Just Play With Others: UK Games Expo 2026 (Feat. NinjaGeek Games)

Con-Crud is a real thing but you know what, it's worth it when you've attended the UK Games Expo 2026.  JP is joined by Mark Monk from @NinjaGeekGames where they break down the show, the games they've played, the people they've met and the wicked awesome (thanks Mark) time they had.

DISCLAIMER!!! For those watching on video Mark's video / audio has a slight delay which will be resolved in future guest episodes as JP has learnt his lesson.

IN THIS EPISODE
- JP & Mark catch-up around their journeys into the NEC Birmingham and find out that Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers have nothing to worry about.
- We break down our experiences over Thursday to Sunday and talk about games, games, games, people and more games

GAMES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Flip 7 / Flip 7 with a Vengeance by The Op Games
The Thing: Infection Outpost 31 by Mondo Games
Song of the Wildkin by Boken Games
Paths Unknown Series by Raybox Games
Almighty by Keen Bean Games
Drillers by Czech Games Edition
Codenames: Critical Role Adventures by Czech Games Edition
Wroth & Wreck by Chip Theory Games
Too Many Bones 2.0 by Chip Theory Games
Sublime Dark by Hall or Nothing Productions
Trouble on the Tempus by Minor Disaster Games
Railway Porters by Saachi & Saachi
Tally Up by Messy Table Games
A Carnivore Did It by Horrible Guild
Thief's Market by PickPocket Games
Kryptothera: The Cryptid Pursuit by NoctiLux Games
Prague: Unseen by Albi Games
Tenby by Mighty Boards
War of Whispers by Starling Games
Snowdonia Gran Tour by Naylor Games
Time Troopers by Molinarius Games
Whisperwood by Cardboard Alchemy

LINKS REFERENCED IN THE SHOW
Check out Mark's channel right here - https://www.youtube.com/@NinjaGeekGames
Becky's Cheesy Bangers Playlist - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2GB4D1yA8G2qehCSAOZ27o?si=5Itu0f0rRiyUg2XyX_GmcwEPISODE&nd=1&dlsi=996ec348f8654010

CHAPTERS
00:00:00 - OPENING
00:00:24 - PHASE A: PULL UP A CHAIR
00:03:33 - PHASE B: JUST PLAY WITH OTHERS - UK Games Expo 2026
00:06:41 - Day 0 - THURSDAY - Press Event
00:07:01 - PHASE C: JUST PLAYED AT THE EVENT
00:12:20 - Flip 7 , Cabanga, Things In Rings
00:13:37 - The Thing: Infection Outpost 31
00:14:38 - DAY 1 - FRIDAY & Song of the Wildkin
00:19:41 - Paths Unknown Series
00:22:58 - Almighty
00:29:05 - Drillers
00:31:50 - Codenames: Critical Role Adventures
00:34:13 - Wroth & Wreck
00:37:57 - Too Many Bones 2.0
00:40:55 - Sublime Dark
00:44:15 - Trouble on the Tempus
00:49:58 - Sanctuary
00:51:38 - Flip 7: With a Vengence
00:53:39 - DAY 2 - SATURDAY & Hegemony: Shadows of Authority 
00:59:20 - Meet & Greets then Railway Porters
01:03:32 - Tally Up, A Carnivore Did It & Thief's Market
01:08:04 - Kryptothera & Stoke Me A Clipper!!!
01:10:39 - Prague: Unseen
01:15:18 - Tenby
01:20:13 - War of Whispers & Heat: Mario Kart
01:23:47 - DAY 3 - SUNDAY & Snowdonia Grand Tour
01:29:43 - Catching up with Mindclash Games
01:32:03 - Time Troopers
01:34:17 - Whisperwood
01:41:59 - PHASE D: UKGE PURCHASES & WRAP UP
01:52:07 - PHASE E: THE LAST PLAY

Transcript

OPENING

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you listen closely, you might just hear it. The faint echoes of dice demo tables and someone from Hall 3 saying there's one space left. That's right, it's the UK Games Expo 2026, and I'm here to unpack the whole weekend.

PHASE A: PULL UP A CHAIR

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to Just Play. It's JP, your host, and this is a very special Just Play with Others uh bonus episode where I have a very special guest. Uh but before I introduce him, um basically we're going to be talking about the UK Games Expo, which we've all just come back from, and I'm sure we're completely knackered. But let's go over and meet. It's Mr. Mark Monk from Ninja Geek Games. Hi Mark, how are you doing, mate?

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Hello, mate. How are you? I'm good, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah, how are you feeling after the last weekend of of cardboard shenanigans? How's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:55

But it's it's only three and a bit days, but it's I'm absolutely exhausted.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yes, yeah, I'm the same. I'm absolutely the same. I think this this UK Games Expo is probably hit me the hardest, I think, because um I've had uh a previous weekend as well, um travelling or uh hobnobbing to the Netherlands. Um and yeah, literally I got back from that uh was it a Tuesday, had a day, and then went straight to the UK Games Expo.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Uh what did you do in the Netherlands?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Oh, I was at um uh Mr. Tursey's David Tursey's game. Yeah, so you hadn't mentioned it, so I didn't make I keep dropping the names, don't I? But um yeah, yeah. Um but I've got actually plug plug here. I've got a future episode where I actually cover the whole retreat and and things like that. So that's good.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

We won't talk about it now then.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

No, I'll otherwise I'll just have to delete that episode, and that's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

That'll just have to get rid of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

What a waste. What a waste of time. But no, thank you for joining me on this, mate. I'm uh yeah, it's it's pretty cool to to do that. I think we we kind of collaborated on the Who's Turners Anyway podcast when we did the Essen episode because we all traveled to pretty much Essence. Twice now, isn't it? Is it but yeah, it's oh it has, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're just becoming a feature now.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

So yeah, yeah, it's like a bad smell just going around.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

No, no, of course not. Um, so yeah, I I think the the general format for for the listeners um and watchers, which is kind of weird for me to keep saying because people now view this on YouTube, um, is we're gonna kind of run you through the event and and kind of go through pretty much day by day what's going on. Me and Michael kind of tag team, different um experiences through games, people, anecdotes, funny stories, all that lovely stuff. So should we get on with it, mate? Because I think we've got a lot to crack through, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah, and I'm pretty excited because obviously it's a brand new channel for you. So that's really really cool. Yes, really excited about that.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Yeah, thank you. It's uh yeah, it's been I mean, today, day of recording, is the the day that I've actually launched episode zero and one. So it's been it's been mad in the best way. It's been mad, loads of messages and um comments and and yeah, from loads of people from past, present, and new. And it's just awesome to see the love and support, mate, to be honest, and on Microsoft.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Yeah, it's community at its best, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Oh, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure I'll probably get the other side at some point.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

But we'll wait till the end of this episode.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah, we're gonna start slagging us off. Um

PHASE B: JUST PLAY WITH OTHERS - UK Games Expo 2026

SPEAKER_00 3:33

so let's talk about the travels up to um the expo. So we didn't travel together. I I travelled with the Curlies, uh, those that know the Curlies from from Whose Turn. Um and yeah, Becky and Curly uh offered to take me and Rob uh up up onto the uh yeah, in in their lovely electric car, which we poodled up the uh the M5. So that was good fun. Um pretty much the the thing that Becky likes to do, and I think if she knows I'm in the car, she she will I was gonna say she's gonna reveal her cheesy bangers, but that's uh that's not what you think it is, guys. That is literally her Spotify playlist um of absolutely trash music, which I love. Um and I think the whole name some. Oh, the highlight, the highlight of the trip, which I the best bit was because Curly was was kind of going, Christ, will you please just get out of the car? It was when me and Becky were were kind of harmonising on uh Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers with Islands in the Stream. I think that's where we hit peak, uh which was great. So we we had a great time, and then I think Curly had enough of about half.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

The thing is, your weekend can only go downhill from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Pretty much. We peaked, we peaked on the way up. I mean, we could have just yeah, turned the car around, but I'm glad we didn't. So yeah, so we we went up there and uh yeah, nothing uneventful as in, you know, nothing crazy happened. We we kind of turned up, and I think as soon as we we parked up and and got to the the event halls, I think we pretty much walked in the door and saw yourself. But yeah, how about you? How did you get up there?

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Yeah, well, I drove in my um my 18 van, the the um the one we took to Essen. Uh I had Davey with me. Yeah, um we had some yeah, I've got a UK Games Expo uh playlist as well. Um, song number one is Mbot by Hansen, of course. Why wouldn't it be?

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Uh Love it.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah. Um but we stopped off at Costco on the way in Bristol.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Oh I think it's ever been to Costco?

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Uh it's yeah, it's like it's like a booker's, but ten times the size. Um it does everything. Yeah, yeah, every it does everything. Eat TVs, playstations as well, and and we went up there and then we got some snacks and curries and things for the evening, so that was pretty cool. Nice. Um yeah, and then went straight. We stayed in an Airbnb about 30, well about 20 miles from the event.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Um really nice Airbnb with some two big gaming tables, like eight bedded, so it's pretty cool. And then we headed over to the uh venue for about uh half four to go to the awards.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Oh yeah, you saw the awards, did you?

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Yeah, yeah, it was really good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Nice, nice. I think I was eating at that point. Uh I think we hadn't we hadn't had a chance to to get food on the way up. And by the time we kind of parked at the hotel, um, we were at the Premier Inn um this year. So it it's a good half-hour walk to to the main halls from there. And I think by the time we got there and went to get a five guys or whatever from Resorts World, uh, I think, yeah, that was all done and dusted by the time we come back, which is fair enough.

unknown 6:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Oh, that's cool.

Day 0 - THURSDAY - Press Event

SPEAKER_00 6:41

But yeah, we had the press event, right? So the or the preview show, as they call it, which typically all all press and content creators will um have access to uh on the Thursday evening, where many of the uh uh publishers and and designers and such will will kind of lay out their wares for for us to have a have a peruse round and

PHASE C: JUST PLAYED AT THE EVENT

SPEAKER_00 7:01

I'd I say have a gander. I mean gander and their stuff. Um not everyone was there actually. Um I was I was surprised that some of the uh publishers weren't there, but I and now having spoken to them, I understand why, because of um uh space issues that they're trying to resolve on the Thursday getting ready for the show and things like that. But I always quite enjoy the uh the the press event. It's it's a nice way to kind of quickly catch many people without having um you know 50,000 people in on dating the whole show, you know, um, which is quite cool. But yeah, I I saw lots of people. Obviously, it's a weird it was a weird expo for me, um, because obviously of the relaunch of of what I'm doing with with just play, and yeah, it's it's just kind of strange. The only thing I will say is that Rob um had kind of you know, he was around with me a lot of the time. He he was just basically saying, look, think of it as JP's Ronan Keating, right? And he's basically left Boy Zone and he's now off doing his solo career. And I just and I was looking at him going, Thanks, mate. But yeah, out of all of the bands, is that is that where I'm at? And I'll say I've probably just got a few hits in me before I just disappear into nothing for 20 years, but yeah, here we go.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

I like my analogy better.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Oh go on.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

It was Harry Stiles, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

That's right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he did he did better than Ronan. So I'll I'll go with yours, mate. But yeah, anything um at the press event you want to talk about specifically?

SPEAKER_02 8:32

For me, it was sweltering in there because they hadn't got the aircon on. It was a hot weekend as well. Yes, um, but yeah, I I looked around. There was compared to previous years, there was nothing that I thought was outstanding that I was you know desperate to take a look at. But I did um there was there was a there was a few. It was nice to see Jack Pot set the reel from Dranda. Yeah, um the the the the you know the final version that looks really nice. Um and there was uh Jason and the Argonauts. Yeah, did you see that? Yeah, so that's a solo um story-driven campaign really cool dice manipulation and and um yes, that's right. Yeah, they did the Hercules and the 12 laders beforehand, and that was a really good one. And this one here looks like they've just stepped it up a level because you can get um companions um and and rather than getting weapons and things in it. Yeah, it looked that looked really cool, but that's I think that's on you guys uh back of kit at the minute or even for pledge. Um, but they've done really well. Um, and the other one I saw that was quite cool was called um Zen Monkey. Did you see that one?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Missed that.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

It looked really quirky. It was um I'm trying to think what other game they did. They had two games, and I can't remember what the other one was, but this Zen Monkey, and it had a big sort of like Chinese temple in the centre, right? Um, and then it's a Tow Lang game, and you're trying to create a Zen garden, but you're moving your meeple around the board to collect resources, and then this monkey king comes down and goes, Oh, by the way, you've got to chuck bananas in there now. And it's like, Well, I've got to go and get them, and then these other little monkeys running around blocking your actions, and you can you can manipulate them to block other people. It just looked really cool and quirky because I quite like that Japanese and Asian theme and Chinese theme. It looked quite cool.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Wall games, I just love them, they're just they're just crazy, aren't they? You just you just wouldn't think half of these things are real when people actually sit and explain them to you, but yeah, yeah. Apparently they are, they're a thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, but that that looked quite cool.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, yeah. Nice, yeah. Uh, I agree with you actually. Uh I was kind of I think as as press events go, I thought that I've been to to better, and I always end up comparing them to like Essen and and other kind of big conventions that I've gone to, and I find that those tend to just be more focused um into the the media side. And yeah, I I was surprised at some publishers who are putting their sales managers on on the press preview tables. Yeah. And I was like, that's just odd. Where's your PR guys? Oh no, he's helping set up, and it's like so. I it I think sometimes it's probably a trade-off, right? You're you're under pressure of a deadline to get your stall set up because that's the most important thing. And if you're not quite where you need to be, then fair enough, like the preview show is gonna take us that back seat, it's just going to. Um, so yeah, we'll we'll see. But yeah, I I it was fun. It was fun.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Yeah, it was nice to see. Um, there's a lot of of content creators I'm in touch with through Instagram and TikTok. I've never really met them. Um and I met quite a lot of them for the first time at this event, which was really nice. I am really bad with faces though. So if someone walks past me and I'm like, I know them, where do I know them from? It's really it's really I see them on TikTok, I know exactly who it is, I can tell you their name, where they live, whatever. Um, but when I see them in person, it just they just look so different. And it takes me a few seconds to to try and remember.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah, I know you, but I don't know where. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

It was really good to catch up with the people that I'd spoken to on media rather than in person.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, we'll talk about the people um as they come in. I'm just realizing that on camera my my left side of my face looks like it's on fire. Um I was saying to Mark um previously, I've been meaning to put a blind up in my office. There we go, sun's gone in. And uh it's just it's like this shining ray of light, it's just uh burning the left eyeball, but uh we'll get through once it goes away.

Flip 7 , Cabanga, Things In Rings

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Um yeah, I think once once a press event was done, we went back to the hotel and played some light games. We um yeah, yeah, basically just put some of the card games on the table. I think I played Flip 7. Realised I've been playing Flip 7 wrong for about six months now, which is just Isn't there any one rule? Yeah, it's quite a simple game, but uh uh well I was you You can play the most complex games in the world, but Flip 7 throws you. I know, throw me any Lisserda and I'll handle it. But Flip 7, apparently I've been playing wrong. But yeah, uh basically I didn't realise that every time you deal a card, you you basically go around in turn. I thought you stuck with one person and kept going order. Didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

And you activate the you activate the events in before you go to the next person. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

So I was like, that makes much more sense, but there we go. So we play Flip 7, play Kabanga, um, which is another light card game, quite a good fun kabanger is and uh Things in Rings we ended up playing, which I didn't enjoy as much, uh, which is the Venn diagram game, which me and Rob just like going, Oh no, just don't know what's going on. So that's pretty much what my whole evening, mate. Um, what did you do? Did you go back to the Airbnb and play some stuff?

The Thing: Infection Outpost 31

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Yeah, we did had a few drinks and we played the uh played the thing, Infection at Outpost 31. Yes, yeah, really good. Um and we had uh one of my friends' brothers came up, and he's not a gamer. Uh he plays on console games, uh video games, but he's not a gamer, and he was blown away with this game because it's a really easy rule teach. Um, but he loved the bluffing, the lying, uh the the pushy luck dice rolling mechanic, really simple things, and it was really good to see. And I was like, oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg, you wait. Um, and yeah, yeah, um, but he loved it, and we had a really good time in and Davey can lie.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Yeah, he's brilliant, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, um, arguments and laughs and things. And the thing I like about that game is yeah, yeah, it's the stories you tell after. Oh, I did this. You remember when that happened? Actually, I knew about that, and it was really good. So it's I don't play it often because it's quite a light game, but when I do, I always enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, nice, nice.

DAY 1 - FRIDAY & Song of the Wildkin

SPEAKER_00 14:38

So that was Thursday, right? Yeah, got some sleep, woke up, breakfast, a little bit of sleep, yeah. Uh very excited, always uh excited for expo, and then Friday rolls around. Um, my first demo, which I already have pre-booked, was um Song of the Wild King or Wild King, um, which is uh by Bokan Games, and I've been in contact with uh Hermes, the designer, and uh yeah, he was there and greeted me and basically sat down with another chap called Russell and uh yeah, we we sat down and played and he taught us pretty much one. Sorry?

SPEAKER_02 15:14

The critters one.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like I I basically say it's Everdell meets a dungeon crawler. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so if you can kind of think of the uh the artwork of Everdell, it's that kind of yeah, you know, got these animals and they're all like um yeah, of different kind of classes where I was playing this, I think it was a fox, I think it was kind of a foxy kind of character, and it was an archer, it was like a uh a ranger, that kind of thing, had a bow.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Um and then Robin Hood from the cartoon.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

It pretty much was similar. Um, and then uh Russell next to me was playing an axolotl mage, um, which is quite cute, and he had a water hat, he literally had a hat made from water, um, and then there's other other characters and things in there, and it's very cute, like it's got a very um really kind of cool aesthetic and and theming to the game, which I've not kind of seen done in the dungeon corlet kind of style, and I quite I quite liked it actually, because I'm a bit bored of dwarves and elves and barbarians and things. Like I like my fantasy things, but when it's been done to death, it's like oh it's another one. So something that kind of changes it up a bit and and puts you in um you know, like uh the the wilderness or forest and and actually just different things going on. So basically these these creatures, these wood wood beasts that have kind of normally peaceful, and they've started to become enraged and and kind of pissed off, and something's something's doing it to to these creatures, and this just start attacking you, and you're going exploring around uh the the kind of forest areas and you you do the typical dungeon crawler things. There's nothing kind of new that I've seen that go, oh my god, that's so so cool. Um, but you have cards, they have energy on them, you'll spend your energy to um play those cards. You can play as many as you you want to do things, which are like move and shoot, target two, very much those kind of things. Um, my character um could I think it's called Long Eye, um, could mark uh enemies to buff attacks against them for others. Um so that was good fun. And and then yeah, other ones were doing pushing and pulling, and uh so positional play is really important. Um and yeah, you've got like brambles on the map where if you walk through you take damage and yeah, you can open chests and you collect these acorns, which is the currency in the game. Um, and then you had other characters that were buffing uh the other characters in terms of dice, because on your mat as well, you can store buff dice, and the dice are just what you roll for you know for fighting and dealing damage and things like that. And then some of the enemies, uh, if they have a defense of of you know two, they'll roll two uh dice as well, and and you kind of need to kind of do the difference in damage and things. But I had a fun with it. I I and the guy was showing us um uh some of the artwork that's not finished, but it's coming together because obviously what was on the cards was very much prototype. The player boards were white, nothing else, so it wasn't ready, wasn't finished. I think it's going to crowdfunding in either end of this year or beginning of next, so it's still got a way to go. But he was showing some of the artwork on these cards and it looks phenomenal. Like I was on the YouTube side, wow, this looks really, really cool to see. So, yeah, I'm intrigued to see how this um evolves, and you know, they're putting boss battles in there as well, so you're gonna have to take down these bosses, and they could be like you know, these giant Beatle things that you have to take down. So, again, it's all kind of like it's it's just localized into a uh kind of a mini universe that I I don't know, I quite like it. I I had fun with that.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

That sounds yeah, that sounds quite cool. So, was it um were they standalone campaigns or scenario uh um standalone games or campaigns?

SPEAKER_00 18:55

I think it's a campaign game, yeah. Oh, cool. I don't think it's one that's like 150 hours or anything like that. I think it's gonna be accessible from from what I've heard. Um I don't know too much more about it. I just it like all these demos, you get a little little sneaky peek, don't you? Yeah, um, but it did what it needed to do, which is actually I'm interested to learn more about this game. And I think if you like that kind of you know, if you're looking for a dungeon crawlery adventure with tactical play, positional play, you know, dice rolling, killing enemies, that's just a little bit different in thematics, then it might be worth checking out. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

That sounds good. Yeah, I have I had heard of that. I hadn't hadn't seen it up close though.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah. So that's that one. That was me. What about you, mate?

Paths Unknown Series

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Well, I worked on uh Friday morning.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

You were demoing, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah, Ray Box Games.

unknown 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

So they do a pass unknown series dungeon call system. So I think Jaws of the Lion um style, you know, with the played on a book.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Um and you progress through the campaign that way. But they've got three different um versions of the game, so depending on which theme or you or or or genre you like. So you've got um a World War II with zombies, yeah. Um, so you're fighting Nazi zombies, which are the worst kind of zombies. Yeah, um yeah, horrible ones. Um two horrible things together. Yeah, yeah. And you've got two different versions of the game. So you've got your the Russians escaping the war, yeah. That's the first one. Then they did another one where you are Americans inf infiltrating uh a huge research facility to find the super weapon, and the super weapon turns out to be zombies. Um yeah, it's all campaign-based, story-driven. It's quite dark, quite gritty. Um, I've played both before, they're both really good. Um, if you do like your Dungeon Crawl um survival horror games, the other one they had there was Norse themed, so that was the gates of Milfheim. Um, so you you're a Viking or Christian warrior and you banded together to take on these uh typical uh Norse beasts like your dragers and your choles and things. Um they've just tweaked the mechanics slightly. So here you've got corruption and glory. So if you do well, you get glory, but you can spend that glory for special abilities and actions into real dice, but you then become corrupt and it affects your stats and combat values. And then the newest one, which was really popular, was the cats of Saint Mon Michel, okay, which is you are cats uh fighting in the French Revolution, so think sort of like the three musketeer type things. I mean and uh yeah, and you're fighting against um rats and cockroaches and things, and it's really thematic because your cats can move about, they can pounce across the map, but then they lose, um they have negative dice modifiers to their combat role. Um and then these these cockroaches they can stack, but they're one hit, and then they you squash them and they die. Um so they're just kind of like fodder, but they really get on your nerves. But um, yeah, it's quite. Cutesy for a dungeon crawler, and that's been really popular. And they do a standee version or a full deluxe mini version, which looks great. Course, course.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

So these are all the same system, as you said, but they're just different.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Yeah, yeah, the paths are known, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

That's what they call it. Yeah, and you progress they're all story, uh it's all linked. And the thing is if you play the game twice, you'll have a slightly different outcome because you'll choose different paths. So I think um one of the books had like 60 scenarios, but you might only do 40. But in two of the adventures, you'll have ammo and health. Your health doesn't regenerate between the scenarios and you can run out of your yeah. So the um the World War II one was more based on ammo resources and things, but you can go on, you can go, right? I'm not gonna do the next camp uh the next mission because I'm short of ammo. I'm gonna choose this one because I know it's a scavenge run. Yeah, and you go off and do that, and then next time you might not do it because you've got the ammo. Um it was quite cool.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

That sounds cool. That sounds cool. Um

Almighty

SPEAKER_00 22:59

so the next thing I kind of went to, and I just happened to chance uh upon this really uh was uh Almighty. So I think I finished the one demo, I walked down probably two two squares, and then on the right was Almighty, and I was like, Oh yeah, I I I remember this game when it came out on crowdfunding about a few years ago, and it's a game by Keen Bean Games, um who have done it uh what was it, Power Grid, not Power Grid, uh Power Vacuum. Um and uh I can't remember some other other games, but Almighty is a game about being a god. So, as the designer was telling me, I'm gonna have to read it from my notes. He said, You play as a god who's a bit of a dick, right? And I was like, I'm in. I was like, yeah, sounds good to me. When when can I play?

SPEAKER_02 23:47

And he went, Well Which which way did he have you at?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Uh so basically I waited five minutes um and I was chatting to another content creator, Millie, um, who uh writes for Wargamer, and we were just having a chat for five, ten minutes, and then by the end of that, uh we jumped on and started playing. And and then as soon as I sat down, I was like, Oh yeah, I remember this game, and it looks it's got a real specific look, like all the gods look kind of cartoony, and something I don't know, I'm trying to compare it to something I can't think at the minute, but yeah, they just look really cartoony, like the sun god. So there's four gods, you've got the sun god, the storm god, uh the god of love, and the god of death, and they all play asymmetrically in in in aspect. So in the middle of the table, you've got this big scroll, and that's the the land where all the mortals um pretty much live. And yeah, basically um the mortals are cards, uh, which has like these cute cartoony characters on there with with text that says like if you poke them, which is weird, if you poke the mortal, then you're in they do a special thing. Um, and on your turn, you'll have five cards in in hand, and you're trying to um basically get a uh area control of the one of the four sections using your cards as influence. So you're influencing the mortals on on the mortal plane. Um, but you can do things to manipulate um the board state. Um so each uh mortal might be blessed. If they're blessed, they get a gold star, which is great. And if they're cursed, then they've got a red star. Cursed will degrade that land's value, gold stars will will increase it. Um you'll have a prophecy card at the start of your round, and no, three rounds, I think. Um, and the prophecy card will say the forest needs to be greater than the mountains, right? And then someone else will have the mountains need to be greater than the forest or something. Right. So everybody's kind of wanting to do different things. And so you're playing cards and and the cards are like smite a mortal, right? Which is brilliant. Like, yeah, that's amazing. So if you've got if you've got this this like little um I don't know, this bum that's sitting in your land or the that land that you want to score on, and you're like, oh, he's just he's just degrading it. I'm just gonna kill him, and you go poof, he's dead. That's what you do, you smite him and he's gone. Like this cursed individual is now uh removed from the board. And then what happens? The god of death loves this because they receive them into the gates of um, you know, the afterlife. Oh, right. And then the the they're getting all of these mortals and they can bring them back to life and do certain things. Um, because the god of death, right? It can yeah, basically do all that sort of stuff. Um so I was the god of storms, and I had these storm clouds on each of the areas, and basically allowed me, depending on where the storm clouds were, allowed me to play certain actions. If the storm clouds weren't there, then I couldn't do it. And some cards made me move those storm clouds around. So that was my puzzle that I had to play. The sun god had a sun that basically is like a conveyor belt, moved across all of the four sections, and then buffed where the sun was. And the god of love ended up wanting to pair mortals up together for relationships because if they're in a relationship, they get extra glory, and that benefits them as well. But you can banish mortals, you can it uh attract mortals in, and you can do all of that kind of stuff, and it was so much fun.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Well, that's that sounds pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

It was probably one of my uh favourite games of the weekend in terms of just getting three different people that I don't didn't even know, and playing a game and just everybody having a giggle around the table because it was just telling stories. Yeah, we had a sacrificial virgin, was one of the mortals, and if you kill her, if you smite her, she blesses everybody else on the board, and then you can poke, like you said, you can poke the mortals, and it triggers oh, if you poke this person, he'll move to something else and do something. So it ends up in these chain reactions. So by round four, it's chaotic in the best way because like you go, Oh, what's going on? And and it's got a nice catch-up mechanic where if you're losing, you'll get these uh extra powerful RAF cards that come in and they are bonkers, just like we're gonna play this bang. And uh, yeah, that that's that was a good lot of fun. I'd I'd watch out for this. I I have backed this or pre-ordered.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Oh, have you?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah. I I think from the demo, I was like I'm doing yeah, I was like, I'm I'm brilliant pre-ordering this because this is this is gonna be a laugh. This is just one of those fun games. And it played we did the full game as well in the in Oh really, which is rare, right? At Expo to play a full game.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah, it is. Um and and especially with trying to teach people four different factions that are asymmetric, that can sometimes be tricky, can't it?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Yeah, it it it's it's not like it's playing root, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's like we're all playing the same game, it's just they are slightly asymmetric, but but still the guy who taught it did a brilliant job. He just threw a straight in and said, right, just play a card, don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

So how long did that take you then?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Yeah, 90 minutes max.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

Yeah, that is you don't normally very you know don't get those full full games.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

No, so full game of Almighty and I enjoyed it. So there we go. That was me.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yeah. What about you, pal?

Drillers

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Uh well well when I um left uh because I finished working at Ray Box at about two o'clock. Um I met with you, didn't I? And we went over to uh CGE, didn't we? But did you did you do anything after your Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

No fair yeah, we did CGE, yes. I forgot about that. We did, yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Yeah, is that not on your notes?

SPEAKER_00 29:29

No, it is, it's just further down. I just hadn't saw it yet. Yes, we did.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

Oh yeah. Um yeah, we went over to CGE and we saw Pavlina and had uh had a look at uh what's what's coming soon and we saw some quite tasty treats, didn't we? Some some nice things there.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yeah, if you just end it there.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yeah, we won't tasty treat, yeah. Just let everyone guess what what we saw.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

Uh well the thing that I'm looking forward to is is drillers. I I like the look of that. Yeah, that was in my top ten. It's uh a nice little um some push-your-luck, resource management, some clever um card play, dual-use cards. Yeah. Uh you can buy cards from the market and you can see them before you spend before they uh before you get them into your hand, which I liked.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

That's good, isn't it? Because your deck is kind of in a stand and it's facing you, so you yeah, it you can always see what's coming. And I think it's so simple, but it's like actually I can plan, I can plan around just that one thing, I know what is happening. But yeah, I haven't played we there there were demoing drillers, but I think they have one table, right? Um and yeah, just um 51,000 people pretty much at the show, so it's it's it's good. Good luck.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

You could have got that, you could have used the do you know who I am? They would have they would have done that, I could have done.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

They probably would have told me to piss off, but it it's it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Um but for those that don't know, it's uh you you represent mechs, don't you? And you're drilling into mines, getting resources, exploring, and it the board will expand as you explore, and you can either go for tiles that for victory points that sit on top of your board or for gems that you can spend um and you can get drones and things to to keep you down under the mines and send stuff up. So it looked like quite a lot you could do.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Yeah, you kind of fuel is an important resource, I think, is if you want to keep digging and want to keep it in the mine, you're gonna have to burn cards to keep fueled up so that you can go longer, but then inevitably you're gonna have to come back to the surface to offload and refuel because you did I think you refuel refuel for free. Um, but yeah, this is gonna be my Essen um play, I think, because I think the next because it's a Gen Con release, isn't it? So I think yes. Yeah, so Essen will be probably where hopefully I'll get a um my hands on a copy and we'll no doubt play it in the bar. Yeah. Um so yeah, I'm looking forward to that. But

Codenames: Critical Role Adventures

SPEAKER_00 31:50

the other one that I'll be honest with you, Mark, like um when when um yeah Pavlina was kind of saying, right, we've got code names, and I was like, code names.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Yep, I'm I'm with you there. I just thought I how much more can you do?

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Yeah, like how much more code names can we do? I've played code names, I like code names, I think code names is fun. Um, but I've played a lot of it, and okay, it's code names. I don't really need to know much. And I'll tell you what, she did such an amazing job because this was code names critical role. Uh and I'm not I've like critical role as a franchise doesn't really do nothing for me. I know for uh you know some of my friends there, they're like critical role, and they're into Vox Mackinac, they're into the Mighty Nine, and they're into these things. I'm I could take it or leave it personally.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah, same here.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Um but as as she was explaining it, and I was like, oh, okay. So you're saying this is kind of like a D D adventure, but with cone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got what? You've got a scenario book where you go through many adventures, yeah. And you've got character sheets that have powers and and you can level them up, and yeah, yeah. I'm like, this sounds awesome.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Amazing, yeah. Yeah, it sounds absolutely brilliant. It was looked like a really, really clever game.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Yeah, and uh the more she was kind of talking about the game, the more I was like, I I've never been excited for a code names game ever. And I said, touche, well done.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Because I think no, so when I was doing my research for my top 10 list, I saw that and just bypassed, didn't it? I thought, well, that's code names, but I bypassed it, didn't even look into it. Yeah, um, and I wish I had.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Yeah, it's it's you know, never judge a book, but you just it's because they've got oh, we've got code names this and code names that, and there's a jewel version, and there's a pictures version, and there's this, and then they had the Harry Potter version, which obviously had a lot of controversy around. But yeah, um then yeah, so I just thought I was just another reskin or something then. But actually that there seems to be a lot of thought put into how this works in you know the fact that you do have a DM and they've got their screen, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

And that's where they they know where everything is, and it's like actually now I I want to try this now. I'm I'm I do, yeah. Yeah, so that's on my I'll definitely get that.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

That looks that looked pretty, pretty hot actually.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Yeah, it looked pretty cool, didn't it? So yeah. Yeah, and then we swung by um Chip Theory, right?

Wroth & Wreck

SPEAKER_02 34:13

Yes, yeah, we did, yeah. And uh Mr. Dainty joined us.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Yeah, and we saw uh Andrew Santaro, a good friend um who I met a few years ago, uh Essen, and um and yeah, we we obviously met last year and played uh a particular game. Maybe I'll let you uh explain it, Mark. But played this very same game that we played this year, and it's now becoming an annual tradition. Um I love uh I I love Andrew to bits, he's so welcoming, he's so chilled and so calm. And I think he was just like, Oh, thank god you guys are here, so I can just play a game with you.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

You had you had two full games. I did on one yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

That's not bad, is it actually thinking about it?

SPEAKER_02 34:57

We're in the middle of the show, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Yeah, yeah. So what do we play? Tell the tell the we played we played Roth. We did.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

In Chip Theory, yeah. Second time I a third time I played it, because the first time I only had a couple rounds, didn't I? Yeah, to leave. Um, then we played in Essen, where you actually taught me the full game. Uh-huh. Um not only did we play a full game here, we used some new factions.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah, we uh are mental. I mean, Roth is mad anyway. Um but there's a new expansion coming, I think, called Wreck. And um with a W, of course, because it's Rol Roth. Um but yeah, Wreck and and yeah, we we played some of the new factions. Uh I I don't know what we could say about them or or probably not even anything about them, but they are absolutely crazy. Uh yeah, they were great, really good fun. Really good fun, and everyone was picking on me because I won. I won last year, so you picked on me. Everyone gave me a dick in, didn't they? It's too right. I deserved it.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Well, the rule the rule I said for that game is don't be first, don't be last.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

It's true, it's very much like Mario Kart. Yeah, yeah. If you if you were sticking at first place, you are gonna get absolutely ruined by everyone. Um, and if you're last, then it's sometimes hard to catch up, but you you do. But yeah, it was just a fun game, and the new factions uh yeah, offering some real unique uh twists to kind of how the game works as well, especially the one I was playing. They were they were weird.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

As I said, when when um without giving too much away, as I said, the the abilities that each faction has with their with their dice, um their own um, you know, their their player board dice, yeah, and the two abilities you get to select at the start of the game are all vastly different. And when I was looking at uh like Marx, I was like, Whoa, that's really overpowered. And then I did mine, and someone went, Wow, that's really overpowered, and then you did yours, and we were like, Wow, what a crazy, that's ridiculous! And I just think they all just tie in really well, and it's a really simple game to play, it's yeah, it's actually really rules light. It's snappy, it's snappy.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

It's um, yeah, it's my it's one of my like perfect convention games. It's not something I would probably play a lot at home. I don't know why. I just I just think if you're at convention, you've got three other people, roll that mat out, let's have some fun for 90 uh not even 90 minutes, sometimes it's an hour, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:26

You just go bang, yeah, ruin your eyes colours.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Yeah, yeah. You literally like put your shades on because of the neon, and then off you go, start swearing at each other for 60 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

And yeah, what did you say? Um, lots of knobbery.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Knobbery, yes, a game of knobbery, uh of the highest order. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

So sometimes you're like, well, I've got nothing to do, so I'm just gonna I'm gonna have to attack you because I have an attack dice for no other reason. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

It's dice drafting, I have to do it. Um so that's good fun. Um

Too Many Bones 2.0

SPEAKER_00 37:58

I also, whilst at the booth, I think just beforehand, I I caught up with uh Josh uh Welgus, who's also known as Gillies, the marketing director for Trip Theory, and had a really good chat. I really enjoyed that chat. I was chatting to him for about 15 minutes or something, and uh just waxing lyrical about Too Many Bones, of course. Um, and I'm trying to get the the inside track on Too Many Bones 2. So I don't know if you heard this, Mark, but they're doing a sequel to the game of Too Many Bones. Okay. This isn't this is known, like this isn't not me spilling news that I shouldn't be spilling, um, because I want to keep in good favour with chip theory games forever. Um, but yeah, they they've been looking to basically create a new game in the um the the IP of Too Many Bones in the world of Daylor, which is basically where it's set. Um and I did say to him, I said, Josh, I said, promise me this is not a second printing of Too Many Bones. He went, no. I said, we can't in good conscience, knowing that people like myself have spent an enormous hundreds and hundreds of pounds of hard-earned pounds buying this game, um, for then to just chuck it in a landfill and get the new version. Because you know I would, and I I'd hate it, but I would have to do it.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

Um so it's a new game then, is it? Uh completely separate.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Yeah, it's a complete new game. Um, and he did make me laugh because um there are influences of a video game that I played back in the 90s, um, which I think I can share, is uh called Chrono Trigger. Right? Okay. So Chrono Trigger is uh uh is an RPG time travel game, it's one of my favourite RPG games of all time. And then as soon as that was mentioned, and I was like, what, this is an influence? Like you're you're taking one of my favourite video games and that and and your favorite board game. Yeah, my favorite board game, and you're gonna mix in the worlds. Um, and to the point where Josh was saying, yeah, we wanted to call it Bono Trigger. And I was like, that is genius, that is genius. Um so I really hope it's called Bono Trigger. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

So that went that that'll be straight to retail, I guess, won't it?

SPEAKER_00 40:11

No, I think they'll crowdfund it. I think it might be coming this year.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 40:16

I don't know though. I haven't got a clue.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

But uh better start saving.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

I better, and I, because it's uh it's gonna be backed. Yeah, can't help it. It's gonna be uh it's gonna be a thing. But yeah, I I just enjoyed the this is what I like expo for, mate, because it's just those interactions that you get with um people like they I don't know, you just look you look up to in the industry and you you you know them from from YouTube or on videos, and then you have like really meaningful chats, and I mean yeah, and that's great. That's that's what makes Expo for me, is that as well as the games, but it's it's all of all of that. Yeah, it's brilliant. Anyway, so yeah, bono trigger, we'll see.

Sublime Dark

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Um anything in after that for you, mate, Friday.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

Um I I after that that when that finished, what time did that finish? About um that was like half four-ish, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

Five. Yeah, yeah. So I I just pondered around and and and had a look at things. Um, I was doing some work for Tabletop Gaming Magazine.

SPEAKER_03 41:13

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Um, so if you head over to their Instagram or or TikTok, you'll see some videos in there. That that's me uh doing a video for them. Yeah, so I just did some interviews for um I went to see Tristan Hall um and did an interview with him, and he talked us through his upcoming fantasy horror game called Sublime Dark. Nice, which looks horrific. It's R-rated, it's it's R-rated, it's I think it's not for the faint-hearted. Um, because he's known for being fantastic in that fantasy gothic horror, um, you know, the adventure games, and this I think just makes those games look like um villainous or something, you know. Um it's so some people haven't actually backed it because of the content. Um so I am looking forward to doing that. I do like my dark gothic fantasy. It's you wake up in this town, I can't remember what he's called it, um, but you're exploring and you're using your emotions as your resources. So, like if you want to break down a door, you'll use rage. And if you get your emotions go too high, they trigger these catastrophic events. Um, so you have to kind of manage that carefully. Um, he did say his games are tough at the best of times.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Um this one he said is super tough. So it's it's gonna be sort of like a lot of replays to try and get the hang of the game and how it works.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Yeah, yeah. I love the fact that it looks like in the best way. It looks horrendous in the best way.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Yes, yes. But um, I'm a big fan, so I'll be I'll be I I've backed that and I'm waiting. It's in print now, so I'm just waiting for it to turn up later in the summer, hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Nice, yeah, it looks cool. I walked past with you and I had a little cheeky look, and yeah, it did look.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

He gave me as well. What? So he he called actually I did the video and I sent it off and I showed him the video that I made. And I've known Tristan for a while, so um, and I've bought I think nearly every single one of his games. Um, and I've done some work for him as well. But he gave me a second edition prototype of Gloom of Kill Forth, like the second edition he ever made while he was testing the game.

SPEAKER_03 43:19

All right.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

And I was like, I can't take that, Tristan. That's that's like you know, it's that's like your thing, you should pass it down to your families for generations. And he went, No, it's fine, because I've got the first edition version. And I went, Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

But it's not on my shelf over here, it's a little box about this big, and it's just the card, but it's the second edition he ever played with to create the game during his prototypes. And I just thought that was amazing. Because that's you know, for for for him, that would be valuable if it was mine. You know, it would be a a big thing. And he yeah, he handed that over and thanked me. And I thought that was just he's such a nice guy.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Nice. Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

I've got that in a shrine, all I'm gonna do is just keep showing Rob every time he turns up.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

Yeah, I would, yeah, to make him jealous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

I did I did I did I did liken myself to a pimp for um for Justin Hall because I keep sending people that way.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure uh you you must be on commission or something, mate. I think.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Yeah.

Trouble on the Tempus

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Yeah, cool. Um so yeah, I mean, but after after the show, we went back to again the hotel, um, managed to carve out.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

You didn't stay in the event to play games, you went back to just no, we went back that night.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Um we managed to carve out uh an area in the hotel for for games, actually it was quite nice. Uh to quite nice to be where you asleep to play rather than thinking I've got to get that half-hour walk home at the end when you just have a big gaming area. Uh it it's it's not it's the restaurant. So but it's there's plenty of space. And um, yeah, I played Trouble on the Tempest, which is Rob's birthday. So we said of course it was, yes. Yeah, we said, Rob, what do you want to play? Your birthday, we'll we'll say yes to anything. And he's like, Can we play Trouble on the Tempest? I bought it, he got his back copy, and uh yeah, so we thought, yep, no problem. So off he went. So Trouble on the Tempest by Minor Disaster Games. They were at Expo last year doing demos, um, and probably the year before. Um, and now they've fulfilled their their game. I think they were selling uh the game at Expo, so which which is really nice to see. Um, the game is pretty much um a cooperative uh game where you all represent different members of um uh yeah, people on the ship, like the captain and the engineer and so on and such for. I think I was the junior officer and my little chonky wooden meeple, because Rob had the deluxe version. It was like it looked like little Timmy, like and everyone else like proper adult y ones. And I'm like, hello, I'm the junior officer. And my special ability was uh I was I was keen and I could run around faster than everyone else if I wasn't wearing any armour or whatever. You were keen, yeah, a keen bean or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

Um what a great what a great superhero skill to have.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

That's pretty much yeah, just basically I've got vigour. Um, and it's it's a unique premise because the game starts off with your ship's knackered, and throughout the game you're you're trying to put out fires, literally. There are fires in certain rooms, there's equipment all over, and at the end of everyone's turn, like you take two two moves and an action or any order kind of thing, and an event card will trigger, and then shit will happen. Like, oh no, this room's on fire, this thing's exploded, this has happened, ah bah bah bang bang bang bang bang. To the point where it becomes uncontrollable and unavoidable that the whole ship is gonna blow up. So, what you do, there's a time drive on the ship. So you okay, so you go to the time drive, or one of you has to get to the time drive, and then you reset time to back to the start of the game.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

So then you replay the game in the exact same order, so you then know the fire's gonna break out in room seven.

SPEAKER_03 46:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

So if we get the ext the extinguisher first, and then make our way up there, we'll be in a better place to deal with it. Cool, we've done that. Excellent. Next, the yeah, that's gonna happen. This this all relies on you having a good memory.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

I'm not drinking beer.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

No, um, and then off you go, off you go. But every time you rewind time, you put um like a paradox card into the deck of where you rewound time. So when you get to that point, that paradox card's gonna do something that you don't know about. So whilst you have knowledge, there's still some nonsense that might happen.

SPEAKER_03 47:36

Well, that's quite cool. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Yeah, the best thing, I mean, the game's aesthetic for me could be more darker. Like I would I think I'd probably get on better with the game if it had a bit more like you know, I'm not saying like nemesis vibe, but because that's quite dark, but if it had a bit more of that kind of aesthetic, because it looks very cute, like the the wooden meeples look like um I don't know, just caricatures of what you'd see on the toilet door. Like you know, that's like a you know I mean like a man, like yeah, um, but it works because of of mostly how the game looks, it all works and it all ties in and it's good fun. Um, but yeah, what what was the best thing ever is that in our game, Curly probably wasn't enjoying the game because it's not really his thing, but he just said yes because of Rob's birthday, um bless him, but kept dying. It was just funny because the first time he died by fire, he got burnt to death, right? Then when we reset time and we did it again, it's like right, no, we're going this way and doing this. We got to that paradox card, and we had opened the airlock earlier in the game to flush the fires out. And we had the paradox card was called a phase shift, and it moved him into the airlock room, and he just if you reset time, you come back alive, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Because does that paradox card does that get reshuffled back in again?

SPEAKER_00 49:00

It discards out. Oh, okay, fine. So you only have like I think three or four times you can go back in time before that's it, you pissed about with time too much, like you're lost in oblivion. Um, but it was just funny that every time we rewound time, it was basically just a different version of Curly dying in different horrific ways.

SPEAKER_02 49:19

Sounds like um, what's that TV programme that that film where the guy predicts everyone's deaths?

SPEAKER_00 49:24

Um, I can't remember.

SPEAKER_02 49:27

Oh, that horror film. Oh, it's gone mouth. Yeah. Started off on the motorway first. It's like that. It's clearly just seasonable.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

Oh, yeah, like Final Destination.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, it's just saying that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

We knew he was gonna die, it's just don't know how. Um, but then it got to the end and we all died. And if you all die, you'd game over. So but we had fun with it. It was it was a good fun game. I think Rob Robin.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

I like the premise of that. I do like my time travelist like themes and things, you know, alachrony and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

Yeah, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

What did you play, mate? What

Sanctuary

SPEAKER_00 49:58

was on your list?

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Uh well, we went back to the Airbnb um and we we played Sanctuary, so it was the first time for me. I hadn't played that, so I punched it. Man, there are a lot of tiles. Um punched it, read the rules, and um yeah, we we we played it that night. Uh so I got that at Essen, because that was one of the hot games at Essen last year. Um I've not played Arc Nova, so I can't compare it to that. I liked it, but I just thought the first few rounds were quite dry.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:29

I get a tile and I'm going, well, if I put it there or there, what does it mean? I don't do I don't care. And then later on, you're then relying on what you've placed to do other things. And um so the first few rounds I just felt actually if I played that again, I would have probably done something slightly different and ended up with the same score because I just yeah, I it was it was okay. I I play it again with with family and things. I thought it was gonna be a bit heavier than I realised.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Um but it's a nice looking game and I I did enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 50:59

But um that's what I've heard about it as well. Is you know, I I enjoy Art N Over. I've played it a fair amount of times, and you know, and I get to the point with Art and Over now where if I don't play it again, I'm alright. You know, it's it's it's nothing wrong with the game. I think it's a fantastic game in its own right, but I don't think it has staying power in my personal collection.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

No, it'll probably I'll likely be sold soon, I think, rather than uh before I get to play it too many more times.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

Yeah, so when it comes to like it is a lighter version of a game that I'm not that sort of bothered with anymore. Yeah, it's like yeah, I'll I'll be alright. But um, yeah, I'm sure people

Flip 7: With a Vengence

SPEAKER_00 51:38

enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

Yeah, no, I mean it was yeah, it was okay. Um then we played Flip 7 Vengeance.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Oh, the Dickey version.

SPEAKER_02 51:45

Dickey version. We did something you didn't do though, we played it correctly. Um the way you're supposed to. Uh but I I've never played Flip 7, right? And so back at Christmas, Tabletop Gaming sent me an advent calendar thing to open up and different things, and one of them was Flip 7. And I looked at the back and thought, this this looks trash, absolute trash. And I I gave it away to a uh a board game cafe shop down in Norwich, and I said, Yeah, fine, you can um I I'm having I just left it on the shelf. Um but we played Flip 7, and this mate, my mate said, Oh, I've got this, can we play it? And I was like, Oh my god, yeah, and tell you what, we had the best time, it was so much fun. I was we were dying with laughter, he you know, egging people on to flip that last seven and cheering when it was you know a card they'd already got. Or Davy, they we played the first 200, and Davy was on 199 points, and everyone he just he I think he lost, but everyone kept giving him negative points dividing by two. He just couldn't. You I don't I can't remember if you want actually or not, but he yeah, he just couldn't get those that last point, it was brilliant. Um and I think everyone was in the hundreds, and I still had zero points. Yeah, but I I thought it was great. I just thought what a cool little game to end the night with, just something really light. It's it's fantastic. Yeah, really, really fun.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

You should have like, I think everyone should have a copy of it. If you're going on holiday, just put it in your bag.

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Yeah, like um, I I was meant to buy a copy, um um and uh I I just completely forgot, but that was on my list. I added it to my list to buy, yeah, and just completely forgot. But that was um I was really surprised by that because that is not my type of game.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

No, no, fair enough. Is that so that was the end of your Friday then? Bit of flip seven with a vengeance. Nice, nice.

DAY 2 - SATURDAY & Hegemony: Shadows of Authority

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Yeah, yeah. That's pretty much Friday done for me as well. Um, so Saturday rolls around, still late nights and uh early mornings. Um, because you know, expos like work in a way, because you you you you can't have like well, you can have a lion, but you're not gonna, are you? You want to make the most of it. It's like no, we've got to get there. And I think on Friday we got to the halls a bit too early, and it ended up being all the cues and nonsense. So the next day and Saturday, we're like, no, just leave a little bit later, let all of that go. Because we I didn't need to be there dead on nine, we just just get there like 10 past nine, and it makes the world a difference because you can just go in, right? Um, so my first thing on Saturday was um to speak with uh hegemonic um project uh games, and um and basically they they were showing off world order, they were showing off um yeah uh hegemony, of course. Um, and I'm not gonna talk about world order much because I will talk about that on a future episode, which will come out after this, even though it happened before this.

unknown 54:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

We've been playing too many time games.

SPEAKER_00 54:44

It's yes, timey whime podcast fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02 54:47

This is yeah, and and you're eager as well.

SPEAKER_00 54:49

Yeah, and it's because by the time I I spoke to the um to the guy, he I said, Look, I already know about world order. I'm fortunate to have you know had demos. Uh I think I played it around yours before last year.

SPEAKER_02 55:00

Um we had a cup of the prototype, didn't you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Yeah, we'd played with that, and then I played a full game um literally the last weekend as well. So yeah. Um I said I know about it, enjoyed it, it's really good fun. But what I want to know more about is the new hegemony expansion for uh Shadows of Uh Authority. And said if you could tell me about that, that would be would be awesome. And obviously it's in early days um that expansion. I think it's coming to uh crowd fund um at some point later in the year. Um and they're still trying to figure out you know, is it an additional board or is it a different board or is it an extension or is it sit on top and all that kind of stuff? But it deals with um another few dimensions of of this whole um social economic space where you've got fascism and and and basically yeah, kind of fascism versus liberty. It's kind of like, oh, okay. So it's all about oppression um and you know the government basically being oppressive to its people and and people rebelling against that oppression, um, which I found that's quite interesting. And in hegemony, I think that'd be uh quite good. You've got crime, that's now a part of the game. Um, where I think as a state you can take bribes, like you know, and as as other class systems, you can enact crime to get what you need to be done, which means you're not paying tax, but benefits, great, but might bite you in the ass later because it's crime, so things could happen. Um, and also there's a lot of environmental um aspects in there of how green you're being as well, and and obviously you know the money attached to being green and things. So I think it's dealing with a lot of those uh issues uh which I find quite interesting.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

And I yeah, they they bring some real-world issues into their games very well, and they mould them into the game very well.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Yes. So I was chatting to the designer Vangelis and um and the CEO, and I said, like, I've I've got no interest in social or economic policies, like generally, like it might if you anyone talks politics with me, Mark. I I I will switch off. I I tend to not like having those discussions, um, because I'll be honest with you, it it's I don't know enough about them, and I find that if I'm into those kind of uh debates with people, I just I don't know, I just don't feel like I can contribute in in those kind of discussions. Um and and I just tend to avoid it. But and I said, You've made a game about a theme that I couldn't care less about and made it fun and made me want to learn more about. I mean and they were like, that's exactly why we made it, yeah. And it's like, well, you I mean, Christ, touche. Like you you've converted me and you've taught me how the world works in a board game, and it said that's so educational. I it it's it's mad. Um, and I love it. I I think it genuinely, and I've I've taught it to a few others in the gaming group, and they were the same, they're like, What's this game about?

SPEAKER_02 58:02

It's like, right, well, you're the class system, and uh yeah, you're the upper class, you've got to make you've got to make factories for me to work in.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

Really? And then they'll play it and go, brilliant, I get it.

SPEAKER_01 58:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

And uh yeah, and I can't wait. So so I don't have all the scoop on on Shadows of Authority, other than I'd I can't wait to learn more about it. Um, and yeah, hopefully later in the year I'll get my hands on it and we can have a game.

SPEAKER_02 58:30

So I I must have gone there just after you because I I went there as well to uh games um and talk to him about the the um the expansion. Um and I was I thought it's a brave move adding that much content into quite a vast game, into one expansion, and I was like, Christ, is he gonna stop saying what he's added?

SPEAKER_01 58:52

Because that's a lot of the thing.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Yeah, and I just thought because hegemony, I think it feels quite complete anyway. Yeah, it does. Um, but yeah, no, I'm really looking forward to seeing that. I mean, I uh didn't look too much at world order because I did the um one of their reviews for them. I I love the game. Uh I've got both expansions, I've played it a couple of times, I really like it. So, again, like you, I didn't um delve too much into that, but I was quite interested with that expansion.

SPEAKER_00 59:19

Yeah,

Meet & Greets then Railway Porters

SPEAKER_00 59:20

yeah. So after that, I just saw a couple of people. I saw um uh Lee and Mark from Molinarius Gains, had a good chat with them. That's my little expo treat. Always have a chat with those guys to see how they're getting on, and obviously Time Troopers is is kind of been fulfilled, and uh yeah, they're selling it, and and yeah, kudos to those guys. And then as I was talking to those, um Thinkathema, Amy and Maggie were just walking by, and I was like, I know those faces. So I I literally just basically said, sorry, Lee, just bear with me a minute, and then I uh just literally they're more important than you, and I'm gonna go and speak to them. Um so I had a uh lovely little chat with them and just asked about how their expo was going. And for those that don't know don't know Thinkathema, they're from Australia or New Zealand, I can't remember, I think it's Australia. Um, so they've come a long way, and I think they've just come back from uh Tokyo. I think they've been doing some work in Tokyo as well, so they've been all over the place. Um and yeah, I think they're having a lovely time and and yeah, just nice to stop. But again, it's just a lovely little interaction. Loved it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:27

Yeah, five minutes, and it just kind of makes you gay, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

It does. It's like, oh that's good. Can I have a selfie? Yes, please. So that's that's why I did. Um, but pretty much after that, I I got a game demo in. I was wandering around on my own for a while, which I actually quite like to do at Expos. Is just get get your headphones in and just have a wonder, and you can kind of cancel the noise out a little bit and just find something unique and something you haven't seen.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

So tucked away in a corner.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

And that's what happened. So I I walked past and saw Adam from punchboard.co.uk does a lot of write uh written review work. If you haven't checked his work out, please do, uh listeners, please do, because he writes some cool stuff. Um, and he was demoing at Sachi and Satchi, so um, yeah, Japanese games. Um basically he was doing railway porters. I know this is an area of the gaming world I know nothing about. Um, and he went, Do you want a demo? It just happened one of those moments, walking past JP. Do you want a demo? I'm just about to start. I'm like, Yeah, go on in. Um, and it's just this really fun, dice, puzzly game, right? Played it in about 20 minutes, 30 minutes, we were done. And basically, you're your uh railway porters trying to get people's luggage to the right platforms, right? That's it, theme over, don't worry about it. Right, and you're the porter, the main porter, you have these two chunky dice, you roll them, and on the dice you've got uh colour um and a number of hands, right? And then you roll your own individual pool of dice, normal size dice, off you go, and that's gonna be all the different colours. And what you've got to decide is which colour dice do you want to select? And everyone does the same. So I'm gonna choose the red one with three hands on it. Cool. That means you can put up the three red dice that you've rolled onto your player board in designated slots, and you might not have rolled any red, so you wouldn't pick it, etc. So you're kind of filling out these um spaces on the board, and if you get like a full row, you might get extra points. If you do this, you get points, if you connect these things, you get points. It's a bit of a kind of uh a little dice placement puzzle. Um, and then you keep going around to the point where you're like, because you're pushing your look, because if I'm rolling two dice and I might not get the colour, and then basically start crapping out, and then you have to put dice in these negative spaces. You can say, No, I'm I'm good, I I have to go. It's basically what I think you have to say, I have to go. Uh, and if you do that, you give your remaining dice uh to other players in clockwise, okay, so that they have more. So you might get what you need, and then you're good, and then everyone else is like, Oh, I wanna I wanna stop. Um, but then yeah, they get an extra dice, and oh I might carry on, um and off they go. So so yeah, it was just a lovely fun game. I it was just what I needed, I think, at that time is that I just need to sit down for 20 minutes and roll some dice.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:19

Um, take the load off, have a game, then recharge.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that that was that was railway porters, yeah. Good fun. And thank you, Adam, for the teach. Thank you. What did you get on too?

Tally Up, A Carnivore Did It & Thief's Market

SPEAKER_02 1:03:32

So I I wandered around, I um went over to Zatu, uh saw the lovely um Rob Trounce, who has uh emigrated from uh Hashet over to Zatu. Seems to be doing very, very well. Um, but he showed me some small um some small party type games that are or at least um small box games that are coming out. And the first thing he said to me was, right, I'm gonna show you a game. Be honest with me, Mark. What do you think of Flip 7? And I went, Well, actually, I really like it. I thought it was a load of trash. I played it last night, Vengeance, and it was fantastic. And he would say, Okay, good. We're gonna go and um I'm gonna go and show you the the next version of that from the same designer, their next game, and it's called Tally Up. And it's again, it's it's heavily push your luck, uh, but it involves dice, and you've got different coloured dye, and they have uh each coloured dye has a different number of stars on it, and you're rolling these dye trying not to get two stars. But I think he said if you roll three stars, that's good. So yeah, and it look it just looked really fun. Another um sort of like quirky uh party game stuff. Yeah, so that that I think that's is that yeah, that's released now, I think. Um he then showed me another one called A Carnival Did It, which again is not a game that I would ever look twice at. And it's um it's a deduction game where you're working together with your with the other players and you get given three statements and one is true, one is false, and another one, and I can't remember whether it's true, false, or something else. Um and you have to work out who did the crime or who did it by this by what's been said. At least things like a carnivore did it, and the other one said, I didn't do it, but someone bigger than me did, and it's got their height, and all the characters have got their height. So you have to try and work out, um, and there are very simple steps to it where you've got three cards, it's quite simple to do after a few minutes, but then you can go into some really complex ones, and there are like a thousand different scenarios you can do, so you're never gonna do the same one twice. And it's got this um, you know, in Nemesis when you're infected, that that sort of like that red foil card thing. Yeah, yeah. It's got that. So you yeah, you can see what the answer is when you've all decided to come to a decision. So the game can last between three minutes and 15 minutes, depending on how difficult it is. And I just thought that's that's a really cool just to get good table talk and you're all working together. Um the next one they showed me was a Thief's Market, which Had uh wispy notes of splendor with these cards and these the you can get them and they provide you jewels, and then you're rolling dice to add to that. So you get your little engine going with with what cards you've got. Um but with these dice, it's about 20 or so dice, and you take it in order and you say, Right, take as many dice as you want, and you go, okay, I'm gonna take that after you've rolled them. I want these, and then someone else can go, Well, I'll take from the centre pool, or they can take some of yours. Um so you can keep choosing. But you, if someone takes all of yours and you've got nothing left, you can then carry on taking someone else's. You keep going around until somebody's got one, uh at least one dice each, um, and then you're using them to spend. And it was really cool because you can kind of stitch people up by taking first player tokens off them and taking all of their dice but one, but then somebody might do that to you, so it's it was quite clever. I thought again, that was that was quite nice. And the last game we played was this really weird party game, and I can't remember what it was called, but all you do is you stand like that with your hand up, right? And yep, everyone's got one hand up, and you draw a card, and it will it will show one of your fingers. Right. And what you have to do is you get these sticks, they like chopsticks, but they're really thin. You have to put it on your finger and attach it to the the neighbour's finger, and then they do the same, and you end up with all these sticks going in different directions all around, yeah. And you have to hold them up, and it's quite hard, and you get about five or six on there, and they start to slip and things, and they went, Oh, we can make it harder, and then they bring out um a box full of these like sponge balls, you've got to balance them on top as well of the sticks, and it was just madness. But I thought, what a really cool dexterity game. Nice, um, yeah, it looks really fun. It was like Kaplunk, but with uh without the yeah, so Zatu had some really cool little party games going that I thought, oh actually, I'm I'm gonna I wouldn't I wouldn't look at them twice on a normal day, but I think I might might take a look. So I actually asked Bob's old remind me of the names of the games because I actually want to talk about those on tonight's episode.

Kryptothera & Stoke Me A Clipper!!!

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

Um, and then I went to just walking past the stand like you did, and there was a game called, I sent a photo of it to you called Kleptothera, that black and gold box. Never heard of it before, but it had amazing table presence. Black and gold looks really, really nice. Um, heard nothing about it, so I sat chatting to one of the guys there, and he says, Yeah, it's a pick up and deliver game with you're looking for clues, and it's got um you're you're you're you're rolling dice to see if you pass tests and things. So for me, it had similar mechanics to like I don't know, Arkham Horror.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:38

Um so yeah, that looked really cool. Um, sorry, actually, I got a copy of that to look at.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:43

Nice, yeah. It looks good.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:44

I don't actually know too much about the game, it just looked and when I posted a picture, everyone's going, Oh, I've played that, it's it's really good fun, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:50

Oh, it's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:51

Yeah, looking forward to doing that.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:53

Nice, nice. Well, if that's kind of you finished, I yeah, what did I do? I I walked around a bit more and I heard um the legend, the man the myth, the legend that is uh Chris Barry as attending the UK Games Expo, you know, Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:11

Yeah. And just do a salute.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:14

Yeah, and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna walk down that aisle and he was there.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:17

And uh he sat at a booth, was he?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:20

He sat at uh the celebrity corner and had like a queue, and I think he was like selling autographs and things like that. Oh right. The queue was quite big, and I I thought I just wanted to see him. Um, because Red Dwarf for me is is I don't know, it's very special to me. It's phenomenal. I grew up with this, uh, you know, growing up, and it it's just a show that it's so magical for me that anything related to it just it takes me back to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:46

I remember just um you just do you just did quotes from it at school, didn't you? Yeah, like quotes something.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:53

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wow. So that was a little, oh, that was great. Like the my younger version of me would have said get in that cue.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:03

You idiot. But I kind of wish I did now. I wish I could kind of get some photos.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:07

Just the first year they've done Slub, because I've I've seen loads of posts of authors, uh uh film stars, uh TV stars and stuff at the show. Have they done that before?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:16

Not as not as prominent that I've noticed, so no, it seems to be uh becoming a bit more popular. I get I get why they would do it though, it makes sense. Um yeah, so that that was cool. That was cool. But then I was I wanted to get a game and I was like, I need one more game. Um, because Saturday was getting busy, and I just thought if I can get one more game in, I'm done, I can rest and go to open gaming. Um

Prague: Unseen

SPEAKER_00 1:10:39

so I managed to jump on um at Albi uh games uh Prague on scene. Um yeah. Um I was talking to Peter at the uh press event about this game anyway, and I was like, right, I'm coming to see you, and hopefully I'll jump on. And I managed to jump on, and I'm glad I did because this was probably one of the the heavier games I've played at the entire expo. Um, and well, what is it? Let me try and explain what it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:07

It's gonna be very designer of Kittin of Horror, isn't it, Peter?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:12

Yeah, yes, I believe so. Yes, yeah. Um and so Prague on Scene is kind of like this steampunk version of Prague, where you have these four um races or or kind of characters. You've got like uh golems, you've got the horned kind of devil-looking uh people, you've got this top hat, like hello, uh kind of people, and you've got robots. And the the board is very white at the minute, prototype, so it could change, but it's very white and a beigey white, and you've got four sections of the board that basically has a mini-game in each section. So you've got um a cauldron area which has a spinning middle piece in there that you can get um stuff from. Um, you have an ideas track where if you're coming up with ideas, you you basically push up the track and you get uh resources and and milestones off the back of that. You've got uh a mill where you can kind of go around um pushing these things and collecting resources in different ways, and then you've got this big chunky golem that sits on this grid that you can move around and pick up guilds and and other resources. But really, it's worker placement. You've got four squares um that represent these districts in Prague, and you send one of your workers, which is either the golem, the robot, the the hoity-toity dude with the hat and and whatever. And if the witch is in the space, you basically move the witch to another space and get the resource from there. So this witch is constant consistently moving around. And then depending on the worker you've sent, will depend on what happens. If you send the one that matches the district, you'll likely get um uh a bunch of resources or more resources than you would normally. And if you send any others, you'll end interact with this other thing. So no matter it matters what worker you you put there, because you've got one of each type, and also matters uh yeah, in in in different ways as well. You can build buildings which attach to each of the districts, which are cards, and then that opens up more options for you um later in the game because there's an action for you is not only to place um uh a meeple or worker, you can build stuff as an action, or you can move a worker from a square to an adjacent building area and get resources. So it's kind of like this two-tiered of you get the worker there, and then I can move them into a space, and then it becomes this area control thing going on, and in the middle of it, there's a big boat uh shipping track that you can push a boat up, and and it's very much heavy euro interconnected mechanisms, and uh we play one round of it, and you can level up in the district, you can then get powers that you unlock from the district that helps you be better at the game doing different things. And I think this game's got a lot of promise. I think this is like this tickling the parts of my brain going, Oh, this this is this is fun, this is, I really like this. Um, and again, it's an Essen release, so it's coming straight to Essence. No crowd fun. He's he's releasing it directly at Essen, and I'm like, right, I'm coming to have a proper look at this when it's ready because this is doing something that I was enjoying. So yeah, it's good.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:22

That's good. I made the last game I played of Peters was Dirt and Dust.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:27

Yes, the rally one.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:29

Yeah, yeah. It's um I mean it's a it's a it's a decent game, as there's no although it's multiplayer, it's very limited player interaction. You're kind of playing your own game. Um but yeah, and I was introduced to Kutna Horror uh Gridcom by Rob. Yeah, um, which I thought was phenomenal. It's a great game. Great song, yeah. Yeah. I do like Peter's work.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:51

Yeah, so I think if you like the Kutna Horror style game, I think you're gonna like this because it's it's just fun. Like what I was doing is fun. I haven't played it all the way through. Need to have the full experience, but yeah, really enjoy what the game's doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:03

Play that just with Peter, was it?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:05

Just you two no, no, it was uh just a demo game. Uh I think it was a chap called Mark. I think it's another Mark that was demoing. Um, and yeah, just uh three other people.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:16

Just playing playing the game, it was fun.

Tenby

unknown 1:15:18

But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we played uh I went to the open gaming area that that day and we played um Tenbi, um, which was that sold out, didn't it? Such a buzz about Tenbi. I mean, we we're fortunate, like when I was part of Whose Turn, um Benji, um who's the designer of Tenbi from Cozy Cup Games, he reached out to me, I don't know, three years ago, two or three years ago, and said, I'm working on this game called Tenbi. Would you like a copy? And I was like, and I had a look at it and I was like, Yeah, go on in. And because I thought Becky um would like it because it just looked like a lighter game, and Becky tends to gravitate towards more of the lighter game uh spectrum than I would. Um so I thought, why not why the hell not? And so Becky ended up playing it, said this game's bloody brilliant. Um and then finally, after years and years, and then Mighty Boards have picked it, picked it up, um which was really chuffed because I've met Benji in person last uh UK Games Expo, and we had a really good chance, and I'm really chuffed for you with the success you're having. And they just sold out all of their copies of of Tembi last year, and this is before Mighty Boards did their thing. They picked it up, and then now it's just because you know it went to number one in the BGG hotness for for a while. And you know, I saw people running to Waterstones queuing up, and the copies were flying off the shelf, literally just flying. I think it was um Rob's first thing, he said, I've got to get Tembi because it's probably one of the only games his wife would ever play with him. Um bless her. Um, and I got to play it for the first bloody time in like two or three years, and it is good. It is is a great game. Um uh I won't go into the the nitty-gritty of it, but you you're pretty much building streets, and yeah, you're you're trying to kind of arrange cards in the right way so you can score them. So it would say, uh, well, how many pigeons to the left um or right you'll get one point per pigeon? And you're trying to just get everything in in the right place, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:17

Yeah, I I heard a story, I met um the name's forgot me now. Um met a chap um and he was talking about what he bought, and he had this was on the Saturday, I think, as well, and he had Tembi. And I was like, Oh, you got a copy, did you? And he went, Yeah, yeah. I went up to um I went up to uh I can't remember where it was, one of the big stands, and someone had asked, Have you got Tembi? And they went, Oh, I don't know, shouted down the line. And someone said, Yeah, there's three copies here, and they just went like that. Yeah, dung, dun, dun, immediately. Yeah, as soon as everyone heard it, three people jumped in and went, Yeah, we'll buy it. Well, he got a copy from it, so oh that's okay then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was happy with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:57

But that was pretty much my Saturday. I think we did that, and I started to feel a bit rough actually. I started to feel like I don't know. Yeah, that dry throat, yeah, dry throat, like everything was behind my eyes. It was a bit like hay fevery kind of like I don't drink enough.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:12

I don't drink enough when I'm there. I'll try, but you you know, you're doing 20 pursues and steps, and well I I actually forgot to I forgot, yeah, literally forgot to eat on Saturday. I'd got up, went to work, had worked on the Saturday morning, had um a couple of demos in the afternoon with Zatu and that, and then by the time I got home, I was like, oh my god, I haven't eaten today, and I was just fading. Um we I went to the open gaming area and I met up with a friend called Elliot Simmons. You may know him as the auctioneer. He used to be do the auctions at UK Games Expo many years ago, and he's got a voice that would shame uh Brian Blessed.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:52

He is a yeah, makes it very, very sorry, makes Brian Blessed look like a mouse.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:59

And he he runs Norwich Board Game Convention, and he's great because what he does, he goes around charity shops, he he buys charity board games from the shops, and then he sells them for another charity, so they get like a double whammy. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, and he he he he makes up these crazy auctions. So he was telling me about this auction he's doing at the next convention where he's got um he's got one game in each uh each what do you call them? What's it? Lots are lots, sorry, yes. Yeah, so you've got five lots and you can put a couple of quid in and get a ticket. If you put uh I think if you put uh 20 quid in, you can choose from a big stack of really big games and add one of them to the stack. Um so you become the it's called the hero fund or something. You've become a hero and you add start adding games to stacks. So people come along and they start manipulating the stacks. Then if you pay 15 quid instead, you you get this is you get as many tickets as you pay for as well. But if you reach that limit, you get to do it. But if you put 15 quid in, you get 15 tickets, you can then start swapping games around in the stacks.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:02

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:02

So, yes, you can go, well, I like that, but I don't like that. So if I put my money here, I'm gonna remove that and get this one instead. And I just thought that's that's really cool. She does these these these funny auctions.

War of Whispers & Heat: Mario Kart

SPEAKER_02 1:20:13

Um, but we played uh War of Whispers.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:16

Oh, yeah, yeah, I've played that.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:18

Yeah, a little you're kind of you're not actually representing anything on the board, you're just m manipulating and influencing what happens in your favour.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:27

Yeah, you're like the guy just in the shadows, just whispering to the leaders, going, I think you should do this, I I think you should uh go and evade over there just so that you can have them.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:36

Yeah, we like that. You've got your five faction tokens and you randomly assign them and hide them, and you've got a faction you want to win the game, all the way down to a faction you want to do very badly, but nobody knows what you're doing. I made a mistake, I think it was in the last round, I just flicked up one of my tokens and it stuck to my finger and then flicked over, and I was like, oh no. But you can you can do an action where you can switch swap tokens around, but you have to reveal them so everyone knows what you swapped. So I just swapped that one and tried a different tact. Um, but that was really cool. Um, and then we went home and one of my friends, you've played it before, has made a very good adaptation to heat with Mario Kart, yeah, and we played that at six player, and you know, you thought Roth was knobbery. This is just insane. So it's heat pedal to the metal. The um the mechanics are identical to the game, but he's put a Mario spin on it, he's got an oversized neoprene mat that he's created that is minced. He's got hot wheels, cars for the characters. The characters have got special abilities depending on their size. So things like Bowser at the end of the round, you can bump people backwards and um all the small people, they can um they get plus one to cornering. Um and you get your weapons that you can fire. So you go over the over the little um question mark things and you pick up your items and you can fire shells and banana. Best thing to do is put a banana just before a corner.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:00

That's the worst thing, the banana, because it covers both lanes. Yeah, like you're gonna hit it and you're like for God's sake.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:08

Yeah, but you included um speed up arrows, you know, those little things you shoot over. Yeah, so this was a new addition. So when you go over those, you flick a coin, it's 50-50, and you either get a free cooldown immediately, and that um or you get um and that comes from your discard pile as well, or you get extra two movement that doesn't count to a corner. Um yeah, and the thing is is is Davy, I said, Davey, I even played this before, and he said no, and I said, Do you like heat? And he went, No, I hate it. Yeah, yeah. And he says, No, last time I played, it was terrible, I had a really bad thing. We played it, and the first three turns, I've never seen someone do so badly. He was like he was like 20 squares away from like having a and I was like, Oh, I feel so sorry for him, and he bloody won.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:01

Yeah, so that's that's heat Mario Kart though, isn't it? It's like who knows what's gonna happen. But then that is Mario Kart in general. So I think what what your friend Ian's done is is just a lot of fun. And I was the same.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:13

I'd love to do a um I would love to do a live playthrough of it on the channel, but I think you should. Well, I think I don't know if Nintendo might get a bit funny because it's yeah, I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:23

There's a whole licensing rights issue thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:25

Yeah, it's not not for sale. Um, I'd knock off the um any advertisements and stuff, but I just I might have to contact them, but they'll I'm a small fish in the Nintendo world.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:36

Yeah, but who knows?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:37

Can I do this? Nothing's gonna be made from it, it's just fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:40

Like, nope. Yeah, but I'll ask and see what happens. See what happens, mate. See what happens.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:45

Yeah, that was my Saturday.

DAY 3 - SUNDAY & Snowdonia Grand Tour

SPEAKER_00 1:23:47

Cool, cool. Um, then we get to Sunday, right? So you start to flag. Yeah, so Sunday was uh just that. Oh god, I've got gotta wake up and and and crack through it again, kind of thing. And um I had a a demo first up with Naylor Games uh with the new Snowdonia and the Snowdonia Grand Tour. And I've I've backed this already. I've been intrigued by Snowdonia. I've never played the the base game or any iterational version of it that it's gone through various different publishers before. Um so it's kind of just passed me by, but isn't this particular version caught my eye when it went to crowdfunding because the art looks just amazing? Um, and the fact that the Grand Tour um comes with I don't know how many boards, like 700 boards, probably not that many. Um, a lot of boards that are double-sided that add different nuances to how the game is played. Like one is um uh the Snowdonia, which is the the you know, the Welsh uh big hill or Welsh mountain. Mountain, yeah. Yeah, and then you've got another one which is like on the other side of that is uh as an old uh Stockton and something railway from the the northeast, and then you've got other ones like the Isle of Wight and ones uh South America and literally just different areas of the world. All the boards got very different art styles and they look very different, and they add different nuances to the rules. Now, what we played was one from the Grand Tour, which is the Dermera um board from South America, so it's all about sugar, sugar refinery. Um and the premise of the game is the same: you're you're building tracks, you're trying to do all the different things that you you want to do, and ultimately, as soon as you complete the railway line, the game ends. And some of you might be going, Wow, that sounds boring, JP. Why are you so excited about this game? Um, but it's until you play it, and then you realise you I now get this game, and I get why this game is is good and why people are raving about this or have done in the past. So really it's worker placement. And at the bottom of the board, you've got sections A, B, C, D, E, F, G, right? And they all do different types of actions. So, like the the A action is about getting resources from the stockyard. So, I want iron, I want coal, I want stone. Nothing new there. Um, and the B action is about digging, so you can dig um rubble out the way on the on the train line, so you can actually start building on it, and you can kind of clear the rubble away from different stations and things like that. Um, the C action is around converting resources from A to B, doing different things to get other resources like steel, so you can build tracks. Um, the E action is lay track, E action is building the stations or building trains, which helps you be more efficient in your actions and doing some cool stuff, but you have to pay coal to get extra workers. And then F's like getting contract cards that help you with end game scoring, but not only buff certain actions as you use them, but as a one-time ability. And then your G-action is a surveyor, which in this board had a dude with a big shtick and he would push him along a track that goes down the line of the the train track, and you get points basically as far as he can go, and other things as you go. Um, but what's different about it is worker placement, but you everyone places their workers, right? And then you run the program.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:12

So you run A first, then B, then C, then D in top to bottom. So if you're like, what's most important to me? Well, I want the top resources, I want first dip, so I'm going top of A. And then you think, well, I'm going to use those resources to build in that particular spot on the board. But someone's taking the top of the build action, so I'm going third now. Now, will I get to do what I want to do? Nope. So there's a lot of you think you'll be alright and you're not. And sometimes you will end up being, oh, that was crap, and I've wasted that. And oh, why did I do that? I should have gone second or I should have gone last. And does it not not screw you over then, though? Well, it it's kind of like it it is punishing in a way. Like if you if you don't do it, you don't you don't do it. Like tough, you you snooze you lose. So it's got that very um kind of not brutal euro, but it doesn't hold your hand. I don't mind that in games.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:07

I I quite you either have to be quite lucky or you really have to prioritise what you want to do just in case.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:12

You've got to try and work out the puzzle in between the players. So I've got to work out right how likely do I think you are gonna do what I want to do? And you're looking at the resources and you're going, well, they could build that. Do I want to maybe I'll do something safe and I'll come back next time. Um, or maybe I'll get first player and then I'll make sure I can do what I want next time, that kind of thing. And just that alone was for me fun. I was like, this is you know, really, really singing to my like midweight euro nonsense. Um, because actually it's not that complicated to play, it's quite simple to play, and there's there's a lot more nuances that I've not explained, like the weather, and that affects what you can do and how much you can um dig and how much you can lay track, and and your extra workers in the pub, and you have to coax him out of the pub so he can help you because he's a lazy git. Um and and yeah, you've got like event cubes that come out that trigger certain things in the game, and and yeah, I I really enjoyed it. Um I could see that people wouldn't if they are doing stuff and they get screwed and they go, Well, I can't do anything. If you don't like that kind of tough, tough crap, try again next round. Um, then fair enough. But yeah, I I had a blast with it. I I can't wait to get this.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:28

When does that come?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:29

Uh oh November, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:32

Oh right. Just uh hopefully before you can take it to Weston.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:35

Yeah, yeah, if we if we can, we'll we'll get our train on and uh start start doing some digging and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:41

So that sounds great.

Catching up with Mindclash Games

SPEAKER_02 1:29:43

That was now I headed straight over to uh Mindclash in the morning. Oh yeah. Um and we normally see uh Dorca, don't we? But um she's on maternity leave, so we saw Adina. Yeah who was yeah, very nice. Um met her, she showed, you know, talked to us, introduced uh me because Davy came with me as well. Um and we I can't remember the name of the game because it's not I think it's just in development in the minute.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:09

One of the code names, is it?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:11

Yeah, so they're doing um it's one of the um what do they call it, the mind clash, the the little side hustles that they're doing. Yeah, mind clash play games. But it's it's set during a courtroom during the 1950s or 1920s in America, and you've got lots of different scenarios. Um, but you are basically in court, and although it's two to I think eight players maybe, they recommend six is the best, and you spit into teams, and you are literally providing evidence for and against the case, talking about the the the case and stuff, and it sounds really really novel, really um, really unique. Uh I I think they said they're in the development stages, but it looked sounded quite cool. Uh quite impressed with what they were saying. And you don't actually find out if they're guilty or innocent, it's just the jury make their decision. Um, I'm not really sure how that works, but then you're like, Well, was that real? Did they get it? Yeah, did they get it?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:09

You don't know what's the system.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:11

Yeah, and um the the guy that was talking to us, because one of the things I said at the same time, I was talking about actually I said we played the thing last night, and one of the things that I really enjoyed about it was the table talk after, and he went, That's exactly it, that's exactly the what I'm looking for in the game is the people chatting, talking together, and then laughing and joking about it afterwards and and looking forward to playing it again. But that looks quite cool. Nice, and then they've got a new project which we can't talk about because I didn't really understand it was to do with an an IP of a game, a console game, but um they they would I said I'd rather not know because I'm not very good at keeping secrets. No, no, it's uh just yeah, let's keep it. They sat chatting to Davy for ages, and I just went, no, no, I'd I'd rather not.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:57

Yeah, not let uh let any secrets out.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:02

Cool.

Time Troopers

SPEAKER_02 1:32:03

Um and then I went to uh Molinaris to look at the time troopers, did a demo there. Yeah, um, spent an hour or so there chatting to them. Really nice team they have.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:13

Um and yeah, I mean, um Time Troopers looked very popular. I think they're were they selling it at the event.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:20

Yeah, they were, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:21

They were. Yes, and I think backers are just receivable just have received it.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:26

Yeah, yeah, literally Rob got his copy. Um again, keep mentioning Rob, Rob from Whose Turn. That's why um Rob Rob got his copy, I think literally a couple of weeks, two or three weeks before expo. So yeah, he was he's very excited to get it.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:41

There's some nice things in there. I like the the um you know, time is is your currency, it's very tight. Um, and then um you've got event cards. It's one of three, you know, one of them's gonna happen, yeah. So you can prep for it, um, and then you roll a die to see which one activates, and you can spend tie to re-roll the die.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:00

Um, spend time to re-roll the die. But if all three of them are the same, you can then go, oh, one of them's gonna happen. I know what it is, I can prep for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:07

Yeah, exactly. And I think all the scenarios are very different from what I've seen. You've obviously got different time periods that you'll you'll travel to to do different things, and there's persistent uh effects that will happen in your deck as you unlock as you go. So you might get weapons from feudal Japan that you can take to take down a T-Rex or something. So yeah, not that I've played it, not that I I've only played a demo I think uh last year, and I think the year before as well. Um so yeah, I think I'll learn more when uh my old buddy Rob will uh start playing getting into it, but he's got too many.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:39

It's a solo, isn't it? It's it's a solo only game, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:42

Yeah, they they badge it as the the the kind of anti-Love Island uh solution. So while your partner's watching Love Island, which is very uh you know rife right now, it's Did you come back on telly? You can play a game of time troopers in an episode of Love Island. Like fair enough. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:00

Yeah, so my wife will be playing Time Troopers while I watch Love Island.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:03

I mean um Love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:06

I can tell you I've never watched an episode of Love Island.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:09

No, meaning that I I just d despise it. Um but there we go. Cool. I think

Whisperwood

SPEAKER_00 1:34:17

my last thing, I think, was with you. So I don't know if you have anything more than um that you did before we did my last thing, which was with cardboard alchemy.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:26

No, no, and that was exciting. I was excited to see that.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:29

It was very exciting, yeah. So thank you again for for getting me on the the demo. So what I'm talking about is Whisperwood, not Wispwood, but Wisperwood, which is a very different game. Um and easier to say than Wisp Wood for some reason I struggle with Wispwood, but there we go. Um which is very good because we played that at Essen. Um we did, yes. It surprised me actually how good Wispwood was from Check Games edition. So there you go. But Whisperwood is very different. Um, and we had a demo. Um, so I basically caught up. I think I I managed to get to the store first and and basically caught up with Rosie.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:08

Um from swamped, didn't she?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:10

She was literally, she had no moment to herself. She was doing the passports right for Flamecraft and basically handing out passports. Her cue was massive. And I said, Rosie, I know you're busy, just hi, just hi, how are you doing? Give her a quick cuddle, and um yeah, and basically said, I'd love to talk to you, but I just haven't got time. Um, so we did that, and then I think you turned up, and then we had the very prestigious um Meeple University, Stella and Tarant, uh on our dadry, which is lovely, lovely turd.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:40

So I've I've I've met Stella before and I've told you this story that it was just brilliant. She she'd she I don't know how, but she'd recognized me at Essen. Um and I was I was like, wow, Stella knows who I am. That's amazing. And I sat down and played Pondscape with her um and and um James Wilkinson from Board Game James, yeah. And um, and I asked Stella for a photo, and she went, Yeah, no problem. Took out her camera, took a photo of me and her, and then left after the game. And I was like, no, I I want the photo. Can I have a photo? Yeah, and so she came back and I took it. But she's lovely.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:18

What she heard was uh, do you want to take a photo of me?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a keeper.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:25

Yeah, yeah, you should, you should take a photo of me just for your records. Uh oh, it's very funny. But no, they were great. Um they were great to to kind of catch up with and and talk to.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:36

It's quite neat again though, Whisperwood, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:38

Yes, it's uh so we had a uh scripted demo, right? Which is I'll be honest, they're not my favourite kind of demos, but I'm kind of glad we had a scripted demo for this.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:48

Yeah, I would have been lost.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:49

Yeah, because I wouldn't know what was going on, what to do, why I was doing anything. And we had um uh Christian um who's one of the designers of Whisperwood who did the did the the the teach and things, and he did a cracking job, like he he set it out. Um and I try I'll try and explain what I know about this game, and I don't know enough. I still feel like I need more um to understand the full um aspects of it, but it it's kind of a sandboxy euro, is how I best describe it, but with the bag building um of Orlean for those who have played Orlean, so you you've basically got bad building, you're pulling out tokens and putting them on action spaces on your playable, but very much like Orlean. Um, but you are druids in the forest, and there's been this blight or corruption that's kind of happened, um, and the golems are there like moping around going, oh corruption. Um, and we're there to to basically help cleanse the the forest full of all the naughtiness um of this corruption and and help out the animals and and and basically bring this forest back to life. And and you do that by um spending tokens on your action board and putting them into your spent pool, which is literally a pool. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:04

It is, yeah, it literally is a pool, yeah. You put them into a pool.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:07

Um and I assume we never saw it, they'll end up getting cycle back in your bag, and you'll end up drawing more as you as you play. Um and yeah, you can kind of move your druid around, you can um yeah, move them across water, which is a nice river that kind of flows in uh across the I say hexes, they're not hexes, but they're they're connected in a similar way. Yeah um and you can move from air to air, and there's just different ways of traversing that you can use some of the elements. Um, you can cleanse the the forest from corruption, you can do stuff like hoax the animals off the uh off the board and and go up the the separate tracks, and there's just there's so much going on, even one action it chained into something else. You unlocked a car that had another action on it, and then you could do something. And I was like, uh what is going on? Bring animals onto the board that you would put and yeah, yeah, and then there's something uh I I was like, Oh, they didn't get a companion, and like, oh okay, what's the companion do? I got a fox, okay, cool. Um, and we kind of went round and and Chris did you know an action at a time and he preceded everything, um, which was kind of great to to showcase what this game was kind of doing. But I just I think at the end of it I genuinely didn't know what it was doing because I didn't, yeah. It's basically I was on rails and I didn't really get the the full experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:23

You can upgrade your actions as well, can't you? You can flip your tokens over, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:27

Yeah, you can upgrade those, get them more powerful, and and also some of the goals at the top that you could convert or you can ditch some of the goals to make more powerful in different ways. And I mean again, cardboard alchemy do a bloody fantastic job on their production of games. Like Andromeda's Edge is so madly overproduced in the best possible way that I I do not mind. Um, the the way the raiders look and the way the minis look is fantastic. And we got shown one of I don't know what it was, it's like a water element, and it looked amazing, absolutely looked gorgeous. Um, and they'll they'll just do a fantastic production of this. And um Mark Dainty from Notball Gaming was was demoing at Cardboard Alchemy all weekend, and he was he was very, I think, impressed with the game. Obviously, he's learnt it a bit more, he's had to have a full playthrough, things like that. Um, so I'm intrigued to learn more about Whisperwood um and actually just be let loose in his systems a bit more and go, right, because I that's how I learn. I learn by just making a crap load of mistakes and go, don't do that again. That was rubbish.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:36

Well, I like the fact that um I know it was a demo, but there were certain things that happened that I thought, oh, I like that. So when you some of the um actions were had you had to put two tokens on of specific colours, and then when you spent that action, you actually lost one of your tokens and it's a discard, didn't it? Yeah, so you're gonna kind of thin your deck out, and it if I remember correctly, they were normally related to your druid, I think. So I lost some air, which I assume would be quite relevant to my character if I was an air character.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:10

Yeah. Something like that, yeah. So yeah, bag building. But I do like bag building as a mechanism in games.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:17

I think it's a big footprint now, didn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:19

It looked like it was just sprawling, and then these cards upon cards were coming out with more things, and then you've got a golem that you can interact with, and it it's like, whoa. Um yeah, one to watch. I think it's um it's hitting crowdfunding soon, isn't it? In July, I think. Um from memory. So definitely want to watch. If you love Carbot Alchemy and what they do, then yeah, if you like the theming of this, I mean I prefer spaceships and shooty shooty. That's just me. Like you do anything in space, I'm I'm in, uh, pretty much. But um, yeah, I think it's gonna sing to a lot of people, and uh I'm intrigued to know more on how it plays, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:58

Yep, likewise.

PHASE D: UKGE PURCHASES & WRAP UP

SPEAKER_00 1:41:59

Yeah, that was pretty much me. Like I got to the end of that demo, and it was about midway through Sunday, and I was like, I think I'm done. Um, which is normally when I I kind of leave uh UK Games Expos by the midday, and I'm like, Yep, I'm ready now. Called everyone else up and went, Yep, we're waiting for you, JP. Whoops. Um off we went, hit the car, and uh basically went home. That was uh I'll tell you what, the journey home was a lot quieter than the journey up, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:30

We um I I kind of wandered the halls for an hour or two after because I hadn't um I had to look around at things I wanted to see, and I just did the same with you the other on the other days where I just thought I'm just gonna wander and see where it takes me. Um and I I went mountain I picked up another game like Crown of Ash and Card Noir. Yeah, little worker placement with some quirky artwork with you're a necromancer raising the dead. Um so I've got a copy of that. Um I bought something for the wife, have to get something for the wife. He actually said, Don't get me a board game, whatever you do. So I got her a board game.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:04

Did you get a puzzle?

SPEAKER_02 1:43:05

You were asking about puzzles, did you get, but I couldn't find one, so I got her spokes.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:10

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:11

Um, because she likes she cycles a lot. Um, and this is it's a sort of like a cycle themed game, a little bit more of a puzzle um type element. So I got her that, and she looked at it and went, Uh yeah, it looks alright actually. It's like that Simpson uh episode of Simpsons when it was her uh Marge's birthday and he bought her a bowling board.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:31

Oh yeah, that's a great episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:32

Yeah, it's kind of like that's the thing, is my wife will go, Well, I'll play it. And I was like, crap, it's for me, and then she'll destroy me.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:40

Yeah, and then you're gonna want to play it again. I'm done with that, I sold it.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:44

Yeah, um yeah, and I just wondered about I saw some you know, small box party games and things, and uh yeah, then we headed off.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:51

Yeah. I mean, before I suppose before I headed off, what did I get? Um, my haul from UK uh G wasn't uh massive this year. I don't tend to go big on getting loads and loads of games at UK Games Expo. Essence's a kind of a different story, but um yeah, I think it's probably because of the release windows, it doesn't tend to be around expo time. But I did pick up, I did see a copy of Arkwright and a very edition. I I I got it in the end.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:20

So we s we saw that, didn't we? So I said, Oh look, it's there, and you'd played it at Essen, hadn't you?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:24

Yes, I had a demo at Essen, which wasn't the best demo I've ever had. Um, but I I quite like the you know, Industrial Revolution, very beige QB um Euros and Arkwright I've known about for a long time. It's an old game, and they say we played the anniversary edition, and I just saw it then. I thought, you know what, I'll take a punt on it. And I picked it up as well, but I didn't get it. Yeah, I just uh I hopefully I'll enjoy it. I just I've put it, I've popped it, and I went, I'm too tired to even think about you, and put it on my shelf and I'll I'll look at it um uh another day. But I am intrigued um because another one that's I kind of have similar in my mind is Chicago 1875. Um shoulders. That is I do enjoy that game. That's a like an 18XX game, but with worker placement and similar theme where you're managing companies, you're paying dividends, you're doing all that kind of stuff, shares and da-da-da. Um that's I do enjoy a lot. Um, so for Art Cry, I think is sometimes dubbed the superior type of game. Um, but we'll see. I need to play it. But I've got it, and it's heavy, literally, heavy in weight and heavy in BGG weight. It's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:37

I I also picked up um Thinning Veil from Triskillion Games.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:42

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:42

Um I do like my dungeon crawlers, um but yeah, this is sort of like a really uh a gothic fantasy dungeon crawler. Um it looks looks quite nice. Um lots of dice rolling and then using your dice to for actions. So yeah, looking forward to getting that on the table.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:00

Nice. So there we go. That's that's the expo done in just under two hours.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:07

Yeah. You've cut two minutes under an hour. But it depends how much you've cut.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:12

Well, yeah, it could be it could be uh yeah, 10 minutes. Um but yeah, I did I think all that's left to say, I think from me is I mean, yeah, I've I always enjoy Expo. It's it's it's kind of a marker for the year for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:26

It's kind of a nice 20th year anniversary as well, we've got to mention that.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:30

It was the 20th, yeah. I've completely forgot about that. 20 years of expo, and uh I've been going to Expo I don't know when my first one was, 2018, I think, was my first expo. So coming up to nearly 10 years. I've not gone every year because COVID ruined one of them, maybe two of them. Um, but most of them I've I've I've been going to over the years, and it has grown to a place where the way it's set out now I really enjoy. I really like the way that they use halls two, you know, three and four in like a U shape. Um and everything's kind of open, you can freely get from hall to hall without um corridors or yeah, it just it feels more open, even though it it probably isn't, but it just feels like the way they've done it, you can traverse it a lot easier than you used to.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:20

It used to be a bloody nightmare getting from this is the first time I didn't actually go into the hotel.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:25

Oh yeah, you know what? Me neither. Normally I go into Hilton. Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:29

Normally go there, get something to eat and and play a game there as well. But no, didn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:33

Didn't do it, but I suppose you'd be in offset.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:35

It's a really well-run event, I think. Yeah, they do remarkably well there.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:39

And the fact they build on it and and make it bigger and bigger and and such a what was it, 50 odd thousand individual tickets? 51k in unique visitors and then 80-something visitors overall, which is and then no wonder uh why I felt like crap coming home because I think it's just lots of people, like you know, con crud is a thing, right? People get concrud. It's uh this is the first year I think I've mentioned off or something. Yeah, I felt felt rough, mate, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:11

I think I need to start booking an extra day off.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:14

Yeah, I always regret it. I go to work the Monday and go, why am I doing this? But I never learn. So there we go.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:24

What is next for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:48:26

Next, what convention-wise or next?

SPEAKER_02 1:48:29

No, it's for your channel.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:30

Oh, chat. Well, more episodes for me. Um which is good because otherwise I'll run out. Um, but no, um, like I said, the next uh just play with others bonus will be um my my Netherlands weekend, so that'll be the next uh kind of different uh I won't say it's convention because it's not, but uh I'll I'll explain what I've done there and I'll go into some deeper kind of games I've played and there's a lot of secrets that I saw, which I cannot tell anyone about. So that's gonna be useful.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:59

This is why I I I I refuse to see them. They're just terrible.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:02

It's just like don't show me anything. I can't, yeah, ask me no um yeah questions, I'll tell you no lies, kind of thing. Um but no, uh yeah, lot lots of cool stuff. I've been I've been in contacts with from UKG as well, with a few people and might want to jump on the show as well. Maybe some from older Who's Turn and maybe some of the Who's Turn gang might might make a a cameo appearance as well, which which should be fun. So we've been having some ideas there, but um but we'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm keeping it very fluid, Mark. We'll see what happens. Good. Yeah, cool. I think we're there then, aren't we? I think we're we're at the end, and yeah, no, thank you, mate, for jumping on this evening and having a chat.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:45

No, I appreciate it, honoured to be asked, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:47

Yeah, no, a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:48

And uh how many people did he go through to get to me?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:51

Um seen. No. Yeah, you're my first pick. Oh, look at that.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:56

You were look at that.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:57

And you said yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:58

So about the camera trouble I had beforehand.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:01

That's true, but we got there in the end, didn't we? So that's the main thing. We did. But no, look, thanks, mate. I appreciate your time and uh yeah, um all the best. And and I know you're kind of growing your channel, and I know you're doing a lot more um you know, uh kind of rigor in in trying to get more playthroughs and things like that. And I'm really looking forward to what you produce and I love all your work anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:23

Next, I think for me, it's quite scary. But I've luckily I've had the guru Paul Grogan coach me into I mean, you can't get anyone better. No, no, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:34

He's the consummate professional in in live streaming, he's done everything probably wrong enough to learn all the lessons to do it right and well. Um, so yeah, just listen, be a sponge, and just do yeah, and he's so happy to share, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:49

He's like, Yeah, yeah, come and come around, we'll I'll show you what I do, copy, I'll help you out.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:54

Yeah, exactly. And if anyone's like listening to the show and um yeah, and hasn't kind of come across uh Ninja Geek Games before, like your TikTok presence is phenomenal, and you should watch Mark's videos and his shorts and and everything because they're just hilarious, like you'll just take the piss out of yourself all the time. Yeah, I do, yeah. And I love it, yeah. I love you for it, mate. It's just keep doing it. And uh yeah, so the fact you're gonna be kind of bolstering the fun side, which no doubt you're gonna keep, right? Because that's just your your bread and butter. But having you know some more that playthrough content, which I need to be involved in. You've got to get me involved on the stream at some point. We'll do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:31

I kind of embarrassed us a little bit at um Cardboard Alchemy, didn't I? Because that guy leant over and like said to Stella how wonderful. Oh, I really love your channel, it's great, blah, blah, blah. And as he walked off, I thanked him for his comments to me. Yeah, and really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:48

No, not you, mate. Not you. Stella, yeah, we know.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:52

Yeah, that made me chuckle. I don't laugh at my own jokes a lot, but that I I I think that tickled me. That was funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:59

Cool. All right, mate. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:01

Well, it's quite a channel, and I'll certainly be be watching you closely.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:05

We'll do. Thanks, buddy.

PHASE E: THE LAST PLAY

SPEAKER_00 1:52:07

Thank you for listening to the show. It's been great uh to have you listening along or watching along on YouTube. So if you've enjoyed the content that I create and you want to support the show, then we are on coffee, and every penny helps. Literally, I want to kind of improve this show as we go. I want to improve the visual uh equipment and technology and all the things that we use. So anything will help, I appreciate it. And if you really enjoyed the show as well, any like, any sub, any follow, any comment, all of that stuff really helps. We're a small channel and we're trying to get bigger. So, you know, we can't do that without you. So please, please, please uh help us uh along the way. Um, but other than that, the only thing that's left to say from myself is you only grow older and when you stop playing. Take care.