Becky  0:27  
Welcome to Whose turn is it anyway? a podcast about board gaming with our gaming group. I'm Becky and I'm taking the first player token from James or Davey as we call him for the next four episodes. Today, our main topic is cooperative gaming, which sort of follows on nicely from the last episode about dungeon crawlers. I'm joined at the table today by Tambo 

Tambo  0:46  
Hello. 

Becky  0:46  
Adrian

Adrian  0:47  
Hello

Becky  0:47  
And Rob. 

Rob  0:48  
Yo, 

Becky  0:49  
How is everyone today? 

Tambo  0:51  
Yeah, good. Thanks. Yes. 

Becky  0:53  
Cool. Well, let's get straight into it then. And let's talk about hex where we chat about the games we've managed to get to the table lately. Tambo, if you want to start us off?

Tambo  1:09  
Yep. So over the weekend, I played the family game called Codenames. So yeah, that's good fun. It's a party game more than a family game actually really, isn't it? 

Becky  1:17  
Yeah, 

Tambo  1:17  
I was introduced this by you, Becky on our 24 hour board game marathon, and yeah, so I went out and bought it and the family love it. Yeah. Yeah. Bit of a description of it. It's a how you say it, you're trying to get the spys out?

Becky  1:31  
Yeah, it's kind of like a word association, isn't it? Yeah. Sort of, but kind of in little teams versus the other team? 

Tambo  1:39  
Yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So you have one person who's trying to get the grid mark? Isn't it? Five, five grids? Six grids. I think, well a section of a five grid five by five grid of words on the table. And you're only allowed to say one word aren't you? Yes. So the spy can only say one word. And he says, for example, car for two. And then the the other teammates have got to guess what you're thinking on the five by five grid names. And if you get it right, you get it right. Or don't and pass

Becky  2:08  
There's only one card that can stop the game isn't there. But it makes me realise how, so I would have thought that me and my husband would have been really good at this. It turns out, it's the opposite. So you've got to be on the same kind of wavelength as your other team members. But it can... you can be thinking about things very differently. I found.

Tambo  2:26  
Yeah. We were part of a good team, was with my nephew we had good, good wavelength

Rob  2:33  
We played this. After we had our first Christmas night out. We were back to big Chris's house, because we were quite drunk by this point. So probably wasn't the best game to play. Because none of us were on any kind of wavelength that was similar to the other person. Great game though, lots of fun.

Becky  2:51  
There's a few different versions isn't there, so you've got Codename duet. Now, I haven't played that one. 

Tambo  2:56  
Yeah,  it's a green box. 

Becky  2:57  
And so yeah, it's just for two players. I don't really know how that changes. And I was looking at earlier today, funnily enough, Harry Potter codnames. Oh, and I think that is more like Code names Duet. So it had pictures on it, which confused me.

Adrian  3:08  
There's a Codenames pictures version as well. So there are a few different ones out there. 

Becky  3:13  
I see. Yeah, but it's a good, easy to understand, but not maybe quite as easy to play. I don't think

Rob  3:20  
Is it anything Harry Potter related and you're quite tempted by it?

Becky  3:25  
I was interested to look, but I don't think, on reflection I want to buy. So you know, 

Rob  3:30  
Piqued your interest.

Becky  3:32  
It will put me in a little bit. And then that's right. Adrian, how about you?

Adrian  3:36  
So yeah, so the lovely Paul Grogan invited me over to play some games with him last week, sometime. And he ended up bringing out a new game called Sabika, which was really interesting. It's, it's a Euro game, it kind of reminded me a little bit of Gugong. But basically, what you've got is you've got three rondelles. So three sort of circles that you put your workers around, they're only allowed to move so many spaces and moving more spaces costs you more resource. And if you land on the same space that someone else is on, it also costs you more resource. And there's three separate ones. And each rondell has got, like a specific reason. So the outside is building, so Sabika is it's a, I think it's a temple. I think it might be a mosque, I'm not quite sure, but a sort of a very elaborate building in Spain that was built in Granada region, I think it is. And you're representing building that. So the outside Rondelle is you're building the building itself, the sort of inside one is sort of more trade and dealing with sort of local merchants and merchants in Africa and stuff like that. And then the inside one is about creating poems and artwork to go on the inside of this building. And essentially, you're just moving over work around and then kind of like Gugong, you've kind of got lots of little mini bits and pieces that you're trying to do. So everything gives you a little bit of victory points, but you know, the inside ones getting you some poems, and you can kind of build a little engine around getting more points for more poems or the outside one essays around building so you can sort of get it so that the more you build, like you build a slightly better engine for building and it's really interesting. Certainly one to keep an eye out on . I don't think it's been released yet. But really interesting game to play, and definitely a strong Euro that I think will fit in a lot of people's collections. 

Rob  5:33  
Sounds awesome. 

Adrian  5:34  
It was really good. It was good. It was really good. It's a different puzzle. I've played Rondelle games before, I mean, ultimately Great Western Trail is essentially a rondel sort of game. But yeah, it was totally different. To be fair, the Rondelle thing looks really complicated in the middle of the board. But it's, it's not the, while you're learning it, you can't kind of see the interconnections I found as quickly as some other games I've seen. But once you'r sort of two /t hree turns in, there's only like seven turns. Once you'r two or three turns in of the first game. You kind of see how all the pieces lock together. I'm really interested to see if I can get a second play of it

Rob  6:08  
With board games, what I found is the weirder the premise, The better the game. Yeah. Like, yeah, if you try selling that to somebody who doesn't play board games, they're gonna look at you like your mental. Yeah. But like when JP talked to me about viticulture, I was like, No, I don't care how good a game is. I am not playing a board game about making wine. I'd rather be drinking it. I'll be honest with you. But everyone talks about how good a game that is. To the point now where I'm thinking, I might need to play it. 

Becky  6:40  
It's good. 

Rob  6:40  
It is good but you tried selling that premise to somebody, oh, yeah, it sounds mental.

Becky  6:47  
There's a worse one. There is a worse one for that. And that is Magic Maze on Mars. That sounds ridiculous. But from you know, having...

Rob  6:55  
You've sold the game in a really interesting way. Like, well that sounds amazing.

Adrian  6:59  
Again, like like, if Viticulture, if you like your sort of mid weight euros, I think yeah, most people would be worth giving it a try. And I don't think there's much to dislike in this game. It may not be your favourite of all time. I certainly think it would sort of break into my sort of top 20 games potentially after

Becky  7:15  
Wow.

Adrian  7:18  
Yeah, it may not break people's top 20 like that, or anything. But there is a game in there that's really solid. And I think be interesting to see how, how it stood up after a few more plays. But yeah, regarding the whole sort of weird and wonderful... I've found I've had this conversation if you sort of you go back far enough. Like you get into really like what I'd call classic geeky tropes, where it's like, we are dungeon delving with elves and dwarves and we're building castles, or we're exporting to the Mediterranean, which are just the real classic, like board game tropes. And the more modern you get, you're like, we're collecting birds, or we're taking dogs for a walk. Or we're making wine. And you're like, if you try to explain to like, if you took some like a nerd from the 90s, if you like, and bought them into modern day, they can probably be looking really lost wth all these random board games. But...

Rob  8:08  
But you made it sound amazing. So

Becky  8:12  
What's the... was it like in its beta phase? Or is it the actual...

Adrian  8:15  
 It's pretty much there, well it is there.

Becky  8:18  
What's the component quality like? And what kind of... is it pretty is basically?

Adrian  8:24  
Yeah, you know, you've got wooden components and some cardboard ones. But the cardboard makes sense because it goes in a bag randomly. So it makes sense for it to be even if it was wood it have to be like printed discs or something like that. And you've got different size meeples which are purely just to tell you which one though, they go on to the biggest workers go on the outside. And it looks visually correct, because obviously the chunks on the outside rondel are going to be bigger than they are on the inside. And then the smallest workers are there. And it's nice, like they've got good stained glass or something like that, which was like this little see through blue acrylic but kind of added to it and the board is massive to be fair for for what it was, like you'd need a decent... or you need a regular sized board game table at least to play on. But it meant that all of the components were a decent size. There was some very tiny writing on some of those cards because they were trying to pack in a lot of writing into a small card. But other than that it looked impressive. It looked like it was chunky sort of cardboard and everything. So that was good.

Becky  9:29  
Rob, how about you? 

Rob  9:30  
I only managed to get one game to the table which was Marvel Champions. So bit of one that we've, we've, I think the majority of us have played in the gaming group.

Becky  9:40  
But not me. You were just saying how good it was

Rob  9:42  
I think you'd enjoy it. Yeah, I really do. It's it's the complexity of the game comes from the deck that you build. And the character that you are, and the class that you are, you know, because you can you choose what aspect you want to be

Becky  9:58  
And this is why you can buy lots of upgrades and add-ons. Characters etc

Rob  10:03  
That's one reason. The other reason is that we're all greedy b*****ds and we like collecting them

Becky  10:09  
Yeah, it's not just about the play is it? It's about the collect and about the acquire.

Rob  10:14  
We managed to get that and we have a really good game. Good fun.

Adrian  10:17  
Got to ask,  who's the villain?

Rob  10:20  
Who was it. I can't remember. Oh, come on. It was Ultron, but because I played as Hawkeye

With his explosive arrows 

No leadership,

Adrian  10:35  
But you've got explosive arrows, it does three damage to everything engaged with you.

Rob  10:38  
Got Squirrel Girl! So every time you, every time you get an ally out, they usually have aspecial ability. Squirrel Girl's ability she does one damage to every, every enemy on the board. Ultron's thing is that he pulls out loads of drones, 

Adrian  10:53  
which have got one damage each.  Squirrel Girl is like Anti-Ultron.

Becky  10:57  
I see

Rob  10:59  
Sounds mental. Yeah. But she worked very well. And with the, just with the leadership deck, there's a card where you can get allies that you've used out of your discard pile. So just kept playing her and it worked really well. And to be honest, it's the first time I've ever beateb Ultron. 

Tambo  11:16  
It's a time that you don't want to put on his third phase otherwise... it's a timer, isn't it. Because you can't remove threat from the third... So you put him in the third part of his...

Adrian  11:24  
Campaign scenario. 

Rob  11:26  
So it kind of works like a story. So the, the villain that you're fighting has three different or two different phases, 

Adrian  11:33  
It can be one, two, or three, yeah, 

Rob  11:35  
And nastier stuff happens, the further they get because they're trying to get to a goal. Okay, the more stages that are flipped over, the closer they are to their goal. So

Tambo  11:45  
You put threat tokens on them, and when it hits the threat number, you flip

Rob  11:48  
So essentially, it's a way of keeping the game ticking

Adrian  11:51  
For Ultron in the first phases, it's basically like him hidden away trying to do his little scheming in the background. And then in the second phase, it's all about him storming the buildings, he's creating more drones. And in the third phase, he's like going to take over the world or whatever. So in which case, you can't take threat back off because he's so well developed that you are... literally have the last few seconds to defeat him. And pretty much every villain has a similar sort of story, like some of them are a bit like this is just don't get to this much threat. But for the most part, you can see the story they're trying to tell in it.

Rob  12:26  
Yeah, really good fun. Yeah. And it was it was a good... thing is you play it once you know how to play it. So like I say, it's different every time because of the different characters that you play, the different aspects that you play. And even the combination of the aspects that other people are playing works for it very well. And that changes as well.

Becky  12:44  
Do you pick the bad guy that you're fighting against? Or is it a random

Rob  12:49  
You can do but they're right there is a campaign scenario where one... you defeat one boss and it leads to a next one. But no, we just picked up a random and smashed him up which is quite nice.

Adrian  13:00  
Oh, nice. It's always good when you win

Becky  13:03  
Yeah, I mean, that's thing we'll mentioned later about sort of coop games. It's nice when you win, but if something's gonna win every time maybe that's not good. I guess we can come on to that. So my latest game we played, which was only a couple of days ago, was Spirit Island. So this whole episode that we're doing today, from my choice was inspired by Spirit Island. And I have to be honest, this episode of this podcast would have been a very...would have taken a very different turn had I not had this latest game. So we played with Kerley, Davey, and JP and it was like a real pinnacle game for me, something just clicked in. I think I just kind of, I don't know, I just got it this time. I'd liked and enjoyed it before but I, I've been feeling like I've been really relying on like, Kerley telling me what, not what I should do. But me asking his opinion quite a lot more because it is just something very different than I've ever played. And it is more complex than I had played before. 

Adrian  14:02  
It is rated highly amoungst complexity. Yeah. 

Becky  14:04  
But it's the thing that frustrated me was it's very easy to understand what's happening. There's, you know, a few phases. It's always like that, the icons are very simple, it's obvious, but having that kind of foresight of what you think is going to happen in a minute. I couldn't get my head around that, and so I really loved it when I first played it, oh it's really lovely pieces, the boards really nice and it's really good. Then I started getting a bit cold like why am I not I'm not getting this as quickly as I want to, that's really annoying. And I just thought you know what, I don't think this is for me and if it hadn't been for Kerley enjoying it, I would have been putting it on for sale because I just kind of...

Rob  14:43  
I think that's part of the difference though with a co op game is the fact that you can lean on others a little bit and like you said if you'd never play that game again.

Becky  14:52  
This is it. This is it. But this last game was a massive game changer for me. I won't go into too much more because we'll talk about it in depth In a minute in our main segment when we talk about coop games, so I guess let's crack into it

So coop gaming them, some love them, some hate them. I think we're all fans here, aren't we? So yeah, I guess we'll have to play a bit of devil's advocate for the purposes of balance. I think they probably fall into a couple of different categories from my, Well, I guess, naive knowledge about it. You've got totally cooperative, where you're all joining together to like defeat the enemy, solve the puzzle, you know, achieve the thing Yeah. And then semi Co Ops, often with like a secret traitor mechanic, where you're all working together but you've got one double crossing piece of work who is trying to foil everyone's plans and sabotages the mission? 

Rob  15:51  
Usually Tambo? 

Becky  15:52  
Usually Tambo

It's often you mate. So what are some of our favourites?

Rob  15:59  
Which ones? Well,

Adrian  16:01  
I was gonna say it's a long list,

Becky  16:03  
Isn't it? I mean, Gloomhaven has to be mentioned, I haven't played it. But it is continually on the top 10 list of games, isn't it?

Rob  16:11  
We talked about a lot on the last pod?

Becky  16:13  
Yeah.

Tambo  16:14  
Which is actually surprising, because for all the episodes we've had, we haven't mentioned Gloomhaven really.

Rob  16:18  
Considering how much we played it? How much we all loved it. I think it's, it's kind of the ultimate dungeon crawl. Yeah. And the fact that you are a band of people trying to do it. Yeah. Good. Little bit of bad. You can kind of play it however you want. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of been the biggest one in the last few years. Most definitely.

Becky  16:42  
I guess you know, one of my favourites is Mansions of Madness. And I think I probably played this first at yours Tambo. I think it was probably one of the first times I played in the group, actually. Second ed. that is, yeah, you've played first ed. Yeah. 

Tambo  16:56  
Only a couple of times. 

Becky  16:56  
And that's without the app, isn't it?

Tambo  16:58  
Yes. Yes. Without the app. And you have a you have a DM as well. So you pretty much have a bad guy. It was good. Very hard. Very, very

Becky  17:06  
Well, Second Edition is hard enough, isn't it? 

Rob  17:08  
Very punishing. Yeah. But the thing is, because of the app, you all lose together. This is it. This is I mean, it's not as bad. Yeah, in a weird way.

Becky  17:19  
And I think that is one of the benefits of coops isn't it? You know, you are all together. No one ends up feeling like they let the side down necessarily. Well maybe they do?

Tambo  17:32  
With Mansions, if one of you dies, then you got one more go to finish it. Otherwise you all die. You're not, the person who dies isn't hanging around doing nothing? Yeah, it's this big, Big Co Op.

Becky  17:39  
Yeah. Yeah,

Rob  17:40  
You have to look out for each other in it. Otherwise, the game is over.

Becky  17:45  
And then I guess the next biggest one that I think of is Pandemic, which I know is one of Adrian's massive favourite, favourite games?

Adrian  17:53  
Yeah, cuz you said like, we've talked a little bit before about quarterbacking or alpha gaming, or whatever, and someone leading you through. And I think you said that your first game of pandemic was quite similar to that. Yeah. And it is one of those games where information is pretty much public. For for a lot of the versions of pandemic, everything is public information. So someone can play the entire game in their own head. And kind of, well, you should really go over there. And like, I've, I've been guilty of that, to some extent have kind of someone's literally gone the wrong way. And I'm like, we literally lose the game. If you make that move, right? Can we just scoot you over that way instead? Like and

Becky  18:29  
I guess that's the thing, isn't it? It's Do you want to play the game for everyone to have fun? Or do you want to play the gam because you want to win the thing? Yeah. So you know, it, I imagine would be very difficult watching someone make a move, you absolutely know is going to hugely impact the outcome. And not try and stop. Yeah,

Adrian  18:48  
I think if it's the last couple of turns of the game, I think you probably could be right to go look we're this close. Like if you go over here, we can see the finish line. Whereas I've I've watched games where someone has quarterback from turn 1, one to turn all but minus one.

Rob  19:02  
A lot of that probably depends on who around the table with. If you're teaching three new players on how to play it, I think you're kind of expected to kind of lean on not not take them through it, but kind of point out the pitfalls. Yes. If you're around a table with people that have played it 10 times. Yeah. Then then I guess you kind of have to kind of pull back a little bit.

Adrian  19:27  
Yeah, I mean, there's there's quite a few sort of ways of looking at that, I suppose. One of my tricks that I developed because I was very aware that as soon as I got into coop gaming, really enjoying pandemic, I was very aware that I was susceptible to that, that quarterbacking and one of the things I learned when teaching new players is well talk me through your few options that you want to do and why you want to do them. And then you talk them through and maybe you might highlight some pitfalls or actually yep that that looks really strong as a move and sort of trying to encourage them. And if you do that for two or three turns if they're clearly hesitant, like some players you teach them and then I'm going off over here I don't care what anyone else thinks? Off I go along, and you're like, Okay, look, this is the first game for everyone. We'll just play it. But you can see some people who are almost hesitant to make the wrong move. And so by going right, okay, so what do you feel your you should be doing here? Or what would you like to be doing now?

Rob  20:14  
And that for me is why Co Op gaming is better? Yeah. Because you have that option? Yeah, yeah, that's what I personally prefer Co Op games, is because you have that option to lean on someone if you're not 100%. Sure. And the same time you want everyone to have fun. So you don't want to be the person that cocks that game up for everyone. So sometimes it is better to just to just say,

Tambo  20:39  
I played Pandemic once. And I'm sorry, but didn't enjoy it because I didn't, because I played it with two experienced players. Yeah, they were just taking over. And just making my moves for me. Exactly. So I really did not enjoy it. I thought theres no individuality to that. Because I think, but I think you're right Adrian and if they were more like what you just said, asked what I wanted to do, from what I thought I wanted to do, and then explain why you shouldn't, that'd be better, but it was more well just just do this, because surely this is going to move this way or the virus is going to go that way, you need to put your men here, you need to men here and like, Whoa, I haven't even thought about it yet. And that's my go over.

Adrian  21:10  
I mean, I suppose we've skipped to kind of the middle point here. So for those who've never heard of Pandemic, other than COVID. The game is essentially four different diseases that will spread through a deck, that deck gets shuffled every now and again, the discard pile gets shuffled back onto the top. So you will see those cities again, basically each time. And you are a group of, there's some, some that are like medics, there's like there's someone who moves other people around the board transporter or something like that. And there's people there's scientists and researchers all have their individual role. What they're essentially trying to do is get around the board, clear up all these little cubes that you put down, which are part of the different diseases, and ultimately try and find a cure for diseases. And when you found a cure, the game is done in a good way. If you have to put too many cubes on the board or if you run through any of the decks or if you get too many explosions of where you've let the disease run rife in a place, then you go down a track or too far, the game is over and you've lost. And I think it's one of those games where I think Alpha gaming and quarterbacking can happen a lot of games. But I think because of that nature of you know what cards you're going to see, there is a much more of a Euro style feel to this than a lot of coop games can have because you know what's coming up, you know, if you've kept track of the discard pile, you know the percentages of what next city is coming up and you can go No, don't go over there. We've already seen that sit in the discard pile go over here instead. And you know, you can think that in your head. But if you've got a new player saying that really out loud as in don't go that way. I'd rather lose the game now. Like when I first started playing coop games, I probably didn't. But now I'd rather lose a game with a newbie. And sort of, if they weren't sure anything like that and have a good game out of it and understand why they lost or why this  did or didn't happen. Than shout at them Why have you gone to deli and not to Essen?!

Becky  23:02  
Yeah, I think that really mirrors mine. And it sounds like Tambo's experience that the first one. I mean, I did buy it at the UK GE because what getting didn't I buy there from the bring and buy sale

Rob  23:15  
You got confused with games thinking they were pokemon?

Becky  23:18  
I was, I was having fun. And that's what imatters. Yeah. And we did buy Pandemic and I do want to play it again. But I will absolutely say  right at the start whoever's you know, teaching or whatever, and it probably end up being you, Adrian so I don't need to say it. But I'd rather lose it in the first 20 minutes and know that I did a stupid thing. Than someone going oh, well this turn should be this this turn should be... because it Yeah, like you said some of it just takes all the fun out of it, doesn't it? And you know, if games aren't fun. What? Why? Why are you playing them?

Adrian  23:52  
Even if at the end of the game. Someone says like, Oh, we lost because of this did you notice or something like that? Something better than...

Becky  23:59  
 Absolutely.

Adrian  24:00  
I'm playing an hour of their game for them.

Rob  24:04  
I've only ever played it once. And we played it when we went to London for the expo. Oh, yeah. Alexandra Palace. And it was

Adrian  24:11  
That was Rapid Response though. Was that the one? Yeah, that's not. Okay. So it's a, it's a spin off. Yeah. And it has very little of the original Pandemic. Very, very little. So there's a few games you've got. Pandemic, you've got Pandemic fall of Rome, Pandemic Iberia, which is my favourite. There's a Cthulhu Mr. Wibbels Pandemic that's actually pretty good. I'm not a big fan of Cthulhu as a thing, but actually, I think they did a really good job of putting that in. And then there's another one which I always... Rising tide, which is about floodplains in Denmark or somewhere and trying to combat that really random thing, but they all have very similar DNA, whereas you've got the one that's rapid response in, You've got another one where you play as the disease that has very little in common and the cure, which is a dice chucker, that has very little in common.

Rob  25:07  
So maybe set a night when

Becky  25:10  
We own it now. So I would be really interested in playing it. It sounds like the thing that we kind of talked about in common here is that new gamers, it's really good to get them in, in a co op, because, like you said, you can tackle games that perhaps are a bit more complex than they would normally enjoy. Yeah, and that's definitely my experience for Spirit island. So it is a really complicated game, you've got a lot of different variables. So for anyone who hasn't seen Spirit Island, it's what looks to me like a very beautiful patchwork board of an island with different kinds of lands in it. So you've got mountains, wetlands, sand, whatever. And you're basically acting as the spirits of those islands in order to stop the horrible invaders coming in and trying to, you know, make a new life on your lovely island. And there is a lot more interaction involved, which is one of the main reasons why I think coops can be really good, because like I said, I play for the fun of the game, not for, you know, I need to win this and solve the puzzle. I mean, there's a little bit of that in it. But if that was my main reason to play, I would never be playing games any well, because...

Rob  26:19  
You're not alone. 

Becky  26:20  
Well, you know, it annoys me that the amount of hours I've spent at it. And I'm not seeming to get any better. I think Spirit Island was just finding... I was getting very frustrated with that. And I didn't really want to play in a group that wasn't just me and my husband, because I felt like everyone else would feel like, well, he's just playing her game for her. What's the point? And that's how I felt. I was like, what, you know, what is the point of me even sitting here, not that he was taking over because he wasn't at all but I almost felt like I wasn't doing anything myself. And that's just, it's just really miserable, isn't it, it really miserable. But this game that we played with the four of us and I haven't ever played it as a four player, and it doesn't look... Well, it looks a lot more complicated. Like there's a huge amount more stuff on the board. And you feel like, blimey, we're never going to tackle this, but that's the thing with Spiritt Island, it looks nuts for the first few turns, then you start to get a bit more of a kind of lead on to getting these nasty invaders. And then you get them all off and you've got a beautiful island again, and it's it's really lovely. And it's there's a lot of like, oh, well, I've got this card I can make... Because I always play the group that make people able to go faster, you've got faster cards and slow cards, so you have a fast phase, then the invaders have their phase where they build, ravage, explore the island. And then you have your slow powers, which tend to be maybe more global, rather than a hit that town particularly, it might be do a certain kind of damage or whatever to an area. And I always play the ones that just do fast powers, because then it meant that I didn't have to think about... I didn't have to think right then in a minute, the board's gonna look like this. So I'll do that. But I didn't you know, when you play the lightning guys, you don't have to, you don't have to think of that. But one of your powers is you can make everyone else go faster, you can make someone else go faster if you want to. So that's really handy. And you can be quite a little happy, helpful person, oh, well, I can make your powers get... you know, and that's quite nice. But it does involve a lot of chatting, which is really well part of the fun. That is kind of the whole part of you know, playing a coop game, isn't it? And, you know, the interaction can't be minimised with that. Because it's, it's just great, isn't it?

Rob  28:30  
And if you don't coordinate, I'm guessing your job becomes a hell of a lot harder. Yeah, well I haven't played it yet. 

Adrian  28:36  
It's got the Marvel champions thing of someone will play an aggressive, someone will play defensive, some play to get your fear or whatever. Yeah. And so you kind of can't, you probably could complete the game, but you'd have a much harder time of it if you don't have a nice mix of aspects, which I found is quite often like a common trope of co op games where you will have your individual powers

Rob  28:59  
Almost like , a class?

Adrian  29:00  
Yeah, even even in like a pandemic or something like that, you know, if you all have things that just take cubes off the board, you're not going to cure the diseases as quickly. And so I found quite a nice thing in this coop, it does try to quite often divide up what you're doing a bit nicely by giving you specific powers that support a way of completing the game almost.

Becky  29:22  
So do we think that it kind of changes the dynamics of the group when you play in a co op? So normally, we're kind of cutthroat and take this, take that kind of attitude. Perhaps that's just our group? I don't know. Yeah, sure. But it is I think it can be really nice to change it up sometimes a play a, a collaborative kind of a kind of game. I don't know or do you guys just prefer the ...

Rob  29:46  
I prefer coops. I just generally prefer them. Mainly because I feel a lot less pressure. Yeah. A more relaxing thing for me to do I'm because it is, there is a group of us we have to achieve this. Yeah, part of it is the game but part of it is how you act around the table and like the human interaction in the games is what I enjoy the most that's what I, that's what I really enjoy so but you've got that common goal Yeah. And you either win together or you lose together and if I cock up then I can blame the others

That wasn't where I thought that was going

And I'm okay with that.

Becky  30:38  
How about for you Adrian, who is someone who is perhaps normally more of a like a internal thinking, this is my plan. This is my structure. Do you find that difficult when you play with coops because you kind of have to accept other people's decisions or is it quite nice as a change

Adrian  30:54  
No 'cos if you don't agree with it, I just do what I was gonna do anyway.

Becky  30:58  
And that is one bonus.

Adrian  31:01  
Which is why it's great. I think it's one of those things where I do enjoy so I really enjoyed Spirit Island. My first one,I've only had one play-through of it. I really enjoyed it. It was one of the more conversative if that's a word, but conversational games, where I felt like we were talking through our turns a lot more. Coops can be kind of anywhere on that scale. I've had coops where you pretty much play it silently. But that's Magic Maze on Mars. But I have had games where you, you play almost that own little game. Even like Marvel champions, I've played games where like, I'm the hit the bad guy deck and they're the keep the threat down deck. And I've literally spoken to the maybe twice about the actual game plan. Otherwise, it's just look at all this cool stuff we're doing, and you're playing in your own team, whereas it can go all the way from sort of that end to I'll probably talk about a little bit later, there's the only simulation board game I've ever played is UBoot which is your world war two German U boat pilots, basically submarine pilots that are playing an entire game of hunting down ships out out in the English Channel and stuff like that. And like you've got such quick timers that you immediately started having to develop quick hand for what you're doing. And you're talking so quickly at each other and getting so that you can get through because it's a timed game. And you'll, it's crazy, but I literally

Becky  32:30  
I can see the stress pouring off Rob.

Rob  32:32  
It's not that, I'm having Captain Sonar flashbacks

Adrian  32:34  
It's one of the most stressful games I've ever played. But it did certainly bring out right Okay, so we're diving, we're diving, you've got everything. You've got everything you've you've you've normalised the ballast, you've got the steering down. Okay, brilliant. You're sending the orders. Brilliant. Okay, have we looked at who's tired? Who's not? Are we changing like ships? 

Becky  32:56  
Sounds like work, sounds like it's doing a job of people management at work, 

Tambo  33:00  
Which sounds awful.

Adrian  33:02  
It was really enjoyable. I didn't want to play it too often. I'll be honest with you and I couldn't imagine teaching too many people it, so it has kind of left itself from my collection. But there is, you can get that whole scale from really just casual chatting to like like the UBoot sort of almost barking orders each other and making sure you've got everything down to... We played bandido. Which was a 'oh, can you not put that there. Brilliant. Okay, I can shut that bit off here. Oh, I can do a new' literally just having that very casual. Very light low end chat. Yeah, but you're talking about other things in between. Yeah, I think that's one of the nice things with coops is it can lead to that more casual conversation if you pick the right coop.

Becky  33:41  
Yeah, as long as it's fully coop so I guess that brings us nicely into semi Co Op especially with sort of hidden hidden enemy kind of things. Although I guess you've got kind of a halfway house of something like perhaps Nemesis where it is a coop. But perhaps might have your

Rob  33:58  
It's not. It's a single player game. where you have to be nice to the other people. To achieve your nefarious goal.

Becky  34:06  
So you've all got your own sometimes conflicting win conditions haven't you? Yes, massive. I mean, you want to win. But in order to win, you might need to kill someone else, or Yes, get this particular thing. So I've only played one game of Nemesis and really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was just such an interesting, that mechanic of yes it is Co Op, we do kinda have to stick together because if everyone just runs off, it's all going to just go horribly wrong. 

Tambo  34:34  
Which it always does. It's very, very good game. There is a full coop of it. And I have played that and I think playing fully coopis  the first game you should play as it's a learning curve. The easiest way to learn to play Nemesis just do it fully coop because you can, you can just talk about everything with the other players. So all the rooms will have different abilities so  instead of secretly looking at the card on the side thinking, what does this room do? And then trying to figure it out, but if you do it fully coop to begin in your first time, you know or you can just say well What does this room do? we can just read it out and explain it because you can, because you've all got your own objectives. You've got to do all... cos there's four players, there's four objectives, you've got to do all four objectives. But you don't all have to survive.

Becky  35:11  
So you can still like, sacrifice someone at the end?

Tambo  35:14  
Just stay on the ship and blow us all up, as long as one person gets out you've done it. So it's good fun in that sense. And it always comes close to wire, the fully coop part, but the semi coop is better.

Becky  35:22  
Yeah, it's more fun. I will look forward to playing that again. When it you know, next arrives on...

Rob  35:28  
I can't deal with the stress of that game. I'll be honest with you. I can't do it.

Tambo  35:33  
Have you played it fully coop?

Rob  35:34  
I've not fully coop

Tambo  35:35  
You should try it. 

Rob  35:36  
I've played that game three times. And it's a wonderful game. I've never enjoyed losing so much in my life. 

Becky  35:43  
Couldn't agree more

Rob  35:44  
But you enjoy losing because watching other people lose is just as funny. And whether it's bad rolls, whether it's bad sort of noise, you know, noise rolls, whenever it's bad attacking rolls, that it's always funny, even when you're doing it. So what is just a wonderful, wonderful game. We've talked about it massively. And

Tambo  36:05  
When you play semi coop games and there's the villain. There's always an extra bit of achievement if you defeat the villain. You've won the game, and you've done that, even better I think . It feels good

Becky  36:14  
I don't normally win when I'm the villain, because I'm not... I'm not very good at it. So even with things like...

Rob  36:19  
You played a wonderful Unfathomble.

Becky  36:21  
That is the only time I think I've won as a villain, possibly. I mean, we play Avalon quite a lot, which is The Resistance/ Avalon. So you've got the kind of very quick...is it a party game? Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah. Perhaps you wouldn't maybe take it to someones house who didn't understand games very well. It's not like Codenames party game, but it's,

Rob  36:43  
You know, you have to play that game with people that you know you can shout at.

Becky  36:49  
Definitely need to pick your group

Adrian  36:51  
That's right. So I remember my first ever game of Battlestar Galactica, I, everyone explained the entire game to me, and I looked at my card and basically went, what does it mean if you're a Cylon? Because I didn't do it deliberately, but all the rules went out of my head. And I was like, I've never played this game before. I don't know what to do. So I was trying to surreptitiously, but I'm not the most discreet person in the world going... So looking at the card, and then kind of going, so if I wanted to unveil as a Cylon, what would I have to do exactly like it was just not... And I think with semi co ops, you do run that risk of if someone is Merlin in Avalon, or whatever, or like the demon in Blood on the Clock Tower. So if you're the Demon on Blood on the Clock tower, then you essentially like you're looking... everyone's looking to try and figure out who you are, and kill you. If you're the demon and it's your first turn round, you're going to be hopeless, because you're not going to know all those intricacies of what's required and all that kind of stuff. And so I do think, a downside to semi co op in the traitor version of semi coops, quite a few different ones. But traitor seems to be the big one that's made the biggest impact on that sort of genre, is if you end up being the traitor, and it's your first play out, like you might as well just reshuffle the rolls out. Because I think it's hard. Some people are going to really struggle and get outted instantly and be like yeah, you're definitely the traitor

Rob  38:17  
Games like Avalon they are over so quickly, that wouldn't really matter. But like a battle of Battlestar Galactica... Yeah absolutley

Tambo  38:28  
Well, they say you've got to look at your card for five seconds. Everyones got to time it, then you put it down. So yeah, SO you stil dont know, obviously who everyone else....

Adrian  38:33  
But yeah, if you don't know what you got to do, if you if you only remember half the rules? Yeah, because it's your first teach of a game that big, then yeah, it can absolutely. Sort of screw with, like, how that game is gonna go definitely almost want to be like dealing off the bottom to the person who's new or whatever. The cards

Rob  38:52  
You could always say, Can we re shuffle them? Then when you are a Cylon again, the everyone thinks He's obviously good. He doesn't want to be a Cylon

Adrian  39:01  
Yeah, I think he's just like to be mindful of if you're, if you're putting a new person in the semi coop, traitor environment. Yeah,

Becky  39:08  
So I think if you're doing the teach on a semi Co Op, and you've got really, really newbies in the group, you need to be kind of saying things like, so if you were the bad guy, this would be helpful. If you were the good guy, this would be helpful.

Rob  39:18  
But then you'd be then you'd instantly be accused of being the bad guy. 

Becky  39:21  
Well yes, basically, we're getting accused of it anyway aren't you because, you know...

Rob  39:26  
I quite like the games where there's a chance somebody is a betrayer or saboteur working against the others. Dead of Winter game, and Saboteur. Yeah, I quite like that. Because a lot of, some of the games that we've played of both Dead of Winter and Saboteur, we were accusing everybody around the table of being the bad person. And actually, nobody's been the bad person.

Becky  39:55  
That is one of the big kind of pitfalls and sort of negative things that people say about coops is the fact that a lot of it is just randomness, it all falls down to what event card you get or whatever. And there's no kind of choice. Whereas I think having that hidden traitor kind of or potential hidden traitor, you can't predict people's sort of moves as well as you would if you knew that. And I think that's a really good,

Rob  40:18  
It does bring another... we played Dead of Winter fully coop, and it wasn't as... nowhere near as much fun. In that whole hidden... I've played it twice when nobody has been the traitor. But of course, accusations still fly. Which is a massive part of the fun of that game.

Becky  40:36  
Yeah, I guess it would be quite difficult perhaps if you were embarking on a new gaming group, maybe or you wanted to play this particular game and you didn't really know many gamers. So you decided to take it to maybe a con or something. Perhaps it's going to be quite difficult playing that game in a group of people where you don't really want to be..

Rob  40:54  
But if you're still talking to each other afterwards, they're worth keeping.

Becky  41:01  
Do we need to talk a bit about what Battlestar Galactica is, and Unfathomable? We mentioned it, you know, that there's different cards you're with different colours on, you're kind of trying to either foil a plan or not, pretty much. It is good. And, you know, lots of pointing of...

Adrian  41:16  
Think you've describe pretty much every traitor game going, there

Becky  41:20  
You know, the better you know, your your friends, the more that you can, you know, add that into the mix.

Tambo  41:27  
Or you can get a reputation and and it's always, always be the case. Yeah,

Becky  41:30  
So Tambo tell us what that's like. So, if you actually get the Cylon or the hybrid or whatever the bad one is,

Tambo  41:38  
You just have to defend yourself all the time? You do the best you can. 

Rob  41:42  
Or play the ultimate game? Ultimate turn I've ever seen.

Tambo  41:46  
Yeah, there is that, but I think I had new player advantage on that one game we played but it was good. 

Rob  41:52  
To this day it was the first time I've ever seen

Tambo  41:57  
He's talking about the Dead of Winter one. 

Becky  41:59  
Okay, now I haven't played this

Rob  42:02  
It's a really fun game. We need to get it to the table. We haven't played it in years. So we need to get that back. On the list to get back to Yes. Tambo was the traitor. 

Becky  42:12  
Of course he was 

Rob  42:12  
And you have to clean the camp.

Becky  42:14  
Right? Oh, I've heard this story. Yeah, I don't even know the game and I've heard this story.

Rob  42:18  
Don't worry, guys. I'll clean the camp. I got this, I can do it in one. Nice, easy, you know, fell move done. Got to his turn. Last player. He was like, Yeah, I'm not doing that. Now. I'm just gonna go ahead and do this. Even though

Tambo  42:29  
I even took the broom off Davey as well, which felt good. He gave me... he even gave me a broom. 

Rob  42:35  
And then he just went off and did his own thing, went 'there you go'

Tambo  42:37  
And I was last person on that go. So it was like the last turn and I was like, Yeah, I'll do everything, guys

Rob  42:41  
There you go, the camps an utter mass, you will fail. I win, however, because I have this. It was just the ultimate Mic drop move. And I was so angry with him because of how good it was. And it was beautiful.

Becky  42:56  
W've all been very kind of positive about Co Op games. Can we think of anything negative about them?

Rob  43:06  
A lot of it depends on who you round the table with? Yeah, I think 

Adrian  43:10  
We talked about the quarterbacking. 

Rob  43:12  
Not even that, If people aren't willing to play as a team, then that can make the game very difficult, especially when there are classes. So if somebody is a class, and potentially they don't want to be that class, then and they're not doing what that class is meant to do. With dungeon delvers, It's probably not the end of the world because you can play those characters a lot of how you want to. But it as a team element, there are parts of every team and you have to do your job. Like they're not not specifically that but primarily. And especially if it's a game that relies on that, then that can make it quite a difficult experience. 

Adrian  43:56  
I play a game of Batman Gotham City Chronicles, which is a great game love it, is very complicated, but it's a great game. And in it, you had to hack some computer points. And there's a punchy person and a hacky person basically. And the person wants to be the punchy person, someone else wants to be the punchy person. The person says, Alright, okay, I'll be the, I'll be, I think it was like old Batman or whatever it was just like, like laying into criminals, basically, And the other person was then the person supposed to be hacking all the computers, but they didn't like it. So they went off and punched people for three turns and the game was done basically at that point, and you you can get that kind of that you know what your role is like?

Rob  44:34  
Yeah, I think most games have a element of do your role. Yeah. Not every, not to the letter and that's all you can do. But I think that can make some games quite difficult.

Becky  44:50  
I guess normally that  only affects you if you don't do your thing. And that's the difference with coops, isn't it? I guess. 

Rob  44:55  
So you win as a team and you lose as a team and that's, you know, The Star Wars Imperial assault, you know, you've got characters, they can do everything, you know, you can do everything that's, that's, you know, the challenges that you have to do certain characters are suited better to do certain things. And they will do it a lot quicker than if somebody else tries Yeah. So you know, if you have to, you can do it, but it will take you quite a while. And there's that kind of element to it as well.

Adrian  45:26  
I played Unlock recently, I don't know if you've any of you've played Unlock, it's a it's a deck of cards with different numbers on them. And essentially, it's an escape room, in a deck, basically land you flip cards over and you look at what's on them, and you try and work out what the puzzle is. And if you put two cards together correctly, it will give you another number or it might have another number, like scribbled very slightly on the side of like something in there and you go, you know, like an escape room, you go and find the different cards and all that kind of stuff. And I was playing it with someone I play with quite a lot. And I just got the funny feeling that they weren't invested in this one, we play coops a lot together. But you could just tell there wasn't that level of investment from them. They were enjoying the puzzle, but they were kind of like, wow, we're on like our ninth or 10th puzzle of this deck now like, I'm not quite feeling it anymore. And I imagined that especially those kind of escape room games can feel a bit like or Okay, hi, have I really got to work out what this puzzle is yet again. And if you've got someone around the table that is like that, with that kind of game, I think yeah, you could end up with quite a just sort of a negative place. Let's lay out all the air out of the room, you know, sort of thing of just like a bit of a drudge sort of thing.

Becky  46:32  
Fun Sponge

Adrian  46:32  
 Yeah, fun sponge, mood Hoover.

Becky  46:36  
So do we think we have to win the majority of the time on co ops? Or is it better if you don't?

Rob  46:42  
I think we have this experience with Descent, which we talked about on the last podcast, we played it on medium difficulty, weren't really struggling. And the story is great, the game is great. But without that challenge, it wasn't as enjoyable. We put it to hard mode, what a difference. And it was brilliant. It was ridiculously different. It was and they don't mean harder as in all the enemies have twice as many hit points wherever. Yeah, it was like you have some of these enemies. Some of these enemies and the enemies themselves present a different challenge. Right? Okay, so you have to approach them in a different way. So then you have to coordinate who's attacking, which creature based on their weapon type based on their range, things like this.

Becky  47:31  
It's more skill, kind of level of increase in your skill.

Rob  47:35  
You can't just run in and smash everything. You have to plan what you can do. Otherwise, you get absolutely hammered, which we all did. And it was just a it didn't make the game better. But it enhance the experience around the table. Yeah.

Becky  47:50  
I think Mansions of Madness I've probably won... definitely less times than I've lost. I think that's that just makes you want to do it again. Doesn't it, that makes you think 'right!'

Rob  48:00  
We don't play that game enough.

Tambo  48:02  
Yeah. The last time we played it, you and me Bec, was Christmas. And it... wasn't it with Kerley. We won thought, didn't we? Yeah, it was the train one wasn't it?

Becky  48:13  
No, No, it was the serpent one though. The serpent one. Yeah. And I think it's really... you feel a real massive sense of achievement when you win that because you know how absolutely hard it is. Yeah, well it can be

Rob  48:25  
Is there a campaign mode in Mansions? 

Tambo  48:27  
No

Rob  48:28  
Why on earth isn't there a campaign mode in Mansions?

Adrian  48:31  
So Lord of the Rings only has a campaign mode, and everyone is screaming out for one shot mission. So I think it'd be great if you can get both in there. But I think some certain games especially like these FFG sort of sprawling games quite often tend one way or another. Yeah,

Rob  48:48  
I mean, Arkham Horror though. That has got a campaign, but you can just pick a random mission and do that mission. So there is precedent for it, right?

Adrian  48:56  
Yeah, it's just, it seems to be for those kinds of tabletop Dungeon games that FFG put out they do tend to stick towards... I think Imperial Assault is the most wide reaching one they've had, because that had a versus mode

Rob  49:08  
Descent second edition...

Adrian  49:11  
But yeah, it's just seems interesting that, like, they tend to stick to just one type for this game.

Rob  49:17  
Because I suppose if you've really written an intricate story, yeah, that twists and turns, I guess you want people to experience that rather than just a random mission here that makes no sense. Yeah. So I kind of get that from a writer's perspective, but give people the option right?

Becky  49:34  
You buy... then you end up buying another game, don't you? So it's all happy for FFG.  Why do we think... oh sorry go o

Adrian  49:41  
I was gonna just gonna say on the easy to difficult thing like my favourite game is one of the first I ever picked up as a coop game, which was Ghost Story, so I think I mentioned it before. It's rated as one as the hardest coop games to complete. I never beaten it, think ive beaten one on the app which I didn't count because it's a bit like it' Um', but I think that the one of my greatest feelings of achievement was I took a new group. And we sort of learned the game quick enough and started learning things quick enough that we got to the boss. And the fact that we just managed to get to the boss was enough that I was like, Yes. Like, that's how difficult that game is. And yet, you know, I've played with groups of kids around the table and all that. If they lost more than half the time. I think they'd be tears being had most of the time.

What do we play Most Wanted from old Champions? The...

Rob  50:34  
Guardians of the Galaxy one?

Tambo  50:36  
That's terrible. Yeah, the last guy was... we just lost about three times, and we felt taht we just needed a win here, we need to play if somebody just to beat easily

Rob  50:41  
I think we went back and played the first enemy, just because we needed a win

Tambo  50:46  
 The feeling of defeat after about three times, 

Rob  50:48  
And you know, we don't get to play that often. We were playing once a fortnight. Yeah. So if if once a fortnight, you know, you've done it three... So it's basically taken us six weeks to try

Adrian  50:59  
And to lose repeatedly

Rob  51:01  
 And not lose, like closely, we got absolutely obliterated

Tambo  51:06  
Tor two games and we got killed so quick the first time, we just had to try again,

Rob  51:10  
And then we got obliterated. Again,

Tambo  51:11  
It's just Ronan.

Rob  51:13  
I think if you can kind of see the end, see that it can be done,

Adrian  51:17  
Well see progress, this time we got to this bit. Yeah, the one complaint I do have about Marvel champions is a couple of bad pulls out of the encounter deck, in certain missions that they built is just game over here. Like there's no two of the villain schemes or whatever is just at that point, like, especially like Thanos that gets rid of half your deck halfway through the game. If you get to that point, just don't bother continue playing, you might as well just start again, and you can get just two cards back to back that gets you into that place. So I think one of my complaints on that is that there is that randomness? I think, because you mentioned it earlier, I think most good Co Op games have managed to get rid of that randomness, or at least made sure that it doesn't happen a lot. Yeah, like I would say Marvel Champions, it doesn't happen a lot. But I haven seen it a couple of times where it's just happened. And and so yeah, I think it's one of those where yeah, there can be randomness that just kills the game. But for the most part, most coops now are at a point where you've lost the game gradually, even if it's two or three wrong moves, you've lost it yourselves.

Becky  52:17  
Do you think there's going to be any kind of massive strides forwards in in Co Op games? I mean, I guess you've got the addition of things with apps now, which is a massive difference. I guess for the setting up like you mentioned in the last episode, the setting up of stuff of a lot of these games is very complicated. 

Rob  52:33  
I can set Descent up and pack it away in about 10 minutes, considering how much there is. The apps just made it so so much easier.

Becky  52:42  
Do you think there'd be any more like, new inventions or ...

Rob  52:46  
I'll be quite interested to see the Frosthaven mechanic when that comes out. That what they've done to it because I know it's basically the core elements, but they've added things like the town elements. So it like like Davy said if you fail a mission, but you get something for the town. It's not as bad

Becky  53:04  
At least you've achieved something

Rob  53:05  
Yes, so just those sort of things. But with regard to, you know, the advancements like who knows, I'm very much looking forward to finding out

Adrian  53:12  
Having seen my coops come from since Pandemic released, which was over 10 years ago now and see the difference we've had in coops since then I think it's fair to say that there's going to be something big,couldn't tell you what it's going to be, because I'm not a rules writer or anything like that  in the industry in that sense, but I can't not see there being some crazy, you know, say apps like XCOM, UBoot has an app where you look through the binoculars for the for the signs of like ships and stuff like that and like you've got those kinds of things for the apps and as you say, for set up and like Imperial assault, removing the one versus many aspects and making it pure coop you've got all of those kinds of bits and even say from the fact of if you look at the ability for game designers to remove the ability to quarterback from games through little clever hidden mechanics where only you know certain things, or only you can have the opportunity to do certain things, which puts the power back in your hands, we've already seen in just 10 years or you know, 20 years or whatever it is since like Pandemic and that really we're making a big sort of comment like come back on the scene or come back but launch on the scene. I think we can only imagine what 10/15 years is gonna look like for coop games, I think it's gonna be massively different from where we are now.

I mean, the thing is, they're not going anywhere. That's my point is you know, they've been around for a very long time and they're not going away so they you know, they're going to have to advance certain elements of those games but I think that will happen on every game whether it's Co Op or not.

Yeah, all all games have seen a massive step...

Rob  54:47  
Holographic tables where there is no set up and the board is just that.

Adrian  54:51  
Well I remember, I remember seeing a gaming table with which this is Warhammer 40k related, but literally someone pushes the top of their model. So it puts pressure on the model and the sensor underneath worked out. And then they tap the top of another model. And it did all the dice rolls for them. Worked out what range it was, whether it was long range, short range, all the modifiers and all that kind of stuff, did the dice roll for them? Did a nice little pow-pow-pow on the sort of screen that's under the table. And then like, did all of that. 

Becky  55:24  
I mean, that is living in Star Trek 

Adrian  55:26  
It is crazy is I mean, I can't think of who is it, CMON that does  Zombicide, they launched... it didn't really launch properly, it was a bit of, a I think it's a bit dead on release, unfortunately, from what I've seen, but they did a map that you'd put under like your Zombicide game. And it would talk to you and play through as you were doing going through different rooms, you wouldn't have to click an app or anything, it would kind of tell you where you're going and describe rooms to you and all sorts. But again, it was like, Oh, you'll need to buy like a chip or something that costs you £15 pound on top of this £300 pound kit that goes with your £00 pound game. And so I think it kind of that at this point. That's where we're at for that kind of... if it can't be put on an app at the moment, I think it's too much for a board game but who knows in the future?

Becky  56:13  
Sounds like we've got a lot of stuff to look forward to in the future maybe. So on to our question time. So let James Davey the previous first player know that His presence is still felt we will ask one of his questions. And it is what is your desert island game and why? So I'm going to assume that you've either been marooned on the island with a group of like minded people or you've gotten slowly mad and have started to paint faces on things like the coconuts and decided that they're sentient now and they're going to be your other players

Rob  56:53  
And you're screaming you're evil every single one

Adrian  56:56  
You're the traitor, and I know you're the traitor

Becky  56:59  
I guess you could pick solo games if you wanted to. And I think T, that might be one that you might pick cos I know that you quite like your solo games. So what are we all picking?

Rob  57:07  
Depends if we've got power on this desert island?

Becky  57:10  
I'm gonna say yes, I am the benevolent God and the spirit the Spirit Island, we have got power if you need an app

Rob  57:16  
And a recharging point fine. 

Adrian  57:19  
All you Descent is now only a five like five episode version.

Rob  57:25  
For me, it'd be Descent. Absolutely. There's enough content in there to see me through for a little while. So yeah, Descent, maybe even the second edition for me. Because you've got a lot more choice with characters with enemies with campaigns. But yeah, that would be it for me I play it solo with the app anyway.

Becky  57:46  
So you got two for one there, you can play with your with your little Wilson buddies, or you can play on your own.

Rob  57:52  
And shout at them for doing the wrong thing.

Becky  57:55  
So Descent for you then, Adrian, what are you gonna go for?

Adrian  57:59  
I don't know. Cuz I would say Pandemic but again, I'd be playing all four coconuts.

Becky  58:07  
We can, we can be marooned with a group of people, a group of board gamers. That's that's allowed too. So if it has to have interaction with people. That's fine.

Rob  58:15  
So it's more like a plane crash. 

Becky  58:17  
Well... 

Adrian  58:18  
We're in 'Lost'. Yeah. After we've run away from the polar bears. Yeah,

Rob  58:22  
And found the recharge USB

Becky  58:24  
We found DHARMA, or whatever it was...

Adrian  58:27  
Do  4 8 12 13 Whatever the numbers were, then you can charge up you app. That's what happens in that episode of lost.

Rob  58:33  
It's a game within a game

Becky  58:36  
tYeah. Perfect.

Adrian  58:38  
I would probably just call back to a classic and just do Carcassonne.

Becky  58:42  
Wow, retro. Retro classic,

Adrian  58:45  
It is, and I didn't play it, like, for a long time. I just happened to be that I think HMV was doing like some pseudo closing down sale, and I happened to pick it up there. And it's just so simple. Like, the version I got came with a few expansions you can mix them in, it gives you a slightly different play experience. But it's nice and simple. It's got, you can play it very sort of nice and relaxed. Or you can play it where if you put a tile a certain way, there's no way that person can close off their city, and really, like screw them over in that respect and stuff. And so depending upon which lot of you marooned people on this island, you've got to get together for the board game, then you could have a different version of the game. And yeah, it just plays quick. I mean, might need a bit of a table or some kind of set of logs that we've chopped up. 

Becky  59:35  
Yeah, we can do that. We can do that. 

Adrian  59:37  
I mean, if we do a gaming table, do we get it so you can lift the top up? So you keep the game? Reeds back on the top and then you can eat dinner?

Becky  59:46  
As long as you don't put your cup on the top of the bamboo reeds. Because we're not... That's interesting. So you've gone for different moods to suit, and Rob, you've gone for different variation. You've gone for something that is going to be different every time, you've gone for something that can be.

Rob  1:00:03  
Versatile

Becky  1:00:04  
What about you Tambo?

Tambo  1:00:05  
It'll have to be Marvel Champions I think, because if you remove it for  four people you have nothing else to do so, four can play that aswell

Adrian  1:00:11  
Surely there's no way... there's no way you got your entire Marvel champions in the overhead storage space.

Tambo  1:00:17  
Always make room! Yeah, probably. And then if you start losing people because they're dying or you have to eat them or something, it's good as a solo play as well. So you've got your end game, so yeah,

Rob  1:00:30  
You know, I did that wrong.

Becky  1:00:36  
For me, I'm gonna go for Terraforming Mars, similar to you just because it's just so so varied every single time. Really.

Adrian  1:00:45  
To be fair, if you're stranded on a desert island, the game takes like four hours and feels like it's going on too long. So it might make make...

Tambo  1:00:54  
But youve got nothing else to do, so...

Adrian  1:00:56  
You've got nothing to do but to sit there and build an engine that should happen in an hour and takes four hours to build it

Becky  1:01:00  
And it might give you some ideas to Terraform the island, you know, so its educational?

Tambo  1:01:05  
I'm so sorry, I thought we were still on the coop part, so it had to be a coop game.

Becky  1:01:08  
Nah, you can choose anything

Tambo  1:01:10  
Terraforming Mars was a good shout

Becky  1:01:11  
Okay, well, I'll play Terraforming Mars with you when we're marooned. 

Adrian  1:01:14  
It's not that bad. 

Becky  1:01:16  
I love it. I've blown hot and cold with it again. The amount of hours I've spent on it. I feel like I should be better. But I think it's just so...

Rob  1:01:24  
Isn't that every boardgame?

Becky  1:01:25  
Yeah

Rob  1:01:26  
I'm exactly the same

Becky  1:01:28  
I just... depending on that startup hand, and that's where I realised that my, that is where I make the biggest mistakes is picking dodgy, making bad choices at the start. But depending on what corp you've gotten, what Prelude cards you've got, and the actual 10 cards in your hand, your game will just be utterly different every time and I just love that about it. And we're obviously gonna go for the big box special one with the the nice cubes, because they're very,

Rob  1:01:55  
Are you bringing your 3d printer?

Becky  1:01:58  
Maybe. We could get some nice little hexy you know, 3d...

Adrian  1:02:03  
I think I think we have done it. Because you could bring a 3d printer and play loads of different games

Rob  1:02:07  
And if you are on your own, you can print people to play with

Tambo  1:02:13  
Surely you could maybe just start building a ship as well very slowly 

Adrian  1:02:17  
If you've only got PLA will eventually melt

Becky  1:02:23  
I like who we've al chosen differently. So we're gonna have different desert island experiences

So now it's time for the penultimate turn. What are the things we're all looking forward to gaming or non gaming related? Anyone got anything particularly springing to mind?

Rob  1:02:44  
Well,  me and T, we have got I'm very excited to play this game again. Outer Rim, Star Wars Outer Rim. Loved it. The first time I played it. I didn't care that T had it. I went and was pricing it up. I was gonna buy this game. It's so goddamn good. It's it's combative when it has to be. But you can play the entire game without ever having a fight with another player. The thematic is is brilliantly done in the Star Wars universe. And I absolutely love it. So we're playing that Friday night, I believe

Tambo  1:03:19  
Yeah.

Rob  1:03:21  
And I cannot wait. Have you played it? 

Adrian  1:03:24  
No. It was one of those where I got warned off by a sort of load of mixed reviews when it first came out. And then saw the expansion come out. And it's sort of I don't know maybe the people who just weren't sold on it the first time were just obviously being quiet about it and the people who were enjoying joined it all the way through sort of were still talking about it and I was like 'ok I'm gonna give this a go now'

Rob  1:03:45  
If you're a Star Wars fan, well it doesn't matter if you're not a Star Wars fan. But if you are, if you are a Star Wars fan even better, isn't it? Yes. From the characters, even the ships. You know, we got there and T was showing me the ships and I was Oh, they've got the ghost. Yeah. From from Star Wars Rebels. And it's so thematically on point that if you enjoy Star Wars, you will love it if you don't enjoy Star Wars. The game is fantastic.

Becky  1:04:10  
You don't need to be invested in the IP?

Rob  1:04:13  
And you know, you're not an all powerful Jedi. You are a smuggler. You're a bounty hunter. And it's that element of you're trying to get famous. Yeah, basically. And it's brilliant, loved it loved every second of it. And the new expansion just brings an element to it that kind of tweaks. I think what most people didn't like about the game and just completely nullifies all their points. Yeah. So, so Yeah, can't wait for that on Friday.

Becky  1:04:43  
Yeah, Adrian. How about you? What are you got in the pipeline?

Adrian  1:04:47  
Nothing strangely. I think the next game day I currently have booked is in October. Wow. That's not that I won't play games. That's just I haven't got anything booked in the diary at the moment but I will absolutely get to more games before then for sure. So what I'll talk about is I had a taster to a Kickstarter that's arriving. So I've got the War Room coming. I think I've mentioned this a few times. It's basically Axis and Allies but sort of on a grander scale, there's more to it and all this kind of stuff.

Rob  1:05:17  
You were talking about this with the paddles?

Adrian  1:05:18  
Yes! So long story short is it's produced in China, as most board games are, because it's set in World War Two and has the original Chinese flag in it, they won't print the flags to go on the like to do the original official, like original World War two flags. So they print it in America, the flags, that go on the board on stickers, and they've sent that out first, and then the rest of the game is coming later. So this morning, I received my China stickers for the Chinese nations. And then some point in the next sort of, hopefully a month, according to the last update, I will get the War Room. So there you go, I'm looking forward to that. I think it will be good, it's probably gonna be a while till I get to the table because again, it's like an eight hour sort of ...

Becky  1:06:01  
Like a Twilight Imperium or... 

Adrian  1:06:03  
Sort of yeah, slog it out. If anyone's played Axis and Allies, I've don't think I've seen a game of that go under six hours, without one side just completely steamrollering the other. It's a bit, it's gonna be a big old beast of a game, I will get to table at some point. But for now, I'm just looking forward to getting it and getting to open it all. And so when I received this little pack of stickers, were just like, Oh, these are fun. It reminded me that the rest of the game was on the way, nice little teaser you don't normally get that do you? Normally like turns up two years late and you kind of go Oh, cool. I forgot about this. But no, I got a little sort of teaser package through the post of this.

Becky  1:06:37  
Are you tempted to put little tiny flags on things around the house?

Adrian  1:06:40  
No, because they literally give you just enough stickers to do everything.

Rob  1:06:46  
That sounds like a lot of pressure.

Adrian  1:06:48  
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, most of them are square or circular. It's not like when I did like the Great Wall, where like the archers had their arms sticking along the little wooden arm on the meeple and then you had the bow that you had to kind of line up as well. And I was like, wow, I was literally there like sweating with tweezers being like, Okay, I think I've got this in the right place should stick it down and then be like, Nope, okay, get the tweezers pull it back up again.

Rob  1:07:11  
The only part I found stressful about Lego, trying to put the damn stickers on straight.

Adrian  1:07:16  
The number of times I've like got a little bit of like lint or whatever stuck behind one of those stickers. And it doesn't matter where you are in the room. You can see it on your Lego kit because you know it's there, anyway different geeky side... is is that kind of pressure that you can feel on it.

Becky  1:07:33  
T, what are you looking forward to

Tambo  1:07:35  
Friday night? I've got Perseverance. Second episode tomorrow with JP and Kerley. Really enjoying it is definitely Mindclash, it's like 'ughhh, mind explodes' with this extra campaign were going on is another section to think about which just again, it's like... you enjoyed the first episode, didn't you? Ish.

Rob  1:07:54  
I enjoyed it. I didn't love it. But I did enjoy it. If that makes sense. 

Tambo  1:07:58  
Yeah, that's the, the campaign...

Rob  1:07:59  
My brain my brain hurts. Big euros aren't my thing. That's where I found out that big euros aren't my thing.

Tambo  1:08:08  
I really enjoyed them. I'm not very good at them. But I've enjoyed. 

Adrian  1:08:11  
Is it episode one twice. Then Episode Two twice, or is it  episode one, episode two, episode one, episode two?

Tambo  1:08:15  
Sorry, I'm not saying it ... No, it's episode one twice in the second part of the Chronicles. Yeah, it's not Episode Two yet. Its the same part of the. It's actually the third time playing because JP actually mucked up our first,  which is brilliant. So glad he did. Because we were playing it three player on a four player side. Absolutely messed everything out, and Kerley, and JP absolutely rinsed it and I was left way behind. I was really grumpy. I was like, No, don't play four more games of this. I'm just so far behind already. And then I came in on the next one, the event, and he was like 'I've mucked up, We played the wrong side of the board'. And then as a mutual decision, we will... well I was well-up for playing it again. It was much... we decided that we just yeah, we played again. And it's much better because we're now all quite evenly close. It's quite good.

Rob  1:08:15  
So it suited you better?

Tambo  1:08:20  
I'd have struggled to get through those four games if I was falling so far... And so you go behind so far once, and I was like 3 glory, and they were on 12 and 13 in one game.

Becky  1:09:10  
That the trouble with Legacy, isn't it? If you start on a bit of a downer, you know that you've got another however many weeks to have to you know, stomp through it.

Tambo  1:09:20  
It's quite ironic because JP was over my game, I had the first game, because he was like not doing too well. But then he went in the actual episode and actually got him back up. So yeah, it's good. Yeah, it was really good. And it was so close. So yeah, looking forward to that. I'm really enjoying it now.

Becky  1:09:34  
So I'm looking forward to eventually playing Zuuli, so this came about because I was listening to the last episode with JP and Adam Richards from Punchboard.co.uk. And as soon as he mentioned Zuuli my little ears pricked right up and then JP was saying, I think Becky's gonna like this. And I thought, JP, you're you're not wrong.

Rob  1:09:53  
He said you were already ordering.

Becky  1:09:55  
I mean, and it turns out he was right. Yeah, I mean, you know, yes. Okay, so when I googled it and saw the box, I remembered seeing it in the UKGE, I think 

Rob  1:10:06  
the one game you didn't buy? 

Becky  1:10:07  
Well, there's got to be one isn't there? Come on. I was put off a bit, to be honest by the very lovely, but quite childlike artwork. And I guess I assumed it was just for kids. I mean the artwork is beautiful, but it's the kind of pictures you'd imagine seeing on a little person's pyjamas or something. You know, like a little lion that's cartoonish. It's very beautiful, but it is quite child like, but then when Adam described it as like Ark Nova without the fuss or something like that. And I was like, Yeah, I want to give that a go. And he just been, you know, telling me exactly how he felt about Spirit Island. And I was like, this guy, I'm, I'm on level with this guy. I know exactly what it means because I felt exactly the same. And I thought, Well, if he's saying Zuuli is good, then then I'm doing it.

Adrian  1:10:53  
You are salesman's dream.

Becky  1:10:54  
I know I know.

Adrian  1:10:57  
Times I've said to you, you can borrow this game if you want to. And you're like, don't worry about it. I've ordered it.

Becky  1:11:02  
I don't like borrowing stuff, because I'm worried that I might break it because I'm incredibly clumsy. Incredibly clumsy. So I, I feel the pressure when I'm playing with someone else's stuff. And also, I don't like having to be beholden to someone else for when I want to do a thing, so you know, not that... I'm sure you would be happy to lend something out whenever but if I decide at three in the morning, I really want to play Bandido with my friend. I don't want to have  to knock at your front door. So yeah, no, exactly. Kerley did taken persuading, because I showed him a picture. And he was like, 'ughhh', his little face... And I was like 'you just said on a previous podcast that you weren't snobbish about games. So'

Adrian  1:11:40  
Let me tell you at one hour and...

Becky  1:11:44  
Because I do the transcripts. I know you said that because because it was typed. So there we go. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. Unfortunately, it should have already been in my hot little hand. But I don't know what the Postal Service is doing. 

Adrian  1:11:59  
Striking

Becky  1:11:59  
Well. Not today. It should have arrived on Monday.

Adrian  1:12:03  
Yeah, they striked last week?

Tambo  1:12:04  
Yeah, I got my delivery.

Becky  1:12:06  
Well, stuff arrived. But that didn't arrive. So... I'm fine with strikes.

Rob  1:12:11  
It's not like you haven't got enough to get you through.

Becky  1:12:13  
That's not the point!

Tambo  1:12:13  
I think you're gonna be ok

Becky  1:12:17  
I did also buy an Anomia and Bandido. They were like seven quid

Rob  1:12:24  
Do you need to speak to somebody?

Adrian  1:12:26  
There's a Facebook group about addicts for buying board games. And I think you can recommend that some people join.

Becky  1:12:34  
Well, like I say, Anomia was seven quid or something. 

Rob  1:12:38  
But when Kerley's telling you to slow down. That's quite an endorsement

Becky  1:12:42  
Doesn't mean I have to listen to him, does it? My justification is and I've always got one. So that's good is, at work at the minute we're having to do a lot more night shifts. And things like Cockroach poker, Bandido, or Anomia are going to be amazing for night shift at two in the morning. That is my rationale. That is my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Rob  1:13:02  
I'm not sure how much I believe you. But well, fair enough.

Becky  1:13:05  
There we go. So it comes round to the final turn. Like the end of most good games, the final turn is upon us. And because it's a co op, there aren't any victory points to award and we didn't work out who the hidden traitor was. But we want to thank you all for listening anyway. If you enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and review on your podcast player of choice and send us your questions to answer on a future episode. You can contact up by sending us an email at players@whoseturn.co.uk , or you can go to our Facebook page at Whose Turn Is It Anyway Podcast, on our Instagram @whoseturnpodcast , and Tiktok @whoseturnisitanyway . We'll be back again in two weeks with another episode so until then... Whose turn is it?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai