Episode 384: Greylune, Gunsen: The Battle for Toshi Ranbo, Mythologies

0:04 Pickax.

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0:39 Yeah, cool.

0:41 A Lego set is a gift that always clicks and clicks.

0:45 The end of the final lap and we've got a champion

0:48 and clicks. For kids who love everything on wheels, choose a Lego set. A gift that always clicks.

1:07 Hey y'all, it's time for Rolling Dice and Taking Names. In this episode, the guys review Grey Lon, Mythologies, and Gunson: The Battle for Toshi Rambo. And is Tony getting back into collecting comic books? I sure hope your reviews are good.

1:26 Hello and welcome to episode number 384. Theme from the Dukes of Hazards, Good Old Boys by Whailing Jennings. I'm Tony. Or should I start this one with welcome to episode number one of Confused and Sleeved or Sleeved and Confused? What were we going to call this thing, Marty?

1:46 We're not calling anything. This is rolling dice and taking names. I don't even know why you even brought that up.

1:52 Because it was entertaining. We should rebrand. You mentioned it. You mentioned rebranding at one point.

1:58 I had only said that is because we play a lot of card games.

2:02 I know.

2:03 And there are a lot of content creators out there that cover generic board game content. We make the joke about white noise.

2:15 It's literally white noise. When we started in 2012, it was a little different because

2:20 there wasn't that many. And now it's like everybody in their brother has a board game content something. And it just seems over the content creation landscape that making content focused towards a more niche product tends to catch on quicker.

2:41 Okay. Well, I mean along the lines of everybody in his brother has a board everybody in his brother, mother, sister, significant other has a podcast.

2:50 Yeah. I thought it was a novel idea when you pitched it that many moons ago and I'm just like, okay. But now everybody comes out with one, runs it for maybe a couple of years, and then they shut it down.

3:01 Oh, for sure. Sure. Most podcasts never succeed. In fact, I looked up a stat at one point in time, and the number of podcasts that last any amount of time like ours has is in the single percentage digits of total podcast ever made.

3:17 Okay. I and I understand that there's a lot behind I mean there are some that are incredible on production, amazing production, but they're also cross posting to YouTube and all the other areas where you know you've got the video going with it and everything.

3:30 So do we.

3:31 Yeah. But I'm saying they've got a studio where it's more of a more of a production you know.

3:37 And they've probably also got a entire staff behind it too that's that's putting those up. But I mean, you can you can have a decent, very popular show without, you know, having a whole production unit behind it.

3:50 Mhm.

3:50 They're out there.

3:51 They are.

3:52 I don't know. It was just one of those things that we were just babbling about. I was I was just talking if I was to ever do another piece of content, it would be something that I would just love to focus on all the time. And since 2001 or whatever, I've just been infatuated with card games, LCGs, CCGs, simple card games. They don't take up a lot of space. Uh it's a it's a game like an LCG CCG that you can play for years. It's the the idea of just being able to meet with somebody and sit down and go, "Hey, we're going to play this game and we already know how to play it. Let's play like Star Wars Unlimited, right? Hey, let's get the game, play Star Wars Unlimited." There's no, "Okay, read the rules first." There's no sitting down. It's like, "Oh, you didn't read the rules. Let me go over the rules and everything." I was talking to Chaz Mer about this the other night, actually. I said, "What what drives local game stores?" And that is things like TCGs and miniature games.

4:47 Reason why is because there's a community built around this one game. I can go to to the table, sit down across from a stranger, and we play this game. There's no what game do you want to play? Can I teach you the rules sort of deal? It's just like we're playing this play and enjoy.

5:02 Exactly. No, I Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent points. All of them. Very good. I agree. Now, I will say in the neighborhood, we um they're trying to start up a Uker group here in the neighborhood. Okay. Uker Midwestern game similar a lot easier than some people argue with me. Spades, you know, spades is a lot more strategic in my mind than Uker.

5:24 And they were they put it out there and they said, "If anybody would like to learn to play before the group gets together, um let us know and we'll teach you." So, some people showed up. And I only bring this up because to your to what you were saying is that they showed up and said, "What's a suit?"

5:39 Oh, wow. So, have you never seen a 52 card deck of cards,

5:44 right? And so, you then go down and explore. I I know what you're saying, but then you say, "Okay, well, now we've gone past suit. Do you understand what's a trick when we play a game?" Okay. And then the mind-blowing aspect of trump when you when you say, you know, if people know, hey, you're sitting down to play spades and something, it's kind of like, but there's not this huge thing like a board game where we would have to go over rules upon rules where, hey, I can teach you cards, I can teach you cards, and you can get a quick feel for it versus a board game that's going to take me 15, 20 minutes to try to teach you at sometimes.

6:19 Right. Right. that like my uh son is actually getting together with a a stranger at a Pineville game store. He's been wanting to play um Warhammer Fantasy

6:31 and he's looking for somebody to play with. And in the Discord channel for the store, they have a section for miniatures games. Just posted it out there. Somebody says, "I'm interested." So, they're going to hook up together. Never met before, but they both going to sit down and play a game that they both know and can play.

6:46 Yeah. you know, as opposed to like, hey, I'm into board games. Anybody want to play a game? Well, I don't know what games you got. Well, I got these games. Well, I don't like those games. Well, how about this game? I don't know how to play that game. Well, can you teach me that? You know, it's just a whole process with just generic tabletop games. We did that in the neighborhood where we set up a a Discord of, hey, what would that Well, I want to go play. Well, I don't like that game. Oh, okay. Well, why do you not like that game? I just don't like dice. Oh my goodness. Okay. I don't know if I made this analogy on the show before, but to me it's like um sports. Hey, I'm a sports fan. I'm a sports fan. What do you like? I like soccer. Oh, well, I like baseball. Yeah. Well, I don't like that. And I like, you know, you got to go down. It's like, oh, what do you like? I like baseball. I like baseball. What's your favorite team? The Braves. What's yours? Reds. Ah, you suck.

7:35 But then it was like, I like the Reds. Do you like the Reds? There's just something in common. So the further you get down in the niche of likes, it just creates a community of people. And so for content creation, if there's somebody out there, man, I really love card games. I would love to find somebody that talks about CCGs or LCGs or something, it just kind of narrows it down really quick, right? As opposed to, I want to listen to a podcast about board games.

8:03 Which one?

8:04 Yeah, exactly. Which one of the thousand are you going to pick from at that point

8:08 as we move forward on that? I mean, you know, Star Wars Unlimited, we've been playing a lot of that. Some of us have been playing better than others. One of the things that happened. Yeah, he's laughing. God, it was Oh, I suck at this game. But we'll talk about our recent plays. But, but um I asked a guy at work. I said, "Hey, I understand you play for the full version of Chat GPT. Uh what I don't know what that means. I have no clue, but I'm curious if you would take this opportunity. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to write a query for you and I want you to create for me a Star Wars Unlimited deck. And he was very excited about this because he didn't know what it would do, right? He had no clue about he knew about Magic.

8:53 And so he so to you to to what you were saying there is he knew about Magic. He knew about card games. And here I am talking about Star Wars Unlimited, which is a card game like like that. Exactly. And he's like, "Oh, okay. Let me run that." And so he runs it and it prints out this huge thing. It says, "Okay, here's how you're supposed to play this deck. Here's how you're supposed to uh build it. It's built around these synergies. When you go and and play Oh, and I've limited due to rares and legendaries. I specifically said, "I'm not going to include these for you because we're just going to keep it as a a deck that is accessible for you." I was like, "Okay, get out of there." And I told you about this and you were like, "Oh, okay. That's pretty interesting." I did the same thing. I used uh at work, we have the full-blown version, like the corporate version of Copilot, which is Microsoft's version. It's built in all their stuff.

9:47 But anyway, so I thought, "Okay, this is cool. I want to try this. Here's what I want you to do. I want to really understand this latest set that we're playing with. It's called Ashes of the Empire. So I So I said, I want to build a deck around Cad Bane. I like this guy and I want you to pair it with this color.

10:04 Now, here's the requirements. It only I only want stuff from this set and I want to make sure I have some good sentinels and some saboturs in case any of those situations come up.

10:16 And I said, "Give me a list." Boom. [clears throat] I said, "Okay, thank you so much." However, those legendaries right there, for those who don't know, those are the most rare of types of cards. I don't have any of those. Can you give me substitutions? Yes, I can. Instead of this, remove these cards. Put these cards in there. Okay, I think I have all those. All right. And I say, okay, I think I've got all I need now. Would you like suggestions on how I think you should play this deck? Yes, please. In the hand that you draw, you're really looking for these cards. If you don't mulligan and try to get them into your hand,

10:47 oh man. And then it says, "Try to ramp up by turn four, turn five. Do you want to have this in play and then go from there?" Now, I know a lot of people go, "Well, that's cheating." Maybe so, but here's the thing, guys. I don't have a lot of time to sit there and invest in this stuff. And having like a teacher go, "Marty, here's a cool way to build a deck, and here's how you play it." Teaches me how to play.

11:06 It's not playing it for me. It's just giving me ideas and suggestions so that maybe when I do create my own deck, all right, well, then I have something to go with. And to build on that, clearly my deck did not teach me anything because I lost four times. And so, you know, it was one of those things where, yeah, it can tell you all that you want. Oh, you need to do this, this, and this, and you need to put these certain cards in there, but it still does not mitigate the the draw. It does not mitigate doing something stupid like playing this when you really shouldn't have. That's all on you. Yeah,

11:39 it gave me the opportunity to say, okay, these are the cards I want to synergize around this to try to make it better. Now, we could say, okay, um, hey, if everybody is playing this combination of cards, what would counter that? And it's just another learning process. Oh, all right. Not that I'm going to build a deck around that because that doesn't do because if you don't go against that, then you're in trouble. But you are able to at least understand what to expect and to learn with, as you say, I'm not going to spend every weekend, every night digging through the cards looking at them. But so it is nice and I I bring this up because it's just another aspect of AI that wow, this this kind of helps, you know, helps me enjoy the hobby. It helps me understand and it maybe maybe help me be a slightly better player.

12:31 However, getting steamrolled with a TIE Fighter deck was ridiculous. You got steamrololled, but then you won.

12:37 All great points. I think that if some if somebody were to hand me the deck that the person who played in the championship at the Galactics won with this year,

12:48 Marty played with this deck. I still would probably lose against experienced players.

12:53 Even though the deck is put together, I need to understand the game well enough how to play the game and how to use the cards. Likewise, a lot of these players when they sit down and Tony, I think you and I were like this with Lord of the Rings when we sat down plays against each other. We know the game so well, you could predict if Marty's playing these things, I need to look out for these cards that might be in his deck.

13:17 Mhm.

13:18 And that's the level these guys get to, you know, when you reach that high level. Hey, I know that if he's playing this hero and this color, I need to be prepared to possibly see this card that I've seen a lot of play of.

13:30 Mhm. [clears throat]

13:31 And then you have the sideboard, right? So, when you go up against that, uh-oh, let me swap in cards to handle the potential situation that may occur. So, AI, yes, will help you create a list and coalate to a really cool little deck. But if you don't know how to play it, it does you no good. But it was really good for me cuz it's like, I just want to focus on these cards. to learn how to play these particular cards from this set.

13:53 No. Yeah. So, welcome to the initial podcast of Sleeved and Confused. We thought you

13:59 So, Mark came up that Sleeved and Confused. I went that is really really good. I I like the name of that. So,

14:06 anyway, so three years ago, we're going to have to get into some yard work. Uh we haven't really done a lot of yard work discussion here. You know, that's one of the our little sticks on rolling dice and taking names. But three years ago, my back flow on my ear.

14:20 Seated and confused.

14:22 Seated and confused. Okay. Seated and confused. Yep, I can see that. I like that. Okay, we can do a yard one. So, I winterized it, but I left one of the valves in the incorrect location and therefore over winter, the whole purpose of winterizing is to keep a backflow from freezing because they are not cheap if they get cracked. Ah, it got cracked. Idiot me. So, I had to pay to get it fixed. Fast forward for three years. Three years, I get a notice from the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Your backflow has failed inspection. I'm like, wait a minute, three years? How did it fail after 3 years of being inspected?

15:10 So, I I get the letter. It tells me, "Your backflow is not high enough off the ground." I'm like, "Oh, that requires plumbing." Joy. So, I I talked to the guy the He says, "Yeah." Um, he says, "I don't know what to tell you. I don't know why after 3 years, you know, it failed. Come to find out, I guess the guy who did my inspections previously, didn't really do an inspection. He kind of just waved it off. Now, I got a guy who came out here because the city of Charlotte puts out a list of backflow inspectors that go through a two-day class on how to inspect backflows." Mhm.

15:43 And I guess I got a new guy for that company and he was all gung-ho about keeping his license or something. I don't know. He failed me.

15:51 So anyway, so the guy shows up to repair it. I can I know I can cut the pipes and I can shark bite it and put in extensions. But I'm looking at it and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that would be like five couplings on one pipe." And I'm like, "That's just not good." So I talked to a guy. He comes out. He had a special so he didn't have to weld a special $4,000 equipment where he stuck it on the pipe and he crimped down on the pipes immediately and was able to make us water. I was like this is unreal. He said yeah that's $4,000 but he says it's beats and a satalone torch and me catching your house on fire. I said I think so. But it was really cool but still backflow BS man. three years because the guy who put in the original backflow, he's like, I warned they that was for a year's worth of work, man. I'm sorry. [clears throat]

16:42 Stupid.

16:42 I I've when it comes to the irrigation system, I've had to I've had to Well, I've been in this house for over 20 years. I've had to replace two valves and one one head. So, I've been kind of fortunate. It's not been too bad.

16:57 Yeah. But I've never had I've never had any backflow issues.

17:01 So,

17:02 yeah. And I asked the guy, I said, "Well, what if I take it out once I just turn off my irrigation system?" He goes, "No, you have to call in a plumber. You have to get it officially tapped off by the city." Ya la. I'm like, "Oh, why? Why? I didn't want this irrigation system. The builder put it in."

17:17 It's an advantage I have of being on a whale, so I ain't got to deal with any of that crap.

17:20 Yeah. Yeah. You living free out there in the country.

17:24 All right, y'all. Uh, we got a a lot of games uh to Shut up. We got a lot of games to cover and we can't we can't cover them all.

17:36 We got two full games and one fiveminute initiative, but we got others we like to talk to.

17:43 In a segment we call quick hits.

17:49 Oh, I'm so glad you discovered that. [gasps] I put that I built that baby.

17:57 I didn't find that. I had to I had to work five minutes to put that together.

18:02 At least you didn't spend $5. Is that still a thing, Fiverr?

18:05 It is. It sure is. But people don't call us out anyway anymore anymore. Wow. Call us out anymore about it. But there, hey, if you catch us saying something wrong in a game, a rule or something like that, let us know and we give you a $5 credit to our gift card to Miniature Market. That's where that come from. All right, the first game is a tag team author's like Arthur's Legacy. Tag Team came out last year from Scorpion Mosque and Hashet Board Games. This is an auto battler type game. Played it last year, talked about it. There's a new version that's based on basically King Author. I love the the simplicity of this game. Each of you have two characters. You're going to have uh deck of cards. You're going to start out three starting cards.

18:52 You put those cards in a certain order. You face off against your opponent. You flip over the top card and you do attacks. whichever card of the character is is flipped over, that's the one that's doing the attack or doing some sort of action against the other character that your opponent uh flipped over. Once you've gone through your cards, you draw three new cards, pick one to insert somewhere inside your deck, then you put your cards face down. What that means is the order of your cards never changes. The only thing that changes is you're building your deck over time. Tony, I think this is one of those simple 15, 20 minute games that it it's just a quick twoplayer time filler that I I enjoy.

19:35 Interesting characters that they brought to the tag team universe. I like the Atheran uh ones that they did. I like some of the powers that were associated with those Excalibur in the game. It came from the lady in the lake. I I'm like you. I like the part where you're inserting the cards like who, you know, so this is how Marty's deck showed up the last time. How do I offset what he just did? That's what I enjoy about this game.

20:00 Yeah. So, you know, you kind of know what you're going to be facing. However, the order of the cards stay the same, but that one card inserted every time. You're going to maybe think, "Oh, that's right. Tony's third card had a really strong attack, so I want to put a defensive card in my third slot." Now, maybe the first time through, hey, sweet. Tony's attack card came up and I blocked it all. Well, then Tony, you may go, "Oh, you think you're smart." So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a card in the first or second position to now throw that attack card one further down in the stack and possibly try to avoid my defense.

20:37 Yeah, exactly. It's It's a bluffing game to me. It's a bluffing game. I

20:41 I don't call it a bluffing game at all.

20:44 How are you How are you bluffing? Oh, you think I'm putting it there, but I didn't. I put it here.

20:50 That That's a bluffing game to me. Okay, leave me alone. These games are in my head. Okay, that's the way I think of it. Hey.

20:56 Okay,

20:57 you don't know what I'm doing. You don't know what I'm holding. You don't You think you know what I'm holding, but you don't know what I'm holding. But tag team was popular last year. Uh I know this was kind of popular at Gen Con and they just announced that they've got what's that called? Um I can't remember in 2027. It's called SNK Legends or something like that. So, they're getting video game characters from King of Fighters and Fatal Fury. Trying to remember the two. There's some there's some uh fighting games that came out in 90s, and it's going to be characters based on that. And I immediately thought, oo, I don't know those two well, but you could do Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. That'd be cool. All right. Next up is Warp 99 from Bezier Games. This was a Marty, you were telling me this was a very popular game at Gen Con, I believe. Um this is a ve it was a very fast playing game where all the players are out there. They are trying they have a tableau of cards in front of them which they are trying to build the ascending order but they cannot there's I believe six colors in the deck and as you're playing your cards you're sitting there going trying to get rid of your stacks but you've got a tableau in front of you in ascending order and you've got one rule on that.

22:04 Those colors cannot repeat. Then also in the middle as you're trying to discard your cards, there are various rules that you have to apply your cards to and meet in order to get rid of them. And then there are some nuances and changes that can occur with the rules. If you can't play, you can flip a rule over. But the trick of this is everybody around the table is facing the same type of rules.

22:26 It's a strategic way of okay, what cards do I want to play to my tableau? because when my tableau is either maxed out, I can then score it in the next round by squaring the number of cards. And that's big points right there cuz squaring is pretty big.

22:43 Well, it is unless it was only two cards

22:46 or zero. Um, but yes, so that there there's your strategy is well, if I play this here, that's going to help me square, but then I can't go to the rules and I can't get rid of my um stack of cards. And yeah,

23:01 you want to get rid of the cards, like you said, because uh obviously as your hand goes down, you got less options to play with. So, you want to get rid of them as fast as you can. And one of those ways is through that discard pile in the middle of the table with th with those rules because you always want to have a full hand of cards to try to build the longest set in front of you that you that you can to score big. Tony, I thought this this game was odd uh to me because I felt like it was two games in one. It was the game of I'm trying to build this set collection, but then there's this rules thing in the middle which just seemed the discard mechanism just seemed odd to me.

23:42 For me, um I had a lot of other issues with the game and probably the biggest one

23:48 I know what you're going to say. Say it because this is an issue that was even mentioned on BG. Go ahead.

23:53 Right. That issue is if you're going to put core concepts in a rulebook about how to play the game, make sure the core concepts line up with the actual rules.

24:02 Because those of us who are quickly reading through the rules, some things may stick. And if you say, "Hey, when you play to your tableau, square the cards, and forget to say if you decide to discard later, which is in the in the main rules, you're going to throw some people off and upset some people at your table." So, and they over at BGG they said our bad that shouldn't be that way.

24:26 Bezier Games came in and said this cuz multiple people said this is extremely confusing because it makes it sound like you score every time you play a card and that's not the case. You only score when you discard all the cards that were in play.

24:40 All right. From your tableau. Um, the other thing is I was having a lot of trouble with the colors

24:46 and and but you can look at the design around the numbers. I know that's petty of me, but that's just, you know, but it was I mean, I'm over there showing you is this orange or is this pink or well, just look at the the design of it. Okay, I could do that, but maybe these designs are really close, too. I Anyway, we just had I just had some issues. Maybe give it another try. But I mean, this builds on the game that was a classic Red Seven about rules, you know, changing the rules and the love that Red Seven. I like how they tried to bring that in. Um, you know, somebody at our table said, you know, you only got this seems interesting that there's only these six rules. Well, they have an expansion that adds more rules if you want to use them.

25:29 Yeah. Also, too, was um keeping scores kind could be kind of a pain if you didn't have some score dials. So, if you get this game, you can actually buy uh dials, score dials for everybody to keep track of. Otherwise, one person's going to be sitting there with a pad of paper or on their phone, you know, basically because not everybody scores every time. So, somebody could say on their turn, oh, I'm going to score this time, okay, what'd you get? Let me add it to your existing total and add all this up. So, there's not like a scoring phase during the game. It's just independently people can score whenever they want. So, having your own scoring tracker is worth it. So, if this game sounds interesting to you, I recommend getting the little plastic score trackers or using some other mechanism, your own phone or something like that to track scores to keep keep up with and everything. So, that's uh Warp 99. Uh, another game we got to the table, a there's a trilogy of card games that Inside UP Games released at Gen Con. We've already talked about one. From that trilogy, we just played Tug of War. Uh, Roar War Ro War. Roar is spelled R O A R, not Tug of War. So, this is a two-player game. Tony, you and I played this and this is this is a lane battler. We've played many of these, but the way this game flows, I really liked it. It's going through phases in order to draft units to put on the board that will eventually fight against each other. And typically in these games, you like have your units, you put them down, you fight, you place more units, you

27:00 fight. here. There's a draft phase called the enlist. Uh there's going to be two rows of three cards, and each of you going to be able to draft a row of those cards, but each of you are going to start out with a hand of cards based on your character that that are ranked from zero to nine. You use that to secretly bid on if you want to go first or second. Thing is though, you use that card, it's out of the game the rest of the game. So, you use those in order to collect these units. And after multiple rounds, you're going to have a hand of units. And then we're going to move to the next phase, which is going to be deploy. And you've got this board sitting out in front of you with five zones. And on your turn, you're going to be able to play a card to one of the zones. The zone can only hold two units from your side. Your opponent can only hold two units in their side. as you play, you could see what the other person is doing because when you go to fight, it's just going to be looking at the strengths of the cards and comparing. Whoever's the highest strengths wins. But Tony, some of these units have special effects. Like one of them, the druid allows you to, hey, when I play this card, I can swap cards, move them around, do some switching and swapping cuz, oh, you thought you were going to win this area? H well, guess what? You're not. You know, I'm going to win this area sort of deal. But also, if you place two uh units in one zone and you're the first to do so, you get to add extra card to your hand, which now gives you more options because you're not going to have your full hand of cards when you're deploying. You're just going to have a limited number in your

28:30 hand. And the more options you have, the more ways you can get them deployed. Then Tony, once all deployed, you're going to go one zone at a time and start resolving. you're going to add up uh strengths, but there are those units that can give special bonuses like uh if you have two of the same type of unit in an area, their ability activates. Maybe they give a commander plus two, etc. But Tony, it's not just those units. Those original cards we talked about that rank zero to nine. Whatever you have left over, you can now play those to the zone. Whoever has the highest gets a bonus plus two strength to their side. and you're trying to collect flags. As you win battles, you collect flags. The higher you win by, the more flags you collect. And then the person with the most flags wins. So, what I like about this is the enlist phase. Done.

29:19 Complete. Okay, now I've got my stuff. I'm going to deploy. We strategically deploy to each side. Done. Complete. Now, let's resolve each fight. But there's still that little bit of, oh, I do have my commander cards I can put out here to try to get a bonus plus two to my side. Would you call this a bluffing game?

29:37 100%. Because I didn't mention that three of the cards can be placed face down when you deploy them. Most of them are going to be face up, but three of them can be face down. So, you don't exactly know what is there until it comes to fight in that zone.

29:51 Yeah. Also, playing your captains to start the battle.

29:54 Oh, I said captains. I I said commanders. It was It was captains. That's how you get that's you get the plus two

30:01 uh to your your side.

30:03 Yeah. I'm not trying to correct you there. just I was just reading through re re refreshing myself but uh no so yeah the captain's coming out knowing how to do that so there's a lot of

30:13 that's the bluffing knowing the strategy like oh I know I've lost this zone

30:17 but is he going to think does he think I'm going to actually try to win this or am I going to try to do some shenanigans on him because like the cards maybe allow me to have those shenanigans and it was it was an enjoyable quick game it just seemed to quickly flow for us and I I really enjoyed it from uh the the resolution

30:36 standpoint. Oh, okay. Never mind.

30:38 That resolution. I changed it.

30:41 You did. And also, by the way, as you use those captain cards for like doing the drafting at the beginning, they're face up, so you can see. So, I can see, oh, Tony's already used a five and a six. Sorry. So, I know those are gone for the rest of the game. So, you it's open knowledge of what has been played uh previously on both sides of the table. So this one I definitely agree there is bluffing going especially into that battle phase when you have to play that captain card.

31:06 Yeah. And the resolution was actually more intense than I envisioned. All right. When we because if if you got into a zone where one was flipped over you you didn't know what happens. I mean you obviously don't know what your score. Oh I've doing pretty good. So you have to be thinking about that. He's got one face down. Is he really trying to excel in that? I I don't remember what he drafted. I can't remember all these cards. But it also the I didn't like when we did the draft, we still had some leftover cards and they didn't come up for me and I really was trying to build a synergy around them, but I didn't get that deployed out. So that you know very enjoyable game, quick setup, enjoyed it from uh overall

31:46 uh uh that's tugof-war from inside up games.

31:49 I'm sorry. Tug of what? Tug of what?

31:52 Roar. Roar.

31:54 Roar. Cuz they're creature. They're anim animals. They're furry creatures. Everything's animals.

31:59 I know we kid about that, but some the artwork on this one's pretty cute. I mean, I like the bear in the barbarian suit. I thought he was kind of cool. And what was the

32:08 Yeah, so the classes are actually like classic fantasy classes. Barbarian, cleric, warlock, bard, etc. But yeah, no, the the art was really good. The art isn't necessarily like real cutesy. That it was good. It was like I mean the the druid the was a porcupine and the cleric I forget what the cleric was but it was kind of yeah it's it's not scary but it's not silly you know so so hats off to them for achieving that when you do thatamomorphic thing going on.

32:41 Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, it's tug of war and that's quick hits. Thanks for listening to Sleeved and Confused. Head over to miniaturemarket.com where you can get all your trading card games by clicking on the banner across the top. Trading card games. Simple stuff. You can get your pre-orders in. Shop now. They've got all special ones over there from Pokemon TCG. They've definitely got some Star Wars Unlimited. They've got those Star Wars Unlimited Twin Sons decks. If you haven't played Star Wars, give give the Twin Sons a try. That's That's a lot of fun. I enjoy that. I wish we played more. I might actually win while everybody discounts the fact that I can't play this game. And then Marty and Bert and Mark will go battle each other, and then I'll sneak in and win. Or if you're still into the board games, head over to miniaturmarket.com.

33:40 Get all the newest board games that are coming out because you've got the Game of Thrones betw twixed flip seven with a vengeance that's out there on the front page. Link two, here's a classic one. You and I played with the designer on this. Tada. That one's back out. Wow. So, be sure to check it out at miniaturmarket.com. Publisher Sorry, We Are French has re-thedmed, re- imagined a classic Spyum and it is now Grey Lon designed by William Atia. And Marty, I never got to play Spyum. Did you?

34:21 I did not. But I played his other famous game, Kais, which is why I was very interested in this. This is a game that for me um straightforward rule teach that you know when you when you deal with worker placement this has got some worker placement in it. It's got some movement but it is one of it has one thing in it that I enjoy is that it has four phases. There's the winter, the spring, the summer and the autumn. If I'm done doing all my actions in the spring, I don't have to wait for Marty, I can move ahead and go to the summer phase.

35:00 Yeah. Because uh typically in games with phases, everybody goes to the same phase at the same time.

35:05 Here, you may want to jump phase ahead of somebody else to take advantage of something they may have wanted to have done.

35:14 And that's kind of like the games where we have moving down the river. It's uh it's not No, that's not fair. Taikiato. That's It's not the same. But

35:23 I see what you're saying is that I want to jump way ahead and get to that position first before somebody else gets there.

35:30 Um because in this game, that very first phase, spring is like a worker placement, right? You're putting your people out into in between village tiles

35:39 that might allow you to, by the way, this is an adventuring game. You're trying to build some people to go out and adventure, do quests, and tell wonderful stories. That's the theme of the game. So, you're out there and possibly putting your workers out there beside cards that you might be able to purchase like items or potions or go to a tavern to tell a story. You may say that item, that horse that helps me travel a little bit further, I really want that. So, you may decide to jump to summer before somebody else does so you can buy it from out from underneath them because maybe they were looking to do the same thing,

36:16 right? And and that's I think one of the things in this game that on our first round I was like, "Oh, I see the brilliance of this of okay, I'm putting my little worker between these two cards. You don't know which one I really want to do. You do I want to buy this item or am I trying to gain hire this um person to to help me to go out on my quest?"

36:39 Mhm.

36:40 You don't know where I'm going with this. So, you're like, "Oh, okay. Okay. I see you placed one there." And based on where how many people are around these cards, it adds to the cost. Okay. So, I need some people to peel off. So, maybe that I can get this card so I can afford it. But there's always the option that if I peel one of mine off, I get coins based on the number of people around the card. So, that's not a bad thing. I I really like that, too. Is like the um they're called villagers at your place. We're using work worker because like it's as it's a worker placement. They can be either go there to take the action of one of the adjacent cards or just go there to try to generate you a lot of money. So Tony, I found myself sometime down on my luck and money. I'm going purposely go to a location where there was already a lot of other people's villages around in order to try to get money. But I can only do that in the summer phase. So again, maybe I want to jump to summer quickly before everybody else can start peeling their villagers off and get as much money as I can.

37:47 Right? You can place all your villagers in the spring phase to round the cards or go to an event. You can only go to the event once either in spring or summer, however you want to do it. And events give you special uh functions or you may be able to earn some stuff. There's there's a whole lot of events, but they are very important. And I found myself Marty the the event card to be something I always wanted to do. But you can hold back some of those villagers because villagers are also a resource that you may need to spend to activate cards in the summer. Maybe when you want to activate one of your weapons that that will help increase your strength that's that's measuring on a track. And everything you're doing is basically trying to figure out how to maximize victory points so that you can win the game. That's what you're doing.

38:36 Sure. Sure. And one of the things you can use your weapons for uh or what your items for is like there's there's like little horses you can buy. Little horses. There's horses you can buy because there's another board. There's a main board where in the summer you can travel. Around this board are going to be these random quest tokens that are put out there and you all start in the same area on the main board, but you can get travel points to help move your little horse pond around to a location and try to complete quest. And these are cards that you're going to try to complete and tuck under your board. And then Tony later on, we want to be able to tell a story about those cards. and remove them from a quest we completed to get back to the village to go to one of the tavern cards and tell a wonderful story to get some victory points.

39:27 That's right. Certain stories, if you have a certain level, the more you tell, the better your rewards. So, you're more flamboyant with your story is how I thought of it. I know I'm trying to add theme where there is no theme.

39:41 No. Well, I mean, well, I will say I love the theme of this game. It kind of got lost a little bit, but everything that you did fit the theme of the game. I'm in town buying items, buying potions, getting uh adventurers to come out with me. Then in the summer area, I'm going out questing and eventually coming back and sharing my stories with all those in the tavern. Mhm. And [clears throat] fighting over these quests became a thing.

40:10 Mhm.

40:12 Because you want to bring those back because it all adds up near the end of the game on being able to score your points. And to be I thought I was doing poorly on the one game we played. I went from from nothing to the hero, which was really wobb, which is unheard of.

40:30 Slingshot. I mean, I was fired out of a catapult, a trebuche, and I came all the way around. And it was all because I had racked up the ability to move my adventurer and gain some very high value quests, which allowed me to later in the last round tell some stories.

40:49 Yeah, cuz um I remember I was way ahead. I mean, y'all were going, "This is Marty's to win. He can't lose." And as my the little victory point token sat there at the end of the game, Tony just came whipping around and flew right by by me. That was pretty wild.

41:04 The phase.

41:04 Oh, can I say this before you move on? I I remember we were referencing earlier why you might want to move from spring to summer to possibly buy items. Another reason why you might want to move from spring to summer before anybody else is to try to get to complete one of those quests before somebody else does.

41:19 Yeah, this game it plays over five years. It's divided into uh three periods. And each year is divided into the four seasons. So let's do some math here. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, five times So you're doing 20 turns.

41:35 Yeah. How to be fair though, the very last phase is just a cleanup phase. I mean, it's literally get income that you can kind of reset everything, get ready for the next year.

41:44 Enjoyed it. But I'm going to go ahead and throw out and I know you can go back to any rules you want to talk about, but I while I'm thinking about it, one of my biggest issues is I was very the iconography. I was like, "Oh, this is pretty straightforward. I understand what they're saying here." And when you teach a game, it's like, "Okay, I've got if this this icon means this." But we got lost on some of the coloring. And that kind of diminished the enjoyment like am I supposed to what am I supposed to do with this worker? And I know we kept going back and forth. Other than that, if we hadn't been doing that, this game would have been smooth as butter. I think we run into that situation of understanding, wait a minute, do we earn this or does it cost this? You know, in many games I had mentioned that sometimes a color is used for cost.

42:33 Maybe maybe red is spend and blue is get, but not all the icons were consistent. So, we had the rule book open a lot. Thank goodness there's an appendix in the back that explains all the cards. So, when a card came out, we took we took time to go, okay, let's understand how this one particular card works. Obviously, that was a first game issue, but I I do think that if this game sat on the shelf for a while and you pulled it back out, you'd probably be doing that again. But other than that, it was Hey, I'm I'm not going to go on and on, but it it's very enjoyable. I I kind of wish I had gotten to play Spyum to be able to compare the two because the adventure board is the addition, right?

43:16 Did Did I need the adventure board? It added a little bit more tension,

43:20 you know? If I wipe it away, then it's just like me placing workers out there to get stuff to manipulate resources to get victory points.

43:29 And and the really good award rewarding quests were at the far end of the adventure track. So, you had to find ways to increase your movement points to be able to get your horse all the way out there. Cuz at the end of the round, everybody's horse came back to the start. So, it's not like you could leave it out there from year to year. You would always have to try to regenerate those movement points each year.

43:53 And some of the cards and some of the things you got, you would discard those items. You rode that horse till it died. You sent it to

44:01 That's true. Some of them were like if you want a couple extra movement points, you can get it, but unfortunately this this horse will not be going to the glue factory after that.

44:11 Yeah. Very unique combinations were being pulled off

44:15 and that put it made it very thinky at times. And also the village changed every round, right? So as items were bought and everything, the village cards would clear and then new ones would come out. So every year it was going to be a different combination of cards that uh you were going to get to see. I think we all at the table really dug it. I I appreciate it's a small box uh to kind of get set up. I think the art is really nice. It is really nice to see actual humans. We were making fun of that earlier, but I think the art is like really nice, clever ad fantasyish, you know, type art. So yeah, I enjoyed it. you kind of get the theme kind of washes away, but it's it's kind of there, which I also like, too.

44:53 Hey, this the theme's going to be is this kind of a bluffing game?

44:56 Oh my gosh. So, that's Grey Lon from Sorry, We Are French and brought to us over here in the US from Pandasaurus Games.

45:07 Fiveminute initiative begins in three, two, one. a drafting and card placement game that they're they're hit right now, Tony. It's the thing. We got another one to the table. Yes. Mythologies. Uh this is from designer Maxim Babad and Michael Garcin or Garcen from Super Meuple and Hashet Games. Tony, in this game, you're going to draft people to put onto your board. Try to generate victory points. I know it's dry. I I get it. It's like my gosh, how many games do that? I know. But Tony, I will say there is a mechanism on this one I really like. Well, a couple things here. So, your draft board is uh randomly put together at the beginning of the game. I'll tell you why that's important uh in a second, but there's four quadrants of cards.

46:01 There's three cards in each quadrant of like regular cards, and there's a a special deity card that come out in later rounds. But right in the middle, there's going to be a card that reveals to show which quadrant you can draft from in that round. Which quadrant each player who is different can draft from. It's not just when you say it draft from this realm. It's Marty's gets this realm, I get this other realm. And over the four draws of these cards, we all get to bounce in the realms. We all get a shot at each one of the realms. And depending on where that person drafts, you may not have a shot at that card because they've claimed it.

46:42 And you only get two cards. Even though you get a shot at every quadrant, you're only going to get two cards. So you have three selection pawns that you're going to hide and put face down. And then you reveal them. It could be like a pass. I don't want anything or I want this card. And you put it and go claim it on that card. Now nobody else can claim it. For the first two rounds, I may claim both my cards. Then I just sit back and watch the next two. Then after we're all said and done, we're going to take those cards and put them on our board, which is a 3x3 board. And Tony, this is where the placement comes in, right? Putting things beside each other activate other things and give you things and give you currency and give you victory points and you could slide and shift stuff around. So it's like a little tableau engine builder kind of with cards.

47:29 Yeah. Your board is he heaven, earth, and hell.

47:32 Yeah. There's three realms. Yeah. that. Oh, that's actually really important because where you place your card, you might get benefits depending on which realm you place it.

47:40 I appreciate everybody trying to find different words, but but um what was it?

47:44 Abyle.

47:45 Abyzle or or you going to you going to crush somebody,

47:50 you know, you place a card.

47:52 Oh, yeah. I thought I thought you talking about the term for hell. Was that was it? Well, it's a bizzle. Yeah. But when you stack another card, because certain cards allow based on which which crush for crush crunch,

48:04 not Yeah. It's not um

48:06 crunch, it's crush. You can crush the card. Stack the card.

48:13 But we always talk about this. The iconography of these cards pretty sweet, straightforward art, beautiful and how it resolved on in-game scoring versus scoring right then being able to pay for the cards. It was all straightforward. I really enjoyed this and I want to play it some more using the various different mythologies. Now, you mentioned something about how the board was put together. What do you mean? There are going to be two trials in the game that you can try to achieve, but those trials are based on, remember what I said, the boards you put together can be random. They build what the trial is going to be. Like I can put this board with this board and in the bottom it's going to say have at least three summoning tokens in your earthly plane.

48:58 So during the course of the game, if I'm able to achieve that, I get some victory points. So it's like achievements that you're shooting for that are randomly built. And as Tony said, there's also different types of mythologies that you can mix and match that do things together. So every time you play this game, you can mix and match your different mythologies together in order to get a different style game. I really don't have much negative to say about it. Yes, the only thing is there's a lot of draft and place card games here, but some of the twist and the drafting and how some of the placement is kind of basic on how that works. Oh, I didn't mention the deities, by the way. I mentioned the earlier. Deities are the special cards that come out in later rounds, but you have to pay resources to get those. But those are really, really good cards you want. You just have to make sure you have a way to get that resource. And one of the ways is when you can play it a row, it unlocks one of those resources for you. And by the way, when you create a col finish a column off, it also gives you a victory point.

49:56 Agree with you. Uh drafting, nothing new there other than the way they did it, which I thank you for doing. You know, I have a lot of drafting card games, but this was I like how they did that. I like how it built some of the suspense in the game. The deities coming out to do the in-game scoring or whatever their special powers were and the battling over that. Fun game. It did stay on the table way too long like some card drafting games can happen. So, yeah. Um, nothing bad from here. I do wonder. We didn't get to play it with two people, but you know, I don't know if it's a twoperson game. I think there there's more tension with multiple. So yeah, it's a it's a thumbs up for me.

50:35 Oh, then what do you give it out of 10?

50:37 You know, I would give that a seven.

50:42 Seven. I agree. I would pull this off the shelf over some other ones. Art, like you said, icons. Really nice. That is mythologies from Super Maple and Hashgame.

50:52 Fiveminute initiative is complete.

50:59 Last year offix, was it last year or two years ago? Office dog came out with a game called uh River of Gold.

51:05 Gold. Love that game.

51:07 Fantastic game. Stays on my shelf. That's actually going to be one of the games I think I may teach this new gamer group that I'm trying to play around with who handled Container like a champ. So, I told him you guys are real gamers now, so I can throw anything at you. Anyway, uh love River of Gold. It's based in the Legend of the Five Rings universe. Last year at Gen Con, we saw there was another game coming from Office Dog based in the same universe called Gunen. The battle for Toshi Rambo, which is a mixture of a Euro and area, no, dudes on a map. That's really what it is. More of a dudes on a map game. Got a nice board, hex spaces. You deploy units, move around units, battle, try to get achievements. This is designed by Matthew Ali Ben Rosset. Tony, we were fans of this previous game, River of Gold. Tell me what you uh quick thoughts on Gunson.

51:57 So, I I watched a few reviews, watched a playby, and they were talking about how it compares to some of the classics like Kemet, you know, area control, majority, that kind of stuff. So, I was really intrigued by this because I don't want games that are constantly being drugged out as people are what what do you call it? Crawling crawling someone back into the pot.

52:21 Yeah.

52:23 Oh, is it is it lobsters or crabs trying to get out of the bucket?

52:28 Frogs,

52:29 but frogs can't grab other frogs. Lobsters and crabs have little claws.

52:35 You don't think a little frog doesn't have little fingers?

52:38 They're better.

52:39 Anyway,

52:39 he doesn't have opposable thumbs.

52:41 All right. You hate games that drag on because somebody keeps other people from winning. Go ahead. kind of like this review as we talk about it. Uh uh all right, lot of options. I went into this game with really looking forward to enjoy it. My initial thoughts were it's a pretty good game. I thought the teach was pretty quick, pretty easy. The simplicity of activating the various actions you can take. On your turn, you get to draft a card from a tableau of available cards. You place it on your board or under other cards that already exist, matching colors, and then you get to take the various actions on those cards in order. Some of them are, hey, you can draft troops into your fort. You can move troops. You may be able to buy special cards. And that was the intriguing part of the game. How do I work this in conjunction to be able to go out and decimate my enemies? The euro part of this game is that drafting cards and activating a particular column. Now Tony, you mentioned these columns all do different things. Some of them are very specific. The blue was all about making sure that you maybe you get some benefits in battle. The yellow is about adding new guys on the board. The purple is about getting a special resource that you can use.

54:02 But all three of those give you an option to move. If you take any one, activate any one of those columns, you can start moving your troops around the board. You can always move a set of troops one space, but each of them have a resource that you could possibly spend to move additional spaces. And each one has a different one that you can move. Like the blue one is spend coin to move additional, whereas the purple column is spend food or wood to to move additional spaces. The last column is super interesting cuz you don't get to recruit with it. You don't get to move with it. But what you can do is get wood or coin and then start building buildings to help you out over the course of the game or special tactics cards. Now, the thing is though, we haven't said how you win the game. It's not victory points. This is one thing I loved about it. It's a Euro game, but no victory points are involved. Nope. It's a race to completing seven achievements. All of us are working on the same achievements. We can all get the same achievements and as soon as somebody has placed their last achievement marker, game over, win. Put it away.

55:11 Almost all the same achievements because we got to remember each clan has two special has three achievements in it that are all different. So those are part of the seven if you can achieve those special ones. And there's an achievement in the middle of the board where everybody is fighting over an achieve putting out an achievement. You can control Tshirobo. Tashi Nobo. What is it?

55:34 It's right in the name of the game.

55:35 I know.

55:37 Tashi Rambo.

55:39 Ranbo. Ran. Not Ram. Ran.

55:41 Rando. There's an area that you can if you control this one hex right in the middle of the board. You get to keep your achievement marker there. Soon as you lose control, that achievement marker comes back to your board. But every other achievement marker that you've earned, it can't be lost. However, you don't need it to win the game.

56:00 Nope. Love this too.

56:01 You You like that?

56:02 Yes. Because you don't have to fight only. In fact, hold on. Let me count. 1 2 3 4 5 6. Yes. You don't have to fight or win a battle at all to win this game. There's multiple other ways. You mentioned each faction has their own objective. If you can build three tactics cards, that's another achievement. build your two special buildings which are unique per faction and gives you special abilities. That's an achievement. If you can uh control two different temples,

56:33 uh that's that's an achievement. Can you explain the the thing at the bottom of the board? That was another achievement where when you draft a card, you may not stack it in your column, but instead use it to activate an ability on the bottom of the board that each of us had. You draft a card out of the tableau marketplace and then you go and take that card and place it at the bottom of your board. You don't get to use the ability of being either the armory or the recruiting or the influence, but you go and you place that card over one of the three locations and you spend influence, which then lets you pull a special card from you have that you may have that you can then put into the row or go up and get another card from the tableau and put it wherever you want. It doesn't have to match color. Or draft a hero and they all get more expensive over time.

57:25 Heroes are important because when you go do battle, they give those powers that you need to go do battles and battling. Thank you guys for a flowchart. Yay. Oh my gosh. Flowcharts,

57:38 y'all. It was crazy how good the flowchart is for battles cuz you know, you've probably seen a lot of things have to do with battles. It's like, well, this person does this and you roll this and you resolve this. Sweet flowchart. Sweet, sweet flowchart that Tony's known for making over the years. built right into the rule book and literally that's all you needed. They did spell out how the combat works, but you don't need it because the flowchart works so well. And Tony, when it comes to games with battling, I thought this was pretty straightforward, but there was enough meat to it that made it very satisfying. The one of the pieces of meat that you can tear off the bone here is the fact that you can add to the amount of dice you roll, but you only got to ever pick two. And nothing allowed you to pick keep more than two.

58:24 I could roll five dice and based on the results, but I still could only pick two. [clears throat] So, it was important as the individual who's rolling the the def was it? Yeah. The defender rolled first, right?

58:38 The defender rolls first. Yeah. because the attacker had the advantage of seeing what the defender had rolled. Yeah.

58:43 Right. So, I'm going to pick two and then I can set either my strength, my armor, or my blood to certain levels, which tells the attacker what they may be challenged to do. So, strength helps determine the winner. Blood gets rid of people. Armor negates blood.

59:01 That's it.

59:02 And and and that and then this flowchart just tells you, well, if this happens and this person wins and are there's anybody surviving, then you select this. Oh, and then proceed to page 22 to resolve the end of turn step. Okay. Because once a battle occurs, you don't get to keep going. That's it. If you move into somebody where someone is, let's let's fight. Let's do it.

59:20 Yep. And and after the battle, either somebody either the space is empty or somebody has control of it. That's it. It's two factions will never reside in in one hex. So achievements for battling is you need to win you can win twice as an attacker and if you do you can place an achievement for each one.

59:39 Handy dandy little chart to follow this. So the battling straightforward

59:43 that's really it.

59:45 So the play of the game I super loved. I super loved the fact that if let's say Mark was like oh my gosh he's building all these huge forces over there and he's getting achievements by battling. Well, once he's won two battles, he's not going to earn anymore. Meanwhile, it's like, hm, well, maybe I want to take a different strategy. Instead, I'm going to try to get my heroes out there. They give me special abilities and try to get my tactics cards, which helps during combat, which also helps me get an an achievement or a building. My particular faction was all about moving across the map. One of my buildings allowed me to jump across the map to to different watchtowers. So, the journey I really enjoyed. The thing is though, we found that this game can end just kind of abruptly with like, oh, that's it.

1:00:34 Anticlimactic.

1:00:35 Let's give the exact scenario. So Mark was getting ready to win. He had six achievements on the board. All he had to do was like build a building. He had the resources to do it. We couldn't stop him. So if it got to his turn, he was going to win. He controlled that center spot. So Tony says, "Well, I'm going to try try to take that center spot from you.

1:00:53 You go in there. you you didn't take it, but you kind of thinned him out. I was next. We said, "Well, fine. I'm going to go to try to knock him out." Well, I didn't calculate everything, right? I went in there, I did knock him out. That was the first time I had been in there. The first time you ever take control of the center, that center spot, you get an achievement. That's one. I had control of it. That's two. That was the second battle I had actually won as an attacker. Three achievements in one turn. Game over. That was it. So, I got three of my seven in one turn, and we were like, "Oh, that's it." But then what was interesting is Bert said, "If you hadn't done that, I was going to win because I was going to finish my second building and finish my second tactic card to get my last two achievements."

1:01:40 Mhm. And I said, "I'm glad I got to play."

1:01:46 So, we're like, "Wow." The whole process of playing the game was a blast. But then it just like it kind of petered out in that last round. It's like, "All right, well, you won. Congratulations. Let's put it away."

1:02:00 And what's important is, and straight from the rules, you gain an achievement as soon as you meet the requirement. It can't be taken away

1:02:09 except that one spot in the middle controlling Toshi Rambo. Mhm. You and I mean, you know, when I was reading three of these, you know, you gain multiple you can gain multiple achievements, but you can only put one of your markers in each achievement space. So, it's not like you can stack them. So, you only get one shot at it.

1:02:29 I was actually thinking I wondered if they had limited you to you can only place one achievement period per round if that would make a difference.

1:02:37 It would make the game go longer and I don't need it to go longer.

1:02:40 No, that's true. because we finished in about uh 90 minutes for four players. So, it's it's not that long and you're engaged the whole time. Anytime there's dudes on a map, you're constantly engaged because the state of the map than the field's totally changing every time.

1:02:55 And this thing plays up to six people. So, you know, we played four to four people. So, on the four to six player board, I think there'd be a lot more the attacking, but is it going to peter out near the end of the game? So, that that you know, mileage may vary with your play group.

1:03:10 Far forget about it. Art's fantastic. River of Golds are fantastic. This is fantastic. Thank you so much for the great insert. So, each faction has their own tuck box. You just have to put the tuck boxes together. So, a tuck box holds all of your cards, your markers, your army pieces. Super nice plastic army pieces, which are nice, too. Everything is stored well in the box. So, top top-notch production there.

1:03:32 I really enjoyed this mixture of a Euro dudes on a map. I think it was really clever. My only concern is is like if you play 90 minutes and then all of a sudden somebody goes boom boom boom I just won and you just saw it you just oh I had no idea that was getting ready to happen. It feel it make you feel a little deflated.

1:03:51 Mhm. So what would you give it on the score?

1:03:53 This is tough. I'm torn between a six and a seven.

1:03:56 Okay.

1:03:57 Because I just know that because I can know that situation can happen with somebody like I did claim three achievements of my four.

1:04:06 Mhm. in that one round. I guess maybe if people saw that it could I could possibly do it. Maybe you want to keep me from happening. But I think that would that would be I'm still going to give it a seven. I'm still going to give it a seven because I really love the nice mixture of the drafting and activating your column for the Euro aspect of the game. And I I think the battling Oh, we didn't mention the battling has a nice uh tracker

1:04:31 that you did you mention about the tracker about how you can easily track each of the tokens. So, you got to do a lot of math. It's really nice. Anyway, so I I'll I'll stick at a seven right now.

1:04:40 Um, so I'm I'm I don't enjoy risk. And I know this isn't risk. Don't but you know, that's that's my bottom tier game. That's like risk to me is a two. Risk takes too long. Don't like risk, but I know my son-in-law loves risk. I would put this on the table for him to try because of just the tension it would bring. And I think it would give him and it would play faster and it would be better. So that takes it up a bunch, you know, uh, it takes it up. I'm not a big, you know, dudes on the map type of game. So I'm so I'm not at a five, but page 24 of this rule book and the flowchart are going to bump it up to a number. 24 is where they list the icon key, the key terms, and frequently overlooked rules in one page. Oh my gosh, it was so beneficial to have that on the table.

1:05:29 And a lot of games do this, but they have this so well laid out. So that's going to bump this game up to me. I was going to leave it at a six, but I I'm gonna go to a seven just because of the overall production of it and the what I would bring out on the table instead of other types of games like this

1:05:47 cuz I don't have a lot of these, right?

1:05:49 And that's because I don't enjoy them. Where this one, even though it would peter out or be anticlimatic, if I'm helping people understand, hey, you need to take we need to be watching this. you can't stop it, that's fine. Those that like to turtle, okay, then that's a tactic you can use.

1:06:04 Theoretically, you could turtle the entire game.

1:06:06 You might be bored. And also, if you know, if somebody if everybody's turtling and one guy is like, "Well, fine. I'm going to go take over Tashi Rambo for essentially two achievement points." That's two easy achievement point for just walking in there if nobody's going to stop him from doing it.

1:06:20 Plus the bonuses of armor on it and and and strength.

1:06:24 Well, when it when you're defending against it. Yes. Whoever owns it has it's harder to take from them because they get a bonus defense.

1:06:32 All right, so I'm going to leave it right beside River of Gold. Two totally different style of games, but I love the both universes and what they've done uh with these games from Offstall Games. That is Gunson the Battle for Tashi Rando. [screaming] Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day. Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your bags and come on through. Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there, too. Comfort in. It's calling your name. Save on the state. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song direct at choice hotels.com.

1:07:18 All right, Tony, we forgot to give a score for Grey Line. I'm going to go with a six on this. So, slightly above average. Yeah, slightly above average for me. When I was comparing it to Spyum and reading through the rules and things like that, I like the adventure board, but I don't know if I needed it. But as far as the rest of these, putting these workers out and all the worker placement games I've got, six is pretty good. I think um I think it'd be harder to get it to the table, and that's always part of my scoring. You know, how Marty and I, we each have our different way of how we assign the scores. I don't think this would be a big hit with the family as well as some of my other worker placement games. So that's why I'm going to go with a six.

1:07:54 Mhm. I think I'm probably going to match you on that one. Like I like everything that it's nothing against the game. I like everything that I did. I I just don't know that it would come out on the table over other games, you know? Like I'd rather play his Kis game.

1:08:11 You like you said, they did add the adventure board, which I appreciated, but I can also see where some people go like this feels pasted on

1:08:19 uh like like a little addition. Now, thematically it did kind of make sense and stuff and it was actually how you won the game overall. So, yeah. Anyway, so I'm going to stick at a six also.

1:08:29 So, the old YouTubes, you know, I'm over there learning how to play games and certain things show up and for some odd reason, Marty, I have been getting a lot of videos about comic books.

1:08:40 Okay.

1:08:41 You know, in the '9s, we collected comic books. We recently played a game. They talked about the big bubble of comic books and how it crashed and how you and I, the death of Superman. Oh my gosh. You know, the various variant covers, the foil covers, the various publishers. What grabbed my attention is I don't know if it showed up because I've been seeing a lot of Spider-Man: A Brand New Day um videos as well of the cast talking and maybe it was linking. Whatever YouTube does, it does. But it got me watching these and I started to learn a whole bunch of new terms and understand how things have evolved. One of the things that got my attention was newsstand versus direct. When you and I were purchasing comics, I'm assuming we were going to the store. Those are news stands that that's that the publishers would send them out or are those direct?

1:09:31 Comic book stores will be direct.

1:09:34 But there are no news stands anymore. I can't go when you and I would grow up. I would go into the um little general convenience store and there would be a carousel of comics

1:09:45 thus or a newsstand publication or if we go to Barnes & Noble in today's times but he was talking about how news stands are so rare now that their values are going up. So if you go and buy certain comics get the newsstand versions versus direct to marketing or direct to you. So, yes, New Stand is sold to general stores like grocery stores, drugstores, and gas stations. When's the last time you saw any comic book in any of those? None. And another big thing is they're returnable. So, unsold copies could be sent back to the publisher for credit. Uh, that can't be done with direct sold to shops. There's no refunds. Comic shops buy these at a discount, but they cannot return unsold copies.

1:10:28 Okay. And the guy was saying that there are more direct versions out there. So news stands are more valuable.

1:10:38 And I think you mentioned this to me too, but news. So let's say you're buying an old comic like I used to go to 7-Eleven.

1:10:44 They had the classic comic book turn style

1:10:47 the carousel thing

1:10:48 display. Yeah. If it has a UPC code, that is new stand. If there's no UPC code, that's direct.

1:10:55 Oh. So I can pull down all my comics and see from the 90s which one are direct and which one were new stand.

1:11:04 More than like most the comics I had as a pull list at a comic book store. So those are going to be direct. But the question is is like sometimes I would buy old comics from the 70s and 80s of characters. I should go back and look at those and see if those were new stand or direct. I have never heard that term before until you said it.

1:11:20 Yeah. And I was like, "Okay, this is interesting." Because yeah, a lot of like you like a lot of the old Spider-Mans that I bought because of, and this is another term I learned, keys being key issues. The first appearance of Venom, the first appearance of a new costume or the first appearance of a new hero as a crossover that developed, those are key issues that you should be taking into account. and then look at the ones because yeah comic books were degrading uh I mean you can see the spike in the various markets of the comic books and how they were rising then suddenly everything just crashed. Now, there's been a resurgence and I was talking to a guy at work about this and he says, "A lot of this stuff is resurging because you and I who are entering our retirement golden years, getting ready and looking at and how we look at things, we are looking at what we are comfortable with and possibly investing or not so much investing but enjoying what we used to know. video games. You buying old video games and even the young people do that now. But still going back and saying, "Oh, I enjoyed doing that. Let's do that again." I enjoyed reading comics.

1:12:34 Mhm.

1:12:35 So I'm Well, if the freaking comic book store would ever be open around here, I would go in and put have a pull list developed.

1:12:42 So you would want to do new and not like old. So like it's really interesting. Uh, my son Travis is into X-Men. So, he goes back and buy the old anthologies of X-Men

1:12:55 of stuff from the 70s and 80s. So, he's not reading the new stuff. He's gotten into reading the old stuff, but not buying original issues. Instead, it's the anthologies that came out.

1:13:04 I would go back because of expendable income. I would look at certain comics that I would want to have

1:13:12 to be able to share with, you know, [snorts] uh, the grandson

1:13:17 later

1:13:18 to pay for college.

1:13:21 Hey, there's one of them. I've got I've got the the one that you gave me as a wedding gift over 30 plus years ago can go for up to $9,000. Okay, that can't pay for any college. It might be able to pay for a textbook in today's world, but still I've got some up there that are, you know, 67,000 that back when you and I were doing this and I bought them, I bought them for like $5.

1:13:44 You threw away a lot of comics, though.

1:13:46 I did. I did. I threw a lot away. I got I sold a lot of my Hulks. Yeah. I got rid of a lot of the image. Not Spawn. I still have all my Spawn.

1:13:57 Mhm. And I still have some of this what I consider the special Superman, Batman's, that kind of stuff. But yeah, I got rid of a lot of ones, but I didn't read that much. I didn't cross over. But that used to piss me off, the crossovers. Spider-Man. Now, if you want to continue reading, part two is in this cover. Part three is in this cover. You got to go pull this. I'm like, "Oh, this sucks."

1:14:18 That's how they get you to to go over and

1:14:21 read something else. So, hey, maybe you'll read that. Uh,

1:14:24 they always get you at the drive-thru. They always get you at the drive-thru.

1:14:29 No, I mean, yeah, that's that's super interesting. I don't know that I would ever do comics again. Only reason I would do comics is if I want to read them. And in fact, last year for Christmas, uh DC started coming out with anthologies, newer anthologies of comics from the 50s and 60s.

1:14:44 So, I've got like this some ' 60s Flash and some ' 70s Green Arrow, Green Lantern, uh that are really interesting to read. I mean, if I'm if I'm going to do it, it's probably going to be video games. And the reason why is because I can still play the video game.

1:15:00 I don't know that I'd want to open up an old comic and try to read it and hurt its value is the thing. [snorts]

1:15:06 Yeah. I'm not going to go out and spend uh $10,000 on uh the first appearance of Wolverine and the Hulk. I'm not. And go read it. I'm not doing that. I'm going to do what you're talking about doing. Or I forget what the latest uh Amazing uh fantasy number 15 first appearance of Spider-Man. It was in the millions of dollars that, you know, it sold for. And I will never grade or I might grade, but that is a racket to me grading comics.

1:15:35 Not uh not necessarily because if you can turn what something is $150 and it becomes $600

1:15:42 then and but it cost you $150 to grade it, you still net.

1:15:46 But are you going to sell it?

1:15:48 I'm only going to grade the ones I would be willing to sell.

1:15:51 Sure. Sure. I mean, I [clears throat] I'm think I told you I'm at the point that when I'm retiring and I'm sitting here, I didn't get rid of any of my special old B ball cards. I'm going to start going through those and I may start selling those and just making a little money selling those. And if some of those I think are worth getting graded, then maybe I get them graded.

1:16:09 Yeah, need to do that, too. H things to do when I'm retire. See, I I won't be bored when I retire. I'll have plenty of to do.

1:16:18 No, I won't be bored either.

1:16:19 Which leads us to our next topic. A new show has come out on Yeah. HBO. Well, Steuart had a comic book store in Pasadena on the Big Bang.

1:16:29 Stuart fails to save the universe. A new HBO Max series that has come out. Now, I have seen one of those.

1:16:35 Um, like the Big Bang Theory, it didn't immediately grab me like it has like Big Bang has now. But you've seen all the ones that have been released and um it didn't grab me, but I didn't hate it and I did chuckle.

1:16:47 Okay. So, I was going to ask, is this supposed to be a comedy? somewhat.

1:16:51 Okay. Because um if it's a comedy, we're I I Yeah.

1:16:57 at four episodes in the the funniest thing to me is the intro

1:17:01 cuz every intro is different and they entice you to stay for the entire intro because they change it and they say don't skip this intro because something's going to happen sort of deal.

1:17:11 That's the most entertaining thing to me. And I think what it is is, have [snorts] you ever seen any of the Big Bang clips when they removed the laugh track and you realize how unfunny that show was and it needed the laugh track?

1:17:25 No, I've never watched that. Okay,

1:17:27 go look at pull up YouTube and go just search for Big Bang Theory without the laugh track and you go, "Okay,

1:17:33 wow, these jokes really fall flat." And the laugh track helps you want to chuckle because everybody else is. And it's not just them. They did the same They were like Friends episodes.

1:17:44 It's just how much the laugh track entices you to laugh. So, this show has no laugh track.

1:17:49 And the reason why I'm interested in is because it has one of my favorite characters from the Big Bang and that's Krypkkey.

1:17:55 Yep. Now, he is he is a regular on there along with the guy uh Bert and

1:18:02 his girlfriend.

1:18:03 Yeah, the girlfriend's on on there too,

1:18:05 Denise.

1:18:07 Yeah. So, the whole premise is them obviously just jumping around to different universes. So each episode is basically them in a new universe and what they they they run across. Episode 4 made me feel like maybe there's an arc here. The first three episodes was no arc. They were like very standalone type episodes. So I'm I'm curious. Vanessa's like, "Why do you keep watching this?" I go, "Because I paid for HBO Max and I got to see if it's any good."

1:18:34 Because I'm waiting on the the lantern core. Okay,

1:18:37 that's tonight as this recording. That's tonight at 9:00.

1:18:40 Is it? Okay.

1:18:40 I want to watch it at 9:00. Yes.

1:18:43 All right. I'm I'm I'm looking forward to that one, too.

1:18:46 Please don't screw that up. They've already messed up of the how and John can both have a ring and be Green Lantern, and they're not going to do that.

1:18:55 Okay. All right. Cuz I I watched the video on how it had to explain what the Green Lantern core is. I watched it specifically so when Donna watches this with me, I can explain it to her because I didn't know the history behind him. I didn't know why the Green Lantern Corps was formed. Okay, I kind of sort of get this. So, it will be easier because I've always jumped into he's out there fighting villains and he and a number two pencil can defeat him, but that's because Yeah, that Well, that was a long time ago. Yeah. Um,

1:19:26 that's a Big Bang joke, I think.

1:19:28 It's It's a good one, though. That's That was a good one. I see. I would have I would have chuckled at that one. That that would have been a good one. So yeah, I mean that every sector of the universe has a Green Lantern to watch over. It's like the police of the universe. So with that, keep rolling dice and taking names. Hey y'all, thanks for listening. Make sure to go over to our website, roll diceames.com, where you can find links to all of our social medias, Instagram and X, where we do a lot of posting, trying to make sure Facebook stays up to date because we do have a lot of followers there. And but I think the big thing is join our Discord channel. Come and chat with us. Tell us about some of the scores you have on some of these games. Are you collecting comics? Are you watching Steuart Fells Save the Universe? Let us know.

1:20:18 We ever just leave and confused. That's all I could hear. And this Led Zeppelin in my head. See, we even got the theme music. We got the theme music. I'd already thought about that. There's no way because it wouldn't get past licensing, but come on. How cool of an intro would it be?

1:20:41 Welcome to Sleep and Confused. It's perfect.

1:20:45 You can change it somehow. Change one of the notes.

1:20:48 You know what? I could I could. Lots of times they do that for Star Wars themed stuff where they'll take the original Lucas songs and just tweak it enough to where it wouldn't get found by the algorithms. H something to think about.