score more points. Person with the most points wins. Okay. Draft place. We've played it a thousand times, right?

14:07 Mhm.

14:08 All right. So, I'm always looking for the twist. Here is the twist. Imagine that we're drafting from five tiles where they're laid out on the board and across. So there's one in the middle, one on the on top of that, one on the bottom, one to the left of the middle, one to the right. So can you picture that? A plus sign basically.

14:28 A plus sign. Yeah.

14:29 Okay.

14:30 Mhm.

14:30 However, there is a dual layer board in the middle of the table that these tiles are in. So, it's that at the beginning of the game, you prepopulate the board with five tiles. And the way this dual layer board works is you can see the top tile, the bottom tile, the left tile, the right, but not the one in the middle.

14:51 It's it's hidden because it's between a hidden layer. And what you do on your turn is you're dealt a hand of your own tiles. And these are nature tiles. They're like terrain tiles. and you're going to take one of your tiles during your turn and slide it in the top, bottom, left or right. And the tile that comes out the other side is what you get. So if I slide in from the top, it pushes the one out the bottom and I take it. But this dual layer board I'm talking about, each exit has a symbol. The tile that you take, you must put it on the matching symbol on your board. So that's the placement rule.

15:28 Question. Question. So, I'm looking at this dual placement board. And as I push the tile, I see these little holes. So, you can see

15:36 four of the tiles, right? That that you one of those you're going to push to the center that disappears.

15:42 Ding, ding, ding, ding. So, part of this is a memory game. It's like, wait a minute. What was in the center? I just saw it a second ago.

15:49 Mhm.

15:50 All right. Mhm.

15:51 If you put your tile adjacent to another tile that's the same terrain type or that's called forest tiles. Let's say matching color to make it easy. You have one of your player tokens that you're going to put on the intersection between those two tiles. If you place a tile, two different color tiles beside each other, you have six river tokens that you're going to place at the intersection of your tiles. So, whenever you place a tile on your board, you'll place one of your tokens or a river token depending on whether tiles match or mismatch. Okay?

16:22 The game will end as soon as somebody has placed all their tokens and rivers.

16:27 But over the course of the game,

16:29 there's these other scoring objectives, these these in-game scoring cards I had. Hey, if you can make a 2x4 or a 2x5 or get this certain pattern of colors or types or get six rivers in a row in a contiguous line, all these little scoring options. And as soon as you do that, then you get to put two of your tokens on that scoring tile, which is another way to get rid of your tokens. It's a race at this point, right? The first person to get rid of all the tokens wins.

17:00 Okay, that's it. What are Aurora tiles?

17:03 Aurora tiles. So, how you get Aurora tiles are there are four different colors. Once you get three colors, same colors on your board, you earn the Aurora tile. And each Aurora tile does something different. Oh, with this Aurora tile, I can ignore the placement rule and place it anywhere I want on the board. With this Aurora tile, I can pick up an existing tile on my board and move it to another area. So, they each do different things, but there's only two of them per color. The next one, somebody has to put down four of the same color to earn the second one. And if you've already earned one, you can't earn the other one. You can't have two of the same color, basically. And once you use it, it's a flip it over and you're done. So, it's a one time use per game.

17:46 Okay. All right. I was wondering as I was looking at the images over at Board Game Geek, I was like, "All right, they said something about Aurora tiles. What's going on here?" All right. So, really, I mean, where the game is is in the memory of the tiles. I mean, placement of tiles, we all know that, but what makes it different from every other tile laying freaking game that we've ever played?

18:05 It's the one thing in the middle about the pushing and and everything. By the way, what happens if you play 12 rounds and everybody's placed all the tiles that they have and somebody hasn't finished placing all their tokens? Very simple. You're going to get points based on the number of tokens and river tiles that you have left. Whoever has the lowest points, which means they have the fewest to place, wins the game.

18:30 Okay.

18:30 So, it's not a point total thing except at the very end if somebody didn't get to place all their stuff.

18:36 Okay. Right. Multiple things going on. The ability to place various tokens out on the um not only on your board, but also on these other cards.

18:46 And that's really what you're trying to do is maximize that efficiency. Okay. Well, I I like the idea or the concern of pushing the tiles through the board. That adds the instead of a blind draw, which is often in tile games that that's not here. You need to remember that. Okay. And as the player now, your stack of tiles at your player side is that's a blind draw, right? You you can't search for a certain tile.

19:12 Correct.

19:13 You pick up a tile, you then put it in the little machine. It's not a machine. I know. And out comes out poops another little tile. Okay. Well, I really want the tile I just picked off my stack. So, how do I place it here so that I event that maybe I can get it?

19:29 Yeah. So, everybody starts with 12 tiles.

19:32 Mhm.

19:33 The all 12 tiles they're going to place, but they're they're come up in random. You don't get to pick which one you're going to place. You just draw one, place it. Now, some cons. You really can't forward plan in a fourplayer game. If I place a towel that I want to get later, chances are I may not get it. And Bert ran into this. There was one particular tile he was looking for and it it stayed in the center every time it got to him cuz when it got to the edge, neither me or Mark would push it back to the middle so he could never get to it.

20:07 And because it's a random draw on his side, he couldn't just put a bunch of forest into the board to try to have a better chance of getting it. So that's where some of the luck is added to the game and and so in a way that's good for a very friendly family game because it's not very skill-based because of that luck factor. But as a gamer, you may be like, I really wish I could kind of prep my next turn to try to help me out and it's just not going the way I want it to cuz the tiles aren't coming up from my own stack or nobody else is putting in the tile that I want to get,

20:44 right? Or it could be great. The tile that I want to place is coming out on a symbol that I don't want it to go. I want it to be some other thing. That's where the aurora tiles come in. It's like, well, you can break the rule once if you happen to have that aurora tile to place it on any symbol that you want

21:01 cuz your wilderness map has various symbols on it.

21:05 And that's the symbols that matches the center board that you're drafting from. The tile that it comes out of will have one of those four symbols.

21:12 I need to put um what is it? a a sun tile out to continue building. So hopefully I can eject the one in the center over to the sun and it's the right thing to help me meet my objectives. Okay, I'm with you. I'm with you on this game. Okay, pretty straightforward. I mean, h push a tile, put a draw a tile, put it on the board, push one out on the other side. Okay,

21:35 but there's the strategy.

21:37 There's one other way to get rid of tiles. Every game there's going to be the four symbol cards that are placed out on the table. If you are the first person to cover all five symbols of one of those symbols, so five times four is 20. Then you get to place two of your tokens on that card. Another way to get rid of your tokens. So also you might be trying to cover all of one particular symbol just so you can hurry up and claim that card cuz that's a claim once and done. Nobody else can claim it. All the other objective, in-game objectives, everybody can do it.

22:07 Do you think this would be a good two-player game or do you definitely need three? I don't see it being a good two player based on what you were describing. What I see here, I don't see it being two.

22:16 With two, I think you have a little bit more control over what you're going to get.

22:20 Okay.

22:21 I do think with again some people that you just played with, your family, the 70 plus year olds, they could probably understand it. Well, I mean, it's simple. You push in, you take it. It must go this place on your board. What about if I can't place it? Guess what? You have to discard that tile. You don't get to place it if you don't have a spot for it.

22:41 It's the memory element.

22:45 It It is.

22:46 I'm joking. I'm I'm getting there.

22:48 Oh, no. Well, here's the thing. I I didn't really keep up with what was in the middle of that often. But here's why. Because it didn't matter. Oh, I know what's in the middle. I need that. Well, that means it needs to be pushed and then get back around to me before I have a chance to get it. There's a very good chance that somebody will alter the state of that plus of those five tiles that's in the middle of the table where I don't get it next time either.

23:11 Okay.

23:12 So, why even remember it? I don't I don't care.

23:14 Okay. Well, good. I'm glad you got that played. It's out there. It's out now, I guess.

23:18 Mhm. Tico from Pandasaurus Games. All right. Last thing.

23:23 This is so funny. Ignosi with Portal Games is getting ready to come out with an expansion for 51st State.

23:30 Oh, okay.

23:31 Yep. Yep. He's working on it right now. So, he sat down with Mary to let her play it to see what she thinks about this expansion. I'm excited about it coming out this year. It'll get 51st State off the shelf, which is an amazing game. I love the game. Love the game.

23:45 Ignosi sends me a text message and says this, and I'm quoting this, y'all. Ignosi says, "So, today I played 51st State. Both me and Mary could not read the text on the cards easily. Conclusion. Point number one, you are not joking about the Imperial settller's font size. Point number two, now I hear you loud and clear. And he finally said, "Damn it, I'm getting older." Karma is a So I said, "Igni, if you remember when we met you 10 years ago, you were now the age now the what we were when we first met you, when we started complaining about it." I said, "Do you get it?" He said, "I get it. I get it. Cuz y'all, if y'all don't know, for years we always complained about the font size on Imperial Settlers in 51st state. And we made jokes, y'all. If you go back in our social media, we use a magnifying glasses and glass. We just having fun.

24:43 Agnosi just knew it was fun. And he was like, "Guys, I can read it. No problem." And now he said, "You're not joking. I hear you loud and clear." And oh man, it's just yeah, it's it's rough. I mean, yeah, as as we get older, I just think about some of the games I have. I'm like, I might as well go ahead and get the readers out the entire time. And if the lighting is not good, oh, I am messed up bad. I mean, that's the way it goes. I hate it for him because L, you know, I mean, Ignasi already has classes. So, you know, I saw that post. I saw him and Mary, he posted it recently. I was able to show a picture of who Ingosi was to u my mother-in-law because she keeps telling me, "You really need to go to Poland. You really need to go to Poland." Yeah, I know. I need to go to Poland, but when when time permits, I would love to go to Poland.

25:35 Yeah. So, I I thought that was good. Regardless, excited about 51st state with a size being any larger. Nope,

25:42 it's not.

25:44 It's not.

25:45 No, because he's got to keep it cons he's got to keep it consistent now. He's got to go with what the uh base game has.

25:53 What is it impacting the back of the game? The card draw. No, it is not.

25:59 You look you you can take that fight to him. He didn't say that. I just assume he's not going to do that.

26:05 Well, I understand you want to but all you got to do is just gradually I mean over time. Come on.

26:13 And and because he wears glasses, he's gonna have to do that uh get the the bif focal type thing going on. Oh. Oh, he's going to love that. Progressives, that type of lens.

26:25 Yeah.

26:26 Yeah, that's that's awesome. Good for him. That's funny. Okay. Well, good. I'm looking forward to new 51st date like you. Uh I wish that game could hit the table. You know, maybe when we stop reviewing new games, maybe we can just go back and call it We need to come up with a new name. Old Guy show or something. You know,

26:45 old guys, old games. Oh. It may be too long. OG old guys. OG OG.

26:54 Aog OG.

26:59 The OG. No. No. Well, you know, OG is like original gangster, right? Oh, I'm the OG game. Oh.

27:05 Oh, we need to think about this as as if we ever turn this turn this place off. You know, I got another idea.

27:17 All right. All right. Well, let's get over to some games that have come out recently that we got to play together. Hey, Tony. You know that game I just told you about, Tico? I didn't tell you what the theme was. All right, look. Here it is. Deep in a northern forest, a firefox runs. And where its tail grazes the trees, the Aurora Borealis lights the sky. There's the theme of that tile placing game I was just talking about earlier. That Fire Fox is pretty powerful. I've been I've seen the Aurora Bor Alice. If I had known it was just that, I would have captured his little high end and then been able to say, "Okay, this way I wouldn't have lost any sleep getting up every night when I was in Norway looking for it." But I tell you what, if you're searching for your next standout title to bring to game night, Pandasaurus Games is proud to introduce Tikica. If you want to build a mystical wilderness from shifting forest tiles, complete clever objectives, and race to place all your tokens before anyone else, check out Tico, a fast playing tile placement game for two to four players. Plays in about 10 to 20 minutes that is available right now at your local retailer online and pandasaurusgames.com.

28:38 Fiveminute initiative begins in three, two, one.

28:43 All right. We always love clever twists on card games. Now, Tony, you and I like clever twist on trick taking games, but what we haven't seen a lot of are twist on playing poker. And that's what we got with the publisher Next Move Games, who made the game all-in predictions. You got five cards. You're trying to get the best hand you can, and you get money based upon that. After three rounds, person the most money wins. But Tony, this is designed by Phil Walker Harding. He's not going to keep it that simple. He's going to throw it that little twist in there that uh we tend to like in this game.

29:20 Yes, he does. I mean, what's one of the biggest uh hang-ups with any type of poker game? There there's a there's some strategy as to know when to hold them and when to fold them and when to walk away. Right.

29:31 Right. But but but here the twist that I really enjoyed about this game was the fact that you get to pick cards that are discarded. You you don't in poker you don't get to do that. And that to me was the big twist that when we were first talking about I'm like wait I'm going to be able to help build my poker hand. That is pretty sweet. But how am I going to do that, Marty? Like I said, everybody's dealt five cards. This is a regular 52 deck of cards plus two additional cards, which are rune cards. But all the cards have abilities on them. So on your turn, you're going to take one of your five cards, lay it down, and take all the actions on that card that you want. It could be draw cards from the card deck. It could be take a card that's been played earlier in the round because when you're done with your action card, you must put it in the middle of the table, and that makes it available to everybody else. or take a card from the discard pile or just earn two runes. The whole goal is to or earn a rune or two runes. The whole goal is to get as many runes as possible after three rounds and win the game. So, you're going to be drawing cards trying to make the best hand and at the end of your turn, discard down to five cards and then the next person goes. However, there is like the name of the game if you feel like because you have to get rid of a card. So, if you think you've got a really strong hand, you can go all in and then you're out.

30:49 That's it. You can no longer take cards, discard, nor can you be targeted by actions because there are some actions that you can look at your opponent and say, "Hey, what's your best rank right now?" And you have to be honest and they they will tell you.

31:01 Or there's one where it's like, "Show me four cards from your hand."

31:05 Mhm. And depending on the number of players, we're just going to say, let's it's four players. uh you have a a tableau where you're going to put six cards down and then you're going to start over and put a card on top of each one that's already been laid. And once 12 cards are on the table, that triggers the end of the round. So, it is kind of a a timing thing of uhoh, when do you when how many more times do I think I have to try to build the best hand? But after the end of the round is triggered, all of us have a prediction token that we're going to give to the person that we think built the best hand. and there's a pot off to the side and if your prediction's right, you get a part of that pot. But regardless, everybody will get money or runes based on whatever your hand rank is with obviously things like full house being higher than a pair, etc. So, you get money from predictions, but you're going to get most of it from corre from trying to get build that best hand you can.

32:02 Play this over three rounds and the pot keeps growing. You don't contribute to the pot. There's no betting or anything like that. The only betting that you're doing is betting on who's got the best hand. And hopefully some of the questions that were asked during the play will help you deduce who that is. Maybe it's you, maybe it's not. Poker faces come in, bluffing comes in. It's all part of this game. So, overall, I I enjoyed our play of it. I thought it was a lot of fun. I like some there was even suspense. I mean, in in one of our games we played, I was sitting there. I knew I was I was behind in winning, but if I could have gotten that pot, I might have pulled off a win. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to this. This is an under the radar type game. So, if you get a chance, definitely give it a play. From my point of view, I'm really glad we got a copy of this.

32:46 Yeah. And you mentioned having the option to go all in. That actually accelerates the round. When you go all in, you take two cards off the top of the draw deck and put them down in the tableau, which rushes you towards the end of the round. And lots of time, the timing is is when you want to go all in, uh, is critical because if somebody went all in, you figure they got a good hand. So yeah, what I love about this game, this game plays in 20 25 minutes, plays two to five players. If you're into simple games based on existing games like we've done with trick- taking games and poker, check out all-in predictions from next move games.

33:20 Fiveminute initiative is complete.

33:27 A new game from two of our favorite designers.

33:30 Oh yeah.

33:32 Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson.

33:34 Yeah, baby. from Bitewing Games is Mtori. I hope I did that right.

33:41 Mira O Y T U R A.

33:46 And this is a World War II simulation game where you're going No, I'm kidding. No, it's not.

33:54 I think David David and Trevor have broken from that. Hey, there we've got us a um game of mythology fiction where we are in Ireland and we are working with deities to battle back demons and monsters while we're trying to control the land. This is an area majority game where you are trying to beat your opponent. two-player game and whoever controls the land or has the most tokens on it will score points at the end of a round. Rounds, there's only there's five phases in each round and there's only two rounds. But here's the twist to this game, Marty, that I thought was really good. You got to kind of work semi-ooperative because these monsters are also scoring points and if they get more points than y'all, you lose.

34:44 So, here's the twist that I love. It's just not Tony and I going to head to head. So, the map is prepopulated with a couple of our tokens. On your turn, you're going to select one of the actions. All the actions have to deal with expanding on the map, taking a spot that you're on, and then expanding from there, getting out more of your tokens. And the rap map is broken up into regions, planned over 10 rounds. At the end of the fifth round, the map is broken up into colored regions where each one will score points based on the first and second of who's there. But Tony, like you said, it's not just you and I that we're competing against. There's also these monsters that are being populated on the board every single round after you and I take our turns. How do we put out these tokens on the board? There are these deities and on your turn you will activate a deity depending on where it is. There are five slots for these deities. One is always stationary. Four other deities are moving across the board. So, if I activate one of the deities and I say, "Okay, he's going to allow me to put out two of my tokens and he has a special ability. Maybe the ability, and this is one of them, it says based on where I'm advancing from or growing from, I can move five spaces away as long as they're adjacent on the sea." I'm going to do that. So, I'm going to put out my two deities,

36:01 two tokens. He now moves to the top of the stack. I did that for free. But if you want to activate ones that are higher in the stack, you have to pay worship tokens. And these worship tokens allow you to put out more tokens. And if they're the top two tier deities, you can also advance it. So then later you get to put out more tokens. But worship tokens are gathered from either collecting them on the board, which are pre-populated, or by defeating three monsters and turning them in for a worship token. So you're battling here. were thinking, "How am I going to get these worship tokens so I can do these better actions?"

36:36 Yeah. And the very first card that's always there, you're talking about the top four always rotated. The very first one always gave you a worship token, a worship cube if you really needed it. What I loved about you talked about uh the higher ranks, the highest ranked cards, the fourth and fifth cards require either two worship tokens or three. But you what you're basically doing is you're upgrading those actions. So every time you take that action, regardless of where it is in the stack, it's going to allow you to deploy one of your additional faction discs. If you take the action in the four slot, it allows you to put one extra of your disc. If you take the top one, it allows you to put two. But just think when that thing starts rotating down, that action shifts down. Eventually, it may be free, which just gives you those bonus tokens that you took advantage of by uh advancing earlier. Now, one thing after I've taken my turn and Marty's taken his turn, the monsters get a turn. So, we flip flip over card that has the monster and based on its color, that monster will now expand as well. Now, when the monster expands, it follows a certain path. Depending on the color will determine which one. It'll also tell you how many tokens it comes out. Now, this is and this I agreed with Marty when we were playing this fighting. Oh my god.

37:49 So complicated. I'm no once again. Brilliant. How many tokens are coming into that land? Then how many exist of the other person? Subtract them off. Can rinse and repeat. I mean, so if I have one token there and two monsters move in there, I'll be defeat one of his, he defeats one of mine and then he stays because he has more than me. Pretty straightforward. Yeah. So that's what I love about it, too. No dice rolling, no complicated combat. It's just literally tit for tat. remove disc one by one till there's only one left or no bodies in there at all. And so the whole goal of the game is like trying to move and manipulate into certain zones to try cuz some regions score more than others. Sometimes if there's like, hey, there's no way I can win this region, but if I can just get one of my discs in there, then I can maybe come in second place.

38:39 You talked about all the actions that you have. You talked about the one about going around in five. One lets you skip two spaces. One lets you when you expand you can kill two monsters if you want for free. One is lets you expand twice. So you're just trying to decide which one is the best for you that time. And Tony, I've played this with you. I've played this with Bert. And we lost to the monsters both times because we kind of took care of our area of the board, but the middle of the board got saturated with monsters and they ended up winning.

39:09 Yeah. And once they start coming out and start growing, it felt like there's it was felt like a pandemic um situation of a breakout to me, you know. But now I will say we did have a bad draw of the monsters where we had backto backto back green and we should have worked better together, but you weren't in position to come down and help me battle the monsters and I wasn't in a position with the I needed the worship cubes. So it's a puzzle. Hey, cuz I got to score points, but I'm spending all this time battling these monsters. I mean, that's the strategy. That's the challenge that you're going to face if when you play this game.

39:44 Yeah. So, like I said, after the fifth and 10th round, you're just going to evaluate each region. Whoever has the most gets the highest points. Whoever has the second gets the second most. And in ties, you're going to end up splitting the points after the fifth and 10th after two scorings. So, whoever the most points wins. Trevor and David really come up with these really clever games. area control, maneuverability. Of course, they did the series Undaunted. So, they know how to take something and make a simple game, but really give a lot of different twist and ideas. And the two things that really stand out about this to me is one, the revolving actions that you'll take, it'll shift to the top. The ability to upgrade those actions if you have enough cubes to upgrade them if they're at the top of the slot when you take it. And the monsters, the monsters is the big thing for me. It's just not monoymano. We got to deal with this third faction that could possibly take the game from us.

40:37 So sometimes, you know, I'll be honest, the airy majority type games like this, some of them just don't hit with me. I really enjoyed this one. It gave me the vibe of Small World, and I like the fact that there's the semi-ooperative in in this game.

40:50 Yeah. So, that is Motora from Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson. This plays in like 30 to 45 minutes. Two players. If you're looking for a good, quick, easy to set up two-player area control game, check this one out. Hey y'all, we always talk about the top new games coming out from Portal Games over shopgames.com. Y'all to go check out their eliquidation sale page. They got some really good games over there that you can get dirt cheap, including Gutenberg, a $170 game for seven bucks. Imperial Settlers: Rise of the Empire, which was an expansion. A really fun roll rolling right game, Imperial Settlers for $5. We mentioned 51st State. How about a $5 expansion for that, the Mollik expansion, Basilica, Dreadful Circus, Printing Press, a great two-player game, Tides of Time, Tides of Madness, another great two-player game.

41:49 Both those $5. You can get all that over at shopportalgames.com. again, go look at their liquidation sale because once those are gone, that's it. Because Tony, if you go look at the other board games they have, it's like a lot of these just sold out, sold out, sold out, not being reprinted. And I'm telling you right now, we've covered most, probably all of these games. Go back and look in our catalog, and I know some of the ones that were highlights for us were Dreadful Circus, Tides of Time, and Imperial Settlers Rolling, right? All those are really good. Now, you know, two-player card games are in that was this was these are games are old and they are still amazing. So, head over to shopportalames.com and click on liquidation sale.

42:40 Hello listeners, Marty and I are going to be doing some miscatonic ASMR for this episode. We are sitting in the library ready to meet with some investigators. Okay, now Marty got to stop cuz I'm about to bust out laughing. We are truly in a library.

43:03 That's right, y'all.

43:05 You started with ASMR.

43:06 Well, we do have to keep quiet because we are on the holy campus of NC State University.

43:12 Did you say holy?

43:13 I did,

43:17 man. Could y'all hear that eye roll that I did?

43:21 It's our anniversary weekend, y'all. And we haven't been to Raleigh in a while, and there's some stuff we want to check out. So, I've always got to come back and visit the campus. And we have some brand new investigator decks from Arkham that we want to check out and tell y'all about. So, Vanessa had the great idea, hey, the first scenario we play was in Miscatonic University. Why don't we go to the library at NC State and play?

43:41 What is wrong with me and these ideas? because we have walked all over this campus and we are very tired, very thirsty.

43:48 So, we are here now set up in the study hall in the basement of the DH DHO library and we're getting ready to play and what we do. We thought we'd introduce it.

43:56 Yeah.

43:57 Play the game and then we'll come back and give our thoughts on We're focusing on the new investigator decks and let's just say who they are. Tommy Mulun,

44:03 Carolyn Fern,

44:05 Marie Lambo.

44:06 Oh, I was going to say her. say her

44:07 because you have to say Marie Lambo,

44:09 Miguel Dela Cruz, and Andre Patel. Each one is one of different arc types.

44:15 So, last time we did a review, we reviewed the play.

44:19 We reviewed the core game set.

44:21 The core game set. And now these are new investigators that have come out for that and we're playing with new new ones than we did last time.

44:27 Yes. And we're playing the second scenario from the core set. And these decks are helped to not only get somebody started into the game, but has additional cards in it for building your deck as you go. So, some of these cards will be able to be combined with the cards that was in the core set.

44:42 Okay.

44:42 So, let's crack a couple of these open. We'll play the game and come back and tell our thoughts.

44:47 We will be back

44:48 several hours later.

44:51 I'm tired. We don't we we can't do any funny ASMR because uh we just got our butts kicked. Well, I mean, things were going things were going well. And

45:04 did they were going until Carolyn pulled out the fire monster. So, now the last scenario found us a flame in Arkham. Like, yes. The university was in flames.

45:15 So, we fled.

45:16 We met up with Dr. Henry Armmitage, the head librarian. So, now this scenario, he told us we had to go find suspects that may know where our friend is.

45:28 Yeah. Exactly. Yes. It was a great scenario.

45:30 Yes.

45:31 The basis of it was to get clues to go and talk to people.

45:34 Yeah. Which I I love. I love the ones where it's not just fighting. It's like doing other things.

45:40 Yeah. But it was a lot. You had to get four clues. Then you would talk to them. Then you had to get a couple more to talk to him again.

45:47 Each one of them had their own personality of like

45:50 Yeah.

45:50 You had to shake them down in different ways. One you had to kind of pay them off. One you had to kind of rough up a little bit.

45:57 Yeah. So, the investigators we use, I chose Carolyn Fern because I have played her in the past and I really like her

46:03 and she is a seeker

46:04 and she's a psychologist and I like playing

46:07 and we read a book and we read a book on that.

46:09 I love this character. Her deck was pretty awesome.

46:13 Oh my gosh, I was jealous of Vanessa. She was playing this deck because the combos in this deck are so well done. It is, hey, if you do this, you'll take some damage, but if you heal damage, you get this bonus. So, it's a very much a riskreward.

46:29 Yes.

46:29 Sort of sort of deck. And I love those kind of decks. Tommy, who is the guardian, is all about fighting. He had some amazing weapons and stuff in here. I didn't get to use them a lot.

46:39 I was going to say in hindsight, we would have

46:41 played somebody different,

46:42 but you never know.

46:43 And then we might try the others. So, uh, Marie Lambo, um, is the mystic. Miguel de L.

46:50 It's Marie Lambo.

46:52 Sorry. Miguel de la Cruz is the survivor. And then we have Andre Patel, who is the rogue. So all you're going to each have their play styles, but what I like about these decks is they come in with pre-built decks. If you're brand new to this game, you take it out of the package. It gives you Oh, what a great sheet that comes with the product.

47:14 Yes, we need to back up with Was that new with the this set of investigator? Oh, so each one has a gosh, what do you call it, Marty? set up,

47:25 a twosided paper that explains not only the character, how to use it, the cards that are in the deck,

47:34 cards that would be good for that investigator to use like their

47:39 I want to read it exactly signature asset. Yes. Tell you what the signature asset card would be. And then on the back it tells you, hey, if you want to upgrade this deck, do this because they also give you 30 additional cards in this deck that cost additional experience that you can use to upgrade the deck. That means, let's say you have a friend that has a core set or or just said, "Hey, you want to come play?" You can buy one of these decks, go into it, play, and then it gives you additional cards for upgrading that over the course of the campaign. I love the way these decks are designed and put together with not only the starting cards, but the additional cards. And that's just an additional cards that you can use in your library for any other of the characters that you might want to use them for. I may not understand all of what you just said, but I do know I really really like to play Carolyn and I really like this scenario. So, how how can we talk about these cards? Like you said that Carolyn had her little

48:42 a little engine going.

48:43 Engine. Thank you. I lost that word. I did. I had an engine going, but there were other cards that I wanted to play that we never got to.

48:50 Mhm.

48:51 Because this scenario really kicked our tails and it was the easy one.

48:55 Well, it's

48:57 So, here's what happened within the scenario. We had an option to resign.

49:03 You could resign anytime you want. Yeah. Is that typical for all of them or is this new something you've never seen before?

49:09 You can always resign as an option. It's always going to be a bad resolution if you do, but you can always resign.

49:15 What it was what I liked about this is like try to talk to as many people as you can. The more people you talk to,

49:21 the better you're going to know who is probably doing all this.

49:26 And what happens is during the resolution, it'll go, okay, how well did you do? How many people did you talk to? If you didn't talk to a lot, then what's going to happen is is that's going to make the next scenario even tougher.

49:37 What I'm hearing is the next scenario is going to be tough for us.

49:41 It it would be. However, I wouldn't mind rewinding this one and open up another couple boxes of the investigators and try the other investigators

49:50 with the very same scenario that we just did

49:52 because now we understand the scenario, how it plays and everything.

49:55 Like he said, Tommy Wald didn't have a chance to fight a lot except for me for for a couple times. Again, his weapons and stuff were really cool like that, but I would like to see what the others do. And then I love that with these decks, I can just at the end of the scenario to say, "Here's how many experience points you get, and those are the points you use for upgrading your cards for the next round."

50:16 So, here's what I like about the Arkham games, like the board game, and then now this one. So, Tommy didn't get to fight. So, we had um suspects that we needed to interview, and they were face down. Mhm.

50:30 random that we got them. There was a big bad monster in it. It just so happened that we didn't find that one until very late in our doom tracker and Carolyn found him.

50:44 Yeah.

50:44 Whereas he could have been the first one that we drew and you had him and then you would have been fighting.

50:50 Yes. And I

50:51 a totally different game.

50:52 Exactly. Then I would have didn't spent my time doing something totally different. I love these random scenarios like this where every time you play the order of the stuff resolves and also the people that you talk to changes. At the beginning of this scenario there's one random person put aside.

51:07 Yes.

51:08 And I won't tell you why that's important though.

51:12 Um but that could change every time too.

51:14 But then getting back to the decks is this a good way for people to get into the game 100%. If you don't have a lot of cards right now and you're investing interested in survivor or the seeker, mystic, etc., pick up one of these and just give it a shot. And these cards could be just combined with the core set that you might have just bought

51:35 because they have cards in there that can be also used to upgrade these decks.

51:39 And so each one of these investigator decks you buy separately.

51:43 Correct.

51:44 And how much are they?

51:45 They're $18.99.

51:46 Yeah.

51:47 That's really good, y'all.

51:49 That's awesome. $19 you're just if you don't even have the core set and the frame

51:53 $19 you're opening up a deck of fun

51:57 even when you get your butt kicked.

51:58 So again if somebody invites you to play it's like I don't have any cards 19 bucks you can in at least just try it out. Yeah I'm a fan. I really like what they've done. The core set five investigators now five brand new investigators gives you a lot of deck building options. The next thing that's going to be coming out are the short scenarios now.

52:16 Oh can't wait. So now what they're going to do is come out with instead of investigator cards, it's like, okay, you have some now to play with. Here's a new campaign to play through.

52:24 I was going to say, I have a dumb question, but there are no dumb questions. So these investigators can be played with both core sets or just the latest core set.

52:34 Fantastic questions. I've seen people ask that. Yes, these are 100% backwards compatible.

52:40 Gotcha.

52:40 Take these. If somebody's playing the old Dunwitch legacy from the very first set that campaign, take one of these in there. It's valid.

52:48 It makes them double awesome.

52:49 Yep, it does. Again, if you're new to the game, this is a way to get into it. If you

52:55 raising my hand like for I keep thinking of these other questions. So, how many people can play

53:00 four? You can play solo up to four.

53:03 Okay.

53:04 And that's why, you know, on some of the cards it'll say one times the number investigators.

53:08 Yes. Yes. So, if there's four investigators

53:11 Oh, yeah. That's a lot. That's a lot of damage.

53:13 Playing with four is hard. I personally like two the best.

53:17 That's always been my favorite uh way to play. And if you're a veteran of the game, these are just brand new cards to play with. Yes. Tommy Moldoon and Carolyn exist in the previous, but these are different versions of those.

53:29 Oh, okay.

53:29 Yeah. So, they're different for So, they're not exactly the same.

53:32 So, do you know which of these have are brand new?

53:36 Andre Patel and Miguel. I can't remember if there's a Marie. I'm confusing her because she's in the board game.

53:43 Oh, yes.

53:43 So, I can't remember she's in in the card game or not. Yeah.

53:46 But I know for sure Miguel and because Andre was just introduced in film fatal which we talked about in an earlier episode.

53:52 Okay.

53:53 Yep.

53:53 Very nice. I enjoyed it. And we are still here. We're we're wrapping. This is like fresh. We just finished playing.

54:00 Yeah.

54:01 Right here at NC State Library. Th This was a lot of fun playing here.

54:06 It was. And I'll just end with this. Go Pack.

54:09 Go dogs. Mississippi State. Mississippi State Bulldogs.

54:13 Woof. Is that what they do? Woof.

54:16 What do they do? They do anything?

54:18 Win.

54:26 5minute initiative begins in 3 2 1. Back at Gen Con, we got to sit down with CGE and they previewed a game that was coming out called Wispwood. Tony, this is another draft and place style game. It's the rage. It's the rage. We got some tiles. We got some cats. We got tiles and cats. We got weird shapes that we got to deal with. And we're trying to build grids over three rounds. Yeah. Score some points cuz we got these score tile cards. Yeah, there you go. You know what you you know what you're going to do to to Mary's point. So in Wispwood on your turn, you're going to see a board populated with these wisp. There are five different colors and they have I'm going to use the word factions. Okay.

55:14 There's there's a pumpkin. There's a witch's hat. Um there's a I think a a heart. There's this thing that I would consider when I play Guild Wars 2, these spectral orbs coming at you. Yeah.

55:25 And what you're going to do is you're going to remove that wisp from the circular board. And when you lift that up on either side of that there is Marty, what's the word I always screw up? Orthogonal? No. Or polymorphic? No. What's the word? The shapes. The tetra shapes.

55:41 Uh, it's just it's not Well, it's not really Tetris because some of them aren't four, but it's poly poly.

55:48 Everybody's yelling at us.

55:49 Yeah. Anyway, so what you're going to do is uh there's a shape to to the left and right and you're going to take the wisp and then grab face down wisps which have forest on the back and you have to recreate that shape. Maybe it's four in a row. Maybe it's an L, maybe it's a little T and you got to put that on your board and at least one of the tokens that you place or one of the tiles that you place must be adjacent to an existing token. Why do you want to place them there? And what's going on is because at the very beginning of the game, each wisp has a scoring objective. They score differently every single game. You have a deck of cards for each one. You deal them out. Some of them may be, hey, if you happen to get a pumpkin and each individual row or column, there's a pumpkin and there's not another one, you're going to score some points. one is for the the blue one that we had for every adjacent different colored wisp in a in a block you get two points per etc. Now what happens if like man I I really want that piece there but that shape does me no good. You get to start out with the game with a little cat, a little tile cat that sits on a forest tile that actually starts out your tableau. You can flip that cat over to take a wisp off the board and make any shape that you want. Or another thing you can do with it is flip the cat over and then you can wipe the board and refill it with tiles. So the obvious question, Tony, is how do you get the cat flipped back over? Another action you could take is just called a tree action. You can take one, two, or three

57:20 trees to help fill out your grid. And if you do, you get to flip the cat over. You mentioned it was three rounds. First round, we're going for a 4x4 grid. Next is a 5x5. Finally, a 6x6. What's important to know about the shapes is of course with any tile laying type of game, you've got to be adjacent to stuff, but then also Marty mentioned those scoring tiles. Each of the scoring tiles, one particularly the witch's hat, have restrictions on how you can put the wisp. Now, five scoring tiles, I'm going I'm going to go ahead and say on a limb, you you're not you need to concentrate on a couple, and that's going to depend on the board. At the end of the round after we get our scores scoring the the cards, the cards don't change.

58:01 You said cards. You mean the tiles don't change or the cards? The scoring cards don't change. The scoring got

58:08 you. You can now move your cat because like I said, the green one says maybe you got to put it put these wisp near the cat. All right. So, I move my cat. I then remove every tree that's in my grid, but I don't move the wisp. So, please be careful when you're removing your trees because you can knock things around. It can that that's probably the fiddliest thing about this game, Marty, that I was very concerned about. But the whisper now stationary. So now you've got to build in the next round around those as well, fitting your pieces in. And at the end of every round, if whoever completes their board first, that ends the round and everybody gets to play the equal number of turns. score, rinse, repeat, go three times like you were saying. Highest score wins. There you go. Whisp. Personally, I was like, "Okay, this is a an interesting take on laying tiles for me.

59:04 I've played a ton of these. These are Donna's favorite games, and I'm going to be interested to see what she thinks of it because of the five scoring tiles. I'm thinking that might be a little much for people from from, you know, that perspective, people that are not gamers, keeping track of it and understand what strategies they may need to follow based on the tiles that are appearing on the board, the wisp that are showing up. Yeah. So, every game, like I said, each scoring objective is totally different for each color wisp. So, you need to spend time at the beginning of the game making sure you understand how each scores. I think they do a good job of going showing examples of how this particular WISP will score a certain way. It's just one of those things you got to keep in mind as you play because it does change every game. You may think, "Oh, that's right. This one scores this way." And you go, "Oh my gosh, idiot. That was our last game.

59:55 This one scores totally different. So, you do have to be cognizant of that as you play." By the way, you can also get bonus points if you happen to fill out your entire grid. If you have to fill out your 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, you get bonus points. Uh, based on top of that, for a tiled drafting game, I think there is a there could be some AP. Tony, we were kind of seeing this of the stuff that's out there. And as you start to build out your board, it's like, if I draft this wisp,

1:00:20 how can I fit this shape that I have to build on my board to make it work the correct way so that I can score as many points as I can? Yeah, I will say, you know, when it comes down to scoring, they give you a very nice score pad, but I do want to say kudos to CGE for giving us an app

1:00:37 to be able to help us score. That's always good. So, it can help check everything for you. Um, I mean, like I said, overall it it was an interesting break from the normal tile placement games that I'm so used to of patchwork, you know, calico, all these games that I' I've got over here. and at least will give me a break from playing Carcasson with Donna every once in a while.

1:00:59 Yeah, the good good reference is is patchwork, right? Because you're drafting a certain shape that you're putting down. You're really kind of doing the same thing here.

1:01:08 It's just that the wisp that you take, you want to make sure it fits within that shape correctly when you put it on your board in order to try score some points.

1:01:17 So, that is Wispwood from CGE.

1:01:21 Fiveminute initiative is complete. All right. If you haven't been over to the Miniature Market website recently, let me tell you, at 10:00 a.m. Central time, every day, there is a new daily deal that drops. Go ahead and set your alarms. I mean, it's not like we can't tell certain devices to remind us or whatever. You might pick up something that you really, really need. I mean, like right now they're doing the Resident Evil 2 the board game. That's the daily deal for when we're recording today. But be sure to check it out. Set that a reminder that at 10:00 a.m. Central the daily deal drops over at Miniature Market. They've also been working on their website a lot. And they've got this new front page going on where they've got the new arrivals.

1:02:12 They've done a lot better classification, organization, categorization, um top 10. What What ones are in the top 10? Oh, something we've talked about. The old version of Flip 7 second edition is out there. My goodness, that you cannot beat that price of $8. Lord of the Rings Duel for Middleear. We talked about that many episodes ago. The Allies Expansion has come out for just $10. Be sure to check it out at miniaturemarket.com.

1:02:51 Fiveminute initiative begins in three, two, one.

1:02:56 Torch light by David Spolinsky from All Play Little Dog Games. It's a trick-T games. Now you know Rolling Dice and Taking Names loves their trick taking games and we love trick-T games that have nuance to them. This is about exploring a dungeon. And this game is brimming, overflowing with nuance. Marty and I were sitting here for about seven minutes out of our five minute initiative trying to figure how to explain this bad boy. And I'm just going to give it to you straight up. It's good. You are playing cards and whoever plays the highest card will take the trick unless they are trumped. Trump is the dragon card. Now, here's the nuances. The nuance is you've got explorers moving through the dungeon and you want those explorers to move through that dungeon because at the end of the round if your explorer is sitting in a dungeon that has a whole bunch of cards underneath it, they get a lot of points.

1:03:57 Plus, you get bonus points if you could predict that your explorer would end up on that dungeon. But how do you win tricks? Well, like I just said, if it's a dragon, you trump it. or if you play the highest card of a of the lead suit, you win the thing. But when you move your explorer, if you didn't win it, could you move your explorer? Normal games don't do that, but this game you do. If you just happen to match the winning cards number, you get to move your explorer. And at the end of the round, let's say you didn't figure out where that explorer would end up. Oh, wait. You had an additional card that you going to hold off. You decide which one do I want to play.

1:04:37 You just lost.

1:04:38 Throw it off right then. I was doing good up until then.

1:04:41 You was doing good until then. I thought you was going to jump to uh the loser of the trick.

1:04:46 Oh, go. Yeah, I've gone completely missing.

1:04:48 The loser of the trick will take the cards that were played and they can pick one card of each color to place it beneath the dungeon that's on the table. So, the dungeon on the table is a line of numbers that match the numbers you're playing. Like in a three-player game, it's zero through six. So, if there's a red three and that's the only red on the table, they're going to take that card and put it underneath the three dungeon. But let's say there's two blue cards, a one and a two. They get to pick which one of those to put. They put the one under the one dungeon or the two under the two dungeon. And then, like you said, you're going to continue the what you were mentioning is at the very beginning of the game, you're dealt a hand of cards. You pick one, put it face down in front of you. Hey, this is where I want to end up at the end of the game. But in the very last round, you could take the final card that's in your hand, look at the one you put down at the beginning of the round, and decide which one of these do I think I can shoot for to try to end up at the end of the round. Because if you do end up on that card, you're just going to get a ton of bonus points, right? So, here here's what I'm going to tell everybody listening right now. If you you hung in there with us, if you like trick- taking games and you like trick- taking games that have that nuance or that little spin to them, give this one a try. And when you're teaching it, just play one hand and reset.

1:06:05 Kind of help go through that because it it took we were sitting there learning this, playing this, and we were like, wait a minute, how's this work? And then we started complaining, well, how will I ever know which dungeon I'm going to end up on?

1:06:16 Y

1:06:17 that's the nuance to me, Marty. That's what kept me enthralled by this game. I'm enthralled. Enthralled. I That's where I was. I was like, how am I going to do that? I got to break this mystery. I love trick taking games. Oh, but by the way, if let's say you get to dungeon six and you progress, you wrap around to zero. All right, so you just keep stepping up by one, but once you get to the end, you'll wrap around back around to the beginning. So, I started going, all right, uh, last game I ended up around five or six. So, that's going to be my guess. But as I'm playing the game, I'm looking where I currently am and trying to hold back a card that I think I can actually get to in the final round and then swap it with the torch card that I played because those points are big. Like you really want to try to get that.

1:07:04 Yeah. So, and then the whole thing of playing a matching the winning card also gets you to move just adds another element of strategy to the game as you play. But you still overlay normal trick taking rules. You've got to match suit and that okay, do I want to short suit myself? Meaning, do I want to shut off cards? Possibly not because maybe I can match or oh man, am I real heavy in certain amount of cards? Do I want to try to run it and then I'm running down the dungeon? Oh, wait, somebody. And this is what frustrated me, which was why I enjoyed it so much. I had all the high cards one time and we're playing and I'm like, man, I am going to run this dungeon. I am going to run flying through this thing and collect all the loot. And yet I'm I'm I'm leading it out. I'm doing okay. And then suddenly the wheels fell off when I got trumped.

1:07:51 And I'm like, crap, I know better than this. But it looked like I could then come back and gain it. But no, those trumps were flying because of just how limited the series is. You're playing 0 to six or 0 to 7 depending on the number of players. It threw off my normal trick taking methodology and how I normally play games. That's what I loved about it.

1:08:08 Yeah. And you mentioned uh shedding. So, we're not trading cards. Shedding means the card you put down is your torch card. That's kind of how you modify things. Let's say I've only got one card of one suit. That might be the card I put down cuz I don't use it till potentially at the very end of the game. So, that's I can force a short suit even though I don't think I'm going to end up on that spot. That just helps me play the game through the round. So, then you're going to play three rounds. You're going to look at whatever dungeon you're on. You're going to get points based on the cards beneath it. Which means Tony, sometimes you want to lose

1:08:43 so that you can place the cards in the dungeon that you think you're going to be in at the end of the round. So sometimes you throw a trick purposely. That's right. And you lead when that happens,

1:08:53 but you now control destiny, which also threw off my normal trick taking. I want to take control of it. I can't. I got to lose. Oh wow. Just it it was good. It was fun. I really enjoyed playing this game. Um I really like the puzzle aspect of it. of any type of card game. So, we're always looking for those trick- taking games that bend those standard, you know, spades, hearts, whatever you want to do with trick taking games. Really, I liked it more than I originally thought when you were explaining rules. Oh, wait. I'm getting this. I'm getting into this.

1:09:23 I think you used a great word, nuance. It's nuance upon nuance that it's just puts a little twist in your regular trick taking game that is just going to really elevate a lot. There's a lot of trick taking games right now, right? So it's like which one's going to get your attention. There was enough difference in this game that I think it's worth trying out.

1:09:42 That is Torch Light from All Play or Little Dog Games.

1:09:46 5minute Initiative is complete

1:09:54 now at McDonald's. Wake up to a $4 breakfast meal deal. Wake up to a sausage McMuffin or a sausage biscuit to hash browns and wake up to a hot coffee. Get your $4 breakfast meal deal. Limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery.

1:10:09 What is it we're doing with Star Wars? We're playing progressive. Is that what you're call is that what we call this?

1:10:13 Escalation league.

1:10:14 Escalation. All right. I pulled my next three packs.

1:10:17 Hold on. What's an escalation league for those who don't know? You got to always assume that people have not listened to the previous episode.

1:10:24 Well, they should.

1:10:24 Well, they haven't.

1:10:25 Okay, fine. Escalation League is where you start off with a basic I'm going to call it starter deck because that's what I've always called it. and you add in three packs each week and you continue to build from that, therefore escalating your deck, making it better. All right, so we've played one round. Well, actually we technically we played three cuz we played each starter deck week one, other starter deck week two, opened three packs, modified it. Now we've opened our next three packs and our game will be as of this recording this upcoming week.

1:10:58 And let me just say, they've sucked. They have absolutely sucked.

1:11:02 Mine too. Mine too. Um like nothing. So y'all the starter decks have no red aspect in it. I'm getting so many reds, but it's not enough to make a deck.

1:11:15 I agree. And I'm sitting there looking like I keep counting the cards sitting there thinking, "All right, I've got all these reds. Well, let me throw a red aspect base in." Right.

1:11:24 Mhm.

1:11:25 But once again, it's not enough.

1:11:28 I'm just like, "Okay." And oh, you can play a card that says, you know, um you know, use your special epic action on your base where you can ignore an aspect. That's one time. And I've gotten the the common card that says ignore the you know, it'll cost you this to ignore the aspect. I've got those cards. I could put those in the deck, but that's situational. I'm just like, man, things are just not and the cost of some of these cards I'm pulling. I'm just like, and our thing, we'll never get there. Never get to this. And and also it's hard to make a deck just a bunch of single cards. You can count on nothing showing up.

1:12:04 Mhm.

1:12:04 Sort of deal. Last week when you weren't there, Bert and Mark were testing out their new decks and Bert pulled the leader where you can ignore the rebel aspect. That opens up a whole another color for him to play with because that now gives him three different color aspects which opens up his card pool. I'm like, if I would have had that, I for sure would have gone that way and just made a Rebel deck because then you have access to all three of the single color aspect cards for free.

1:12:35 Mhm. For free. There it is.

1:12:37 Yeah. So, I It's like, dang it. That's a good one. That's a good That's another thing, too. If you're pulling leaders that just don't work in this sort of league, what do you do?

1:12:46 I'm pulling the same leaders. That's what's killing me.

1:12:49 That's the worst. I got two of the same. I did get,

1:12:52 oh man. Yeah, I've got what what is it? The Vader. Based on the number of cards that you have in your hand, you can discard and get that number of points. I'm like, that's red.

1:13:02 Thank you. And yes, we are whining and complaining about Swoo and we can do that. But so if you haven't played the game, it's still it's a great game. Don't get us wrong. Find some buddies. Get get you some Star Wars Unlimited decks. just see about enjoying it, especially if you're in the Star Wars universe. We're really enjoying it right now, especially the new ones, even though that we're kind we're whining about it. We're enjoying this new series that's out, expansion. Thinking about this, it's giving me an idea for a video that I'm going to start um scripting out. Uh has to do with board game communities, finding people to play games with and stuff like that. You know, in the general board game community, it may be, hey, I like to play Root. It's like, I hate Root, but hey, that's cool that you got games. It seems like over the years that we've been in this now 26 years, some of the best communities are built around what we call lifestyle games,

1:13:59 a game that you get and just play over and over again because of stuff like this, Tony. We talk about it in the middle of the week with each other. Then we get together and we play the same game and we get better at that game. And then other people's playing the same game and you got an immediate connection. It's like, "What do you play?" "Oh, I play Swoo." "Sweet. I play Swoo!" sort of deal. And in the stores, the communities in stores, show me a place that's not like this, a store. I mean, there may be out there where it's built around a TCG, a miniature game,

1:14:30 an RPG, or even very niche board games, historical war games, or war games. or there might be a group out there that only plays root sort of deal. So anyway, talks about the idea of how if you really want to get involved in a tabletop community, look at lifestyle games. And there's going to be a follow-up to that when people say, "Oh, well TCGs are too expensive, I also have a follow-up video to that where there's a way you can play TCGs without breaking the bank." And Tony and I have done it since day one. And I'll show you how you can do it.

1:15:06 There you go. All right. Show notes. Concert. What about a concert? What? Would you go to a concert?

1:15:11 Have you ever been to the AMP in Valentine? Y'all were talking something local here.

1:15:15 The AMP.

1:15:16 Oh, it's right beside you. You know where the AMP is. You work right beside the place, right? Um went and saw a concert there last night. What an amazing outdoor venue.

1:15:25 It It is.

1:15:26 It is re really nice. So,

1:15:28 for who I went and saw, I'm going to throw out three names that probably most of y'all have never heard of. One is Victor Wooten. is called the Wooten brothers. Victor Wooten, if you ask a lot of people who their favorite all-time bass player is, some people will say Victor Wooten. He's one of guys is just that good. Always been on my bucket list to see him. He used to play with Bella Fleck and the Fleckton if you ever heard of that name. So, that was an amazing show. Next was Snarky Puppy. I've probably talked about them before.

1:15:58 I've heard of her. Yeah, I know Snarky Puppy.

1:15:59 I'm wear I'm wearing the t-shirt. Second time I've seen them. Another amazing group. And final was another one I wanted to see a bucket list. His name is Corey Wong, a funk guitarist. An amazing job. Great venue. But here's the funny story about it. I bought tickets for this back in September. It was me, my youngest son, and another musician friend who were going to go. I got the tickets, forgot about them this week. It's like, "All right, let me pull the tickets up. Oh, I got general admission." And they sent some information. And it's like, "Oh, by the way, you know, if you're sitting in the grass, you can rent chairs for like $10 or $30, something like that." I like, "I don't want to rent no chair. Can I bring in my own chair?" "No, you can't bring in your own chair, but you can bring in a blanket if you just want to sit there and watch." I was like, "Oh crap, I'm not going to bring a blanket either."

1:16:47 So, it's nice and warm. I thought, "Well, I'll just we'll sit in the grass or whatever." So, we get to the venue and they say, "Where are you sitting?" I said, "The grass." And they said, "Okay, it's that line over there." So I go up and stand in line and I get there and I show them my ticket and they said, "No, you're in the wrong line." So what do you mean? You said, they said, "You got a seat." "What do you mean I have a seat?" "Yeah, you're over there. You're general admission." General, "Okay, so I'll go over to general admission." They went,

1:17:12 "Oh, yeah. Yeah, just come on right in here. Just find any any chair that's out there and just sit wherever you want." I went, "Really?" Yeah. I said, "I thought I had grass seats." He said, "No, you got general admission." I said, "No, general admission to me is like you're back there with just standing room only. Just be wherever it is." Unbeknownst to me, I actually bought a good ticket and we got there early enough to where I had we had an amazing view. We had the like a front row seat of one of the sections where nobody was walking in front of us and we could see the entire show and it sounded amazing. So, it was a pleasant surprise of a mistake that I made last September.

1:17:55 Well, there you go. You just walk right into that. I like that. Oh, I did I did receive some bad news on something. I was not selected to get any banana ball tickets.

1:18:05 Uh Vanessa and I tried for two different games. We were the same way. Nothing. Yeah. Nada.

1:18:09 Nothing. Oh, man. Well, that's good. Yeah, the AMP is is I'm shoot I went over to the AMP for a um a cultural exhibit and they had some stuff going on and it was the AMP is great. I mean, it used to be a golf course,

1:18:22 so they've turned it into a nice area for the community.

1:18:25 I forgot about that. It was a golf course. Was it a private or public?

1:18:30 It was public, but it was expensive.

1:18:32 But yeah, that whole thing over there.

1:18:34 That's funny because last night I was thinking, how in the world was this area never developed? It was It was a golf course. I'm glad you reminded me of that. Hey, if you want to go see the Human League this summer, uh we can all go together and watch a an 80s band.

1:18:47 No.

1:18:48 Okay. Wow. I'm sorry. Donna said, um a friend of ours, he he works st shows down in Wilmington

1:18:58 and he and he's going to go work. I think it's going to be Foreigner. I think they're coming to Wilmington.

1:19:03 Okay.

1:19:04 And I'm like, is anybody still alive? I'm confused. Lou Graham's not singing with them. I think only the guitarist Mick something. I can't remember his name.

1:19:15 I'm like, they're not the originals. It's like going to go see Jouri and not see the originals. And for me, I know that's that's elitist of me, but that's who I listen to, right?

1:19:25 It's so funny you say that because my sister said, "Oh my gosh, Jony's coming to Charlotte. You want to go?" I went, "Nope." She said, "Why not?" I said, "Because Steve Perry's not there. They got somebody sounds like Steve Perry." Okay, so it's a cover band. I mean, I know I know the guitar.

1:19:39 Oh, that's a good point.

1:19:40 I said, "Okay, I know Neil Shawn's there, amazing guitarist, and Jonathan Kane. I'm pulling these names out. The keyboards, I think they're both still there, but the original drummer's not there, who was an amazing drummer. The lead singer's not there." I said, "It's it's not." What about CN Sticks? Went, nope, Dennis D. Young's not there.

1:19:59 Not interested. Now, the only time I'm breaking this rule is I am going to see Rush later this year. Neil Per passed away, so they have a new drummer, but this is their last tour ever. My youngest son Brett really wants to see Rush, so we're gonna go see Rush.

1:20:16 All right. Well, we said this is going to be a short episode, but two more things I want to cover. First off, I'm going I'm going to give you a number and I want you to tell me what I'm talking about. All right. You ready?

1:20:26 All right. Yep.

1:20:27 19,9975. What am I referencing?

1:20:33 Hold on. 19 million

1:20:35 almost $20 million. What am I referencing?

1:20:39 Oh, that would be probably it's going to be past that now. The TCG cyberpunk card game. I

1:20:46 I'm watching it right now. I'm watching the Kickstarter right now. By the time this is released, yeah, it'll be above 20 million because it closes in 5 days. So, if you didn't back it when you hear this episode, I'm sure there'll be some late backers. Guess what? This is ridic. This is unreal. Oh my god. It just jumped $500.

1:21:07 So, I will say that a Kickstarter version of a TCG is a great way to get into it because you get it day one and you get it at the right price without scalping. Anyway, anyway, there's a lot of things that make a TCG success.

1:21:32 Insane.

1:21:33 Unreal. I'm I'm going to go on Steam and buy Cyberpunk 2077 just for the fun of it.

1:21:39 I'm getting it for I'm getting it for the Brett said it's great for the Switch because you can play handheld then. Yep.

1:21:44 Okay. Yeah, but then I need my readers.

1:21:46 But then you need a Switch too cuz it only works on Switch too.

1:21:50 I don't have that. So that makes it pretty straightforward for me. Okay. Last thing I want before I get out of here. So, one of the podcasts that I listening, it's on YouTube and um it's dropping names and it has the uh Jonathan uh Freckus and um Brent Spiner from Star Wars Next Generation number one and of course Data. They had on there Felicia Day. Felicia Day is good friends with Brent Spiner. She's been in things with him. Da da da. And he they introduced her and everything. And it's amazing where she's come from. But what blew me away, Marty, the reason why I bring this up is The Guild, which we all know from YouTube when she brought out on The Guild when when YouTube was very, very, very young. She was one of the first scripted shows.

1:22:33 Mhm.

1:22:34 The original Guild season one or whatever, she did for $300.

1:22:40 No way.

1:22:43 Well, the very first portions of it, she had $300. Okay. Until she was able to get sponsorship. and she said on there that she's trying to do a guild reunion

1:22:53 and maybe she'll pull it off, but she talked about how all that started and it was really interesting to hear her talk about um why she did it and it was because she was always being told no in Hollywood because of her face and she was like they were constantly saying no to her and getting any show your your face is not the right shape d she said screw it I'll just do it myself.

1:23:21 Okay.

1:23:22 And then she talked about a little bit about Geek and Sunundry, but just what she was able to go on to do, but what how, you know, how she's still getting all the guild stuff, the residuals and all that from what she was able to accomplish. And I was like, "Oh, this is kind of cool to listen to her talk about it." So, if you haven't gone out and seen that, it's called Dropping Names. And a lot of stuff I don't pick up on because they're doing exactly that. They're dropping names. I don't recognize the names are dropping, but you know, it's always fun to go like they kept talking about being in a movie with Rip Torn. I'm like, who in the freak is Rip Torn? I know that name, you know, and I'm like, "Oh, Men in Black, the guy who's overhip torn."

1:24:03 I was getting ready to say Men in Black. Yeah. So, and if you've never seen The Guild, I I'm sure it looks dated now, but I I was hooked. I was like I was waiting for the weekly drops. I it was so new on YouTube to have a scripted show like that. I love the topics. The characters are well done. So, I would welcome a reunion if it has the original writers, original cast and everything. It that would be really really good.

1:24:31 And she was the writer. I think she I can't I can't she probably was. I mean or she probably

1:24:37 the very first ones. Yeah.

1:24:39 Yeah. The very first ones. Yeah. I mean I was just like get out of town. I'm think I'm remembering it correct from listening to the podcast. You know how things come and go. But anyway,

1:24:46 one reason I went to that first Gen Con I did was so I could meet her and the cast and get their autograph.

1:24:52 Oh, cool.

1:24:53 And I I have a picture with Felicia Day

1:24:55 from Gen Con. She's now

1:24:58 Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, I met her 16 years ago. Holy cow.

1:25:04 Wow. That's pretty long ago. Oh, here we are. We're at 20 20 million. Dang. Oh, wait. We just we just dropped below is now 19,99941.

1:25:15 And here's the thing is, you know, last day everybody's jumping in because I haven't put our order in yet. So, I still got to put our order in.

1:25:21 All right, with that, keep rolling dice and taking names. Hey y'all, like I said, go join our Discord channel. We're going to be doing some contest this time. We're going to be giving away a copy of Flip 7. Come back next episode cuz we give give away another. And you can also find all of our socials over at roll diceenames.com.

1:25:51 So Marty, why is Bigfoot sometimes confused for Sasquatched?

1:25:56 I have no clue, but Yeti never complains.