Just Play With Others: Netherlands Board Game Retreat 2026

JP returns from a rather sweaty weekend in the Netherlands...no not like that, board gaming in 30+ degree heat of course.  Every year Dávid Turczi hosts an invite only retreat for friends, family, developers, testers and this is my second year attending.  So will I'll divulge any industry secrets, well no because NDA is a real thing but I did get a lot of games played so what an excuse to talk about them.

IN THIS EPISODE
- JP talks more about the event and the fun journeys driving to the Netherlands
- I joined a variety of content creators including Paul Grogan from Gaming Rules!, Mark Dainty from Not Bored Gaming and Asaf from EZBoardGames
- I talk about the following games including:
Andromedas Edge by Cardboard Alchemy
Slay the Spire by Contention Games
Leviathan Wilds by Moon Crab Games
Cat In The Box by Bézier Games
The Defense of Procyon III by PSC Games
Recall by Alion Games
World Order by Hegemonic Project Games
Clans of Caledonia

LINKS REFERENCED IN THE SHOW
Watch this episode on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcJr_buxLWU

CHAPTERS
00:00:00 - OPENING
00:00:18 - PHASE A: PULL UP A CHAIR
00:00:40 - PHASE B: JUST PLAY WITH OTHERS - Netherlands Gaming Retreat
00:01:49 - Who attended the event?
00:03:28 - What was the place like and why was it sweaty?
00:05:04 - The journey to the Netherlands
00:06:17 - Secret games that I can't talk about...seriously JP
00:07:01 - PHASE C: JUST PLAYED AT THE EVENT
00:07:23 - Andromedas Edge
00:12:46 - Slay the Spire
00:18:08 - Leviathan Wilds
00:25:34 - Cat In The Box
00:28:15 - The Defense of Procyon III
00:35:17 - A quick aside for Star Trek Captains Chair
00:35:56 - Recall
00:40:21 - World Order
00:46:58 - Clans of Caledonia
00:51:42 - PHASE D: THE LAST PLAY

Transcript

OPENING

0:00

I've just returned from a very sweaty weekend in the Netherlands. No, no, it's not what you think. It's not what you think. Welcome

PHASE A: PULL UP A CHAIR

0:18

to the Just Play podcast. It's me, your host, JP, and we're here with a Just Play with Others bonus episode where I'm actually going to talk to you about a gaming retreat I just literally have to come back from, literally yesterday. And I wanted to kind of create this episode on the fly and just kind of tell you my experiences and what happened and what it was. So, really, well, what is this gaming retreat?

PHASE B: JUST PLAY WITH OTHERS - Netherlands Gaming Retreat

0:40

Well, this gaming retreat is called Cardboard and Polders, and it is David Turtsy's um main kind of gaming retreat. So, for those that don't know, David Tursey is a well uh renowned designer, um, has done many, many uh games and many solo modes for games. I'm sure you've heard of him, so I don't know why I'm even explaining his name to be honest, but there we go. Um, and yeah, he holds uh an annual invite-only retreat uh for his kind of friends, family, developers, play testers, and other kind of members and content creators that somehow kind of basically go across and say hi and chill out for the weekend. And I've been privileged to uh attend, and this is my second year. So last year was my first. Um I managed to to kind of go over and and basically hang out with with David and his team, and it was a blast, and this year was no exception. Honestly, guys, it was it was fantastic. And I'm not here to kind of just say, look at me, I've been to this uh very exclusive uh retreat, but I've actually played a lot of games and and I thought actually it's probably going to take me a while to kind of talk about some of these games, and I thought, well, let's just bring these to life, let's just do this nice episode and and explain what it was, what it's all

Who attended the event?

1:49

about. So, who else was there at this uh retreat? Well, um David was obviously there and his family, um, and his as I said, his playtest team, uh developers, playtesters, and you know, some um uh other kind of game designers as well. Uh his brother Adam Turtsy was there, also fellow designer of the Star Trek Captain's Chair series from box um two or wave two. And so always great to catch up with Adam. Um, I met Adam last year and we had a blast playing loads of games, and uh yeah, uh really uh really good to kind of get uh good friends with with Adam as well as David as well. So if you're listening, Adam, um always brilliant to hang out, uh hang out with you. So uh other content creators that were there, we had Paul Grogan from Game and Rules. Um, and Paul was my travel companion and also roommate. Uh so yeah, no kiss and tell stories here, I'm afraid. But yeah, so Paul had the um the joy of of spending pretty much 13 hours with me in a car trying to keep me sane as I drove to to the Netherlands from the southwest of the UK, and uh yeah, very much appreciated. Thank you, Paul. Um, Mark Dainty from Not Board Gaming, always great to see Mark. I love Mark's uh sense of humour and banter that he gives at the table. And this year was no exception, no exception at all. So that was always good fun. And we had uh Asaf from Easy Board Games, and I've never met Asaf properly before, and what a pleasure! Really great to sit down and and and chat with Asaf and and yeah, and get some games with him as well. And that was that was fantastic. So, really, really lovely to see um all those different kind of people at uh the event and and just really hang out in a real chilled environment.

What was the place like and why was it sweaty?

3:28

So we kind of stayed at this um kind of large house, really. It's on a kind of centre park style uh complex where you've got like high ropes and there's swimming pools and there's lake and uh to kind of swim in and all sorts of different things you can do activity-wise, and of course, we didn't do any of that, and we pretty much played board games all weekend, which was pretty awesome. Um, so I have to talk about the weather. The weather was absolutely crazy. I mean, right now I'm back in the UK and it's been literally 30, 30 odd degrees, 35 degrees. So currently I am sat in my office, the door is wide open, you may be able to hear the wildlife that is kind of out there, and yeah, I'm just I'm literally in a hot box right now. So if you start to see beads of sweat come on uh basing on my forehead, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen, guys. So so yeah, so the weather was the same, it was pretty much very, very much in the low 30s uh all weekend, it's just not really board gaming weather. I always worry about the board games just kind of curling up in the heat and all the jewel-layered player boards just buckling under the pressure of the heat. But we we managed to get through. But I think my only saving grace was getting to probably about one o'clock in the afternoon and thinking, I'm just so hot, I've just finished playing this game, and I had to kind of take a walk into the lake like it was some sort of uh legendary quest that I went off to uh every day, just basically sitting down in this very cool lake trying to uh freshen up and just get sorted. But you know what? We soldiered through. It was great to be away and it's great to kind of do those things uh

The journey to the Netherlands

5:04

as well. So let's talk about the drive over there. So, yeah, I I drove um pretty much all the way, as I mentioned with Paul, and uh the drive was pretty good. It's long, it's always gonna be a long drive, but it was pretty good. There was no major uh setbacks or hiccups. I mean, the the channel tunnel was a little busy going out um and also trying to get uh around Antwerp is always a challenge. It's always a challenge, very busy around there. Um, and I think if I'm stealing a reference from uh probably the previous Essen episode that I did with the Who's Turn Is It Anyway podcast, where I think it was Davy who mentioned that we got Antwerped, um, and basically we got Antwerped again. It was just a thing that we had to do. So so yeah, but we got there. We arrived on the Friday and uh basically unpacked, found our room, got sorted, got settled, food was was cooked, um, which we had kind of everyone, not everyone, but uh selected people were kind of being the chefs of the weekend, had different meal plans each night, and everyone was doing their own chores, so everyone's kind of pitching in, which is nice. Everyone's kind of doing their their thing to help uh with the weekend. So, yeah, that was great. And that food we were ready for for that food that were uh that was there when we came.

Secret games that I can't talk about...seriously JP

6:17

So, so basically, I want to talk a little bit about the games. That's what you want to hear, right? You want to hear about what board games did I play, what secrets can I unveil uh to you that obviously I'm I'm seeing prototypes of new releases that are maybe coming out this year, or might even be next year, or might not even see the light of day, who knows? And the answer to that, I cannot reveal anything, absolutely nothing. So this kind of makes this a bit awkward. Is that okay? So you're telling me you've gone to a uh a board gaming weekend uh where you got to see and access all this new stuff, and you can't tell us about it, JP. And no, no, I can't. I'm sorry, I'm not allowed. NDA and all of that lovely stuff. It's just what it is.

PHASE C: JUST PLAYED AT THE EVENT

7:01

Okay, let's talk about the games. I can talk about, let's talk about the games I I played over the weekend and and bring that to life. And what I might do is I'm I'm gonna probably throw some uh uh kind of images and photos that I took from the weekend throughout my monologuing of many games so you can kind of get to see what that event was all about and how it looked and how it worked and all that kind of stuff. So, yes, check out those as as I kind of talk through it.

Andromedas Edge

7:23

So, Friday, Andromeda's Edge. Right? Andromeda's Edge is a game by uh cardboard alchemy and designed by Luke and Maximus Laurie, uh the father-son uh design team, and the spiritual sequel to the dwellings of Eldervale. And yeah, basically Andromeda's Edge is uh a worker placement game with lots of combo tastic uh resource management um and yeah, lots of kind of knobbery as well because it's uh spaceships and and basically players battling each other to do whatever they need to do to kind of get moving. So, so yeah, for those that haven't really heard of the game, kind of how it works is you have a series of ships um starting with these transports, which these kind of cool like starfish-looking transport things, and they start on your launch bay. And on your turn, you will do a first launch to uh hexagon on the main map, which are many different planets or alliance bases. The planets are standard planets that have different colours that represent different um kind of terrain or planetary types in the game, and you have alliance bases which are your main worker placement action spots. So your ships are your workers, so you're sending your ships or launching your ships out to the mat. Now, the the difference is on your first launch, you can go anywhere unless another player is in that sector. Um, so you can pretty much go, which is all well and good. You do the thing, do the action, happy days. Um, when you want to do your next launch, this is where the puzzle starts to come in because you can only launch from the range of your previously played or launched ships. And at the start, that's usually one hex. So suddenly you're now limited to where you can put your um your ships, but you can now start putting them in other players' uh sectors. And what that does, that starts a bit of a tussle and a bit of a fight, um, which is always good fun in this game. Um, so yeah, you really got this kind of snake-snail kind of uh trail of different workers trying to get what you want, whether you're picking up moons for resources or slotting them into different areas, or whether you're trying to get uh specific actions to buy these other modules, which I'll talk about in a second, um, to help build your engine up as you play the game. But typically, um, if you're ending your turn with other uh opponents in the sector, and that can be the neutral raiders that do appear on the board, and typically they'll start in the uh the nebula area, which is this top row of hexagons at the top of the board, um, you'll have a fight. And the combat system in this is just it's really good, it's really simple. It's essentially you'll work out how many dice you're gonna uh roll, you'll go through some combat steps of whether you're playing diplomacy, which you'll have these tactic cards that will do all sorts of cool and like silly stuff, but in all in the best way that kind of creates this tension and atmosphere in the game. Um, and you'll be chucking those dice, and really is whoever rolls the highest number, and if you draw, you then go to the next highest number, and then the next highest number until ultimately there'll be one person who has has done whatever uh beaten the other player. Now, there is a rare uh chance that you can absolutely draw, but that's never happened in any game that I've played, so yeah, you kind of do that, and if you lose, you get some sort of uh reward for for losing, which is always nice, and you can configure that in the game, which is always good. I think I did a a two VP gain every time I lost a battle, so I was constantly throwing ships in there. Um, but yeah, if you win, you you go up this uh supremacy track. And there you go, you've got so many tracks in the games, you've got five main tracks of different types that do different things, one science, one industry that helps you build new ship types, which are like your uh your attack force, your your um your kind of science vessel, and your heavy cruiser, and yeah, that's quite cool. And you've got your yellow track, this is your commerce, that's gonna help you get uh credits and and scoring points for your resources at the end of the game, and your blue uh civilization track is gonna help with your hand limit and end game scoring. So there are different tracks that you're gonna push yourself up, which is always fun to call tracks because you get things and bonuses and and stuff like that. Um, so yeah, uh the thing that kind of makes the game as well is that when you've done and you've all your ships are launched, you'll do a return to station action, and this is where all the modules that you've been buying throughout the game start to get activated. So you'd be putting a ship on a row, you'll be activating the row, and depending on how many modules you might want to activate, you need energy to activate more and more, and you'll get to do um more and more kind of combo tastic stuff. So, actually, the the action that's normally the I have to recall my workers' action, it's actually one of the most exciting actions in the game because you just get a load of stuff. It's like going shopping and all the endorphins are kicking off there. So, so yeah, Andromeda's Edge was great. I did absolutely crap on my game, I'm not gonna lie. Um, and this is a running theme of the weekend, I think mainly because I'm playing against designers and play testers of games that are there to break games, and generally, yeah, it's just the thing you've got to like live up to. It's you're playing against some real clever people that know how to play these games and how to grok these games uh to the nth degree. And but we had a blast, we had a great time, and uh yeah, that was a really good opener for for the uh the the retreat. So we played that, went to

Slay the Spire

12:46

bed. So Saturday, wake up, of course, we want to play a game, and uh I had someone uh from the team uh requested um that I bring Slay the Spire. So of course, happy to play Slay the Spire. It's one of my favourite games to play, and uh we literally spent um the the morning outside uh just near where the the lake is kind of situated, which I was frequenting throughout the weekend, and just basically pitched up camp on uh on a big uh outdoor table and basically got a couple of uh parasols to shade us, and I think that was the best that we could kind of make of the the situation to call off. So Slay the Spire got set up. We had a three-player game of which um I played as the silent, um, we had um basically uh uh Jace who was also with us playing as the Watcher, um, which is great because it's a character that doesn't get played that much, and I wanted to unlock more content for that character, and then we had uh uh one of the other team um uh and friends of David playing uh the um uh defect. There we go, get out, get there eventually. So, yeah, so getting the defect, and basically we ran acts one, two, and three. We went through the entire game. Now, many of you have probably heard of Slay the Spire, the video game, which is a video game of a board game. Um, so now there's the natural board game of the video game, which is a board game, so that's quite cool. And I'll tell you what, what I was skeptical with Slay the Spire when it got announced. I was just thinking, oh, I'm not sure this is gonna work as well, and how is it gonna translate into the the real kind of physical media of board gaming? But they've knocked they've knocked this game out of the park, they they have absolutely made this work, and it is just fantastic to hold those cards that you've seen on the screen in your hand and to be able to play cooperatively, which is now a standard feature in Slay the Spire 2, right? Um it's just such a great game, it's such a good game, and if you haven't heard of it, uh I'll just buy it on Steam, just go and buy it or buy it on the the app store and just play it because it's just fantastic. But really, if you've never heard of Slay the Spire and you're thinking, okay, JP, well, what is it? Well, Slay the Spire is uh a game where you start at the bottom, it's a roguelike um style game where you're doing runs against the game in order to get to the boss, defeat the boss, and you win, right? Fairly straightforward. And on your journey, you're making decisions whether to go left or right up this branching path of do I fight uh monsters in an encounter, do I take a random event, do I go shopping, do I rest, do I upgrade my cards, etc. Every decision is meaningful in this game in the way that you uh kind of progress. And that the the kind of trick is that if you're having a fight, you're always gonna get a card as a reward, right? So you get this massive thick deck of cards for your character, and then you typically would draw three and pick one. So your standard deck that starts with let's say 10 cards is growing and growing and growing with ever um you know opportunity to kind of tailor it to what you want. But also you've got to be careful because there's not that many ways of trashing cards out of your deck. You can do it typically when you go shopping and through certain events, but typically your deck is just going to get bigger and bigger so it becomes this thing, um, which hopefully you've created in the right place. And I just love the choices, it's like you're you're constantly getting these new boons and cards that are things that will unlock opportunities that you're never seen before. And the way this the combat works is slick, it it makes sense. You can do many of it simultaneously, you can discuss it with different players, of course, where it makes sense, like uh guys, I'm about to die, I need your help, please. Otherwise, we all lose, which is obviously a lose condition of the game. But as you kind of progress and you progress, you're unlocking relics. Now, relics are just these cool powers that you get um when you basically uh defeat um elite bosses, and also when you kind of get up to certain areas in the game, especially on the the act one, and they're just doing cool things like you know, uh once per turn, do this thing, tap it and get a thing. Or it could be that because you roll a dice every combat round, which determines some of the behaviours of the the enemies, you might be getting heals or blocks or do dealing damage to different people, and you can get potions that can help you do buffs and all sorts of stuff, and it's just such a fun game. We had a blast, and it really helped. I think Jace, who was playing with us, um man, like breaking the game, dealing 120 damage, which is just massive in the game. And I was like, Thank god this is a co-op because you'd rinse us if it wasn't. So, yeah, it was just a really, really good experience. And we went for acts one, two, and three, and we played all morning, and we beat the game. And this is also on ascension one, so the game has an inbuilt um uh kind of mechanism that if you want to make the game harder, you can add this difficulty level in, which will twist the game up slightly. So we were we were playing on ascension level one, which is the easiest of the ascension modes, which made the elites harder, and now we've unlocked ascension level two, and so the next time I play, you can keep going and going and going until you get basically better in the game, and and that's just always good fun. So, yeah, that was such a blast playing Slay the Spire.

Leviathan Wilds

18:08

Um the next game I'm going to talk about is Leviathan Wilds. Now, this is a game that I brought to um the retreat, and uh another person, another member, um brought it as well, and and it's just a game that was constantly on tables, it's just it was always being played, not always my copy, but um I think Ricardo's copy was just constantly there, and and it was just such a joy to see this game just consistently being played. And and I think it's I'm not trying to wrap my brains why um why is it the case? And obviously, I I think it's a great game, uh, but I think it's kind of a game that lasts about an hour, and it's just a nice filler, it's just a nice, meaty kind of filler puzzle that you can get in between kind of maybe larger games that take three hours, and and I think it was just yeah, basically being a nice palette cleanser. So, what is Leviathan Wilds? Well, Leviathan Wilds is a game I knew nothing about until about two or three weeks ago, and the crowdfunding uh is currently at this time of recording, is doing a um yeah, a campaign, uh, which is Moon Crowd uh games, doing a campaign for the Shattered Peak expansion for it, and it's only really from that I've been going, what is this game? and people comparing it to Shadows of the Colossus, the video game, which is all about you scaling these big beasts and and basically taking them down. And this is kind of like a board game adaptation of that, although it's not directly linked to the IP, it's its own thing. And really, you are these climbers with specific powers that you are climbing these Leviathans who have got these crystals all over their body, and some of these crystals are you standard crystals, and some of them some of them are blighted, which are different colours on the map. And these crystals are kind of enraging these leviathans and making them pissed off, basically, and they do not like or want you climbing all over their body, um, so they're constant, consistently trying to like hurt you and and and deal their nonsense to you in order to basically get rid of you. And it's this kind of game of cooperative game where you're working together to destroy the crystals off the Leviathan, and if you do, great days, you just you rescue the Leviathan, it kind of comes out of its its uh trance and then realizes cheers, thanks for the help. Um now can you get off me, please, so I can get on with my day. Um, whereas if you lose, well you die, you lose, and that can happen in the game. So it's like a boss battler. So the game comes with a book of 17 Leviathans, and you can open up and you can play them in any order you like. There's not really a campaign as such. You can play them obviously one to 17, or you can just play whatever the hell you want. And we played, um, I think throughout the the entirety of the weekend, I played this game three times. So I've played three of those Leviathans already, and I think others were playing the others, and every Leviathan adds its own new rule set, probably apart from the first one, which is like a tutorial, but adding uh its own kind of rule set into the mix to kind of mix up the puzzle. So as you're climbing up, that the whole board is a book. So you open it up to the pages you want. There's a Leviathan, you take the set of cards out that are the kind of Leviathan's behavior cards, give them a shuffle, and you arrange them into a row of five, and ultimately you are um taking your turns, revealing the threat card, so you kind of get an idea what this thing's gonna do. And it comes with these kind of rings that you put onto the board uh surrounding your space, and basically, if it's gonna attack you, it might have an area of effect uh attack that you're gonna have to deal with or get out of the way. Um, um, but usually you have time, not always, because when these things get pissed off, they get enraged and things start to get a bit naughty for the climbers. But basically, you are playing these climbers, you'll have a class of climber and you have the character of the climber, and there are two settings. Separate decks of cards, and you take them both and you shuffle them, and that's your deck. And it's very simple. There's no real deck building as such, you're just throwing two things and mixing it together. So when you do that, um, yeah, you you're away, you draw your hand to three cards, and you're taking one of those cards and slotting it into your player board, and that's your action points for the round. So now you know what you can do. And on your turn, you can climb, which means you can move up the nodes in an orthogonal way, and each node is uh an action point. You can jump by spending three action points to literally jump to two nodes away, and that can be over open space. So again, you're climbing up, you might be doing a jump to a different area of the beast, maybe onto one of its little legs, and yeah, and you can do other things like striking crystals, which is that you can spend as many action points to strike them down, and the crystals are dice that you basically use as counters, and you can tick them down and and away you go. If you hit a blighted crystal, then you're gonna take blight damage. And this is where the kind of um the game over conditions can come in because if your health ever reaches the blight marker on your health track, then you die. So as blight goes up, it means that the health has less than go, and if they ever cross over, then well, you're super dead, uh, which is probably gonna happen at some point. Um, so yeah, you're kind of doing all these different things. You can heal yourself, you can rest, and and the way the grip system works is so simple, but the way it works is just so clever and intuitive and thematic. So your grip is your deck. If your deck ever runs out, or your grip ever runs out, guess what happens? Well, you fall, and if you fall, you're going straight down to the bottom. Now, if you're passing through certain nodes that are injury nodes or grip damage nodes or whatever, you will take that as you fall down and you'll hit the first ledge that is in your column. Now that might be right to the bottom, or it could be uh in a safe place that you manage to kind of put yourself in. So you've kind of like you're managing your deck, and there are ways to manipulate that as you go where you can kind of get more grip, which is basically uh random cards from your discard shuffled and put under your deck to keep yourself going for longer, right? Um, and I I really like that aspect of like my grip's running out, I need to find a ledge so I can rest. And when you rest, you take your discard and basically put that under your deck and and uh yeah, you have grip and you can carry on climbing. So the timing of the game is really important. But what I really love about it is you've got your hand of cards and you can just play them at any time to do skills on your turn or on other people's turn. So if an opponent's revealed the threat card and their area of effect is gonna hit you. Well, if it's not your turn, you don't have any agency to deal with that. Well, this game allows you to play a card. So you can basically go, Yeah, I'm gonna play this card, it allows me to move out of the way, and all the skill cards um do some really cool stuff, like that kind of thematic to the character. So I was playing a gadget here, and it has this big wooden gadget token that I could spend to do some cool stuff, which is gonna help me strike, it's gonna help me move, and all sorts of stuff, but yeah, so there you go. I hope that kind of gives you a sense of what the game is, and yeah, it's just fun. I just can't I can't explain it any other way, it's just fun, it plays in an hour, really good for families. If you've got kids that are, you know, and that 10-year-old mark, maybe even a little bit younger, who can get onto board games. I'd pick this up. I think it's just a great, great um kind of experience, and a lot of people have said the same thing when we're playing it, which is awesome to see, right? Which is great.

Cat In The Box

25:34

Um we then played uh still outside a trick-taking game called Cat in the Box. This game, this game. I don't even know where to begin to explain Cat in the Box. Um, there's some thematics around it being that it's to do with time travel or it's to do with you trying to stop a paradox from happening. And it's like any other trick-taking game, except the cards you don't you have don't have any suits or colours, they're just number cards and they're all black and white. And you think, well, hang on a minute, how does that work as a trick-taking game? And it took me, it took me a few goes to try and figure this out. But you have this board in the middle, um, which has all of the the colours. Um, you've got your um, yeah, your various different colours of green, blue, um, red, and yellow, red being the trump suit, and they're all arranged um in in that way, and then you've got your own little mini player board, which means when you're playing a card from your hand, you have to put it on which side, um, which denotes its colour. So you can say I've got a six, but I'm playing it as a yellow six, or I'm playing it as a green six, and and when you do that, you put your token onto this this communal board that shows everybody that that was the the green six. Um, so therefore the green six is done, and no one can play that again. So at the beginning it feels open because you're bidding for the amount of tricks that you can do, so you think can I do one, two, or three? But the clever thing in the game was actually the if you bid correctly and the tokens that you put onto this numerical board all kind of arranged in an orthogonal um connection, you can actually score more points in the game. So not only you're trying to um create this big tray trail of tokens, but everyone knows you're trying to do that, and they're gonna basically screw you because if you ever get to a position where you're playing a card and you can't play it for any number or colour because you're out of that colour, or they're all taken, then you cause a paradox and you're gonna score negative. So there's this real, real kind of silliness with the game where you just can't help but but play, and yeah, it's it it's just it was fun. I'd play it again. Um, trick-taking games for me they can be hit and miss. Um, they're not my favourite style of game, but I I like the mechanic of um trick taking and how it works and when it's implemented into game systems. But yeah, this one was just a little bit unique and and a little bit different to what I've played before, and it does require some some kind of brain decision space that might not be my wheelhouse, but it was good fun to play uh a lighter game, especially after the Slay the Spire and Leviathan Wilds. So

The Defense of Procyon III

28:15

then we get to Saturday evening. So Saturday evening, we had booked a grand epic adventure of the defense of Procyon 3. So this is a game designed by David Tursey. So again, his weekend, he had his copy, it was all painted. Um, probably showing you pictures of those painted uh miniatures now. And we set this up, so it was me, Adam Turtsy, we had Mark Dainty and Asaf from Easy Ball Games, and we sat down to play this epic grand game. And I I love this game. This game is uh just something unique and special about this game. The more I play it, the more it kind of lives rent-free in my brain, and yeah, and it was just a great privilege to kind of sit and play. And Adam, you being David's brother, had not even played this game before, so he was keen to try it out. So me and Adam were on the alien team, Mark and Asaf were on the human team. So Adam was playing the Meld, which is the spaceship faction, so basically, in yeah, dealing with all that nonsense in space. I was playing as the principal, which is the alien ground forces, and Mark was the uh expedition playing the human ground forces, and Asaf was the Armada, which is the human space. So maybe I'll explain this very shortly. So the game is like an asymmetric, unified war game that's fought over different uh fronts. You've got the space and you've got the ground, and it's all happening simultaneously. You're kind of helping each other on your team, you know, and the the way the space board looks, you've got the planet of Procyon 3, and you've got all of the space uh armadas all uh waiting, you know, uh waiting for the the big grand battles, and you've got like the western hemisphere and the eastern hemisphere of that planet, which is directly interacts with the ground board, which is the you know, the literally what's happening specifically on the ground with all the troops having um yeah, basically firefights and and all sorts of stuff. And on the ground, you've got on the alien side the the Empress who's the queen. Uh the aliens all like a hive mind that they're all kind of being controlled by the Empress, um, and all of the drones um uh that are kind of on the board and centurions, which are like your beefy units, all trying to basically cause mayhem for the humans in order to retrieve this artifact. Because the story is that the humans have dug up this artifact on the the planet, and they're basically pissed off these aliens and saying, No way, leave that alone. There's a bigger threat in the universe if you start meddling with that. And because neither you know, faction or or species can understand each other, it's this massive, massive war and conflict. And every faction, even on the same team, plays differently. They've got different mechanisms that's been brought in. You know, if you're playing as the meld, you're playing like a gloomhaven with dice kind of system. If you're playing the principal, you're you're playing this card play system where more to use cards that allow you to move units around based on the territories on the card, but also their skills do some really cool effects. But you also have this board that you can play cards face down on to uh basically enact directives. And the way the combat works at the principle is that you you have a bag and it's like a bag um building um kind of ratio of black and white cubes, and you're just hoping to pull out the um the black cubes to do all the damage because all the white cubes are um basically the the discontent of your forces that is not listening to what you're wanting to do. That happened a lot at the amusement of the other players. Um, but the expedition player kind of has these four core heroes that specialise in different things in the game, whether that's healing, dealing damage, etc. recon, etc. And then they're playing cards to basically activate a hero and uh basically generating a rally points to move units and and do firefights uh on the map as well. So it's that's always good fun. And in our game, me and Mark were head to head. We were the ground forces, and Mark was pretty much decimating my eastern front of forces to the point where my Empress was you know pretty much at risk, and they get a lot of VPs for killing her. Um, but on the western front, I was basically causing uh Mark uh a bit of trouble and tearing down his his pylons and his defences and all sorts of things. All the while, Adam was from space bombarding the planet, trying to help me out and doing all these things, and also landing ships to give me extra combat strength and things like that. But on the other side, um Adam and Asaf were basically sorting out the space conflict and the way the meld work again, you pick a dice, you're doing pips for one thing and diamonds for another thing, and activating specific units and moving them around, of which they have many. Um, and the Armada player kind of has this uh you curate your own combat deck which has hits on there. Again, these are multi-use cards as well, and also your any cards that are kind of on top of your discard pile act as a um uh technology that you're being used uh throughout the game as well. So it's so much decision space is that you're you're kind of going through for each faction. And I've played this three times now, and this is the um, yeah, basically I've played a different faction each time because I'm trying to get around all of the uh factions that can help teach this game. And the biggest downside to this game is that it's a highly asymmetric game, it's much like root in the fact that you're having to learn a brand new faction the way it interacts with the game is completely different to everyone else. So if you've got uh a faction that someone's uh coming along to play and you've not played it, it's really hard to help them out because the game comes with four separate rule books, one for each of the factions. And really, one of the best ways is here, read this rule book. And that's always a high barrier to entry for any game. And there are some actually good videos online that kind of break it down, which I've watched. Um, but you know, when I'm teaching games, it's always a bit difficult because I I want to be the one that helps the the players out, right? Even if they're on my team or not, I want to be able to help them out, and it's it's a bit difficult to do that, so it takes a lot of investment of I think of your time. But oh boy, oh boy, right when when you get there, when you're kind of grokking this game, I can see this being exceptional, absolutely exceptional, and and most of us around the table, I think, enjoyed it. Um, I think the first play is always rough, the downtime is always long, and it takes a long time to get around because everyone's like, how does this work again? How does that work? But once you get past that, there's a gem of a game here. Um, and you know, and I think currently I think it's out of print, it's it's probably quite difficult to get hold of. And I'm really hoping that this gets picked back up because there's something special. There really is. There's not many games like this, it will be niche. Um, but we had a blast, and I think Adam's um looking to pop round um maybe later in the year for one weekend. We're gonna get some games of it then and hopefully get refreshed. So that's cool. So that's good fun. Um, so that's pretty much the Saturday. I think after all of that game, I'll I was pretty tired and ready to hit the sack. So yeah, then we

A quick aside for Star Trek Captains Chair

35:17

got into Sunday. So the first game I played um was some Star Trek Captain's Chair decks, but I can't talk about them. But I did play two games of Star Trek Captain's Chair, um, playing some some potential content from future waves. And all I'm gonna say was, brilliant. Love that game. Um, I won't talk about Captain's Chair too much, other than you should check it out, even if you're not a Trekkie. If you like the Imperium system, please check Star Trek Captain's Chair out. It's just such a fantastic game. What an experience to to play, and yeah, what a privilege to play with the designers as well. I absolutely love that game, but I'll say no more about

Recall

35:56

that. So, what did I play? I played Recall um with uh Frank and uh a couple of other uh people that were there at the retreat. Um, Frank um did a great job at kind of teaching the game to other people. I played before, and recall kind of sits in I think it's in the same design as as uh Revive, and basically it's it's a similarist game, even though it's not the same. It feels like the DNA of Revive is in there, um, but it is it's basically a very different game. Very, very kind of um Euro-y uh in the way that it works. You you basically are exploring this this land, you're trying to unearth um these artifacts and knowledge from these three species that have been dormant and dead and buried many, many millennia ago, and you're uncovering basically their technology and and their knowledge and ultimately to utilize for your own gain. So you're exploring these tiles, you're branching out with your your workers, you're building these uh vaults, you're building workshops and and monuments uh um that are kind of linked to to these particular uh species. Um and yeah, basically all in the name of VPs. Um, and recall's good fun. Um personally, I prefer revive. Um, I don't know why, and maybe I'm in the minority of that, but I I think I do prefer revive to recall. But I I wanted to play it again and I still have fun with the game. And I think what it is is like let me let me explain how the maybe the game works a bit. So you have these keys, these action keys, and they slot into your playable, which is very cool, by the way. So you take the key, put it into an action, and then you'll do anything on the key, which might be bonuses, you'll get, and also you'll do the action that you've slotted the key in. And that that bit's quite a cool part of the game. Um, I feel like maybe you're not getting enough of that. Um, that that kind of endorphin hit of I get a thing, put the key in. Um, maybe maybe because uh there's only 13 rounds in the game, and at least two of them are going to be recall actions, which is similar to Andromeda's edge of recalling um all your kind of keys and pulling those those back as well. Um, but yeah, you're you're kind of doing these things, and those those actions are like move your workers, reveal a new tile, traverse over water, um, excavate, build stuff, um, etc. etc. And they're just a pretty much a combination of those things. And yeah, and you you've got these each tile is like a hex grid of many hexagons um that are all interconnect into each other. You'll be revealing those, and then depending on the terrain type, will depend on what you can build on there and how you interact with them. And you've got these things called Rally Cubes, which are these big chonky cubes that sit on there, and when you pick one of those up, they'll go into your player board. That's like a set collection thing. Um, you can get gems, which are help you uh as action economy to spend for a lot of these things, and there are three tiers of gems that you'll need to acquire, and you can convert those up and down. I think the fun bit of the game is the species are all like like asymmetric powers, and you've also got the gadgets, and these gadgets are these little tiles that allow you to activate with ability stones that allow you to do some cool stuff, and you might be like you can get to build for free, or you get to do a free movement, or you can do something else. And you start with one in the game, and there are three others on the uh three species uh tracks of which are white, grey, and black. And basically, the more you interact with that, those colour components, whether you're digging up those colour ability stones or or you're finding the knowledge of that particular uh colour, you're going up the track. And when you get to a certain point, you're gonna get a bonus if you're first, but you get access to a gadget, you'll find a gadget, and then you add that to your playboard, and now your options are increased. And then you get a bit further, you unvey re you reveal the species, and now you have access to its ability, which is great. So now you've got two kind of core abilities that you can do, and you keep doing this until you kind of build this custom um species, really. Like your faction just becomes a um a meld of different different things, and yeah, it it's quite cool that bit, I must admit. But I just I think for revive, I just prefer to have my faction, which is a bit more meaty that does this thing, the way the board is completely asymmetric to others. I just find that system just more interesting for me. But I think a lot of people are enjoying recall, uh, probably more so uh than revive, but hey-ho.

World Order

40:21

Um the other game that I played um on uh Sunday was World Order by uh hegemonic projects games, uh, which is their new um yeah, kind of game in that series. So a lot of people are going to compare World Order to hegemony because it's the same publisher, but it is nothing like that. And Paul did a great teach. Like Paul was um pretty much trying to practice his uh teaching um patter down because he's got a uh demo this at the UK Games Expo, and so yeah, uh I decided to jump on uh his second game and just get a full game experience because I've only really played like 60% of a game round uh Mr. Mark Monk from Ninja Geek Games when he did a uh a practice game for his demo at GridCon. And um, yeah, and I've demoed it at uh UK Games Expo previously as well. So I thought let's get a full game, let's see what this thing's all about. Um so what is World Order? World Order is a game where you play as a superpower, so you can be playing as an America. Um, I'm not gonna finish that sentence. Um, you can play as Russia, you can play as China, you can play as the EU. And you effectively are influencing the world via different ways, whether it's militarily or whether it's through economic um pressure or whether it's through um basically engaging diplomatic um relations for different countries. So you've got I think it's seven sections of the board all representing the different continents of the uh the earth, and each continent will have uh a deck of country cards that will be like a little mini uh market and offer that you can kind of get as as you go through. Um, so yeah, really it's kind of boiled down to eight actions. I'm not gonna go through them all, and they are themed in different things: diplomacy, military, uh, economic and trade, etc. etc., and some in growth as well. And they're themed around these themes, and you start with a deck um based on your country. Now think they're slightly asymmetrical in how they work as well, which is always nice. And you are effectively playing a card, doing the thing on your turn next. You play a card, do a thing, da da da, and you go round and round um influencing the ball by putting cubes out, and there are like three of the core actions will allow you to put cubes out, whether you're spending diplomacy to engage with uh particular uh continent areas, and and it becomes like an area majority game in there, uh, which is always interesting actually because there's two sections to the area majority. You've got like a permanent influence, which can never be removed, and then you've got this uh temporary influence which gives you more points when you place, but it is at risk of being knocked out when they they kind of slide on a conveyor belt as people put more and more on. So that's quite an interesting thing. So, yeah, you typically can put influence cubes out by engaging, by building bases in countries that will allow you to, not all countries like you. Um, I found that out. Some they're happy to have bases from you, and some are like, no way, like piss off, you're not allowed to do it. Um, and the other one is investing in countries as well. If you invest in countries, you you're spending money, but you're getting uh small returns from them, but also influence into that region as well. Um, but yeah, you're doing different things, you can improve your country by getting growth cards. Um, you can basically yeah, get more country cards as well, improve relations and in different ways so you can get more options because those are cards you can spend to do different things as well. Um, and yeah, you can also put a crap load of tanks out, which I learned that's what Russia does. Like Russia uh was just basically being a military threat to pretty much most of the other players on the board. And if you're putting tanks on the board, you're increasing the threat into those areas and depending. On the area, you'll have like um your your uh superpowers icon in certain regions, which is basically saying you're like more present in certain regions. So for China, which is what I was playing, I'm more present in Asia for obvious reasons, um, whereas the USA more present in the Americas, but there's some overlap as well. So if you've got tanks in there, you're now providing threat to the other player, um, providing it's their their kind of sphere of influence. And if you have less threat than the opponent, then you're losing victory points at the end of every round, and that's quite interesting because this becomes this cold war of just people putting tanks in, and you go, Oh, hold on, I'm putting more tanks in. Um, but kind of when you've done all of that, you um basically go through a uh uh a purchase market uh phase where you can get quite a card. So the two cards that you don't spend, so you get six cards in hand, you you spend four of them as actions. The two that you don't spend, you get money typically, andor research points, and you can add those research points to buy new cards. So it becomes this deck building game, um, which is always good fun. Uh I I love a bit of deck building in in games, and you're now going, I do want to spec into military, do you want to spec into economic? And you can kind of lean into different ways of reacting to what other players are doing in the game, and yeah, it that well that bit was really, really fun. But the game has its major scorings after three and the sixth round, which is when it ends, and that's pretty much when yeah, basically um all the shenanigans kind of happen. And I enjoyed it, I enjoyed World Order, I thought it was a really good game. Paul did a crack and teach, which is no surprise, that's his bread and butter, and it's what he loves doing. And I think everyone had a great game. Now, people were going, well, how does it compare to hegemony? And I'm like, well, it is a different game, so it's difficult to compare. But if you ask me which one I prefer, which one do I like the best? Is hegemony. Um I think my main reason for that is I think I prefer the zoomed-in aspect of you are a country and you are operating as one of its class systems, as opposed to I'm the big superpower. Um, and it just feels like you're more under the microscope, and the cards you play you can kind of identify with a lot more uh for me personally, and then and I think hegemony is a heavier game than World Order, which is not necessarily a bad or good thing. Um, but I think that's uh just something for my taste. I just prefer hegemony, and I'm actually looking forward to the Shadows of Authority expansion when it comes out, so that should be good. But World Order is definitely a great game, it's definitely good. I'll play it any day. Um, and I think probably the the good thing is that it's not super asymmetric as well, like hegemony is where you've got to learn a class system and is literally different to how the state works or how the working class works. Everybody will be doing the same things but with different nuances, so I think it's a bit more accessible. No, it's a lot more accessible than hegemony is in that respect, so yeah. So that's uh world

Clans of Caledonia

46:58

order, so that was all good fun. And then we get to the Monday, and I play a lot of repeated games of Love If and Wilds and other things as you do. But the only new game I played on Monday was Clans of Caldonia, and that came as a bit of an opportunity because three of us were sat around, it's like, what should we play? There's a big stack of games on the on the table, and uh, I think again it was Frank said, Well, we could play clans, and I was like, please, I want to play Clans of Caldonia because it's a game that I've heard of and I've just missed out playing it. It's just yeah, I think at GridCon twice in the past two years, I've not had uh the opportunity to play, I've just missed out, and yeah, to get an opportunity to rectify that was like, Yes, please, let's do it. So we uh we we got clans of Cardoni to the table, and yeah, clans was it it gets reference to to like Terra Mystico a lot, and it gets reference to um Gaia Project as well. Um, and I'm not sure if it actually shares the same design or not, I'll have to check it out. But it's very similar in that you've got this board in the middle, and you you arrange it in multiple tiles, so you get a different board layout, which is always good. Um, and on this board you've got a bunch of hexagons, and there's lakes, there's grasslands, there's mountains, and there's loads of cost um icons on each hexagon. That's pretty much the board. There's some ports in the corners which will allow you to do some mega moves if you can kind of get there, but generally the board is the board, and you've got your little player board, just a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny player board, which has all of your industries on there, whether it's your your sheep, your cows, the milk um uh that it's making, and the um the cheese uh industries, there you've got wheat, you've got uh whiskey, and you've got bread. And then you've got a bunch of workers that can be uh woodcutters and uh miners that kind of work in the mountains, and yeah, all that's on your board, and much much like Terra Mystical or Age of Innovation, you've got uh seven actions you can do, the eighth one being its pass, and this game flies round the table. It's like right, I'm gonna expand, I'm gonna put the um let's say a cow on this space, I'll pay the cost of the space and the cost of the industry. Done, you'll go right. I'm gonna upgrade my um navigational uh shipping range. Cool, four four quid done. Next go, right. I'm gonna buy um resources from the market, and this is where there's a nice little market board of all of the primary and secondary resources in the game and all these counters on there that you can just buy, and the amount you buy will then push up um um the basically the price of of those uh resources because they get more scarce, and if you sell they're you know they become uh devalued. So this thing's fluctuating as the players are interacting with it. And I always love simple market kind of trading boards, I think they're always quite fun in the game. Um, so yeah, as you're kind of flipping around doing these uh actions and it's just literally zipping right round, like you're just having lots of turns before you know it, and to the point where you can't do anything, you ran out of money and you're like, I have to pass. And the whole kind of point of the game is you're acquiring contracts, which is one of the actions, and on that contract, it'll say, I need two bread and one whiskey. And you go, Okay, well, in order to do that, then I'm gonna have to start investing in those industries and putting them out on the board. So you're kind of building um at the start of the game, you're having two presents on the board, which are two of your working meeples, and typically you'll have them at either end of some some sort of fashion, and it does a snake drafting and how that works as well. So once you've done that, you um can build off from them in an adjacent way. So at the start it's very open, you can go anywhere. But I'm telling you, when this game gets going, contention is happening all over, as people cutting you up. Um, and the game we were playing, there's a really, really like awesome port uh ability in the corner which says if you have these four resources, you get 50 quid. I'm like, I want a piece of that action, and just got completely cut off. And it's like, eh, sod you. Um, so we had a uh a bit of a laugh about that, but it's just really good. I I want this game, I want Clans of Caldonia. It's just it's been tickling my brain ever since I played it, and I'm like, I really want to buy this game now. Um, Frank did have the industria expansion, we didn't play with the train board, so no choo-choos for us, unfortunately. Um, but we did, I think, throw in some of the modules of extra stuff and extra clans. Um, and I'm not sure if I was playing one from the base game or from the expansion, but I was like the fisherman clan. So my workers weren't woodcutters and miners, they were fishermen and they could go in their lakes and move around, and that was quite fun. And I really liked how different and asymmetric the the different clans were. Um, so yeah, I'm looking forward to to playing more of Clans of Caldonia, but yeah, please check it out if it sounds like it's your jam. So

PHASE D: THE LAST PLAY

51:42

that was kind of the main game, those are the main games I played over the weekend, and I had such a blast. Um, you know, and all I can say really, if uh if you're listening, David and and team and yeah, Noralie, who basically coordinated the event, um just thank you so much. It's such an honour and a privilege to be invited to this uh event, and it's one of my favourite weekends of the year, just to get away, play new things, play stuff that's not even out yet, test some stuff out, and of course playing more Star Trek Captain Chip, which is just uh amazing. Um, but yeah, I just absolutely from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of that experience, and thank you to the content creators uh um, yeah, basically I games with because you all just made made it so um yeah, wait welcoming and and I love it so much. And I'm definitely looking forward to returning in the future years for sure. So yeah, so basically we travelled home. Traveling home was a lot easier than travelling there. I say a lot quicker, a bit quicker. Uh Antwerp was slightly kinder. The the tunnel experience was was great. It was the quickest I think I've ever got through the tunnel at Calais to Folkestone. And we drove home. And uh, other than my foot cramping up from the amount of driving being locked in this position, I think um, yeah, we got back and we we had pretty much the the the hottest day in the UK as I was travelling back, which is fine in Aircon when you sat in a car, but when you're um when you got out of the car and you're unloading, you think wow, it's 35 degrees in the UK. We're obviously not built for it, but um, but you know what? I don't care. We had a great weekend, the weather was exceptional. I didn't see much of it because we sat most of it in in a house, but I wouldn't change it for the world and and yeah, it was great. So there we go. That's that's pretty much the end. I just wanted to to kind of cover that as a a bit of a special uh just play with others episode and give you a little uh insight into that weekend I've just had. And yeah, if you like and enjoy the show, then um please like, subscribe uh to the YouTube channel if you haven't already. So you can see this visually if you're listening on the podcast uh platforms, but you can find us and engage with us through all of our social media um channels, which is Facebook and Instagram and whatnot. Um, and if you want to support the show, we do have a coffee uh subscription, and every penny helps. As you see, I'm trying to be more visual with the podcast. I would love to upgrade my visual equipment and get better cameras and and different things like that. And every penny towards the show helps, just like it did with the Who's Turners Anyway podcast. And I really appreciate those who have already done that and that continue to support the show. So thank you guys, you are amazing. Um, but so all there's left to say is you only grow old when you stop playing. Take care of the