Over 20 Hidden Gems from 2024 ►►► The R&R Show Episode 107

0:01 Christmas is coming. It's true. Ho ho ho. And Santa needs assistance. Old and new. These goblins from a village far away are just who he needs to save the day. Welcome friends. How are you? Good to see you. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to our top 12 hidden gems of 2024. This is the RNR show. I hope you're doing well. Hello, Chris and Ray. Oh, I'm Ruell, by the way. And Chris and Ray are here. Hello. There is the

0:47 It's an exciting time. It's an exciting time because Ray is back. Ray is back. Everyone

0:54 one whole stream without me. Whatever would you do?

0:57 We would we would die if it was two.

1:00 That's right.

1:01 But I did get to see Rouel last week, which was really nice. It was odd because I wasn't on the show, but I did get to see Rouel in person last week for not as long as I would have liked to, but we had some friends down. Agreed. I was traveling to the OP offices and Ruel and some friends came and hung out with us, which

1:18 it was such a treat to see Ray in person. Uh friends, we doing my job.

1:22 Yeah, doing your job. But you know, it was always nice to connect. And uh Ray, you were also out here on the West Coast for a very special reason. Can we talk a little bit about that?

1:32 Yes, we can. I um I was nominated. Oh, I was a finalist in the Women and Toys Wonder Woman award. So, I got to go up one of the reasons why I was out in California. We went to San Diego to do some work in office and then we drove up to LA to attend the fanciest event I've ever been to and probably will ever go to in my life.

1:53 Nice.

1:54 Um, I didn't win. I lost to someone from Amazon. Everyone act shocked. Um, but it was a lovely time and it was I never anticipated actually winning, but it was very very cool.

2:05 I don't know what this award is. I've just found out about it. But I hate it.

2:10 No, we love it. We love it. It's fine. Um, it's so it's run by the women and toys organization. Um, and they like honor women in the like toys licensing and entertainment industry. And it's very interesting because I've always been very much on like the proper hobby board game side of the industry. And now with my work at the OP, we kind of straddle toy and board game a little bit more, a little bit more mass market. So I get like a peak into the world of like toy. like you know they had people from Mattel and Lego there and they've got money. That's basically my takeaway is good lord there's so much more money over there. So it was very jarring. Like you take like the spiel of jars which is our biggest award in the entire board game industry and it's like in like a hotel like conference room from as far as I can like grasp and then you take this award and it was at the Beverly Hilton.

3:01 Like I couldn't it was it was just like a weird little time warp that I went through. I got a fun little peek into this kind of other adjacent part of our industry and it was very fun. It was very cool. We got to get all fancy. Um so yeah, it was a good time.

3:14 Nice. And congratulations again, Ray. What an honor to be nominated. Thank you. I appreciate it.

3:19 I know one of the other folks from the board game industry, um Jillian from Brotherwise was also one of the finalists. So

3:25 obviously the best of the best were represented there. So again, kudos to you Ray. Um, you know, congrats again on the nomination, but also just for being an amazing presence uh in the board game community online and offline spaces

3:38 and um Chris, I don't know how we're going to follow that up. How's it going?

3:42 Well, that's why I said we couldn't do it. We couldn't do another show without Ray. You know, Ray is the lifeblood that holds us together, keeps us coming back uh stream after stream. Uh but also shout out to our sponsor this uh this stream as well, Goblins Hate Christmas. they've kept us coming back stream after stream as well. So, huge shout out to them for and go check out their their Kickstarter or their their their website and they're going to be launching uh their campaign and and check them out and show them some love because they showed the RNR show love and they've brought you this show now three weeks in a row.

4:16 Yeah. So, again, thank you Goblins Hate Christmas folks. Be sure to check out

4:20 and Goblin in the chat says we do. We do hate Christmas. We have goblin who who's regularly in the Twitch chat confirming that all goblins hate Christmas.

4:30 I I like Christmas, but I'm not a goblin. But uh folks, be sure to check out that game. It's a a fun little uh quick uh card game.

4:37 So you say terrific art and uh yeah, be sure to check.

4:40 Not a goblin.

4:41 That's something that a goblin would say,

4:42 you know. I don't know. There might be a campaign started at uh #uel is really a goblin. Um #goblin. Show your true colors. That's right.

4:53 Um, uh, you know, Chris, before I forget, we also have something going on real soon here coming up at the end of the week. Uh, you want to talk a little bit about that?

5:01 True.

5:02 Well, I am flying tomorrow to Vegas to, uh, yeah, I'm flying tomorrow cuz we'll be setting up. Well, I'll get in late tomorrow night. And, uh, then we'll be setting up all Thursday to get ready for the World Series of Board Gaming, which is starting Friday. And come next Tuesday, next Tuesday, we will be crowning a champion and giving them $25,000. So just playing board games.

5:23 That's so sick. Every year I'm like, this is the year I do it and I didn't. Not this year. Next year though, cuz every time you talk about I'm like, that's so cool.

5:31 Next year.

5:32 Well, next year I think it's going to be around Labor Day, so I don't know how that that works works for you, but some people might have more um that. And if you if you like when this tournament starts, uh we'll be running like a very small like a live promotion or whatever uh where you can save the best the most money off your ticket if you get it now. So like if you if you want the best deal that will be happening like as the stream starts I think till end of September. So just keep your eyes for that. I think the code's going to be early bird. I'm fairly certain that's the code, you know, very easy code to remember. So you can just uh there's there's your inside scoop because um yeah, if you want to buy a ticket to WSG, use code early bird like within the next week and then you'll be get the best deal.

6:13 All right.

6:14 Okay. I have I have so many questions about WSBG. I feel like we we've probably talked about it on stream so I apologize if we've already like talked about it and I wasn't here for it, but like I have questions, right?

6:25 What is the game that's being added this year that you're the most excited about? Like what's the new game on the roster that you're really excited about? Well, so so for this year for 2025, um the new games that were added, we we only added two in. So we cycled in Dune Imperium Uprising for Dune Imperium, uh and then we we Tickets Ride Left and White Castle came in.

6:44 Yes.

6:45 Oh, that's a a very different

6:47 Yeah,

6:48 very different game.

6:50 There's always going to be some turnover. Uh which that turnover for next year for 2026 will be announced, I think, on Friday. So when the tournament starts, we then announce what the changeover will be. Um, and I think I think some I I I don't know what it what it actually is. I don't know what I'm allowed to say, but some some previous uh tournament fair might come back. There also might be some new ones involved as well. It's a little teaser.

7:15 Cool.

7:15 Sure. I can say that. Well, I just did. We're live.

7:19 Don't worry. I've definitely said things I shouldn't say on this stream before.

7:22 I know. And so I got to give it back to you, Ray. And that's my favorite game is what can I make Ray say that Ray is not allowed to say. It's my favorite part of the stream. We should have a segment. We should have a whole segment dedicated to it. Race fills secrets kind of, but a little just a little bit.

7:39 I love it. Yeah. As AG Fox says, Yeah. What NDA? We don't. Right.

7:44 As we, as we like to say in the biz, it's a friend. You go.

7:48 That's right. Uh, speaking of, uh, friends, let me know in chat how our volume uh, mixes. Hopefully everything's going okay. Um, fingers crossed that we've got our tech issues resolved. Um, we've had them the last couple of weeks, but I think we've figured them out. I know that we do have a slight delay between me, Ray, and uh, Chris. But, you know, we're all over the world right now. So, the fact that we can get together is a miracle in my in my eyes.

8:10 It's a miracle.

8:11 And also, let me know if my if you if I'm cutting in and out. I know last stream we had a little bit of a problem with that. So, um, let me know and I will try to fix it. But, I believe it's I I think in our tests before the stream it's better. Don't

8:22 And and and also let me know um how handsome I am.

8:26 Uh-huh. There's a look. There's like a twinkle in your eye where you're just going to say something.

8:32 Yeah. You can see what

8:33 you like lean in a little. You're like I can see the joke like starting in your brain.

8:37 I'm ready. I'm waiting to say my joke now.

8:39 I'm going to do it.

8:40 Yes. 100%. That is what happens. You I'm very glad that you see that. I have a very obvious tail where I'm like, I thought of something funny and I want to share it. Uh yeah. So, let me know how handsome I am. Um, let me know. Let me know. Like you can rate my handsomeness on like previous streams as well. Um, oh, AG Fox is asking where's the better half. You would you be asking about Jade? Ag Fox is that is that referring to?

9:05 Um, Ag Fox, I just want to to know in the chat if that's who you're looking for because maybe if we all say her name three times, she will appear.

9:14 I hear one Jade in the chat. I hear one Jade in the chat. I I I don't know if I I see a third a second Jade in the chat. I don't know if there's a third Jade in the chat because maybe she'll appear. Maybe she'll appear if we if we if we get it dropped in there. Do we have a third? There's Oh, come on. Oh, I love you so much. I I love you so much. We're back. We're back. I'm here for I'm here for Dwayne.

9:35 I leave for one.

9:37 I leave for one straight.

9:38 See what happens. Ray,

9:39 I even forgot my voice.

9:41 Nobody stops. It's normally sounds like this. actually very but Richard hasn't made me angry yet. So I was feeling a bit nicer. Uh I'll be back. Don't you worry.

9:50 Um yeah, that's Jade. Jade was there.

9:54 I had all week.

9:56 Oh, it's like baby cookie all over again. Wow.

9:59 I made I made sure that Jade was sitting right next to me just in case the opportunity arose. And Agent Fox, you didn't didn't disappoint.

10:07 Yes. Thank you, Agent Fox. And

10:10 Dino Corki,

10:11 I'm so glad we encouraged this behavior when I wasn't here. Great job everybody. Good parenting. I can't wait to undo this damage on these streams to come.

10:19 The voice of reason is back, friends. Thank you. Oh,

10:22 Jade almost went full medal there. Hey, the people love Jade. You know, the people we got to give the audience what the audience wants, right? It's called fan service. Okay,

10:31 fan service. That's right.

10:34 Um,

10:34 that is one,

10:35 friends. We've got a great show uh coming up here. We're going to be talking about our hidden gems. Uh much like Jade was a hidden gem last week. Um

10:45 great segment.

10:46 Yeah. But we've got games that you may not have heard of from last year which we really uh enjoy. And um I'm really excited about this. I love doing this the last couple of years. You know just to highlight games that you know may have flown by the radar like there are thousands of games released every year. So to highlight a few of them here is always a treat. Um I personally now we we do talk about how we came up uh came up with our list. Personally, I looked at the games that um I ranked last year that were 3,000 and below on BGG. So, I went

11:16 look at that. We didn't even talk about it. Did the same thing for Look at us go. We didn't even talk like 3,000 ratings.

11:23 Yes. Well, no, wait. So, if it was ranked 3,000 or lower on

11:28 then we did something totally different. Oh, okay. Never mind.

11:31 Well, what did you do, Ray? I'm I'm curious what you did number number of ratings. E

11:36 I did. Yes. So, I think what you did is really interesting because you were actually looking at like the like the the ranking compared to other games that have come out, right? I was strictly looking at how many people rated it on BG.

11:51 I looked at like how not necessarily like how good the game is on on BG like what people ranked it. I just the only opinion that matters is mine. If I like the game, I like the game. I then had to somehow discover figure out if it's hidden or not. And that was my barometer for hidden was if it had I had less than 3,000 ratings on BG um as my metric for hidden.

12:12 That's Yeah, that's an interesting way.

12:14 But I like I like that we did the two different ways cuz I think they they mesh pretty well. I think approaches will

12:18 Well, let's find out. Chris, what about you? How did you approach this?

12:21 I decided to do both of those. Wow. Both of those things. And in fact, I went even further. I made sure to be under 3,000, you know, for for Ruel. Um, and then I and then I also made sure to be under 7,000 for me. Um, and then for for Ray, I decided to be under um under 3,000 ratings, but also under a thousand. Actually, under 702 ratings or under under 160. Some of these only have

12:49 I was going to say only one of mine is in the thousands. Most of mine are like in the in the hundreds. So yeah,

12:54 I just looked them up right now actually while you're talking to see actually where where my where my ratings fell and it was likeund and and I will have those metrics as we talk about them as well. Yeah, I tried to I had a big list in terms of things. I actually looked just under a thousand um uh on BG at first and then I made a big list and then I ended up picking the ones that I just wanted to talk about and liked the most but also felt there was a balance of maybe people haven't talked about this as much. So that that especially boosted by number three up into the contention which is how we're going to start the list really.

13:28 Yeah. And I I do want to let everyone know thank you again for coming back after listening to Richard rant last week. Some really classic rants. I I thought they were great. Uh talk about

13:38 classic rant.

13:39 Yeah. So if you missed that one, be sure to check out that episode.

13:42 We found out that Richard doesn't want you to have physical um board games and only wants all of your board games to be app driven. That's what we did find out. That is the official stance of this Roto channel now, I think. Um, because he was so impassionate about the Teor system and wants every game to be a part of the Teor system and and doesn't want you to actually be able to get together with uh with people without the basis of this um electronic board. And I thought that was interesting. I thought it was an interesting take. Me personally, I differ. I differ personally, but um yeah, I thought that was an interesting It's an interesting twist, you know, that every board game should be electronic, I think, is what he was saying. uh last year and

14:20 fascinating.

14:21 He's not here to say differently. So, I think that we'll just have to we'll just have to assume that that was it.

14:25 That was what he was saying.

14:28 Check out that book. That's episode 106. We are here at 107. There will be no Well, there may be some ranting. We shall see. But, uh these are our top 12 hidden gems of 2024.

14:38 I thought you were going to say there will be no 108.

14:41 Nope. This is it. We're done.

14:44 That's a wrap.

14:45 That's it. It was a good run. Uh but why don't we run into this uh list here? We're going to start things off, I believe, with Chris at our number 12. Is that correct, Chris? I'm going to check right now.

14:55 Yep, that's me.

14:56 Yeah. Uh but I'm going to tell you about my number 12. Number 12 is a little game called Bosa. So Bosa looks like one of those games that you would see at a store, at a Barnes & Noble, at a Target. Uh and you would think, I'm a hobby gamer. I don't know this game. Um yuck. Uh and that's exactly what I thought as well. I said I said that wasn't on crowdfunding. Why should I even care? Uh, but it's actually a really cute little drafting game. There'll be four cards in a market and you're going to make a little tableau of 16 cards and you're going to be pulling out your your cards one by one. And whenever you drop a card into your tableau, you get to activate it. And you also get to activate like the row or the column. So max you can activate these the your one column is is sort of four times and you're building kind of simultaneous engines while also trying to worry about like card placement as well. And so it's just cute. It's great. It's a really relaxing filler game. Uh, I had never heard of it before. I was like, "This is probably going to be bad." I was sort of a delightful surprise, but I don't think anybody's heard about it before because when we look on Board Game Geek, it's uh 7908 on BGG. It's actually my my furthest rated, my lowest rated. It only has 157 ratings, but it's sitting at like a 7.7 uh breakdown when you look at Board Game Geek. I think that's a pretty good pretty good breakdown for the amount of people who have actually um you know played it and enjoyed it. I think it I think it is quite nice. A delightful filler game. I think it also was a pretty good price. So yeah, I I quite liked it in terms of just a quick resource conversion engine building style game. I like building the tableau.

16:26 I like having the secret objectives too that my secret objective was like you want to have as many purple cards as you as you can but they can't have purple cards on either side. I'm like okay cool. So, I want to make a whole crisscross pattern of purple cards, and that was my goal. And then trying to build an engine around that to to get the other most points and other point categories was fun. It It was really nice. And so, I figured this was the most hidden of all the ones on my list to me.

16:49 That's very hidden.

16:50 Yeah.

16:50 And so, I I figured uh that I had to include it. And that's our number 12 is Bosa.

16:55 Very nice. Yeah. I hadn't heard of this game. Um but it looks like something that would be in my wheelhouse. Like, I can see me and Michelle totally playing this on a week night. um after work. And I love the fact that you know you've you found something that is I feel like it's readily available to folks. We just don't know. It's like almost like hidden in plain sight, right? So that's sort of cool.

17:15 Yeah.

17:16 Yeah. So what was So Chris, where did you find it again? It was the the Canadian equivalent of Barnes & Noble, was it?

17:22 I don't know. Somebody brought it to a board game night. A board game uh thing. And the six of us played it. Took like I don't know 45 minutes for six people.

17:30 Okay. Um which is pretty

17:33 Yeah. because it's just like quick drafting. You make 16 decisions essentially. Um, and you only have a four in the market to choose from and so it just kind of goes around. You're like, "Okay, well, the market's going to be completely different by the time it gets back to me." But, uh, yeah, I think it was six people or maybe it was five because it might only go up to five. Um,

17:49 yeah, it says five on BG. It's nice to get like a a short quick strategy for for five is not always

17:55 Yeah. Yeah.

17:56 common.

17:56 Cool.

17:57 All right, that's the way to kick off a list, folks. Hidden gems for 2024. Let's move on to our number 11. I'm going to take this one. Uh, this is a two-player game called Naishi. Um, this was from France and, uh, recently Renegade just picked it up and Michelle and I did a playthrough of it. This is a two-player tableau building game. Um, and it has the mechanism that I cannot stand where you have a hand of cards and you cannot shuffle your cards in your hand.

18:25 Oh, no. I love that.

18:27 Oh, really? So, I can't stand that. Yeah, because you know I'm a I'm a poker.

18:31 It's hard. I I get it. The muscle memory is frustrating and like as a poker player I always want the same suits and the same numbers together, but in they do it a really cool way. So you have your um hand of cards and it relates to right in front of you. So Michelle and I we would actually play be playing this across the table from each other in real life, but here for the purpose of the stream uh we're side by side. So you see the little tableau here. We have the middle market which is the river and then I my on top here that's going to be my you know first tableau and then my second tableau is actually in my hand and then same with Michelle she has her tableau in front of her and then she um has her hand and whenever you draw a card from the river you're either going to put it in your hand and discard it from the exact same space that you got it from or you're going to place it in front of you in your open tableau and replace it exactly where the card is coming from the river. Now all the cards have different powers and abilities and you also have an action selection system there on the right side where you can place a token and take an action where you can start manipulating cards. So if you don't like the card that's say like right in the middle, maybe you could use that special action to say I want that middle card to go to the far right or left or whatever and then bring it into your tableau. So, as you're doing this, um you are playing, you know, until one of those river um uh spaces is gone, like completely gone of cards, and then you can decide to end it there if you feel like you have enough points, or you can continue the game until two of the river spots are gone. And then what's

20:02 really neat is you're going to score two tableau. So, you Michelle and I, we only have our first open tableau there, but at the end of the game, we're going to reveal our hand and we're going to place our hand right below our tableau. So you're going to have a 5x two grid and then scoring on depending on what you have there. So some of them are like, hey, if there's a red card next to a green card, you'll get points. Others are who has the most of the blue cards. Yet others are, you know, do you have a certain number of these cards, you'll get positive points. If you only have one of them, you get negative. It has a lot of really cool scoring mechanisms that you've seen in other games. But I love this whole like hidden tableau in your hand and then you have the open one in front of you and you're trying to manipulate those. So there's there are ways to get them from one tableau to another. Naishi, it is so I it's I don't know if it was underlooked just because Okay, it's a two-player card game.

20:52 There's a ton of those these days, but this one is excellent, folks. It's It's got like this uh I don't know, like some sort of Japanese theme. The theme, honestly, it's just pasted on. It could be anything. I would have preferred Cute Critters, which I always prefer, but hey, the gameplay is rock solid, and that's why it's our number 11, Naishi.

21:10 Cool. Yeah, never heard of this one. So, you've you've achieved achieved the the bare minimum of hidden gem that we we haven't heard of it. And uh I it sounds it sounds fun. I like that. I like that dual

21:22 dual tableau that you're creating. That sounds that sounds

21:25 I love this list. Oh, first of all, before I start yapping too much rule, could you turn me down a little bit? that we are getting feedback from chat that I'm a little loud.

21:31 Okay, sure.

21:32 Um

21:33 um but what I love about this list is that um for once none of us can trash talk the other person's picks because we're all like hm that before.

21:41 Yeah, we have no additional commentary. It's like wow.

21:46 Okay, so that's our number 11. Naishi, let's move on to our number 10. Ray, you've got this one.

21:52 All right, our number 10. This is my the least of my hidden hidden games. had 2500 ratings on

22:00 which is quite a lot but I felt like it didn't get talked about in the media cycle last year and I feel like part of kind of what uh RUL you just mentioned we've had a lot of good card games lately like a lot I feel like it takes quite a bit for a card game to stand out in the last couple years because we've had just couple years of just straight bangers and this one I think is super solid and would have deserved a little bit more attention than it got and this is Odin this is a handshedding game kind of like Scout. It kind of hits the same part of my brain that I that loves Scout, uh, but it's simpler. I was actually just coincidentally talking to a co-orker last week about how Scout's like on my top five list of like quick, easy card games, and then every time I try to teach it to a non-gamer, it's painful. Scout has got a little bit too much to it. The strategy is a little too opaque. and Odin feels like a great step down from scout that is still just as fun but a little bit easier for newcomers to understand um the strategy of it. So Odin is a handshedding game. Um you are going to be trying to play sets of cards to beat the previous set of cards that were played before you. Um so again kind of like scout. Um but here the cards you can play you can play the same number as the previous person or one more. And the cards you play have to either be the same suit or the same number. So you'll see there's like four or five different colored suits. So if um Chris played like a blue 53, I could play a pink I

23:30 could play two pink cards or three pink cards. Now how do you determine if my hand beats Chris's hand? You are going to add together. Add is kind of a hard not the right word. You're going to smush together the numbers on the cards you play. So with Chris is five and three. He has a 53. He doesn't have

23:47 Yeah, I got a 53.

23:48 He has 53. I could then come in with two fours, like two pink fours, and have

23:55 No, that's not how that works.

23:57 That's That's not enough.

23:59 Two sixes. Two sixes. Then I'd have 66

24:02 and I'd beat him. I know. Crazy how that works. And then would you

24:08 after you play your cards, you're going to then take one of the cards from the previously played hand. So I would then have to draft one of Chris's blue five or three add into my hand. I know.

24:20 Five.

24:20 Crazy.

24:21 No, I'm just a three. And so what I like about it is that strategy of trying to you want to play powerful hands so you can get rid of as many cards as possible and shed your hand, but you have to be mindful of what's left in your hand because whatever you take from the previous person kind of has to have a home. Just having one blue five is going to really suck. Kind of like in scout having random singletons is a real pain in the butt. But what I like about this versus scout for new players is you're always getting new cards in your hand, right? So sometimes scout

24:51 scout has plenty of mechanisms to

24:54 counterbalance the bad hand problem, but you kind of need to know what you're doing. Odin, there's a lot you're you're shifting through your hand a lot more, and I think that makes it a lot more um a lot more accessible, and I find this game is actually harder than it sounds. I've been playing it a ton on on BGA, and I get my butt kicked all the time. Um but yeah, this is Odin. It's a nice little nice little card game. I like the the mechanism of adding the numbers together like that to determine the power of your hand. It's easier for people to grasp than like runs or sets or whatever. It's just you add it together. Big number beats small number. Nice and simple. Um and yeah, that's Odin.

25:29 Yeah.

25:30 Really thought I had it with my 53.

25:32 I know. I know. It was crazy. It was an upset. I came with those two sixes. Who would have seen it coming?

25:36 Yeah. Yeah.

25:37 Uh I've also played this on BGA. Ray, you're right. It's um I I I love how you describe it's just a step down from scout, but there's still plenty of stuff to you know, there was plenty of strategy here and um I I really enjoyed this one. I have not played in real life yet, but I'm dying to because I really like

25:52 it's a perfect BGA game. I love it. It's great for It's like It feels like it was meant for BGA.

25:58 Um yeah,

25:59 so good. Okay, let's move on uh to Richard. He's got our next game. Um this is number nine. Richard, take it away.

26:07 Hey gang. Hey everybody, it's me. I am here and I'm going to add uh to the list because interestingly, I've already gotten a sneak peek at everything that Ray Rel and Chris are talking about today. I have not played any of these games. In fact, I've only even heard really I know anything about two of them. They were both Chris's. One, uh he's mentioning a game that Chay actually covered on the channel. It looked fairly nice if you like that sort of thing. And then another one I'm actually planning on covering while Jen and I are on the road on our way to Essence Spiel. So, you'll be seeing me doing coverage of it with its new expansion that's going to be coming soon. Uh, and I'll leave it to you to guess what I'm actually talking about or mention it down in the comments if you think you know. Um, anyway though, uh, we are on the road. We're on the M4 somewhere deep in Wales heading east towards the tunnel. Uh because we have embarked on an epic threemonth road trip uh leaving Ireland behind. We're going to be spending a week in the Netherlands cuz Jen's going to be uh taking a glass making class with some worldrenowned artist that she very much respects and is very excited about. And then we're going to be very slow rolling our way to Germany for Essence Spiel. And then we're going to spend a few months on the road heading back through France and probably down to Spain. And yes, Paulo, we will make it to Portugal. We will swing by and say hi. Should I be committing to that?

27:30 There you go. You've just committed.

27:31 Apparently, we've committed. All right. But anyway, folks, um, if there's more RNRs, you'll be hearing from us more on the road. And I know there'll be at least one when we get together to do our most anticipated for Essen. I might be recording it at Essen. Who knows? But anyway, enough about all that business. We are talking about hidden gems from last year. I've got so many I could tell you about. Here's how I came up with my list. I basically just took a list of everything I played and sorted it by the um Board Game Geek ranking and pretty much anything above that didn't at least make it to the 6,000s is outside the 6,000 best games of all time I'm reckoning is an overlooked gem. And right now I'm going to be telling you about my three most overlooked because they are at the absolute bottom of list.

28:18 I mean one of them is like number 14,000 or something like that or 12,000 on the database. So, people should be paying attention to this game, but they haven't. Anyway, though, what we'll get to that one in a second because right now we're talking about number nine on our combined list. It is, if I can push the buttons. There we go. Jen's going through a roundabout. It's Cat Packs. Cat Packs. This is a game I actually covered when it was crowdfunding. I think it's a fantastic little sweet, charming game. uh drafting cards that um are all these different cats in funny, adorable uh situations. Apparently, it's based on, you know, the uh the art is done by a famous cartoonist, and this is a popular line of stuff that this cartoonist does. I don't really know the background. All I know is it's a really good game. You know, kind of reminiscent of Calico. Hey, there's four cards out there. I'm going to grab one. I hope hope the one I want is there when I get a chance. And then we're actually going to end up I'm going to take it into my hand and then I can play cards. This is one of those, hey, I've got to sacrifice some cards to play other cards. You've got all those fun, you know, Race for the Galaxy tough choices to make. But, um, the game really comes alive when you're actually playing them into your little grid because all the cards have different color markings on the outer edges and you're trying to get those to line up to get extra points. But these cards have special powers. These cards have different ways they want to be adjacent to each other. Some of them are income generators. Some of them are there's actually a kind of a little majority thing. Um, you know, uh, you

29:49 know, whoever's got the strongest cats or the richest cats or the fattest cats, the fat cats. Uh, actually, I just made that up. Although, there are some fat cats in here. There's cats of all types as you're seeing, um, in the video. Folks, I don't have to go laboring too long. You can go watch my run through. There's going to be a link for it down in the show notes. And I think, like me, you will be incredibly charmed by this game. and you'll say to yourself, "Why has no one heard of our number nine uh hidden gem of 2024, Cat Packs?" Okay, back.

30:21 All right, Cat Packs. So cute and cozy. I I'm really stunned that this didn't make any of our list because I had never heard of it, but it seems like my type of jam. Uh it looks super cute and yeah, cat packs friends. Um that's a really hidden gem. I I have heard of it heard of that one um as well because it was on crowdfunding and so it's been on there have been a couple iterations of it on crowdfunding as well. They've just added in new packs, right? New cats, new packs, new fat stacks.

30:49 What a world we live in.

30:50 Yes.

30:50 You know, uh new tracks. No, there aren't any tracks in the game. Um but there might be some cat tracks that you can stacks. Uh I I thought this game when it was on Kickstarter looked fine. I know it had a bit of a it was a higher price for what essentially boil down to like just a small deck of cards that you were that you're going to tile lay. I thought the tile laying looked looked ordinary. So, it didn't look like it was anything innovative, but uh I'm glad that uh that Richard enjoyed it enough to put on the list. But for me, I was when I looked at it, I remember being like, "Yeah, okay, sure." It kind of was like a in terms of what it elicited for me when I was uh looking at it when the campaign was running. Yeah. And again,

31:32 we all look through so many games every day and it's hard to keep track. So, I can see why that just sort of

31:38 flew past us. But, hey, Richard, thanks for um taking the time out from your road trip to share that with us. Um it's always funny to see where he's at, you know, like

31:46 I hope he'll be in a field.

31:48 I love that he just moved to Ireland. Then he's like, "We're leaving Ireland behind for seven months." It's like, dude, you just you just moved there.

31:55 Do you even have like do you even have like your mailing address set up? And he's like on the road again.

31:59 I know.

32:00 Which you got to you got to love him for it. He's living his life.

32:02 Absolutely.

32:03 We are all just jealous, you know.

32:05 That's all it is.

32:06 Yeah. Um let's move on to our number eight game of Hidden Gems. Uh back to you, Chris. What do you got for us?

32:12 Yeah. So, this is the one that uh Richard was talking about that he'd heard of before because Shay did a run through of um I just looked up and and I assumed that Shay would do a runthrough of it because it seems it it is a bigger box style game and I feel like often those go to Shay. uh versus versus Richard. Uh this is Earth Under Siege Flashoint. So, this one is rated uh 7,587 on Board Game Geek. It has 146 ratings. Um and it's currently rated an 8.7 on there. It is it is a great game. Uh it it's really really fun. Uh I my favorite part about it is that it it captures a stealth game in the way that I want stealth to be captured in a board game. Um, I feel like the only other kind of stealth games that I'm aware of are Burn Cycle is is one of them, but I I like this a more than Burn Cycle. And mainly because I find with a stealth game, the the hard part of capturing making a stealth game fun is that in a stealth game, you have to be waiting around.

33:16 Inherently, you're waiting around for the the troops to get into position so you can burst out from the wall and like do a sneak attack and get them and make sure that nobody sounds the alarm, right? But that inherently comes with like, okay, well, I have to wait two turns uh burn two turns for this guard to walk down this pathway and around the corner, right? And so I I think what's what's interesting about this is that uh the fun part is that you'll have a hand of cards. Your cards will all do different things depending upon what character you are. Uh, all the characters are pretty fun except for Captain Hicks, who I hate.

33:48 All my hate Captain Hicks.

33:50 We hate C. I would say I say we hate Captain Nix. I don't know. Captain Nick Hicks just seemed like less cool than everybody else cuz he see he's more of a support character. I'm like, I don't want to support you. I want to do cool things myself.

33:59 Classic Prince doesn't play support. It does not shock me.

34:03 You know what? No, I don't like

34:05 No, no, no, no, no. That fits my narrative of you lines in perfectly. I don't need new information. No, I'm giving you information. Attack on Titan, the deck building game. I love playing a support deck. I'm like giving you a fuel canister, giving you a resupply. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. But in this um I I don't know. I think the other the other ones feel a little bit more active. Uh but but what what's really exciting is that you can discard on your turn. You you can discard cards from your hand to get like additional tokens, which will then depending upon the type of card that it is, which then gives you like a boosted version of another card. So, it's like you're building up. It's like you're really setting a trap and it gives that feeling of setting a trap. Uh, and you can't really just run in guns blazing because the enemies are tough enough that you'll probably get wrecked. And so be because of that balance, I I think it really nails the stealth genre uh in quite a big way. Uh, and I think it's a it's a very the production is very well done. I think the storage is awful. Uh, I think it's very bad.

35:04 You can't have you can't have everything. It's like

35:07 three things picked two when it comes to board games. storage is horrid. Uh they're like, "We got all this great storage." Like, it's really bad. It doesn't help with setup. It's It's such a big freaking chunky box, too. Um but I I think the gameplay itself and the scenarios are really fun. It's also built as a campaign game, but I'm playing it more as like one shots because the progression as you go through doesn't really you don't really have to worry about it, which is great because I can't have another campaign game on my conscience. I just want a scenario.

35:34 I just want to be like, "Okay, I've leveled up to like this amount. Great. I'll build my character and I'll go through. I don't want another campaign game. I don't I don't I don't need it. I just want to play some scenarios and have fun with this game. And I think that's what this does.

35:47 Yeah.

35:47 Yeah.

35:48 Yeah.

35:48 Um you know, you mentioned the storage.

35:50 I don't know that I

35:51 Oh, sorry. I was just ahead. Uh Burn Cycle, you you compared to that Burn Cycle, it's hard to top as far as storage, right? Like that uh the Chip Theory games, they always come out with like the best storage and best components. So, but this looks really interesting as well. like the whole, you know, um, uh, is it a cyberpunk uh, setting? Is that what I'm looking at or No, I'm thinking of motorcycle, but this is

36:11 it's like XCOM.

36:13 Yeah.

36:14 Yeah.

36:14 Yeah.

36:15 Anyways, Ray, uh, comment,

36:17 I was just going to say I don't think I've ever thought about stealth as its own genre. So, it was interesting to hear your takes on it because there's just I wouldn't I can't think of a lot of games that I would categorize as that. So, that was it was very interesting to to hear your thoughts on it. I I want more and I maybe want more that are not sci-fi themed. I want someone to do a cool take on stealth that is not XCOMY, right? Because everything that I can think of is like some sort of XCOM style game. So, yeah.

36:43 But this one looks like a good one. And um

36:46 yeah.

36:46 Um I've always I'm always a fan of cute critters. Can we have a cute critters stealth game? I mean,

36:52 yeah.

36:53 Can we make that

36:54 red wall stealth?

36:55 Yeah.

36:55 Oh, see I would love that.

36:56 Right.

36:58 I would love that. You're Clooney the Rat and you're breaking into Red Wall and you're killing all the Red Wall. You're Methusela. Sorry, you're gone.

37:08 Let's Let's resurface the childhood trauma here.

37:12 Spoiler spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Red ball.

37:14 Spoiler alert for a children's series.

37:16 That's 30 years old.

37:18 Right. Wow. Older than me. We We said Methusela on the stream. We're We're good. Um let's move on to our number seven. I'm going to take this one, friends, of our hidden gems. Uh, this is from two of my favorite designers. So, our number seven is Wrath of Fire Mountain. Uh, it's from two of my all-time favorite designers, Eric Lang and Phil Walker Harding. Praise be. Um, it is a game

37:39 and I've never heard of it.

37:40 I can't believe I haven't heard of this and I love Eric Lang. So good. Oh, wait. Okay.

37:44 This is from heard of it.

37:46 I It just It just clicked where I've seen this before. I think that Eric Lang is testing a prototype of this in the the movie The Hobby. Oh,

37:54 I think that like this looks like what he's play testing in that in that movie. So maybe I have heard of it.

38:00 Yeah. So check out that movie folks. You'll see the behind the scenes stuff. Um so

38:04 Eric and Phil got together and they mashed up two really interesting mechanisms. So it is area control, you know, which Eric Lang is, you know, famous for for so many of his games. And as you can see here, we are that's Fire Mountain. You have the different terrains. That's how you're scoring your area control. So, you know, do you have the most in this contiguous uh group of like, you know, um grass or a field or water or whatever? But then after each round, you're going to move these things. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit to the video here where you can actually see me moving. So, you're going to choose to either go up and down or left or right. And it's going to bring things around. And as you can see there, yeah, there it is right there. So, I'm going to choose one tile, move it up, and that's going to change like how you play, you know, how you're going to try to figure out where to bring your uh characters and stuff. It is so fun.

38:52 And I I think I know why this didn't hit. I really feel like people sort of overlooked this because it was from Gameright. And Gameright is really well known for like Sushi Go, like these very accessible games.

39:05 Yeah. Like lighter

39:06 lighter games, right? So, I'm thinking like hardcore games, they thought, "Oh, this is a baby game for babies." No, it's not. This is a fantastic game. Uh, again, Eric Lang, Phil Walker Harding, praise be. You put those two designers, I'm all over it. And I think this is such a hidden gem, criminally underrated, and that's why it's our number seven, Wrath of Fire Mountain.

39:26 Nice.

39:28 Yeah, I remember in the in the segment in the hobby where Eric is talking about this, um, he's describing play testing, right? It's his little segment talking about how to how you make a game, how you play test a game. He said, "Play testing is just playing an unfun game a lot until it becomes a fun game." So, I'm glad to hear that this game turned into a fun game because that was my only exposure to it was I saw that and I was like, "That's a game that I don't like I I don't remember hearing about it, right?" I was like, "Oh, I thought this was still a to be published Eric Lane game at the time of the movie releasing because I just don't think it got it didn't get the press cycle." So, I was under the impression it wasn't out yet. So, this is was kind of cool. Kind of like deja vu like, "Oh, I have seen that before." That's

40:06 Yeah, I'm glad it turned out to be good.

40:08 Yeah, it's like really good. And again, I just I we there's just so many games that come out every year and some just slip through the cracks and unfortunately this one did. I I think it's fantastic. So, um it's an area control SL game with Yatsi style rolling. I I just What's I can't think of any other game like that with tileing, right? It's just it's sort of

40:28 Yeah. And the way the tiles like move and push each other like that's cool, right?

40:31 Or which I

40:34 Cool. I still haven't seen the hobby. I'm in it.

40:38 You're in it a bunch. That was going to be when we were talking about WSVG. That was going to be my second question. We got on another topic, but my second question was going to be how did it feel to see WSBG and you in a movie? And the answer would be you don't know.

40:50 I know. I I really need to see I've been trying to get to a screening, but like we had we had a screening of it at WSG.

40:57 Buy it. Watch it online.

40:58 Oh, okay. All right. I need to buy it then. And And

41:01 I mean, watching it at a screening would be way more fun.

41:03 Yeah. Well, cuz Simon Simon, who's the director, was like, "Oh, yeah, I got a Toronto." He He's in He's in Toronto, too. Like, he lives in Toronto. And so, I was like, "Okay, well, I want to go to like a screening or whatever." But, um, yeah, at at a certain point, I just need to actually watch it because you just need to watch it cuz you're in it. I'm in it.

41:19 Every time I've watched it, cuz it's become my show this to people in my life who don't understand what I do for a living movie. And every time you call this like that's my friend.

41:29 Cool. Cool. Nice. Nice.

41:31 Yeah.

41:32 Yeah. I'm excited to watch it. It was I I know I know that they captured a lot from WSVG and it ended up being like a decent

41:38 It was one of the big like the big storytelling pillars which I wasn't expecting. Um

41:42 yeah, we weren't expecting when we Simon wasn't expecting when he came down, but he's just like no in terms of the footage that he got and making it a nice through line and a story. Yeah.

41:50 Yeah. They just had a screening in LA recently which I unfortunately I missed because I know Chris will be much more handsome on the big screen than on the little screen.

41:57 See, there you go. That's what I was saying. Let let us know. Well, remember, let us know in chat how handsome I am because again, I don't think I saw enough of that when when we said it earlier.

42:07 Yeah. So, I'm just let us know. Let us know in chat.

42:09 Let us know in chat. And why don't we move along to our number six. We're going to turn it over to Ray.

42:13 Sorry, I got us off track. Let's talk about our next game. Our next game has 340 ratings on BG. So, a lot less a lot big jump from my last one.

42:23 Yeah.

42:24 Um, this is Stock Exchange. Now, stock exchange is a gorgeous stock market manipulation game. Typically isn't my jam. I'm not into stock market games, but the way the stocks rise in this game is via a communal spatial puzzle, which is my jam. So, this kind of tricked me into playing kind of baby's first uh stock market game because that genre really they're always themed in like the most boring way ever. And this is a really nice breath of fresh air for the stock market genre. So, what you're going to be doing is you're going to be try investing in different types of flowers based on your hidden portfolio. Everyone's going to have a number of flower tokens that represent what they're invested in. And then in order to get the stocks for those flowers to rise, you're going to be planting flowers in this communal garden. Now, at first, all the flowers start as bulbs and they need to have space around them in order to bloom. And then once you get a group of like colored flowers that have all been bloomed next to each other and fully surrounded, all of those flowers will harvest and that'll directly relate to rising in that flower stock. So, it's really I really there's something it it it doesn't do the game justice, but it feels like Candy Crush to me. You're trying to get these little groups of flowers together and then they all burst and then the stock arises.

43:42 That is really satisfying to me and I like that it's this communal spatial puzzle, right? you're trying to see what types of flowers someone else is planting and you're trying to kind of like game the system a little bit. And that could mean, you know, um blocking them out from making big groups and and putting more of your flowers down. It could be pivoting and riding their wave of like, hey, Chris really likes tulips. I'm going to switch my portfolio and start investing in tulips and just let Chris do all of the work. Or my favorite strategy is to see that Chris is investing in tulips and then I just go tulip crazy. I just plant a ton of tulips because remember a group doesn't harvest until it's totally surrounded. And there comes a point where if a group is so big it's hard to surround it. So there's a point I my favorite strategy in this game is to get someone really excited about one type of flower. Get them planting a lot of it and then add on to the point where you can't ever harvest it because it's gotten so out of control. I just really like that spatial element. It's quick. It's light. It's fun. I wish this had like found its audience better than it did because I think it's such a solid such a solid production. The little wooden pieces are so so nice. Um, and yeah, that's Stock Exchange. I just I love this game. I'm biased and I know it, but this is one of my favorite games uh that I've been a part of recently and I wish it got wish.

44:56 I like I demoed nothing but this at Essen and they kept trying to put me on another game and I was like, "No, I want to demo stock exchange. I love teaching this game to people."

45:04 Yeah. I remember you taught it to me at Gamma I think two years ago or whenever that's right. Yeah. And it was this and Gnome Hollow that really changed the way I I view the op Ray. It's like oh y'all aren't playing anymore. These are hobby games like you know full on hobby games and it's terrific. And I don't know if it was like maybe it was just a victim of Gnome Hollow's success like everyone was so focused on that and it sort of like you know was you know cannibalized a little bit. Yeah.

45:29 Yeah. But it's Yeah, you're you're right. It is a terrific game folks. If you've not gotten a chance to play, I I definitely recommend this one as well.

45:36 And me, I'm just happy that all my favorite flower, the tulip, is just flourishing. You know what I mean? I don't It doesn't even need to be harvested. I just like seeing it being planted and and even double tulips. Hey, do you know that there's a thing called a double tulip? Kind of looks

45:50 in real life. Really?

45:51 Yeah. It kind of looks like um it's it looks like a better carnation. That's what it looks like.

45:55 Oh, it's

45:56 I didn't know we needed a better carnation, but here we are. Well, you do cuz carnations suck. Oo, carnations. Double tulips. Yeah, double tulips. We are They're a cool flower. So, I'm very happy that uh you know, I I was investing in tulips.

46:13 And uh and this isn't even brought to you by Big Tulip.

46:16 Wow.

46:16 It's in fact brought to you by Goblins Hate Christmas.

46:20 Yay.

46:20 Yay. Goblins Hate Christmas. Um let's turn back over to Richard for our collective number five. And Richard, where are you at? What do you got? Okay, we're moving on to number five because I've got nothing to say. Again, I I guess everybody's choosing well on this list because these are a whole bunch of games that, you know, Chris Ray and Weller talk about that I know nothing about or next to nothing about. So, I'm looking forward to hearing them say, why do they think they deserve the nod? But I'll tell you why I think our number five deserves the nod. It is Race to Mars. Now, I guess I understand why it's so well hidden. I'm pretty sure this was self-published by a guy. I want to say Norway. I'm pretty sure it was Norway. Maybe it was Sweden. Maybe it was I'm pretty sure he was Norwegian. Um, and the thing is has this I think he only put out like 500 copies of this game. And I'm very fortunate that he sent me one uh because Jen and I both fell hard in love with this race game. This actually this game is so good. But I ended up getting rid of several other race games from my collection cuz I just didn't need them anymore when I could do the Race to Mars. Um, and I am hoping hoping hoping Ray the YP hoping that some publisher out there will contact him and put it in front of more people because I think this game is just something really special. What is it? Well, it is a race to Mars kind of set in the modern day and the game has two halves. The first half of the game, we are taking turns drafting cards. And these cards are either going to be our crew. They're

47:53 multi-use cards. We draft them to add to our crew with all kinds of special powers. Or we draft them and tuck them under our rocket. So, we've got um you know, more modules that will do different things that are on the way to Mars. That's a terrible view of uh rule book. or you know the cards that we don't take when we're drafting every round um they end up getting placed in the middle of the board. You can see here we are um you know in the second half of the game. This is the actual racetrack to Mars. If we zip back earlier in this run through I did as an exclusive for backers of the show. Hey, there's no road yet. And you know here we are. We're starting to lay them out. So um the card I take is important for building my rocket, building my crew. The card that neither of us that nobody takes, that's the road I'm going to be traveling on. So, I'm trying to actually design a rocket with that road in mind.

48:41 I'm trying to get the right crew with that road in mind. I'm, you know, sometimes I'm just grabbing cards to make sure, oh, this card, I can't let it be on the road because I can't get past this particular segment. So, the first half the game is anybody can after a certain threshold, you can take off, you can launch, and just get going as fast as you want. Um, oh, Jen remembers this. Jim, where were you? Jen was just going like this.

49:07 You can switch paths. Remember?

49:09 Oh,

49:10 yeah.

49:10 We haven't played this game for half a year and Jen remembers it. That is

49:13 love this game. This is a great game.

49:15 I cannot stress how high a recommendation that is. If Jen remembers it 6 months later, especially after all we've been through moving halfway across the world. Um, but anyway, so Jen remembers this thing too cuz she was remembering, oh, there are powers you can have that let you jump from one lane to another if I don't mind that card going in there because I'm just going to jump over to your lane at one point because our rockets are kind of similar all. So, the first half of the game is really cool, especially because you can take off whenever once you've hit a certain crew threshold and you might want to do that and get a leg up on everybody else or you might stay on Earth longer and keep drafting more and more cards, watching who, you know, whoever got took off first. Oh my god, they're halfway to Mars. But you know what? when you eventually launch, chances are you've got an amazing crew with an even better rocket that's even better suited to um you know, follow that path. And will you catch up? Will you I mean, this game is very dramatic.

50:03 It's really smart because then the second half is, you know, we basically done a bit of deck building um for all intents and purposes. And will we be able to make it first across the finish line and um you know, set up on Mars. It's so cool. And it is such a shame that so few people can play this, which is why I just beseech any board game publisher out there. Go on Board GameGeek, look him up, send him a geek mail. He's just waiting for somebody to recognize how brilliant this game is. Hey, any publishers, send me email me and I will send you a link to my backeron exclusive video I did for this so you can check this out and see if it might be good for your catalog cuz it's got to be. It's so good. My wife loves it. Jen has something else to say. Yes,

50:49 I just want to say I am driving. I'm not even looking at any of these graphics and I remember this game just from his description.

50:56 I cannot I mean that that is amazing. Jen, we play so many games there. You know, Jen can barely remember them, you know, a few weeks after we played them when we have to do the monthly Gen jog where Jen has to talk about all the games we played. She remembers this months later and made such a strong impact. It is so good. It is just waiting for the OP. I don't know, somebody anybody out there to please pick this up so that it is no longer our number five hidden gem, The Race to Mars. Okay, back to y'all.

51:26 Okay, so uh thanks Richard. Wow, that seemed like a pitch video uh for for the OP, Andre, but it looks really cool and um these are the hidden gems we're looking for, ones that deserve to be seen or and andor played by a bigger wider audience. So perhaps it's in the future. Who knows? Um Yeah. I love the theme. I love the theme.

51:48 Certainly never heard of it. So

51:50 Certainly never heard of it. Yeah. It looks good though.

51:53 Yeah.

51:53 Yeah.

51:54 All right. So now we've got four more games to talk about. And um Chris, we're going to bring it back to you for number four.

52:00 Uh yeah. I didn't know this one had an expansion coming out, but I'm excited that it does because that's the one that Richard was talking about in his first video. Um, this is my least uh hidden gems of the gems that I have revealed to you all. It has a It has 701 ratings. So, two too many to so many so many. And in fact, two too many. So, that could be couldn't be under 700. Um, I meant to too many, but you know, whatever. Uh, but yeah, this is Kavango. This is rated uh 3,000 51 basically in the public's eye. Uh, but yeah, Kavango is is is a great game. Kavango is very much like a seven wonders style game. Uh a drafting drafting game. You'll have a hand of cards. You'll pick one. You'll pass it on. Uh that's what drafting means. Uh so yes, it is very much a drafting game. Uh a and it is all about creating a conservation area um in Kavango. I saw this on crowdfunding. It was my pick of the week on crowdfunding and I thought it looked really good. And then my friend Colin bought a copy of it. And then I also played a copy of it with some people over at the Level Up Gaming Retreat as well. Uh, and it it it did exactly what I wanted it to. You know, it's one of those games which sets out to do a job and it does the job very very well. You have a tableau. You're going to be building that tableau slowly over time. Uh, but there's also a couple other things that are going on where you're competing for these public goals that you the first person to compete to complete it gets a bunch more

53:31 money. You can spend your money on like conservation projects. There's a global conservation track where some animals in order to play them down, you need to be up on a certain point of the global conservation track or your own security track or your own like um habitat tracks or whatever. It's just great. It's very simple. you you're you're taking four different types of resources and then you're building animals and you're trying to get the most points at the end of the game based around the animals that you build. Super simple, very great drafting game. I just thought the production quality was really good. Uh on Kickstarter, their bonus was that every copy got their got one of their cards got a foil version of the card. So Colin has like a foil elephant, you know, and the people who I played with have like a foil leopard or something like that. I I just think it's a it's a really solid game that I think was only available on Kickstarter and it did like pretty well on Kickstarter, but I I think it's one of those things where if you're not in that sphere, you likely will have missed it. I I found it very relaxing. I would rather play this over Seven Wonders. You know, it it it is the sort of thing that would replace that for me. And uh yeah, I I really like the theming. I thought the art is really cool. And there's just like little tweaks, little bonus cards that you can add in and little goals that you're trying to achieve that make it uh make it a bit more dynamic and um yeah, really fun. So that's Kavango, which is our number four. I really like it and I'm now very excited about the uh expansion because I I'm really excited to see what that that brings because it's a fairly simple game. Uh, and so

55:03 anything that that would up that complexity and increase the decision space, I definitely would be interested in even though the the main games decision space is is pretty good.

55:12 Yeah, this one looks terrific. I remember so that's uh my co-host uh Becca Scott over there at Good Time Society. We do a morning show, Good Morning Society, every Wednesday morning. Uh I remember when this was actually they were doing the shoot for this and she really liked this one. Um and I love the look of it and I just assumed it was going to go to retail for some reason, but apparently not. So, I'm glad that they

55:33 I don't know if it has or or not, but I I think I think it did well enough that some retail stores might have it, but I don't know if it's like widely available at this point.

55:41 Yeah. So, that's cool that they have the expansion. So, I'm assuming with the expansion Kickstarter or campaign, uh we'll be able to get the base game as well. So, this one looks terrific, Chris. Yeah, good call.

55:50 Yeah, the idea of it being like a Seven Wonders replacement is very interesting to me because I I'm a big Seven Wonders person. super nostalgic for me. But like I like the idea that there might be something

55:59 simpler to get to the table than Seven Wonders. The problem is I keep confusing this the name of this with Kabanga. There's conveo and cabanga and I maybe that maybe that's why I didn't do well. But everyone got them confused like I got them confused. Even though they're completely different games and have no similarities other than you say them, they sound very similar.

56:18 They do. Is Kabanga the one are you? Like is it a dexterity game, Ray? The Kabanga? No, it's um it's a it's like a card game with masks, like color colorful masks on the front.

56:29 Okay.

56:29 Um totally different.

56:30 Yeah, I'm totally think of a different game now.

56:32 B and the V sound the same. And yeah.

56:34 All right, cool. All right, let's move on to our number three. I believe that's going to be my call. Uh number three, I'm going back to the cozy theme because I don't know. I I haven't really talked about cozy games this this uh segment, but uh this is our number three collectively. Um I love this one. It's called Wild Gardens. Um, this is cozy um I I guess food foraging for food and you're creating meals uh for your friends. And I love the theme uh of this and um I love games uh like this where super colorful, right? And it's taking mechanisms that we're we're familiar with such as deck building, bag building, and then you're just moving along this track taking actions. And what I love about this is the way that you upgrade your actions. So, it's I don't want to compare it to Arc Nova, right? It's nowhere near that that like complex of a game, but it has that thing where you have basic actions, then you can upgrade them. It's like, oh, now I get more stuff and I get you start comboing things, which is really neat.

57:33 And as you go, you're collecting food and you're trying to fulfill recipes, right, for your friends, come up with like a killer meal uh for them. And as you do, you're also you have opportunities to like collect books and then drop books off at the library or or like some storage space or whatever. So, that's going to unlock some other scoring for you. So, there's a lot more going on in this game, which really surprised me the first time I played it. Um, but I love that about this. It's again, the presentation is off the charts. It is it just been knocked out of the park. This is from Rose Gotland Foundation uh or Rose Gotland Entertainment who also does a Rose Gotland Foundation who I've worked with in the past and oh it is phenomenal. Um it is a game that I wouldn't call exactly a gateway. I'd probably like a gateway plus or even a light medium game uh because there's so much going on but at the same time it's a game where it's the accessibility is really on point.

58:24 It's like oh this looks beautiful on table. I'm interested in this. I want to feed my friends these you know awesome meals. So it's really easy to grab people into it now. Having said that, there is a bit more going on. So, it's not something that you just take to like a general game night, but it's a game I would definitely play at any time. I've actually played the solo edition as well, a solo variant as well, which is really good. Um, I love Rose Gauntlet Games. Isaac Vega is an amazing designer. And, um, Wild Gardens, folks, I don't know why it didn't hit. It's just one of those things. There's so many games going on. This may have just been flown on the radar. And it's our collective number three, Wild Gardens. Yeah, I've had this one on my radar for a long time and I just for whatever reason I haven't I haven't pulled the trigger on it, but it's so gorgeous and and like you said, Rose Gauntlet is amazing. So,

59:10 yeah, all the components and Yeah, it is. Oh, such a great game.

59:13 Their games are always so gorgeous. Oh my god.

59:16 Yeah, I remember looking at this when it was on Kickstarter as well and crowdfunding. Um, so you got two of us knowing it, Ruel. It wasn't really that hidden. I don't know. Um uh yeah, my my concern with this one is that it seemed it seemed very seemed very simplistic in terms of Okay. Uh how do you move your person around the garden? Is it it's you just have like a movement stat or you can move it one space or do you do you recall?

59:39 Yeah. So let me go back here. So that's actually one of the things you could upgrade. So I think you get like basic movement but then as you upgrade to your actions then you can like oh now I get additional movement or when I move I get additional resources and then certain spots give you a resource and that may give you either another resource or I think another movement as well. So it's you're really just building up things. You all start the same like same basic things on your player board. But yeah, as you go around that board you it really ramps up. And I should mention there are I I think it's included, but there are some mini expansions that will add things uh to the game. I think I might have played with one of them. It was like, you know, adding visitors or something like that. But um yeah, it does seem simplistic. I mean, it is simple, but I wouldn't call it a simple game. Um it's definitely got some, as I said earlier with another game, it has some meat on its bones, uh surprisingly.

1:00:28 So, yeah.

1:00:30 Yeah.

1:00:30 All right. So, that's our number three. We've got two more games to go. And Ray, I believe you have our number two.

1:00:37 All right. So, my number two has a criminal 74 ratings on PG. And that feels impossible because this was picked up by the queen Emily from Shut Up and Sit Down. And I just don't it just didn't it didn't give it that you'd think that that would like blow the doors open and it it didn't for whatever reason. But I was introduced to this game initially um when a friend of mine at Gen Con um last year pressed a small felt uh witch hat lovingly into my palm and said, "I have a game for you." That was how that's how they opened it. And I went, "Okay, you have my attention." So this is Curses and Covens. And the starting player, the lead player token is a little felt witch hat that got worn a lot and and and passed around at Jen.

1:01:22 It was very fun. Um this game, first of all, gorgeous, stunning. some of the most beautiful art. I feel like I say it all the time. This is some of the most gorgeous art I've ever seen in a board game ever. U this video I think is probably old and is not doing it justice. The the look up just look up the cards for this game. They're so stunning. They have all these little gold foil accents. Beautiful. Anyways, this is a cat and mouse one versus many game which we've I think we've bemoaned on this channel before. There's not enough of. And I love it because this is a simple entry in a genre that I feel like sometimes gets they try to like make one verse many more interesting with more and more rules, more and more complexity. This is really clean, really simple. Um, basically one player is going to be the witch hunter and everyone else is going to be witches and you're going to have a hand of cards. If you're a witch, you're going to have a hand of cards. Some of those cards are going to be witches of various suits.

1:02:14 Some of them are going to be rituals, evil rituals, and some of them are just going to be decoy towns folk. And at the start of the round, you're going to lay all of your cards out on the table. So you and the witch hunter, everybody can see what's in everybody's hand. And this is the only time the witches are allowed to discuss and openly communicate. It also has hidden comm or limited communication, which I love. Oh, yes, that art. Yes, look at it. Look at that. Oh, so good. Anyways, you're going to be discussing in front of the witch hunter. So, you want to try to like be careful with your words about what you want to do during the travel phase. The travel phase is where everybody takes their cards back secretly back into their hand and you're going to and everyone that's a witch is going to either pass a card to somebody or request a card from somebody. So, the witches are going to be like scattering about the town. And then the witch hunter is going to come around and pick two cards from two players to try to find the witches. And if the witch hunter gets five witches, they win. And if the witches collect three of a kind, three witches of the same coven together, they win. Or if they can stick the witch hunter with two rituals. And it sounds really simple.

1:03:19 There's other things in there. You can cast spells. There's a decoy witch. There's other little things. It's so simple, but with the right group of people, I find this to be a really fun, really quick one versus many cat-and- mouse style game. Um, and I'm just so sad that it didn't get it didn't get the love it deserved. I don't know if this maybe hit more internationally cuz the people who originally introduced it to me were from Australia and I know Emily from Shut Up and Sit Down I believe is also Australian. So maybe it like kind of just did its thing in Australia. It didn't really make it over here. I was gifted this game so I don't even know how easy it is to get in the States. But this is gorgeous and stunning and I think it deserves uh more love.

1:03:56 Yeah, I love the little hat that you could see it there in that photo.

1:03:59 Yeah, that literally was my first introduction. She came up to me and was like, "I have a game for you. Here's a present.

1:04:07 Oh man,

1:04:07 that's funny. Yeah, I I I remember it joged something in my memory and I looked it up and I I did see it when it was in crowdfunding. It was in crowdfunding. It funded on November 15th, 2022 according to my spreadsheet that I keep. Uh and then I just looked it up and apparently only 317 backers backed it at Craft as well.

1:04:26 Wow. Criminal. Criminal.

1:04:28 Yeah, it was only and it was only 27 Australian dollars as well, which is pretty good. That's like 20 bucks US. That feels like a a pretty good um pretty good price for especially crowdfunding.

1:04:39 Uh yeah,

1:04:40 and for cards that are that high quality tarot sized cards with gold foil, that's a really good price point for it.

1:04:45 Yeah. And now Ray, you were saying this is a one versus all game. Is that right?

1:04:49 Yes.

1:04:49 I don't Yeah, that's that's cool. I don't see too many one versus all card-based games like this.

1:04:54 No, you don't see a lot of you don't see a lot of quick light entries in that genre. And I think this is this is a really nice breath of fresh air.

1:05:01 Yeah. Definitely definitely piqu my curiosity. All right, we've got one more game. Uh let's uh see what Richard's got for us at number one today. Richard, what is it?

1:05:10 Okay, we're coming down to the wire. Although, I'm just getting started, folks. After we're actually done with this top 12 countdown where each of us contribute three, uh you know, if you go into the extended, you know, the the the post countdown, I'm going to give you a full top 10. In fact, actually, it's even 11. I'm going to do a honorable mention. I'm going to give tell you about 11 amazing hidden gems. You've already heard two of mine. You're about to hear are communal number one. And it's number one not because it's my favorite game I've talked about today. Probably Race to Mars is my top ranked, but this is number one because oh my gosh, why has nobody played this? Why is it so far down on the overall Board Game Geek um rankings? Not quite sure where it is. You can go to Board Game Geek, you can look it up. Um very few people have had a chance to play this and it's a real shame because it's something really special. It is our number one on the list, Bobblins Rebellion. As you can see, I did an excl another one of these exclusive runthroughs for backers of the show. I mean, anybody can see this. Even if you just back for one month, for $1, you can go watch um and see why this hidden gem is so special along with MySpace and uh uh a Valaria game.

1:06:19 Anyway, though, sorry, it's neither here nor there. What is Bob's Rebellion? Uh this is a game where we are actually trying to spark the flames of rebellion. We're a bunch of little goblins trying to throw off the shackles of our oppressors. That's the theme. But really, at its heart, this is a very fast-paced engine building and engine destruction game. The game comes with these cool little cubes that have little silk screen faces of the little goblins, although there are um I forget what the bigger ones are, like trolls and whatnot. Uh and these are our workers. Um, but they are also the resources we spend to grab the cards to fire up the uh, you know, the the goblin industry, the fires of industry to um, we grab these cards, we add them, we put our little goblins on them and um, then we can run our engine and activate all the cards. But every time we run them, the goblins, you can see um, you can see on them there's like little uh, you know, progress meters on them. Eventually, once a given card has been run a few times, it's done. It's exhausted. That's how you turn them into points at the end of the game is by running these. And so, you are constantly um juggling three things. Your own board where you're managing um you know getting all these different goblins who have different power. There's wizard goblins and and worker goblins and fighter goblins and all that kind of stuff. Um but then you are using these to actually run the engines um you know to generate different types of goblins that we need for different types of things because there are multiple levels of the dungeon and there's hero goblins you can get with all kinds of cool special powers uh as we try to fight for our freedom in

1:07:51 the in goblins goblin rebellion. Um but anyway eventually I mean you want to use these engines ups fast as you can and then make room for new ones. So, you're constantly adjusting your overall strategy as you tear apart the engines that you're building and rebuilding and pivoting from one thing to another. The presentation on this game is phenomenal. Those cool little green goblin cubes are just adorable. And it's just a fun game with tons of replay-ability because every time you play, you're going to get different combination of cards that are available to you. You're going to make different combinations of engines that you're trying to run. Um, and it deserves more love. Uh, it is the most hidden of all the hidden gems they talked about today because I don't think I don't think any of the gang had anything that was lower on the overall board game rankings, which isn't a reflection of its uh quality. It's just a reflection of how few people have actually seen our number one hidden gem of 2024, Boblins Rebellion. Okay, back to you.

1:08:49 All right, Bobins Rebellion. Yeah, I I have not heard of that game. I've not seen it around, but it does look sort of cool. So, there it is, the most hidden gem of them all, friends.

1:09:00 I I will say that Bobbins Rebellion is uh ranking at 14,820 um on Board Game Geek, which is significant because it is uh 22 spots lower than the critically acclaimed, me being the critic, Bounce Off. So, uh Bounce Off has surpassed Bobblins Rebellion. Bounce

1:09:20 Off. Wow.

1:09:21 Bounce Off is officially the the you know a better game than Bobin's Rebellion if these ratings are to be taken wi with gospel. And I think we should I think we should all praise the

1:09:33 Nothing's ever been wrong with a BG rating.

1:09:36 Never never infallible system.

1:09:38 And honestly that's still too low and I need everybody watching to go rate it a 10 and write why. Um give it an honest 10 because anything else you're not being honest. Um, but also say

1:09:51 speaking of speaking of speaking of ratings, um, Bobin's Rebellion also, uh, unfortunately I wanted you to win the lowest number of ratings, Ray. But, uh, this is it has 49 ratings.

1:10:04 Oh, wow.

1:10:04 74 was good.

1:10:06 74 was really good, but still has 49. That's probably why it's uh why it's down there. Bounce off has 741 ratings, and that can only go up. That's right.

1:10:16 Practically a mass market hit at that point. 700.

1:10:19 Yeah. So, we need to keep that keep that number going up with honest tens. And you say why there you can read the other people.

1:10:26 This video is getting clipped and sent to BG and all of a sudden your account's deactivated. Yeah.

1:10:30 Yeah. You can you can uh I mean I've been I've been pray I've been making that call for months. So, you're safe. It won't nothing bad will happen to you. Um, but yeah, I want uh I want everybody to go and make sure that we can I think the point of this video is to make sure that we bring the the the hidden gems forward and that is raising bounce offs rating which was in the 16,000s and now it is in the 14,000s and it brings me so so much joy and I believe that we can get it up because it is you know the best of the best. Our secret number zero Richard. Oh actually I'm getting yeah I'm getting a text say did you mention bounce? You know what I already did? I already did. He wanted me to do it. He wanted me to do this.

1:11:10 The additional hidden gem of the list was bounce off. We've actually got a bunch more. We're going to talk about our honorable mentions, but let's turn it back to Richard. He's going to talk about his entire top 11 uh for hidden gems. Uh so back to you, Richard, then we'll come right back.

1:11:24 Okay, post countdown time. Um we're still in Wales. We're about to cross uh we're doing the big bridge, aren't we?

1:11:31 This is Cardiff.

1:11:32 Oh, we're in Cardiff. We're passing through Doctor Who country. Um, and uh, anyway, that's not her there because Jen just said in between me filming the last thing, the next thing, "Hey, could you get out the potato chips?" I'm like, "Okay, I just need a little bit more." She's I need those potato chips. She needs a she needs a car brush because we've been driving for hours already and we got many, many miles to go yet before we uh camp for the night. So,

1:11:55 this is like the third England trip we've made in the last I don't know, six weeks.

1:11:58 Yes, we've been we've spending a lot of time on the road

1:12:01 this road in particular. And we've just kind of um it's given me my brain as like potato chip land.

1:12:07 Yep.

1:12:07 It's Yeah.

1:12:08 All right. So, I got to get through this uh this uh um this top 11 hidden gems quick. So, let me just get right to it. Ain't nothing to it but to do it. Um starting with Gunnet. Now, actually, Gunnet should have been my number one because where is it? It's actually at 18,853 because almost nobody has played this game. And that's a real shame. Now, I didn't put it on my real list because I've only gotten to play this game once at a convention as a four-player game. And so, I don't feel like I've had enough experience with it to really, you know, fullthroatedly say, "Yes, this is one of the greatest." But I was super impressed when I played it. What is it? It is a cooperative um, you know, limited communication realtime game that is recreating a big Hollywood um, blockbuster uh, movie car chase shootout. Um, we are a car and where we sit around the table determines whether we are the driver in the passenger seat or in the rear seats and um, every round there are cars and motorcycles and all kinds of stuff just surrounding us and we are having to real time figure out right um, who's going to grab the shotgun, who's got the pistol, who's got the easy, which way are we shooting? Um, you know, and sometimes getting mixed up and oh crap, I need to shoot at that over there. I'm literally in the passenger seat shooting up, you know, in front of Jen and, you know, maybe there's going to we're we're catching ourselves in the crossfire. It's a really clever game. It's incredibly thematic. Um, and very just it so deserves so much more attention. Like I

1:13:40 said, it probably should be at my number one based on my own metric, but I just haven't played it enough. But I would like to play it more. If you like the idea of, you know, a board game that captures the feeling of the, you know, the the the highway chasing with Trinity on the motorcycle from Matrix Reloaded, that's what we're talking about, what this game does. It's a literal miracle of design. I highly recommend it from what little I've seen of it. Um, but it's still an honorable mention. Now, let's go on to my number 10. Um, it is Strange World Above the Clouds. This very quickly is a very very sharp card drafting using you know Sushi Go7 Wonders style drafting. Um you know hey I pick one hand the rest of my neighbor. I know I'm going to see some of them back and laying cards out into a grid to score points. Uh it's nothing we haven't seen uh many many times before but this is one of the best examples. The drafting in this game is so tensionfilled and the art is absolutely phenomenal and I love everything about it. I'm trying to remember. I think this actually made it into my top 10 of 2024.

1:14:45 It's that good. And um you know, it's sitting at 6,600. More people need to see Strange World Above the Clouds. Um also, more people need to see number nine, Collab. Another one that made it into my top 10 of the year. This is a brilliant worker placement game with, I think, probably the highest quality production of anything that came out in 2024. The miniatures for this game are out of this world, bonkers. Um, the worker placement is so cool because when I put my worker out to harvest what I need to, you know, either concoct potions or um, you know, make gadgets or um, you know, summon creatures. We're basically mad scientists collaborating in one big communal uh, laboratory. Um, I send my workers out to the lab to get my stuff. my workers stay on the board and anybody can use them on future turns to harvest their own things until I pull them back off the board. So, there's a lot of collaboration in this competitive game. But that's not where what really makes this game special. The three different types of cards you're drafting and getting all the resources to build and then laying out into your own grid.

1:15:50 This is some of the best cool special power um you know, puzzly grid laying stuff I've ever seen. You can go check out my runthrough I did for it. I cannot stress how great this is. uh collab. Um, right. Then we move on to Frozen Frontiers. Another game I covered many, many years ago. I want to say like three or four years ago, and it was crowdfunding. I believe it eventually came out in 2024. This is a worker movement game where we are trying to, you know, it's some desolate, it's a hard sci-fi game. No fantastical stuff. This is just far in humanity's future, the 22nd century. We are um colonizing a mining planet on a a frozen mining planet. lifeish, harsh. Um, as we build more and more infrastructure, we create things that other players get to use.

1:16:38 Even though we're competing to be the best, we'll all die if we don't work somewhat together. It's not a semi-op game. It's still uh just, you know, a straightup competitive game, but this is a game where we're constantly creating opportunities for each other with the investments we make, and we hope everybody else comes and uses our stuff because we get benefits as well. It's a very, very sharp game. Um, you know, and again, I really appreciate we don't see hard sci-fi like this. You know, fans of Terraforming Mars, they should be checking this out for I mean, it's right in their wheelhouse. It's Frozen Frontier. Then um we've got Hackivity. Oh, this was a lovely little um cooperative deck builder kind of. Basically, there are two decks. There's um the virus deck because we're going into cyerspace and trying to hunt down and destroy viruses with our cyber deck.

1:17:24 And we're putting more cards into our deck. Um, it's a communal game. And on my turn, I have to draw I forget what it is. I have to draw like three cards, maybe four cards. And I pick how many cards do I draw from the virus deck, thereby creating problems for us to solve. And how many cards do I draw from our our program deck that we actually use to fight stuff. Um, you know, I'm feeling like we're doing really good. You know what? I think I'm going to draw three bad guy cards and one good guy card. Like, oh no, these are the three and I don't even have what I need in hand. Fortunately, Jen does. There's lots of really fun, sharp um you know, collaboration between players. Uh it's really a a nicely produced game, too, with dual layer boards and all kinds of cool stuff. It's sadly, I mean, was it at number 10,894? It deserves more love. Um I forget. I think I I did I did cover it. I think I'm trying to remember how I covered it if I did a full run through or if we just did a sponsored segment of it. But anyway, Jen and I did play it. We were impressed by it. I've covered it in a previous roundup if you want to hear more details cuz again, Jen wants those potato chips. So, I'm just going to What? What? She's

1:18:27 Oh, no. Just a guy that I was I had to pass him with my caravan.

1:18:32 The instant Jen decides to pay us this slow moving truck. All of a sudden, he gets his gum ship. Oh, I got to pass them back in the caravan. Anyway though, um anyway, activity well worth seeking out. Another hidden gem as is witchdom. Now, um, publisher designer, uh, you know, Albby and Michael, uh, Pichel or Pichel, they're going to make a much bigger splash this year with Michael's big box game, uh, Forestry. You'll be seeing a run through for that coming to the channel pretty soon. Very impressed by that game. This is an earlier game from last year. Very small, simple little um, bag building game if I recall correctly. Or no, was it deck building? It was pool building. Um, and basically we've got these uh, witches. Yeah, they were cards. So, was a deck builder where it's one of those things where, hey, I need to use these cards to get the resources I need, but ultimately I need to spend these cards to actually make the potions and score the points. So, it's another one of those things. I always love a game that gives me that tough choice of I've got this incredible deck of cards, these this coven of witches I'm using, but I have to sacrifice them. I.e., I have to use them to actually brew the potion to score the points, and now they're not in my deck anymore. And having to pivot, okay, well, I'm not doing any more green. I guess I'm not doing any more green potions cuz she was my lead green um witch and now I'm going to have to switch over to focusing on a different style of potion with different powers and all of that. Neat little game. Um very very fun. Deserves more attention.

1:19:55 Witchdom. And let's see. Oh man, Treetopia. Another great little game. Uh this is a very interesting um one where we've got if I call okay three cards in front of us that represent different trees that we are trying to rehome. They come from, you know, industrialized, blighted areas. It's kind of a fantastical game. Um, and what we're trying to do is find new homes for them in uh beautiful locations where they want to go. We're building basically a tree sanctuary, and it's a communal thing. What really made this game stand out is anytime we're doing any kind of communal buid building, you know, laying out cards in a grid. Normally, that's something that doesn't work for me, Jen, because sooner or later, it's a situation where, oh, I try to cut I see what you're trying to do over in that section of the grid. I'm going to cut you off and do my own thing. this game, it's very much live and let live. It's all about players creating opportunities for each other. I hope you build over there because then I can build off of what you did. Um, you even though we're competing to be the best, I'm always looking for more collaborative style competition and this thing delivers. A communal grid building game we actually like. But the other half of the game is really interesting.

1:21:00 You've got three cards in front of you. These are the recipes you need um to basically be able to replant the trees. But when you take new cards, either drawn blind or the face up ones, you can only keep three cards. So sometimes you'll have to sacrifice the card you've got to grab some other card that can be used as the resource to for the third card you want to do. But then the card you sacrificed, it just goes back into a queue and maybe I'll be able to grab it back later. Or maybe Jen will see, oh, I was so close to doing that, she could do it, too. So it's kind of got Lost Tribes vibes, too. That the cards you give up, maybe somebody else wanted those cards even more than you did. Um, and it's got a lot of great stuff. Really beautiful, a wonderful theme, Treetopia. And then the last one I'm talking about, the number four is Dirt and Glory. And this is a push your luck deck builder set in a Mad Max, you know, an anonymous, you know, it's not actually Mad Max, but a Mad Maxesque um post-apocalyptic future where we're riding for dirt and glory instead of being shiny and chrome. But you you get the vibe. And I mean, you will be constantly quoting um Fury Road non-stop if you know it as well as I do while we're playing. Here's the deal.

1:22:06 This is another one where um the best thing I can say about it is Jen actually enjoyed this and she has no reason. She hates Mad Max. She hates grim dark apocalyptic futures. But the um push your luck, you know, because you're deck building, I mean, every round, hey, now we're trying to drive to this fortress or or this hideout or whatever. That's the target number. We have to keep on drawing from our little decks that represents our tribe. And um we we're trying not to bust and go over the target number, but be the closest to the target number. But over the course of the game, we're putting new cards into our deck that give us all kinds of cool special push your luck breaking powers. And it's really, really sharp from new publisher Pink Trouidor, who really set the world on fire with their bigger game last year, um Galileo Galilee. And so this one didn't get as much attention, but it's something really special. It's it's a very gateway game. Anybody could learn to play this game. So if you have people in your life that love Fury Road or Mad Max or any of that kind of stuff and you just want a simple It's just a deck of cards and a few tokens to represent the special powers. It's really something special. It's a very hidden gem u from 2024. Uh Dirt and Glory. That was my number four. And then, as you already know, my number three was Cat Packs, number two was Race to Mars, and number one was uh Bobland's Rebellion. And I'm looking forward to hearing um any more uh games from the gang that I missed and that I might want to seek out. So, I'm going to throw back to everybody. And

1:23:37 now, Jen Jen needs her potato chips.

1:23:40 Two of the chips.

1:23:41 To the chips. All right. See you guys next time.

1:23:44 Okay. And I hope Jen got her chips. I hope that was a safe travel. order chips.

1:23:51 Crisps. They're in the UK. Some of the are saying in chat.

1:23:54 That's the That's their what? Like Glorious Bastards giveaway is calling them chips instead of crisps or whatever.

1:24:00 They're going to be booted out. They're going to be sent back to the US.

1:24:02 That's right. Um uh the games two of the games that Richard mentioned that I I saw and um I'm glad he got to play because now I'm interested are Treetopia. I've actually seen that in the wild. Yes.

1:24:12 And also uh the uh the MadMax one, Dirt and Glory, was it? Or Glory and Dirt. Um

1:24:17 whatever that one was called. Yeah, some combination.

1:24:19 That one I've seen and it looks fun. Uh silly, you know,

1:24:22 I had seen Gun It, which is which is the 18,000 one that he had. Yeah,

1:24:26 that one I remember from Kickstarter.

1:24:28 Yeah.

1:24:28 Um

1:24:29 so lots of terrific uh choices there. Why don't we go and talk about some that didn't make our list? Uh Chris, you got anything you'd like to share highlight here?

1:24:36 Well, yeah. I don't know if you guys have heard about this game, but it's it's called Bounce Off.

1:24:41 Oh, Bounce Off.

1:24:42 Yeah. I don't know. And and in case in case bounce off is a little bit too pricey, that's okay because Teimu has a game bounce.

1:24:51 Oh, Timu failing to disappoint us.

1:24:55 That you if you want a bootleg copy if you don't want to give the original bounce off IP owners Big Bounce your money.

1:25:02 You want you don't want to give Big Bounce their money. Well, you can get Game Bounce as well, which still has, you know, the sticker on it cuz I feel if I if I pull it off, um the whole box will disintegrate. I have such a love and hatred obviously for uh um knockoff board games. Hate because obviously they just they they uh hurt an already um very thin margined industry, but they I think they put a lot of effort in especially some of the ones that I see that come across my like social media feed. They put in like a weird amount of effort to like like change little thing. It's it's somebody sat there and was like, "Ah, yes." you know, they're not just like ripping the files. They'll like take them like and then change the colors or do something like a It's like I don't know. I have a love for them. We have so many like tapple ripoffs that just get they get so creative like

1:25:53 right

1:25:53 well it's like sometimes like um back in the day and I haven't done this in a while but uh you know I'll be in like LA like downtown LA and there's like you know markets everywhere and there's all always like knockoffs of like say the latest toys or whatever and I always crack up at like you know they'll have like the Avengers like action figures but they're always like just slightly off was like it's not really

1:26:12 their faces are like a little melty.

1:26:14 Yeah. like it's Captain USA and it sort of looks like um it's not really Captain America or you know Spider-Man was I've seen like a spider dude before. I was like come on folks come on it's just dude

1:26:25 my my favorite is the for the online listings they always photoshop they always try to photoshop their own their own like

1:26:33 lifestyle photos or whatever. My favorite is there's one for flip seven that's someone holding a hand of flip seven cards with all the cards faced outwards. It's like ah yes my favorite flip seven. That's hilarious.

1:26:44 Seven uh roulette.

1:26:47 Someone took the time to like cut out the model's fingers to like uh crappily photoshop the card behind them, but didn't take the time to read like the two p flip has like two rules. He couldn't even like he didn't take the time to learn how to play the game, but they took the time to do like the worst.

1:27:03 Like none of that is right.

1:27:04 That's hilarious.

1:27:05 That's so funny.

1:27:08 Well, yeah. Game game bounce is so hidden it doesn't even have a BG rating. Um, that's uh that's uh No, Bounce Off does, but Game Bounce doesn't have a BG rating. Whereas

1:27:18 Bounce Off is legit.

1:27:19 Bounce Off is legit. You know, that's how you know it's legit. Although there there are like there's also one that I heard it was called The Uzzle, but it's actually the game Match Madness. It's literally the exact same game. It's just called itself different, started selling on Amazon, has a BG listing, and everybody in the forums is like, "This is a game by someone else. You just like changed the name." And like that's how I first heard about it. It's cuz somebody had a game. They're like, "This is the game called The Usel." And I was like, "Oh, okay." And when I looked it up, I was like, "Oh, you actually have the bootleg one."

1:27:45 Wow. Madness is Yeah.

1:27:48 Um, but I have uh but I have uh I have some other hidden gems. So, I went through and I did anything sub 1,000 essentially. So, I'm just going to run through them uh starting at the at the top the closest to the thousand. So, Creature Caravan is still rated 1249. That's the Ryan Locket one. I think that deserves to be higher. I think that's quite a fun little game. you're building out your Tableau and and going through. Uh there's the game Fishing, the card game by

1:28:14 I just got that recently from a friend. I I've been told that they think I will really like it and I'm really excited to try it. I like just

1:28:21 It's great. It's great. It's a great little card game. Um it uh you you start out it's a trick taking game where all the cards that you win you have to use as part of your hand next. And so and then if you don't have any cards to draw, you draw from a deck which gets better as it goes down. And so like so one of the go one of the ways to win is that like hey I want to lose all my tricks first so that I can draw a bunch of super powerful cards and then like run later later rounds which I thought was really unique and interesting. Um then there was Sears Catalogu which is rated 4,445. This is by Bezier and I feel like Bezier are faking kings of the small card game now. Like Scram and Silver, oh my god, they're so good. Oh, they're so good.

1:29:06 Oh, they're so good. Um, I love Scram so much. Um, but uh but Sears Catalog as well. It was was really interesting in terms of this is it's a card shedding game, but you want to keep your high card because like your points at the end are is the value of the card of the lowest card you have left in your hand. So, if you get rid of all your low cards, but you keep like one high card, then you can get like 11 points versus if you if you're the person to end the game, you actually don't get any points. You don't get negative points, but you don't get ne you you get negative points for every card left in your hand and you get points for like the value of the cards. Really weird scoring thing. And there are powerups. Um yeah, really really fun. Like infuriating to play cuz you're like here's my plan. What? The game's over. No.

1:29:53 I love games that do that. That's the best feeling. You never want to be like, oh, is this over yet? It It's so good when a game ends just a little bit early. I feel like this one got a lot of buzz early, but it just tailed off. And I I mean, I really like the game. It's from um designer Taylor Reiner, who actually does Taylor's Trick Taking the YouTube channel. So, he knows his trick taking. Yeah, he knows trick taking. And this was I think his first published designer, if not if one of the first, but yeah, again, it just sort of got it was super buzzy buzzworthy and then all of a sudden just sort of fell off. So, yeah, terrific game. Sears catalog. Good choice.

1:30:28 Yeah, really neat. Uh, I was very happy to to have played it. Uh, I put Life in Rotera on there. That was Eric Lang's very like mass market one. It was 59.46 on Board Game Geek.

1:30:38 Um,

1:30:38 I feel like that got a good amount of buzz, but maybe it just didn't go anywhere.

1:30:42 Yeah, I think it got a lot of buzz. And maybe it's just better because like it's at Target, you know, and those people aren't rating on Borgame Geek, but they're they're not necessarily not buying, but they're not rating. And it's just like it's another King Domino. It does exactly what kind of King Domino does. And I think it does it in a in a nice way that has a bunch of variability and really great production design, too. Like really really great production quality. So, I like that.

1:31:04 Um I I also had the Mass Effect board game. Uh which is kind of a kind of a cheap like it's rated 6735, but that's because it's it also was like review bombed because people are afraid of they they she pronouns um or they them pronouns, which like uh here's what I have to say to you. Oh, I'm sorry. I said you. Oh, I said you. Oh, no.

1:31:26 I know. I don't mean to I don't mean to include those pronouns, those scary words. I Oh,

1:31:31 that nobody ever uses.

1:31:32 I'm so afraid. Uh, and I love too that like literally they put they them on an alien race that is in canon, has only one gender, and appears as female to the Terran race because they're like, "Oh, that's how we can like this is what you want us to look like." But like, if you actually look into the lore, it makes so much sense. They're like they don't follow the the gender binary and it's like yeah, let's let's actually like update the language for that. Um, so dumb. But so yeah, so that naturally that got review bomb, but I actually think this is this is quite a nice game. I I gave it like an eight out of 10 for me. I I really like it. You have a you always have four characters. You have 12 dice for your first character and then nine dice for your next character and then six and then three. And so you're really like trying to take care of your last team member as you roll these dice and take actions and you all get to take actions on it. So, I thought it was fun and like very nice to go through the the the campaign and and scenarios. I thought it was really slick. Um, and then the other one that I had was uh Adventure Party, which is 9687 on Board Game Geek. And Adventure Party is like Dn D wavelength with dice rolling.

1:32:35 Um, yes.

1:32:37 Yeah, it's it's really it's really solid, you know.

1:32:40 Agreed.

1:32:40 Um, I might have talked about it before.

1:32:43 Yeah, I've definitely heard about this one. I I have a review on it on the channel and uh yeah, I thought it was I thought it was it's storytelling. Uh basically, you'll say like, "Hey, I'm I'm the necromancer. I'm I'm Betty the necromancer and here's what I'm going to try to do in this scenario." And you describe what you're going to try to do. Then you roll a dice and then you describe what actually happens. And so it's like 20 is the best success. One is a colossal failure. Doesn't matter what you roll. It matters everybody guessing exactly what you did roll. So if you want to describe what your role actually is and you can get fun in the storytelling. I was like I kind of succeeded every I'm so bad at this game cuz I'm like yeah I just kind of succeeded. So I slipped and I broke my leg but but I still did. They're like you broke your leg. How is that an 11?

1:33:29 So there's a lot of like really fun um discussions that can be had with Adventure Party and uh yeah I really liked uh I I I really like that one as well. So that was my list of hidden gems. So, I was surprised going through of how many like 2024 titles I had played that that kind of fell into that category as well that I wanted to talk about. So, it was a nice list and I I could have shaken up the list in any kind of way and been happy with it. But, I knew I wanted Kavongo to be my number one because I I think there's just something really nice about that production.

1:33:58 Right. Yeah.

1:33:58 And I've actually played Adventure Party a couple of months ago for the first time. Had a great time with it, Chris. You're right. It is a lot of fun. Um, and it's just it's silly and it's, you know, an RPG party game as it's described on the box. It's perfect for that. A lot of fun. Uh, what about you, Ray? Got anything you would like to highlight before you get out of here?

1:34:16 I filled my homework. I didn't write down any of my runner-ups.

1:34:19 No worries.

1:34:20 You came up with some great

1:34:22 I didn't write down any of my runner-ups.

1:34:24 Prepared I've ever been for a list.

1:34:25 I know. I feel like normally I I

1:34:28 I have a couple at Christmas. I got one. We each have like a couple. So I feel the one I will say cuz we sent in four and three got picked. The fourth that got cut was Solstice

1:34:38 the like tile laying mountain burning game. I play that a lot on BG. Big fan. I don't know how much I'd like it in person. I've never played it in person. I feel like the tile

1:34:48 how big the tile board is might be annoying but on BGA beautiful. Love it. That was my that was my number four option that got that got cut but I to I forgot I had I had more and they got I don't have them.

1:34:59 Yeah. They will remain hidden.

1:35:02 They will remain hidden. But yeah, Solstice was my number four that I that I had on my list.

1:35:06 Oh, Bruno Catholic game. Cool. Yeah, I had uh heard about this.

1:35:09 Yeah, it's really good. That one is really like I I almost considered like bumping it out of like taking Odin's spot with Solstice just cuz this is le I think lesser known than Odin, but I I like Odin more than this one. So, I was like, I'll put I'll put Odin higher up on my list. But yeah, Solstice is fantastic. I also really love the artwork on this one. I think it's beautiful.

1:35:27 Gorgeous. Cute. Um I've got a few. So, I've got these here. Actually, uh Chris Life and Richer was also on my list. Uh the other Eric by Game. I I didn't want to have two of them on the list, so I went with the Fire Mountain, Wrath of Fire Mountain. Uh other ones I had Seaside, uh Adulthood, Entaria, A Card, um Fairy, Oh My Pigeons.

1:35:48 Yeah. Um let's talk about Oh My Pigeons. This was a hilarious party game. Uh Ray, have you seen this one? I I figured this is like your job.

1:35:54 I've seen the marketing for this one. I definitely paid attention to how they marketed this game, but I have not played it. Yeah. Uh, Chris, have you seen this one? This is alert. So, you've got these little pigeons and you're just trying to collect. I think it's seven to win. But, uh, you just turn over cards. It's super simple. But, there's a point in this game when it becomes a dexterity game where you're flicking pigeons at each other. It It's just That right there sold me.

1:36:18 I didn't know like it switched. That's fun. That's cute.

1:36:20 It is hilarious. So, that's one of my hidden gems as a party game. Uh, one that I'll mention as well is, uh, Koala Rescue Club. Uh, this one was actually higher up on my list, but again, I didn't want to include it only because it was another Phil Walker Harding game. Praise be. And, uh, this is from Postmark Games. So, these are the games that you can download yourself. You print and play. So, this is only like $5 US. Uh, this is a

1:36:46 Love that.

1:36:47 Yeah, this is a roll and write. It is fantastic. It's a really cool roll and write. You actually print out two sheets and you know, you roll dice and you're just going to assign them somewhere and try to get um basically chain so you can do other, you know, go to other parts of your uh rescue club to rescue all the koalas. A terrific terrific um rolling right game and you can get it for about 5 US uh on Postmark games. Um other ones that I wanted uh that I had on my list, let's see, I'm talking about Oh, my pigeons fairy.

1:37:16 Real quick before you do the rest of your list, Loa Palooa, thank you for the raid. Thank you so much.

1:37:22 Yeah, we're we're excited to see you for like three minutes.

1:37:26 Not even. We're almost done with the stream. Thank you for the rain. We appreciate you so much.

1:37:30 Thanks Dave and Ila. Much appreciated. Um yeah, we're just going over finishing up some highlights and some um honorable mentions for our um hidden gem uh best top hidden gems of 2024. Um oh, one other one I wanted to mention here. I'll bring it on screen here. Uh Avantard. Uh this is from a card is a good one.

1:37:51 Resident correct.

1:37:52 I did. Yes. This was actually this avancard has a special place in my heart. It was the first game that was made at Resident that I didn't touch at all. So everything before this, you know, after Monarch I was like involved in in some way. Avancard was the first game that was really cool. I got to kind of switch back to being just a full fan of Reson. And I think they they crushed it with this game. That that was one of the ones that I had considered as well.

1:38:13 Nice.

1:38:14 Yeah. I I thought this was fantastic.

1:38:16 Really innovative.

1:38:16 Yeah. super innovated. It's a deck builder, but you don't have to worry about like currency in this game. You're just you're grabbing cards and but it's really interesting the way do it. It's like how many cards you play determines how much you can afford. Like um I think you is it play you play them in like a row or a sequence and that gives you Yeah. Anyways, I don't know if I'm explaining it right, but it is a fantastic deck building game. What I really like too, I don't know if you they have it here, but the way it's like stored, it's like Yeah, the box is incredible.

1:38:47 Brilliant.

1:38:48 It is. So, here's

1:38:49 got all these like little Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

1:38:52 Yeah. No, I was going to say it has all these cards, but then it folds up into itself. So, you're like slotting cards in these little things almost like um like an accordion almost where you're putting all these into an accordion file and then you just open it up and you're ready to play the game. Literally the cards are in the set. It's just amazing. It blew me away.

1:39:11 I love the one of the designers in this Mac Sideman uh was uh got like an engineering degree before he started making board games and you can always tell like what like his he always does some sort of innovative thing with all their games. So Mechanica has the spinning wheel in the box. A card has got this really innovative solution to keeping your your small decks of cards separate as you roll out the box. It's h I love it. It's so cool. He he always comes up with like the the coolest innovations on stuff you've seen before but better. It's super cool.

1:39:41 Yeah. So, uh definitely check that one out. Avantard. And they just released a couple of mini expansions, too, which I've got. Um I think I played one of them. It's It's great. Uh but I think that's going to do it for now. Uh that's our top 12 hidden gems of 2024. I'm going to ask uh Chris and Ray. We'll start with Chris. Any final thoughts before we get out of here, Chris?

1:40:00 No final thoughts. We got a ton of hidden gems and they're all exciting. We're all excited about them. Uh yeah. No, that was a fun list and uh I I liked hearing about all of them. That's it.

1:40:12 All right. And Ray, well um any final thoughts on your end, Dre?

1:40:16 I'm happy to be back with my friends. Happy to to get get Chris's antics back under control. Seems like that was needed.

1:40:24 What are you talking about? What antics?

1:40:26 No, this is great. I I love I love chatting games. I also really love chatting about um underappreciated games. So, this has been fun. Okay, Rule, you want to wrap up the stream?

1:40:35 Yeah. Bye, Jade. Uh by thanks to all of you for watching, and we want do want to thank Goblins Hate Christmas for sponsoring this episode. Um next time, we'll see you soon. All right, take care. So long. Bye bye.