Dr. Finn's Book of Two Player Strategy and Word Games | Print & Play Brand New Games for 2!

0:00 Hey everybody, Kimberly here and I am so excited to talk up the latest strategy and word games book from Dr. Steve Finn. Pretty much called exactly that, just in the other order. So, it's Dr. Finn's book of two-player strategy and word games. And the best part about this, I cannot wait to show you all the cool features here, but the best part about this is you have eight different strategy and word games in here. And each of those games offers eight variations on the map or the board that you play on to make every single iteration of that game different. And that's what makes this so replayable and so portable. So, what I'm going to do is put the information in the description below where you can go to the Kickstarter page and you can see all the details. Instead of me listing off everything about the cost and how you get it and blah blah blah, I'm just going to send you there is really really clear and super super easy to understand. Um, so that's going to be available to you, but I want to show you what's in my book. I got the book. There are also the Amazon print version that you can buy after the Kickstarter was successful in April. So, here's what you've got. Um, you're going to come in here and you're going to see table of contents. There again are eight games.

1:21 You've got detectorrists, stareyed, spell track, fishmongers, quillseker, tic-tac-toe, eloquacious, and speculators. So, every single one is going to tell you how to play the game. Really, really great instructions. There was only one game in here that I had to use the QR code to look up. one rule clarification, but there are these how to play video QR codes where you just have a uh tutorial of a like an audio that helps like of course with the rules. Um, so again, that one, let me come back here to see was Fishmongers. That's the only one I needed a rules clarification on. Um, and so if you need to make sure you go to that one for for that track. So again, you've got one, two, or three pages of your rules. Super straightforward, really easy to understand. And then you've got your board. So here's the one that's undone.

2:20 You're out here detecting like rings and coins and all kinds of cool stuff. Um, you've got watches. That's the other thing, too, is you're out on a beach and you're you're collecting things in your sand buckets. Um, so this is again the play page. And this one was really tight. We tied each other. And then I won on a tie break, which was crazy fun. Um, but players are going to, and you're going to see here, they're actually going to tear or cut a lot of these pages. So, I would just say working inside of it, just tear, do it, and you're going to see, yep, he had F, I had D. And you'll just do this. Oh, wait. Here's another one. The configuration of the map is different. So, every single one of these is going to have a different iteration of the same game. And a lot of these games um are just a back and forth choosing and then the other player is going to do something really really fun. So in this case, what you're going to do is draw a line and then the other player after you draw your line is going to um then square someone with two people.

3:23 Well, one person's square, one person's circle. So you're going to outline a twoerson detector and the other person who drew the line is going to circle a oneperson detector. And you just continue going back and forth drawing lines which are separating buckets into a square of their own or a space of their own. And then you're going to look at who has the most represented detectors in that space and you're going to be earning the points based on that. So you're separating slowly taking over area control. Just a ton of fun with that one. Starry eyed. Um this one is about drawing shapes. You'll see our shapes right here. Half of these shapes are really pretty and the other half are are mine. Um, but you're selecting from the shapes here. Um, and you are wanting to get particular scoring conditions that happen throughout the game. You're not picking your scoring conditions all at the beginning or all at the end. You're picking them as you build the map that had nothing in it. So, the games are so dynamic. They develop really well. They give players tons of choice. And slowly as the game starts coming to a close, you hope that you have essentially outstrategized your fellow player. So this guy, really, really fun with that guy. Um, spell track. This one is a wild. When I started reading the rules for this, there's even more. There's like three pages here instead of just a two page. But you're slowly building

4:54 your words one letter at a time as you work your way around a track by throwing um numbers. Essentially, you are going to um as it says on the count of three, both players throw one zero or two fingers. You go like this, you go like this, you go like this. And then you're going to add together those numbers. And if two uh zeros are thrown, it's a five. And you count your way around the track. This is a classic Steve Finn um mechanic that I really like is moving around the track kind of like this. So it's like, oh, our first round was a three, our second round was a one, our third round was a two. You can kind of see where you are and you're picking letters that are available from those rows and columns as you work your way around. And one person needs to uh reach or exceed 12 to trigger the end of the game. And uh you've got all kinds of different scoring mechanisms here. So it's very fun. And again, look, all different letters. All different letters. Can't tell you how um awesome it was. So, fish mongers out bidding your competitor at the fish market to buy seafood fulfill contracts.

6:02 I've got a couple pages here. Um and then here is our our pages. And I swear it looks like we almost didn't use it, but you'll see this is our score track out here. And these are the fish that we were picking from um the contracts. And we have circled things underneath here for our contracts, which are scoring. Um, again, we're picking contracts throughout the game. And then we are scoring out our crabs, our eels, maybe our fish, our shell, shellfish, I don't know, crustaceians. I'm not a seafood eater, so I I I mean, I do know what animals are, but um, these critters. And then, of course, your money, and you're going to have your total sales at the end of the game. Um, but this is a great way of picking. Essentially, you're bidding your money to take one of either tray. And whichever tray you take, the other player takes. And so, they can't have the one you pick if you are the one bidding. And that's the the bidding I had to have a question about. It's like I I put a I say I want to bid three so I can pick and if my fellow player says no, I don't accept it, they pay three, and then they get to pick. And so, that's the only thing that was left out of the rules right there. But it's really fun. You have to manage your money just right and every dish here is going to be different. Um, so that's fun. Quilseker. Um, this was really tricky too because you are capturing words in a crossword style and you are trying to build a special word. You get more points if you get a word that's

7:33 five letters long and even more points if you write it in the right order. You can anagram it and essentially be able to move all the letters around because in this game you're moving the letters around because look at this. It's asterisk R W A E O G. You're kind of like what is that? That's not a word. These do not create words. They create words when you move all the letters around after capturing a word of four, 5, 6, 7, or eight. And you have to leave one letter over. So there's only five rounds. So you're doing a lot at once. And you're also trying to set yourself up for the bonuses down here and of course kind of putting your your fellow competitor in a corner. Really, really fun. I like the word ones quite a bit. And there's one in the very end here that is a word game, but it is cooperative. I'm going to skip to that one since I'm talking about it. It's right past this guy right here. Um, so this one's called Eloquacious. And Eloquacious is giving clues to your partner to fill the grid with words and complete your tasks. Yes, you are trying to complete a threeletter word, a four-letter word, a fiveletter word, a sixletter word, a sevenletter word or more. You're going to try to fit into two corners, three exact fits between the wall and black spaces or black squares and black squares and then 12 or more words before you strike out. And that's what this whole thing is about.

8:59 So, you're giving clues and it's really fun. Like I love games where you're giving clues kind of like you do in code names. Sorry, I had to look. Code names is all the way up there at the top of that shelf over there. Um so you give clues and then your partner is going to try to essentially um say the word that you're going to fit into this particular crossword style. And that's cooperative. It's the only cooperative one in this book. Okay. So tic-tac-toe I really enjoyed. I enjoyed this one so much because it's it's got a lot of rules. Um, but it is tic-tac-toe but like on on like yeast. It's like it's like crazy. It's it's so so interesting the way this works because you've got a grid of a 3x3 but inside you have other grids of 3x3 and you are trying to yes one is X, one is O's. You are trying to collect bread ingredients to then sell them to customers who have a particular desire but you can only go in a square. Let's say I want to go in this particular square right here. In one of these other spaces, my fellow player has to put their mark in this space of a small grid, which would be this square in the large grid. So, you're taking this and you're kind of like maximizing, you're blowing it up, and you're saying if someone if if my fellow player goes in one of those spaces that hasn't been taken already, then I can go into that space. And then when I go into this space and I fill that customer's need,

10:30 now I did this mark. They have to go into this space here. And you just go back and forth essentially marking your money until someone reaches 25 or more and they trigger the end of the game. Really, really cool. Very, very interesting. Um I I really want to come back to this one. And I honestly was thinking about, oh, I should probably tell you like what I rank them and and which ones I want to come back to more than others. And I just can't do that because I liked all of them. I liked all of them a ton and I think they're all worth playing all the way through and then just playing again and again whenever you feel like, oh, I feel like wanting to do a market game. I want to do a word game. I want to do a tic-tac-toe strategy like abstract strategy game. Do that. So, this is speculators and this is the last one. Invest in currencies and maximize your market. I like this one, too. So, this one's all about an eye cut. You choose.

11:21 And what you're going to do is you're going to divide up these screens. You've got all these monitors and one player is going to be the um active player and the manager. They're going to draw a line making no more than two adjustments, two curves or two turns. And then it's going to be separated into even groups, not even groups, it depends. You're going to be collecting currency. You're going to be raising the market or the stock value of that currency, and you're going to be scoring your current amount into these um octagons. So that's what you get to do. So I cut, you pick, and then I get the second one. So I'm always trying to cut one of these spaces into a place where I know it's advantageous for my fellow player, but not so much so that I'm not getting some myself. And of course, you've got a little secret here. You've got where you get to bump up your currency and get scores for that at the end. So there's going to be one of those little corners.

12:16 But every single game is different. You only play six of the eight monitors, so it really creates a lot of dynamic play. And that's going to be wrapping up the book. Oh my gosh, I can't even begin to tell you how much fun we had playing this. We would just sit down and just say, "Let's play one." And then we'd I'd read the next rules for two, and then we'd play two in a row, and then I'd wait, and then I'd read some more rules, and then we'd play a couple more at a time. So with eight here, I think we sat down and had like, you know, five sessions, six sessions or so of playing this throughout the week. And that was just playing through one time, enjoying the games. I mean, first time through, I mean, second time through are always that much more fun because you are aware of the previous game and you're like, "Okay, here's what I did last time. Was it successful or not?" And honestly, the strategy, the word games, a nice balance. And that one sneaky, cool, cooperative word game in there was a lot of fun. Maybe from, you know, my side giving clues. I think my husband didn't enjoy giving the clues as much. Found it a little bit more challenging and the game was less dynamic because there was so much time in between giving clues and me guessing. Um, but that's just a player interaction kind of thing. It didn't it was no uh critique on the game itself. All the games in here are so thoughtfully designed and a ton of fun.

13:39 I would say each of them takes maybe 20 to 30 minutes to play. So, they're really fast. And because this is just a book and you can tear things instead of just use scissors, you can take this on trips. You can take this on an airplane. You can take this anywhere. You can also just house it. You can just slide this into Oh, look at this. I can just pop it right into my bookshelf. And there it is. It's right it's it's right there. So, I'm going to leave that in there uh for now. But that's how easy it is to um shelf and to essentially carry and take with you. Just an absolute joy. I'm so excited. I love what uh Steve Finn's been doing with his games lately. This style of the print and play or the collection of a book you can buy um either through the Kickstarter or through Amazon. Um, so just a lot of fun and still fantastic and surprising gameplay um, with Dr. Steve Finn. Loving it. So cool. Go and check it out. Again, I've got the link in the description below so you can click on it, look at all the details, figure out what's what's best for you. But I will see you later, folks. Goodbye.