Adrian  0:25  
Welcome to Whose Turn Is It Anyway, a podcast all about our board gaming group and board games. I'm Adrian, your first player, and I'm joined today by Lord and Lady Kerley. Hi there, everyone. Today we'll be talking about upgrading your board games and board game bling. You join us mid first turn where Kerley has already won, but we shall move on to our second turn anyway, before we get going, though, how's everyone doing?

Kerley  0:47  
Yeah, really good. Thanks.

Becky  0:48  
Great. Thank you 

Kerley  0:49  
tired, but yeah going well.

Adrian  0:51  
yeah, we are. We have released an Expo episode. But we are just post Expo at this point as well. So

Kerley  0:57  
Been a busy week as well.

Becky  1:00  
But I've got annual leave next week. So I am pleased about that.

Adrian  1:04  
Sounds good to me. Alright, so without any further ado, let's move on to the second turn

So here we go with our second turn, where we talk about you and me and we talk about all the good things and the bad things that have been as we talk about hex so we are lucky enough today not to be joined by JP we've managed to pry him away from the podcast episode, our first entirely JP free podcast episode

JP  1:33  
Shalom i've gatecrashed 

Adrian  1:37  
What are you doing here

JP  1:37  
I thought your doing in a podcast episode, and you tried to do without me and I found you. 

Becky  1:43  
I know it's in your house, 

JP  1:45  
but it is in my house. So you didn't try very hard is number one. Do it somewhere else and steal the equipment. And then I went turn up Now. I'm only here for two minutes. I'm going to talk about you're on the clock I'm on the clock on my two minutes. Jesus Christ. Yeah, two minutes because I recently played Septima which is a Mindclash Games. I always talk about mind clash games, because I love them. And I played it at Gaming Rules, HQ. And by the time this episode comes out, Septimawill be on Kickstarter will be towards the tail end of its campaign. And there still has a really relevant thing to kind of bring and show you all share my experiences are what it's like. So that's why I'm here. 

Adrian  2:27  
Tell us about it. 

JP  2:27  
Yeah, so set Septimais a it's on the I say the lighter end of Mindclash games. It's still quite heavy, because it's Mindclash. But it's definitely lighter than no other titles. So septum is all about you manage your covens of witches, right? So it's kind of setting that mediaeval witchy, European town, and it's all based in this town called Nocturnberg. And it's cool. Yeah, it's very cool. The artworks done by the same artist, I can't remember the name, but it's the same artist is done Trickerion. So for those that kind of like the art in that it's the same same kind of deal. Essentially, you've got a map, a hex map of the town, and the surrounding edges is like a forest. And there's all different resources you can pick up in the forest, and then right at the edge of the map. So you've got these witch hunters. And the kind of idea of the game is that you kind of have to, you don't have to work with other covens. But if you do you get bonuses for doing it but also raises suspicion, because you're using your magic and therefore the witch hunters get suspicious and you come in and potentially capture your witches, you don't actually play as a particular witch you have a variety of witches that you can attract into your Coven, they all have different special abilities and things like that. So if your witches get captured, they end up getting put on on to trial. And there's a whole kind of bag management Clank esque kind of drawing kind of meeples from the bag, some of angry because they're like grrrr witchesis we don't want them in our towns, we want to get rid of them. And then you can put some of your own kind of coloured meatballs in there to help swing the favour of the vote. And, and that's quite an interesting mechanic because there's always a trial at the end of every season. And you can actually then attract other witches that aren't anybody's into your coven. But also, if you have one of yours captured, or the players can then rescue them, or get them off the hook, and then attract them into there. So quite an interesting interplay there. But essentially how the game plays, you've got a hand of cards. And each of these cards do different things like move, kind of pick up ingredients, brew potions, all witchy stuff that you kind of expect. And the cool mechanic that I really enjoyed with it is you kind of have this discussion, which I've not seen in the game before with other players, which is what are you going to do what you're going to play and it's quite an important thing and in a competitive game, you think you wouldn't really do it right? You wouldn't get to try and say well, I'm gonna do this. And the reason why that's kind of in there is that if you ever match with another player, you you get a bonus You can actually do all the actions on that card. So it benefits you, it benefits them. The downside is, is then the suspicion raises, because you're kind of similar to doing things and, and you've kind of balanced your suspicion track versus where you are on the map because of the witch hunters can kind of come in and get you. And also, the benefits of matching your actions is that you can go this other tracks called the Rite track, and it essentially you can imagine, like loads of dots in triangles, and you can zigzag your way up to the top of the track. And if you match the symbols to where on that track, you can kind of get up to the top, get victory points, all that kind of things. And you can unlock charms and actions and abilities and kind of build your little engine on things. But I really enjoyed it. Like, I could probably talk about it for a long, long time. I'm not going to. But I really enjoyed it. I just wanted to kind of share my brief experience on the prototype that I played. And yeah, Mindclash Games..

Becky  5:55  
Why is it called Septima?

JP  5:56  
that any is the name of the main witch who is kind of retiring and handing over basically retiring from being a witch or witchy things. And then so you, you're the Coven that's going to take over.

Adrian  6:08  
So it's entirely competitive. But with a little bit of cooperation in there to help you get to the top essentially, yeah, yeah. You've mentioned obviously bag building. Yeah. What other sort of cool mechanics are there in there? Like, is it worker placement? Is it auction bidding?

JP  6:23  
No, it's hand management. So essentially, you'll have five turns within a season, there's four seasons, so 20 to basically 20 actions for the whole game. And you'll have your deck that you run through. And any card you play in a season, you don't get to play that card, you get to play basically the rest of your cards, and there's one of the cards it's called Remember. And then that allows you to basically copy an action in your discard pile. End of the season, you get all those cards back. So again, you can kind of then work out what others have played, knowing which actions are safe. And sometimes you might do a bit of bluffing to say, Yeah, I'm gonna play movement. Yeah, I really need to play movement, because you really need to play something else that doesn't raise suspicion, you can get what you you know, get what you want done. So yes, it's quite interesting tug of war element, which I've not kind of experienced in a competitive game

Adrian  7:11  
It sounds like a lot of elements are not seen together before. So

JP  7:15  
it's definitely unique. But yeah, I really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it.

Kerley  7:20  
Well, you've sold me sounds really good.

Adrian  7:22  
Yeah, I saw some pictures that you posted up before and it looked visually appealing. And some of that stuff does sound like it would it's very purple.

JP  7:28  
If you like purple. Yeah.

Becky  7:30  
Well, they go so it to me it's

Kerley  7:33  
a lot of Mindclash Games anyway, so

JP  7:35  
yes, it is on the lighter side, which means medium heavy.

Kerley  7:40  
Are they Anachrony? 

JP  7:41  
Yeah. Anachrony, Trickerion, Perseverance.  excited for that. But that's me. So I'll you to it now. I'm going to go make a cup of tea and I'm going to bugger off. 

Kerley  7:53  
Mine's a coffee once again.

JP  7:57  
I can't interrupt the recording, bye

Adrian  8:02  
Right now he's out of the room. Can you tell us about what you've been up to recently?

Kerley  8:07  
Um, well, board gaming wise, played a lot of games but a lot of ones that we've spoken about before played Ark Nova I've played....

Becky  8:16  
I had a terrible time in that game. I just it just it just didn't work for me. No, it just didn't work for me

Kerley  8:22  
one of those days. Yeah. But I also taught Becky Lords of Waterdeep good game. Yeah. Fantastic game. Yep. One of my favourites is one of those that's kind of it's light enough to be relatively quick and casual, but it says enough different strategies, enough different things you can do to make it interesting, you know, say that sweet spot for me. And I know it's, it's it's been a popular game top 100 on BGG first been around for a long time. There's you know, and there's a reason why it's still there. It's just such a good game. For those of you don't know, it's some, I'd say thematically is probably one of the weaker games that you'll come across. It could have been literally any thematic  but it is based in the fantasy realm in a city called Waterdeep and basically, you have to get a load of soldiers and wizards and priests together rogues in order to complete missions. And it's lightweight Euro worker placement style game with completion of missions to get VP's it's fairly simple in its in the way that it plays but you know, endless options and brilliant.

Adrian  9:28  
there's just a tonne of routes in it isn't that as you can build buildings which gives you a bonus when other people go there and it can sway the game towards a lot of buildings have one type come out for instance, it can sway the game slightly towards a different way of working Yeah, and I think there's I think that's reason why it's got a lot of staying power. Like in the in the board game sort of circle is the fact that for such a simple game, certainly for for simple when it came out. It offered so many so much variety in so many different ways of playing it. Yeah, I can totally understand why it's still in there

Becky  10:00  
For someone who really hates the learning part of the game, which is me, I just cannot stand that bit. I really, really loved it. And our bearing in mind, I was learning it at about what 10 o'clock at night at the expo was really, really tired. And I still really, really loved it. And we've got the modded pieces, which, you know, goes into what we're going to speak about later. So that's cool. But it's yeah, it's really, really simple to grasp. But I can see how much more interesting it plays when you realise Oh, this is about this, and you can modify your approach, I guess. Yeah, I really liked it. Very, very simple. Anyone could play.

Adrian  10:37  
Yep, I agree. I've literally got one bugbear, which kind of is the reason why I sold it on and off. In fact, everyone I knew had a copy, which is the compulsory missions. I think they're a bit too severe. I've been 30-40, I played a lot of it when I was first started. I've been like 30-40 points hidden just for people have just chopped into turns of just chuck compulsory admissions at me and you're like, Well, we're going to now say, like, you know, it's just too severe. Like I get it's good to handicap and a player who is running away a little bit. I wish there was like, you know, if this still in your hand, at the end of turn, it's worth minus eight victory points or something rather than the other way around. That's my only complaint of that game. Otherwise, I think it's still really stand up solid. It's why it fell off my sort of my top 50 If you like of games

Kerley  11:23  
yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Boom, 

Adrian  11:27  
Becky

Becky  11:28  
we played a game of now I'm going to pronounce it both ways. So people can search it and find it. So the correct pronunciation apparently is Troyes But it's written Troyes. Yeah, Troyes you would assume that was how it was right. But no, apparently not. Apparently, actual town is called Troyes. So there we go. Which is basically a dice drafting, kind of dice drafting. You roll dice, and you have to pick them from your little pool. But you can also steal other people's for a certain cost, right? So you've got certain things you can do on the board, you can either focus on building the cathedral, you can fight battles, or you can kind of be I suppose it's craftsman, isn't it? So you're kind of getting all the bonuses for things. Every time you've got to every sort of turn every round. Yeah, and you've got to defend the town against some kind of Marauder, there's always got to be some element of attacking an outside thing. You're not really attacking each other, you're all kind of working together to attack the outside thing. But that's done on Turn Order, which changes each time, right. So if you're unfortunate enough to be first player that time and you've got something really hefty out, you have to spend your dice, you know, defending the first time there is a penalty for stealing other people's dice, which means you have to actually pay them for it. Yeah. But I kept rolling amazingly, and everyone was stealing my dice. But actually, that worked out for me in the end, because I actually had quite a lot of money. So you've got certain ways of getting VP's you kind of have influence which means you can change dice numbers, which is actually work. So you can reroll some, you can literally turn the dice over to get the other number so you know exactly what's going to be. And you can basically spend your Influence Points doing that. But there's also a ways of getting VP actually on the cards of the kind of craftsman people that you're going around. And you've also got like a hidden a hidden agenda. Now that is a hidden agenda for you. But also it works for everyone else. So if your hidden agenda is you get VP for having lots of money. Right? Everybody else will get VP for having money to show

Adrian  13:32  
you know. Yeah, and they don't exactly Oh, sounds interesting

Becky  13:36  
Yeah sometimes it's it's rare, blatantly obvious what that person's going for. Sometimes it isn't so much. And obviously, you've gotten a much bigger advantage, if you know what the other choices could be. Yeah. So if you're playing fresh off the, you know, fresh to the table, you never seen it before. You're gonna have a slight disadvantage. However, it's still really easy to learn. But again, similar to that way of easy to learn, but there's nothing that makes it complex that Yeah,

Kerley  14:01  
yeah, it's kind of like an interesting mix between a dice drafting game, a worker placement game, and kind of a cooperative fighting off the enemy. Good. Yeah, it works. Really, it works really well. It's a difficult one to describe, though, I have to say.

Adrian  14:15  
I've looked at it because it's come up a couple of times in our group, and unfortunately, just not being able to make those evenings because it did look good. It didn't look anything like you've described it. So I'm interested now to give it a go. Because I would have I would have had a very different just looking at the board sometimes a bit of a perception as to what that game was going to do.

Kerley  14:30  
Well, yeah, the old style is very strange. Strange. It's a particular artist who's done a few JP would have been able to fill out that gap of what other games they show and why is he he's abandoned us but no, it's a very interesting art style and and the game. I would, for me the art style doesn't do the game. Any favour.

Becky  14:51  
The pictures are irrelevant. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It just kind of looks very mediaeval. That's probably a good way of describing it. And I got it for now was it 15 Little 20 quid on the expo bring a Buy Sell bargain. Bargain bargain.

Adrian  15:04  
Why not? Hey, I'm going to quickly talk about a game we talked about just on the last podcast I think which is Game of Thrones I managed to get another game in having said it's probably what a once a year game. Another gaming group that I play with occasionally decided to get the game in a bit while you guys were off for the Expo, and yeah thoroughly enjoyed. It didn't play with a Targaryen as we play with the Iron Bank and the Vassal system, but decided to leave the Targaryens to one side because the guys hadn't played it in a long time. And I don't play often. So it was nice to keep things simple, is good, really enjoyable. Starks and Tyrells fought out a good combat for most of it, even though they're on opposite ends of the map, but we had great joys and Lannisters as vassals, so they kind of used the vessels backwards and forwards to hit each other and tried to do a thing that we've played in the last game where you could try it almost sacrifice the side where you want to take all their castles try make their force weak so you can take them over. But the bit I wanted to talk about was is probably one of the meanest games I've ever played or ever seen played. So I was the Martel's. Another player was Arryn And in between was breath Ian's the Arryn player was not going to go after the Greyjoy section because that's what the Starks were owning. And they were in league with the Starks. So they were pushing down towards Baratheons.  Tyrells had a nice set start with so I decided to go after the Baratheons and I think I took Dragonstone turn 4 and had them down to three territories the Baratheons because I had to go off to one of them was that very southern faction you kind of go sort of east or west as you're going north. And yeah, turn 4 the player was pretty much out of the game. And apologies to that player. They know who they are, if they're listening, it was definitely not a good play experience for them. I felt mean for about for about 48 hours afterwards. But still enjoyed the game just was definitely just reminded me of exactly why it's got this reputation of being such a cutthroat game.

Becky  17:01  
Once you saying that you're kind of friend was almost out by like turn? Yeah, two or three or whatever? Can you clawany of it back? Or do you just have to make it through the towel

Adrian  17:13  
he was able to he had a bad few like things happen one after the other. He was good at holding on to his territory. And he also made sure that he won a quite a few of the tracks.

Kerley  17:24  
I've got an interesting question for you then because I'm not sure where I'd fall on this one. Do you think you'd have played that way you should have attacked the other people who didn't have a natural enemy instead? So what I'm really saying is, is it more important for you to win and someone else have a negative experience that you know, have? Or would you rather, potentially win but have a lesser chance to win to make sure that someone isn't getting pincered, as you described?

Adrian  17:50  
It was a question that I've asked myself for quite a bit afterwards, because I was thinking I did have a terrible player experience and it is almost entirely my fault. Like there's no you can't place the blame anywhere else. He did all he could. He was my primary target is the one I chose first turn, we had a little bit of a jokey argument about the territory. So that's mine nd he said a nice mine. So he went for it cuz he got first turn now and right at the start of the battle and right, so I'll go after him. It wasn't until a couple of turns later that I realised how, like, how much I'd pushed him. And I could have sort of come off the pedal a little bit. But all I've done is given the other player the ability as I weakened him enough. It was either me or it was the foreign player on the other side of him that would have then come down and taken it. Once you've made that decision. That's it. Yeah, it was, by the time I'd realised my mistake in game, I thought, well, this is the damage is now done. So I'll make the most of it. And actually, it was like, well, at this point, I might as well keep going in that direction. So but anyway, that so yeah, so a game so we played over the last couple of weeks

now we move on to turn three, our main turn and one I know that Becky is particularly excited for

Becky  19:06  
Yeah, this is this is my time to fully excited yet to literally shine and sparkle.

Adrian  19:12  
So so we are going to talk about board game bling, upgrading your board game, all the things you can add to the base game, essentially the game you buy, to make it a better game one way and we're going to break this down into three sort of main topics to go through. So we'll look we'll talk firstly, about aesthetics. So anything you can add or change to the game that make it look prettier. look a bit more blingy. Give it more table presence, whatever it is there. We're then going to look at functional upgrades you can make to a board game. There's a few examples. I think it's quite tough to talk about it in generalities, but we'll talk about sort of functional improvements. And then we're going to talk about storage and improvement of storage of your games. So should we come with aesthetics going then Becky.

Becky  20:01  
This area is my area of favourite things to do to a board game, I think maybe it's because I grew up as an almost only child, although I do have siblings, I grew up on my own, so I had to kind of, I wanted to customise everything. So everything I owned, would have my name on it, or, I don't know, a sticker or something. So I think being able to sort of personalise your game with, you know, the kind of things that you like, so often we get in board games, little cardboard tokens. Now that is fine. If you want to be basic, and play the game in a really boring way, then you crack on. But when you can go out there and obtain nice wooden pieces, or shiny pieces or make your own or whatever, I don't think it matters if you've made them or if you bought them so you don't have to spend lots of money. It could just be you know, little squares you found little it could be anything could be little Mahjong tiles could be whatever you like. But that kind of improving your gameplay and making it different, has always been my one of my favourite things to do with anything that I don't really.

Adrian  21:06  
So what do you what do you think makes a good aesthetic upgrade? Then what do you think?

Becky  21:11  
I like it when you tie in with the iconography on the cards, for example. So wingspan is a perfect example for this. So yeah, you've got those little wooden tokens which are very, you know, wingspan is one of the prettiest games just as this basic game. So you can buy or we have already bought, there is in existence, the wooden versions, which I think a are more hardy, so you're going to get longer out of them. Yes, there is a some function in there isn't there. So we can pretend that it's because of the functionality that we wanted them. I think there are some games actually, you know, Wingspan is probably not a very good example of this. So something like Quacks of Quedlinburg, for example. So those cardboard tokens are fine. But you've got a sweaty hand delving into a bag, pulling out little cardboard tokens, you're feeling them and you're kind of ruffling them around, you're going to those tokens are going to look unrecognisable after maybe we talked about it in the last four turns or something. So I think aesthetics and functionality would come out, you know, useful for Quacks. But I think the best thing is something that is shiny or more 3d or more obviously different from all the other cardboard pieces. Yeah, that's what I think an aesthetic improvement is all about making it more visually obvious, perhaps, or tactile, especially. Yeah, I think that's what really sells it to me.

Kerley  22:33  
Well, it's, I'd like to do a little bit of a shout out actually speaking of not spending money for a company called the Game Knight UK who do a lot of that work on Etsy. And we bought a whole load of, I'm going to just sum them up with the term meeple for many of our games, but that did also include it, for example, for anyone who knows Wingspan, nectar tokens and things. But we got a full set of Lords of Waterdeep meeples and some stuff right and over as well. So yeah, just a shout out to them, really. And that was one example of

Becky  23:07  
just beautiful just, JP JP sent us a link and I was like, Whoa, look at this shiny little token.

Adrian  23:13  
Etsy, Etsy is a dangerous place i'm found. Because, as you say, sort of not spending a lot of money. A lot of these places put out some really nice upgrades for not a lot of money comparatively, you know, sometimes you can look at talk about Quacks if you go and buy the Geekup bits they are beautiful. But you're spending sometimes double the price of the base game Absolutely, just to get those extra bits. Whereas I found Etsy is quite often the quality may not be as there as if it's an official product. Sometimes it is may not always be but they're still always normally a nice upgrade on your game for very little money comparatively,

Kerley  23:47  
it's more for functionality thing, but I would like to say with Quacks of Quedlinburg is just coin holders is the way to go those ones. So it's very expensive, though. Well, it is expensive, but it's not going to be as expensive as if you bought them from, you know, the company was paid out for wooden versions.

Becky  24:04  
Yeah. Yeah, there are often cheaper ways to get around that kind of thing. Yeah, but I think with aesthetics, it's about making it making it look how you think it should have looked originally. You know, I guess if you've got a Kickstarter version, perhaps and you see the regular version, like, like Terraforming Mars that you've got the big box off. So does it matter that you're squares or dense and beautiful and shiny? No, probably not. You would get the little card the little wooden squares right or plastic ones in the base game.

Kerley  24:34  
I think you can kind of just sum it up really easily with Terraforming Mars actually the component quality and the original base game of terraforming Mars is famously awful it's totally rubbish like literally the card centering not great you know the print offs I've done the print runs a pair to the sheets were no good as well. The component quality is just so poor like the little metal cube well or not metal they are painted metal they just chip off, kind of awful, but they've got to put it out at a certain price point.

Becky  25:08  
If it means that it's accessible, and people find the game thing great by the basic version

Kerley  25:12  
and the thing is, is once you know that you love a game, you don't mind spending the money.

Adrian  25:16  
This was exactly what I was thinking was that the base game if you can get in and it's like, here's 30 quid, yeah, loads of people will play it and then they might they can choose whether they care about the aesthetics functionality, or whatever it is. Yeah, they can choose to do that. Whereas if you slap it in at 70-80 quid you've already made that choice. Yeah, that's fine. But you look at Vital Lacerda Eagle Gryphon games, you know, that beautiful storage is good. The aesthetics is lovely. It's 100 pound a game? Yeah, it's how many people are buying that?

Becky  25:45  
Not just off the bat.

Kerley  25:48  
It's just a risk isn't it? You don't mind risking 30 pound on a game that you're not sure about. But you wouldn't spend 100 on one until you knew how it played and everything else. So the point is, anyway, is the buy Terraforming Mars, which was I don't know. 45 pounds probably originally 50 pound maybe I can't really remember what

Adrian  26:04  
the I think it's gonna be now around the 50 pound mark. I think it was close to 40 when it first came out.

Kerley  26:09  
Yeah maybe but and then two years later, I've bought the big box, which was near enough 300 pounds. Because I knew I'd loved it. Yeah, my friends love it. And we've played it so many times. It's worth it.

Becky  26:22  
Yeah per play that game was probably worked out the cheapest I will say, especially when you look at hours per play. Yeah, probably looking at tuppence ha'penny an hour.  Because you played it so often.

Adrian  26:34  
For international listeners, very little money.

Becky  26:38  
0.15 cent or something? Yeah, not not a lot of money.

Adrian  26:42  
I think I think to your point clearly is that there's three levels there you can buy based Terraforming Mars looks a bit rubbish but is still functionally the game you're playing. Plenty of people either 3d printed or bought from Etsy stores, their own plastic upgrades for the board their own plastic, city tiles and city tiles or dual layer boards, which I'm sure we'll get to a functionality point of view as well. And then the other option, which is the 100 pound I think for retail, if you didn't quite get everything or 300 pounds through Kickstarter, as you say, is the official one is the nicest, I think I've seen it's the most official looking, you know, everything ties in it's a little bit better quality. And now you're kind of three levels, aren't they? You can go official, you can go that my example is Brass Birmingham. So I bought the retail edition Brass, it comes with cardboard coins, the options I had, when I looked at was baby to go and buy some metal coins or something like that on an extra third party. Why I ended up doing was buying Roxleys Iron Clays, which has mixed reviews, but I absolutely love them. They're little poker chips. They look the part I use them for loads of other games as well. It's not just Brass Birmingham, but they just look the part they feel nice. You know, we're talking about sort of that, that tactility sort of clicky clicky sort of part to it and just what it just improves your experience of the game, right? You just feel more immersed you feel more like you're having an event. Yeah, when you've got those kinds of.....

Becky  28:10  
That's what the aesthetic improvement does for me, and it doesn't, you know, hurt that I like fabricating things. So for a game of how do you pronounce it? Is it Gugong. So the kind of It's a Chinese kind of ambassadorial game. That sounds really boring, but it's really, really good.

Adrian  28:27  
It's on my must play list

Becky  28:28  
It's amazing. And you've got you've got pieces of jade now, surely, to goodness, it doesn't cost a lot to make a bit of plastic green thing in the Kickstarter, it was well, the cardboard bits you get are just quite frankly offensive. Someone who cares. I mean, the rest of the game is so beautiful. Yeah, it wouldn't have cost them more 50p more 20p more to actually have plastic tiddlywinks would be better than the cardboard bits you've got so all right. I already own you know, epoxy resin and UV resin and hardening resin. So I wanted to make some green shiny ones. And they look great. And that probably cost absolutely nothing 

Adrian  29:07  
cost you nothing as you've got everything

Becky  29:08  
I suppose but I could sell that for like maybe five quid. Yeah. And it would cost me 20p to make Oh, and my time. So I spent a bit it's not that long. But it looks so much nicer. So much nicer. You could even just get little bits of green stone for goodness sake. Just why do they do cardboard? Glass? Yeah, absolutely. Why they would when when your game is so beautiful. I just think sometimes developers really do cheap out when they it wouldn't actually cost that much more. Maybe it's not just that maybe it's the sourcing? Maybe it's the weight? I don't know. I don't think it would have been that much.

Adrian  29:42  
I think it's I think there is a whole load of you know, you've got weight and all that kind. Yeah, no, I think you know.

Becky  29:47  
I think we've made the transition really nicely into functionality.

Adrian  29:49  
I think so. Yeah.

Becky  29:50  
I think with functionality upgrades. It's the kind of game that we wish they had made. That's kind of the biggest difference for me, I think so. Things like better tokens or aesthetics is involved in that. But if you've got lots of tokens that are all quite similar, and you have made something that is or made, I will say made because that's what I would do, if you have purchased or whatever, something that makes that immediately different. That's really helpful, I think. And not just the extra tokens when you've got things like storage kind of boxes, or something that you can take out rather than have to shuffle through cards every time you know, if you've got like a little player tray for want of a better word, I can't think of a game that that would be useful for where you like the like something for you got this Twilight Imperium little, little shelves,

Kerley  30:38  
I was gonna talk about those. So it's essentially you put your ships on them, they're on stilts, there platforms, I've seen the paint chips on them, and you move them all together, so why not have them on their little movable thing that you can, it doesn't disturb any of the stuff on beneath

Adrian  30:55  
It looks really nice as well. As you say it's that picking like scooping all your chips up with the hand almost as opposed to just pushing a little tray across, isn't it?

Kerley  31:03  
Yeah that's it. And as well, the only problem that I had with it as I had my heart set on the different coloured ones. Yeah, each faction had to have two these they could have in this, I think now six different colours that you can have. But I had to order in the States. Yeah. But at order it from the States, because there was all of the ones available in the UK. Were all just clear. And that's I didn't really want that. So yeah, that would be my only complaint. 

Becky  31:29  
I could have done something like.

Kerley  31:34  
But yeah, Etsy from the States, but that's an example I was going to bring up actually. So yeah, that's one of the the, I don't know, functional upgrade, but I never really thought about that he made quite a big difference to how I Yeah, yeah, why play the game? But how easy?

Becky  31:47  
Yes, I think with functionality upgrades that often happens after the fact I don't know that maybe a game board designer would have necessarily thought about that. That is something that people have thought themselves aren't you know what, this really needs to have something that moves a whole chunk together or it's, it's something that has happened sort of organically, after you've played a few times and thought, Oh, I really need this kind of this thing, this certain mechanical certain approach would be really helpful here. And then people design it either on Etsy, or, you know, third party or whatever. That's, that's more often, it seems to me the way goes rather than right this is a game coming straight out the box, we've got this amazing thing, because you need to play tested it extensively. I think in order to get the idea in the first place.

Adrian  32:35  
I think I might disagree with you on that one. You're what we're here for a bit of conversation is, I think a lot of people know the functional upgrades they require. I think they look at cost, I think more than aesthetics point and increasing the cost. Do you think those trays for moving Twilight Imperium around, would have added 10,15,20 pound on to the cost? By the time I'm guessing they put them in a tray and all that kind of stuff? 

Kerley  33:01  
And you know, it seems reallyweird. I don't want to do it. But I actually agree with Adrian over my wife, my marriage. But no, no, I absolutely agree. I think I'll you gain benefit from it to the tune of how much I paid, which was way too much at once, once you've ordered it in from the States. But yeah, I think it's probably not worth it for most people. And that's the point is that if you're looking at something, and it's costing 150 pounds instead of 120 pounds, and you're like, well, you're on the fence anyway, yeah, those little things, it's not gonna make £30 worth of difference. You know, it's, it's a fine balancing act is people designing anything.

Adrian  33:37  
And I think if you look at Kickstarters, quite often the functional upgrades are the add ons.

Becky  33:42  
Yeah, I think they probably didn't come up with that initially. You know, I think maybe, I don't know, maybe it's just my experience of it. When you're starting to play a game, everything is cardboard, everything is whatever. And you think, Oh, actually, that looks really nice if that was I don't know plastic or 3d or whatever. And it would be useful for it to be like that because of accessibility issues or just easier gameplay. But I think you're right, it does tend to come with Kickstarters. But then, I don't know,

Adrian  34:09  
I think the reason why they're add ons on Kickstarter is is making a like, you know, even add ons in like Deluxe boxes and functional upgrades because it's easy to sell. Look, this looks prettier. Yeah, that's, that's immediately obvious to you. Yeah. If I turn around to you and said are 12,12 Games in, you're going to realise you want this thing in your game, you might sort of give us a bit of a tougher sell. And so I think that's why they don't include them in the base game is because it's harder to say, Look at this. You know, look at this card tower that holds all your cards. We've added it in for you. I think people would go on if so when you need it. Yeah, maybe what do I care about? If I say to you look at these 12 gorgeous models that cost the same price or similar price? I think it's an easier sell for people. So I think that's I think that's from my point of view. I think that's where the functionalities is where we tend to add them ourselves rather than the what do you know the publishers do?

Kerley  35:02  
I think it's an interesting going back to our Kickstarter episode, which I've been referenced too much. But it's a really interesting time over there is because I actually mentioned in that episode that I hate expansion add ons. Yeah. Because I think, Well, if you've made it flippin included in part of the game, you know, I hate the you buy game, and then you've got the choice of six extra expansions that will cost half the price of the original game each. Well, it frustrates me so much. But the flip side of that is the add ons are a brilliant idea. Because if for example, Adrian, you wanted the coin upgrade, you could do that. Well, I don't want a coin upgrade. I've got coins. Yeah, but you can buy it. And I don't have to, you know, yeah, and same with that, I can see the functionality use of that one, I don't mind paying 15 pounds, but someone else would go now I don't need that.

Adrian  35:43  
So one of the things that I wanted to bring up with functionality is, for me, a lot of the things that add functionality are usable in multiple games, coins

Becky  35:52  
Like your coins, yeah,

Adrian  35:54  
the Iron Clays were sick, we sat at one of the very nice like, is it Geeknson table that we're recording on, there's plenty of them out there, they come with that little line on the inside that you can stick your hard put your cards in. Yeah, that's great. But I'm not never going to afford any of these. So I printed out a little card holders, just trays, you can stick your cards in when you're playing something like Marvel Champions, or Lord of the Rings or whatever, where you've got a little hand of cards. It's great, it sounds really lazy, right. But you can just put your cards in there, you can keep an eye on them, you're not holding on to them, you can do whatever else you want to do drink and move tokens around. And the other one I thought of was and this will come into storage a little bit because you kind of can defunct them with the right storage but these little trays with the funnels on that you can put into your little ziploc bag or whatever it is at the end and we'll get to it in storage because you can defunct those but all of those things can be moved from one game to another. And I there are things we've talked about them that aren't just functional, but for one game that are just functional fun game, but there's plenty of options out there. When I thought about this I thought of all of those generic upgrades, functional improvements on a lot of games.

Kerley  37:05  
Yeah, I abso won't talk too much about the expo but I I bought a whole boatload of coins from that. I think it was what was it about 50 And the way I justified I think

Becky  37:20  
48 actually, but I want to be specific

Kerley  37:24  
48

Becky  37:26  
We're in padent free zone.

Kerley  37:29  
But the reason why I justified the cost and they weren't massively cheap was the fact that I can use them for anything. So I bought ones fives and 10s in absolutely a boatload of ones a few fives and a few 10s You know,

Becky  37:39  
but it doesn't say one five or 10 on it either. It's bronze, silver and gold. So again, you're kind of making it more adaptable could be

Adrian  37:46  
ones twos and fives if you want to.

Kerley  37:48  
So yeah, so I spent a bit of money on those but the big one that I think that you guys haven't talked about yet is not only the ones that are multiple use, but also the really good solutions that are cheap. For an example the big one card protectors. Yes, that's huge functional upgrade

Adrian  38:04  
can't believe I forgot that.

Kerley  38:08  
Yeah, so you know that's that's the basics right? I mean, I would suggest that to anyone I mean most people listening to this probably got card protectors and all that stuff but it's just a great way of increasing the longevity and you know what the value alright, so especially if you tend to sell secondhand people look at this stuff do you keep card opening you know, card protectors things like that and let's face it oh god I'm trying to remember now but you can get a bunch of kind of see through card protectors for a pound or two.

Becky  38:33  
Yeah, not for about expensive it is actually really helpful.

Adrian  38:37  
Oh, you're gonna stop me ranting about card sleeves now so

Becky  38:42  
we've opened the box you have opened

Adrian  38:44  
the box so I sleeve nearly all of my games. If the sleeves my my rule is if the sleeves cost less than the game. I will sleeve it. If it if the sleeves cost more than the game.  I won't

Becky  38:56  
I thought you're gonna say you still sleeve it? 

Adrian  38:59  
no if it costs if the CIF cost more than the game and it's not like a Kickstarter exclusive includes that kind of thing. I won't bother. What I will say is there's plenty of sleeves out there that are called Penny sleeves or whatever. And within six months, those will have probably deteriorated if you're playing it at any level, spend a little bit more my personal favourite is Mayday Premium because they're that nice middle ground between nice and cheap and good quality. And I know you can buy like Dragon Shields and King sleeves or something they're called the Paladin Sleeves and stuff like that. There's loads of that they cost a little bit more and they are much better they will cut perfectly the same size every time and all that kind of stuff but for me Mayday Premium is my personal choice. Anyway, we will all finish functionality there I think and move on to storage. So go on Becky, talk to us about foam core.

Becky  39:48  
my one of my favourite things to do and what was it was it Christmas you got from the Mansions of Madness

Kerley  39:54  
You mentioned some madness with all the expansions bar one I think for Christmas and then I had about a week of being able to play my games because I didn't see you

Becky  40:04  
makes me sound like I'm there harassing him all the time. However, however I was sat happy as Larry, on the dining room table, slash the board game table with a big old cutting mat, a metal ruler, some kind of five mil foam boards from Hobbycraft shout out to Hobbycraft amazing shop, as I'm sure you can guess that's one of my favourite places to go. And they sell it in black or white, hashtag Black looks so much better. I really wish I'd have bought black for everything. But there we are, it wasn't a bit more expensive. And I was being cheap. White was Wingspan. And Manions of Madness I did do it and why. Yeah, so I spent a ridiculous amount of time sorting out the cards. And then also allowing for an expansion I hadn't got that I then had to get from America because they didn't have it here. So I had to then do extensive research on how many of which particular kinds of cards there were to make sure I left enough room in my in my, you know, Grand Master Plan of organising between different kinds of common items, spells, blahdy, blahdy, whatever. So all of these fit in the board. So I had to measure them. So they all sat nicely and fitted kind of in a graduating size, and I separated all the tiles out. And then I've also learned from previous mistakes of if the board gets tipped over, the box gets tipped over, all the bits go everywhere. It's very annoying. So that is the one downside of foam core. Because you can make lids, it's just a little bit more of a pain. So I kind of made the best of both worlds or couldn't be bothered to make boxes properly. So I kind of made a, I made everything that was gonna be the same size in the same area, and then kind of incorporated into the lid. Different levels of like, some parts, I've got to say four layers of this foam core, which if the push it all down Exactly, yeah. So I'm not saying you could turn it upside down and shake it and nothing would move. However, you could put it in the back of your car, you can carry it around, tip it around a bit, and the stuffs gonna be in the same place. Yeah. And with that, you can then start making really lovely little labels for everything, which is definitely my jam.

Kerley  42:08  
So your Mansions of Madness, one doesn't really suffer from any problems with stuff being thrown around. But you do need to sort out Lords of Waterdeep

Becky  42:15  
And this is the difference. See, this is very important to note to note here. If you haven't played the game before, you don't understand what the importance of each part is. I agree. So doing it for Mansions of Madness was perfect. Because I understand what needs to come out in a box what needs to come out in pieces what needs to come out in chunks of five for example, How easy do I need to shuffle through this little stack of stuff? With Lords of Waterdeep I haven't played it. So I was saying to you, like do these need to stay in a box to these needs to stay in a thing. So that's fine. Didn't get that information. But I didn't understand the ramifications perhaps of how it's just all about context. That's it. Yeah. So know thy game before you attempt to.

Adrian  42:55  
And you can see this on again, like you can see this on Etsy. See there's a few times I've been trolled by not rip off Etsy stores. But I've been trying to gain inspiration from what they've been doing

Becky  43:06  
I do exactly the same thing, Adrian...

Adrian  43:07  
not gonna have the 3d inserts and I'll look at one and I think you've never played that game because you absolutely would not have put those together. Yeah, you've got the pieces or someone's lent you a copy of the game and you've gone are crazy. I'll make this square but I can see you so I would say absolutely before you create any of these things, get the game out play a couple of times and then work out what the best combination is.

Becky  43:26  
Or you know, go on to a website that you would trust like there was an amazing one that we saw at the Expo called Folded Folded Space. They were beautiful, absolutely beautiful. However the price point is quite high. I would say if you're gonna spend the same amount if you've spent on the game it's totally This is it if you can make a million times and it's gonna save your organising by half maybe it's worth it.

Kerley  43:53  
I'll just think it is purely and simply it is a lot of money but it's not not worth that money for example, the your Mansions is free for me for you. But the amount of time you took to do it, it would have if we'd have been paying you an hourly rate it would have been about one pound 10 or something. So it's a I'm not saying that like they're brilliant quality, definitely worth a production price. But for me, I think I was looking at and I got to tread carefully because JP has got it but the Twilight Imperium with the expansion and so that I was looking at was 52 pounds. And I just I don't think I could justify the cost. Yeah, and I'll get that I've just spent 40 something pounds on some coins for various games but it's just about people's priorities. 

Becky  44:39  
This is it. I agree this is it

Adrian  44:40  
and for people like me so until about 3d printing in a bit because that's my side of this of this argument I suppose of which one wins out maybe but I am never going to be able to cut those foam boards as nicely as folded space will have produced them for you automatically mine is going to look a mess if I have to cut out foam boards. And if people don't want to spend the money or can't afford a 3d printer or don't want it in the house, or whatever it is, and their craft skills are terrible, like mine I, then Folded Space or like E-raptor or any of those ones, I think failed to do some stuff as well. All of those kinds of board game inserts that improve it. Yeah, they might be a bit expensive. But if you're going to play a lot in it, it improves setup and teardown of the game this is it. Yeah. 

Becky  45:29  
Then what's your time worth? Worth? And how nice is a game this

Kerley  45:32  
brings to mind as being the one that I would actually consider no matter the cost is probably the new FrostHaven. Because gloom Haven all my life that set up was just horrendous. It was almost, it was very, a very big barrier for me, and I love the game. I love the game, there was a huge barrier, the amount of time it takes to set up because there's just bags everywhere. Coins everywhere, flip everything everywhere. FrostHaven is half again, the size from what I can see on the Kickstarter, really, yeah, they they've expanded it, and they've actually increased the price point. But guaranteed the ones who've already ordered when it

Adrian  46:09  
comes to the foam ones, I think a couple of the benefits are that it stays relatively light doesn't add a lot of weight, you can craft it yourself much easier. There's no outlay of 3d printers, it's you and a hobby knife and a bit of glue sort of thing.

Becky  46:24  
And I would say if you've made one, it then gets progressively easier to make more because you understand the mechanics. There's no mechanics aboard it's cardboard, but the way things were designed, yeah. And if you've already made one, you can then measure measure, cut, cut cut, you could make multiples of the same one in a fraction of the time it took you to make the first one Yeah,

Adrian  46:46  
yeah, I agree. I think that counts for 3d cadding in as well. I've tried many different ways and learn which ones I prefer and which ones I don't for adding lidsto boxes and stuff like that. And this is where I'm going to sort of talk about the 3d printing stuff is one of the things I love about the 3d printed storage is that I can take a box out take the lid off and put it on the table. It's got the nice curved edges so when you put your things in there, you're not scrambling around in corners. It's tougher than the foam so I don't feel bad about putting it on the desk or maybe the side of knock off because I've not glued it properly I definitely would refine my your so your craft skills might be better than mine

Becky  47:23  
is five mil Yeah, 3d print a lot thinner than that and have it still very robust I think

Adrian  47:28  
and again, you can put lids on it much more easily you can you can CAD in like a little lip on the inside or you can put magnets much easier in it and stuff like that. The downsides is the weight. So I 3d printed a friend's Twilight Imperium storage. It fits the expansion and that in there. Oh my god. It's a work out to carry it around I didn't have any concept of of how heavy it was gonna be and even like quacks where I've made little pots for everything where you can put the book in the back and all that kind of stuff on our 3d printed the capsule holders.

Becky  48:04  
Thinner you go obviously the less the skin a bit techy now but the thinner you go, the less space you have, that is just infill, like 15% infill is going to be mostly 100% If you've got a very very thin wall. Yeah, so I guess that's where your weight is going. If you had quite a big thing it would be mostly empty.

Kerley  48:22  
Have you ever tried to add up the cost of this? Or is it just something you do is partly just interest really and

Adrian  48:30  
so a spool like a kilogramme spool of plastic costs 2020 quid 25 pound lets not at the price of the 3d printer on top but I think mine cost around 50 quid mark because yeah, the more the more you do the the cheaper that works out 20 pounds 25 pound I can get I would say two average board games out of it

Kerley  48:53  
so what about Twilight Imperium a full lot

Adrian  48:55  
so see this is tough because I printed them all out in colours so where you have the pink faction they got a pink box a blue faction so I bought eight different colours 20 pound a pack because I was like I'm gonna get around to using those colours eventually again, or better still sat there Right? There's a pink is the hot pink

Becky  49:14  
I'll buy it off you. I've just currently used a pool and my 3d filament making crocodile holders Nice. So yeah, I'm thoroughly out of 3d filament.

Adrian  49:22  
But yeah, if you go into like, I've got lots of black and lots of like light to grey because I find them the colours that I've got some browns as well for making things look like wooden boxes and stuff like that. So I've got a lot of those you can buy them fairly cheap. And you know that when one spool runs out, you just start the next one. And so I would say about 10 to 12 pound, a little more board game but a normal board game box that requires a few of them. What I will say about storage, whether it is foam or not is the amount of wasted space you can get in a main box

Becky  49:59  
100% Absolutely agree.

Adrian  50:01  
So my example is I bought the Carcassone big box, I had the Carcassone little box, I 3d printed my own design insert that took the big box and fit it into the little box. Like that's how much space I save with good organisation skill.

Becky  50:17  
And that's the beauty of doing your own inserts, I think or buying someone else who's done. Absolutely, you really can make a massive difference to space. And if you're the kind of person that loves the organising and the you get that kind of sense of satisfaction, and almost like you've won another game, because you have managed to kind of tetris style puzzle and that was part of the fun for the Mansions of Madness thing for me. Because you feel like yes, I have achieved the pinnacle, you know, spaces for this. I'm not it's it's organised in a beautiful way. But I think we're definitely heading down a road here that a lot of people relate to. A lot of people don't, you know, feel the same as that. Very No, Kerly is sitting here what is

Kerley  50:57  
I appreciate the the product of what you guys are talking about zero interest, I think that's how it gets, there's

Adrian  51:05  
ultimately, you know, we'll go back to to, like Folded Space or something like that. If you don't have the time or inclination to sort out and work out, do I need to make a 12 millimetre box or a 14 millimetre box?

Becky  51:17  
And if you're the kind of person that doesn't care about that wouldn't even cross your mind. Don't go down the road of making Yeah,

Adrian  51:23  
you're gonna have to at some point, but yeah, absolutely right. I think it's safe to say I think we've covered everything reasonable without going into real nerd nerd layers on that. So without further ado, let's move on to our listener questions in Turn 4.

Moving on to turn four, which is question time. So I'd like to thank Ian for sending this email in. He's asked my wife and I have recently got into board gaming, we've started with Catan, and Pandemic, we've also enjoyed playing The Princess Bride game, and we'll be getting Dune to the table next week. We also enjoy card games such as uno, phase 10, et cetera. Do you have any suggestions for two to four games that we could enjoy as a couple? Now, if only we had a couple on hand that we could ask this question to?

Becky  52:17  
There we go, no, go, what do you what do you think?

Kerley  52:21  
Well, it would depend massively on whether you're going to play more two player or four player. But I would say if you want to cover most bases, there's a few that we've got the play well at two and up to four. And that's kind of our sweet spot really, isn't it? So for example, off the top of my head, I would say the what first one that springs to mind would be Wingspan 100%. We've already talked about that today in our upgrades, but plays really well to two, we've played tit at two quite a lot. plays really well. But it plays equally well at three or four. So that would be a really good one. But we've also got Everdell not everyone's cup of tea, but we've liked it. And again, a 3 or 4.

Becky  53:01  
I liked that even though I was a very novice board gamer at the time. Yeah, I'm not suggesting that I'm not novice now. But I could grasp that. Without even Oh, and by the way. Hi, Ian. Nice to hear from you after a long time. Yeah, Wingspan is really good. And it doesn't hurt that it's really beautiful. And Everdell exactly the same.

Kerley  53:22  
Yeah, exactly. There's a few more as well the more two player base that I do think about as well. Me and Becky at the moment. Ian Hello, mate. We've been we've been playing through Hogwarts Battle. Yeah, two play. I played it at the wasn't the expo it was the one that Alexander Palace and I named was really great. It was good. But I didn't overly get into it. But then we had a chat about it. And we were looking for a game that played like that. We both really liked Harry Potter. And we were like, You know what, let's just do it. I ordered it. And then we played the first scenario and we loved it. Yeah,

Becky  54:02  
it's very, very simple. I mean, simple enough that a child could play

Adrian  54:08  
played it with a friend and his son. Yeah, so yeah.

Becky  54:11  
Which is really great. It's a really inclusive but that doesn't mean that it's too simple to enjoy as an adult kind of a game I think yeah, as

Adrian  54:18  
you go through the years, right, you get more complex it's a kind of legacy game you go through the years you open a box and again, they add more mechanics into it as you go through by the time you get to year seven, it might be quite complex ish. Yeah, but But it's built you up to it and if need be, you could just stop at year five or year four and go okay, we'll stop at this mechanic because this is how far that kid can cope with. Yeah, we'll just play that again. And again, if they love Harry Potter, they're not going to care about the fact that they're not unlocked. The other characters and pieces

Becky  54:46  
are very nice. Yeah, putting out there the dark marks are nice and shiny and little token Very good. Yeah,

Adrian  54:53  
I would caution 4 players

Becky  54:54  
never tried it at 4

Adrian  54:56  
Yeah, it's great to play game I've played all the way through Through the base game and with the monster box. And it's fantastic. Three plays is nice. It's quite a good game with three players as well, 4 it's easy to lose by the time it gets back round to you. And there's a lot of turn, there's a lot of time between turns as well. So it does kind of lose some of its appeal at 4. But yeah, for a couple's game I think bang on it was one of my

Kerley  55:25  
one of the biggest things I do on BGG actually, Board Game Geek is I look for the ideal player count that is the most useful functionality on our website in my opinion. You know, the reviews are all well and good the ratings and stuff like that, but seeing what the ideal player count is I'd be really shocked if that didn't say two

Adrian  55:43  
might say two to three I think maybe my head

Becky  55:46  
Yeah, another good one that's just occurred to me is 7 Wonders Duel, John. Yeah. Really good. Game Seven Wonders is just another game sort of card based game really good. Interesting artwork really like it. 7 Wonders Duel, is the two player sort of version. It does change the mechanics, just change it slightly. But it's really easy to play. And you can play game in what? Half an hour 40 minutes, something like that. Really simple. And yeah, really easy to pick up small box, you know, good.

Kerley  56:16  
Yeah, so it kind of depends what kind of game you're after. Really. For me Hogwarts Battle wins it for a two player deck building. Not too complex, quite casual game. I would say Wingspan wins it for me for a four player game that plays great at 2 player as well. And again, complexity is not too high but there's nothing there and I feel combos and tactics you can do that aren't too difficult to pick up but it's difficult to get really good at and then you've got your your 7 Wonders Duel that is just a pure to play again. Yeah. thematics wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

Becky  56:54  
Kind of, you know, ancient civilization sort of a thing, but really good. And then you've got your puzzle games. So I recently watched a really good video on YouTube. And I shout out the guy and I can't think what it's called. The video was called something like top 10 games to play down the pub or something like that. And there's a few games mentioned in there, which I think are amazing. So Kluster is one of them, which is the magnet game that we were playing but a lot of recently works as a couple of two player and as a group, just you know, involves sticking magnets in a bit of string. But I print I 3d printed because I couldn't find anywhere to buy a game called Quarto which is kind of like Connect Four and kind of like Noughts and Crosses sort of so you it involves using 16 pieces on the table. They're either black or white, tall or short, hollow or solid, and circular or square. And you basically got to build a for, you know, four in a row, which shares one of those characteristics. Now the rub is you don't pick your own pieces. You pick the piece for your opponent. So it's Yeah, so it's like a level up from Noughts and Crosses. But that's really fun. And yeah, okay, I had to 3d print the copy, because, but you could easily make it with modelling clay or something like that. I think you can buy it in would, it would it wouldn't beautiful like that. But I couldn't find it because then anywhere.

Kerley  58:15  
Any suggestions from you, Adrian? 

Adrian  58:17  
Yes. So a couple of things. He submitted this question before we did our niche number ones, one of those nice number ones was great games to play it to that also play five, give that a listen, two to four gives you a like a wealth of extra options, but it certainly has a few good suggestions in there. I had a couple of extra little suggestions though, which was Quadropolis. Quadropolis is a age of wonders city builder kind of game you pick from a grid of buildings, and you're only allowed to pick certain squares in on this like big block of different buildings that are available. And then if you picked it two places in you have to put it on a number two spot and then we'll get several numbers on them. And then you have to lay out your pattern of of city basically and if parks are next to residential, you get bonus points if ports are next to factories you get extra points but if factories and extra residential I think it is you lose points because you don't want your people living next to these smoke producing factories sounds like SimCity is it is kind of like that. And what I would say is it's very simple for it's one of the simplest city builders I've played. And what I found is a lot of games as they get towards to players as they come down in count they get a bit more sort of knife fighty, they get bit more vicious, you you end up a bit sort of just ends up a little bit more sort of mean aggressive. So yeah, you go down to two players what I find with Quadropolis is because it is so light and because it doesn't restrict you throughout the game too much puts a very small amount of restriction in there. It makes it great to play a game that also works almost in exactly the same at four players. And so it's it's competitive game, but it's not very competitive with two players. While the suggestion is the opposite to that, which is again, it gets much meaner as it gets to a smaller number is Azul. Azul, however you want to pronounce it. And that gets a lot more tactical over and why hate drafting and my taking this factory there's make it and you can start counting turns and advanced much more to players than you can afford. But the production is fantastic. That is a game that needs no upgrading. As far as I'm concerned. It's beautiful.

Becky  1:00:36  
So so if you haven't heard it, heard about it, it's like a Portuguese tile laying game

Adrian  1:00:42  
Yeah, again, a theme is pasted on 

Becky  1:00:47  
You've got different coloured squares, and there'slittle pieces that you are putting on your wall for want of a better word, you get more points, if you get certain patterns in a row, that sort of thing is a puzzle patterny kind of game.

Adrian  1:00:57  
Yeah, and you draft from a factor and you pick one colour, and all the other colours go into the centre. And then essentially, if you're towards the end, quite often, you're forced to take ones that you can't place down which become minus points. And I find that becomes much more of a part of a two player game than it is a four player game I've ended up with like minus 12 points, because someone's really

Becky  1:01:18  
More punishing, isn't it? No, I need to work on my wall, or should I just work on ruining someone else's wall? 

Adrian  1:01:24  
But I find it still great to be like that puzzle? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you've made a great start with choosing Pandemic officers, one of your starting games. So well done

Becky  1:01:32  
there, I need that we've just bought that. So I'm looking forward to playing it again, without an alpha gamer telling us how to play the game. 

Kerley  1:01:39  
That would be nice.

Adrian  1:01:40  
So I think thank you very much for the questions much appreciated. Great question. If you have a question you want to ask, we're gonna go through the ways you can contact us at the end. But please do get in contact and ask away. We love seeing what questions you've got for us and coming up with our, our suggestions and answers. So thank you very much.

And so we move on to turn five up our penultimate term. And in this term, we talk about what we're excited about and what's coming up in the next few weeks before the next episode. So Becky,

Becky  1:02:12  
well, I am going to talk about playing Just One with a group of friends who are not gamers got a kind of girl girly holiday with some work colleagues. So I have to take games with me, obviously, obviously. And I thought a really good one that has worked with another group of non gamers was Just One which is very, very, very simple kind of party game, where you look at a wall, you don't look at it, the person who's guessing does not get to see the card, it's got five random words on it. You pick a number, then everyone has got to describe that word to you so that you can guess it. Now the the problem lies with. If anyone's written anything the same as each other. The guesser does not get to see either of those words. So you've got to be quite sort of cryptic and maybe not very obvious, but you have to be obvious enough.  They're going to guess the word.

Adrian  1:03:03  
Yeah, they get one guess at their one word. And they only see examples that are turned up once. Yeah, hence the Just One. Absolutely. I think it's a great choice for we've played it as a group. Yeah, absolutely loved our, our game of it. Yeah. And it's I think it's great for non gamers, because they kind of just get that word association.

Becky  1:03:22  
It's so easy, so easy and obvious, but it makes you realise like, Where was your mind going when you were thinking of that and it's just really, really fun. It's really really fun. I have probably sold that game to three people now. Yeah. Okay, from Adrian. So you know Adrian used to just that's me and I loved it.

Adrian  1:03:37  
Thank you TK Maxx because they always do some nice cheap games at Christmas and pick that one up but yeah, I think it's I think it's a great game for that, obviously. Yeah, I've really enjoyed what Just Once and again you play what you're supposed to play like 13 rounds and then you can play you can stop that really mean chart on the back that tells you you should do better each time

Becky  1:03:56  
You are rubbish, how awesome you are. Yeah, you could just play until you

Adrian  1:03:59  
just play until they keep going. I think it's yeah, it's great for that. It's just yeah, it's just

Becky  1:04:03  
good fun. Nice.

Kerley  1:04:06  
So it's a little bit of a way off yet but I want to talk about because I've just put the event in is Architects of the West Kingdom. I've got them back in I've only played at once. I've got Architects Paladins and Viscounts. Yeah, I played architects God about four years ago and then learn it played it once and then never played it since and that's not because I didn't enjoy it. I loved it. It's just with the pandemic and everything else getting in the way it's just kind of took a bit of a backburner. It's become the large part of my shelf of shame those three games Yeah,

Becky  1:04:37  
Still in their shrink wrap

Adrian  1:04:40  
I mean, certainly Architects my I've played once but I've watched a couple rather randomly where I was like, I don't fancy playing a game and I'll on a game don't just sit and watch sort of thing. And you can tell it plays better at four or five and as you say, during pandemic we just didn't go there get those opportunities right but ya know, I'm I think it's a great choice. I I'd do like Architects

Becky  1:05:01  
card based all I know of it is the artwork on the edge of the box because that's all I've seen. And I quite liked the look of that. So you know,

Kerley  1:05:09  
it's worker placement in its in its there's some differences and it's a bit of a. What I like about the game is is worker placement, but it's a cutthroat worker placement. So you like, go somewhere and you can like send them off to prison if you have more of them. And, you know, they have to buy them back from them. Yeah, and it's just an interesting mechanic. It's one of the I wouldn't say it's heavy. But there's certainly some interesting mechanics in there that are different from your average worker placement. 

Adrian  1:05:37  
I think that's it is it's worker placement with quite a significant twist, work placement, you've normally got five or six meeples, they come back to each term, architects, you get what 20 They stay out on the board, and people can round them up. If there's too many in an area, they can round them up and send them to prison, they get money for sending them to prison, and then you have to get money for getting them back. Okay, so it creates this kind of a push, pull, push pull, we kind of like I want to send them to prison because I want money. But if I send them to prison too soon, they get more of their workers back quicker. I want to make them sweat with just a few workers left and stuff. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a great game of

Becky  1:06:13  
war of attrition,

Kerley  1:06:14  
kind of a it's just a it's difficult to describe, to be honest, but it is just really interesting twists. Like you said his perfect word. Really interesting twist on a relatively common workplace mechanic, I suppose. So I'm really looking forward again that to the table. And then as long as we enjoyed that, hopefully following that up with Paladins sequel as well,

Adrian  1:06:33  
I think you'll think you'll have good fun with that game can't move I've signed up for or not, but I think you have

Becky  1:06:40  
Facebook groups very useful, you can just immediately tell

Adrian  1:06:43  
I look forward to playing that game with you. I think the one I wanted to talk about it because again, I'm in a similar situation to what Kerleys is in is there's a game that I've played once, loved it. And haven't really had the opportunity to play again as Champions of Midgard. So yeah, I'm looking forward to playing playing that because it's worker placement. It's probably a slightly heavier weight than Lords of Waterdeep. Yeah, for my memory of it, but it's got dice chucking, so it's got that random element. Now my understanding is because haven't played all the expansions is that the expansions mean that when you get a duff roll on the dice, your guys die and go to Valhalla and then give you points for going to Valhalla. So there's a little bit of a, there's a plus side to not rolling well on your dice, which I'm really looking forward to seeing how that works, because I've heard good things about it. But yeah, it's a it's a game I've enjoyed previously. So I played it once a long time ago. And I'm just really looking forward to trying out again and getting it to the table again. 

Kerley  1:07:39  
So it's my one Tabletop Simulator game, actually my first simulator game we did during the pandemic with JP so yeah, it'd be good to get that one. I believe I'm playing that with you. Me. So

Adrian  1:07:49  
good. Good. Looking forward to it.

Kerley  1:07:51  
Yeah, definitely.

Adrian  1:07:52  
So our final turn is wrapping up and victory points are about to be scored. We know Kerleys already won. Thanks to everyone for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and review on your podcast player of choice if you want to get in contact with the show on our socials. You can you can email us players@whoseturn.co.uk You could check out our Facebook page Whose Turn Is It Anyway Podcast. You could go to our Instagram page @whoseturnpodcast or you can go to our TikTok @whoseturnisitanyway, we'll be back again in two weeks with another episode so until then, whose turn it anyway?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai