This Board Game Channel Is A Hidden Gem | BGSS ep_012 | The Grove

0:00 crazy crazy plan. I bring Cosmic Encounter with all 800,000 alien races. And because I'm probably going a little bit crazy, I just play myself. So, it's like six-handed. Are you running around like a stump? Oh, absolutely. Acting like somebody else.

0:18 Do you know Wilson volleyball?

0:20 Yeah. Exactly.

0:24 In the moment, you're like, I hate you. Like, we're never going to be friends again. You betrayed me. Eli, we're just going to attack each other every time.

0:32 Sometimes I want to play 10 and I just want to be a farmer and I just want to hang out. Sometimes I want to I want to shoot you with a gun and that's okay.

0:40 So for me, the why is 100% just spending time with my friends. Um doing something that's fun, getting the opportunity to play more board games. Yeah, that's that's what it's all about for me.

0:50 Today my guests are a collective. In fact, they are a quarter of a collective that comes together to create content on the Grove. The Grove is a channel of I I don't think we actually nailed it down. Like 10 to 13, maybe 14 people if they accept me by the end. I don't know. May it may go up to 15. I don't know.

1:13 But they all come together to create content, to play games, and basically as an excuse to be a community around the thing they all love, which is board games. And that comes through in the content. In fact, that's why I reached out to them because I recently fell in love with their channel. I really love all of the different dynamics that they have together and I think that this is a special channel that deserves a ton of subscribers, frankly. In fact, right now, stop the video, go subscribe to them. You won't be disappointed. We get into how this collective came about, how they all met. We get into TI4. We get into Take That Games and Rivalries. We get into all kinds of stuff. Plenty of meandering. It was a really entertaining discussion that I hope come through to you, and I really think it will. I think it was an absolutely wonderful time. And without further ado, let's welcome Eli, Matt, Robert from The Grove to the Board Game Secret Show.

2:13 First off, thanks everyone. I mean, I have Matt, I have Robert, I have Eli, which is actually a minority of the Grove. So, thank you very much for being here on the Board Game Secret Show. A show that nobody really knows about and I don't even know why you guys did it. So, thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

2:31 Thanks for having us.

2:32 Yeah.

2:33 Thank you for having us.

2:34 We just cold open here. We just kind of what basically what I'm going to try to do today is get as many clips uh controversial things that you say. We're going to montage them in the middle. So, hopefully I can get like on a two-hour video five or six minutes retention. Are we good with that?

2:51 Yeah. Yeah, we just I have a rough structure, but the more meandering we do, the better. The more we don't talk about board games, the better. Um, and but and then we'll just kind of kind of go from there. But all my questions are basically around board games. Um, I don't have

3:10 I have a question for you.

3:11 Yeah. No, have at it.

3:14 Okay. So, we said we don't want to talk about We want to talk about board games, but a little bit less

3:18 No, we'll talk about board games. I was messing around.

3:20 Yeah. Yeah. This this is a hypothetical, right?

3:22 Okay.

3:23 If you get $10,000 every single day,

3:27 but

3:27 okay,

3:28 you you must eat one hot dog every 24 hours, as long as you eat the hot dog, you're good. But if you don't, you die.

3:37 Okay. So, how many days does a hot dog take off my life?

3:42 That's a good question. I don't I know there is going behind it.

3:46 I thought No, that's it. It's all

3:48 It's on you to do the research. is do you want the money in exchange for hot dogs? Yes or no?

3:54 All I Dude, are you saying all I have to do is eat one of the best foods there is for 10 grand a day?

4:01 For sure.

4:02 I was actually recently uh laid off. So then all I have to do is be like, "Hey, let's just go get some hot dogs." And I never have to get a job again.

4:08 True.

4:09 Yeah. And then it's a kind of a win-win. Unless Unless you're right and you do lose like like two minutes every single hot dog, in which case, you know, it'll

4:16 Yeah. You know that that is a stat out there. And I thought you were about to hit me with, "Okay, well, now you only have four years to live." And I was like, "No, just we love we love hypotheticals.

4:27 Your family's gonna be okay."

4:29 Yeah. Yeah. They're going to be very comfortable.

4:32 Okay. Well, okay. Let's do this hypothetical on board games. You have one board game to take to a desert island. Eli, what are you taking

4:41 that? I'm probably going to take 10 from IV Studio because that's like my go-to song.

4:45 I have You have a hundred plays of Tend, right? Or over aundred plays. See, I watch your videos.

4:51 Yeah.

4:51 Yeah. Your top 10 is wild when you look at Tend sitting up there compared with all of those other games.

4:58 It's just so cozy. I love it.

5:01 I love Rolling Rights. I have not been able to get my hands on Tend yet. It does look like the copy you have is the full-fledged like because you I saw the shiny box. You got you got everything.

5:12 Gotta go super deluxe

5:14 which is the world's most expensive Roland. Right. Right. Or and bourbon. Right.

5:18 Yeah, it's very very expensive but it's very overproduced so it balances.

5:24 And the funny thing is is in in our group, you know, uh I believe all three of us at least have

5:30 Yeah.

5:31 the like deluxe version, which means that we can just locally put on a 72 player game of 10. But

5:37 And you have plenty of sheets, right? You're not going to run out of sheets between you all.

5:41 Yeah. I actually I ordered two two super deluxees myself and I was like I'll just you know I'll play enough to justify it and then that that didn't happen. So I freaking kidding me.

5:52 Why did you why did you

5:55 I can tell you I can tell you it was more cost effective by the time you added additional markers and the extra stuff. It was like okay if I just buy a whole new game I'm spending like $15 extra dollars and then I've got like an extra box in case it gets dinged up. I uh I used to be a lot more particular about my board games and I've I've since since we started the channel that's fallen off. I'm just like, you know what, if if the box is got a hole in it, that's fine. You know, it's fine,

6:19 dude. I think that's girl math right there. Like that is that's some crazy board gamer math. And I like it. I'm here for it.

6:26 Yeah.

6:26 All right. So 10 10 it is. You're playing by yourself 10 the rest of your life.

6:31 That's it. They're not playing anything else. All right, Robert.

6:34 That would be that would be

6:35 O. Okay. By myself that changes things. We had a group.

6:39 Literally nobody is there. I know you guys are used to your group. You know,

6:42 I'm always stand by myself, so I'm used to this.

6:46 Blood on the clock tower.

6:48 Yeah, I was going to say if I had a group, it's it's TI4, but uh

6:51 gosh, uh

6:52 we'll talk about TI4.

6:55 Oh, yeah. Honestly, if I'm by myself, probably Voidfall or Cloudspire right now.

7:00 Voidfall is such a good pick there. I think that is one of the best solo games I've ever played. Like that is and I don't and I think in my review that's what I had talked about is I just I love it as a solo game because playing with people I could frankly just be on the other side of the map and just you know not even pay attention to them whatsoever.

7:22 For sure.

7:22 That's the one one downfall on it. But uh okay, I like Voidfall. All right, Matt, you can't pick TI4. All right. Um solo's hard. I don't play that many solo games.

7:34 You're going to have to do it now, man. You're on a desert island by yourself.

7:38 What? What? What? You know, I crazy crazy plan. I bring Cosmic Encounter with all 800,000 alien races. And because I'm probably going a little bit crazy, I just play myself. So, it's like

7:52 sixhanded. Are you running around like a stump? Oh, absolutely.

7:56 Acting like somebody else.

7:58 Do you know Wilson volleyball? Yeah. Exactly.

8:04 And like just getting mad at myself like I can't believe you're invading my my planet.

8:09 I have to run all the way back around and be like, "But it has to be done."

8:12 Yeah. And you're punching the volleyballs all over the island. You're going to start losing them. They're going to float away. You bet. You I would have picked something a little nicer because you're going to start losing those friends of yours.

8:23 Well, how long do I really want to survive?

8:26 Yeah, I know, right? I am. It's easy because you know you're on a desert island and you need something to last.

8:33 Like this is this is it. If you're dealing with cardboard,

8:37 it's over. So, we're doing Neoprene, Heavy Chips,

8:41 Too Many Bones is like my first solo love. And in fact, I did I had in general I have um I play a lot of solo stuff and I've covered a lot on the channel, but it's not my type. I like more interactive, you know, full-fledged like going after each other's throat. But Too Many Bones, it's going to I can play it in the water. The salt is not going to damage it too much. I do have to watch out for some sun fading on those mats, but yeah, it's going to be too many bones. I've got my trove chest behind me. I have enough gameplay to last me however long I'm there, so it's going to be too many bones for sure.

9:14 That's a goal. We've always joked that Chip Theory is like the one publisher you can actually play on a boat. If you're like on a float trip down the river, bring a chip theory game. You can get it done.

9:24 100%. That's why

9:25 start like the

9:26 Cloud Spire would have been good.

9:28 Yeah, honestly. Yeah.

9:29 Yeah.

9:30 But now all your stuff is going to fall apart.

9:33 Yeah.

9:35 You have you all have a good I mean because the um that like seawater and and you know spray and all that stuff, you're going to have storms. All of your games are done. True.

9:45 Within the first year. 10 was probably a terrible choice. Like one range.

9:51 Yeah. And you're just out of maths.

9:52 Yeah.

9:52 You're going to have to bury it every time in between plays.

9:57 Like get a map. Okay.

9:59 I put it by the coconut tree, you know.

10:02 It's just

10:03 I'm sure Eli has everything memorized. He could make his own sheets like in the sand. He'll be fine.

10:08 I think I could. Yeah, it'd be good. I could I could work on some expansions, you know? We could we could talk.

10:14 Do you think you would end up making some form of game while you're there? I you'd have to, right?

10:19 Yeah. I feel like you'd have to because that's like go looping back to hypotheticals. I'll see some that's like would you turn into a rock for a million years and then you know at the end of it you get a billion dollars and it's like dude I can't have my brain off for longer than like 30 minutes without without really losing it. So I'd have to I'd have to noodle on something you know.

10:40 Yeah. I I don't know something. Uh I was trying to think is there a good game that would teach me the survival skills that need like a cheat code, you know, but I don't I can't think of any

10:53 Robinson Cruso.

10:58 Yeah, Matt, you we lost you, but now you have to make a game on the desert island. Uh go. What are you going to make?

11:05 Make a game on the desert island. Um I mean tic-tac-toe with some rocks. I don't know. Yeah.

11:12 Um,

11:13 that's a good one.

11:14 No, I

11:15 I think you know, may maybe like Stone Saga. I know we just did a lot of stuff on stone songs. It's like something that's like, "All right, the Stone Age.

11:23 How do I make fire with Flint and Steel? Let's Let's go.

11:26 Yeah, but we've talked about the

11:28 Go ahead. Go ahead, Eli.

11:30 I was going to say we we've talked about the series where we play like on location. So, I'm trying to think of like what would be a good game to recreate across an entire desert island, right? I think Calypso would be Camelop if you if you got Camel up. Yeah, if you could find camels on the on the island. Yeah. Uh yeah, there's like I don't know. Mine would probably be basic. I'd just do something like chess.

11:53 I mean, Robinson Cruso is like the the what the game, right?

11:58 I mean, that's true. That's the one.

12:00 I guess chess.

12:01 Yes. Speaking of Stone Saga, that was like the most recent video I watched of you all and I was uh I honestly hadn't given it one look before, but then you started talking about the crafting system and being able to like independently essentially take your turns and go and like delve or whatever it was called forage and and all that all that stuff. That seemed pretty cool. And I talked to my last guest, Kangi, and he loved it as well. So, I think I'm I'm gonna have to go grab it now. Yeah, there's honestly like not to not to plug too much, but there's like really good deals on BG for copies from people because you know like everyone's guilty of just backing a bunch of games on Kickstarter and then a big legacy game shows up and they're like, "Oh, it turns out I don't have 30 hours to play this game." Uh there's a bunch like I saw someone was selling an all-in for like 65 bucks and it's like it's worth that space. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's gone now. It sold way f like like within the day. But yeah, no, it's cool. It's one of the most innovative crafting systems I've ever experienced in a game. And and Becca is not super into legacy games that are like generative storytelling because she doesn't have what's the the aphantasia like the the lack of not lack of imagination but the inability to visualize things, you know, super in-depth.

13:16 So for her to love it, it really speaks to how well it does the story and just like how fun the experience is.

13:23 Well, I didn't know there was a word for that. I think I have that as well. I I I can't I have a I've had a hard time getting into narrative based games unless they have a good mechanical hook. Um, Sleeping Gods: Distance Skies was like my first like, oh, this is what a narrative game should be and it was because I really liked the battling. I felt like it was really puzzling and kind of something I was into and it like it kept me going to get, you know, more cards or weapons or whatever. Um, but yeah, I have I I wonder if that relates also to just like how much of a visual learner you are versus like being able to just read a rule book and pick it up. Like I have to watch the how to plays. In fact, I've watched your how to plays. That's how I found you all was the holiday the Holiday Hills how to play actually. Uh, so that's I'm fully visual. And if I'm reading a rule book, I have to have the game out on the table.

14:15 Oh yeah.

14:16 I'm that way. I want I want the game in front of me like espec even watching a video like I want the game in front of me to like feel the pieces and like okay that's what they're talking about whenever they say you know right the diplomacy track or whatever.

14:31 Yeah. When I watch how to plays I really appreciate when there's a um a high kind of global view and then it zooms in rather than cuts because the cuts I don't know where where you're looking. I don't know where this is. I don't know like relative to the board. That's why having it in front of me is so important because I can kind of like, you know, find everything. But yeah, I don't just read rule books. I just I have a hard time or it just takes me longer. I can't I can read.

14:56 It's a real thing.

14:58 Yeah. It's like the test to see because there's like levels to it. Uh I have the opposite of aphantasia. Hyperfantasia, I think is the the name for it. And it's like I can visualize like color. Like I can picture myself holding an apple and like turning it in my hand and seeing the light reflect off of it and like even taking a bite of the apple getting a little of the taste and stuff like that. Yeah. See see what you can do. Like picture you're holding your hand out.

15:23 You know he's crazy.

15:25 Can you hold the apple in your hand? Do you see an apple at all?

15:28 I do, but it's it's not clear. It's just it's like it's like my mind's flickering,

15:34 you know? It's like I can't I can't watch it all the way through.

15:37 Yeah.

15:37 Yeah. There's like there's like studies on it. Ted has a really cool like uh like 10-minute video breaking down hyperfantasia aphantasia. It's interesting though because I'm the one in the group with it and you said the thing about rule books and I am like very good at digesting rule books just after reading it. So I wonder if that's part of it. I'm into that.

15:57 Yeah.

15:57 Very interesting.

15:58 Do you have a photographic memory? Are you like Doogie Hower?

16:01 No. No. I wish I I don't I don't have that. I have like I can picture like colors and like put like I I it's it's the opposite of useful because sometimes I'll daydream so hard that I just kind of get out of reality and I'm just like, "Oh yeah, I'm in a field right now." No, I'm just at my

16:18 So it doesn't make you rich. It's quite the opposite. You're just like off in in your own world like watching cool movies in your head.

16:25 Yeah. Oh yeah, it's cool. It is cool.

16:27 Is that called schizophrenia?

16:31 No, I'm not hearing any voices or anything. So I saw, you know, Go ahead. Go ahead.

16:38 That we got to watch out sometimes because sometimes one of us will daydream a rule exists that doesn't

16:44 and then we play it wrong, we're going to go back and fix it.

16:47 Yeah, Eli, you're reading the rule book and you you're hallucinating as you read it. So then you screw up the entire play through.

16:54 Oh yeah.

16:54 Yeah.

16:55 Yeah. Absolutely. I was gonna say I saw once or twice on Tik Tok a schizophrenia simulator and I have no idea if it's right, but man that it honestly freaked me out. Like I was like, "Oh gosh, I need to stop watching this." Cuz I felt like it was going to get me schizophrenia. I was like, "I can't do this."

17:10 Yeah.

17:10 Yeah. It's It's interesting. Beck and I uh right after college, we I I don't know why we've always we we just don't like being we don't like sitting around watching TV. I guess we like being way too busy. Uh but right outside of college, we started a mental health nonprofit that like worked with people like getting them connected with uh resources in in central Arkansas and uh we did that. It was like a professional schizophrenia simulator and it's like meant to dstigmatize it and everything. Um it was really interesting

17:41 because of how like vivid the the audio like the audio auditory hallucinations were. Um but yeah, I I cannot imagine we we uh we we actually met a guy who he suffered from schizophrenia and then like overcame it through through seeking help, medication, etc. And now he's like a really big advocate for it. And just like listening to him talk about that experience, it's like oh my gosh, that's thankfully I don't have that. I just I just have really intense

18:05 Oh yeah. Yeah. So I guess maybe the Tik Tok sim simulator is uh sort of true because it was terrifying if like you have to deal with that. Yeah.

18:14 Oh, speaking of um

18:15 interested in

18:16 side quests, we sure will have already went on one right out of the gates.

18:21 We certainly lost 99% but the 1% that are here.

18:25 It's okay.

18:26 We're going to have a good time.

18:28 Yeah. Thanks for being here.

18:29 Yeah.

18:30 Yeah.

18:31 Maybe it's the only the people that are schizophrenic. I don't know. Uh okay. So, now on to the my my structured portion of the show. So, I recently last night I paused on one of your intros and I counted 10. Is it 10 including Robert? Robert, you were like the cinematographer or is there actually 11 or is there more now?

18:54 So, Matt's actually the cinematographer.

18:56 Oh, Matt's cinematographer.

18:58 Yeah, we can do the Brady Bunch thing. Matt and

19:01 Robert helps write scripts. I can't Oh, no. Robert helps write scripts.

19:07 It's fine.

19:08 Why are you pointing behind you? Why are you pointing behind you?

19:11 I'm just trying to figure it out. It's It's the It's inverted. I'm not gonna

19:14 It's mirrored. It's mirrored.

19:16 Yeah. Yeah. We have I think in total 12.

19:19 Is it 12?

19:20 Yeah.

19:22 You better update that intro because I'm pretty sure I counted 10.

19:25 It might. It might be. Let me check real quick. I should know this. I should know this, right? But yeah, between We've got a couple of buddies who No, they're in the intro. Nick and Austin. They they're uh two of our buddies who live outside of central Arkansas, so they're not in videos a ton. They've been in a few, but they're like awesome editors. They uh they work for Funhouse Games on YouTube for a while and all of like the super zany, silly shorts that we do. That's that's them.

19:51 Yeah, I was watching I went through your shorts today. There were some nice edits in there. Uh I I do appreciate it. Appreciate that. I started this channel really heavy on kind of like, oh, I'm going to make my name being the heavily edited channel and and learn everything I could about, you know, anything to editing and then it didn't equal to views. I just you just have to be interesting, it turns out.

20:13 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

20:14 So, I'm working on that.

20:15 Sometimes that doesn't even work. Yeah. Sometimes that doesn't even work, man. It's uh it's it's something we've noodled on a lot is how to how to increase reach in a

20:24 in a hyper niche because you know sometimes people are just like oh I'm going to review cell phones and then that's just that gets clicks but you know not the board game hobby is still growing. We still got to get people% it's a little niche.

20:36 So it's it's easy and I think I wanted to get into this later but it doesn't matter. I like talking YouTube game. I like I like talking like, you know, talking shop a little bit. But one thing you have to remember is let's say you were in the video game space. You all are are coming up on 2,000 subscribers. That's probably like a 100,000 subscribers in the in the video space video game space like where there's multiple millions like some of the absolutely if you take out uh you know tabletop RPG what is it? Dice Tower a couple hundred thousand right like it's

21:08 like 400 something 400 now. Um, so you know it's it is it's it's it's easy to fall into that like oh

21:17 100 views, huh? Well, I mean there's not that many board gamers out there and board gamers watching YouTube on top of all

21:25 seeking out niche games like but

21:29 so how did everyone meet? Like this is so basically selfishly I wanted to have you on because I need more friends in my life. This is my audition to be part of your crew. You are in Arkansas and I'm in Seattle, so we're pretty far away, but I I am looking for a job, so I might move to Arkansas. So, tell me how how you all met.

21:46 There you go.

21:47 We uh we all met in college. So, funnily enough, I actually

21:54 Yeah,

21:54 that's kind of how I love it. Yeah, Beck and I were talking about this a couple days ago, how lucky we are to have a friend group who over the course of like over 10 years now, which ages us a bit, but over 10 years, we've still managed to stay in touch and like all remain super super close friends.

22:11 Um, I think the only the latecomers were Nick and actually no, I've known Robert. How long have we known Nick?

22:18 Uh, we've Eli, we've known each other 13 years. We've known Nick for like oh god almost nine then probably eight or nine.

22:27 That's crazy. Basically we've known Nick as long as PUBG Player Unknown Battlegrounds has been out. We started playing out with them.

22:34 Yeah.

22:35 Well, it come the

22:37 Go ahead.

22:38 Yeah.

22:39 I was going to say the the fun fact uh is that uh Eli and Becca were RAS in the dorm that a lot of us lived in. Not everyone, but a lot of us. Were they good RAS or bad RAS? Uh, Becca was a RA.

22:53 Becca was great. Becca was

22:54 Hey, hey, hey. I was such a good RA that I got the policy in the housing department changed because I was doing too good a job making friends with my residents because there was a financial incentive to hang out with your residents. And every single time you hung out with your residents, you could file for it was called like a an impromptu event or something. And I I would file every single time because I'd always have like 10 people hanging out in my room and then they were like, "You can't do that because now you're just hanging out with your friends and charging us for it." You and that's what's bro's all about.

23:27 Yeah. Like what's the point? You literally found like hacked the game.

23:32 Yeah, absolutely.

23:34 Yeah.

23:34 So, did you come out of college completely rich

23:38 playing that game?

23:38 Oh, no. No, no. I think I It happened like twice. I got like a h 100red bucks, 50 bucks out of it and then that was the end of it.

23:46 It all went to Taco Bell runs.

23:49 Oh, midnight Taco Bell runs.

23:51 Sure did.

23:53 I'm a big fan of Taco Bell, but let's just agree like the prices have gotten out of hand. What happened to Taco Bell?

23:59 Insane.

24:00 Outrageous. I am That is something I could Taco Bell.

24:04 It's crazy, dude. Like Becca and I went there and I know I keep saying Becca and I we're married. It's a qualifier. just assume she's always with me. Uh Becca and I went to Taco Bell and it cost $34.

24:17 That is as much as an actual restaurant.

24:20 It's fine.

24:22 Makes me very mad.

24:23 Yeah, it's it's it's tough.

24:26 The I sometimes I just Google old pictures. I lit literally do this old pictures of Taco Bell. Even old I've googled old pictures of Taco Bell receipts just to make myself feel bad after I take my family to Taco Bell and I've paid $60 and I'm going, "What the hell?" And I've got a I've got a boy in high school and he spends 20 bucks at Taco Bell and I'm like,

24:47 "I can't do this. We can't afford Taco Bell as a family. Like, what does this world come to when you can't take your family to Taco Bell?" My My parents used to get these giant uh like boxes of tacos and we would all be fed for under 10 bucks. Oh yeah. Yeah. The taco the taco party pack. Like 20 tacos for 10 bucks, dude.

25:06 Right. I mean, what is it? McDonald's.

25:10 A McDonald's meal is now more expensive than Chipotle.

25:13 Yes.

25:14 Why?

25:15 It's like

25:16 the Costco hot dog is the only thing that remains, you know, stalwart

25:21 in the I'm going to eat that every day

25:24 and $10,000.

25:27 That's right.

25:28 So, it's actually a really big boon. It's the only thing that makes sense in this world anymore is the Costco hot dog.

25:35 Yeah.

25:35 I will say Taco Bell's kind of killing it. It's still pretty good,

25:39 right?

25:40 It's good. It's good. Beck and I, we stopped eating it in like January and then we ate it again in March and then we were like, "Oh, we can't go back to this." We've like something about we hit that 30-year-old mark and then our bodies are just like, "Nope, you can't do it. You can't do it."

25:56 You just got to get the vegetarian stuff. Just get the vegetarian stuff. That's true.

26:02 It might all be vegetarian if we're honest. Like, is that stuff really meat?

26:06 They did get sued. They did get sued for like having too much wood chips.

26:12 Silica sand.

26:14 Silica. Filler.

26:16 It's literally filler. So, they can't even call it uh like beef or any or something like they

26:21 Yeah. They have to call like meat product or something. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, it's good meat product. Let's be honest.

26:29 How genius is it that you can you can make me spend 15 bucks at Taco Bell and only give me meat product? I could literally go to to the grocery store and get a prime ribeye for that same price. And I'm like, nah, I'm going to go to Taco Bell and get some meat filler.

26:46 That's the uh that's the the stuff that the preservatives they add to it to make it addictive. But it works.

26:52 Yes, it does.

26:53 It works.

26:53 All right. So, we're gonna mark it as

26:55 kind of slap.

26:56 The second side quest of the day. We're gonna try to get to 10. If we don't get to 10, we can't we can't cash in the goals at the end of the game. Um, all right. So, you all met in college. When did board games enter the the picture? And did everyone kind of fall at the same time or was it like this slow, you know, whatever? I'm I'm losing my words. This this slow melt,

27:21 you know? I I started in college with actually a different group of friends. It's kind of Cosmic Encounter uh drugged me into it. Um and it's kind of I had kind of fallen out of uh Eli and Robert and you know the the Groves gang of friends

27:39 um until board games kind of

27:41 like I I would still go to Christmas parties and Halloween parties and whatnot and you know play the occasional uh like shooter. Me and Eli played a bunch of Hunt Showdown. Um,

27:51 that's true.

27:52 But yeah, I I had got into board games separately. Um, and that ended up dragging me back. Um, which I'm thankful for. Uh, and yeah, started playing on TTS with these guys again. And, uh, that's that's how it was. It was like TTS is kind of like what started bringing

28:10 some people together. Certainly not all 12, right?

28:15 You know, I think

28:16 No, not everyone.

28:17 Yeah. Like Becca, Becca really was just kind of like moderately into board games up until like three years ago whenever we played Moonrakers for the first time and she like really really enjoyed Moonrakers from IB Studio. Um

28:33 yeah,

28:33 because it was like we we had played Katan and we had played like Wingspan and all the the basic things. Robert and I our first

28:41 we got thrown into the fire.

28:43 Yeah. Our our first one outside of uh

28:46 Yeah. Austin, one of one of the guys on the channel, he he told he told us one weekend he was like, "Hey, there's this game. It takes about 8 to 12 hours to play. It's heavily asymmetric. It's TI4." And uh he was like, "You guys want to play it?" And we were like, "Yeah, abs, absolutely we want to do it." And that's, you know, we started with TI4 and then started playing Wingspan and Katana afterwards. But

29:11 insane. Okay, so I've never played TI4. Convince me now why I need to hop in my car tomorrow and drive straight to Arkansas to play TI4 with you.

29:22 You want to take it, Robert?

29:24 So,

29:24 you want to hit him with the

29:25 TI4 can only be described as an experience. All right. It doesn't matter if you win or lose as someone like yourself who has issues visualizing stuff.

29:35 It's one of the few games that we can look back on. Like I've gone through our old we have a whole discord just for TI games

29:42 and I'll go back and just read the stories that happened to it because we'll be chatting to each other and it'll be like

29:48 all right well I'm making this alliance with Eli but secretly on the side I'm with our friend Dylan and he's going to invade Eli and I could just actually visualize what happened in those games which is so hard for me to do

30:00 and it's all just so much fun and it's stressful in the time wrong in the moment you're like I hate you like we're never going to be friends again. You betrayed me. Eli, we're just going to attack each other every time.

30:14 Our friend Nate and I can never be in an old team. Um

30:19 but it it's just something special. It has flaws, but it's one of those things where you can overlook the flaws, or at least I can just because to me it's so special and

30:30 it's truly one of the few games I can rate a 10 out of 10.

30:33 Now, you say it has flaws. Eli, I believe you it was maybe a top 10 25 video. It was the TI the newest expansion. Does that fix any of those flaws?

30:44 Yes,

30:44 most of them. Yeah.

30:45 Would you start?

30:46 Genuinely.

30:48 Yes.

30:48 I I I would say like genuinely almost every I mean for me every single one of them like the biggest problem that I had with TI4 was that it was starting to show its age. uh like the tech tree was kind of outdated and it was just kind of like there was a meta that had formed where if you played TI4 a lot like you know the tech path that everyone's going to go and you know like typically the deals that are going to come out and like it's like once you've played it the 30 40 times however many times we've played it um you can kind of just tell what's going to happen for like the first six hours and then it's like the last two hours it really make a difference. Um, Thunder's Edge fixed all of it in like a really cool way. It also made it like modular where you can play the game a lot faster and uh there's like new mechanics that got introduced that are super cool cuz like one of the things with TI4 is you can't you couldn't previously coexist in the same system. Like if I move into the hex where you're at, we have to fight. Like mechanically we have to. And now that's no longer a thing. And the coolest thing to me are you get these rule cards that uh you you can pick and play with as many as you want. There's like 40 or something in the in the expansion and you can just toss it in.

32:02 Yeah. Like it basically thematically talks. It's like this is the the event that's happening galaxywide and then uh there's some flavor text on it, but it's basically like a rule modifier and they can be like, "Hey, you can trade your technology now." And literally just that is like oh my gosh dude so much fresh life into the game because it's like yeah

32:23 before you couldn't do that. It was you had to figure out ways to progress up the tech tree. But now like in the first round you can start trading tech to each other and then people can have like their engines online two to three hours earlier than they normally would. Or if you don't want to play a 12- hour game, there's rules that fix that and make it like I think there were some people on Reddit saying they played it in as short as like three and a half, four hours, which

32:46 Yeah, I've seen some people do like three to four. Um, some even shorter,

32:50 but those are like the ones that have played it hundreds of times, you know, but

32:54 Yeah. Yeah.

32:54 It's

32:56 What's the minimum count you'd recommend?

33:00 Six.

33:00 Six.

33:01 Six. Yeah, it's

33:03 four can be good. Um, the issue with four is in TI4 you get these special cards that just allow you to do different things. And at six, there's eight of them. In six player, you're getting six of them out on the board. So, these actions can only pretty much be done if the card's available.

33:22 In four player, everybody gets two. So, every action's available.

33:27 So, it kind of takes away some of that limiting factor. There still is some because you have to spend resources to use them,

33:33 but

33:34 some people really enjoy a four.

33:36 Yeah,

33:37 I'm mainly a six person. We've done a lot of five. Five is not it. It'd be four or six.

33:43 No, five sucks. Five. Five. It's TI4. It's still a great experience, but like it it's one of those things. It's like if I'm having a lobster dinner or a steak dinner, I want it I want it I want my I want my steak rare. Will I complain about a a medium rare steak? No. It's still a good steak, but I like my steaks rare. Six players is rare. Uh, four, let's say medium well. I think five is like five is like well done, you know, like it's it's hamburger meat.

34:13 So, if you are about to get into a game of four and I knock on the door out of nowhere, drive in through the night, you're going to be a little disappointed because you have to play it.

34:21 Oh, no.

34:23 No, we're still playing. We're still playing TF4. No, it's one of those things. Like I said, you're still having a steak dinner. It's still great. And that that's the thing is like it's such like what Robert said, it's such an experience even at five. The reason it's rough at five, and this is another thing that Thunder's Edge addresses a bit. Uh there's a there's a meta that's formed in TI that's called support swapping. It's basically you have a card like the the goal is to get to 10 points in a standard game, but you have your support for the throne and it's basically if I give you my support for the throne is thematically like my faction is publicly announcing that they support you and that has enough influence where you get a point out of it. So it's very common for people to as the game progresses and like partnerships start to form, they give each other their supports. It's called a support swap. And so it's like the way that the support swap works is we can no longer attack each other because if I give you my support for the throne and you give me yours and then I attack you, I have to give yours back and I lose that point. So it kind of locks us into a truce. Uh in usually you can play around it in some games, but in a five player game, two groups of two will support swap and then there will be one person who's just like super behind on tempo. And that's like like a single point in TI4 is really hard to make up.

35:41 Like you want to be on tempo across all the rounds.

35:44 Yeah.

35:44 If that

35:44 What's a winning score in TI4?

35:47 Or is it you're 10?

35:50 You're trying to get to 10.

35:51 Yeah.

35:52 Yeah. First person it

35:54 or if you're crazy, you can do 14.

35:58 No.

35:59 No.

35:59 Yeah. That makes

36:00 We're doing a 14 game alliance one day.

36:03 Yeah.

36:04 No. Our 10 our 10point games in person usually go 12 to 14 hours because if you haven't caught on yet uh we like to talk.

36:13 Um which which turns it turns a uh heavy negotiation game into um I mean just it's it's a ton of fun but it is all day. So

36:25 do you talk game the whole time or are you just all over the place and that's what's taking so long?

36:30 Uh we talk game the whole time. We do have a rule when when we have lunch break, we can't talk game. So, we can't be making little secret alliances and doing this during lunch because

36:41 because it's not open. It's not open that that's happening.

36:44 Can you whisper during the game? Can you like literally, you know?

36:47 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And we'll pull each other we'll pull each other to the side, but it's like everybody knows we've done that. Like if I pull Robert to the side and say, "We're attacking Eli." Everyone has seen us walk away so they know we're together like on something.

37:01 The the pro move is to text about it

37:05 because then it's like, "Oh, you're just checking your phone."

37:08 That is.

37:09 And that that's fair that's fair game. That's fair game because you know like you you might not necessarily intercept those communications if if you're sly about it. Uh it's it's amazing. on TTS. I've messaged Eli just saying hi and then message me the person I'm actually like, "Hey, he's trying to form an alliance with me. Get him."

37:27 Yeah. And it's worked. It's worked one time. And then the fun thing, too, is you can you can intentionally send somebody something and say, "Oops, sorry, wrong person." Yep. And then and then you're not actually forming a deal with anybody. You're just messing with them. The psychological torment that you can cause TI is incredible.

37:43 I think Let me paint you a picture.

37:45 All right. Go ahead. Let me paint. This is my last thing I'll I'll say about it, then I'll get

37:49 No, we can keep going.

37:51 But, okay, there's a faction, one of my favorites. They're called the Embers of Muad. It's I won't get into the lore. The only thing you need to know is that in the Prophecy of Kings expansion introduces like an extra layer of asymmetry. Everyone gets what's called a hero, and the heroes have like these usually really impactful once per game abilities. Embers of Muat has a galactic nuke and what they can do is they move in and it says to pick up the hex they moved into, move that and everything on it completely out of the game and then replace it with a giant supernova like a like an exploded star. And that's just like if you're not convinced at the thought of being able to like space nuke somebody, I don't know what's going to do it for you.

38:42 I was convinced before. Now I'm just like how how do I play this freaking game? Like

38:48 it's perfect timing. You know, no job. Will you play TI4? Yeah.

38:52 Like that's there's 100% there's

38:54 nothing better. I love above the table storytelling. I love Yeah.

39:00 the the table talk. I love the negotiation. and I love it. Recently, I played um Have you guys played Lords of Vegas at all?

39:08 No. Uh no, I've seen I've seen playthroughs on it, but I've never played it.

39:12 Yeah, I was in Dice Tower West in Vegas, of course, and played Lords of Vegas and met these guys and we were just going back and forth stealing each other's casinos, like pulling shady moves in that game. Everything, any deal is is okay. Like, you can trade and make any sort of deal, future promises, all of that stuff. And it was such a blast. And the cool thing was the alliances and rivalries actually followed from game to game. We played this like five times during Dice Tower West. So as as we started playing other games, we would start be starting pissed at one person and we're like, "Okay, this is going to be the game we're going to be friends, right?" And or not. And it was just like the stories that you could tell from one game to the next were incredible. Do you find that with TI4? like where you're, you know, one game is bleeding into the next or like, you know, you start to understand how a certain player plays and, you know, they're just always shady so you're always out to get them.

40:09 Oh, 100%. I will say we we try keyword try to not carry gametoame hate like over over games just mainly because it's like hey we played TI4 like twice a year and if something crappy happened last time it's all just for the love of the game you know uh we do a very bad job of it

40:35 you say it but it's always in your head it's always in your head that he stabbed your back the last time, you know.

40:41 Yeah, for sure. For sure.

40:43 The the tr the layers of trust can can definitely fall, you know, game to game where you're like, well,

40:50 yeah, I trust you, I guess.

40:54 The other thing that sold me on this is you mentioned 10 points is the winning score. I love like Dune Imperium. I love games with very low point totals that you are going where every point feels like it was so incredibly difficult, especially when the points can be taken away like in Dune. I don't know if that that can happen in TI4, but sometimes it it it adds to that kind of story that's being told and that drama and that tension. And if you're in a 14-hour day doing this, I could imagine

41:26 like your your heart starts to beat a little bit sometimes, right?

41:28 Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I've had moments where I was shaking like

41:34 if you're if you're trying to be sneaky, too. Oh my goodness. Like

41:38 we there was one of our last games we played in person. I know. I was It was like me and Robert were both on the edge of winning. Um and I had this really sneaky play that like for about an hour nobody had caught it, but just it just kept going and kept going and finally somebody saw like my winning move and said, "Whoa, wait. We can't let Matt do that. And like the entire there was an hour of adrenaline.

42:01 So you kind of had checkmate for an hour. Uh essentially.

42:05 Yeah. Yeah. Without calling it out because if I was saying that statement for an hour I had a path to victory that nobody could see.

42:13 Uh but then they found out right like if any other game if you have a path to victory for an hour uh you're probably going to win.

42:21 Oh that's cool. So you only play two times a year.

42:25 Two. We used to play a lot more, but with the Grove and just like us being older, it's a little bit tougher. But we have a big 3D printed trophy that's one of the units of the game. It It's like a big It's called a war on. It's like the Death Star basically, but it's a big trophy. And then the winner of the game, Robert, I think you actually have the most

42:45 right.

42:46 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But um

42:48 Robert won the last one. Uh but we try to meet like two times a year. We'd like to do it more, but we've uh we've kind of hit that point where there are so many games to play that sometimes I don't want to only play TI4 if we're getting together for a full weekend of playing games, you know.

43:05 Um mainly because we discovered Blood on the Clock Tower. That's honest. If we're being honest, that's that's kind of like

43:12 that did steal a lot of days.

43:14 I I think you might be like the one of the only game groups in the US that can actually discover Blood on the Clock Tower and just like get a game spun together with your game group. That's That's pretty special.

43:24 Yeah.

43:25 Super cool.

43:27 Does everybody have a really solid group?

43:30 Yeah.

43:30 Yeah.

43:31 Yeah. Yeah. I and we and we even have about I would say six to 10 non like the grow Oh yeah, there's the trophy. Look at that. Look at that.

43:43 It's cool.

43:44 Nice. Yeah, we we have it's coming home with me next time, Robert. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's coming.

43:50 I think you all need

43:51 Go ahead. Go ahead, Matt.

43:54 Uh yeah, well, I I was gonna jump back to blood on the clock tower, but

43:58 Oh, go ahead. Yeah, just that that that we have we have a a large group of people who can play even outside the Grove. Uh I know like our local board game cafe, the the folks who run that like they like to be able to get away from the board game cafe and come play with us and just a couple of other you know friends that are like I'm all in on Blood on the Clock Tower. I think that's the beauty of Social Deduction is that like

44:21 you can get non board gamers into it fairly easily, right? Um, you know, it's it's less of a cell than 12 hours of TI4. Like,

44:30 right, you personality, right? You need a a certain personality that doesn't mind the the lying. Uh, but yeah, it's honestly, I don't think there's anything that brings people together more than a good social deduction game.

44:44 I agree. I really do. I I think it's one of those things where you just have to be able to like there are people that I've played with who have a hard time separating the intent of the game

44:55 against the intent of the person. It's like I'm not lying to you because I'm a bad person. I'm lying to you because it's the games. Like

45:02 in a worker placement game, I'm not going to call you a bad person because you went to the same spot. I mean, I probably am going to call you a bad person if you took the spot I wanted. But it's neither here nor there.

45:10 Oh, I will. Yeah, for sure.

45:12 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm going to assume you did that just uh to to you know take my spot.

45:18 I probably did if we're being honest.

45:20 Yeah,

45:22 I brought I definitely I I've been on rides home with my fiance after a game of Blood on the Clock Tower and she's just like, I can't believe you lied to me for two hours. Like I can't believe I'm like look it's the game. And of course she doesn't mean it. He understands it's the game, but it's just like

45:39 all right.

45:40 Matt, neither of us should ever be trusted in Blow the Clock Tower at any point.

45:44 It's true. It's true. You guys

45:46 Well, I mean, haven't you all got to the point where everybody stabbed everyone at this point for in in some game or another, you know? So, it's kind of

45:55 It's just that Nick and I can more consistently make people believe us.

46:02 Yeah.

46:05 To them.

46:06 Yeah. Matt and Robert typically run the show. Becca and I storyt tell. So, we do a thing. We usually have, like Matt said, when we do board game events or like just, hey, come play board games. We'll have like the Grove crew plus like 10 sometimes other people. So, like we did an event over MLK weekend where it was just like, hey, we're not filming anything. Show up. Let's just hang out. And I think we had like 20 18 people show up. Um, but for for Blood on the Clock Tower, Becca and I both storytell. So, uh, she'll go off and like have her notepad and follow people around and then I'll go off and do the same thing. And it makes for a really cohesive experience because we've got, you know, 12 people playing. I can check in on six, she'll check in on six, and then we'll get back together. Kind of get the narrative going. But we also go all out.

46:55 Like we have custom lights in our house that like if evil wins, we can make everything red. or if blue wins, we make every or if good wins, we make everything blue and uh we like put music on and like we get into it. We have like a candles to represent everybody's life and a fake clock tower and all this stuff, but we try to get into it.

47:14 It's a lot of fun.

47:15 Say, and we had an alum of the show.

47:18 Oh, go ahead.

47:19 Go. Go ahead. Go ahead.

47:21 So, we we had an alum of the show uh Mr. Chris Porter himself got to come play blood with on the clock tower with us.

47:27 That's awesome. Is he close to you? I mean, he's in Tennessee, right next door, right?

47:33 He's Yeah, he's he's in Memphis. So, he he's actually coming

47:37 Yeah, he's he's coming down on Sunday. We're gonna play his new game, Headliner, uh which is which is about like forming a rock band, which is super super cool.

47:44 Yeah, he was telling me about that and just like relax. Yeah, it's cool.

47:48 I love Chris. I love what uh Chris Couch Games is doing. I was a huge fan of Holiday Hills. Um yeah,

47:55 you know, I I I'm a huge fan of I liked Pedal. I loved Garden Club. Um, it just

48:01 Yes, Garden Club's so good.

48:03 That I thought so too. Like I was talking to Board Game Co. and he he thought pedal was so much better. I'm like, are you high? Like I felt like

48:11 that's crazy. Interesting. It really was.

48:13 I would I would say crazy. It's different different strokes for different folks, but the amount of trash talking that Becca and I like you would have thought that I was ready to throw my wife out of a window over some strawberries. And that's my opinion. Yeah. Well, I think that's it comes down to personal taste, right? Because uh you know, I think he cited the tool cards as not liking having too many tool cards or whatever. Tool cards might be a little out of bal out of balance, but uh I love the tool cards. That's the take that mechanism that makes it so fun. That makes the game dynamic that makes it way better than pedal, right? Like I I I loved it. And then he told me that he has like chainsaws and these other things that you know these kind of like random tools

48:54 on people's trelluses and stuff.

48:56 Yeah, I know. Well, as soon as you said that, I was like, "My wife is always putting trelluses out early, and it drives me insane because I forget I even have a trellis. Sometimes I end without even putting a trellis out." So, if I had a chainsaw, I would be chopping them down left and right.

49:09 Absolutely. Yeah. And it's cool, too, what what I love about Chris is he is what I think the term he uses is like kitchen sink designer. So, he'll like make a game and then he'll be like, "I want to make like four expansions off of it." And they're just like tiny little the rules is like on a card, you know, not a ton of not a ton of overhead and you can just mix and match and really make the game that you want to play, which is great because like I love super super super heavy games and Mecca likes more middleweight games. So if we can mix and match and if if we start that middleweight and then slowly add more stuff so it gets heavier. That's I I love that system. I think he does a really good job.

49:46 Right. Well, I you know, Holiday Hills I I appreciate that there's naughty and nice, but I'm only playing naughty. I'm never I'm never going to play this.

49:53 Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah, it's such a it's such a brutal mode, too. I love

49:58 another reason why I love his games is because he does have like there's take that mechanisms in there. They're not they're not overwhelming, but I feel like that makes board games so much more dynamic when there's board interaction, dynamic play states.

50:12 It's it's constantly changing. But I really recognize some people just hate like having their party ruined. I love to mess up your game,

50:20 you know? I was playing ARCs the other day um was the last one we played and I realized that I was I was just

50:27 out of the gates just not doing well and I was like you know what all I'm going to do is mess with you Eric I'm literally just going to do everything I can to make to make you lose and a lot of people hate that about you know Cole Worley's games in particular king making and and all of that stuff but I love that it's so good

50:44 yeah it's part of it that's part of it that's that's like one of the things is

50:47 sometimes I want to play tend and we we talked about how we're top 10 list is sometimes I want to play 10 and I just want to be a farmer

50:54 and I just want to hang out.

50:56 Sometimes I want to I want to shoot you with a gun and that's okay. You know it just it's just you know pick pick the flavor you're feeling.

51:02 Yeah. You have what where are these reviews?

51:08 Twilight Imperium Tend Castles of Burgundy the Nemesis Slay the Spire Breakers Anarchy Blood on the Clock Tower. Um, and you know, you're you are not shy about giving tens.

51:22 Uh, a lot of people don't play t don't give tens because there's nowhere to go up. What if something better comes out?

51:29 I think I think it you have to look at stuff because you know like this we kind of loop back to uh we can loop back to Chris games like you have to look at certain you have to look at a game for what it is trying to do. And I I know that like there are reviewers who try to look at a game versus the broader market, which is a consideration. You know, there's so many games being produced. You need to consider can other games offer what this game is offering like better, cheaper in a better experience, what have you. I love looking at a game. I'm like, I've played this several times.

52:03 Would I ever tell someone that I don't want to play? Like if someone came up to me and said, "Hey, I want to play Castles of Burgundy." And I'm like, "Yeah, absolutely." Like I I would play Castles of Burgundy 40 times in a row and I'd be so excited. Nemesis the same way. Say the Spire same way. Blood on the clock the same way. I know that things can get better, but like reserving a 10 for that feels just kind of arbitrary. I think if a game gives you that feeling of really loving it and enjoying it,

52:30 it's okay to give stuff 10, you know? And then also like it's okay to go back and say, "Hey, I gave like Brink for my Studio is one of the games. I think I gave it like a 9.5. I give it like a seven now because

52:40 I noticed you're at a seven and a half. I was gonna ask about that. I thought you like that more.

52:44 Yeah. Yeah.

52:45 It used to be It used to be one of my top ones and I' I've played other games and my tastes have changed and that's okay. It's still fantastic. Like it it I think when people give reviews

52:56 I I just feel like there's a magic in board games that when you try to quantify it, it gets lost a little bit. And so when I give reviews, I just try to keep that sense of like wonder because at the end of the day, we're just playing with toys, right? Like if I'm having fun with this toy, it's a 10 out of 10,

53:13 you know?

53:14 Right.

53:15 For me, I know it's a 10 when I literally feel a buzzing in my brain. Like it starts it starts to vibrate a little bit and I enter flow state and I'm so excited for my next turn. I can't wait. I'm getting pissed at the next person for taking too long, even at like a 30 second mark. And I'm just like there's just there's just so much uh going on and I'm like okay what lever can I pull? And then

53:38 if I don't care that I would lose and I just want to say what happens when I pull this and then this in this order. I don't care that my wife might might be playing a better game. I just want to see what happens. And to me that's a 10 is is something that continues get to give me that um

53:57 that feeling over time. But I do recognize and I built in a cardboard that preferences change. And not only preferences, some games just have a have a shelf life.

54:06 Wingspan was a 10 for me when I played Wingspan cuz it was the first designer board game I'd ever played.

54:11 Yeah,

54:12 it's not a 10 any longer. It's probably a seven. I think I might have it at like a seven, seven and a half. I still would would play it if you ask me, but I'm not going to jump at it like I would arcs for example or Barrage is another one that I absolutely love. Um, but right now I've just started playing a bunch of IV Studios stuff and right now you asked me to play Brink. Boom. Yeah, I I want to play Brink. Like, you know, Fracture Sky, boom, I'm in I'm in on Fractured Sky. Let's do it. Like, you know, but that changes over time and I think that's

54:39 where the sometimes the audience sometimes I'm pretty critical about board game reviewers or at least thinking about how I review games because I a lot of times I'm reviewing it at the early part of the arc of me loving or hating a game. Right.

54:53 Yeah. you're reviewing after probably five or less plays, which

54:57 right, you know,

54:59 and usually that's the honeymoon period where you're like, "This game's incredible."

55:03 Oh, there's been

55:05 countless tens in the five play range for me. I'm just like I'm thinking about them. Very few. Castles of Burgundy is is one of them. We'll just like barrage is another route, arcs, like those are some of my favorite games. Dune imparium up to an extent. Um, I'm constantly they're constantly kind of challenging me. It's the the puzzle hasn't been solved. Um, you know, typically they're highly dynamic social games because the play state is never,

55:35 you know, it's never solved. You know, barrage being a Euro that play that that board is constantly changing. Um, there's there's constantly a new puzzle to solve. How do you all feel about or or like um

55:48 like broadly speaking as the Grove like what's your stance on reviews? How many times you have to play a game? Like do you have any sort of like uh structure or thought around that

55:59 or is everyone different? You have 12 people. So,

56:06 Matt, you want to take it?

56:08 Well, yeah. You know, I was just going to say that we we've not

56:12 I I don't know if I would say we've actually even done a review at this point.

56:16 Uh at least not in a typical

56:18 sense. We've done lots of

56:21 Stone Stone was the first one we titled a review. Yeah.

56:25 Yeah. I noticed that when I was looking through it. Um, mainly because we've always been hesitant to, you know, stamp that like our opinion is is broaden or like what am I? We've we've struggled with is our opinion uh big enough like have we played enough games? Have we played that game enough? because like Stone Saga, uh, Eli, you and Becca have played that at this point 20 hours, right, before you went into that review. Um, whereas like, okay, we're talking about, we have a video coming up where I talk about uh, Luier or Luteier by Patterson Games and I've played it three times. Three times is enough to talk about it. Three times is not enough to give like

57:12 I really enjoy it. I love it. Um,

57:15 and I the blind bidding incredible. Um, but

57:19 that was a 10, by the way. Now it's probably like an eight for me, but it's because I played it past five, you know,

57:24 and that's that's what I even said in that video. Um, was that like, hey, after three plays, I love this game. Am I still going to love it after 10? I'm not sure. Um, and so I I would be hesitant to to make a review having only played a game three times. Um, I'm definitely Yeah. in the camp and with different play groups. our play group very often we we've been told when we do play testing for games that

57:48 um we have a very different way of playing games than a lot of play groups. Um

57:54 and because of that like you know it could skew our you know an opinion of a game if we just play with the same four people. Um so

58:04 that that's how I feel. Eli you want to hop in? Yeah, I was going to say like you you mentioned the whole um us not wanting to when we first started this channel, we had played a lot of games, but like we you look at someone like The Dice Tower, they've played thousands, tens of thousands at this point. So, there was this hesitation for us to say like, "Oh, this is like the best game of all time." Because we didn't have a lot of references like, "Oh, this is our favorite trick taker. I've played three trick takers, you know." Um, so we we tended to avoid reviews there for a little bit, but we also I mean speaking from just for myself, I again going back to the toy factor, the fact I I could enjoy throwing rocks at each other if we're playing with our friends, you know, like so for me is if I'm I'm just going to inherently be biased and give stuff happy reviews if I have a happy time with my friends. We've we've very rarely played a game. There have been a few games that we've played that we've been like, "Hey, we don't think this is the right fit for the channel." And and that honestly is more because it just isn't the right fit for the channel, then it's a bad game. Uh, but we don't want to give the perception that everything is positive. We're we're toying with the idea of like moving into more reviews with that new video that Matt talked about. Kind of like rapid fire, but at the same time like we're friends with a lot of designers and I'm really really slow to say negative things because I think for like for someone who's just a player and someone

59:34 who isn't really on this side of things when they don't like a game and they get like really mad about it, you're hurting someone. And not just financially, but like a lot of times that was a lot of effort and time that they put into it. So when I give reviews or I give feedback, I try to make it as constructive as possible because like, you know, even for making playthroughs, we're putting ourselves out there. We're making ourselves vulnerable. Um, we've had some like negative messages in the past from people on like Reddit or Facebook saying like, "Oh, you guys are just selling out and trying to push your your channel." And it's like, no, we're just excited and happy. And I I'm I'm very hesitant to, you know, disparage someone who put part of their heart and soul into a product.

1:00:18 Yeah. And how much money are you making right now to sell out and really push your channel?

1:00:23 None. We're none.

1:00:25 Yeah. We're we're actually

1:00:28 Shut up. Yeah.

1:00:29 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm building.

1:00:31 This has been a big loss for me. Just to be clear for everybody. I'm looking at lots of equipment. Everything net loss. Big time.

1:00:38 Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's just pure passion and I think um going back to the whole like review sance and stuff, we're we're trying to get more into it and like giving our opinion still in a constructive way, but we we want to fully avoid being a channel that engagement baits if that makes sense. Like

1:00:56 if we don't like a game, there's a really good chance we're just not going to put it on the channel. Yeah.

1:01:00 Uh because it's just like, hey, another channel might like this more. I'm not going to get up. I think it's really irresponsible. Uh, I know that some channels do this and and that's just because it's it's the nature of the beast. But I think it's really irresponsible, like what Matt said, to play a game twice and then get up on a channel and be like, "Hey, I hated this." Because you could really hurt. I mean, that that that could be the difference between a publisher being able to continue to make games and not making games ever again. And that that doesn't go for like the the people who mismanage Kickstarters, which is a whole another issue. Like that kind of stuff, like the industry problems, that's a different conversation. But when it comes to like an actual game that someone really worked hard on, I just I don't know. I'm just excited to be hanging out with my friends.

1:01:42 Yeah. What do you say to the people that say you have an obligation to the audience to say everything you're feeling about a game and report on the games you don't like?

1:01:53 Yeah, I I hear that. So the games and that's the thing. The games we don't like, I don't think we've really played. There was one that we played that wasn't ready yet. And so for I I think one reviewing games that aren't fully developed that's a waste of time like in my opinion it's not ready. If it's if it's ready if it's in the prototype prototype phase and it's on Kickstarter that's different. But if it's a game that's like hey this is basically an alpha product. We don't even have art yet. I'm not going to review that. I think that's the only time we've played a game that we actively didn't enjoy. Um

1:02:28 but and it wasn't going to be available. So, like there was no sense in us sharing our review. But

1:02:33 I I think it's important to uh because we're we're slightly different cuz you know, as it's been said several times, there's there's 10 of us.

1:02:41 Um with 10 very different tastes.

1:02:43 I thought I heard I'm so confused now.

1:02:46 Yeah. No, I I count There's 11 of us. There's 11 now. Okay.

1:02:49 In the 25 I'm going to have to put that in the show notes.

1:02:53 We lost a guy.

1:02:55 Give it Give it Give it a few days. We'll be at 12. You're you're you're coming. You know, you're on board. You're in. Okay.

1:03:03 Oh, maybe that's what that

1:03:04 you want to be more confused.

1:03:05 I was auditioning and you were just making the count. Okay.

1:03:08 Perfect.

1:03:09 Well, if you want to be more confused, we've had 13 on the channel, but there's 11 of us that do it most.

1:03:14 As long as there's a seat for me, I don't care what the number is. Yeah.

1:03:18 Perfect. Perfect. You're in. Um, beautiful.

1:03:21 But just we there's so many different takes and like we have several people that like party games and like games. like that's what they're all about. And so if they were to review, you know, uh a speak easy that, you know, we talk about in a video coming up, like they would say this game's not great because it's not for them.

1:03:40 Um

1:03:41 it's so good.

1:03:41 And so it's it's it's just hard for it's hard for a group of 12 people

1:03:47 to uh like have a unified voice in that front. Um,

1:03:52 and so there is there's a lot of games that, you know, you would say, "Well, you you need to talk about the games you don't like."

1:03:57 Well, I didn't like it, but Robert loved it. So, like, should Robert talk about it or should I talk about it? Like,

1:04:04 it's a really really good point. Like, with uh you mentioned Wingspan, like we we recently did a playthrough for Stonemire Games and like Matt and Ashley love Wingspan and Beck and I we we enjoyed it. It's kind of the similar story like we loved it when we first played it. It's falling off for us a little bit. The new expansion though is very good, but um we fell off it a little bit. We knew that Matt and Ashley would be better fits. So, usually when we are showcasing something on the channel, we have a wide enough group where we're able to pick people who do enjoy it. My whole take with like you have an obligation to report on games that you didn't like. We're not in that review space. We're mainly just in it. Like, we will play a game and that should give you enough information on whether or not we like it. If we sit down and do a talking video, you should be able to ascertain if you like it. And as a consumer, as we've mentioned, like we are not making money off of this. We are in a lot of debt over the studio.

1:04:57 Um, as a consumer, I feel like you also have a responsibility yourself to figure out if you will like the game that you're going to buy. Like,

1:05:07 Right.

1:05:08 Yeah. You don't Somebody just telling you to like it is Yeah.

1:05:12 Yeah. And I'm guilty of that, too. I've watched plenty of videos where someone's someone that I've trusted or some a channel that I've watched a lot of No Rollsbard comes to mind. Like I'll watch them play a game and I'm like, "Oh, it looks fun. I'm going to buy it and then it's not the right fit." But I'm not going to get mad at No Rolls Bard because all they did was play it and just showcase it. And uh again, they're a friend group. They're just having fun. Like again, we could we could just

1:05:33 we could play throwing my cousins and I grew up we were we played throwing walnuts at each other. We literally called them walnut fights growing up in the country. That's what we had access to. So, but we would we had walnut fights and that was a blast. And you know what? That is my mentality stuff, too. I'm just having fun. It's a 10.

1:05:51 Well, if that's a 10, I'm never listening to anything you have to say again. You're completely compromised.

1:05:57 I I didn't grow up in the country.

1:05:59 All the walnuts.

1:06:00 Yeah.

1:06:00 Yeah. Big big walnuts.

1:06:02 Do you have brain damage from those walnuts? Like, why would I listen to you?

1:06:05 Genuinely sure. Yeah, I'm genuinely sure I do. So what would you say to people that say that you are compromised because you are friends with designers and you know you have relationships with people in the industry?

1:06:18 Yeah. I just personally am like we are friends with designers. We're we and frankly like we do get paid sometimes to do playthroughs and and and uh previews and stuff like that but at the same time like I said we've not really played games that we haven't enjoyed. And and we have those we have a I think we have a good enough relationship with the friends who are designers where we can push back and be like, "Hey, we didn't really like this." And there have been times where I've given feedback on like rule books or or mechanics. Um there's some stuff that I I would love to talk about, but I can't because of NDAs, but like there have been times where I've like kind of argued back and forth pretty heavily with designers. We've not showcased those games on the channel. But uh I think we are friends with designers, but again our position in the market is not to convince you to buy a game. We're just a friend group wanting to share our love with of games with the internet. And if that resonates with you, that's fantastic. But like I have a full-time job and I don't need like commission rates off of games to survive, if that makes sense. So I think if anything there's a point where we're not biased because of that. Like we all have full-time jobs. We all self finance this. Uh we, like I said, we get paid a little bit. And that's mainly just because we took out debt to buy cameras and build the studio. Once that's paid off, like we're not going to be doing this full-time in a sense of like, hey, I I have to make sure that I have a really good relationship with this publisher because if I don't, then I might not be able to pay my bills. I just want to have a good relationship with the publisher because in real life, we're friends, if that makes sense.

1:07:50 Right. Losing Matt.

1:07:52 We've looked out. Yeah.

1:07:54 Yeah.

1:07:54 We've looked out where anytime we've actually like thought, "Oh, okay. This game isn't great or something." I'll be honest,

1:08:02 we messed up the rules somewhere.

1:08:04 Yeah, that's understand.

1:08:07 Have you made a video?

1:08:07 And then we go back

1:08:08 on that. That's really embarrassing.

1:08:10 No, but we've gone back and go.

1:08:13 Yeah.

1:08:13 Oh, that's how

1:08:16 Okay. Well, I don't have a gripe with this anymore because it was me messing it up, not the design that was messed up. I mean it was actually

1:08:23 playing the rule book writer but other than that you know it was your fault.

1:08:27 Yeah. So so it's interesting you mentioned Fractured Sky. That's one of the games and you said you love it. We we we did not realize that you could use skimmers to secure rewards because we we misinterpreted that in the rule book. But I felt good for a little we held an event.

1:08:43 Yeah. Yeah. We held an event for Ivy Studio for the the new expansion. Yeah.

1:08:47 And Lily came down and she said, "Oh, well, it's funny that you mentioned that cuz I also didn't think that." And like she literally works for the company and helped play test it and stuff. And even she didn't realize that until like two days before the event. So after we figured that out, we were like, "Oh my gosh, that fixes like all of our issues with this game because we were just like, how can you get enough resources to do anything?" And then you just use skimmers. That's that's the solution. But thankfully, we made our video on Fractured Sky after we realized that. So we

1:09:14 I know, right?

1:09:15 That's the closest we got. That's the closest we got.

1:09:17 Yeah.

1:09:18 And we also d

1:09:20 we also really dive into things like

1:09:23 just between the group, especially Eli and I, if there's something out, we're gonna spend 40 hours figuring something out about the game if we really enjoy it.

1:09:32 Oh my goodness. you you should have seen. So, we we did a playthrough for the new Voidfall expansion um recently, and uh I'm in the Discord, the the Mind Clash Discord with these two. Um and there's there's channels all about Voidfall. And Robert went on like probably like, you know, I don't even know how to explain it. A novel's worth of messaging back and forth with people of like how to understand

1:09:59 the Yeah. theory crafting, like how to make his faction work. It was just like, my goodness, like this is above the Call of Duty for what we were doing for the video. But Robert just actually wanted to win. So,

1:10:11 we were just so excited and he did and I was I was genuinely very proud. Uh yeah, that's that's funny. It's funny that you mentioned that. Like that's another thing with with games is uh when it comes to like our friendships with designers. I've like like I said there have been a few times where I've like argued kind of aggressively about like certain designs and like sent like hey mathematically speaking here's a formula that breaks down why this is not mechanically balanced. Um right but like we we usually dive really deep into games. I think like some some of the stuff we've not reviewed we like legacy games and stuff like that is because we we feel it's weird to not weird because you know everyone has different levels of standards but for us

1:10:52 I don't want to do a review of like Osworn after playing two sessions of because of that honeymoon phase we talked about like

1:11:00 I might get bored of it after 10 and totally different as you go through right like there's so much content you haven't seen I laugh when I see videos where people are I mean a lot of them to be fair they're calling it impressions and and and all of that but you know I'm a big proponent of it definitely disclosing how much you have played of a game and I don't hear that all the time

1:11:25 I you know you saying that makes me like we

1:11:28 we should do that if we if we ever dive into reviews I actually really appreciate that as an idea of like hey I've played this game 12 times or hey I've played this game three times three times I'm going to be saying, "Well, I'll listen to you. I'll hear you out, but I'm not putting a lot of, you know, weight in what you're saying."

1:11:47 Um, but

1:11:48 yeah,

1:11:50 I don't think there's enough context in reviews and and there's a lot of different ways like you can provide context. The number of plays, the who you've played them with, like even the if you really think about some of your best play playthroughs of all time, a lot of it has to do with who's at the table with you. No, nobody, no audience ever knows that. They do know that in playthroughs,

1:12:12 you all do great playthroughs and I like watching the playthroughs, but people's attention span is so damn short that they don't watch plays. You know what they want? They want they want a 36 game in 10 minute review

1:12:26 and so they can see all these games and with no like true context deep diving, which is fine. I get it. but who you play with, how many people you play, how many times you played, and who you are. I think you touched on this, Eli, a little bit about like almost feeling I'll put words in your mouth, like an imposter syndrome on not playing enough games or or to

1:12:49 that is important, right? Who are you as a gamer? Like when Tom Bassel, I'm interviewing him on Friday, um talks to me about playing a game, I don't know how relevant that is to me,

1:13:01 to be honest. And I'm going to ask him this like how relevant do you think your opinion is to a normal person? I feel like I've gotten jaded over time. I go I always go back to the example where Wingspan was a 10. Depending on when you talk to me about Wingspan, I would have sold it to you.

1:13:16 Bottom line,

1:13:17 you know, I just played coming of age today. I will sell that to everyone. I think it's absolutely incredible. If I'm three, four plays down the line, I might have say, oops. Uh, you know, I'm not going to pull it off the shelf again. You know, this is all of that is super important, but also what's your taste like? Eli, you've rated um some games, 62 reviews on cardboard. You and I have an 83% match. So, when I look at all of the different mechanics that we like, genres we like, and then levels of complexity, luck, um interaction, rules, overhead, all of that stuff in general, we match at an 83% clip. So, when you tell me that you like a game, I'm going to listen and I'm going to say,

1:13:59 you know, I bet I I probably have a pretty good chance of liking that if you like it as well.

1:14:03 At the same time, you we might have a 50% match and you might say, in fact, Robert, you and I, you only put 10 ratings on there, but you and I have a 61% match right now. 10 is not quite enough to get a like, but let's just imagine you rated everything you've ever played.

1:14:17 I'm I'm probably not going to listen to you, Robert, you know, because or or I won't go buy a game because you say you love it. I want to hear what Eli says. Yeah. I think all of that context is missing. And that's what's driven me crazy with people arguing with me in comments about like, you know, liking the game, not liking game, whatever. It's like, how the hell do you know?

1:14:35 You You don't know me. You don't know what I've played. You don't know what I've played recently. You don't know if I've overplayed trick taken games recently. Like, all of that that context is missing. And reviews are problematic. So, you know,

1:14:48 I sort of applaud you from staying away from them, but I know you're looking into into doing them. Um,

1:14:53 well, yeah, it's it's a tough it's a tough thing to balance because like we kind of hinted on it a little bit how board gaming is such a niche hobby and one of the things we'd love to do is hit a point where we have a bigger subscriber base and a consistent audience and you know like we can just see the channel continue to grow and we're working at that and we're trying to do it in an honest way. But I mean it is it is true that one of the things that does well are like top 10 lists or reviews and like rapid fire stuff like that. And I think it's silly because I've seen a lot of sentiment on this where people are kind of like

1:15:29 hateful towards content creators for making that kind of content. And it's like

1:15:35 I make it too.

1:15:37 Well, you have to. You have to.

1:15:40 Yeah. Yeah. It's like we we we well we we post a playthrough and you don't watch it but we post a top 10 and you watch it and say why do you make this content like I'd love to see other things. It's like

1:15:50 we're trying to do other things but yeah you

1:15:53 well great example is

1:15:56 Go ahead.

1:15:57 I was just going to say for us to grow like we have to do the thing that gets eyes on the channel. Um

1:16:03 that's not selling out. That's not us giving,

1:16:06 you know, it's not us giving false opinions, you know, like our our highest view videos where just me and Eli are talking about little uh trinkets and things you can buy off of Amazon to like improve your board gaming experience. And it's just like

1:16:19 And it's just like

1:16:20 full disclosure, we've made about $30 off of that video. So,

1:16:23 yeah, those Amazon links those Amazon uh buy Hugo's amazing tape. But anyways,

1:16:31 it is amazing.

1:16:32 It is incredible. Um,

1:16:34 is that for repairing boxes?

1:16:37 No, I actually have some sitting right here.

1:16:41 It's It's invisible. Like it's it's invisible tape that doesn't stick to anything,

1:16:46 but it sticks to itself.

1:16:48 Yeah.

1:16:49 So, you can you can wrap it around like a deck of cards

1:16:53 and it will hold itself together without being like a tape.

1:16:57 Oh, so you're making essentially your own like deck holder or whatever it might be. Yeah.

1:17:02 Yeah.

1:17:02 It's It's fantastic for organizing games.

1:17:04 All right. Put your link. Put your link in there. I'm going to buy some and make you three cents.

1:17:10 Heck yeah. Probably a fraction of a cent if we're honest.

1:17:14 We can go get some uh We can go get some what? Silica beef from Taco Bell. We can go get like

1:17:20 Oh, you wish. You know how much we have to buy a lot more.

1:17:25 Yeah.

1:17:26 We might We might be able to put a down payment on a hot dog. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I've seen the the new Methodist to Clara, your Costco hot dog.

1:17:37 I don't know if you guys have seen that.

1:17:39 Yeah. To those videos, I So, I tell this story all the time. I'm I'm sitting here. I'm editing this this nine games I wish I played sooner. And yeah,

1:17:48 I think it's the biggest piece of [ __ ] video I've ever made in my life. And I'm just like I really do. I I hate it. I felt like my takes were bad. Like I just didn't like the way I showed up on camera. all this stuff and I was like, you know what? I need to get a video out. So, I'm going to put this thing out. And it uh you know, it sucks. I shouldn't probably shouldn't have done that. Right now, it is by far my highest viewed video. Like over I think it's like 150,000 views or something stupid.

1:18:15 Wow. Congratulations.

1:18:17 Well, yeah, but it's also how but how how shallow is this where it's literally the video that I am least ex like least proud of ever? And it is

1:18:28 I get it, man.

1:18:29 List videos sell, which is so annoying. Um because I don't play enough games to I don't have enough list videos for everyone, you know. I'm not one of those guys that that constantly am getting, you know, new games in. I like to dive deeper into games myself. Um but yeah, it's

1:18:44 Yeah, absolutely.

1:18:45 That you know, how do you think about like your goals on the channel and growth and kind of like your why?

1:18:52 Like what? Let's go around. Why what's everybody's why? Why the hell are you doing this? Why you why you sub are you subjecting yourself to debt? People making bad comments, you know, assuming that you're making money and you're you're not making anything at all. Like what are you doing this for?

1:19:07 I'll I'll start. I I think for me like it's

1:19:11 100% the opportunity to spend more time with my friends. Like we we are legitimately friends. We would be playing board games without the cameras. Um my day job is making videos. I uh make documentaries about farmers all like 40 hours a week

1:19:26 really.

1:19:27 Um yeah, it's it's super fun, super cool. Um and so that was why there was, you know, a year and a half ago, uh we were in a chat, Eli, Robert, uh Taylor, sever several other people. I was like, we could make videos. I was like, yeah, we could. I know how to make videos. Like, let's do it. Um, and so, so for me, the why is 100% just spending time with my friends. Um, doing something that's fun, getting the opportunity to play more board games. Um, yeah, that's that's what it's all about for me.

1:19:57 Yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll backpack off of that. Speaking of, our first video that we made was a Moon Rakers playthrough and we had 19 we had 19 subscribers at the time, all of them friends or us. And

1:20:09 I was going to say, how how did you have 19? That's insane.

1:20:12 Yeah. We started with 12 because of the or 11 11 because of the group. Uh but then I was just like hey mom will you subscribe to our YouTube channel. Uh and then we we I sent it to Austin from IB Studio and I was like this is the coolest thing anyone has ever made. And I'm going to tell you something right now.

1:20:33 It's awful. The top cam cell

1:20:38 can full display free dude in this economy. I can't even afford Taco Bell and I'm out here putting my feet on the internet. But uh but yeah, no, we we had a talk cam that was a cell phone. We didn't focus lock it, so it's just like going in and out the whole time.

1:20:53 I've got some videos like awful. So annoying. Yeah, but we were we were just so excited and like I I think I want to I want to like paint. We we talk a little bit about the pain we've gone through. Like when we used to film, what we would do is Matt would bring some camera gear over and we would rearrange my dining room. I'd like pull we had like a dining like a light fixture. We would pull it and like a fix it to a seastand with some with some rope and then we would just

1:21:18 Matt almost put it through the window or something. I think I lost it today.

1:21:22 He did. Yeah. Absolutely. Almost did. And that's whenever we decided, hey, maybe we should do a studio. But we would we would get together and we would have to figure out because you know like part of the thing about having a big group like this is you have to schedule when it works for everybody and that makes it tough. So, we would do what was called bonanzas and we would say say, "Hey, this weekend is when everyone together and we're going to film like three months worth of playthroughs and then we're just going to get and it's like some of like our some of I think our first root playthrough um we had we had played like eight, seven games before our first root playthrough and it was like one in the morning, midnight whenever we were filming it and uh to keep that kind of energy and make sure that we were still going is is tough on its own. But like we were subjecting ourselves to that. Uh rearranging my dining room, like doing four hours of setup and tear down every single time we get together on top of agreeing to do like rush edits for publishers because this is like we didn't have any context in this ecosystem. So I was messaging publishers and saying like, "Hey, we're awesome. Uh check out our Moonrakers video. You can see my feet for free.

1:22:32 Oh no,

1:22:33 we're we're we're awesome. uh we would love to do a playthrough for you guys. And we were we were getting these games and I was agreeing like, hey, we're going to do a playthrough for free. And very quickly it became like Matt and I and Taylor like we would we would edit until like mainly Matt for like the first six months. He would edit until like

1:22:52 two in the morning up until the game or up until the video was ready or due. And then I would review it and until like 4 in the morning. I'd leave my notes. Matt would make the notes in the morning. he'd render it and then like we would both be miserable the next day and there came a point where we were like we we have to make a studio and that's kind of made the workflow a lot better but at the end of the day like we want to just do this because we're hanging out with friends and I think that's another thing like with the whole like your obligation to

1:23:20 people who are watching your channel we will always like try to be honest and sincere and good people but like what we want our draw to be is like if you enjoy watching friends hang out and play games and you want to feel like you're part of the table. That's the goal.

1:23:34 Yeah.

1:23:34 And uh like we talked about like how it's loveless sometimes. Like Voidfall for example got like a thousand views which is not bad for for our channel. Um we've not had anything crack like more than 7,000 I think is our highest. But Voidfall that was we played it like 12 times before filming. Four hours a piece. uh 100 plus hours of editing between everything like between

1:23:59 it was like all the all the B-roll card popups everything. Um that was like a huge project and we we I mean candidly we did get a little bit of money from Mine Crash for promoting it but it was still like if you do the math on that I'm basically making like $4 $2 an hour. So it's it is a labor of love and it's just because we love board games and we love each other. It's like again we're playing with toys with our friends. What's better than that?

1:24:26 100%. Well, one time, you know, I had thought that, okay, I'm going to make the craziest video I can. I just learned After Effects, so I I made a Lost Runes of Arnack kind of like an ode to Lost Runes of Arnac. And it literally took me like a hundred hours and and it like popped and gave me like I don't know a few hundred views. There's it's it's gotten a few thousand views at this point, but it was literally the thing that I put the most effort into ever, and it gave me the least amount of return. Meanwhile, I make that stupid nine games I wish I played earlier, and it's just people keep watching it. It's every month it's my most watched video. It's so insane. Like, the the incentives on this are so backwards and drive me

1:25:06 absolutely. No, for sure.

1:25:08 For sure.

1:25:09 Why do you do this? um really just different things. So like kind of like how we talked about earlier, I'm more having to watch a video to kind of understand how a game works and stuff. I think I'm Eli said I don't give myself enough credit, but I'm typically one of the slower ones in the group to pick up on all the things of like all the mechanics of something and then I'll go really deep into it and figure it all out, but it takes me a little bit longer. And then I'm a teacher, so I'm watching videos and I'm like, "Hey, these things don't make sense." Like the way you're describing it is not how you should be describing it.

1:25:44 So like when we go into doing different videos, like I'm making a list of, "All right, how would I teach this to my kids?"

1:25:51 Yeah.

1:25:51 We're going to go in and that's how we're going to structure a, you know, how to play or how to learn a game.

1:25:57 And then, you know, again, we lucked out by having so many friends. Um

1:26:01 yeah,

1:26:02 my girlfriend, she's just she's been in a board game group since she was like 12. Like her family, uh back where she's from,

1:26:11 they have five to 600 games, like an entire downstairs, four custom board game tables. Every week they'd meet up and stuff. So getting to, you know, explore board games with her, getting to meet, you know, all see all the friends and everything has just been great.

1:26:32 Yeah, it's um I I would say

1:26:36 you all you're headed in the right direction. I think your channel is great. How do we get you and all of us I I I'm a small creator as well. Like how do we get you more noticed? And I really think it's just continuing to be authentic and not not ch I'm doing everything I can. Will I not not will I never make a top 10 video again? I'll probably make a few. But

1:26:59 sure,

1:26:59 I recognize that this is what I love to do is to talk to you all and learn about new people and meet designers and all of that stuff, but it's also not the best thing to do to grow, but it's also the thing that makes me the happiest. And I think kind of living authentically through the camera and doing what you all want to do is is going to end up, you know, being so much better in the long run. And I would say, you know, I think you said you could never film TI4. Do it like, you know, do a full day live stream. You know how many like cool shorts you could cut out of that and just like, you know, you could literally put hundreds of shorts. you could put short up every single uh day for the rest of the year off of just cool interactions that you might have with other people. Um you know, and I well and I

1:27:46 go ahead. I was going to say I I think that you know if you were to a fly on the wall in like our Discord channel and like I know me and Eli's like personal DMs back and forth like we have all these conversations of like how do we grow, how do we do this, how do we do that and I think every one of us at some point has ended a conversation with well I think what we've come to is that we just need to keep on chugging. Like we just need to keep doing what we're doing,

1:28:12 keep enjoying what we're doing. Um, and to your point being authentic. You know, I mentioned that I make videos about farmers. Um, and I I'll tell you this, farmers don't like having cameras put in their face. Um, but the thing I always tell them is that the way that this video is good is if you're authentic. If you are who you are,

1:28:33 Yeah.

1:28:33 then it will be good because it's it's a representation of you. That's true.

1:28:38 Um, and I think that that's the same in the board game space, right? It's if if we remain authentic to who we are and what we think and how we feel and what makes us happy,

1:28:49 uh then numbers, you know, numbers be damned. Uh we're successful, right?

1:28:56 Yeah.

1:28:56 Yeah. But it's also hard like you spend so much time, right? Like literally this is a the epitome of a passion project for every single person that starts doing it, right? and getting

1:29:09 less than you would have expected in terms of just people viewing it or or even you see how many you see how many people actually even see your thumbnail as well and sometimes you look at you go

1:29:18 I'm sad about that like I just spent so many hours doing that it's like it's hurt my psyche in some cases and I've taken long breaks as I and I've just had to kind of eventually learn and really find my why right and I think that's

1:29:32 that's what I'm still exploring and still trying to find you know I never interviewed anyone up until like my last 10 videos. And it's like, okay, well, maybe this is what I want to do. Maybe this is this is what's making me happy. This is what's um getting me excited. But I do think the algorithm

1:29:50 is is really difficult for smaller channels

1:29:54 to break through consistently. And that's another I'm going to keep plugging Cardboard, but that's another reason why I am having creators come on to Cardboard is I want

1:30:02 I want a space where I can match you based upon the kind of channel you are. and the the games that you're covering, not because you had the best thumbnail or you collaborated with a big channel or you're making top 10 videos. Like, I I think there's deeper content out there that people never really even see. And that's the difficulty because not enough people watch it long enough in the first two hours.

1:30:25 And and that's I I fully believe a channel like you should have tens of thousands of subscribers. Um but you know in the scheme of things within a year you guys are doing great you know so

1:30:38 yeah absolutely

1:30:39 you know I would love find a way to for more people to find you

1:30:43 and me.

1:30:43 Yeah for sure I think that's been um I think that's been I have so I I have a career in adtech. Uh I do like online marketing for well not online I do like tra traditional TV advertising. So yeah the the hardest thing for me is I come from a world where like

1:30:58 the impressions that we're seeing are like terrible. Like I I would be very displeased if a campaign that I was managing had these had these had this ROI. But um

1:31:07 for for me, I also suffer from what Matt has dubbed main character syndrome. Again, I sent people the Moon Rakers video and I was like, "We're the best channel on YouTube. You should work with us." So, it's true. I do I do have a little bit of it. But I think I think it's true. Like one of the things that we've had to do, myself especially, is if you go back and you watch our first video and then you watch like a video four months from then and then four months from then all the way up till now, we have like improved every single time and our I think our audio quality is really solid now. There's like a little bit that I want to refine, but our video quality is great, our studio is great. We have done a lot in just one year that and I talked to some some people who have been making videos for like 10 years and they've only got like 300 subscribers. So there's always that that%

1:31:54 you need to find humility in the position that you're at, but like I'm just so hungry to be successful and like continue to grow that I want to at least learn and and like see what I could be doing differently. And you've talked a little bit about how frustrating it is that that the audiences really prefer top 10 list, right? Yeah. Um because at the end of the day, some of the times I've had conversations with our publisher friends, it's like, what can we do that provides most value? And a lot of the times it's just do what you've been doing, which is like have a playthrough, have fun. That's all that we care about, which is what I love. I I love getting that answer. Um but sometimes it's been like, hey, have you guys considered making like a shorter video? because we found that people watch that more. And um there is that kind of that issue where if you're not interested in Voidfall, you're probably not going to watch a 2-hour Voidfall playthrough. Or if you love Voidfall, you're probably not going to watch a 2-hour Voidfall playthrough because you already know that you're going to like it and enjoy it. So, you have to find we have to like find that balance. We're trying to experiment with new formats.

1:32:58 Uh what I don't want to do is lose the heart of our channel. Like I want to make sure that at the end of the day we're still just friends having fun. Like we're talking about getting into photography and doing some more like user generated content, but

1:33:12 I want the I want the soul to still be there. I still want it to be at its heart friends just having fun and playing games. And I think in that pursuit of growth, it's it's tough sometimes because you know, like you said, you'll you'll put a lot of effort into a video and then it won't get a lot of views. And we talked about the imposttor syndrome a little bit. For me, especially coming from the adte background, I get nervous like, oh, I hope that publisher is not offended. And I think as we continue to make more progress and like, you know, talk to more people and learn more about the ecosystem. I've learned that usually the publishers are just happy to have some form of coverage, that's like all that they really care about. But for me, like I'm so competitive that I'm like, "Oh, well, you know, like we played Emberart for Mine Clash and we're like the sixth video down." It's like I want to be the top video. How do we do that? It's just, you know, figuring figuring out that balance of wanting to be the best while also like maintaining humility and not losing sight of

1:34:05 We're also gamers, right? And what do we want to do? We want to win the game, right?

1:34:10 I want to win the game. And this is very much a game. In fact, I made I made a video a while ago about like I think it was a year or two ago about YouTube is a board game and I and I made all these connections. Um, but yeah, it really is and it does kind of like speak to, you know, the gamification is the subscribers and the likes and and that dopamine is is uh is really wonderful when one hits, but it also is crushing when it doesn't and you expected it to to happen. You had mentioned

1:34:38 other channels that you know have been doing this for 10 years with 600 subscribers. Um, you all have gotten partnerships with uh publishers that people would dream of that have been doing this for years. speak a little bit about like what you've done to kind of foster those relationships. The the voidfall thing is perfect. Minecraft didn't reach out to me. I have one of the best uh performing void voidfall videos that they had with the first with the first uh um thing. They they didn't reach out to me. How are you guys creating these relationships and getting these review copies or or able to make these videos for these publishers? I think a lot of creators would want to know like what's what's your secret sauce? So that is the question. A lot of

1:35:22 Eli's dumb luck.

1:35:24 Okay. Well, I was gonna say Eli's charm, but dumb luck. We can go.

1:35:27 No, like one of the things one of the things that I did as a side business that I still kind of run is an exotic plant nursery. It's not drugs, I promise. That's cool. I run I run an exotic plant nursery. And there was one night where I couldn't sleep and I was like, man, I'm kind of spending too much money on these plants. They're carnivorous plants. They're awesome. Uh, but I just was like, you know what? I'm just gonna message to the point so many people on Facebook that I got banned temporarily for being a bot. Uh, just like that that desire to like just I don't care if I get told no 999 times as long as like one person says yes. And it worked. And I found I found a network of suppliers and I've been able to to make that plant business work. But um, the board game thing was kind of the opposite. I was like, "Hey guys, I, you know, because of the plant stuff, I'm I'm totally fine to do bisdev. I have no problem cold calling publishers and and getting told no." Uh, I set up our email to forward to my personal email and I we've had in our YouTube description, you know, like you can contact us at the Grove Games and um I it had been like six weeks, eight weeks since we posted videos and we had one that did kind of well. I think it was Critter Kitchen. It was like a 5,000 views. Um, at the time it was like our third third video. It was it was we were excited about it. Um, but I was surprised that nobody had reached out and so I checked the email just, you know, out of curiosity. We had like 12 messages from publishers and they were like wanting to just Yeah.

1:36:53 just wanting to talk to us and I was like, "Oh my god." It had been like a month and I had not responded. And I am the type of person who I will typically respond to an email within 24 hours, sometimes within like an hour if I if I have the time. Um, so for me that was devastating and I messaged all these publishers back and I said, "We're so sorry. You know, we'd love to work with you guys." And a lot of it was just like, "Hey, we want to add you to our media list." Um, but there were two that I will say are really like our board game godp parentents. It's it's Chris from Chris Gus Games. He wanted to work with us on Holiday Hills. And then it was Jenna from Inside Up Games. And those those two Jenna Jenna was like, "Hey, we'd love you guys to do a playthrough for Earth and uh for the latest Animal Kingdom." And we were like, "Yeah, let's do it." And that was back whenever we were we were so new we had no concept of like a rate sheet or anything. Uh we agreed to do earth animal kingdom. We had never played earth before. We had never played earth abundance. And me in my infinite wisdom said hey let's we're going to do a comprehensive how to play of the base game the abundance expansion and the animal kingdom expansion and then do a full playthrough with both expansions.

1:38:01 And we had six days to do it. and we did it, but it was a it was a horrible idea.

1:38:07 Yeah.

1:38:08 Well, we we we had very early on said that

1:38:12 like and kind of with this video said we're only going to showcase something for a company if we've played the game four times. Um

1:38:20 so we in six days pre-played Earth four times. uh shot an you know shot all the B-roll play through how to play Earth Abundance and Animal Kingdom we had to do we had to do each one incrementally so we could have a comprehensive

1:38:38 view of how it all flowed together.

1:38:40 I I think but between between the five of five or six of us that worked heavily on that project I

1:38:47 there might have been 10 hours of sleep in that six day period. It was it was bad.

1:38:52 We made mistakes. What you have you guys have like 11 12 13 people like come on spread the work a little bit

1:38:59 and we and we we've learned to do that. Absolutely.

1:39:02 Right.

1:39:03 Well, the other thing is we didn't have a when we jumped in

1:39:07 uh let's just say we weren't smart about it. We didn't start with a backlog of videos.

1:39:12 We just went straight.

1:39:16 It wasn't just okay, hey, we have a video edited and ready to go out next week. It was all right. We filmed all these things. All right. And at the time we only had Matt.

1:39:26 Yeah.

1:39:27 I think maybe

1:39:28 I edited the first videos. I think

1:39:32 I think I think I think Earth was the first going out.

1:39:36 Yeah. I was like, "Have fun." But

1:39:38 we were we were we were filming that week and two days later the video had to be fully edited.

1:39:43 That's the thing. We we try to do we try to do our due diligence and do our playthrough. Then we play it and then we we ededit it and then we have like multiple people review it to make sure that there's no like jump cuts and that the audio sounds good and then after the review we do a second review to make sure it's good. Uh so like we probably do way too much but it's just we pride ourselves we pride ourselves in it. We we want to we want to we want to make sure that we're making good quality content that people can enjoy. Uh but anyway, to loop back to that question, I think just uh the thing that I've been told looping back to the imposter syndrome is that we come across as very authentic and we just do a we we make a game like an enjoyable experience where people feel like they're able to sit at the table and have fun and then kind of like play the game along with us. And that's been the goal from the start.

1:40:30 That is% I want to say.

1:40:32 Yes.

1:40:32 No, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. That's it's kind of like I want to say there's some secret sauce to it, but it feels like we've kind of lucked into this and it's it's you know there's there's always going to be a bigger fish. Like we like I said, we've not had a video really even break 10,000. I think we just hit 100,000 views as as a channel. Like we're 120,000 or something like that so far. Um we're still seeking that like 100,000 plus view video that could be like a breakout or something like that. But um I think just staying true to yourself and then also just taking the time to make sure that you are we we found that video you can kind of get away with being okay. Audio is really important and there are there are microphones that aren't that expensive. If I had like one piece of advice uh because I think our audio is fine like and Matt disagrees. He thinks it's like one of the best out of any channel like in our studio at least. Um, I think it could be improved, but uh, just taking a look at your audio, like looking at channels that are successful, seeing what they're doing, and then seeing what you can do to improve your own standing.

1:41:37 Because at the end of the day, if if your goal is to I mean, it depends on what your goal is, right? Like, if your goal is to just get a free game from a publisher, that's easy. You can just make a short and just get on some media lists and then you'll get sent games. Like, you can even just take pictures and put it on an Instagram channel. But uh it just depends on what you want. But I think staying true to yourself and just making sure that at the very least if I had one piece of advice, there's a lot of channels that could improve their audio. And I know that's ironic because I'm apparently talking out of my webcam right now.

1:42:06 I was wondering if you're going to sound like [ __ ] right now.

1:42:12 Sorry.

1:42:12 You sound good. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. the the I I think too maybe the the the secret sauce that Eli's going to be like don't don't say that. Um is that Eli has no concern about um when he reaches out to a publisher like looking silly

1:42:34 my internet. Um, and and so, uh, I think that to the point, he reached out to Ivy Studios when we put a video out that showed his feet and had a blurry top cam and like was awful, but like him reaching out like to companies like that has definitely helped. You know, they're never going to see you just naturally, right? which is hilarious because Ivy Studios is probably the most concerned with production across their videos, their playthroughs, their their actual games. It's that's hilarious that that's the one.

1:43:10 To be clear, to be clear, they did not work with us after that video. They took us back around.

1:43:17 They shouldn't have. I would question them if they did.

1:43:19 Absolutely not.

1:43:20 Yeah.

1:43:20 No, absolutely not.

1:43:22 We've had some absolute We've had some absolute bangers, you know, like there's there's always a publisher. I think that's another thing, not being afraid to be told no because like that's the worst that's gonna happen is they're gonna say no.

1:43:33 Ghost is the worst. Being ghosted like oh maybe they haven't seen it yet.

1:43:38 Yeah. Well, and then here's here's the secret, man.

1:43:41 Just message them three more times and like every six weeks just set a reminder and send them another message. You can wear people down until they say yes. Just ask Becca. I'm just kidding. I was af I was terrified asking her on a date. I was terrified of asking her on a date and apparently she was into me. It's fine. It's fine.

1:44:02 Yeah. But all that to say with with the with the publisher stuff, we've had the classic problem of number not big enough, which I get as someone who's an ad tech like

1:44:12 uh some of the bigger publishers have said like, you know, your views just aren't there yet. Totally totally understand it. Especially for especially for a uh a paid opportunity, right? Like you you shouldn't pay us to do that because it's silly. You need your marketing budget to be, especially with as razor thin as the margins are in board games, you need your marketing budget to go farther. Totally get it. Um, but I think not being afraid to be told no, not being afraid to just like I I think just this week I've sent like 40 emails to to publishers just being like, "Hey, I see this game's coming out. It looks really cool. I'd love to be added to your media list. Uh, I would I would love to be considered if you guys want to do a playthrough. reviews are always free, but you know, we'll our opinions are going to be our own, but we would uh and and our we again, we've started talking about doing reviews. We've not we the first one we did was Stone Saga.

1:44:59 Um but for the most part, I'm just like here's our rate sheet. Here's our media sheet. Uh we're a small channel. We're we're pretty cool. Here's a link to our channel. um Ascadelia who's the the the manager for of like all that uh the social media. I don't want to butcher her title, but she handles all like the the coordination with the the content creators that Allplay handles. Um she had a really good post about whenever you contact a publisher, make sure you include clickable links. Like basically a tlddr that's like here's our channel, here's our core audience, here are our numbers, we'd love to work with you. And uh I think that's really important because after talking to some of our friends in the industry like it's typically one person handling sometimes multiple companies worth of communication. So making it really easy for them to follow up and then something that I've really struggled with that I've I've recently started being better about is stating what you want. Not in a not in like a not in a you owe me way, but like, hey, uh, I want to do a playthrough for you guys and we have an in-house studio. We can crush it. If you don't have an in-house studio, that's totally fine. Just be confident in who you are and what you want to do. Um, fake it till you make it. And then again,

1:46:12 yeah, honestly. And

1:46:13 even if your feet are in the frame,

1:46:16 even if your feet are in sometimes that's a bonus,

1:46:19 especially sometimes that's a bonus.

1:46:20 Depending on who it is, make good money for that.

1:46:23 We look at that video. Yeah, we did make a pack that we would not take that video down because you can't it's it's a good it's a good bookmark, right? It's a good look where we started. Look

1:46:36 look at all the corners we were cutting trying to make this work. Um

1:46:40 yeah,

1:46:40 and

1:46:42 yeah, that that's another thing about just having a channel as a whole. Like maybe we never get to, you know, a 100 thousand or whatever. At least we can always look back and go, "Hey, I have all these memories of my friends, you know, 30 years down the line, I can go,

1:46:58 oh man, I remember we did this one game. I just don't remember what happened." I can go back and I can rewatch it and just relive.

1:47:03 Yeah.

1:47:03 Oh my gosh. Imagine win this. It doesn't matter if I move

1:47:06 10 states over. If Eli moves or if Matt moves or someone, we always have these connections we can look back on. So,

1:47:13 yeah.

1:47:13 Yeah.

1:47:15 Really, really good point. Speaking of connections, so and Moon Rakers, you've you seems like you have a pretty good relationship with Ivy Studios. You've even held events, I saw. Talk a little bit about how that relationship's uh kind of come around. I'm jealous. I really want to play Honor Zen, by the way. That looks incredible.

1:47:34 So good, dude. Okay, so I'm sure I'm sure you've noticed I another reason why we've been a little uh hesitant on reviews is I do not have a good filter. I just, you know, you get excited, right?

1:47:47 Fights.

1:47:47 I GET EXCITED. HONOR ZEN IS SO FUN, MAN. It's like I don't I have an 83% uh match rate, so I'm going to listen to you. I'm going to go ahead and get

1:47:56 And I hated it the first time I played. I did not. I was like, there's I was like, there's no reason for this to exist. Slay the Spire beats it in every case. And then they made some changes and I I think it I think it at least hangs with Slay the Spire. It might be better when comes out. Um, but anyway,

1:48:13 we aren't getting spoiled by the campaign. We've refused to play test further in because I don't want to be spoiled about it.

1:48:19 Right.

1:48:20 It's true. But, but yeah, the Ivy Studio thing. So, I reached out to Austin from Ivy Studio and uh I he was like, "Hey, this is great. The the actually the the the best feedback we've gotten, and I I won't I won't drop who the publisher was, but the best feedback we we've gotten is that we we did a playthrough and we rushed it out and we we did a good job with it. We got told, "Thanks so much for the passionate content." and they've never talked to us again, which is objectively hilarious.

1:48:48 But um the the Ivy Studio thing is uh they started doing these tours and we were just like, "Hey, we we'd love to be involved." And then they reached out to us and we we made that work. And now that we've started doing tours, we've been able to do it more. Um they've got a new game coming out, Alterara, that we're going to be hosting an event in in Little Rock. Uh I Matt and Robert, this is news to you as well. June 7th is the date.

1:49:11 Okay, cool. Um, I'm gonna be interviewing Austin soon. Probably

1:49:15 May at some point to talk about that.

1:49:18 I've only briefly talked to him uh we we met at Gin Con in person for the first time. I know he's watched a few of our things, but uh we we hung out with Lily a little bit at the Fractured Sky one that we did, but they're great. I think that's the thing about Ivy Studio that I I love is just that their games again, like they feel authentic. Um, but that that relationship is just like we're we're not like super tight. We really want to go to Tennessee Game Days because I wanna I want to kick Austin's ass at Twilight Imperium. It's one of his favorite games. Uh and then I feel like I will have earned his friendship at that point. Right.

1:49:50 Right. Exactly. You You must prove yourself, you know.

1:49:53 Yeah, absolutely. But no, I think uh I think we've just we've just like talking about wearing them down. I've sent them a lot of messages. I'm very active in their Discord. I've play tested a lot of stuff. Um

1:50:03 yeah,

1:50:04 you know, just being being a positive presence in the community is important. And I think I think whether or not you want to work with publishers in a professional sense, like just doing that in general, like even as someone who's not making content is important. And it it has perks. Like there's there's several people in the in the Discord, the Ivy Studio Discord who don't make content and they are able to do the tour just because they're like pillars in the community and they are positive role models in the community and Ivy Studio is good about recognizing that. But

1:50:32 beautiful the tours are sick.

1:50:35 Go around real quick. Who who do you all want to work with the most that you haven't worked with yet?

1:50:42 That's a good question.

1:50:43 Uh for for me, I I've I've made Eli uh again I I'm good at the cameras. I'm not good at that uh bisdev part. I have pushed Eli to try and get something with Pverson Games.

1:50:56 Uh I mean, Ringo play tested it. It's great. Uh Distilled's good. Lutier, love it.

1:51:04 Yeah. Um, I love an engine builder for what it's worth. Uh, so um,

1:51:09 hey, Harrison Gain,

1:51:13 they they hit us with a they hit us with a we saved your email address, which is that's progress, baby.

1:51:20 Last time they ghosted us. So, yeah,

1:51:23 mentioning them in this, you know,

1:51:25 after after Gen Con they ghosted me. This time I got an email back. That's progress.

1:51:30 Robert, who do you want to work with? you go.

1:51:32 Uh, honestly, I'm between two. Um, really like, uh, Barry Giant would be fun.

1:51:42 Obviously, you know, new one with Cole Worly.

1:51:45 Uh, would be interesting to talk to him a little bit.

1:51:47 We should have some fun. Or

1:51:53 for a lighter thing would be uh I'm a huge Cardboard Alchemy fan, so that'd be a fun one for me.

1:52:00 Very cool. Yeah, Barry Giant is I think they're going to be doing some really cool stuff. Have you guys played Oath? You seem like an Oath group.

1:52:06 Yes, I we've not played the new the new expansion, but uh I

1:52:11 Cole seems very excited about what their plans are in the future with O. He kept going in our conversation when I interviewed him kept going back to Oath. Kept going back to Oath. So,

1:52:22 you know, have you played it?

1:52:25 No.

1:52:26 It's a cool I definitely wait for the the expansion.

1:52:28 It's been some years. Yeah.

1:52:30 Yeah. It's been it's been several years. It's it's got really good generative storytelling. It's one of Austin uh who's on the channel. He it's his favorite game of all time. Uh he loves it. It's it's it's got it's got some really cool systems that the expansion I'm sure you heard about it. It reworks it and makes it better in ways that I think will be less fiddly for people who aren't willing to just like slog through it to learn it.

1:52:51 Um but yeah, I'm very excited about that for sure. I laughed whenever Robert said the thing about Cole Worly because you you love arcs. I love arcs. Uh we played an arcs campaign last June. I think it was last June. Uh Robert

1:53:06 two two Junes ago

1:53:07 air conditioner two Jungo really. Uh well okay. So Robert's air conditioner was out

1:53:13 and we were playing a campaign. We decided to do a whole campaign in like three days and

1:53:20 Robert was ready to

1:53:22 two days

1:53:22 assault Kwarly. Yeah. two days. Yeah. Ram was like ready to throw hands with cold and it was to it was to the point where at Gen Con in the middle of summer it was it was 94 degrees without counting humidity.

1:53:39 Yeah.

1:53:39 Yeah.

1:53:42 Water weight.

1:53:44 Well, look. And and the thing about arcs is that if anyone if you've played arcs, you know this uh no hand is a good hand, but no hand's a bad hand. But in the moment it really feels like you have a bad hand.

1:53:56 You know what? It's really funny you say that.

1:53:58 Yeah. In my last playthrough I, you know, I've I've been saying that forever. You know, no hands good hand, no hands bad hand. And I had to and and I felt like I had a lot of damn bad hands over and over again. And I keep going back to what Cole said. And Cole said, um, you're you only have a bad hand because you made the wrong moves before you got that hand. I was like, okay, it's my fault. You got it, Cole. Okay, Lord Cole. Yes. This is not a bad hand. This is all me.

1:54:24 When we were first playing, Arcs was one of the like few games I'd play at the time. I've probably played the least of a majority of us in the group. Um, you know, there's a few that have played a few less games than me, but Arcs was one of the few. So, I I'll be 100% honest. I was real grumpy at the sort of like fighty sort of game. I'm more of just a, you know, put out some worker placement, have a real chill time, and then I'm over here like No, don't don't listen to him. Don't listen though. Here's the thing. He also beat me.

1:54:57 Destroy worlds. He has destroyed worlds.

1:55:01 I also have a good win rate in arcs. Even though like I wasn't a huge fan of it, but now that I've played more games and like got to actually experience things,

1:55:09 I want to go back. I'm like, okay, this mechanic actually isn't so bad. I was just really salty at the time.

1:55:14 Yeah. No, I

1:55:16 yeah video that went over all the negative takes of arcs and it and it it really is it's a matter of perspective the number of times you played in it. To me it's the question is do you like take that and do you have enough patience to play multiple games even though you might not have a good first experience. I had a great first experience, but it's like

1:55:34 five.

1:55:35 Really? Whoa.

1:55:36 Yeah.

1:55:37 Five.

1:55:39 We hated it.

1:55:42 We played it five times and I think me and me and Austin were the ones that really liked it and then

1:55:48 uh at some point the the trick taking element clicked for Eli and it just

1:55:52 I heard the bells as Cole said. I talked to him in person about this at Gen Con. There's no way he remembers that. I was like the thousandth person he talked to that day. Uh but I told him about Robert. I said, "Hey, I got a friend who like wants to punch you in the face because of some some misplaced anger."

1:56:09 And uh and uh he said, "Well, just because he hasn't heard the bells yet." And it it resonated with me because you said the thing about vibrating whenever you're playing a game, that's the thing. You that's hearing the bells.

1:56:19 Yeah.

1:56:19 Yeah. It's a real thing

1:56:20 for me. It's just a full body fry. Like I'm on drugs like

1:56:23 like levitating. Yeah.

1:56:25 So Eli, who do you want to work with?

1:56:28 I've got two. Ironically, IV Studio is one of them. You all have two just to answer the question.

1:56:34 It's know it's tough. It's tough. Ivory Studio because I love their games. The other one is Eagle Griffin. We we recently went to an event where they were they they invited a bunch of content creators out. So we got to basically just spend like a week playing games with Inside Up Eagle Griffin the guest publisher there and I got to play a lot of Eagle Griffin stuff and like some learn some Lerta titles and stuff. I love their games. So, I've loved their games for a while, but uh

1:57:02 you know, ironically, I don't know that I've actually reached out. I mean, obviously, I know them now. I don't think I ever reached out to them about our bisdev. I'm realizing live on camera, but

1:57:10 I reached out and they said some some good things, but then ghosted me, never got back to me. So,

1:57:16 yeah.

1:57:16 Yeah.

1:57:17 Yeah. You got to be you got to be comfortable with it. And then you just follow up. Hey, how's it going?

1:57:21 Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Hey, remember me? He's like, no, we don't remember you at all.

1:57:27 Right.

1:57:28 All right. So, we're about at our time, but tell me what's to come for The Grove. We talked a little bit about ambitions, but like what what's the future, you know, the the next year hold? Where where are you guys going with this?

1:57:42 Take it away, Matt.

1:57:44 Well, you know, we've we've discussed, you know, maybe not getting into full-blown like shut up and sit down style reviews, but um having having quicker takes um on some games. Um we obviously want to keep doing playthroughs. Uh that's the heart and soul of what we do. Um we've we've kind of we've toyed with the idea of a uh

1:58:04 uh some other like kind of show ideas. Um Eli's dream of the Unbox This podcast where it's an audio podcast unboxing games.

1:58:15 Um

1:58:15 yeah.

1:58:17 Um

1:58:18 well it's because he can see everything in his head. That's not everyone Eli.

1:58:21 Exactly.

1:58:22 Yeah.

1:58:22 Exactly. That's part of the chat.

1:58:24 I would hate that.

1:58:25 Look look. Hey, niche audience of a niche audience.

1:58:28 Yeah, exactly.

1:58:30 But um I I know that uh just continuing to iterate and get better at what we're already doing, I think is a big thing.

1:58:41 Yeah.

1:58:42 Um so do you guys do TTS plays

1:58:45 still? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

1:58:49 So we got to get together and play some stuff and use that collaborate feature and

1:58:54 Yeah.

1:58:54 Yeah. Yeah. Let me know. I don't think you ever need a player, but let me know if you'd like a player.

1:59:00 We should we should play arcs in T uh TI4 sometime. Like if you if you if we can find a free weekend, we can teach you TI4 and just throw you into the deep.

1:59:09 Okay, let's go.

1:59:10 I was I was about to drive to Arkansas. I guess that's the easier way to do it.

1:59:14 Look, what what are you doing right now? Like

1:59:17 Yeah, you're right.

1:59:19 Yeah. All nighter.

1:59:21 Some of the other guys.

1:59:24 Yeah. Awesome. Well, I have nothing but time now, so let's let's let's seriously do this. Um, you know, I'd love to play stuff with y'all.

1:59:34 Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I'll I'll add you I'm gonna I'm gonna send you in in the email after this. We'll send you an email with our Okay.

1:59:40 with my Steam stuff and we can connect and get it get it going. Yeah. I want to Matt said this stuff about um Matt said the stuff about like kind of our our short medium-term goals. My long-term goal is to become a household name on how to plays. I love how to plays. I love I love making them. I love writing the scripts. I love like shooting the B-roll for it. Uh that's that's like my most ambitious goal is for when when someone buys a game out of their from the local game store, I want them to look up is there a Grove how to play on it. That's my that's my goal.

2:00:12 Okay, we need to talk because I have this actually I've already had the built feature, but what I need is how to play people because I have a rules lawyer. So, I've I've basically have a database full of rules um rule books and you can ask a question on over 9,000 games that'll give you answer. However, what I've also built is to take your video in and give the link to the exact timestamp of where you answer that question.

2:00:38 So, that could be a really good partnership is uh you know throwing your how to plays on there. It could also be really cool for you to go to publishers and say like, "Hey, we will also be in this automated rules lawyer that then people will will be able to, you know, click right through goes right to your YouTube channel in the exact time timestamp." So, that could be something uh that we work on together.

2:00:59 Absolutely.

2:01:01 I like that.

2:01:02 That'd be cool. Yeah. I'll be sending you an email after this for sure.

2:01:04 Beautiful.

2:01:05 Don't ghost me. I will be annoyed if you ghost me.

2:01:08 No, we're friends now. I'm part of the Grove, right? Didn't I make the team?

2:01:12 That's true. That's true. Yeah, you'll be in the

2:01:14 How am I going to ghost you? Dude, I don't have a job. Do you have a room? Like,

2:01:19 that's true.

2:01:20 Yeah, you can you can sleep on the the table of the set.

2:01:23 Yeah. Is the Is the set in the garage?

2:01:27 Uh, it's in it's in the detached garage. Yeah. Yeah.

2:01:30 So, I can live in there. I'll get out of the way when you start filming.

2:01:33 Yeah.

2:01:34 It's like, you know, it's a garage, but you can

2:01:38 beautiful set by the way.

2:01:40 Appreciate you. Yeah,

2:01:42 it was uh

2:01:43 air conditioned in classic.

2:01:45 It is. It is.

2:01:46 Okay. I was wondering about that cuz my shed is not controlled.

2:01:50 Sometimes I have to film at certain times, but I'm in Seattle, so

2:01:53 yeah,

2:01:53 it's not that big of a deal.

2:01:54 We uh we have very very hot summers. We used to we originally didn't have insulation in the attic, so we got that blown like for the for the shop. And then we added a mini split cuz my nephew works in AC, so he was able to get us a super good deal. Um, and then we built the set over the course of like a few weeks and it weighs if that wall ever falls while we're recording.

2:02:17 You're gonna see four people get crushed.

2:02:20 I I thought you remodeled your house or something. It looks great. Like I was like, "Oh man, look at you."

2:02:25 Yeah. So that I live in that thing.

2:02:28 Yeah. Yeah,

2:02:29 of course. It started

2:02:32 it started as a drawing on a piece of paper that then I sent to Eli and Eli took it to

2:02:37 uh some of Becca's family are are like actual carpenters and they're like, "Well, that's a good start, but here's how we actually built this." Here's Yeah. Here's how professionals do it. That's cute and all. Uh but

2:02:50 Yeah. Yeah.

2:02:51 Yeah.

2:02:53 That's I'm pretty sure that's word for word what was said. Uh they just didn't tell me that. Yeah, they didn't.

2:02:59 Cool. Uh, Robert, Matt, Eli, it's honestly been so awesome talking to you. Um, I'm sure the couple hundred people that'll watch this are going to fall in love with you. U, but it's been it's been really cool and I hope we kind of continue this relationship and and absolutely, you know, hold each other up and I I hope you guys just crush it because you I think you're doing something really cool that a lot of people aren't.

2:03:22 I appreciate that. That means a lot. Those words of affirmation are huge. Yeah, for sure.

2:03:27 And you know what? It goes way giving us a lot. You as well. Yeah, you as well. You've been doing awesome. We we've uh we've been watching we watched a few of your recent interviews and they're really cool.

2:03:38 I really appreciate just people who are making content.

2:03:41 Yeah.

2:03:42 Yeah. And just just the fact that you you're willing to talk to, you know, you you talk to Cole Worly and then you're willing to talk to us. It's like

2:03:49 that's very much. Pretty cool, right? No, I'm just joking.

2:03:53 It was pretty cool. No, it was I couldn't believe he said yes. I was like,

2:03:58 "Yes."

2:03:58 Are you serious?

2:03:59 Yeah.

2:03:59 Like Tom Vassel Well, Tom Vassel took like four emails and me agreeing to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to interview him. But he said yes.

2:04:07 Sure.

2:04:07 Yeah.

2:04:08 Persistence.

2:04:08 Heck yeah, man. That's exciting. Yeah.

2:04:10 I hope he shows up and people don't see this video and go like, "Why didn't he ever interview Tom Bassel?"

2:04:17 That could happen at this point.

2:04:19 If it doesn't happen, it's because the recording,

2:04:22 right? You know.

2:04:23 Yeah. I'll just pop in. I'll I'll some like fedora and some suspenders. I can get a

2:04:29 Exactly. Are you up at Well, I guess it would be 7 a.m. where you are, so it's not that early.

2:04:34 Yeah.

2:04:34 Yeah.

2:04:35 It'd be rough on me. I'm I'm a night owl.

2:04:37 Yeah. Okay.

2:04:39 All right. Thank you all. I really appreciate you being here.

2:04:42 Yeah.

2:04:42 Enjoy your night and we'll have to do this again for sure.

2:04:46 Absolutely%.

2:04:47 Thanks everybody. And yeah.