Catan (Clip)

And okay here we go. Oh my god, another seven or serious. Not my lucky day. This guy Something troubling you. Surely there's been a mistake here. What mistakes do your eyes see? Please tell us. Well the burglar appears to be placed on my highest yielding wheel field.

Conor

Welcome to ADSP the podcast, episode 208, recorded on November 12th, 2024. My name is Connor, and today with my co-host Ben, we talk about our favorite board games. Alright, how's it going? It's been a minute since we chatted.

Ben

Yeah, it's been a little while. It seems like I was thinking the other day, is Bryce now doing the on location podcasts, and I'm doing the homebody podcasts?

Conor

I haven't decided yet. I mean, uh I feel like this is a multi-co-host podcast now. That's what season season two is. We're not, I don't think we're either of us, or actually, uh, that's a lie. Uh Bryce is, I think, at the moment, what is it, November 12th? Actually, I don't know if he's left yet, but I know that there is a cascade, is that the right word, of conferences and events in the C ⁇ world about to happen. There's uh code dive, there's meeting C. I think sandwiched inside of that is the uh Berlin. I think it's Berlin. I could be wrong. Maybe it's Poland. It's in one of the two Meeting C or code dive locations, uh which is Berlin and uh Wrocław, Poland. And then I think there's I think it's still happening. Um the core CPP event in Israel is happening after that. And I think Bryce is attending all of that? I think I think. I I chatted with him a few days ago and he said uh he had to do like you know three weeks' work of worth. Three weeks worth of work? Wow, that's a tongue twister. Um in like a couple days because he was heading for travel. And I think actually he was just in a conference in New York, like Pi Data NYC, where there were some NVIDIA folks.

Ben

Anyways. There's always something happening. There's always it's always busy on the on the conference circuit. C alone, and then you take in, you know, all the array language conferences that you do, and it's all it's all you guys are always traveling.

Conor

I think honestly, that's this like in the midst of whether C is crumbling as a an empire or not, you know, it's hard to tell in the midst when Rome was at the peak of its you know height. Sure. Whether or not that's happening. I think the single best thing about C is the cornucopia of not just conferences, but also podcasts, content. Say what you will about competing efforts, um, but like Rust is probably the biggest of those. And I think there's only really one active Rust podcast called Rustation Station, and there's a couple other small ones that come and go that like I think the next currently active one is like at 10 or 15 episodes, and there's a there's definitely a few Rust conferences, but definitely nowhere near the number of C ones. Anyways, and it's nice to, I don't know, as someone who consumes content, it's nice for there to be more content because I would I would I'd love to listen to more Rust podcasts that are like more language focused.

Ben

Uh anyways. So is this your new recording space? Connor's where I normally talk to Connor from, he has changed. Now I see behind him a good number of books, which which I will ask about in a sec, and a bunch of board games, and a bunch of medals and running numbers, and and a sense of veria. Mother-in-law's tongue or snake plant, for those who aren't familiar.

Conor

Yeah, this is actually Professor Snake. It's from a friend of mine, Justin, Justin Quang shout out. He got married in September. I was actually MCing his his wedding. Congratulations to him and Jenny. He used to live in Toronto and left to Vancouver. And when he left, I acquired all of his plants, one of which is Professor Snake, who has never been on camera before. Uh, Maxwell, my fern plant, uh, is too big to fit back here. So what has happened is I moved at the end of October. My fiance and I used to live at one place, now we live uh what was her old place and is now our new place. And I'm not gonna stretch this over like 10 episodes where I tell you uh a story each time about my couch and then my fridge. We moved, it was painful. Oh, I have a couch guy down at IKEA, you know. We we got we had one couch at my old place, which was a hand-me-down from my sister when she she also used to live in Toronto, and then she went to Calgary. Almost all my furniture is like acquired from people that left the city while I was moving, and they were like, Hey, do you want half my stuff? And I was like, Sure, why not? But my my fiance had a couch at her place, so we we don't need two coaches, so we sold our coach for $30 to it's basically like the fee for someone just to come and get it from us. We don't, you know, yeah, actually trying to make money from it. Uh right, exactly.

Ben

It's like take it away.

Conor

The point being is we're now in a smaller space, so all of my stuff is uh is crammed into this little den uh which used to be spread out across the apartment that we used to live in, and uh that's why you see yes, all the board games and stuff. I'm not sure. Yeah, so we were chatting because someone once requested we should do a board game episode. I know you are also a board game fan. I am. So yeah, I don't I don't know if you want to talk what's behind me, and then you can mention your favorites and we can we can uh sure, sure.

Ben

So we know that Connor likes Scrabble, and there are some word gate word board games represented behind you there. So you've got one called letter tycoon, I'm not familiar with that, but you've got Dixit and Scrabble indeed and Wood Word on the Street? Is that what that says? Yeah.

Conor

Oh yeah, Word on the Street. I went through a phase that that was it's a still a very fun game. It's uh a game where uh yeah, of the word games, well I mean Scrabble is here, you can't see it. Yes, yeah, it is there. Um this is this is the $20 version of Scrabble. If anyone knows, you used to be able to order custom Scrabble boards that you know you could choose the foldability, you know, if it's a tournament scrabble board, turnstile, etc. You can't get them anymore. A lot of the companies folded during the pandemic or they shut down just because they didn't have the bandwidth, it's like one person shops. If anybody knows, a place that I can get a and not for like 500 USD dollars, because that is crazy. That's the only ones that I can find. Uh, I'd be interested. Scrabble's definitely my favorite word game. Word on the street is a game where you take not the full 26 letters, but I think it's like 22 of them, and you place them on a table in a line on a board, and then you'll get given a category like animal. And then you've got 30 seconds to think of the name of an animal, and then spell it out, and every time you say a letter, you move that letter one lane towards you. And once you get it three lanes in your direction, you collect that letter, and it's the first person to get eight letters. Obviously, though, you go back and forth with the either opponent or the turn. So, like if you say alligator, that would be a pretty good one because it's A, L, L, I, G, A, T, O, R. So you get two doubles, A's and L's. So the longer the word, and also it gets really fun because towards the end of the game, once certain letters are collected, all the A's, R's, L's, S's, T's, you can't use them once your opponent gets them.

Ben

Is that okay? You can use them. But there's no benefit. I see. So it's a tug of war. Exactly. A 22-way tug of war with all these letters. Yeah. So do you go for what's a good strategy in that game? Uh one, I mean, one is trying to get double, trying to get long words in general. Do you try and snipe some of the lesser huge letters, perhaps? That's a strategy.

Conor

The best strategy is to, or and I mean, I'm sure everyone has different strategies, uh, although it's not a huge, it's not like a deep strategy game. Uh in general, the longest word as possible that you can correctly spell, because if you misspell it, you have to put back all the letters. Right. Okay. And then you want there to be uh a breadth of letters, but also if you can get like uh a double or a triple, like sometimes saying the word uh, I don't know, daddy or something like that, or mommy. Uh those are bad examples because I don't actually think that would be the answer to any clue. But um if you can come up with a word that has a triple, you can automatically lock that letter up.

Ben

And especially if you have- Oh, I see, because it's only three stops until you capture the letter.

Conor

Yeah. And then usually you want to try and target letters that are either at the edge of your highway, like side of the board that you're one away from collecting, and you want to defensively try and take back if if your opponent has like a T and an R coming up something with like a website like Twitter, then you can get it, you know, back into the middle. Very fun game. Not many people know about it.

Ben

Sounds fun, yeah. There are a few of those kind of tug-of-war styles. The tug of war style it reminds me of is um a game called that I haven't played, but it's called Watergate, and it's for two players, and it's so it's the strange it's supposed to be a really good two-player game. Strangest idea or kind of theme for a game, it's about the Watergate scandal. And one one side is playing, you know, Nixon's administration, and the other side is playing basically the press. One side trying to, you know, get to informants first before they get sort of taken out of the game. And you're playing tug of war with a you know, if you get it all the way to your side, then then Nixon gets impeached and removed, and if Nixon gets it all the way to his side, it's he he wins. It's like it's a kind of tug of war game.

Conor

Interesting. I've never heard of that. And I'd be interested in playing because I did recently watch what's the Watergate movie called? It's not called Watergate. It's all the President's Men? All the President's Men, yes. Robert Redford. Yeah, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, I believe, and there was obviously a couple other people in it, were my fiancee and I are watching or trying to get our way slowly through the AFI, America's Bill Institute 100. And it's always it's a it's a toss-up. Sometimes the movies really, really age well, and sometimes they're painful to watch. Yeah. But this one I thought was really, really good. Um, and also what's sad, and that's yeah, I you know, everyone loves their partners, but um Shima, my partner, is so much better at understanding like the context of a movie. The movie, not to ruin anything, uh, but it stops before all the stuff that was in the headlines at the time took place. It's just a lead up, yeah. It goes through that like in rapid fire at the end, and I was like, what? That's the most exciting part. But because I didn't live through it, like I'm not really familiar with what happened. But at the time, everybody would have known, like they were telling the story that people hadn't heard, not the pe the story that was in the news. She immediately picked up on that, and I was like, What? How could they do that? And she's like, Well, you have to understand, like, we're watching this, you know, decades later.

Ben

40 years after the fact, yeah.

Conor

And I was like, well, now they gotta make a follow-up so that the the young kids that didn't live through it because it's it's pretty insane what happened there. Anyways, back to board games. Uh Watergate. I'll put it on my list.

Ben

It's supposed to be really good. Um, I haven't played it, but uh I I do watch a YouTube channel called Actual LOL. Actual lol, like LOL. Like actual O L. Actual LOL. Okay. Yeah. It's hard to say. But um yeah, there's a British guy he reviews board games, um, and Watergate's one of the ones he recommends. Yeah, so I see several others there. Oh, Mastermind. Mastermind, of course, is a programmer type game, right?

Conor

Mastermind is the game that I um borrowed the exact matches problem from in a Martiars talk, point for your die, and then that I talked about it. I think it was in the composition intuition talk that I gave at CPP North a year ago. I vaguely remember something. Yes. And it's actually hard to find that game. That that version of Mastermind is a multi-person mastermind that has like a spinning ball where like up to four people can play and guess. I only I never played that version, but uh it's hard to actually find the old school just rectangular with rounded edges, gray, gray um version of the game.

Ben

Right. Let's see. I see hive, wingspan, patchwork two, codenames. Codenames is a good game, but really difficult, I've found.

Conor

You have to have the right uh you have to have people that are on the right wavelength. It can it can be Yeah, I think so. It can be a lot of fun, but there can be some frustration, like where someone goes for or should we explain the game? Should you explain the game for those that might not have heard of codenames?

Ben

Yeah, so in code it's a two-player game, at least I've played it two players. Um you're sitting across table from each other, and between you is a matrix of what? Five by five matrix of cards with words on them. Uh with words on them. And you each have a key to this matrix which denotes some of the cards as secret agents or bombs, or basically you you you they are to be avoided.

Conor

Yeah. Like so you get a five by five grid where you have two code sayers and then two people that are trying to guess. And the people that are saying the clues have a little five by five card that denotes, I think it's gonna be like seven red ones, eight blue ones, and then one black one. And your goal is you you want your red teammate somehow to guess the red ones, the blue for blue, but never guess black, because that's the equivalent of syncing the eight uh in a in a game of billiards.

Ben

On each turn, you are trying to give, I think, a single word clue. One word, yes. That somehow uh leads your opponents to guess one or more of the hopefully related words on in the matrix. Obviously the ones you want them to guess, the red ones, and not the ones you want them to avoid.

Catan (Clip)

Oh no.

Ben

That is my son just sent me a dad joke. Where do bad rainbows go? Uh I have no idea. Prism. Oh. That's a dad joke. We'll keep that in. We'll keep that in. Yes, so codenames is uh and what makes it difficult is you don't have an unlimited number of turns, right? The the the timer counts down every turn. You only have a limited number of turns to uncover all the or or identify all the good words. I've never played that way. Yes.

Conor

Wait, maybe I've been playing wrong for the uh entirety of uh my codenames before.

Ben

It's there is a m there is a mechanic like that. I don't know if it's a pure time limit or if it's just that when the when the quote unquote wrong words are guessed, they count against you and they they decrease the time limit. There is some mechanic like that, the way I've played it.

Conor

I think we might be conflating I could be wrong, because I've actually never played this version, but there is the solo code names where you play with just a a partner and it's you against like a number of turns, and then there's code names versus a team. So the the the one you're explaining, I'm guessing you've got n number of turns, and every, you know, wrong guess decreases something.

Ben

And if uh Yes, and it's a cooperative game for two players.

Conor

Like I'm cooperating with the person across the table. Okay, yeah. I've never played this version. And so the the version I'm used to playing is you play against a team, and you're trying to get your teammate to guess your color, which is either red or blue, and you're trying to definitely avoid the black, but also trying to avoid the blue cards, because if you accidentally guess your opponent's card, they still get that as one of their guesses. So now they have one less thing to guess. And and the tricky thing is when you say a clue, you give it a number. Like uh a classic one is there'll be like some geography like you know, Canada, Paris, but then it'll also have something like pyramid. And so you'll you'll you'll want to say something like geography for two, but you want to make sure that they don't guess pyramid, because it could be the opponent's uh guess, or it could just be a neutral one. So you want to say, okay, if it's what did I say, Paris and Canada, you want to say something that is leans more towards like uh jurisdictional borders, like jurisdictions maybe, versus geography that could get conflated.

Ben

Landmarks, yeah.

Conor

Yeah.

Ben

That's right. I'd forgotten you say the number of words that you're cluing in each round. And your opponents can guess up to that number, or they can guess as many as they like. They don't have to guess the number you said, they could sort of leave it in reserve for the next guess, and then so they can get sort of more information by combining successive clues, potentially.

Conor

This is where, because I whenever I've played board games in the past, like pre-pandemic, especially when I was younger, I used to play with actuaries and even people in tech. We all take board games very seriously. So there's a set of rules where you you can say N uh as the maker of the clue, and then like you said, you can you can guess zero if you want, and just say pass. Right. And then in the future, if you ever go perfect, if you go one for one or two for two, you get a bonus guess. And so you can you can make your way through. And there's another way where the at if it's close to the end and it's like a last shot, Harold Mary, you can say, I can't remember what the word is, infinity or like negative one, and then they can have as many guesses as they want. Or you could just say like seven so that like they get as many guesses as they're gonna be. Yeah, so they get as many as left. And it's uh it can become very strategic where you'll guess like two out of the three because you're definitely sure, and it's narrowed down to two, but like you don't want to guess the opponents, so you'll save it for a bonus. But I've played with people where they don't understand all those rules, and they're like, What are you doing? You're cheating here, getting a bonus guess, or um, and it's like, no, no, no, that's the rule. Anyway, see, sometimes that's a simplify. But I've played where someone will say like something for two, and it's very obvious what those two are uh in hindsight, but then like the person was oh, I actually didn't read all the cards. I I only read the first two columns, and then it's like, well, you wouldn't have made that clue if you had read the remaining you know ten cards. Uh anyways, very fun game, if not leads to some contentious moments with family members and friends. Uh yeah. So so yeah, I am uh avid board game player. Yeah, what are your favorites? I I don't see any behind you, but I'm sure they're in a different room.

Ben

They are all in the cupboard on my right, which is full of them. I would have to say my favorite game, and this is just one that I was playing. So when I was working in the UK for electronic arts in Chertsey back in the day, we would play Settlers of Catan. Uh it's just called Catan in America these days, but I know it as Settlers because it was called DC La Von Catan in Germany. We would play it every lunchtime, every day. You know, and we would take the lunchtime just to play, and it takes about an hour because settlers or Catan Catan has an expansion called Seafarers. The original game I understand as it was designed was Seafarers. Catan or Settlers of Catan without the without the boats part is the original game that's cut down to fill to make it the marketable. Um this is a four-player game, it lasts about an hour. Right? So anyway, that game that game is just great in terms of how it mixes strategy and luck. It's a really, really there I I don't know really of many other games that do such a good job of mixing luck and strategy. Um and there are multiple paths to take, you know, depending on where you get your settlements and how often they produce. And you know, you can go for things like largest army, longest road, you can go, you can go development cards, you can go settlements, you can go, you can go road building. Um and then the game pivots as you play because you have to start out building settlements and roads. Um, but then in order to make it to 10 victory points, you more or less have to start upgrading to cities at some point. And that takes a different, you know, a different uh distribution of cards, a different different strategy, because wood cities require, I think it's stone and wheat uh to build, whereas whereas roads are brick and wood. So completely disjoint uh materials that you need to somehow get. And there's just such a lot for such a small-ish game. I mean it's a it's a sort of a per for me, it's a perfect size. Um there's so much in it, there's so much combinatorially in it. You know, it's just you're putting down settlements, you're putting down roads, you've got a card, a hand of cards, and you're spending cards and you're getting cards from what produces every time the dice are rolled. It's a great game. I used to play it every day. I always have a soft spot for it.

Conor

I've only played Catan, I think, three or four times. I've loved it every time I played it. I'm not actually sure why I never got into it. I think it's probably because I found Carcassonne first, and both of those games. I'd say actually Carcassone has a Carcassonne's a worker placement game, is that right? Yeah. That's the one with the meeples. Yes, exactly. It's my second favorite game by far because it's a game that takes like one minute or two minutes to explain, two minutes of playing it to get the gist of it, but it's actually got it's like a light strategy game that actually has a lot of depth to it. And it's it's in the similar box of Catan. So I think I discovered Carcassonne first, fell in love with that. If if not, I would have fallen in love with Catan. But Catan, I I I came across this Instagram reel, and I will try and find it and get the audio and cut it in.

Catan (Clip)

Okay, here we go. Oh my god, another seven or serious. Something troubling you. Well, there's been a mistake here. What mistakes do your eyes stae please tell us? Well, the burglar appears to be placed on my highest yielding wheat field. I'm afraid no mistake has been made. But are your people not enjoying bread? Made from mine. And are your people not living in stone holes? From the resources that I give, you illustrate my point perfectly. We were engaged in trade. My people no longer have use for your bread. We take lamb. From the north. People of the Orange Kingdom tried to make a light. We had alliance! Gentlemen, if you thought that it was an alliance, then you truly are a fool. I'd rather live a thousand lives as a fool. Breathe a single breath as a tyrant. No, I just I just won. What? Yeah, I just got the longest road. Oh, yeah, true. Okay. I wanted to see where this was going. That's anticlimactic, eh? Winning that didn't even feel good. I think I'm having a panic attack. I don't want to clean this up.

Conor

It was so fun. It's these two guys, or it's actually one guy playing three characters, and they're playing a board game of Catan, and they're saying at some point he's like, I no longer gonna trade my wheat with you. And then he goes into these UK accents of like, I can't believe we had an agreement, and he was like, blah, blah, blah. And they go back and forth for like 40 seconds if this is like, you know, a Shakespearean medieval, whatever. And then the third guy who's just like watching it happen is like, uh uh, actually, I I won't say it, I won't say it, because I don't want to ruin it. But, anyways, he just like interrupts and then the game's over, and it's uh you have to have probably played Katan at least once to understand the hilarity of it.

Ben

Yeah. One of the things that makes it good is on any turn you have a number of choices of what to do. You know, you have plans to advance your own standing, and you can try and screw up other players. You can be racing to build roads to cut people off. You can be but you always have you have a hand of cards, right? And you might you you could buy a development card or build a road or exchange, you know, exchange cards, maybe at a port if you have a port. Or you know, so there's a choice, there's always a choice over what to do, and that's what makes it and it's a kind of a fast paced in terms of like the turns don't drag.

Conor

It's also a game of um which is why I like Carcassonne as well. It's a hidden game of statistics, if I recall correctly.

Ben

Yes. Like math plays around. Exactly. In settlers, the statistics are not hidden, they're actually exposed on the board. So you lay out the hextiles for the island, right? The island is made of hexiles, and every hextile is uh one of five landscape types which produce um the various resources. So you've got um pasture producing sheep, wheat fields producing wheat, mountains producing stone, uh I think m or mines producing brick and uh what's the other one? Forest producing wood, right? And then one tile is desert, just the way that the the tiles are. I mean that the island has one tile which is desert, and that's where the robber lives to begin with. And and and then across those tiles you you lay counters which indicate w that each counter has a number on it, right, corresponding to a roll of two dice.

Conor

Right.

Ben

So the idea is that when when that number comes up, the tile with that number will produce its resource.

Conor

Right.

Ben

But also there's dots on the on the numbers, on the number on the little number tiles, um, and the number of dots indicates the probability. So eight and six obviously are the highest probability. So if you roll a seven, which of course is the ultimately highest probability with two dice, that doesn't produce anything. That's when the robber moves. And the person who rolled the seven moves the robber to whichever tile they want, and then steals a card from someone with a settlement on that tile. That's the whole thing about rolling a seven, right? Rolling a seven is the most common roll, but it doesn't A. You ha if a seven is rolled, everyone has to discard their hand cards down to a maximum of seven. Right? So there's that element. You could be building up a stockpile of cards, but if you don't spend them quickly enough, you run the risk that a seven is rolled, and then you have to discard. I think you have to discard half of them actually. It might not be down to seven, it might be half, I forget the rule.

Conor

This is very honestly uh I I'm not super familiar with the game, but craps-esque where yes, yes.

Ben

Well, and then all the way down to like so obviously you you lay out the island, you let you lay out the numbers on the tiles, and then the first thing you do is everyone places two starting settlements on the on the vertices between tiles. So each each settlement borders effectively has three tiles around it, so three chances to produce resources. But of course, you want to put your settlements on the vertices that border high probability tiles. Yes. So the the first person, the first player to go gets an advantage because they get first pick. And it's snakes, right?

Conor

If I recall, like the picking of where like a it the way that people place things, it's it's snakes. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the nice thing about Catan too is is the replayability of it. That's like you're explaining of the way that you set the board up every single time you get a brand new Yeah. Where there is some games like Robot Ricochet. I love that game. Have you ever heard of it?

Ben

No, I know I've got RoboRally.

Conor

No, RoboRally I've heard of as well. But Robot Ricochet is a very quick game. When I was down in Silicon Valley, there was some guys at Amazon that had a board game group that would meet at least once uh once every two weeks, sometimes once a week. And we would play two or three games in the evening, and we would always finish with Robot Ricochet. And the replayability of that game isn't great if you really study the boards, because it has four quadrants, and each quadrant can be flipped. So you get a certain number of new things, but every quadrant is always going to be uh the same, so you can kind of get a sense. And uh the way it works is you basically ha have a grid with kind of angles that these little four robots visually can bounce off of kind of um Okay. Not like hence the ricochet. Yeah, so it's just like you know, if it it hits an angle, you know, it goes, or if it hits a wall, it'll bounce back. Is it like one of those laser mazes? Exactly.

Ben

Yeah, the the play field. Okay. Yeah.

Conor

It's just so you can think of it like, yeah, with lasers and windows is a great way to explain it. And you'll have this board with a ton of these win, you know, mirrors effectively that these robots can bounce off of, and you'll flip a card that'll show like a red circle, which means you need to get the red robot to the red circle or something like that. And so then you just stare. You stare, like the six of you or the eight of you, at this thing, like just trying to do it visually with trying to figure out where the ricochets can land. And then at some point, someone will say seven or fourteen, and that's the number of reflections that it takes that robot to get there, and then the timer gets flipped, and if anyone after that can come up with a lower um number in the 30 seconds, then they'll say like 10. And uh and the and the person with the lowest number then gets to show it. If it's correct, they get that card, and that's it. And then the the robot's in a new place, the next thing gets flipped. Very simple game, incredibly fun because some people will be like 24, and you're like, how did you you can't do 24? Like, and then they will have done 24. Uh anyway, very fun game. Haven't played it in years uh since I was down at Silicon Valley. But the point being, Katan, replayability off the charts.

Ben

Yeah. Like I say, I used to play it every day for like over a year. Over a working year. We played every lunchtime, so repayability very high.

Conor

Be sure to check these show notes either in your podcast app or at adsphepodcast.com for links to anything we mentioned in today's episode, as well as a link to a GitHub discussion where you can leave thoughts, comments, and questions. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day. I am the anti brace. Um