Level Up Board Game Retreat Recap

0:00 if you're coming she's like no pick me up she literally turned for me to pick it up what hello everyone welcome back to Foster the meele a Channel all about games and board gaming things exactly we are here today to talk about level up Retreat which we just got back from right yeah that's right it was our second year attending now for anybody that doesn't know my chair is stuck on the freaking rug there for anybody that doesn't know level up happens in new joyy I knew you're gonna Jamie cannot say New Jersey without saying Joy joyy Jamie has these things I've said it before she has these keywords that she'll say my keywords in certain ways new joyy what's another one I do tanks tanks tanks Andy tanks anyways we just got back from level up which is a board game convention uh and it's a play convention so there's like there's a teeny tiny vendor haul but it's not like a bunch of Publishers it's some makers so this is our second year that we went and we had a great time and today's video I wanted to talk about our experience I want to talk about the games we played our community um and

1:33 before we get into that I want to make sure that everybody knows that Foster the gameathon is happening it is March 22nd and 23rd there's a link in the description where you can sign up to get notified of everything but we have a really wild fun lineup of board games that we're going to be playing and along with that a bunch of giveaways so you want to come and stay up with us for 24 hours and play board games that's the thing to do what day of the week is that happening Saturday to a Sunday that'll be that anyways I just wanted to make sure everybody knew anyways so we went to level up and we we left on a Thursday but it started on a Friday okay so it goes from Friday to Sunday so it's a three day event and like I mentioned it's a playc con so they have a couple like panels and sessions we've never done them so I can't tell you whether or not they're good but they have them if you're interested they've got board games they've got some RPG stuff they have a library I think with around like 800ish games but I know a lot of people bring their own games we brought some games yeah I don't think I played any games from the library I mean it's one we played Colorado from library correct that was it yeah they do have a decent library but yeah I think most I mean I don't know I shouldn't say most people our community tends to bring a lot of games mhm uh so we never really have to use the library no speaking of our community so we had a mass amount of our Discord there Foster me showed up we

3:05 don't know exactly but it was around 40 to 50 people of like a 200 person event well I think it said it was a 500 person event but no I don't I don't know it seemed it didn't seem regardless we had a very impressive our community showed up yeah our community show up and I think what's great is a lot of our community does happen to be on that side of the coast yeah I was talking to someone about that I can't remember who there's a a big uh conglomerate there's a big presence of our of community members that are in like the northeastern part of the US exactly because a lot of them also go to packs unplugged as well but anyways there's a huge amount of our Discord members there which is perfect because this is one of those conventions that we get to go to where we have no other obligations except to play games with our people yeah which is not an obligation it's something we get to do for fun which is great okay so it's Thursday to sorry Friday to Sunday we got there on Thursday Thursday night do you want to know what we did we went to Shake Shack of course and tar yes that that was our Thursday night we didn't play any games we didn't do anything like that Jamie and I have mentioned this before one of our favorite things to do our best things in the world is be in a hotel room and lay in bed lounge and Lounge yeah we watched some of season 2 of squid games so we did that while were there as well and if you haven't watched it please for the love of God I think it might be one of the best shows in the whole wide world

4:37 yeah I wouldn't disagree it is disturbing though so just be warned anyways so that was our Thursday but Friday we kind of got into it and I have obviously recorded shout out to Meg Professor Meg she made me this she gave it to me at level up um I've recorded everything that we played and I thought that bother you no but do you want to know the I I did take off my name it said Jamie and level up on it and so I took that off because now I'm home and I'm not at level up anymore here's the thing about it nandor yeah loves it and he will jump up and try to get it when I'm holding it like this he does that with sweater any lace yeah lace string laces those aren't called laces string laces are on your shoes it's the same thing when this is the exact same thing asce it's sound like you were about like scandalous underwear all right so we on Friday started to get after it now last year when we went to level up Jeff was not well um in his anxiety Journey but this year you were feeling much better yeah which is great there's always an inherent level yeah of anxiety any social gathering for me so we started our level up Journey playing Tinder blocks which is perfect because we played Tinder blocks for the first time ever last year at level up yeah we played the harder version though didn't yeah we played like Tinder block after dark or something something like that I

6:07 don't I don't know that we did or not but the point is we are going to be playing that during the gameon which is exciting and I lost yes and so we played that with Ben and Sarah who as you probably you've heard them before they're our friends they're from the Discord they're joining us for the gameon and then we started to get into some more stuff we didn't really get into many beefy games because we wanted to try and play with a lot of people which is one of the things that isn't so great sometimes for us I wish we had more ability to sit down and I mean it comes down to like I don't know I don't even know everything is time and our and our I think our self ability no like the pressure we put on oursel to fulfill to make sure we're playing with to make sure we're playing with as many people as we can yeah and which does not invoke the ability to sit down and play like a big chunky game like the biggest chunky game you got to play was too many bones and I got to play well we'll talk about that yeah but I didn't get I didn't really get to play any chunky boys chunky games no no anyways then we invited a few more Discord people at the table we had Antonio and Hunter actually I don't think Hunter's in the Discord but we played with him at level up last year too Hunter get in the Discord would you we played flip seven we played Skull King which you were really excited about because it's been a little while since we play SK I really like Skull King playing Skull King at a high Play Count player Count's really fun too it's the preferred way to do it the more there so much more Antonio got screwed over a bunch it was hilarious really fun uh and

7:40 then we sat down and we play we basically what we decided to do is we brought a couple games with us and we're like we're just going to set up at the back of the room at a table and then shoot a message into the Discord hey we've got three spots for this game and that game for us was Dice Town y so we played it back to back to back three times in a row with Discord people and we're like hey we've got three spaces hey we've got three spaces whatever it might be we played a lot of dice town it's going to keep coming up but we did that and here's the thing it was a hit it was a hit every single time everybody loved Dice Town yeah what's not to love what's not to love uh then I got to play a bit of a chunky game I got to play distilled with a couple of our Discord members D and Nancy and then I also played Ben and Sarah also played with us and I got to teach it you all know that I love distilled it's one of my faves M and I love teaching distilled and actually everybody at the table picked it up really quickly and the game went way faster than it might typically when you're playing with new players and then later in the con I saw D and Nancy were teaching other people how to play I love to see it which you love to see that's right you had to play Lord of the Rings of Confrontation I did I played Lord of the Rings of confrontation with uh Ryan um it was his first ever time playing it and he won but I would like to caveat this with let him win I 100% let him win I had a clear path to Victory on the right side of the map that I didn't take because I wanted him to experience the joys of winning his

9:10 first Lord of the Rings the confrontation game and I knew how much it mattered to him to be me so yeah Ryan would cry if and uh Ben watched yeah not our uh well I don't want to say not our friend Ben not Ben that I played Ben bren's Ben bren's Ben watch and then uh Jerry yeah watched as well and then they played after we played oh nice um I didn't know that and I sat there if they had questions and stuff um yeah I love that game our other game that we pulled out with a lot of people for a quick game was trick and snipers but you you were like I eventually I'm I'm like I'm just not as hot on it I think as you are like you love it and I'm like yeah this is a fine trick-taking game I was getting there at the end with di toown oh yeah I was like I don't this is the six time I've played this right in like two days well just so you know Jeff played trick and snipers four times back to back with Discord people uh and then so now that's like a five minute game yeah it's like a five minute game now we're into Saturday and we played dice town again because you'll love to see it obviously and then we played Colorado so Colorado is a game that we love that's the only game we pulled from the library actually yeah we played with Jerry we played with Jerry who we met who's from on the Discord Jerry's awesome and I love Colorado such a great little game it's really great I would like to play with the variant we only uh any what sound like you said du variant

10:41 I didn't say that but I feel like I should have yeah we've only played the base game because most of the time we're teaching or playing it for you know we were playing it for the first time we're teaching it but there's this like variant of scoring ability like the blue side that the more you get of one color that you actually start to get negative points yeah and I want I want to try that sometime but I really like Colorado it's so easy it's such a good intro game MH yeah great um then Jeff okay this actually happened the previous day but Jeff went two times to a retro video game store J2 games J2 games J2 games in uh Woodbridge New Jersey I'm just gonna shout out that great prices they had some games he got so many things they had some games that I've been looking for very very long time and I've never seen them M and they had some like fam it was great it was great I went I loved it so much the first time I went again it was about a 10-minute drive from the convention which is in Woodbridge New Jersey if you're like where so they're in Woodbridge did you oh okay cool anyways then I think they have multiple locations while Jeff was doing that I played a message from the Stars which is an allplay game with uh Daniel with John trip and with Sarah and me and we played remember when we played this I was there Creed's going it's a deduction game Daniel acted as the alien and me John and Sarah were trying to like decipher what he had what he was saying and I was like 1,000 I was confident John was like

12:12 how confident are you 100 I said 100% a base on nothing and Daniel got so annoyed with us he was like stop focusing on the E there is no e Daniel welcome to playing uh social deduction games with Jamie 100% confident yeah that is a great game though it's so fun it is way better playing with more than two players I liked it as the no I didn't like it I don't you didn't play as the alien when we played this I was going to say I'm getting confused there's another game yes thank you uh I played a couple of games of Nana Jeff was n not there you did yeah what well sorry we played Trio so but we play Trio which is basically Nana then I got to play veiled f like a six or I think a six or seven player game of veiled you were playing teams so it had to been it had to have been six plus and that was great once again with a bunch of Discord people and Austin from IV Studios joined us because he saw us playing but not with like the upgraded expansion and so we ended up playing with the upgraded expansion it was a blast I won me and Mitch we were team blue because you're on teams but you don't know who your teammate is anyways I had you used the hadria expansion exactly which I think is the best one mhm it's it was so much fun and that was that you kind of just that night wandered around you didn't really get into any games I was I was feeling a little bit

13:44 tired yeah I think in in all truthfulness I'm a little bit cond out MH my social battery is pretty limited now limited and it it it's not a level up problem it's just a me thing and I just think my social battery is at zero right now but we keep having to go to convention uh so sometimes I hit I hit a wall and I think that night I I just was like I'm yeah he was good I'm just GNA do my thing I kept on trucking then we go into Sunday and Sunday I started off my day playing too many bones with Brad from The Discord and Ben and Sarah or sorry no Ben and Mitch Sarah was tired um because she stayed up until 5:00 a.m. playing Hello Kitty playing Hello Kitty but this was the like first time I've gotten to play at a full four players Brad who is in the Discord he plays too many bones more than probably anybody I've ever met so he knows the game really well so I got to play a new character I played a stanza and I loved her and all I have to say is I've always thought too many bones was such a crazy hard game it was so much easier at four players it was so much easier and we had two new players at the table and just playing it at two versus 4 what a freaking difference but but it was great and we played it pretty quickly cuz I think he showed other people and they took like 4 hours to play and we only did like two I think it two and a bit yeah yeah so that was great uh believe it or not I was there I was watching for a bunch not slept in that day too I did yeah and then Jeff

15:16 played trick and snipers again well I think that was the game John John wanted me to show with to him so I played with John and uh another Ben a third Ben yeah uh and we got to play a little camel up so great at the end of the con we played camel up and there's a actually there's one more trick and snipers that Jeff played played with Richard Karen Eric Eric Lisa Lisa yeah and Jeff and I also before Camelot played scales of Fate which is the new two-player version of veiled fate which we will be covering in March I'll save my opinions for that but it's so good it was amazing um anyways oh I accidentally wrote down too many bones twice oop delete uh okay because I did not do that and yes so we ended the last game that we played was camel up and camel up you know we love and we played this at like a full eight player count so we played that's the first time we played with that first time we played that many people the first time we've ever been able to use the deal cards like the partnership cards um so we played that with Liz and Jerry and Jenna from board game garden and Dave from board game Dave and then with Lisa and Eric and me and Jeff yeah I think that was everybody anyways it was the first time that we played that I already said Jerry Jerry toau Jerry um and it was awesome I highly recommend playing Cel up at super

16:48 high player account S it's such a good game so so good uh and those are all of the games we played so we didn't play like a ton I was chatting with Jenna she played like the gallerist and void fall and like all of these big games we just I don't have like I I feel like I don't have the stamina to play late like Jeff can't play games late at night a lot of people will stay up till like 2 am play games I just can't I can't do it sometimes very uniquely I can like there was a couple times at BG con I remember I stayed up late with Nick and Mike but normally I'm done at like 10: yeah so like being able to like play a lot of games like the galleris that's like a two like I just I don't know how people find the time to do it don't know but we did try to play vast again but we had a little issue at home with our little baby nandy the animals were just being animals yeah we so we sat down because we were we played vast Crystal Caverns last year and we wanted to play with the same group again this year but unfortunately life life got in the way life got in way we had to deal everything's fine everything is fine it was just a little bit of a pulled muscle so Andy was kind of like limping a little and then literally the next day was perfectly fine I had to call the emergency vet which is really complicated to do when you're not you're not home with the animal and so I was trying to describe the videos that were sent to me and the Vets like it sounds like it's just a a pulled muscle and I was like okay perfect anyways was

18:18 stressful nonetheless so we ended up not even getting like a turn into that and we were just like we're not we're not able to do this we we have to go and deal with this stuff back at home which we did all is fine all is fine totally yeah a little bit of a hectic end before that though we went out for pizza at this place called strawberry Pizza and Pub and it was delicious so good and actually we ran into Eric and Lisa there yeah we did which is funny from the Discord so anyways that's everything that we played we had we had a great time it's just I think next year which I assume we'll go back we're we aren't making any kind of commitments to anything at this point no but I think it'll probably be fine to go back with our like travel stuff because Jeff's last trip before then is in September and then you're not traveling again I I I hope to go to PA in November but Jeff won't be yeah I have a very heavy travel schedule front half of the year uh up until the end of May yeah and then I have a July trip or we have a July trip uh and then our September trip which I don't really you have a June trip what's June Chicago oh right but then September is the last trip and that's Disney that's Disney so that doesn't really count freaking so I have yeah I have a long I have and July I don't really count either because we're just going to visit our friends Charlie and Sarah so that's going to be like a chill that's just a chill board game

19:50 yeah the other ones like conventions are work yeah they just are and it doesn't regardless if it's a play or not con exactly I mean only one that I feel like maybe isn't as much work are the BG cons um because really we go and we kind of hang out with Nick and Mike which is like our time to hang out with Nick and Mike which is really great but like most of the other cons like that is work they're exhausting they're whatever um and so it's nice to kind of have a little bit of a break yeah I I've I've had some conversations with Jamie and some some other content creator friends of like just the con burnout that I'm feeling and I'm very much feeling right now yeah so I think having a nice and I said this to Jamie I was like I think I just need a nice long break away from KH so that I can reinvigorate my interest and love for going to them because last year it was con con con con and this Con was an extension of that yeah like this was this level up was an extension of all of the conventions we traveled to last year because we didn't have a ton I mean Pax was only a month or so ago mhm realistically couple months I guess so I'm looking forward to getting a break cuz yeah level up would be the first one after that long break yep we the next one I'm going to is gamma but that's not really like a public facing con so that also feels a little bit different it's work but it's like just work like I'm going to go to meetings and to do that kind of thing and then that's that which

21:22 feels different than the public facing cons because it's just a lot of people and quite honestly like they're expensive and we go to a lot of them and yeah the majority of the time like in full transparency some of the conventions we get a little bit like maybe our room is comped or or whatever um but a lot of the time like we're paying for flights we're playing for hotel rooms we're paying for food we're paying for all those things and like you do you do that multiple times a year it's a lot of money even just flights for us in general flights are expensive and like luckily with like newey it's a direct flight but it's still expensive like I mean two of us are going everyone that goes to K knows like hotels are insanely expensive food's crazy expensive and flights are crazy expensive so we've also had to make that kind of decision of like we can't go to all these a the financially and mentally yeah um but I really do enjoy level up and I think it's probably again I'm not committing it's probably one we will continue to go to MH I think it makes sense for us cuz it's so easy to get to e it's even more easy to get to than packs which is crazy yeah it's a 2hour flight and we're we're there and so many people from our community go which is fantastic but I do want to mention I don't know if you want me to mention this but we might be considering baby oh baby wanted to make

22:54 the announcement anyways we might be considering holding our own little tiny convention here in Nova Scotia at some point but it will be calm down it'll be very limited yeah number of spaces it'll be very limited number of spaces in the first year and it probably if we're doing it it won't be until 2026 it won't probably be until 2026 it will not be until I meant it could even be 2027 I'm just saying it's not happening in 2025 got it but like we're considering doing that as a way to kind of bring our community together yeah um which you know that could eliminate another con for us basically where we want to just bring our people together and hang out yeah instead of us spending the money to do it you can exactly but I love to show off Nova Scotia and I know there's a lot of people who want to come and see it so anyways that's a possibility if that's something you're interested in you should be in the Discord because that's where the announcements are going to happen pretty much but that was level up we had a great time and shout out to level up uh they did bring us out as special guests for this year which was great and there was like no commitment other than to play games which is an easy commitment for us to do y I think that's everything for level up I may have missed a couple games I don't think I did but if we played a game with you and you're like you forgot this feel free to put it in the comments and if we didn't get to play a game with you and you're there we're sorry we did our best to play with as many people as we could very difficult to navigate all timing is struggle but that's everything we have

24:25 for today know if you're in some buying board games like any of the many we talk about today you should first start by checking your friendly local gaming store and for us that is the boardroom Game Cafe heck yeah it is and you like what you see Please Subscribe we hope to see you again soon and now we say goodbye goodbye later it is H there's a knife on the table

24:51 Jeff they not like us they not like us that's song stuck in my head hello everyone welcome back back to Foster the meele a Channel all about games and leaking roofs exact yeah we have a leaky ceiling hey baby hi baby hey baby baby come on baby come baby come on baby hi baby hi come up hi come up baby where is she on the other side come baby all that you just walk right by all right we'll have start again you have eye booger okay come on you don't get gestic little white kitty you got gross G on your butt you got butt look oh yeah you got a goie butt you got G butt hey G butt come here cookie that's going to be a new nickname come here cookie

25:59 h