Q&A Vlog Nov '21 - 25 questions answered!

welcome to jungkits games today i'm bringing you an edited version of the live q a vlog that was recorded in november of 2021 and i do want to mention that if you prefer to listen to this vlog instead of watch it then you can do so by supporting the patreon campaign at any level by doing that i will give you access to an exclusive podcast feed where you can hear the audio versions of all the vlogs that i put out now speaking of patrons i have actually put in some questions that were asked by the patrons before this live q a so i have filtered those in amongst the rest of the questions that come in through the actual chat while the vlog was being recorded now i do want to ask that if you enjoy this video that you please click the like button for down below as well as the subscribe button for the channel and on that note i think let's now jump into those questions the first question i'll be answering today is actually came from the patrons so we're going to go for that and then jump into the chat this one actually came from tc3p who's been a supporter of the channel for quite some time they ask or they say they really enjoyed the unboxing and setup video that i made for the patreon backers and they're happy for a chance to peek behind the curtain do i plan to continue making those uh now if you're not a supporter of the channel you might not know about this but this month i'm doing some experiments with different types of exclusive content and i did an unboxing and setup video for imperial steam right before i filmed the full tutorial for that one um i just turned the camera on when i was opening up the box and i set the game up like i normally would but i talked about it the whole way through and then did a bunch of fast forwarding um it was kind of fun to do i've only done one of those so far and i think for a lot of games there's not enough stuff in the box to really validate that um but i'm hoping to continue experimenting and uh probably do that kind of stuff as well um it sends it seems like it makes sense to do those as i'm setting the game up for an actual tutorial uh i received brian boru a couple of days ago and i was like oh maybe i should make an unboxing for that but i wasn't in a good situation for it with the filming table because there's a game all over it and uh i just ended up unboxing it on my couch so maybe that was an opportunity missed i don't know it's it's cool to see that you enjoy that one and i tend to keep making uh this kind of exclusive content to just experiment around and see if people actually enjoy it all right next up we have another question actually from the patreon supporters this one comes from dave brown they say wouldn't it be better to have written the rulebook for a less complex game than darwin's journey before being thrown uh at the deep end with it uh so dave is referencing the fact that i wrote the rulebook for darwin's journey and that's actually the first rule book that i've ever written from scratch i started working on this wow like 11 months ago i think it was a december of 2020 and i guess to a certain extent yes it would have been better for my first rule book that i ever wrote to not be this massive incredibly complicated euro game but you know you kind of take the opportunities that are given to you and this is the first time somebody offered uh me to actually do this uh dave goes on to ask why do you think thunder griff games chose you for it when you've never been solely responsible for writing a rule book before um i asked myself that question when they asked me about writing the rulebook um it seemed like they just trusted me i'd made several videos for them in the past and i'd also done a little bit of proofing for some of their rule books so it seemed like they just felt like i must have a good idea for where these things can go and honestly i think part of it is they just really needed a solution and i had just about a week before emailed them about proofing a rule book uh specifically the darwin's journey rulebook and i think they realized that they said yeah we want you to proof it and then i think they realized actually we need somebody to write this as well and they gave me a shot uh i hope it turned out well i mean we are still working on this thing or i guess we wrapped it up i think about a month ago but this has been a much longer project than i anticipated and if i'm being honest i feel like i probably could have done better i feel like uh the stuff that i've written since then because i have written actually several rule books over the course of the last year since then i feel like i'm a much better rulebook writer now which makes sense because that was my first one so hypothetically i should get better at these things as time goes on so yeah in a perfect world my first rule book would not be 63 pages of google docs for the base game and then like 30 pages of google docs for the expansion and whatnot cause it wasn't just darwin's journey it was the fire lines expansion and then like six mini expansions as well as an additional rule book content for the collector's edition it just was a lot and it's actually been really satisfying uh going through this whole process has been quite exciting and i just talked to them yesterday about writing two more rule books so uh things definitely seem to be going well there the next question comes in from dame zumari and they ask are you happy with the friendly ties format do you think it is a sustainable format for you um yeah i'm to give a little bit of context here in case people don't unders know what they're talking about uh friendly ties is a podcast that i started along with my good friends anastasia and nick um i won't go into the nitty-gritty of the long backstory for it because i've talked about it in vlogs but friendly ties isn't really a john gets games product it's this other thing that's kind of adjacent it kind of rubs elbows with john gets games because so far uh all of the episodes on friendly ties have been uh the three of us discussing a game that we just played or almost honestly reviewing uh the game that we just played because we now seem to be playing these games quite a bit many times before we actually talk about them uh so it really is a group effort between all of us versus you know john plus a couple of guests um so i definitely you know enjoy working with my friends like this it's been honestly intensely satisfying to make uh this kind of stuff to talk about games with people who also love to talk about games just as much as i do i feel like the two of them honestly make more insightful commentary about games than i do as well so just being on that level having these discussions and then putting them out there has been awesome either way coming back to your actual question um the second question i guess is do you think it is a sustainable format for you and i certainly hope so it's definitely sustainable for me because i think i've proven over the course of the almost last eight years that um i have no problem talking about games on end you know indefinitely now that it's been a full-time career i still have no problem talking about games forever um and it seems like my two friends anastasia and nick are really enjoying this one as well i'm constantly trying to take their temperature to make sure that they are just as happy as i am to be doing this because it's important that we are all happy and this you know doesn't become something that we have to do instead of something that we want to do but so far so good i mean it's only been going for about two months officially but um i've been very happy with uh with it overall and i think they have been too all right let's move on to the next question and this is another one that came in from the patreon supporters of the channel uh this one is from brian brazil uh they uh they say that i mentioned that i played kayla's for the first time and saw it as a board gaming merit badge what would be the next game on my mirror badge list that you'd like to play but you haven't gotten a chance to yet now for a little bit of context there um part of the exclusive content that i've been making for the patrons is an actual kind of impressions vlog review vlog type thing where i've been uh talking about all the games that i've been playing recently whether or not i like them or not i've been quite honest and it's been really fun to make that as content for the patrons uh in a little bit more of an informal atmosphere and i talked about kayla's because i talked because i played kayla's for the first time ever about two weeks ago um now the merit badge thing uh i'm a boy scout or i was a boy scout or whatever uh and that means uh the merit badges are just you know the little things you put on your sash to say that you have the woodworking mirror badge and the orienteering merit badge and i said i got my kayla's merit badge because i played it at once and this is you know arguably the first worker placement game and it's just one of those famous classic board games that i had never played and it just seemed like i should at some point and i'm glad that i have uh and if you'd like to hear more about my opinions about kayla's then please support the patreon channel at any level and you'll be able to get access to that now as far as future merit badges yes i have quite a few there were a couple that i battled off the top of my head and then i went through the board game geek top 300 games just skimming through to see what games really jumped out to me as surprising that i hadn't played and games that i've been meaning to and i wrote them down i actually wrote nine of these down and i'm not going to go into detail about all of these but i will tell you about the nine and i put them into a list of like the the top priority merit badges down to the lowest and the first one is agricola um i haven't played agricola before and i use air quotes for that because technically i played aragola once in 2010 uh about a year into my you know falling down the board gaming rabbit hole i remember nothing about it uh the rules were taught to me incorrectly and i had a miserable time so i guess i don't remember the rules to the game but i remembered really disliking it because key scoring rules weren't revealed to me until the end of the game and it was like oh by the way you have a negative score because you forgot to enclose all your stuff and i was very sour about it and i never came back to it and i want to come back to it because agricola is such a classic game i really feel like i want to play it and also i feel like i should have played it that's a merit badge i should have uh after that there's el grande which is a like the classic area majority uh type game which tons of people love i've heard so many great things about it over the years and i've never even had an opportunity to play that one after that there is trois which is a dice drafting game that is very well loved by people who like euro games and um never had an opportunity to play it so that one's definitely one near the top of the list in fact we almost played trois the same night we played kayla's but the person teaching it remembered kayla's better after that there's russian railroads um i've been interested in playing russian railroads since it first came out back in oh what would that be like 2013 or something like that but i never had an opportunity i don't think i knew anyone who owned a copy and i didn't want to play it enough to buy it blind and you know time went on and i never tried it uh this is a uh euro game it sounds like it's a train game but uh from my understanding it's a very euro game with lots of tracks and stuff and i like euro games with tracks like not train tracks although i think there are train tracks i think there's actual tracks where you move your little tokens up them uh after that there is age of steam steam i know people who love these games hate them to be lumped together and i know there's some subtle differences between the two but um i haven't played either really again with air quotes i have actually played one of these i just don't remember which because it was back in 20 uh 2009 and it was like in the first month and a half of me joining up to a meetup group and i was learning like seven or eight games a night and uh the meetup organizer loved this game and he sat me down and i played it and i just remember feeling really overwhelmed and i had no idea what was going on and i don't remember anything else i don't remember if it was age of steam or steam so that's another one that i feel like technically maybe i have the merit badge but i don't deserve it so i want to get that one for real by playing uh that one um either version honestly as far as i'm concerned although it seems like people tend to talk more about age of steam so maybe that one has a slight priority uh after that there is indonesia which is a splatter game i've played several splatter games like food chain magnate and antiquity and at least one more but it's i'm totally blanking on it but indonesia i've heard amazing things about for a long time and it's just one that i would really like to try at some point but i haven't had the opportunity uh next up there is village which is a classic euro game i say classic it's not as old as el grande or um kayla's but it's you know certainly i think about 10 years old or so and it has this mechanic where the people in the village uh are born they grow old and they die you have to put them into the cemetery and there's like this village cycle thing going on i played my village which was the dice game version of this and i quite liked it so i've been wanting to play village for a long time uh next up there is trajan which um i think only came out about seven years ago so not crazy old but uh this one is a mancala type game it's uh one of the most well-regarded stuff and failed games and it's one i've been just curious to try and finally there is blood rage uh this is a eric lang design and i've never played it i know so many people who have mentioned it in the past a lot of people really like this game and in general i don't find myself gravitating towards seabon type big plastic miniatures type games but from what i've heard about bloodrage i feel like this one i will potentially actually like versus others and honestly just from a mere batch perspective i don't even care if i dislike it i just feel like it's a game that it would be good for me to have played so that i will know how it plays and that's just a good backbone of you know mechanics and stuff like that to actually speak to so yeah those are the top nine board game merit badges that i am uh actively seeking out um i mean obviously there's a ton of other games that i'm playing um but these are ones that i would really like to have happen at some point and that turned into a longer answer than i expected sorry about that the next question is coming from hans and they say which of the new essen releases do impress you the most gameplay-wise and originality-wise uh now i haven't played all of them or even that many of them honestly i've just played arc nova a whole bunch and golem a whole bunch i have not played boone lake yet i haven't played messina yet um i have not played brian boru yet i haven't played you know a lot of the essen releases i didn't go there and i don't have cop access to most of these games um but i will say between arcanova and golem which we played a whole bunch arc nova is uh definitely squeaking things out right now that one is is at the top which i'm really happy to say because after the first time i played that one i was i was thinking it was just not gonna be a game for me but now i just genuinely really like that one i like the theme i like the mechanics and honestly i mentioned friendly ties earlier if you'd like to hear a lot more about it then please check out the friendly ties episode with our arc nova discussion because the three of us have a lot of things to say about that game because there's a lot to say about it it's a very fascinating game overall all right let's go to another question from the chat and this one comes from ginmay they say do you have an uh did i have an opportunity yet to try out 10 with my local board game group uh yes now i apologize i don't want to sound like i'm just showing for the patreon support campaign the entire time of this video but uh yeah i talked about it at quite length in an exclusive uh uh segment for the patrons um that one along with a bunch of other games that i've been playing like well golem back at the time but also coffee traders and just a bunch of others that i can't think about plus ten were all games that i played recently and i gave my impressions of that one uh i've actually played it twice we played it two days in a row because a friend of mine that i taught it to who i was staying with enjoyed it so much i didn't like it quite as much but yeah if you want to hear my extended thoughts on that one then please support the patreon campaign at like any level even the lowest level will give you access to uh that kind of stuff and you can hear me talk about 10 quite a bit as well as a bunch of other games uh let's go back to a patron question there's uh four more of them and this one comes from john paul they say do i have any games in the past year that have significantly changed my opinion about with additional gameplays either liking the game much more than you originally did or liking it much less than you originally did i went back through my entire year's worth of played games to try and answer this question and uh three of them jumped out to me the first one is arc nova i'm not going to talk about it really at this point because i've talked so much about that one lately but as i even briefly mentioned earlier on in this q a i was not convinced i was gonna like this game after the first play i was pretty down on it which surprised me because i thought i would love it but then with each subsequent play and i think i've played it six times now um i've enjoyed this game more uh and i wonder at some point where i'm going to actually plateau but i haven't plateaued yet so that one started out uh high expectations low reality and then it's skyrocketing up to being one of my favorite games that i played this year uh the other two games i'm going to talk about have actually had my opinion going down a bit one of them is sheepy time and i actually talk about this quite a bit in that patreon exclusive video because i'm also uh going back to games that i've covered before i'm kind of considering it sort of an ongoing review process where when i play a new game i talk about it when i play a game i've talked about before i talk about it again because sometimes my opinion changes uh the short version of what i said in that exclusive bit was that sheepy time is uh lowering in my expectation in in my uh uh appreciation of it because of weird downtime from the busting mechanic um i've seen many opportunities and i've been in the position several times where i bust or maybe i even leave the round early and stop and then i just sit there for like 10 to 15 minutes while other people do stuff and that downtime is kind of frustrating especially if you bust on a crazy bad set of luck which i've seen happen a couple of times and there was one uh circumstance where that happened in what i was what was going to be the last round of the game i was pretty sure and i was right but that meant i essentially stopped playing the game like 20 minutes before the game actually ended or 15 minutes which was frustrating because i knew i got bad luck i busted because of that and then the game was probably over for me because somebody was probably going to win um the other game i wanted to mention is blue lagoon i picked this one up for five dollars at a board game flea market i couldn't help myself i played this one once a couple of years ago and liked it it's an area majority um two-phase reiner kenitzia style game um that i really enjoyed the first time i played so it was a no-brainer to pick it up for five bucks and then i played it a couple times since then and i actually realized that i wanted to like this game a lot more than i actually liked it uh the base mechanics of it are super cool you lay out these canoes and people in various lines doing area majority then you score stuff you clear most of it off and then you do it again with slightly different rules my issue with it is when the game is over and at the midpoint there is a ton of scoring and that just did not feel very elegant to me it wasn't really what i was looking for in this game overall um it almost seemed a little bit clunky with the number of things that had to be scored also i don't mind area majority in general but this game had a lot of calculating and recalculating trying to make sure okay am i still in the majority of this island and this island in this island oh wait i miscounted let's do this one and this one again um honestly our aristocracy has uh bumped blue lagoon out of my collection it's also a reiner canezia game but it does not have area majorities it has some other stuff going on which again i actually talked about a bunch more in that exclusive bit because i played that one a lot recently and i guess i guess i could talk about that one that could be the fourth one i could talk about here that my esteem for ericksonocracy has gone up very well very high i played it once at bggcon a few years ago and liked it but then i played it like three or four times since then and every time i play this one since i'm enjoying it and i haven't taught it to anyone who didn't actively like this game uh so aristocracy is also on the up and i'm really glad i have a copy of that one all right let's come back to the chat uh and shrey says on writing rule books have you been able to run uh blind play tests using one of your rule books no i have not been able to do that and you know the main reason for that is i guess the pandemic although i guess the main reason for that is because no one's asked me to and i haven't really thought about doing it just yet um that is a very important thing i definitely uh think that every rule book should be blind tested just by having somebody read it even if they don't actually have a physical version of the game in front of them but that's at least from my perspective not been part of the workload that's been asked of me i've just been asked to write the rulebook and then other people have done some editing and whatnot that is a good idea though that is certainly an interesting thing to think about uh you know what i'm a total liar uh i did with the darwin's journey rulebook send this out to a couple of friends uh before i sent it to the publisher um i think i sent it to anastasia actually she was one of the first people to see it and then i sent it to a couple other friends um when i specifically did the solo mode rules for darwin's journey because those were not easy to write the rules for and i wanted to make sure they thought it actually made sense and they actually did do blind testing of it they tested the solo rules using my rule book in tabletop simulator and i got a bunch of good notes from that so i take it back yes i have done a little bit of it but i think it was just for darwin's journey probably because i was so nervous about it i'm not against doing it more in the future but it's not been something that i thought about and i'll try to think about it thanks for bringing that up uh let's go to another question from the chat simon says do i experience new game fatigue sometimes as in do i have periods of time where it seems like no new releases managed to generate any enthusiasm for me uh yeah that's definitely happened um i feel like that happened earlier this year um but i'm not sure if it was a new game fatigue situation or just a my personal life was in a in a state with just the amount of stuff going on the amount of work for john gets games and also just the inability maybe to see people uh in real life as much as i wanted to where i just did not play that many games for a few weeks there was a month this year where i barely played any games um kind of on accident um i suppose if a bunch of hot new games were coming out in that moment that maybe that would have kicked my butt into gear and to actually get those games played i've definitely been playing a lot of games over the last five or six weeks and probably part of that is because of these sm releases that are becoming available like arcanova and golem at least using tabletop simulator so yeah it does happen um in general i'm usually always down to playboard games if i don't play games for a few weeks or even two a month it's probably not because i'm sitting here saying i don't want to play games it's probably because some outside force has stopped that from happening to me all right let's move on to another patron question this is a long one this comes from flo and they say the last decade or two appear to be to me as a golden age for board games with so many innovative ideas make mechanisms designs and people contributing to a constant evolution on the medium do you ever see this phase waning maybe when all possible game mechanics have been fully explored or do you see board games as a medium that has the potential to evolve for the foreseeable future this is a great question uh one that i don't have an amazing answer for but i did want to talk about it briefly because um maybe i'm just being an optimist but i really don't see things changing uh in a big way well i take it back the only constant is change right everything is going to change but i like to think and i hope that going into the future that as things change um they don't get worse i guess if that makes sense that it's not going to have less innovation and that kind of thing come out um to a certain extent maybe we are having less innovation maybe there's just a lot more uh tweaks on general themes that are happening but you know it seems like every few years some big thing emerges as like a big trend like uh well deck building about a decade ago uh legacy about five or six years ago and then rolling right about two years ago just exploded i mean it's not like it was the first time any of these had happened uh well i guess dominion started deck building but i think you get my drift um the idea that all good ideas have been had and that there will be no more in the future just doesn't really seem like something that's ever happened in the past with humanity and just in general uh not just board games so i like to think that that's probably not going to be a thing that changes for board games as well um specifically at least as far as running out of ideas i think humans will come up with new ideas all the time uh sometimes you smash a couple of ideas together to create something kind of new as a hybrid and sometimes you do that and realize oh there's this other offshoot from it that really is its own new thing and that can turn into whatever and you know we won't know what that is until somebody comes up with it uh i'm sure you know year or two from now there's gonna be some designers kicking themselves about whatever the new trend is and not realizing uh what that was gonna be to write it so um again not the most satisfying answer to your question i think but i'm an optimist and i think you know i've been heavily heavily passionate uh practically addicted to board games for like 13 or 14 years now and uh i've seen a lot of these trends happen uh come and go but i've never sat here thinking wow nothing good is happening anymore maybe the hobby is grown too stale okay the next question comes from mark simpson and they say do i feel that reviewing and or giving detailed impressions of a game based solely on plays in tts might flavor your feelings slash impressions one way or another over playing with components in real life um i mean i guess it'd be silly to say that it wouldn't change my feelings about it at all but i guess i don't really feel like it has that big of an effect that's mostly because my the priority for me with board games is the mechanisms and just playing things with my friends live i really prefer to play board games that way um so not actually touching the pieces is not really a big deal to me um you know the component quality of board games almost never factors in to how much i actually enjoy it i mean occasionally components will wow me and i'll be like oh wow this this is really nice this thing over here but even a game that has really drab poor components like i'm not gonna be like oh i'm not gonna play that game because i don't like the way it looks or what the way it feels unless the way it looks and feels actually detracts from how it actually plays like if it makes it actually hard to play the game uh but also i've been an avid video gamer for most of my life um not really the last decade because of board games have kind of taken over but i'm i've been very comfortable in a video game space uh with the controls using the keyboard and the mouse um i was very very very addicted to world of warcraft for the first three or four years when that came out came out when i was in college back in 2004 and i was playing that game like 80 hours a week while somehow still passing my classes so um i don't have i guess baked into my brain i don't have a problem staring at a computer for ridiculous amounts of time whereas i do know some people who haven't really played that many games over the last year and a half because they just can't bring themselves to stare at a computer when they play the board game so it's definitely going to affect some people but for me i don't think the way it affects my impressions of the game uh i don't think it affects it in a way that that has an appreciable overall impact on my feeling for it all right let's move on to another patreon question and this one comes from dave brown they say that you're a fan of arc nova and golem yet criticize or at least aren't keen on teotihuacan for being too complex isn't there a contradiction here or are my tastes changing i think this is a great question i really like seeing this one come through because i have some thoughts um yes in the past i've mentioned that games like teotihuacan aren't really something i keep coming back to because you know of of the complexity that's there but diluting it down or i guess distilling it down to say oh it's too complex and that's why i don't like it is is actually kind of missing the mark my issue with games like teotihuacan which honestly you could bundle in most many or most modern euros that are being made right now is i don't like euro games that have so much complexity that didn't seem like it was necessary i am totally okay with a complex game where every single piece uh is needed uh imperial steam for example is a game with a lot of rules i made a tutorial for that a week or two ago and that one took a while but i really like imperial steam even though it has all these different uh mechanics that work in very different ways and it takes a while to see how it all works together it all works together i could not sit here and say oh i would prefer to play imperial steam without x or y part because every single piece seems like it's necessary my issue with teotihuacan and many other games but to focus on that one is it really felt like that game shipped with like two expansions worth of extra modules and stuff that were stuck in there that i would rather not be there um there are all these tracks in this game tons of tracks in teotihuacan and you only interact with maybe a couple of them each time you play the game if you really focus on trying to go up those tracks then you're probably not doing any part of certain other parts of the game and some people like euro games where you only play with like a third of the game each time and you you mix up which third of the game you're gonna play i am not that kind of person i like to play all of the game every time i play with subtle uh emphasis uh so like if i'm playing imperial steam maybe one game i focus a lot on the investors and i do some track laying in another game i go crazy on tracks and maybe don't do that much with investors but i will like to do i'd like to you know touch every single one of these things each time i play so again the complexity isn't really a problem overall and you know going over to like arcanova and golem for examples um i don't think that they have things that i could um casually just say i wish x mechanic wasn't in there um you know there's a lot going on to both of these games but it seems like everything is necessary to tell the overall you know mechanical story that they are going for um one game uh gaia project which came out many years ago honestly kind of before this trend really got huge uh my big complaint with guy project was uh the gaia four being part of the game which felt a little bit weird because the name of the game is guy project but i remember feeling like i would much rather play guy project without the guy forming mechanic that almost felt like an expansion's worth of stuff that was added in and i wish it was a module that you could excise because i feel like for me the game would have been better because of it so yeah there's just a lot of euro games coming out with so much extra stuff and i feel like you know not every euro game needs to be this complex and i guess you know i'm kind of rambling a little bit but to kind of come to something of a point uh it seems to me like a lot of euro games are being made more complex for complexity's sake when they didn't seem like it was necessary i feel like there's a better game for t.o.t with khan in there with less stuff attached again a better game for me like a lot of people love that game and i don't begrudge them and i'm not saying they are wrong but there's a better game out there for me with that there's a better version of gaia project out there with one or two less things really honed in on what's going there stroganoff is another game that i played on tabletop simulator where the central mechanic for that game is so good i really really like what's going on there but then there's so much extra stuff that feels like expansion's worth of content that you kind of have to play with every single time um if there was expansion's worth of content that you could just not use in sort of a beginner mode then i'd be totally fine with that but that's often not the case um so anyway i think i may be talking about this one too much and hopefully i've been able to articulate my feeling on this a little bit more uh when with regards to all of these things um you know this doesn't seem to be really changing as things are going forward and i think a big part of that might be kickstarter i mean teotihuacan did not go up on kickstarter but but it does seem like you know kickstarter lends itself to lots of stuff extra you know components extra mechanics extra modules and that's not really where i want my euros to be again i'm totally fine with my euros being quite complicated as long as it feels like it was all worth it and you know that's completely subjective but um you know from one game to the next whether or not it's worth it but that's just where i stand with it okay let's move on to kenneth they say i'm looking for games that are fairly light with quality playback got any favorites i own quite a few board game of board game geeks top 20 but don't always have time to play uh yeah there's some complicated games up there in the top 20 for sure um that's a great question um it's it's tough to come up with specific game examples on the fly but i will say that your question right there what you're saying is part of the reason why i have been liking cube rails games so much i'm not going to go on a long proselytizing rant about them right now but i will say that um one of the reasons i've enjoyed them is because their rule books in general are very lean they have uh simple sets of mechanics that work together in fascinating ways to um lead to a lot of really great circumstances i really enjoy the fact that most kubril's games can be taught in less than 10 minutes and then you play the game in around 60 minutes so you could play you know two to three q rails games teach and play two to three cube rails games in the same amount of time as you could play like some of the more modern heavy big complex euros that are out there as far as some other ideas i mean uh aristocracy is one that jumps to the top of my head um just because i was talking about it i mean not necessarily because it's the best recommendation but it's there in the front of my mind uh that's a randor kinesia game with a really great central mechanic uh where you draw three random tiles from the board at the start of each turn and then you do an action based off of the stuff that's revealed it's it's got this subtle incentivization thing going on it's got a subtle kind of lottery type vibe to it because you're flipping these over randomly but you choose where you flip them from and every single game i played in this at least at some point somebody flips over tile and just jumps up from the table they're so excited about what they found so it kind of has that you know winning the lotto kind of vibe to it uh so yeah that one's really up there honestly a lot of reiner kenichi games could probably be uh up there but i'm having a trouble coming up with other examples sorry about that kenneth next up oh reiner canesia is also in the next uh question here shrey says no kinesias on your merit badge list have you played many of his higher rated games uh i think so i i saw a whole bunch of kinesis games in those top 300 and i think i've played essentially all of his biggest ones uh you know like tigers euphrates uh raw as well as oh my gosh there's so many and again i'm so bad at just recalling games on the fly when i'm live uh but uh i did not see any in the top 300 of uh reiner kenichi's games that i hadn't actually got to um i guess one that sticks out a little bit is i think my city is up there in like the high 200s and i haven't played that one but i wouldn't call that a merit badge it's definitely a game i would not mind playing but i wouldn't necessarily call it a mere badge um there are certainly games in those top 300 where i'm like you know oh i've heard a lot about that game but i've never played it like war of the ring for example is in the top 20 maybe even the top 10 but it's not on my mirror badge list because i don't really have any interest in playing it even though it's a classic warsaw game lord of the rings theme and all that a lot of people love it it's not necessarily one that i'm going for i do tend to really like reiner can you say games it's true and i think that's probably part of the reason why i didn't have any on that list because i just happen to have actually played those um but if you can think of any that you think maybe i haven't played then then throw it into the chat we'll see if i actually have this is the last patreon question uh so then the rest will be for the chat this one comes from from brian brazil and they say how is all the experimenting with the channel going do you have any ideas in the hopper so again over the course of november i've been experimenting with a bunch of exclusive patreon perks uh various types of content like kind of moving my impressions vlogs over there and talking about the games i'm playing and the games the new games i'm playing and the old ones uh an unboxing that i've done and i might do more of those um also just asking the patrons for questions to ask in this live q a is one of the things that i'm experimenting with as far as the future there's a couple things that i am thinking about trying one soon and one i don't know at some point uh the soon one is i'm thinking about doing some sort of office hours type thing uh sort of like this live q and ax but uh being live for like three or four hours at a time while i'm working and then i can just kind of pop in and chat with people as they they happen to be in while i'm like editing videos or something like that uh not necessarily streaming what i'm editing but just kind of being around to chat i think that could be kind of fun that's something i might try before the end of this month but i don't want to fully commit to that um the other thing that's been knocking around my brain for a long time is it's hard to find all of the content that i've made on johnny's games for the last eight years specifically for games uh like uh for example i mentioned aristocracy before um and if you type in jungkook's games aristocracy into google um i'm not 100 convinced you're going to find the content that i made where i talked about aristocracy and that is a concern considering how much i've talked about specifically in vlog style format where i talk about like three to you know ten games there was a couple years there where uh i was talking about like 10 to 12 games every time i did one of those impressions vlogs and that's that's a worry for me because i like people to find my stuff and honestly it's frustrating for me sometimes too um the best way i can actually find this stuff is i go into my boardgamegeek blog where i posted my vlogs and search within there because that is kind of a bulletproof way to find the stuff that i found but most people aren't going to do that so i've been thinking about trying to devote some time to making that a part of my website my website currently has effectively nothing on it and the idea of making kind of a digest that has every single game i've talked about and then a link to the video and the time stamp when i talked about that game that sounds really attractive the problem is i've made almost eight years worth of videos hundreds and hundreds of videos so this would be a gigantic project and i haven't really taken it on just yet um that wouldn't necessarily be a patreon exclusive type thing it's just been something that's been on my mind and i haven't really had time to invest some real thought into actually making it happen so i'm not saying it's gonna happen but it's definitely something that i would like to have happen at some point in the future i just i'm just not sure if i'm going to make it happen and of course every day i don't do it makes the project harder because every day i put out more stuff next up we have jonathan saw and they mentioned a disaster being averted because yeah i just plugged my computer in before it ran out of battery um they ask are there any new euros coming out that are leaning more on elegance like simple rule sets but great depth um it's hard to say about great depth for games that i haven't actually played but it does seem like there are some heroes coming out with uh simpler rule sets uh brian boru is one that just arrived here at the house actually um that one has trick taking and some area majority and some some really cool stuff going on but it also has a very lean overall rule set that you could almost teach just by looking at the main board which is something i i certainly appreciate that can drive me a little crazy when you have a game with a whole bunch of little side things and you know a whole bunch of conditional scoring and end game scoring and then there's no icons for it on the main board because when i'm teaching these games it's so much better to like point over there and be like okay here is the round structure we are in the action round and then you know move on that kind of way i definitely like to have icons and reminders and that kind of stuff printed on the board um as far as other euros coming out that might be uh grabbing me in this way i'm not really sure again i i'm so bad at coming up with this stuff on the fly um there's a lot of games coming out i know there's if i had gone to essen i probably would have come home with 30 plus games just like i have in the past uh and honestly if i'd done that i'd probably be a lot quicker at coming up with various examples than just the one example i have i have right here if i think of any more i'll definitely mention it um but it does seem like you know not every single euro that's coming out is crazy complicated with a whole bunch of stuff going on that's that's not every game it just feels like it's kind of a trend uh shrey uh it's coming back to the kinesia question uh i think about the merit badges they say their top three kinesia games are medici taj mahal and raw and i have not played medici that that one i guess yeah that could be a mere badge for sure i've heard about that one for a long time uh and never got around to play it although i could be wrong but i think there's a bunch of auctions in medici and up till uh 2021 i usually avoided games with auctions uh so that might be part of it but now i'm pretty much down to try any auction game uh raw technically has an auction but it feels like its own thing and raw is amazing and i really like taj mahal i've played that one three times i think and i've considered getting a copy of it um not everyone i played with actually enjoys that game the last time i played i had a wonderful time and one of my opponents had a miserable time they just did not enjoy that one at all uh it's got this kind of poker almost uh uh bluffing element to it where you're putting these cards down it can be very punitive in general but i think it's a really great game uh we've got some more uh kenichi games coming in from hans they say samurai raw taj mahal lost cities tiger sun euphrates modern art battle line slash shot and taunton medici the quest for eldorado and high society i have played all of those except for well i i said medici and samurai i don't think i've ever played samurai with other people i got the app for it on the iphone like 10 years ago or something like that nine years ago and i played several games over there but i don't think i've actually played samurai with other people so you know what that's another kinesium air badge i would definitely like to play that one because i remember liking it in the app form but i don't generally like playing games against artificial intelligence opponents um so that one didn't really stick around i didn't like keep playing it i just played it maybe like twice so yeah samurai that's one that should definitely be on there i would like to play that one at some point okay next up we have elise and they say which game that you will be making a video for in the next coming month are you looking forward to the most um well i'm not sure exactly what uh playthrough with friends videos we're gonna do in december but i have some suspicions um i think it's possible we might be doing one for brian boru we also might be doing one for messina 1347 and if either of those happen then those are right at the top of me being quite interested quite excited to actually go through the with those um as far as tutorials are concerned i actually don't have anything scheduled right now for december i think it's a little weird i was looking at my schedule you know the sponsored tutorials that people are paying me to make um i don't think i have any for december it's a bit of a weird uh month there so there might be less of the actual tutorial style in december i'm not really sure what's going to happen there but as far as just videos in general i'm hoping to do a playthrough with for brian boru as well as potentially for massena 1347 because those games look super cool i haven't played either one of those yet but um this is a great opportunity to play them especially considering we usually do a friendly ties podcast episode uh along with it and that kind of adds the uh the impetus to play the game a bunch of times to really try that kind of stuff out uh so not an amazing answer i think to your question uh but again honestly december is looking a little bit funky and considering how much is going on it's not the end of the world although not necessarily ideal uh anime says maybe ask for volunteers to help organize those hundreds of videos yeah so that is something i could do and um to talk on a a personal uh uh note about that i feel very uncomfortable about the idea of people volunteering their time for me uh for john gets games for for this kind of stuff in general um this is part of the reason why i don't have a discord chat server or something like that because those things require moderation and i just don't feel comfortable asking people to volunteer their time to moderate this thing for me you know uh jungus games is me and john gets games is also my job it's my full-time career and i just feel weird having people do unpaid labor for me that just doesn't work for me but also i don't think i really have the um the wherewithal to pay for this labor so because of that you know a lot of these things don't really happen and that's that's fine i think that's fine uh i i can definitely i want to consider doing this kind of thing and maybe chipping away at it as time goes uh but the idea of trying to organize people to actually help me out for this makes me quite uncomfortable like personally emotionally and whatnot uh which is why i tend to not do those kind of things and hopefully that makes sense maybe i'm just a weirdo uh elise says i think the pre-asked questions work well i didn't mind the back and forth great that is really good to hear as i was going to sleep last night i was laying in bed thinking how am i going to do this i've got all these questions that came in and i want to answer them but i thought it would be weird to just like talk about a bunch of patreon questions and then go to the chat which at this point i will probably have ignored for like 20 minutes like that doesn't feel like a good live experience so hopefully the bouncing back and forth worked i was gonna do one and one but then i kind of on the fly decided to do some and then some so i don't know i really shouldn't give myself rules on this stuff uh anime fan x11 says do does your want to play list go faster than your played slash tried out list as in you'll never actually finish it in your lifetime or do you think you'll actually get through it one day uh i don't think i will ever get through my what's a playlist it definitely is growing faster than my actual playlist uh part of that's because you know just not having that many opportunities to play games some people play games like you know four plus days a week um i tend to play games two days a week at the maximum sometimes i will go a week or two without playing a single game um so that definitely can impact things overall um but yeah for me i mean i think i'm just always so ravenous and wanting to learn new things and hearing about new stuff and adding them to the list that i don't think my list is ever going to run out and honestly that makes me happy i don't want the list to everyone out i adore board games they're one of the best parts of my life and uh i i would i would hate to have a moment where i'm just like oh i guess i'm done with board games who knows it might happen someday but uh i'm hoping it doesn't happen soon if it does have to uh tc says speaking of euro games i love your t-shirt do you remember where you got it uh yes uh i got this t-shirt from tabletop.com that's t-e-e-b-l-e-t-o-p uh they actually have the official john gets games merchandise uh you can go to jungusgames.com merch to find the jungles games t-shirts and the reason i actually went with them is because i got this shirt i liked the design of it and i i bought it and i wore it and i thought it felt really nice so i reached out to the guy who runs it and he's also the artist behind the stuff and i commissioned him to make the jungle scam shirt and then sell them so yeah you could go there and get this awesome shirt as well as a bunch of others and you could pick up a drunken game shirt if you want to uh it might sound like i'm hocking my wares but i think i make like you know a couple of bucks off each t-shirt so realistically that's not a money-making adventure for me it's a it's fan service like i think the t-shirt looks cool and i like people having the opportunity to get these really cool looking t-shirts that you know are associated with the channel so next up we have hans and i think they are answering a question from before about euro games with elegant mechanics and they say furnace free ride mobile markets a smartphone gaming um furnace absolutely uh i played that game i think a year ago because it technically i think came out in 2020 but it's being released in the states nowish um that's an amazing game that's definitely a wonderful engine building euro with this awesome bidding system that is super elegant on the rules so yeah that's certainly a good one free ride is a track lane train game kind of i played the tabletop simulator mod and was not overly thrilled with it if i'm being honest i never talked about it because that was when i was just doing good games and i wasn't really talking about the games i wasn't liking uh and i have not played mobile markets yet but i'm quite interested too because i did enjoy smartphone inc so it's good to hear that that's a recommendation reishi says sometimes i want to try new games but sometimes i just want to grab one that everyone knows how to play uh so less downtime or learning the rules or searching for answers in the middle um honestly that's part of the reason why we've been playing arcanova so much and golem to a slightly lesser extent but um there's a lot of games to potentially try out there uh within our game group and we keep just being like you wanna just play arc nova like we all know it we put in the time and effort to learn the game and understand it we're really enjoying it let's just bang out a game of bark nova so i definitely understand that uh that feeling okay the next question and i think the last question comes from um patel and they say have you played food chain magnate uh yes yes i have uh i've played that one at least twice maybe three times and uh it's a splatter type game which i don't think i'm particularly interested in playing anymore if that makes sense um at a very high level it's about creating a food chain a chain of stores you know you're selling hamburgers or i think root beer or i can't remember everything that you're selling but at its core you're managing all of your staff and you're setting various prices for things and i remember being very cutthroat with the pricing uh where you would market specific prices and then someone be somebody would undercut you by like one uh dollar and then they would sell all this stuff you wouldn't sell any of your stuff then all of your stuff spoils and then you're feeling bad a lot of people love food chain magnate a good friend of mine owns a copy of it and i think he's down to play it pretty much whenever but i think after playing it about three times i've i've seen enough of it to know that it's not really a game for me yeah okay i think that's gonna bring this one to a close uh thank you to everybody who joined in on this live and thank you to the patrons who asked questions um if anybody has feedback about how that went with the patreon questions being uh intermingled throughout the various uh the chat then please let me know i'd love to see feedback um it seemed to go relatively well from my perspective i definitely liked answering a couple at the beginning before questions actually cycled in so yeah i think that is going to bring this uh live q a vlog to a close i'll do another one of these in about a month i'm not sure the exact date so far but i always announce it during the update vlog that happens in the first week or so of december so keep your eye out for that if you'd like to join in on one of these in the future as always i'd like to thank everyone who's been supporting this channel including these producer-level patreon supporters if you too would like to directly support the channel in the creation of future videos just like this one then please go to junketsgames.com support also if you enjoyed this video then please click the like button for it down below as well as the subscribe button for the channel thanks for watching