Get into Games on air episode 9: Boardgame backpack. Packing for a convention

0:00 hello and welcome to get into games on air a podcast about board games and the people who play them my name's Craig and joining me as always is Rebecca hi did you like that intro no because I don't like you calling me Rebecca it was very good no there was only one person who ever called me Rebecca yes and it's not you it is now and it was only ever when I was naughty well then stop being naughty hello everyone thanks for joining us on this Fair podcast today is episode nine is it board game backpacks board game backpacks that's what we're calling it and that sounds great board game I love it we're not even talking about backpacks that'd be fun would it brilliant thank you to everyone who listened to the last episode uh about airon and today we are continuing our journey on to board game conventions with how would you pack your games for taking two conventions but before we get into that we are obviously going to be talking about what has hit our table this week and there's been a fair few games some new some old we've got some new games in as well exciting for next week which will be nice as well um and then we'll get into our board game backpacks or not so much backpacks board game handbags

1:31 board game satchels board game backpack sounds yeah I like a bit of alliteration on it um so what we what have what what have we played what have we done what what's what's board game so um Monday Tuesday Happy Days Wednesday Thursday Happy Days okay can I continue yeah uh Friday Saturday Happy Days Sundays fun this is not what the people tuned in for bring it all back to you so on Monday we played some these happy day right enough okay on Monday we played some B board game arena with um games with Bean uh we played a game well we played a game of pandemic that's what we on to play but board game arena was playing up so we went onto the app and played idel first and then we played a game of pandemic which quite cool we had two Clock Tower Games on Tuesday um then we didn't really play anything for the rest of the week because you were at work I was at work um but yesterday we managed to get a few new ones to the table so we had been sent some games by Cosmos so we played

3:03 ubongo junr with uh the kids which they really enjoy we've got ubongo um that's a free sneeze for all the listeners I couldn't stop it I tried so hard but you're welcome you're welcome we've got ubongo we do um but for the littlest one it's quite difficult for her to be on a Level Playing Field with us yeah but what's nice about ubongo junor is that it tells you which pieces you're going to need and they've got little animals on them and there's a easy side and a hard side so she could have the easy side and we could all have the hard side and so we could all play together which was quite nice I quite like that and I like you can scale up like we had the idea of like while they're try while the littlest one's trying to do that we for adults could be just like trying to use the sand timer to try and get through as many of as quickly as we can get through as many cards and see who could win so it was great yeah it's quite fun I enjoyed that um we uh Cosmos also sent us in genius which is a rhina Kia game which I had seen before and was interested in playing um it's a puzzle game where you've got lots of different shapes and you it's quite the scoring is quite interesting because at the end of the game the winner you score your lowest scoring shape yeah so you have to try and keep on top of all the shapes when you put them together any that are in a

4:34 line that sort of spread out from the one that you've put down um you score points for don't you but I just liked the interesting way that you have to work on everything rather than you you could go heavy on I don't know say red stars or whatever it is yeah um but then if you don't score on the others you'd score on no points or one or two points really yeah I really like the puzzle of it it kind of reminded me we've been playing we've also played Take It to the Limit from early games um which is like pipe you're laying pipes the score kind of reminded me of that as far as scoring and the puzzle laying um it's really good I really like the puzzle I'm my only criticism of the entire thing is the production well I broke broke a piece within two seconds it suggests or it shows you in the instruction manual that the tiles which are you say two hexagon put together yeah um can be slotted into the side of the side of the board yeah it's got five stood up so that other players can't see which ones you've got well I tried to stand it in and ended up bending one bending one of them yeah it's such a tight it's a tight Gap some of them are tighter than I don't know with my just my copy but some of the slots were tight so I just wouldn't use that function the board itself is very thin very very thin

6:07 um in the end we just put them in our card yeah we put them in the card hold it worked exactly the same and the game it's a shame like the game is fantastic it's just production that for me is kind of let it down a little bit like I don't know how much obviously being sent it which is lovely for Cosmos to do that um I don't know quite how much it actually costs the RRP but it's a great puzzle it's it's a really good little puzzly game and it's good for for family a family weight well oh a 9-year-old could play yeah yeah absolutely uh we played another game called monsters outnumbered but I'll talk about that later I think so yeah um that's a really cool Massy type game it's it's really good but I'll talk about it later and then uh we played a game of after USS yeah which I do always love although I never win I yeah I enjoy after us there's a I have a I think I I generally have a similar strategy every time I play it almost within reason yeah but it's I don't even care about that like it's so satisfying to make those cards join up together and then see what combos you like I couldn't even care less about the score I just like well well there's another game that we've played today that's as satisfying as that but like it just feels good to do it whe whether you're winning or not yeah so after us is essentially Planet

7:39 of the Apes the board game um so the Apes have taken over uh the planet and you are a tribe of monkeys to start with and you are trying to getar tamarins yeah you're trying to get more um great apes to join your tribe um and basically when you're playing you have you're to play four cards in front of you just it's a deck builder you you you start with eight basic cards you start so or 10 basic cards you have four cards in front of you eight oh it is eight yeah and then you put the cards together and when it builds a complete box you gain the resources based on the box um and then you spend those resources to buy better Apes for your tribe um and and things like that and then you buy and you upgrade your deck you get rid of like the weaker things like a normal deck builder would do and it's just really satisfying the components everything it's Vincent you do trait art so the art quality is topnotch it's sort of out of this world in that way um it's just it's just going from four basic cars where you can do virtually nothing yeah I mean you can get a few resources but then you buy those level two cards and suddenly you're like and I can do this and I can get this this and I can combo that and now I've got three of those and I can get oh my God yeah it's yeah it's the way it just builds and builds and builds and it's just gets quick because a pure race to 80 points

9:09 so in like that space based style that you're trying to upgrade your things and then you you can combo more stuff together I love and then we just got back from a lovely games day with uh Jenny from board game family UK so that was really nice so we managed to play a potion explosion which we have played on BGA before but we've never played in real life with the actual marbles yeah and oh that is so satisfying when you take a Marvel and then the next one's Clank together and you can take those if they're the same color oh my God I loved it yeah it's so it's is very satisfying it's lovely to play with nice polished balls um but uh the yeah just being able to fulfill the potions and then the potions give you benefit then you can combo together the potion so you can gain marbles out of the thing then draw yeah it's just so good where you can just keep you some amazing comos you were like and now I can do this again and this yeah so yeah I had some of so there's are potions that allow you to re Rake The Power of another potion again so you could draw you could get loads of marbles and just keep on forfill in stuff it was yeah was really satisfying it is a bit gimmicky but you know it's cool it's got you know uh five like runs for the marbles to go into and then you can take from one of those um yeah and it's it was just very

10:43 very cool I liked it it's a really good I think we might be buying it it's definitely going to be it's on the list and then we played another game which we've also played on BGA but never in real life which was Tranquility yeah um that's really nice um well it's to do in numbers again you have a is anything but tranquil I'd say six by I feel like 6x6 yeah yeah it is 6x6 grid grid and you have to place out the numbers 1 to 80 but you're not allowed to talk to anybody um you can place the numbers wherever you like but if you place um say there was a 25 on the board and you place a 23 next to it you have to get rid of two of your cards so you have to think very carefully about where you're going to place the um you have to hedge your BS because there's obviously one of each number and if you discard the one that you like we did we discarded the number 77 and it was the one C it was in my pile Oh it out um it's like a nice puzzle is anything but tranquil because you're like oh no yeah it's quite but um and also when you lay the stock card you all have to agree to get rid of eight cards don't you yeah and then you have to manage to finish with a finished card but obviously you get finish cards early on you don't want them in your hand because that's wasting space so you might get rid of some finish cards and

12:14 then no one might have a finish card at the end yeah it's um it's a good one definitely uh we sorry we also played ecosystem Savannah which is a new one that yeah we we really like so we introduced that to really good Jenny and Mark and we played carcass on the winter Edition yep because why not play a Christmas game in March I see which I'm I don't know I found it a little bit more complicated to see the actual differentiation between the like abber is it the ab ab yeah abies and um yeah not the ab the abies and the town it did it what didn't seem as clear as the snowy white board kind of makes it yeah it detracts a little bit from it um they had some Santa mles and some Snowman mles and I played with Snowman and that was quite satisfying yeah yeah and the S Santa mles were great um yeah and then we played a game of Copenhagen which is a tile like a Tetris type tile a polyomino tile laying game which we decided as a bit like ticket to ride in that you're collecting cards to then usey you're collecting groups of colors to buy you basically you have a you're building a a a building in in Copenhagen putting Windows like colorful building yeah and

13:44 then you are spending you're drawing up cards that have to be next to each other on grid um and spending x amount of the same colored card to buy the a shape that has that many essentially that many squares of the value and then you're putting it in your building and you're scoring for columns and rows and and you get extra points if those columns and rows are complete with just windows and you can get bonus Powers which then allow you to do multiple things when you cover like a yeah and then it's got call like the score track and again that's a race to 12 points um and you've got little little mermaid um statue meeples um and then there's like an end game trigger where the little mermaid herself is in the deck and then when you uncover that so you go through the pack of cards twice yeah um but the second time you put the mermaid into the last nine cards so you know whereabouts it's going to come out but you can't be certain you Shuff it into the nine cards so it could be right at the end or it could be right at the start of those nine cards yeah and that triggers the end and whoever's in who has Whoever has the most points when that comes out is there such it's a really sad that's another one we played on bjm that's the first time we played it in the real that's a really satisfying game so that was cool and I would highly highly recommend that if you enjoy TI L games I think it's yeah it's on a got that kind of because Patchwork Simplicity to it

15:16 but also it's quite complex because different colors have different shaped pieces yeah so you could go for the purple cards but they're all straight straights um and then the blue ones might be more kind of a mixture of L shapes or whatever but you do have it's not just about what's a you can you can only pick two cards each time or build something yeah and the two cards you take have to be next to each other so it's that kind of do I take two purples but is that going to fill my grid up how I would like or is that then going to leave me with a gap it's um yeah it's a really is it and then because it's a race to just 12 points it feels really tight like you're never going to finish your house you're never going to like what way do you start building do you start building straight up do you go for columns do you go for row because columns will give you more points because obviously they're longer than the rows would you do would you go for that would you try and cover these things to get your bonuses because there are ways of like again comboing together moves um so I had a pretty sweet like again a combo on that one where there's a special tile that let you draw cards and play at the same time and I manag to draw cards play cover a symbol reactivate my cards again so the next turn I could basically do the same thing like twice in a row which is quite powerful didn't help I lost the game but um yeah but it feels it just makes you want play it feels good when you're

16:48 doing it it's just yeah it's oh it's so good I would that would be it's a queen game and I'm not always that the queen game sometimes for me don't always hit the mark we used to have Kingdom Builder which for some people they love for some people there's nothing wrong with Kingdom Builder I just think we grew into more complex strategy games and it would didn't appear to be too difficult once we we yeah we got Kingdom when game early in it was like one of the first games we got yeah and it felt really complicated and then we tried playing it and we were like okay this is not complic yeah so yeah so all in all after the weekend we actually played quite a few games yeah but not so many in the week yeah it was good it was a good yeah a good finish to the week I always like it when you get to play so games you've enjoyed on BJ when you get to play them in real life and then you're like oh this is so much better because I I did enjoy tranquility and potion explosion online but yeah you can't beat the real thing I suppose it's like reading a book isn't it you when you watch the film it's not the same as reading the book yeah um so yeah was was good that's good we got another few games days lined up next weekend so that' be nice then after that is the airon which we've managed to twist some people's arms to make them spend money and buy tickets last minute.com uh which is always good I do believe there are still tickets

18:19 available so if you are thinking about it do it on that and if you are wondering how to which games to take to the convention well this where we got the games for you distilled no um Scythe uh in cyclopedia I'm not just I'm not just staring at the wall behind me going these are the games you should take honest so we decided we'd set ourselves a little bit of a challenge a challenge yes this is a challenge and um and you can join in too we called it the what board game board game backpack for no apparent reason exact we haven't used backpacks this is true so you have filled satual full of games I have a Star Wars Record bag it's orange that makes no difference of the sizing but it's just a normal record bag a shoulder bag I think it's called record bag you might not call it a record bag you might call it a satchel it's anything but a backpack it's a shoulder bag it's like a man bag hand bag for men okay it's a bag that's rectangular in shape yeah this one's orange and it looks like Luke's X-Wing um it's a visual it's not visual medium we have to explain exactly what this bag looks like it's orange it's it's a it's orange and I don't think the fact that it's orange makes any difference to how many games you can fit looks like we did originally discuss doing a suitcase a small suitcase and US each filling it and seeing what we would take but we decided

19:51 that potentially at a convention you're not going to want to take a suitcase round with you so we've gone for practical yes how could you transport your games um in an orange Satchel in a bag should you wish to take games to a convention and I have gone with my um R2D2 Lounge fly bag yes handbag which is quite small but I have managed to fit quite a few games into it yes so um I think you're going to go first I'm going to go first what games you take your lead orange and then I will do mine um did I mention it orange yes it's orange yes it's Star Wars yes thank you okay so what would you take to a convention in your bag and why right okay so in my bag I have got I think six or seven games how exciting but let's have a look so just going to reach in and then I'm just going to grab one so first of all um I have got because I got limited space because it's only a small orange uh bag it's quite big it's quite it's large it's big enough um I've started off with my gold mine from Cosmos games uh my gold mine is a pure push your luck uh game where you are dwarves uh mining for gold uh

21:23 obviously because it's called my gold mine um and as you're turning over car or drawing card underneath the cards you're drawing uh there may be a dragon and then there's this really cool mechanic where you just turn the tiles over and the dragon like is moving through the mind going towards you and you basically need to push your luck like how much gold you want to collect and then you really want to try also try to get out of the mine as quick as possible without well not as quick as possible but with as much gold as possible but without the dragon eating you because then you lose all your gold you play over three rounds it's a wicked game uh it was huge huge hit last year for for Cosmos and I think um it's always so popular why did you decide to take that you would want to take this to the convention though specifically um I wanted to find a game that is relatively quick the small and small enough that I fit in my bag um is relatively quick but can be played with as many people as possible yeah um and I think that's like the key because a lot of the time you bump into people you know or you your friends and stuff like that and also it's it's Kitty friendly so I can play with the small people um and also I can play with up to six players so six of us can get around the table play this really silly game have a laugh nothing too serious nothing too strenuous people who have never played it before it's a really easy very quick rules overhead um and off we can go nice good start um what's next next up um I

22:56 have chosen to bring Zuli The Fierce and friendly card game from Zuli is that the company no it's unfringed things um so Zuli is a again a one to six player game it's relatively uh light rule set you are trying to build a zoo you have a a hand of cards uh depending on your Play account is how many cards you have you keep a card and then you pass the cards around the cards around in the circle I likees go style yeah um cuz it feels like you have to really make that choice am I going to take this now or I'm going to potentially leave it to come back around or is somebody going to or you're going to give it to someone else and they're going to use it um so yeah in Zuli you have to have enclosures that can have specific uh a specific volume a specific number yeah um depending on the size of the animal takes up space so you might have an enclosure that's a six but if you have an elephant that is a six some animals can't live each other you can't have a predator and a neutral an a good animal and a it sounds complicated but it's really not it's AR over the Caro no yeah it's it's yeah it sounds a very a bit it's complicated it's CR the card art is very like cutesy um but it's a lot crunchier than the card art kind of allows yeah when we first got this I thought it was for children but definitely not really yeah I mean it says eight plus on the age thing I think they probably could play it but there's

24:27 a bit of yeah they could play it but the strateg yeah you need to be what's next next up is another it's a one to four play game it's something for when you have a little bit of a break or lull or if you're just having a bit of a sit down and quiet time you want a bit of aone time um if you've gone on your own or if you're with just with someone you can just sit down and just chill um I think it's always good to have a rolling right or a fliping right on you um and there was a load to choose from uh but one that is very satisfying to play that I've chosen is Gans Shan clever from uh Wolf Gang was who's just a great great designer of all the board games um and in Ganson C you're rolling dice you are selecting Dice and then your opponent selects a dice so you're all getting you're all getting to do something every single role it's not just a case of you roll you do stuff I roll do stuff um you basically take what's left um it's got got some really satisfying combos as you're Crossing off different areas of the board you know I'm hearing in this podcast we like combos I love a combo I love a combo I love it when you can do something and then you can do something else yeah it's just a really satisfying little roll and right so yeah Ganon clever I think uh it's it's basically if you enjoy if for people who don't know the rolling rights don't know that specific game that well I think if you are a yachi fan if you enjoy like the idea of of yachi rolling

25:58 and just ticking off boxes to score um I would also say that for conventions you could probably cheat so the box is a lot bigger than the things inside it so essentially you could take the six Dice and you could laminate some sheets and then you'd be good to go I think yeah I think that's one of the things about all convention packing which is proba probably what I should have said at the beginning you don't when you went out once to uh what it we went out once and we my and I just spent certain bits code names was just full of the code names box because obviously it's notoriously an empty box uh was just full of about three or four board games I think that's another podcast for another day but that's the best way to really yeah just just take everything in one big box yeah makes life easier what's next next up is a one to four player Cooperative game What's Next the bag has on the floor that's the next thing no it's not it's a two to six player Cooperative game by Kevin Kevin hamano with art from Beth soal and it is kites uh from Floodgate games kites is a fantastic Cooperative relaxing time flying kites um it's not relaxing at all no not not at all it's it has nothing to do with

27:28 um any form of relaxation you are using sand timers that are in this uh example are the are the kites uh you start by turning a couple over you drop everything on the floor uh you turn start by turning a couple of a couple of sand times over then every time you play a card you have to turn over the sand timers of those specific colors um and then you have to basically work through the entire deck to get all of the cards played without any sandtimer running running out it's very stressful uh but it's really really satisfying when you complete it there are modular cards as well like um storms that flip over all the cards there's an airplane that mean they don't flip over the cards flip over the sand timers yeah there's a airplane that limits communication you can't um discuss card there's um something else as well to what is it what is it is it twisted lines you mean you have the hand like swap your cards around um so there's loads of really cool little um action modules at first when we played it I thought um oh yeah this is going to be really straightforward it feels really very wrong it feels really straightforward to start but yeah we've got loads of time oh no it's all running out and start playing more yeah cool well this is looking good like I I'd come and play games with you good because you're going to have to

28:59 what's next next up is one of uh my favorite little card games it's two to five player game from haset UK or Studio H and that is valara um I like this valara we played at ukg just last this past year I saw it online and I thought this looks really good because I really really like libertalia I'm a huge fan of libertalia the way it just plays is so good but taking libertalia in the Box taking libertalia is a big old big old chunky boy but valara is using the same mechanics you have 12 cards everyone has the same 12 cards and you have a hand of cards and you can play the cards down you get a benefit off of the card that you've played um depending on the order that you play the card in yeah so you might not if you play it and so it will say things like if you're the first player to play this or if someone played an odd card before you so it might be that you get a benefit equ not yeah so you get uh you get points for the the card that you play and then you can also then you draw these lands that you're trying to create this realm in front of you so you're drawing these lands from this land deck in front um and obviously the earlier you you can play cards but then you can draw these lands up to get points again for the different types of lands will score differently it's a really satisfying like points and you is it

30:31 like Auto gaining these points so you it's not something you wait to the end of the game to see who wins you've sort of you can see what's happened with the points but the points will face down you don't know you don't know what each other are getting and scoring because they all look the same but it could be a 20 and a 10 yeah um it's really cool um and I I really enjoy this game and we don't play it I haven't played it for a while I think it's better with more players we played it at like um uh we played it four at ukg and the board game M ran we played it it was better at yeah it's just a very good very good card game Viking themed really nice artwork um yeah really satisfying little game then I have also got in my bag another two to four player game these in your just just by putting them in with my hands put them in the bag they're in the bag well they're not now I've taken them out the bag um a two another two player you might have to actually take these because if you've said this on the podcast people might be expecting you to turn up with your orange with my orange bag with these specific how they'll they'll know me from my getting to games hooded jumpers created by the wonderful team over at shirts and merch go check them out not an ad but but it is now um uh yeah my next oh my orange bag uh my next uh two to four player game I actually

32:01 played for the first time ever at aircon 2020 without without you you were in no I had to look after the children yes and I ran away and then the wonderful Sue from board game good and her husband um had just bought they had just bought a copy of this game Village rails a game of locomotives and local motives from Osprey games and we sat down and we played and I went this is bloody brilliant so I went home and I bought it um so Sue it's your fault if you're listening to this podcast it's your fault um and it's great it has it has like I don't know am I right think like roll and righty Vibes I don't know no F flip and righty VI so basically you have a you have a a kind of uh square that you've got the starts of rails in specific it's 4x4 grid is it specific uh Landscapes and then you're basically buying taking cards to pay to play tracks with specific land Types on them that all have kind of multipliers combos um ways of scoring points and then once you've eventually finished a track you attach a ticket to that track um to score more point to earn money based on that track you so you score points then you earn money lots of money mol um and all the all the different um Things Track types of track have

33:34 different objectives and then there are other tickets that you can buy that that you can get that give you more benefits and more points or rescoring it's just a really satisfying crunchy thinky game that in a very small box it's a very small box um could be smaller because the cards are d double sided double sided on one side they have the terrain and the track obviously and on the other side they have the extra things I like that when when games utilize yeah it also makes the game quite modular and the replayability because it's such it's a big deck of cards really you never get and sometimes you're going to be using one side of the card sometimes you're going to be the other so as soon as you shuffle them up a couple of times the replayability of that game is just it's s we played it with two I want to say old uh older non- Gamers really my mom and dad your mom and dad yeah um we play some funy duddies we did some funy duddies and uh they and my dad really enjoyed it yeah good with the trains I think he actually won um there he he did your your dad's I've said that before though your dad is a um when he no when when he when he gets into a game he's like yeah and then suddenly he wins every time and it's like damn it and I say I'm a brilliant

35:05 teacher because of that I am always a little cautious though when you come back from places going we really need to buy this because I think oh yeah you said that the last 10 times but you came back to the hotel and said oh I just played an amazing game and I was like and then we bought bought it and then I was like oh yeah actually right see so games are great yes and I'm right uh this is the last game I have in my in my uh rectangular orange bag um the last game I've got is a two to 10 player game 10 players 10 players um two to 10 do we have 10 people who want to play with us yes uh and it is a game that is this year I'm going to buy another copy of it but don't tell Mrs g games right here okay this year I'm going to buy another copy of this uh because this year is the 30th Anniversary are you going to buy x 30 years of six nyed this buy the X one maybe one day but this this game this game was out when I was 9 years old wow can you believe it 30th anniversary of six so what are they what is it a special box that they're doing they're doing a special box with special art also a Cooperative version of six Ned how would that work I don't know that's why I'll buy it and find out and I'll soon tell you but right so six n is

36:37 a game basically you have rows of cards and you are drawing you you have a hand of cards and you're placing a card in the rows and they have to be uh higher than the card in front of it but if you are the sixth card placed you basically have to pick up all the cards and if you've got loads of cards in your hand you count the bullheads that are on the card and you deduct that off your 66 points and then when you're down to zero points the game is basically over um you you lose and then it's whoever's got the most points left yeah um it's so satisfying it's so good we found a Prof the professional variant on BGA which cards can be placed to the left or the right of rows and my golly gosh isn't it it is good yeah it is one of those games that is is incredibly frustrating but also like so um I don't know you just want to keep playing it cuz it's like oh God I can't can't believe you made me pick up all of those points and and then another time you'll be like watching everybody else picking up points and you'll be like Oh I'm doing so well it's you could be flips you could be having two blinding rounds you've not lost any lives you've still got 66 points everyone's like getting battered for points and stuff like that and then suddenly you have one round and you lose like 30 in a round and it's like that was a terrible terrible day um yeah I mean totally and wait oh no there's one more thing in my bag oh that's weird that's really weird

38:08 in my bag there's a there's a leaflet there's a leaflet in my bag it's really weird there's a leaflet in my bag for someone called rent Shuffle and roll this sounds really cool because they they're apparently they um you can rent apparently you can rent board games from them um it says like you can you can choose you can do monthly plans you can rent games uh uh and then you play them you can send them back it's um they're called yeah rent Shuffle and roll it's really and their website what can I just stop you no well I was I was I found some interesting information for the podcast yes yes thank you so this says stop what stop no you know this this is silly okay what do you mean silly it's silly because this happens every week what are you talking about the people who sponsor the podcast are Ren Shuffle and roll well that's weird because that's the same name on this leaflet yes so have you ever wished that you could try every game you want before you buy yes yes I have ever think you've got too many games on your shelf that you've only played a couple of times or not at all yes ever think geez run out of space again I often that happened it's happened now there's a pile next to the table uh Ren Shuffle and roll can solve these problems they save their subscribers money every month versus buying their new games new or secondhand

39:40 buy any game you love from your subscription at a discount and never have space issues again when you send all your unloved games back try a month at 50% off with code gg50 and see the value for yourself so this company here rent Shuffle and roll yeah www.rent Shuff roll .co.uk yes they're in contact with you you know who they are this is all a terrible rules if R if you go to that website brench roll.co and you use the code gg50 yes gg50 get into games 5050 gg50 you save yourself money you get 50% off the first month 50% off that is that is like half price well done yeah the price that's half the price that that is a very good offer to do so what I would say so if you come back from a convention and really fancy trying out lots of games like you would do at a convention or youve seen games at the convention you want to get a hold and go I want to try that again before I buy that yourself a subscription get yourself a subscription to rent Shuffle and roll and head to rent Shuffle and roll.co do.uk and type in the code g t G50 and get 50% off that deal thing situation today and help the B does it help us yes does it yes yay do yeah what's in your bag what's in my bag well quite a lot really I can barely shut the

41:11 uh it's hemorrhaging it is actually fully closed so I consider that a win it no longer looks like whether I can get the games back in in a minute it looks like melted r2d show a little bit so what have I got in my roll of goodies so the first game that I would take to the convention is a game called Bandido it's a tiny little um box and essentially there is a thief a bandit a bandit who is trying to escape uh the jail and you are trying to team up to to stop him you have cards that are like the track out of the jail and you have to try and block off all the exits um adults children can play it um it's I find you can either do it very quickly or don't do it yeah or it gets away for itself but it's one that's easy to teach um everyone can understand it and it's a good line even if you had a few to drink or you know you're tired you can still get your head I've seen people do a like play it with um bandida the other version as well like stick them both together that looks like hella fun the next one I'm

42:43 not sure if you'd get through security but hey we can try it's gone the game decanted it from the box because it's easier to take it out of the box and it comes in a handy bag and it is cluster I love cluster cluster is a circular rope and lots of magnets and you share out the magnets between however many people there are usually two to four one to four yeah two to four yeah and you are placing them in the circular rope within the circular rope the confines of the circular rope trying not to attract other magnets and I've taken this to the pop before we've taken it to board game mentions it is Fab M yeah and you can take it in the bag and it takes up less space which is why I have managed to fit it in uh the next game I have got is another bag game and it is a love letter game and it is the Star Wars version now I would bring the Star Wars version because I know you would prefer to play the Star Wars version um than the normal version but again it's a good card game um it's quick to play well you can make it last longer if you want to have more yeah of those points um it fits in the bag CU it's in a tiny bag and it's a good one to you know if you're short on time or you just want something quick to

44:13 play with people that you've just met up with um it pretty much says on every card what each one does yeah I think any of those Love Letter options are always really good they play they play at high count um they're small um and they're relatively quick there's a bit of deduction to them um yeah it's more C counting than deduction but yeah either the Star Wars one or the I like the normal one I like the Star Wars one because it's pretty it's Star Wars and Star Wars is pretty isn't it it is so uh this is the biggest game in my D yeah um it is ecosystem Savannah and this at the moment is my favorite ecosystem game I don't know I've fallen in love with the animals on these cards this version of the ecosystem as we've spoken about before on the podcast is the one where I can see the ecosystem at work the most yeah the original one I I I can't see the links between the animals the fish one's fine but I'm not that fish mad um this one I like you turn you play out your cards um some of the cards flip over and that's to indicate that they've been killed by a predator pretty much and then there's vultures who they are on the top of a a column yeah of flipped over cards they score you points um I just think the ecosystem the theme comes

45:45 across best in this version of ecosystem it definitely works really well like being like so you play all your cards out and then being able to flip a card when like a lion is eating like you can see it happening you flipped over the card you know that animal has been eaten by the lion or attacked by the lion or whatever so you flipped that zebra or you flipped that gazelle after the cheater's got it and then it's in the row of the vulture and because you've got that flipped card there you know the vulture the vulture can come down or the hyena can move it just but we we were talking about this in the car on the way back from our board game day today in the original version for some reason I think it's deers I may have got it wrong but dear score for every column and row that they appear in is yeah to me that makes no sense why is the deer the one that scores that way yeah in this you want no other deer in the same column but they're herd animals so in in this version the tree is the thing that scores for and that to me makes sense because you would have the odd tree as a shelter sh yeah yeah yeah um I don't know it just for me it makes the most sense and I now wouldn't necessarily play the original I'd always want to play yeah I mean i' yeah I think this is the best the best one I really like it I I know people say that the coral reef one is the prettiest one um but that's just CU it's very colorful whereas the Savannah

47:16 one is quite savany so it's quite deserty and it's not it's not brightly colored yellows and stuff but it's it's a nice it's a very nice game I love it how many games do you think I still have in my bag uh 63 oh okay um no I don't five no three um but I thought I'm quite impressed cuz we've already had four so managed to and my bag is smaller than yours so I'm doing well I think um the next game is another small box game called Drew Porter yes and this says quickly drop only the necessary Lucky Charms in this Palm coordination game you essentially get five um Lucky Charms one's a ring one's like sort of what looks like a cracker there's a shell there's a key and there's a a square a Red Cube a Red Cube yeah sorry not square and um it says Eerie noises wake you up in the middle of the night ooh thud boom one by one ghostly figures begin to appear from beneath your bed you hurly grab all of the Lucky Charms that you have been collecting just for this kind of situation using one hand will you be able to drop only the necessary Lucky Charms on command with no mistakes it's time to push your palms to the limit so essentially you turn over a card and it says you need to drop these four items so you try and drop these four items quicker than everybody else then pick up

48:47 the ghost token um which is fine until once you've picked it up and you're the winner of that round you collect little bells and then you have to try and drop the items without dropping the bells it's incredibly difficult um but it is laugh out loud really yeah it's so good it's it's yeah you've got to get five and you always like getting those and then you dropping them and you ended up you can end up with 10 things in your hand and you just yeah drop them everywhere um and then I've got another small box game which is called rafter five and um this one says five Rafters are collecting planks of wood to make their raft bigger try your best to instruct them to load the cargo into the raft but be careful the balance of the raft extensions is important if a person that is supporting the raft is moved the raft will collapse all at once will you be able to skillfully build the raft and make it difficult for others to expand while also making sure you aren't the one to let it all fall apart will it collapse will it hold enjoy the strange Balancing Act in this brainy balance game so essentially there are five very strange looking people which are the peoples which you stand on these cards which are meant to represent the raft which is fine at the start of the game so they're all standing on a ra then you pick up a meele and you place a piece of raft and you put your meat back down and then you add a little bit of treasure onto the

50:18 end of it yep and then uh the hilarity ensues because you start picking up people and bits of treasure start falling into the um ocean whatever um and sometimes you think oh yeah I've been lucky I've been able to pick it up without dropping anything and then like we had a game where I picked something up and the whole thing imploded and it's it's just good fun everyone can enjoy it it says age seven plus there's one to six play but it's it's another good little box game doesn't take up very much space at all um but is great yeah I really like ra five it's got that kind of Pickup Sticks but in the reverse and yeah they're both by oink games or hash at UK and yeah they're just very satisfying little games um I have one more game one more game and this is a new game to us um but it appeals to the math teacher in me yeah um and the parent in me because it's going to help our children with their maths it's called monsters outnumbered it's in a small box not a tiny box more like an ecosystem type book slight slightly smaller than an ecosystem ecosystem ecosystems yeah is that what's good yeah that's to start you know when you start to say something it's sounds wrong yeah um actually it's in like a dirty pigs type cuz it's got

51:49 that sort of magnetic connection M it's really nice so you are building up a monster horde I think they call it and all of the cards have numbers on them the cards by the way feel so nice they're sort of yeah they're glossy plasticky glossy um some of them have ads on them some of them have multiplications on them some of them have divides on them and essentially you build up your monster hord so I might layer three and then I might add a four so now I've got seven and you can either lay on your own ho or you can um do something to somebody else's so say Craig had seven I might then minus three off of his and you have nine I think it's nine cards and you're trying to score the biggest horde but obviously other people are trying to affect your score but you're having to work out the maths but you don't know I I felt like we played with Alana and I felt like she didn't know she was really doing math because it was in a fun yeah monster kind of really good yeah so monsters outnumbered is um sent across um from the states and it's yeah it's it's really good it's it is one like you said I think the great thing about it is it's like you're learning you're doing your homework you're doing your maths you're not realizing that you're quite doing the work that you're doing yeah um yeah and

53:22 it's good and it's it's a way to remember those those key skills of the matics it is um so yeah so there are the games that I would F my back so that's a good a good range of games that so between us we were able to take 14 games in two quite small bags yep so and have a range of games that we could play with that's the thing as well I think the other thing is with when you go to conventions you can go with whole hope I'm not going to spend any money um and don't spend any money but I think also sometimes you can go you can take big boxes of games with you and then you end up buying stuff and you got double the amount to bring back I think last time we went we bought things like flamecraft and we might even bought Planet unknown and we've always take far too much and end up taking it all the way there and never having played it so yeah I'd rather take small box games and play them multiple times yeah and also when you get some of them they quite crunchy there's quite a lot of thinking so even if you want to play something a bit heavier and that kind of thing and we we're going take kids with us so we're not really going to be in the probably the mindset to play some big me Euro um or anything like that so it's probably ideal to have those smaller games with fun kind of thing and be able to play with a multitude of different people to be able to enjoy uh the games the most really yeah um so do we want to challenge the lovely people to have a go yeah I I want to hear what your board

54:53 game backpack would be or handbag orange Star Wars Record bag yeah if you have the um R2D2 bag can you fit more games into yeah a short stuff board games yeah Lucy yeah you can show all of your Lounge bags with all the games in specific Fe in there plus if anybody wants to send me more L yeah yeah absolutely funco Funko one yeah Funko get in contact please no the yeah I'd love to see some um of what games you take to conventions or if you are going to airon or you are going to any board game conventions this year um I know there's a few over in the lovely United of the states as well going on um yeah just let us know what you would take in your bag um also if you fancy seeing us unbag them oh yeah online online then are we yeah a video so we are going to do an comping YouTube video to this podcast um uh basically we are going to unbox unbag the gam The Insider knowledge so you have The Insider knowledge if you are listening to this you're going to see the games in the flesh um we might even take them out of the box we might even go woo look at this uh we might um who knows uh yeah so we're going to do a com a companion video across on our

56:23 YouTube channel YouTube channel don't have YouTube My we don't have an hour of YouTube no um yeah so we're going to we're going to do a it'll be short it'll only be 5 10 15 26 hours um he says short but I was only expecting this podcast the last half an hour and we're at 56 minutes and 40 seconds every week should we do a short one he says should we do a short one I love words the problem is I love words I love sounding out the words and saying the words yeah now they love the words too um no one listening yeah exactly they'll never hear me say thank you for listening to this podcast they never hear you say and game game yeah exactly uh but yeah thank you very much for listening to the podcast uh thank you for those who have left reviews please feel free to leave some more reviews on your podcast of choice it helps a lot tell a friend about the podcast share us on Instagram on YouTubes on Facebooks on x's on twitters on MySpace what on nobody uses Myspace now do they I don't know is there any others what's Donald Trump truth so truth what's um Donald Trump's one that one um whatever whatever platform you are what on it armors whatever platform you are listening uh and doing please let people know about the podast or the YouTube video or the YouTube video and uh yeah so that would be cool if you could do that send in

57:55 some board game menus we are having a lull there's a lull of less board game menus yeah but maybe they're not going to send board game menus now they're going to send board game backpacks board game backpacks confessions and menus whatever you like send us to us if you got any ideas for the podcast let know let us know we'll take anything we'll take Bank details um however you want uh but yeah again and remember and remember yes remember to always lock the front door when you leave the house uh because burglers bur remember to always turn your hair straighteners off turn your hair straighteners off because your house will burn down remember to feed the cat before you go out for a board game day remember to feed the cat before you go out for a board game day otherwise you might find your fruit ball halfway across the kitchen um and just angry cat waiting for you at the front door don't know if that's a that I I I don't know if that's a real thing that's ever happened but um yeah you shush me you shush me on my own podcast my God and and remember remember when you pop you can't stop enjoy Pringles please remember remember well look we're like a minute off from one hour exactly get get yourself dressed in the morning cuz no one likes naked people in the street and remember and remember to to get into your car on the way to work and

59:29 drive down the road and park outside work and get in or if you don't drive get a bus you can get a bus buses are a mode of Transport that are optional to you and remember and also remember um the oneeyed man you're not trying to do this so it ends exactly on a minute a minute an hour are you yeah pretty much and remember to to get get in in remember to remember remember to to get into gamees 60 Minutes ah