Funkatronic Rex - Games & More
For those of you who are not familiar with Funkatronic Rex, we are a friendly local game store located in Phoenix, AZ. However, we are quite unique.
We tend to be the goofy, gregarious, and non-grindy gaming geeks of the community.
With a humble staff of 4 friends, we love our customers dearly and many of them are like family to us. Our social interactions and goal of a warm "Cheers" style vibe has a direct effect on our niche community.
As with any community, we have an abundance of hilarious stories and insight.
Our aim is to bring you in, share the vibe, and bring the love of the Funk to you in our podcast!
We hope you enjoy!
https://funkatronicrex.com/
http://www.patreon.com/funkatronicrex
http://www.instagram.com/funkatronicrexstore
Funkatronic Rex - Games & More
Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 11 Tangential Thoughts
🎙 Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 11 — Tangential Thoughts
Buckle up — this week’s episode lives up to its title as Chris and Paul take the scenic route through games, movies, snacks, and all things geek culture.
We kick off with Spider-Man talk: memes, multiverses, and Tom Holland’s adventures both on-screen and (maybe) in Holland. From there, the tangents swing fast — how Spider-Man’s webs could (or couldn’t) work in Phoenix, Costco hot dogs and churros, and why filled versus unfilled churros might just be the debate of the decade.
Eventually, the conversation loops back to the table with a dive into Marvel Champions’ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. expansion. The guys unpack heroes like Maria Hill and Nick Fury, encounters with villains from Black Widow to Batroc the Leaper, and what it’s like to run Magneto as an omega-level mutant hero. They also swap thoughts on Ant-Man, Thor: Love and Thunder, and how the MCU sometimes lands—and sometimes drifts into camp.
On the home front, the episode meanders through parenting and games: kids rolling hot dice in Yahtzee, afternoon blackjack lessons, and whether luck counts as a superpower. Chess even makes an appearance, along with memories of beat-up family sets, summer camps, and the eternal debate of pulling punches (or not) when playing against kids.
Things wrap up with a thoughtful look at player archetypes and the social contract of gaming. Whether you’re a Timmy smashing with big plays, a Johnny chasing combos, or a Spike sharpening your deck for competition, the crew reminds us that the real goal is fun, shared stories, and those unforgettable moments when a game does exactly what it’s meant to do.
It’s equal parts gaming podcast, comedy show, and food review — but that’s Funkatronic Rex at its finest.
Yeah, as long as hands, like hands, as long as it's not too hot or loud in your uh ear holes. What the hell is this episode?
SPEAKER_00:Traveling to another dimension. A dimension not only of plastic and paint, but of games. A journey into a wondrous land where meeples become real and cutboard cuts like a knife. That's a sign post up ahead of your next step. The function.
SPEAKER_04:Wait. That's right. And then because then we played it and then we talked about it.
SPEAKER_08:Can we talk about Marvel Champions from Wait, should we get started?
SPEAKER_04:What the hell? Well, we're just gonna figure out what the hell we're gonna talk about.
SPEAKER_07:Welcome to the Funkadronic Rex Podcast. I'm your host, Chris, and with me as always is Hey everybody, I'm Paul. Wait, I'm Chris. You're Paul.
SPEAKER_04:Spider-Man Point. Oh my gosh. But uh I loved the fact that they did that meme in the movie. Yeah. I because uh when we saw that, you know, the kid and the wife looked at me and they're like, oh, that was funny. But I'm laughing. Yeah. Like you got it. Because I got it. And many people in the then they're like I think almost everybody got it.
SPEAKER_08:That meme was pretty pervasive.
SPEAKER_04:And uh I do think the wife told me it's like like like tell me afterwards. Like very good. Don't interrupt the movie now. Like, why were you laughing so hard? So I showed her the meme and she's like okay. That's funny. That is that's awesome.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, it was good that they added that. I uh I don't know how to feel about how long it's been since since the the last movie came out, and we haven't still haven't gotten to the third one. Like everyone's complaint about the second one was that it ended on a cliffhanger.
SPEAKER_04:Wait, wait, okay, Spider-Man? Yeah?
SPEAKER_08:Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, across the Spider-Verse, and Oh, there's the animated ones, the Spider-Verse ones. Yeah. Uh wait, which one are you talking about?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I was talking about because in the they didn't they did that in the Oh, in the live action movie. In the live action movie as well. Because it's obviously awesome when they had Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and why am I forgetting his name? It was right on the tip of my tongue. Steve Buscemi. Yeah, Steve Buscemi played the old Spider-Man. Now that's a movie.
SPEAKER_07:Tom Holland.
SPEAKER_04:Tom Holland. So they have the three Spider-Mans in that in the lab, and they're all like, uh-uh-uh-uh, right? And that's you're right, but they did that in the animated one as well.
SPEAKER_08:The animated one was like straight up the it was uh Oscar Isaac's Spider-Man character, like just portals into the the 60s cartoon.
SPEAKER_04:Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_08:In that scene.
SPEAKER_04:In that moment. Yes, yes. No, I was referencing the live action one because I was like, there is another Spider-Man, Tom Holland, coming out eventually.
SPEAKER_08:Maybe right? I think I mean I don't I don't know, man. That's such a cash cow, and the kid's young. Yeah. And it makes him so much like that that kid's gonna make one more Spider-Man movie and then be able to retire for the rest of his life. You probably won't because the kid's super talented.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, I right, right. I hope he doesn't, because that kid can like, yes, like uh but don't don't don't cast him in everything. Like let other actors, that's you know, one of the things that gets me sometimes is you're watching these uh great actors come around and you're like, um, oh, you know, you were great in this role, that's awesome, but then we're gonna recast you in another superhero movie, and they're gonna be in superhero movie two, and then well he already did that.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, he was in the Uncharted movie. Well, Uncharted is done a he's done a couple of like action movies that are right.
SPEAKER_04:I mean Uncharted action-y, yeah, Spider-Man adjacent, right? What is it?
SPEAKER_08:I'm sorry, his character was Spider-Man Adjacent.
SPEAKER_03:Right, right.
SPEAKER_08:Um I don't know. I I think he's I think he's fantastic, and I think that it'll be fun. And um because there's gonna be a I I think he said after the third movie that he was like done with Spider-Man for a bit. But also I know well, I don't know, no, but I'm I'm pretty sure he's coming back for Secret Wars and Doomsday.
SPEAKER_04:Right, because that's the next big thing in the Marvel universe. Correct. But I swear, I thought I read because it's uh because the Tom Holland ones were all like No Way Home, uh, you know, Homecoming, blah blah blah, some Far from Home. Far from Home and No Way Home.
SPEAKER_07:No Way Home.
SPEAKER_04:And then there is another, I can't remember, but it's another home reference movie. Something like that, because that's their theme for this one.
SPEAKER_07:Homecoming.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's not coming. No, Homecoming was the first one. That was the first one. Home Away from Home. Home Away from Home.
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_08:Uh Home is Where the Heart is.
SPEAKER_04:Homeward bound. There you go.
SPEAKER_08:Homeward bound. And it's just gonna be him lost in the woods for like the entire movie, and then he comes home and Zendea is just like sobbing. Sobbing. And the entire audience is sobbing.
SPEAKER_04:Well, actually, Homeward Bound, it's gonna be him and another three superheroes are lost in the wilderness. Yeah, the three smart. They're all lost in the wilderness, and they all have to work together to make their way home to New York. Correct. And they're stuck in Holland or something like that. Tom Holland in Holland. Tom Holland in Holland. Oh, that's a movie.
SPEAKER_08:He's never heard that joke before.
SPEAKER_04:That's a TV show right there. Tom Holland and Tom Holland's Adventures in Holland. Oh my gosh, we were making this joke the other day. Like, Spider-Man, uh, what are the things that uh uh I think we talked about a little bit in the uh we talked about the X-Men cover where we were like, what the heck is this? He's holding a bazooka. Like, what is this trap he's attached to? Like Spider-Man just shoots his webs out, right? Pew, pew, pew. Like in New York, you kind of assume you hit things. But then if uh maybe not, like you're just shooting that straight in the air, bro. Like suspension of disbelief a little bit. And I'd love the fact it connects to the clouds, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Right.
SPEAKER_04:It's my sky hook to the clouds. Oh my gosh. Well, though we were looking at the joke, like, so what does he do? He's like, well, it just he just shoots his webs and they attach to anything. Yeah. And everything. There's always a building around somewhere. Yeah, it's always high enough. It's always high enough.
SPEAKER_08:You don't need to know, but the moment that's why Spider-Man never has a comic placed in Phoenix.
SPEAKER_04:Right. Any place that isn't a dense metropolis.
SPEAKER_08:No tall buildings.
SPEAKER_04:Well, then it could be, it would be just downtown. Like it would be alright.
SPEAKER_08:Right, it would be like a five-city block.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_04:It's the entire building. What is it? The old Patriots Park, which is now uh uh whatever the name of that like two block uh shopping district is. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, with the stand-up comedy live. But it would be that's all it would be. It would just be those that that yeah, that entire space. One movie in Cityscape. That's it. The entire movie would be set in Cityscape. He'd like jump off, stand off live, and go to the Walgreens and you know, beat up a homeless person and then like have to run. He's just in a Costco. He's just the whole time. That's the only place. They are big enough. They are big enough to shoot webs up there. It's like, what is he attached to? Sir, that's not safe. Please don't shoot your website into the two-story high uh sofa storage. You can still get a hot dog and a drink for two dollars! That's right, but no more churo. All right. That is the one thing. Okay, not the one thing. If, you know, this is the this is apparently the tangent show, which is gonna be awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:The thing I apologize in advance.
SPEAKER_04:That's right. No, we're it's it's gonna be awesome. Uh the Costco Churro was one of the like things that brought me joy. Not gonna lie. Like, oh yeah. Going to Costco. Dude, they were one like okay, the place next door, the taco shop next door to us, just in case anybody is wondering in listening land, I think it's called Taco Dia. It's gone through the Mexican restaurant next door to the Funcatronic Rex. We are an actual physical store.
SPEAKER_08:I keep forgetting that place is supposed to be a Mexican place.
SPEAKER_02:It is, it's it is Mexican adjacent.
SPEAKER_04:It's fine. It's fine. Um, but they have Mexican fusion. Right. It's Mexican plus Latin. Wait, what? Isn't that this I don't know. Isn't the same thing? But their churros are great. And I thought the Costco churros were awesome. Now, I don't know about you, Paul, but I have a sweet tooth. I do love the tasty, sweet, delicious dessert things. I'm sweet enough. No, you're sweet and low, bro. Come on now. Uh, you know, I wouldn't that's enough. That's enough.
unknown:That's enough.
SPEAKER_04:Enough of that sugary saccharine goodness. But I was so uh I would go to Costco whenever we do the trip. I'd be like, I can't wait to get a get a churro, man. Like, I want to pick up. I don't care what I'm getting at Costco, I'm getting wiper blades, uh, like a six-pack of vodka. And a churro. Like, that's it. And the guy's just like, that is a uh like the like the checkout guys, he'd be like, right, dude, good choice. You know?
SPEAKER_08:I can't go into Costco and not come out with a cart full of stuff.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, that's that's the thing. You bite and buy. Just stuff. And uh, I was so sad. So I went there with a kid and we did the stuff, and we did our little you eat lunch at Costco by eating all the samples. Yeah, oh that's good. Oh, we can come back for that one. That was oh, that's good. And then I get up.
SPEAKER_08:Dude, right?
SPEAKER_04:What's that? Oh, it's$2.99, whatever. He gets his hot dog because he loves the hot dogs, and I'm like, I'd like a church.
SPEAKER_07:But the hot dogs aren't as good as they used to be.
SPEAKER_02:They're they're still the same.
SPEAKER_08:No, they're not. Did they change from They used to be Hebrew Nationals? Yeah. And that now they're the Kirkland brand. And ever since they switched, they're not as good. Okay, I haven't had a hot dog there in forever, admittedly, but it's been that way for I think ten years.
SPEAKER_04:No, yeah, it hasn't been ten years. Because I've seen the signs of them using.
SPEAKER_08:I don't think your your kids ever like had a real Costco hot dog.
unknown:What?
SPEAKER_08:Ladies and gentlemen, my mind just exploded a little bit there.
SPEAKER_02:Dang it, really?
SPEAKER_08:It's the same size.
SPEAKER_04:What's okay? Let's just be honest.
SPEAKER_08:It's probably But it doesn't taste the same. It tastes like a cheap hot dog instead of the Hebrew national all beef deliciousness. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Uh no way. Or maybe I'm thinking of the Hausian days of youth, where they always had like the Hebrew national sign, and those are the hot dogs I would always get because they are. I mean, if you're gonna get tube meat, that's delicious tube meat right there. It's good stuff. It's good. Uh well shish kebab. Well, that's another thing to go to Marek Coshko!
SPEAKER_08:So let me ask you this for churros. Filling, no flint filling? What kind of filling, if so? Ooh.
SPEAKER_04:Well, the place next door has the it's like uh that caramel, it's like a chocolate caramel almost a nougat. Yeah, I don't I want to say it's like dulce de leche, whatever, but I don't think that's the right term. Dulce de leche? Dulce de leche, delicious leche.
SPEAKER_08:Listen, I am fluent in Spanish. Ask Mike. Everyone come into the shop, find Mike, and ask them, is Paul fluent in Spanish? Actually, don't even ask him. Just say, hey, hey, Paul is fluent in Spanish. Right. And he'll he'll he'll agree with you. He knows.
SPEAKER_05:He gets you back. He knows you know español.
SPEAKER_08:He knows.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, you know all the español.
SPEAKER_08:Yo, hablo español.
SPEAKER_05:Uno momento. Hablo español.
SPEAKER_08:Webn E2.
SPEAKER_04:C what? Gracias. Cherro. Your eyes are closed. Uh I see. Oh my gosh. Uh I don't mind either way. I am a a churro. If it is a deep fried dough that's been rolled in brown sugar or sugar and cinnamon, uh, I'm probably gonna just eat the heck out of it. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_08:So if it's filled. So you're wrong.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. No, I'm not. You're right.
SPEAKER_08:It's gotta be not filled. No, no. The filled ones just ruin it. It takes away from the purity that is the deep fried dough stick rolled in cinnamon sugar.
SPEAKER_04:Now, if I have a choice, like it depends on how I'm feeling. I will usually lean to I'm like a 60-40. Like, I'll usually get the unfilled, but sometimes I want a little extra.
SPEAKER_02:A little, little, little rail.
SPEAKER_04:So sometimes you're wrong. Got it. Most of the time I'm right. But sometimes I'm wrong. It's like donuts. Filled donuts could be can be also too much. No, it's too much, man. Well, it depends. It's too mucho.
SPEAKER_02:It is not too much. It's too mucho.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, I was about to roll into German, even though I don't know German no more. Nine! That's it's nine! Wait, I don't know.
SPEAKER_08:When someone speaks a foreign language. I know, I know one word in German, and that's the number nine.
SPEAKER_04:What do you what number?
SPEAKER_08:Nine. No, that's not a number.
SPEAKER_04:What number?
SPEAKER_08:What? Who's on first?
SPEAKER_02:I learned all my German from Indiana Jones.
SPEAKER_08:This is the board game and tabletop hobby podcast, if you didn't know.
SPEAKER_02:Legends gentlemen, welcome.
SPEAKER_04:We're talking about everything but gaming. Come on. Everybody loves a good sugary snack while playing a game, right? So you get your fingers covered in the churro stuff, and then you reach out and you touch the game, and your friend who just put all them in sleeves is like. If you touch my cards with those churro covered fingers.
SPEAKER_02:Why do my cards look like they've been covered in napalm death orange stuff?
SPEAKER_04:Who ate the Cheetos? Oh my gosh. Well, speaking of podcasts, so uh Cheetos!
SPEAKER_02:I wanna do Hey, my dagger's an orcslag dagger, or whatever it was, right?
SPEAKER_08:I got an ogre slang knife. It's got a plus nine against ogres!
SPEAKER_04:Yes, I attacked the darkness.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, you can introduce yourself now.
SPEAKER_04:Alright, so my kid has actually found the podcast. It says you have gray eyes. No, well, I changed them. I wanted a blue eyes. You can't do that right now.
SPEAKER_08:We've already made this reference and told people to go watch it.
SPEAKER_04:That's it.
SPEAKER_08:That's right.
SPEAKER_04:That's it.
SPEAKER_08:That's right. That's it. Title of the episode.
SPEAKER_04:Tom Holland and Holland. The churro. That's right. They'd be like, uh, don't you want to be in Espanol or Portugal? Like, no, I want the Holland churros.
SPEAKER_08:All right. So, anyway, so we got interrupted, and now we're going to move on to actual on topic things, which we I don't think we have a topic this week. We have no topic. So we'll just talk about whatever we want. La policia!
SPEAKER_02:La policia!
SPEAKER_08:Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_04:They're gonna come in and arrest us for doing a podcast not on gaming. All right. They're gonna be like, what are you guys talking about? Churros and Tom Holland, you're under arrest.
SPEAKER_08:So we got interrupted again. Um yeah, I mean, uh, I haven't had again, my my life's been crazy. Uh, I posted on the Discord that uh things are starting to chill out a little bit. Um good. I did play some Marvel Champions. I had a chance to play that on Friday. We started the new Agents of Shield.
SPEAKER_04:Right. So that's the newest box. Now it's a it's not a character pack, but it's a new box with like bosses.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, it's a uh it's a big box expansion. It comes with two heroes, and it comes with I think it's five villains that create a campaign story arc. Um, so that this one's interesting. There's there's some secret stuff going on. There's some like clue adjacent mechanics where you're trying to like figure out which uh shield board member is the the double agent. Um and like the name of the last villain is all blocked out in the rule book. So unless you sleeve the cards like an idiot, then uh unless you go through all the cards and beat them on who it's gonna be. So it's it's really interesting so far. Um, of course, we're playing neither of the two new heroes, which is Nick Fury and Maria Hill. Right. Supposedly, allegedly, Nick Fury is very disappointing, and Maria Hill is busted. Like just way too strong.
SPEAKER_04:You and Q have talked about like this guy, you know, in this box, this guy is okay, and this character's okay, but this character is busted. And then this box, this character's alright, but this character is busted. Right. So they've at least they're uh you know consistent.
SPEAKER_08:Q's been wanting to go back and play one of his favorite heroes. Uh so he did that. He's he's finally playing Black Widow again. Nice.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's in the theme, at least, right?
SPEAKER_08:You got a little shield. The very first villain that you fight is Black Widow.
unknown:Oh.
SPEAKER_08:So we had Black Widow be Black Widow. It's uh Yelena Bolova is the Black Widow you fight against, and of course, Natasha Romanoff uh is the hero version. So it is two different characters, right? Both named Black Widow. Um, the Black Widow fight was really disappointing. It was fine, it was a good solid, like introductory fight.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:Um, but the fight was to be fair. To be fair, our two heroes kind of broke the the scenario. So what two heroes her mechanic is whenever you attack her, she can like trick you.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_08:So she's trying to like dissuade you from attacking. So we just never attacked her. We just did indirect damage to her the whole time. Uh, I'm playing. We we made a joke about um the shield is in trouble. They're having this issue, so they call in uh the black widow and an omega level mutant. I am playing Magneto for the first time.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, when two worlds collide. That's alright, interesting combo. All right.
SPEAKER_08:Um I I've been wanting to play Magneto his mechanically, he's like everything that he he was doing seemed really fun and interesting to me. And it is, he is an omega-level mute. He's very strong.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. Bonkers broken, or just like if you obviously if you get the right cards in the right order.
SPEAKER_08:Strange levels broken. Okay. He's more Captain America levels broken, where he's just generically good at everything. So I'm and to be fair, I also built him as leadership, which is how he comes in the box. Um, but I wanted to kind of like try him out and uh get him on the table. And get him on the table. And so so I am I'm playing him as leadership, and leadership is the the strongest of the four aspects as well. So or five aspects. Right. So uh so yeah, it's been wildly it's been fun. We we did two scenarios and uh Magneto is is a ton of fun to play, and Black Widow is just silly because she does she does nothing except sets up all these plans, puts all these plans in motion, and then all these things trigger. Um so we're we're just kind of like steamrolling through the first couple scenarios.
SPEAKER_04:So well who are the uh so who's the who are the villains in this? Because it's I assume it's shield themed. Is it like crossbones and hydra stuff?
SPEAKER_08:Crossbones was in one of the first campaigns. Yeah. So he's not in this one. That yeah. That being said, that means nothing because I think one of the villains in this campaign was also in a different campaign. But we're fighting against so far, we've fought against Black Widow, uh Gilida Beloba.
SPEAKER_04:Right, aka White Widow, aka the new widow, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:Correct. Yeah, and then um we fought against the second one, was Batrock the Leaper.
SPEAKER_02:Who? What the what? Okay.
SPEAKER_04:You don't know who that was. I do not know Batrock the Leaper is. So Batrock is. I don't know how to Batrack my what?
SPEAKER_08:He he's an older villain, but he was featured in the MCU. So in Captain America Civil War. Uh-huh. No, not Civil War, excuse me. Captain America First Avenger. No, it was Civil War. At the beginning of Civil War, there's he he invades the boat with Black Widow. Yeah. And they he fight has that really cool fight scene with the dude that does like all the flippy flips.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Is that?
SPEAKER_08:That's Batrock. That's the MCU version of Batrock.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_08:So Batrock is just this super agile French dude.
SPEAKER_04:It's not like I haven't watched these movies so many times. Now I'm just trying to place it.
SPEAKER_08:When Black Widow and Captain America jumps out of the the plane.
SPEAKER_04:I don't think he has a well, he might have a mask.
SPEAKER_08:No. Yeah, that was crossbones. The Batrock in the movie had like no skill, look, no special tech or anything. He just had a pistol, and then he like immediately is like, Oh, I can take Captain America on. He throws his pistol aside, and they they start fighting, and Captain America's throwing the shield, and he's like jumping over it. Yeah. Um, it was a super cool fight. It was one of the best fight scenes we'd we had or in the early MCU. Um so in the first Captain America or Civil War? This was in Civil War for sure. God they jump out of the plane. Um somebody says something, and Captain America's like, there's there's only one god or something. I think he says it to Black Widow and then like jumps out of the plane, and uh they land on the boat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you. Mr. Maglaza, in for the visual references. Oh gosh. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_08:So, anyway, so that's the second villain. Okay. I know who the third villain is. Um don't spoil it because people listen. I mean I've already spoiled it.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, you should have had it.
SPEAKER_08:Like, yeah, his costume, his costume is legit. Uh the third villain is Modoc. Oh, okay. Also featured in the MCU very well.
SPEAKER_04:I haven't, we have not gotten to that movie because I keep like it's one of those movies like I want to watch it because I love Paul Rudd. Like Ant Man, I think his Ant-Man, much like uh uh Iron Man and uh God, why am I bad with names as well?
SPEAKER_08:Ant-Man is the epitome of what almost everybody hates about the MCU now. I love the Ant-Man movies because it's nothing but comedy and quips.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_08:And and a lot of people don't like that the MCU shifted to just quips. Well, I would uh all quips all the time. I would say for me, I love the Ant-Man movies.
SPEAKER_04:I think they're great because I think they're still comic book, but they are kind of the comic book feel of we're not gonna take ourselves too seriously. Correct. We're not we're not pushing into camp, which is a movie that there's the the uh the movie that I'll talk about in a second, right?
SPEAKER_08:That to me And it's not all Sky Beams, the earth is doomed.
SPEAKER_04:Right, right. It's like listen, these guys are superhero, kind of, and his backstory is great. And you know, I think their approach to those movies was really good. The first one was great, second one I think was good, not great, and the all the unfortunately, all the I thought the the second one was great. The m the the rumor mill, the scuttle butt of the movie third movie, quantum. The third movie is the weakest of the three. By a wide margin. Everybody was like, I don't know if you wanna uh you know, it's like uh if you really are a fan of Ant-Man, go see it. Paul Paul Rudd was great.
SPEAKER_08:Well, huge fan. Usually is um you know that's about where it ends, though.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Right, right.
SPEAKER_08:Um now here's now for me was done real bad.
unknown:It was amusing for that.
SPEAKER_08:Right. Um now that movie I liked the bat the background that they did for him.
SPEAKER_04:I thought that was cute, but now okay, did Quantumania come out before or after Thor Love and Thunder? Dude, I think it was after. Was it after? It was around the same time. Give and take. My when Love and Thunder came out, I was watching this, and to me, that uh has gone into what I call the camp area of the comics to me. I did not I thought it was okay. I did not think it was a it was real disappointing. It was a good version of that story.
SPEAKER_08:Um it had funny moments, um, but they it it it really felt like the like Disney said, hey, everyone loved Ragnarok, do it again. And Tycho White T D is like, I mean, I guess I how much are you gonna pay me? Sure, I'll do it again. Right, and so he just cashed in the check. Yeah, yeah. There there obviously a lot of talented people worked really hard on that movie, and you could tell that there was a lot of love put into it, but overall it was a very weak story and in telling comparatively to what we had previously.
SPEAKER_04:Right. Because I mean, the when I heard that it was gonna be uh Gore, the I think Gore the God Killer, that comic book run, if anybody's uh you know curious about that stuff, I want to say it's Mighty Thor, the comic book run written by Aaron not Aaron Judge, Aaron something, dang it. Names tomorrow names this morning are hard for me for some reason. Um uh not Hank Aaron either. Uh that run of the Gore the God butcher or god killer. God butcher, that's it. The art is fantastic, the style of art is great in that. The story of how Thor gets messed up, like he's a god, but he still gets messed up. Like it is again. How does he get around it? How does he work through it? And how do you mess with a god? Well, this is how. And it I thought the story arc was like again, great. Yeah, I would highly recommend if you if you like Marvel and if you like the Asgardian stuff and Thor, go check it out, go find it. I think it's in the collected paperback um graphic novels, the collections of it. Uh go pick it up. So I saw like the preview of Christian Bale playing that. I'm like, yeah, oh, this could be And he was he was wonderful the movie. He was fantastic. This could be a uh Well, not But his character was written poorly, right?
SPEAKER_08:Right, right, right, right. Gore the God put butcher butchers two gods. Right, I think. Right. Maybe or was it one?
SPEAKER_04:No, he does the first one at the beginning, like when he gets his stuff, and then maybe a second one. Yeah, it was that's how remember how memorable that movie is. Now the thing is, is like the crazy thing is, is is in the storyline, he kit starts killing all these gods. Right. And a god shows up to Thor and be like, bro, we like like we need your help. And he's like, Who are you? And he's like, Well, I'm a god from this planet over here, and he's like, Wow, let's go check this out. Okay, like some like gods are people are losing their faith. They're gods. This is this is a problem. I should go do this. And he sees all these gods being like the aftermath of that, and how it affects people, and then he's uh continues on like how to fight gore, and it's it's hard, like holy crap. Uh, but also there's like the flashbacks. So there's a young Thor, the middle-aged Thor, and like Thor when he is Odin's son, like almost uh uh Ragnarok level, like like he's got the eye patch, he's old and early, and like broken, busted, powerful because he's old man Thor. So you see all these almost, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you see all these storylines and they start to come together, and you're like, oh, this is really delicious. And I was really hoping they would have done a little bit of that, you know, like and again, like you said, the writing, the storyline of that movie was camp. Let's how do we make Thor campy?
SPEAKER_08:And wasn't like the main fight like ended up just being a bunch of shg shadow monsters? Like they didn't even fight against Gore.
SPEAKER_04:Well, that was on the Shadow Planet, right? Right, which is that too, and he sends this stuff out, which I think was it was alright, because it's like, how do you fight something that's not there? Which is the interesting question. Now, this is also the movie that he went to Olymp Olympus and saw Zeus. Right. And all the gods.
SPEAKER_08:Like uh, what's his name? Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe played Zeus. I'm like, that was fantastic.
SPEAKER_04:That's all right.
SPEAKER_08:Right Russell Crowe was hilarious in that role.
SPEAKER_04:There's definitely, but it's like the level of they pushed the level of camp. To me, that's when you go.
SPEAKER_08:That's comic book camp. Felt very shark jumping.
SPEAKER_04:That's the uh Batman and that's the 60s Batman camp, which has a spot, like don't get me wrong, has a place to watch and enjoy. But I think the move the Marvel Cinematic Universe has set themselves up to be not that camp, but a little funny, a little humorous. Spider-Man is funny. Alright, sorry. So as we go along this thing, uh, however the heck we got on this delicious MCU tangent.
SPEAKER_08:I was playing Marvel Champions. Right, Marvel Champions, Ant Man. That was like the one game I got to play in a while. I have played.
SPEAKER_04:Yahtzee. In my time. Now, here's the crazy thing, right? It's kids out of school. Right. Summertime. I'm thinking, all right, kid, here's my plan. Mornings are for outside activities. Get off the screens, go play. I hope I don't know if hopefully I'm not repeating myself from a previous uh podcast or whatever, but you know, parental brain. No, we do that a lot. The parental brain repeats a lot of stuff, as we all know. Um, so I'm like, okay, the plan is before lunch. When you get up until lunch, go outside. For love of God, go ride your bike, go play with the kids. Mom's gonna be working. I'm gonna be ignoring you. I mean, doing my work. Go outside. It's an after lunch, come inside when it's napalm death hot out. Right. Then come and play. We can play some Minecraft board game. Like, whatever. Uh the Minecraft board game. The Minecraft board game, which is awesome, actually.
SPEAKER_08:Uh yeah, it's actually a really good game.
SPEAKER_04:It's kind of fun. Um and uh for what it is. Right. Uh, but sadly it's turned into he's like, hey dad. Hey dad, hey, uh dad, you wanna I'm like, dude, this this is the time for you to figure out what to do. Yeah right? How do you entertain yourself as an only child, which is a challenge? We're not here to necessarily entertain you all the time. Correct. We'll go out and do some errands and do this some stuff. And I'm like, go, go play. So I was like, fine. Let's play some games. You like games, Dad? I'm like, yes, but I also have a little, I have a I have a podcast to work on, and I've got other stuff to do. Let me let's let me get my stuff done. Yeah. So in the afternoons we can roll over and do some stuff. So I played Yahtzee.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, Luke's been super into uh chess. Yeah. We've been he's been playing a bunch of chess with mom. He he plays a couple games with me, but he doesn't want to usually because I you know crush him.
SPEAKER_03:Um I must crush you.
SPEAKER_08:I'm not good at chess too. Like this is not me saying I'm uh you know rated. I don't I'm not even rated. Um but you're overrated, Paul. No, but but I do I you know I did play chess in high school and I uh enjoy it from time to time, but like I am not good. Right. Uh but but I'm better than a nine-year-old.
SPEAKER_04:So uh I mean I hope so.
SPEAKER_08:So he gets mad, and and and also I don't pull my punches. Right. So uh he gets mad because he can't beat me. So but but what's cool is I found I was sitting in the line for the for the pharmacy, because that's what we do as old people. Yep. Um we hang out, we go to the drugstore. And I was I look up and it said there was a sign in the parking lot that said, no chess tournament parking. I'm like, what? Okay. Turns out there's a chess club right there on Union Hills and 7th Street. So uh, and they do summer camps. So we're see we're thinking about signing him up for that and letting him letting him get rated and get trained so that he he'll be better at chess than me. And uh then I'll consistently lose at chess to both my baby brother and him, and uh, you know. Then you can table flip. I'll I'll just feel really bad about myself all the time.
SPEAKER_04:That reminds me of my childhood. Yeah. I still have the chess set. I don't know how it survived, but the chess set that my brother and I played with my dad made in the gosh, oh my gosh, made in the 60s. It looks like Roman, it's like a Roman Empire chess set, right? Now, how often do you think about it? How often? Not very often. There's like five people that got that joke.
SPEAKER_05:I don't know. I don't okay, we'll come back to that.
SPEAKER_08:No, we don't need to. No, uh it's it's a bad thing from TikTok. I don't know, TikTok. Yeah, don't bad.
SPEAKER_04:Uh so I still have it, and of course, it is broken to not to smithereens, but like all the pawns, they would have their shields and swords. None of them have their swords anymore. Like the queen is like one arm, looks like the Venus de Milo. Nice, uh, all that stuff, and it is beat up. Uh, and I I like kept it.
SPEAKER_08:But it sounds like it's a nice chess set, though.
SPEAKER_04:It's kind of nice. Well, it's kind of nice. It's not great, but it's kind of nice. But I got it and I busted it out for Cal. Because he's like, oh, let's I don't know, let's play checkers, play chess, let's do some stuff. I mean, I'm terrible at it, and we had some fun. But my dad was really good. Yeah. My brother was better, and I'm terrible. Ice terrible at chesses. I like the pieces, and I move them, uh-huh, and then I don't remember what they do. Like that was uh it is kind of like what we talked about with with the you know Marvel Crisis Protocol and stuff like that. Is I'm kind of thinking a move or two ahead. Maybe three if I'm lucky. Knights can fly. Right.
SPEAKER_08:Bishops are diagonal. Yep, castles are straight. Right. Hey, queens do both. That's right, as they should. And that's basically all there is to you.
SPEAKER_04:And the kings just stand there like most men and tell you what to do. Um but no, so I was just like, I got my butt handed to me like all the time. Let's play some chess. And after a while, I'm like, no. No, let's no, no, no, I'm good. We're gonna play something else, like Chinese checkers, or uh, well, a bridge, which I hated, or hearts, and I still we they would always crush us. But to your point, my parents never pulled their punches. It's always like, learn how to play the game. If you play people that are better than you, you will, if you keep playing the game, and everybody knows that there comes a point where you're like, okay, this game, I hate this game now. Like Monopoly. I hate this game. The other day, Kyle's uh Kyle's like, hey Dak, we made Monopoly Monopoly, and I was like, no, we do not play unless unless it's like the Star Wars version where I can just have fun running flying around the galaxy.
SPEAKER_08:Again, if you play by the rules, the actual rules as written with at least three people, yeah, the game is not unbearably awful. It's it's because of all the house rules that Monopoly is. Maybe I'll go back and look really bad.
SPEAKER_04:Maybe, maybe.
SPEAKER_08:Uh and roll roll to move is is frustrating, but right, right. Uh, one of those games like Chess and Monopoly.
SPEAKER_04:I'm like, I don't know. That's why we played Yahtzee. I'm like, we can play Dice Throne. Dice Throne's fun. It's cards, it's Yahtzee with cards, you know, we can do that, upgrade our powers, all that stuff. He's like, let's keep it simple, just roll some dice. I'm like, all right. Now, the the other thing we which was great when the wife came home for a lunch break is uh I don't I don't know how we got onto it, but we started playing blackjack. Good print good uh printing win. Wait, do you mean do you mean the game 21? I mean the game 21. Yes. Oh okay. It's officially called 21.
SPEAKER_02:Uh like I don't know how the heck we got in there.
SPEAKER_04:Oh no, well, it's officially called. I think pretty sure it's blackjack. I think it's officially called blackjack. That's that's the you know, I'm sure if you play it at home, it's called 21. Uh well, we got our out our out our uh old poker chip set, because that we played Yahtzee with those dice, which was pretty cool. Uh and as usual, he rolled hot. That kid rolled three Yahtzeis.
SPEAKER_08:Three. I think the most I've ever rolled was like three, and it was one time, and I'll never reach that that hot. The pinnacle of yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, we looked at our scorecards.
SPEAKER_08:No wonder your kid loves Yahtzee so much.
SPEAKER_04:Dude, he rolls hot. Like he is a hot, like Mike's sitting here over nodding. Yeah, there's there's there's hot dice. He can roll some hot dice. Um, we have a so I printed out scorecards so you can look at all the stuff and our average scores and look how much, like how many times we won and he won. And there's been several times where he's rolled two to three Yahtzeis. Yeah. Like out of 12 games, he's rolled more than one Yahtzee, I think, half the time.
SPEAKER_08:Have you gotten him tested for uh psychic abilities and man?
SPEAKER_04:Get him in there for some ESP, some luck probability or something. Like, I have these superpowers. Oh no, he won, you know. I'm sure Mike remembers that back in the day when I brought him in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He came in. We played some X-Men. Not X-Men, sorry, X-Wing. X-Wing, X-Wing, the other X game. Yeah, he's all the defense. Like, what the f yeah. Oh, Mike just looked at me and he's like, Your kid can't roll dice anymore. And Kyle's like, Mike, what does this mean? And you're like, salty, salt, salty, salt, salt, salt.
SPEAKER_08:I think I think the rule is he he gets to roll the dice, but he can only roll them for both sides. Right. Now, if he rolled for everybody, that would be awesome. He just gets to roll all the dice.
SPEAKER_04:And then the game goes forever because no one can hit.
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah, everything would just die really quickly.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. Pew, pew, pew. And he did the same thing one game for Marvel Crisis Protocol. He had him come in here hanging out and playing. I don't know if it was with you against you, but it was definitely here. And he was just like, just that one time, it's like, are those all hits, Kyle? And he's like, Dad, is this good? And I'm like, geez, Jesus, dude. Oh my god. Uh and I looked at the I can't remember who I was playing, and they looked up and they were like probably me. And I'm like, it's okay, he he won't, he you can he can roll for you now if you want. And you're like, yes, that'd be great. Because it was just like, wow, wow. Uh so he loves the dice rolling and playing the Yahtzee. Right. Um, but we also played Blackjack for whatever reason, I was like, let's look, do, let's do math. Because you gotta add up to 21. So I wasn't doing the math, you gotta add it up. Boom, boom, boom. How do you do odds? Boom, boom, boom. He's like, How do you figure out how do you win this game, dad? And I'm like, well, you start counting cards. I mean, you work on probabilities in a deck, and then you get kicked out of the body. And then you get right. Well, once you win three or four times in a row, they'll kick you out. But just work on the probabilities. And he's he's really good at math. Yeah. Right? Uh the wife and I are not math people. We're we are the English literature writing drama people, and he's the sports math person, which obviously you're like, where the heck did that come from? Um, so he's working out some probabilities. He's trying to be like, how do I figure this out? Like, well, remember, there's how many aces, how many tens and numbers? Always assume this car's this. And he's like, Oh no, like you can see the hamster wheel start. Oh, oh, well, what if I did this? And he's like, everybody at the table would hate you because if you split tens, they will literally riot. But you're gambling. Go for it. He did it. He got a blackjack on one and busted on the other. And he's like, That's good. That's good. I like, I like, I like this. These are odds. Uh, so those are the games that we played, obviously a fun one. And then the wife came home and she's like, Are you are you really playing blackjack?
SPEAKER_02:Are you really?
SPEAKER_04:And then he's like, Hey dad, what are the what are the gambling games that roll dice? And he's like, Well, that's called craps. And I might have to introduce you to that one. Because when you hit 21, you're gonna pay for your senior year of college, bro. Just like, ciao! Like, how do I win a lot of money? Put your money on this one and roll sevens or whatever. You know, I don't know. I've played it a couple of times and I can't say what's gonna be. But he doesn't get to roll, does it? In the casino. Eventually. Yeah, eventually. Yeah, it rolls, it goes around. And once you roll the dice, that is a bust. It passes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He doesn't have to know how to bet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other people at the table will tell him, hey, bro, you're hot. Here. This is they'll bet for him. They'll be like, here, here's something on the pass line view. We'll just fucking keep him going.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Just roll it. Bet here, bet, here, be here. And that's what I did when I played the two times I played. I was like, oh, this looks fun. Or he's like, okay, this guy's bet here, here, here. I'm like, oh, dang, I just made a hundred bucks. And then I walked away because I'm like, and then I lost it all blackjack. Sounds right. Because I love me some blackjack. I love hanging out, doing the cards of the of the Vegas, because that's pretty much what we do. What the hell is this episode?
SPEAKER_08:Negative ghostwriter, the pattern is full. Do not buzz the tower.
SPEAKER_04:Do not buzz the tower. I have a need. Need for speed. I think again, this is the tangential tangent show. Yeah. It's just, we're just having fun. Uh, because yeah, it's not like we sell blackjack or poker chips or Yahtzee, although we should sell Yahtzee here. We we occasionally carry classic game stuff for on uh around the holidays. Well, there's the I mean, there's the uh I want to say it's the checkers and chests set that's there. Uh I always, whenever I think of Yahtzee, obviously I think of Dice Throne, I think of zombie dice. You know, dice.
SPEAKER_08:I almost brought King of Tokyo today. I was like, oh, that's not gonna be very much fun with two people. Is that the uh it's Yahtzee with monsters? We talked about it. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, bring it next time. Okay. Let's play it.
SPEAKER_08:Uh it's not very good with two people, but but I'll bring it and we can try it. Well, if uh you bring Cal and he can kick our butts.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, so the funny thing. Oh my god, right.
SPEAKER_04:Uh so the funny thing is Cal did go, hey Dad, can I have can I be a guest on your show? And I was like, probably not. But you could come after and play a game.
SPEAKER_08:Right. But yeah, we'll we'll figure something out. We can bring the the boys in and uh I think that'd be a great idea, dude. Yeah. Have a cool episode with that. Um so I've got uh that's gambling.
SPEAKER_04:Uh my one my one experience So, folks, if you have a gambling problem, please don't listen to this podcast.
SPEAKER_08:I have attended two casinos in my adult life. Um, one was on my honeymoon. We were uh we lived out in Texas at the time, so yeah, but my family was here in Arizona, so we came to Arizona for our honeymoon. We had a big reception here, and then we went up to Sedona and stayed in a resort and did all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was great. Um while we were up there and we were near Prescott, we swung into the the casino up there, and uh we were like, oh, I've never been in a casino, she's never been in a casino, let's check it out. And we went in and we uh lost, I want to say we were we had a very small budget at that point in our in our honeymoon. Um, but we lost like I think it was 40 bucks,$20 each on slot machines in like 15 minutes. And uh and we're like, all right, well, uh that was fun. And we left.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_08:Uh and then my second experience is very recent. Uh we I went on a cruise. Oh, they say, was it on the cruise? Uh a couple of weeks ago, and uh we went down into the casino and we had a bigger budget this time. And uh I had fun. I I was up uh a decent amount and then I lost it all.
SPEAKER_04:Well, there's gambling for you, folks. Thanks for listening. Also on slot machines.
SPEAKER_08:Oh well, my my philosophy I always get super like nervous about the card game stuff because A, I even though I know how to play all I know how to play, uh I don't I don't really know how to bet in roulette or craps. Yeah. I I I vaguely know. Um I know how to play poker pretty well. I know how to play blackjack pretty well. Like well, a couple years ago, Mike had a birthday party for uh his daughter, and and I brought my kid out. And I you were there, you were at that party, but I don't think you played poker with us.
SPEAKER_04:I don't think I was able to, yeah. I think you had to leave early.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, um, but we played uh poker uh toward the latter end of the party, um, and it was like five of us, and I was like, I don't I don't bet real money, I don't do bets.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:Um, but Mike was like, Oh, I'll buy in for you. I was like, fine, I'll whatever. Uh, and I took everything. Uh I just crushed them.
SPEAKER_02:You crushed them!
SPEAKER_04:And then hey guys, what does this mean? What does it mean when I have like all the same color of the numerical or numerological order? Like, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_08:Then I gave Mike like you know 60, 75% of it since it was his buy-in.
SPEAKER_02:A fresh. You have a fresh.
SPEAKER_08:But it was it was a little it was fun. And and I'm pretty I I don't want to say I'm good at poker, but like I can I can do poker pretty well. And I don't do the counting cards or anything, it's mostly just reading people.
SPEAKER_04:Well, that's the thing you really enjoy, if I if if I remember right, like the um your Battlestar Galactica game and other games, that social interaction and social deduction, right? Because in poker, you're not all you're you're playing your hand, but 80% of the time you're playing the player. Correct. So you have a good hand, but you're also playing the player. And blackjack it's the opposite.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Blackjack it's all about your hand and the house. Like what and the players are before or after you on the table can screw up if you should hit or not. But poker's that. And I'm not great at that part because I'm there to have hang out and have fun.
SPEAKER_08:But I'm also mathematically minded. And while I don't count cards, like I can, you know, I can do quick math in my brain. And so I'm worried I'm worried if I sit down at like a blackjack table that they'll be like You see the pit boss just walks over, sir. I don't I don't do uh card counting as much as I do probabilities, which is roughly the same thing.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I mean, it depends. Like I was talking to the you know, Kyle, and he's like, Well, how do with one deck, like there are card tables that do one deck, yeah, but a lot of them have six in this huge card shuffler. So it just becomes that working out probability, working out like if they have a, you know, if they have a 10 showing, what do you do and what's the system? Everybody's got their own system. Yeah, my system is I'm gonna walk in with 20 bucks, I want to be entertained, like hopefully the dealer's fun. Table is fun, I wanna hang out, like watching a movie. I'm gonna have to sit here, hopefully, for an hour, an hour and a half, maybe two hours, if I can make it last, have an adult beverage and have fun. Yeah, all the money that when I walk into a casino, I'm gonna put my money in the donation box at the door, and the rest is hopefully great. Most of the time, I walk away even. Right. So if I'm playing for an hour and I have not like made turn my 20 into 30 or 40, I'll be like, all right, I'm gonna come back a little bit, whatever. Um, but if I've made my 20 into 40, I'll like pocket that and just play with the house 20 and just see what happens, right?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, that's the smart thing to do. Right. That's what I should be doing.
SPEAKER_04:Right?
SPEAKER_08:But you know, I've only I've only been to a casino twice. Yes. I've I've been burned both times. I think I've learned my lesson.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I mean, and this is this is something I definitely I definitely impressed upon the kiddo, is like i except for poker, if I remember right, except for poker, everything's in the house's favor. And that's why it's gambling. Everything. It's always you you have to beat those odds, and that's the thrill of the game. It's like when you do it, you're like, yes, I got blackjack, oh my gosh. Or, oh, I just got my butt kicked and now I have no more money left, or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Like, Papa's gotta get a ride home on the uh Papa's gotta buy a ticket. Hopefully, I could double down. Yeah, don't ever do that.
SPEAKER_04:Don't ever like be like, oh, here's my keys for the car on the table. Um but yeah, it's it's about having fun, much like games here, right? Like I'm coming here to play Star Wars Unlimited or uh Marvel Crisis Protocol or whatever. Uh I'm here to have fun. And then the second goal is like the winning part. If I'm having fun with my co-player, because that's kind of what you are, you know, you're not necessarily adversaries, but you're here to have fun and play a game. I'm here to have fun and play a game. If we're both doing that, it most of the time it'll take the edge off me losing, right? Yeah, and hopefully, it if I win, I'm like, dude, you your uh like your whatever build you did, whatever deck you did, did your thing. Like, that's what I want to see. Yeah, I want to see your cards do their thing. I want to see your army do its thing. Like this past Sunday, uh, when we're playing Star Wars Unlimited, uh, like my deck, I it's the Luke Skywalker Trench Run, basically. Right. I got to play my trench run card. Good. And it was like it was sweet. Now, uh we I went two and one that round, I think. And then my opponent got to do their thing. Like did the I want to say it was like the hot shot, played a hot shot blaster on an opponent on a card, and then smuggled in the hot shot blaster, which means you automatically get to attack right away, ambush, and again, like my trench run did 12 damage, and that hot shot blaster did like 12 damage, and we're both just like that. Uh I squeaked out a win on that one, but I was I love seeing when you build something, like that's what I want to see. If your Darth Vader deploys into his uh TIE fighter, Victor, I think it's Victor 1 or whatever, and you crush me. And then when you attack, you make more ties, and you have this fleet of ties. That's awesome. Now I'm I'm sad I'm getting my butt kicked, and hopefully I can get a card out to help that. But you have a fleet of TIE fighters. Yes, come at me, bro. Like that's that's the best. Um, and I'm trying to remember many other podcasts talk about like gamer archetypes, like the idea of being uh like a sweaty player, guys like people who run the numbers and make the lists and crunch it down. And then people like myself that are more like, listen, I'm here to have fun and I want to make Jimmy, John, Johnny, and Spike are the magic players. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think that was one of the ones that I think.
SPEAKER_08:Spike is the one that's the competitive player, always always trying to you know squeeze the blood from the stone as much as possible. Right. Uh Johnny is the uh the combo player. He wants to make the rubber gold goldberg machine come to life. Right. Mike, all I want everything to and then Timmy is the very simple like I just want to turn things sideways and smash.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_08:Um, I'm just here to have a good time. I don't care if I win or lose. Right, right. I'm not building to be to to be the strongest player or to do a thing.
SPEAKER_04:I'm doing stuff like these are like my favorite characters, Luke, and I want him to attack the Death Star.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Let's let's do that.
SPEAKER_08:Those were the the three. I think there's there's a lot more nuance, especially now, and especially with like uh commander and things like that, um, where those those three archetypes are a little bit too narrow.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. But those are the three. I think there's a couple of talk about like there's like one or two subsets of each one kind of thing. They've broken them down a little bit, but those are three generalities, you know. Uh, and everybody knows who they are. And I'm I guess I'm pretty much a Timmy, right? I want to come in. I not maybe a little bit of Johnny, because I like how if my deck does its combo, does the thing. Um, but I just yeah, just come in, hang out. Obviously, the the idea of coming in and playing games with somebody like, especially people like you and I, where we don't have a lot of time, unless we come in and record a podcast. Um, but like the the social contract of I want to come in and hang out and have fun and play the game. And you have come in to do the same. And there's some people who want to come in, I've come in to work my deck for the competition to win. We're like, oh, that's that sucks, and I'll be your guinea pig. Right. But hopefully we hang out.
SPEAKER_08:Hopefully we have some laughs and have a good time doing that. Right. Um, and yeah, and I think that's I think the majority of commander players are are that way, or at least in our in our community, thankfully, where everyone builds uh a deck and they want to to see their deck do their thing, and that's that's how I am. I I I I'm not opposed to like people controlling games and and shutting them down. I definitely hope everyone's there to win. If you if you come with a deck that's like, I don't care if I don't have a win con, I just want to see somebody else do a thing. That that stuff's miserable for me. Um because that's the game is designed to where everyone's playing to win. And like if you're throwing that off, you're basically just making well, it's not necessarily throwing the weight off.
SPEAKER_04:Right. But it's also the spirit of the game. I mean, games are meant to be played to you know, win, whether it's baseball or magic or whatever. Uh-huh. So if you play the game, the object is to win, but that's it depends on your priority, is is probably a good way to look at it. My priority is.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, that'd be like if if a pitcher came in in baseball and their goal every baseball game, they don't care if their team wins or loses. They just want to bean the batter with as many pitches as they can. Right. And they A, they wouldn't make it professional baseball.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_08:They wouldn't last that long, but B, nobody would want to watch that game. It wouldn't be fun. Right, right.
SPEAKER_04:Um and nobody would want to play that team. It'd be like, oh gosh, Bob's pitching. You're like, whoo, better armor up, or whatever. Or yeah, the only thing this guy throws is curveballs because he wants to, you know, he he wants to mess with you, or whatever. Exactly. But I mean, uh playing the games like that is that's half the reason why I would come in here, is especially for the games that take longer. So Magic doesn't take that long, Star Wars Unlimited doesn't take that long. I think when you get to tabletop miniature games, that's when I think that that again, that social contract of like, listen, I can't play this game without somebody else. Right. And you, same thing. So please come in with the idea of let's have some fun. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll be BFFs. Yeah. Maybe we'll just have a good time and have a moment in the game where we every time we see each other and play a game, you go, guy, remember that time your guy did the thing and it blew me up and it was awesome. Uh we stuff it was a close game, but you still beat me because your thing did its thing, as opposed to I've got a list that is mathematically amazing, and I've worked the numbers and it's the the fun.
SPEAKER_08:I think those no, I I I disagree. I think those lists are perfectly fine if both players come down expecting that game.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:If both players are are coming down expecting a cutthroat, right, high stakes, right, top of the meta, you know, right.
SPEAKER_04:I'm working on a list to take to a competition. Correct. I'm looking for someone to play against or a deck that they built.
SPEAKER_08:Or I'm I'm built I'm playing a C E D H deck and Commander. Yeah. Those those C E D H is one of my favorite ways to play Commander. It's miserable. So C E D H Yeah, what does that mean? So EDH is Elder Dragon Highlander, which is the original name of Commander. Um, back when Commander was developed in the in the late 90s, uh, it was called Elder Dragon Highlander because the leader of the deck was usually an Elder Dragon, and it was Highlander because there's only one copy of each card in the only one. Um that's why it was called Elder Dragon Highlander. And then when Commander or when uh Wizards fully adopted the format as an official format, they changed the name to Commander because probably because of legalities and simplicity. You can't buy Highlander necessarily, but so so they they changed it to Commander and C E D H the C stands for competitive, so it's competitive commander, or you're building a commander deck that is specifically designed to win the game and win the game as fast as possible. Right, right. And with those games, or bracket five is is it's now being called uh with the new monikers that Wizard is is Wizards is testing and roll testing to roll out, um, those decks are designed to win as fast as possible against other decks, and usually they're you're you're doing your deck building with that mindset of I'm playing against other people that are playing this way. Right. And so those are those are games where a normal commander game usually will be over somewhere between turns seven and eleven, somewhere in that that ballpark. And people have had that's usually enough time for people to do a really cool thing and everyone to have an explosive turn and and kind of push themselves ahead, and and everyone has a really good time on a com on a casual table. Right. If you bring a C E D H deck to one of those tape, get those games, you're usually winning the game by turn one or two. Wow. Um, my my competitive deck, which isn't a C E D H deck, but it's it's optimized, if it's not trying to win by turn four, it's not doing the thing correctly.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_08:Um, so those are those are decks that are optimized to win and win as fast as or present a win as fast as possible. And then they also run extra removal and interaction and things like that to try and because you're expecting those people to do that. Right, and you're trying to stop them. Right. And so those games are super rad because what ends up happening is you're still having that seven turn, ten turn game, but it's happening in the span of three or four turns instead because everyone's going so much faster. Right, you're you're in in a lot of cases, I feel like there is more interesting decision points and more cool stuff that happens in a or just as much cool stuff that happens in a competitive game as there is in a casual game. But that's only if everyone is bringing that deck.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_08:So if you sit down with a C E D H deck and you're playing against three casual players, casual, casual precons, that's that's a non-game. Right. You're just like, okay, I I I won. You guys couldn't do anything about it because you don't your deck's like sitting down and putting your cards on the table, and that's it. Yeah, and that for me, some I understand some people get their kicks off of uh what is known as pub stomping. Um, but I personally like that's fun once in a while to just be like, oh, you want to see my Good deck, are you sure? Yeah, all right. Sure, I'll I'll show you once and and I'll pull it out and we'll we'll all like have a quick game. And and they're like, Oh, that's really cool how that worked.
SPEAKER_02:Everything that's rad, that's great, but cool.
SPEAKER_08:Let's move on to a fun game because that wasn't fun for me. I just I just did my thing unimpeded. Um so yeah, so I think having the the the mindset of everyone sitting down to have those metagame games is super fun. Because it's like if I'm bringing my my best deck, I want to play against your best deck, right? And I want to see I want to see how how it stands up, and we're probably gonna have a good back and forth.
SPEAKER_04:Right. Well, it goes to that, like we were talking with chess or whatever, any game. If you play against somebody who's better, like the kiddo plays baseball. For those people who don't know, there's like just like regular baseball, there's double A, triple A, and majors level for kids' baseball, just depending on skills and set like that. So uh right now his team was a double A. And then a couple of times he played against a triple A team that was playing down, much to our chagrin, or just in the tournament, that's how it happened.
SPEAKER_08:Extra large, organic.
SPEAKER_04:Right, right, extra large, organic eggs. Um, and you know, they while they didn't get curb stomped, they definitely were like ran and ran them over.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, but it goes to the thing, like if you play against teams that are better than you, hopefully you the idea is that you learn from that uh and get better yourself eventually. You know, and you gotta you gotta take the the, you know, it obviously hurts. It sucks when you get beat like that, uh, you know, when they're when his team loses 20 to nothing. Right. And you're like, Woo! That was a you know, that's a tough game. But what did you know, did you watch them play? And like with just with magic or any card, like what cards were they playing? What were the combos they're using?
SPEAKER_08:And how how do I answer that? How do I answer that? And that's super fun. Even in even in uh all casual games, it's like cool. I I learned that there I have a a deck, my that I'm uh it's it's a silly deck, but my skeletons deck, I've talked about it before. That deck is in was entirely hinged on having uh one enchantment that resolves, and if that enchantment is removed from the game, the deck used to fold.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_08:Because that that was what it was built around. I've I've s and because I've played and had that enchantment exiled and that kind of thing, and I've either I decided to add alternate alternative options that still feel on theme for skeletons, or I've added ways to get the enchantment back or uh protect it and things along those lines because and I wouldn't have learned those if I wasn't playing with the mindset of I need to get better. And and I think that that's a core part of the card games and and a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_04:Um but yeah, yeah, I mean it was the same thing too uh for me, because I'm loving my Luke Trench run deck, and it's a fun deck, but I'm bumping against some of the more uh meta decks that are out there. And people are working on uh No, we've got a good, healthy, competitive season. I think we've got a pretty good healthy season in our community. Um and it's a good mix of people who want to play in the you know the qualifiers and the competitive scene, but they also want to play just come and sling some cardboard, right? Yeah. Uh so I'm playing against my deck, and I'm just like, it's a little fun, and I'm bumping against these decks that are definitely more tuned. Uh and I'm like, okay, how do I Oh, that was a that was a rough game. Uh you know, I'm gonna lick my wounds and come back. Like, so what are the cards? Do I have something that can answer that? Uh again, if my one trick card doesn't go off, right? Do I have options? And that's my thing that I am learning how to do better, uh, which I'm really enjoying, is all right, I've made my because Trench Run's kind of a one-trick pony, but I need I need a backup plan. What is the other plan? What is the other avenues to either uh hold off so I can get to my win condition and win the game, or uh, all right, it didn't happen. I didn't pull the cards, but I know they're in there, so when I see you playing your stuff, I I have to get the cards, but it's possible. I have a chance to get in there.
SPEAKER_08:You have three things that you can do with those types of decks. You can either uh and a lot of times the answer is do all three in small amounts. So how do I more reliably get my my trick to to happen? Yep. Uh how do I uh sorry.
SPEAKER_02:How do you give your co-host the middle finger?
SPEAKER_08:How do how do I reliably get get my thing to happen? How do I if my thing fails, what do I do then? Right, right. And then the third one was uh how do I make sure that my thing happens? Right. When I do have it, how do I how do I ensure that it resolves and resolves successfully? And so building with those to those three things in mind, you're gonna have a lot, you're gonna have a lot more fun because you're gonna do your thing more often and it's and it's gonna happen. Right.
SPEAKER_04:I'm gonna have the uh the chance to do it, and hopefully when I do it, it will happen. And then the third is like, okay, it didn't happen, and now hopefully I have a backup plan or a counter to some things to hopefully get to we really need to build some twin sons decks because I I feel like twin sons is like really yeah, that's your your format.
SPEAKER_08:Because like with Twin Sons, maybe with with multiplayer formats, yeah, Commander, for instance. The part of the reason I love Commander is I can bring in a stronger deck, but I'm playing against three other people, and then they can team up to take me down, or vice versa. I somebody else is coming ahead, I can work with the other players, and we can kind of take them down, right? It even if they brought a stronger deck, and doing those types of things is a lot more fun, plus you the limitation of the Highlander, though there can be only one card in your deck, right? Uh, or one copy of each card, that creates a little bit more variance, and your your trench run is like suddenly a lot more valuable, right? Like, right, okay, how do I really pull this off? Because I can only I only get to get my one pieces. Yes. I have to get my three pieces or whatever. Yeah. How do I find those in a hundred cards? Um so so yeah, I think I think I think we we really need to sit down and build some twin sons decks and and bite the bullet on that or or bite the blaster on that.
SPEAKER_04:Um I mean, I'll definitely give it a shot. I think, like I said, I've only played Twin Sons like I think two times, maybe three. Right. And I would definitely have to wrap my head around it's you know, the format. There's three tokens, one card per, and that's what really scares me. I'm not gonna lie. Like, I only have one of each freaking card. Right. Like, but I love my card, but I love but uh but uh but but I want my I want my trench front, I want my lightsabers, I want my lukes, and you're like, well, you you gotta be you gotta be.
SPEAKER_07:Good news for you. The new set has 15 lightsabers.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my gosh. All right, total size number. Uh I don't know if it's at 15, but I've been so as the cards have been, as the cards have been like previewed uh on the Star Wars SWDB or SWUDB, Star Wars unlimited database. Yeah, Swab. SWUB, SWUB. Um, they get the previews and you could build decks in there and you can export them to Force Table. Right. Which is what I because I don't I haven't quite gotten the hang of using whatever Karabast is right now. I'm not sure where you can play with another opponent. Um, I like Force Table because it's easier, it's with an AI. AI isn't great sometimes and makes some interesting things, but on the whole, it's just getting reps and how your deck works. What is a good pull? What starting hand am I looking at? Right. Um, so I've been using the uh oh my gosh, Legends of the Force previews, and I've built a deck or two. There's some there's some tasty metals, man. I am not gonna lie. There's uh some lights, there's a lightsaber that gives healing. So if I put I've I put it on another card that gives healing, so every turn I heal four, five, which is a lot. Yeah. And then the other card, the other lightsaber gives a discount for the next card. And then that unit also gives a discount, so you can either activate it or attack with it, right? Depending on what I want to do. So suddenly I'm like, oh, I can kind of get ahead and ramp up, and maybe my Luke Skywalker can come out on turn five.
SPEAKER_08:I need to build a Grievous Twin Sun deck that just runs all the lightsabers.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, like and this next That's all it has is for anybody who wants to do that Grievous card with the um attack. Uh what there's a card that you put on them that allows them to do like bonkers damage against everybody. You just go and you chainsaw through everybody. Sounds like fun. The lightsabers in this deck, I think, are gonna be awesome. It's really gonna swing us back to some ground units versus space units and loading them up and getting upgrades on your cards to do those cool things. I'm loving it. I'm really enjoying it. Loving it. Um so I'm really looking forward to, and I'm sadly I'm looking forward to those Carbonite Prestige cards. I'm not gonna lie, because the Qui-Gon one is gonna be awesome. Hopefully, there's an the new Luke should be good, but I have a feeling all the prestige are gonna be um so the previous set was all the except to like Maul card? There is a I think there is a new card. Is only half of it good? Uh no, you have to tear it in half when you play it. Um uh but he does come with his lightsaber. So there is a fallen lightsaber in the previous set, which was the generic one. But this one is Darth Maul's lightsaber, so it's got a few more things, and when you play it on Maul, it's I mean, I don't want to be on the receiving end of that thing. It is tasty. Um, but just like jump to light speed, the prestige cards, the alternate art and collectible cards were all ships, and the artwork was great. I have a feeling and I'm hoping it hasn't been totally revealed, I think. But the uh prestige cards are gonna be like the force users and lightsabers, and I can't wait. I cannot wait to see the cool Qui-Gon Jin, the cool Maul, the New Vader. The New Vader is hard counter to anybody who plays a deck that likes shields, because the new Vader put a shield on an enemy unit, put a shield on a friendly unit. When you attack, defeat an enemy unit that has a shield on it. Just delete it.
SPEAKER_02:Just delete it.
SPEAKER_04:You're like, what up what that's what Luke does. Okay, that's what Luke 1 does. Like, I love handing out the shields and the defense. Um I'm like, but why are you messing with my mojo? I love my shields. Jedi with a lightsaber and a shield. That's what I want to play. Invader's like, no, I'm gonna mess with you up. Oh my gosh. Uh just gonna choke him out. That's you can't shield a choke. Can't choke a shield? Wait, can't shield a choke? Can't cook an artichoke? I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:And we're ladies and gentlemen, we're back. The show brought to you by card sleeves. Protection for all your cards.
SPEAKER_04:For all your card and gaming needs. All the things. All the things. So um Yo. What was I gonna say?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know. What were we gonna say?
SPEAKER_08:We were talking about enjoying magic and maybe doing twin sons. We have about 15 minutes left. Um I think one one other thing I wanted to talk about um in preparation for a future episode. So let's talk about some role-playing games for a minute.
SPEAKER_03:Ooh, role-playing games.
SPEAKER_08:What are those? We should have a lot of things.
SPEAKER_04:We did a whole thing, guys. A whole episode.
SPEAKER_08:Um, but the there's a there's a new game that came out uh from the comp the publishing company is Darrington Press, a subsidiary or side company or related company to Critical Role. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:You may have heard of. Critical Role does some podcasting and YouTubing, I hear. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_08:Yep. Well, it's a it's the live uh live play DD where they they broadcast their DD game and it's a bunch of actors. Nerdy ass voice actors as they self-proclaim. So Daggerheart came out, and I'm super excited for it. Um, I did do some playtesting for it back when it was in beta. Yeah. Um, and I loved it. It was now what's it called again? Daggerheart. Dagger Heart. We apparently sold the copy that was up there. Oh. Um, but we should hopefully restock it. The um, so this is a role-playing game that takes. I sound great right now. Um, that sounds really good. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Just remember this. Remember the setup of this. This is it.
SPEAKER_08:This is the moment. Yeah. This is the point. Um Daggerhearts, uh a game that is a narrative-based system that has a little bit more crunch to it. Um but it it very openly and honestly borrows some of my favorite mechanics from multiple role-playing games. Okay. So it it borrows heavily from the Star Wars and Genesis role-playing system.
SPEAKER_04:That's a fairly narrative system, right? So if you get like Yeah, it's got some crunch to it too, but but yeah, it's pretty narrative versus root crunchy number rule stuff. Correct. Okay.
SPEAKER_08:Um, it borrows some of the like uh player, the the formatting of the character sheet and the the principles of the powered by the apocalypse systems, apocalypse world, dungeon world. Okay, um, those sorts of games that I absolutely adore. Those are very narrative systems. Um you probably haven't played a narrative system until you've played those. Um that's not entirely true. There's more narrative systems out there. But they kind of pioneered the narrative movement. Right. Uh it borrows from like the Cypher system, it borrows from uh Blades in the Dark, which is another powered by the Apocalypse system. It borrows from uh DD and even fourth edition DD is called in its in its uh references. So it borrows a lot heavily from a lot of games, and what it what it ends up doing is it's a a fantasy role-playing game where uh very similar to DD, you choose your class, you choose your race and your background, uh, and you make a character. And it uses these playing cards that it comes with as like kind of a reference for the powers. It's a very fourth edition thing. Um but what it what it looks really it is really cool. It hasn't changed much since the play test that I played. Um, but I definitely um I definitely want to get a game going, so hopefully we can do something like that soon. But basically, um the the way that the the core mechanic of it, instead of rolling just a d20 and pass fail, right, move on. Uh the the game system is built around 2D12. Okay. So you roll two D12 and you get into probabilities there, kind of like rolling with two D6s. Right, right. And uh you choose one die, you want two different colored D12s. One die is gonna be uh your you'll designate as your hope die, and the other one is your fear die. And what'll end up happening is you roll and then you add the two numbers together. So say I get a seven and an eight, right? You get 15 plus whatever modifiers you have. Right. Uh so 15, and then if your high if the higher die was your hope die, you succeed with a benefit. You you get hope, and you did the thing, and you did the oh, hi everybody.
SPEAKER_04:Uh this is Chris, the other co-host of the Funkatronic Rex podcast. Seems like we had a little bit of a technical hiccup. The USB drive ran out of space as we were discussing the role-playing game. Unfortunately, you do not get to hear us pontificate more on that, and maybe even uh solve world hunger and world peace and peace in the Middle East and all that. It is now part of the vast emptiness of cyberspace. So, sorry about that. As always, we appreciate everybody listening, hanging out, dropping any comments you have in our Discord. And speaking of, don't forget to like and subscribe and leave a review wherever you are listening to this. It really helps us out and lets people know about our podcast. And now back to our regularly scheduled end of show.