Welcome to the Board Game Snobs podcast, critically harsh reviews with a touch of class. And welcome to the Board Game Snobs podcast. This is Gavi, primary host, with me today. It's me. Bubba is here. Jerry is not such a pleasant, pleasant evening. I've been a nice, relaxing, although Jerry has been a lot better here lately. He really has. He's good. Blood pressure is good. He's hanging in there. He has not yelled at me at a certain decimal level in a long time. I think he's doing better. The listeners have responded saying, "Yeah, he sounds like a really..." Yeah, they're like, "Jerry has not been as angry." You see, I get him at the right time. Is it just a show? No, is he really better? No, I think he's universally calmer. Zined out. Calm Jerry. Yeah, calm Jerry. And who would ever have thunked it? Because calmer's Jerry can't get. Now, he can still get... Well, you think so? I know he gets worked up about things, but he hasn't gotten gotten as I write. However, it also hasn't been the three of us. It's been me and him, which has always been me and him. Okay, so I've brought up this theory before. Enrique is the problem. Because when Enrique is here, me and Jerry fight for whatever reason. I don't know if Enrique's sending out just subliminal messages. But when me and Jerry alone, we're good. So you think it's like an audience factor? I don't know if it's an audience. I think maybe just Enrique is the issue. I don't think I'm the issue. I think I'm rather calm, coming... You are person in the room. Enrique is not. Well, Enrique is. Something about Enrique, because Enrique likes to team up with Jerry against me. It's always two against one whenever it's the three of us. That's issue number one. That issue number two is Enrique will flop sides and then he'll suddenly be on my side and Jerry doesn't like that. But you just always remain neutral. Yeah, I just want... Well, I'm probably putting this photo stick Jerry out, but... Well, that's true. And that's why I... Well, me and Enrique together, we're pretty, we're pretty good. We're pretty good together. I love Enrique. I'm just saying the inciting factor in a lot of our fights, I think, has happened. Not that he is the inciting factor, just that when we're together and we've had arguments, Enrique's always been there. At least on the podcast. But anyways, but now I think we have not record. I'm trying to think if we've recorded all of us together, or at least me and Enrique and Jerry's since BGG Spring, I don't think we have. Maybe Enrique just gives our fair moans and Jerry a response to his shirt mistake. It's testosterone. It's testosterone, Enrique's got. Leaking out of his tiny chicken finger. Spanish testosterone is particularly potent. So Enrique is good for that. So you haven't been on the podcast since BGG. That's true. Anything that you have been up to that you want to let the audience know because they're always asking for Bubba to show up. So Bubba's here. I do nothing exciting. Everything I do is boring to explain. I mean, it's just ears. I mean, I got into a board game design a couple of weeks ago, well, a couple of months ago, trying to figure all that out. That's been kind of a neat thing in between all my time that I do not have. But it was pretty cool. I've been liking that. You know, what's bad about board game design? Once you start looking at board games, they become less impressed. That's what happens. And I have played board games. So can't you go ahead? Well, you asked me if I had played board games, and I told you know, I really had been playing board games. I actually bought like four of our board games, but I haven't been playing them. I was just breaking them down. Just analyzing. Yeah, just analyzing. And that's not that's not I find that fun, but it's not fun to describe. So how are you analyzing? Are you like reading the rule books and playing them? Yeah, I'll play portions of it. I don't even play them all. I've played black out like seven times, but I've never finished it. Hong Kong. Yeah, I've never finished it. I have no desire to finish it. I'm just. Are you playing a specific part? Yeah, I'm just fine and play this particular mechanism and this, this, and this. Then I download it. I mean, I got I bought the Apache something series, the big one. Did that massive game? Probably paid it that combat simulator game. Yeah, combat simulator game just to see kind of how that works out and the paperwork to it. I mean, it's kind of a neat thing. I mean, but I probably paid that two or three hours. Then I would, I need to find out, put it on the one I hadn't played is I played the legend of you. Oh, yeah, yeah, like that one. That's a solo game. Played that one for maybe, I don't know, two, three hours. Didn't finish it. I have no need to finish it. I don't mind what I need to learn. I was good to go. Let's move on. Yeah, I how the sausage is made has ruined the process for you. Pretty much. So I mean, it's fun. I still can get fun from, but it's looking at things and going, Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. And okay, that makes sense. And okay, not that terribly exciting, but okay. So, so then Bubba and I have just finished playing cryo. That's true. And so I don't, I guess you were just analyzing the game as a process. It's different when you play with somebody as a mechanisms. Yeah, I definitely you play it with somebody else. So so you don't, could you don't think, did you like legacy of you what you played of it? Or is it? Yeah, I thought it was different, but see, that's a narrative driven. I'm a legendary legacy. I think it's one of those. It's narrative driven. So it's different. So like, I hadn't went to all the card decks. I like, I hadn't even looked at them and saw them, which is the point. So I like, I enjoyed that for the reading part of me. And it was like, Oh, okay, that's a neat little way to do it. I've never had actually never played a game that does it. So I thought it was fascinating, but at the same time, there's a reason why it's a solo board game. So does it, if if it ruins your, I'm not the water it down to ruins your enjoyment, but why proceed with the designing one? Oh, it's no, no, see, see, that's the thing. I say ruin in the case of as a board gamer to play it, but as a person figuring out, I enjoy that. I mean, it's a good, it's a, it's a good little thought experiment and how to do this and how to do that. So it's pretty neat. I like it. I enjoy it, but I recognize that playing the board game itself is not enjoyable, and that if I play other board games like it, I'm going to go, huh, same mechanism that sucks there. That's good there. Oh, he did it good, because it's just the way it works. So. Do you have in mind, by chance, since you're totally unprepared for this, a mechanism that works really good in one game and terrible in another? I have been exploring the idea of card drafting with multiple cards, but like you, you draft cards. I can't think of a game in the heads of it. No, my God, because I was looking at a lot. When you say drafting, you're talking about just drawing from a deck or passing them around? Well, you're drawing from a deck and then, and then how some games have tried to incorporate that as a means of to randomize something, right? And why that sucks sometimes? Like terraforming Mars is like one of the biggest deck drawing games. Yeah, and why that sucks sometimes, because it gives you lack of control. So I have now realized that I do not like games that give me lack of control. So that's why Jerry hated terraforming Mars, because you're just drawing all these cards. Yeah, it's like playing Uno. I mean, and I understand, but Uno is not a game you sit there and play by yourself. It's a game that you sit there and play with other people. It's about the people, not the game control. If you're playing, I learned a game and, and my family outing last couple of weeks ago, I learned a game called Trash or Garbage. I learned that game kind of a neat thing. No different, no different. Uno, you play it, put things down, you turn over cards, you move on if you're something else. There's no skill set here, and it's completely random. So there's no joy in technically playing the game other than who you're playing it with. I eat my wife, so I absolutely enjoy playing with her. But, and my nieces and nephews are super good. So I found that I'm trying to figure out how do you take that mechanism and its purest form and turn it into something that can heighten the experience of a game. And it is one of the most big, and that's what I do. I'll get a foundation principle and try to turn it into something that I haven't seen or emulate something that I do enjoy. So it's kind of a neat little thing thing. So, does it make sense? I may be. Well, what I'm thinking of is, okay, so a lot, a lot of people, I'll take Terraforming Wars because that's one of the biggest gripes of it has been, you're just drawing a bunch of cards. Then people are like, well, you can draft them where you pass the cards around. That doesn't fix it to me because people are just going to give you the craft they don't want. So whether they hand you the stuff they don't want or it's just a randomized drawing, you're still going to end up with a certain amount of cards in your hand. And so even in Uno, you're then going to select from what you have to derive your best strategy. So I guess that's the game. I mean, I think card drafting in the respects, I thought about this. If you have a group of people in your card drafting, you're really prioritizing and dumping off your priorities to everybody else. But now you turn the game into, now instead of you having a lack of control, the whole game has a lack of control, it's like being, you're all in the same ship and you're depressing the game. You're just sinking the game into the water, because now you all have crappy hands. Yeah, I guess the thing with passing them around like Burning Kingdom. You remember Burning Kingdom? Yeah, I remember that. It's a really good card drafting game. Seven wonders. The only thing I guess that might be slightly different is you develop a strategy from the get go. Okay, I'm keeping this card. I'm hoping to get a card that goes with that to add to it. And you hope they keep coming around to you that the cards you gather, you might have more of a chance to have cards that work off each other than just grabbing off a random stack from the table. Yeah, but you use that word, I hope, which means a lack of control. Right. So, I mean, and so then to defeat that would be you have a tableau of cards in front of you that are turned over and you choose from those what you want and hope the person in front of you doesn't pick what you need. So I can only explain in a way that comes to my mind right now having to steal this down to a way that you can put into a card game or perhaps even make sense to everybody else. Do you know how you can, this is on the way in the right feeling you think is stupid, but you've watched Star Wars. No, we'll talk about Star Trek. We'll talk about Star Trek. So, because I am, I just started on Star Trek Enterprise. Believe it or not, the actual one with anyway, we'll go with Scott Bakula. Who's the guy who was in quantum weight? Yeah. Yeah, that one. Yeah, I don't know their names. I suck at knowing people's names and actors name. But anyway, what I'll say is this. Sam Beckett. Sam Beckett. There you go. Sam Beckett. I should know that by now because he's older. You know how you can take one event in physics and you can look at it in this way. If you look at it, you can look at it and straight on quantum mechanics. If you look at it this way, it's this thing. But if you look at it from this way, it's a completely different entity. If you look at it from another way, it's a completely different entity. The only way in my mind that I can think that I can make a drafting card game delightful at hand control is I get to determine what the card value means in my hand. Depending on what I want to do, I can take a seven and really it's a three or I can take a seven and it's an ace. We do this all the time because you'll go an ace is a high or low. We're looking at that the way we want to look at it. So how do I take a card drafting game and turn it into something that I have a control over what it means, but do that in a way that makes sense or that I can even explain how that works. So I mean, this is just me. But I think I'm saying stupid stuff. No, no, no. I think perhaps you want more control, but I think a lot of what people enjoy is getting this crap handed to them. And what could I make out of it? Well, yeah, but that's I get that. I get that. But now you're I mean, that's. But that is not that's solitary. That's not skill. Right. That's right. Right. Right. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. What's she saying? Yeah. So it's it's it's do you enjoy playing solitaire? Yeah. It's a solo game. And then you're figuring stuff out. So how do you. And what do they call those mitigating factors? Yes. So how do I do that in a way? And that's just one thing that I think about when it comes to like, Oh, mechanics and how this works. And I kind of break it down and build it back up and put it with something else, which is why you have all the derivatives and you have all the other stuff, all the variables added into it to mitigate those things. Well, I really hope either you or Jerry someday decide to design a game because, you know, it helped the podcast put out there and put out there. So you can make a simple card game. Dan and Mike are making I made you a mixed type. And I think it's I don't know what to say. Click. I forget. I've heard about it so much from them. I feel bad that I don't know the genre it's in because I should. It's either said collection or trick taking. I feel like no, it's I split you cheese. It's like you're kind of like, Hannah, Khanna, Hannah, Hannah, my Koji. You have you. I'm going to take this option. And I'm going to present you this. And that's up to you to choose this one or that one. So there's like a deception deduction thing. Yeah, I kind of okay. That Hannah, my Koji is the only one I've really played. There's like a bunch of them. New York pizza game I never played. But it's an I split you choose is the name of the mechanism. And I haven't played a whole lot of those, but that's the only one I know I've played. It's kind of interesting because it's like, for like example, you're presented with it is a set collection game because I'm needing these cards over here for me. So I can I'm going to put this two and this three in the stack and a five and a five and a stack and present those to you. So you can either choose the five and the five or the two and the three. Well, the five and the five looks great, but I really need the two and the three. So I'm hoping you don't choose this or that. Yeah. And it's just kind of an interesting take on that. I think so this is what I've learned. I've learned you can do board games a lot of different ways. But I learned a lot of designers and I've seen a lot of a lot of podcasts and a lot of books. And look, that's some game theory stuff which is super fascinating because it really shouldn't be a client sometimes. Anyway, you can do games two ways, boil it down. I can do a one mechanism, do something funky with it interesting people like why I can develop a system. I can develop a system that has probably a central a central mechanism that has other mechanism variables around it that adjusted and people think is interesting, but really isn't. But they think it's interesting because it gives the illusion of what the presentation is part of it. So it's like, it's like you can smoke weed, which is just one thing and that calms you down or you can take another drug that's synthetic. He goes all over the place, but he can kill you. So you got to figure out if you do, you want to do a system or a mechanism. And so it's been a fascinating thing trying to figure that out and how people do it. I mean, people do it. And then if you see games, I don't mean it's in where and I know y'all have talked about it. Everybody talks about it. You play one game, you know, everybody does this game is like this game, this game is like this game. That's because you're seeing the same system being repeated. Now that's there's nothing wrong with that. That's that's every movie. There's nothing wrong with that. But the movie that breaks out, the game that is truly like changing or like changes stuff up, it's one that does something differently or does it in a way that nobody contemplated. And I don't know, I'm a little too ambitious. If I'm going to create something, I don't want it to be like something else. So but now I realize that I can create something that should be like something else. So you can learn how to do it. I have nothing wrong with that. Maybe I'll do what I'm 60. But yeah, I've just found it fascinating. What are you going to shoot for? Well, you know, as soon as you said that, I'm going to movies. Okay, I always think of the matrix. But the sad thing is when you think of the matrix, that was like this everybody copied the matrix after that. The matrix copied these old karate movies. Yeah. So it's like, but it was new to the generation. It seemed new. And the way they presented it was super cool. They put it in a different wrapper. And it was new to people. And I thought, Oh, this is new. Wasn't new, but put it in a good wrapper. But that's what you got to do. But I mean, I shouldn't talk about movies because I suck at movies. But you have like a movie like the matrix with what's the one where is the dream inside of a dream, which is inception, which is, I know on a book and some other stuff. But that was a neat idea. But some people would say inception is related to the matrix. I don't think so, but I get the concept. But it's, yeah, you got to time things, right? And what, you know, there's an original idea out there new and board game. I doubt it. No, I don't think there's original ideas out there period. Yeah. Well, I mean, but I think the originality comes from intersecting something with board games that you never have expected. There has to be an intersection in a way that nobody else thought of. So what can you intersect with board games that that people think I never thought of it before? Maybe not be a new thought, a new idea, but it is a new application. So how do I intersect something with board games that nobody else has ever done before? Which I know we didn't start this podcast to talk about board game design, but well, no, because that's, I mean, that's what you want to shoot for. And I think the way that people try to address that is but just by changing the thing. Yeah, but that's gimmicky because it's not a new thing. So how do you truly put something into a board game that nobody else has done? And you take a person like dozens of other people in the world who think in these terms and think, well, how can I develop a new system or intersect two systems together? And when you do system design all day, and that's kind of how you think of it, is what can I put two things together that nobody expects? And it's like chocolate and peanut butter. Whoever did that at first, genius. Chocolate, been around forever, peanut butter, been around forever. But dang, that started a whole company. And like, no new idea. Reese's pieces. I started a company, you know. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I put up, I put an electric engine into a car. Oh my God. I mean, James is an industry. So yeah, what can you intersect that creates a system or refines a system in a completely different way that people would blow their minds that you're playing a board game that can do this? What do you do with that? And sadly, in board gaming, board gaming has simply become what's hot right now. And no matter what you come up with, it can be brand new blow minds. Next year, nobody will care. It is true. So how do you make something long lasting? I mean, if it's if it has to be a, I don't know. No, that's a whole yeah. Yeah. But so, so I know it's a lofty idea, cheap, make it cheap and good. So it's a lofty idea. But yes, and I will, you know, when I study the city economics for board games, I thought, I'm going to study some economics and see why, how that works. And just like, how do you get massive amount of people to buy things, which is an actual whole psychology versus economic thing, very fascinating field. Didn't know anything about it. Read a lot of magazines, very fascinating. And the thing that they came up with, and believe it or not, is how do you get people, massive amount of people to accept something that necessary in their lives, like a conspiracy theory, or like massive drug use in society. And that's the examples that they were using is like an economic and psychology thing. How do you get people to wrap their minds around that and, you know, board game in cerebral? See, I'd go too many different places of thinking, all I want to do is create a board game and say, you know, I'm studying economics and how that pertains to board game design and how psychology pertains to that and how you can emulate this thing about if I'm going to create a board game. Now, simply just start out doing something very simple, get it, but building the skillset needed to do something that's rather complicated and mind-blowing, which I may never achieve and I probably won't. I'm sure somebody else way smarter than me will do it. No, no, no. No, I'm dead serious. You see so many people baking board games and you look at how they do it mathematically. I mean, clearly genius level people, clearly. They do some things that I've never, yeah. If there's someone in particular you enjoy listening to on board game design, or that you run across? No, you know what? Uh, no, because I, I'm saying reason why I tell you guys whenever people talk about this, Jeff Inglestein always comes up because he's a designer, but she has a podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've listened to him a little bit. Here's the thing. I don't get like, like, you know, I caught up with the Einstein effect when you have somebody is so popular in the field and everybody just gravitates toward, oh, they're jeans. By the way, truly is the jeans, but you miss so many other things. I don't really. Well, I do agree. I just like the genius. Well, yeah, clearly a genius, but, but there's like 10 other jeans is like him that he built on. Did he or did he not fail math in school? I don't know, it's like last or is it fiction? Is it fiction? That was a fictional story in that he himself did said, no, that's not true. I passed math because people like to say, well, he felt math. He was a genius, but he was so genius. He felt what? No. Yeah. You hear people saying, Hey, you're so smart, but you're stupid on the simple things. Common sense common sense. Well, you're dumb. You can't tie your shoes. Yeah. Yeah. But you can do this thing with math and you're hit with five variables and stuff. There are people like that. I get you, but guess what? You know, intelligence, if intelligence, it skips a whole lot of different boxes. So an intelligent person is never intelligent. I think they would put you on like a spec, the spectrum. Well, no, I just didn't. Were you like excel in one field? Yeah. You don't know how to tie your shoes? Yeah. Those should correlate somewhere in there. You should. But, you know, it may not. I think you might need Velcro. I think every ordinary people are geniuses in on their own particular ways. Oh, you're a very positive person. No, I mean, just you have a person who, am I a genius? I think you are. I think there's some things you tap into that other people don't easily tap into. And it's like, Oh, okay. It's like, you know, you can talk to a homeless person and tell you about life. And you'll learn so much from him, but his whole life tells you he sucks at the last day. Was not great. He was not great. He made a lot of bad choices and it's not just learned experience. He probably could have told you that the whole time. So I think board game design is a lot like that. I think you have some people who are very good at a very narrow. They function at a very narrow level on board games. But it's a reason why I don't have a favorite board game designer. So I have gotten tired of like Z man games. Are they the people who do the omniverse thing, thingy thing? The one that's scary. Yeah, the scary thing. The solo game. Yeah. I know what you're I'll need only. Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah. Of course, a con or whatever. See, I started looking at houses, but you know, but it's like, that's the same game over 10,000 times. Oh, Nairam. Oh, Nairam. There you go. So are you talking about? Yeah, that guy right there. Yeah. So yeah. That is done by everybody. I just. I don't know. Z man. They were distributed to whatever. So yeah. So I look at board games and it's like, oh, okay, what, what did you, you know, I don't know, is it, can it be just different enough to be attractive? I guess it can. I like wingspan, by the way, but I know people hate it. I love. Jerry's one of those. Yeah, I love wingspan. He hates everything. Yeah, it's because he was this beautiful game, but anyway, which I haven't played it in a long while. Yeah. We will, we have a lot of games. I haven't purchased anything new in a long time. So to go into what we just played today, we played cry out. Yes. I played this several times. I love this game. And today actually kind of solidified that for me. But now Bubba has come in with his designer brain and he may have different thoughts. But it's just the type of worker placement, action selection, tight, like you don't have enough turns to do everything you need to do. So you're forced to make sacrifices. And I like that about this game. It's like it sucks. But the fact that it sucks in that decision space is what makes it interesting because you really want to like to build up your platform, your personal platform that you're working off of. You want to get that going and being as efficient, having all the ships to launch and these upgrades and missions. And you can't do it all. That's true. You literally cannot. That's true. Because you only have there'll be 18 turns. Yeah. It's a pressure making. You can't do it. Yeah. I love this game. I think it might be in my future top 10 that we will probably never do. We do need to do that one. We do need to do it. But I like it a lot. And that is a game by, well, say, Tom, Jolly, Luke, Lori, Larry, Larry, Mac, Larry. So Bubba played it. I showed it to Bubba. We watched Rodney explain it to us very well on what you played. And so Bubba, what do you think? One about Rodney. Very good hair. Two very, his nails are very clean. Three, his wedding man is too big on his hand. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that? He wants you to know he is taken. It may be, but his wedding band is super loose and he has not lost weight. Oh, you mean like it's big as it might slide off at any moment. He's like, I don't know why you do it. He has very clean glasses. Anyway, what I think about the game, I thought the game was it was a very nice game. On one to six, it was six and a half to seven. Did you say it on one to six? On the one that's one to ten, I'm sorry. On a one on ten, it's a six and a half seven. Okay. Can't, will that be fair enough? For you? Sure. I think it's good. I enjoy playing with you, but it was good. What did you like? What did you not like? I think that it is good for casual play. And I think I like it for that much. I think that if I, how many times have you played it? I would say at least five. But have you played with different people every time? I played it with Jerry and Enrique the first time, then Mike and Crystal, the other two or three times, and then now you. So let me answer your question. The last time that you played with Mike and Crystal was everybody super efficient and knew exactly what they wanted to do. And it was still exciting. Michael always is. Mike. Yeah. Yes. It's been a big hit. Yeah. Yeah. It's a job play. I do you take less and less time to play them. Okay. I say I played it four times. Okay. Once with Jerry and Enrique twice with Mike and Crystal, Mike won both times of Morris and then this time with you. So that's three player, three player, three player, and then two player. Okay. Was it less and less time when you played with Michael now every time? Was it more? No. Yeah. It was less and less time because we know what we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I like the game. I think I could not play it after three or four times. Well, no, no. I could play it as many times I need to play it. I think I will lose interest after the third of work time. Because you know exactly your strategy. Yes, a game of efficiency. I mean, and which every game is a game of efficiency, but this game streamlines that efficiency in a good way. Well, and I would say I think with more players, although it does have these spots that open up because like, you know, they close off certain spots of the board depending on player count. So you do have access to those and then you have those upgrade cards that like I had one that I didn't even use that you can go to a spot that's already damaged or whatever. So, mitigating factors. Do you think you would play the same way? The most efficient routine, though, is to play the same way. Once you figure out. Let's see here. This is my thing. I only play it once. I don't know. This is my gameplay. Okay. I go into every game as if it's my first. I got you. You do it. That's what I said. I don't remember. I remember nothing from the previous play. And I might even go into it. I did remember the key thing of where you can launch a pod from your platform with that. It's not the launch. I forget what it's called, but you pay a nanite and an energy and you just explore. It's the explorer mode. So I remember Mike doing that and he did it several times and you can go way far out and it would take a lot of energy for an opponent to travel out to there and conquer that instead of you. So, late in the game, if you're able to explore when people are low on their energy and stuff, it's a good strategic move to pop out there and do that and then you just have automatic area control. So, I remember that. But I can see that if you played this several times, but that's the thing. And that's why I think this cult of the new, it's an issue, but it's also like I've had this game. We've played it four times. All those took place in 2022. I haven't played it since then. So, today was like a brand new, it was all brand new to me. So, we don't, we have so many games. By the time you get back around to playing it, it's a new experience. I'll give you that. That makes sense. Because I ask you what is your strategy? Like, I just are playing the game to see what happens versus me. I'm banging. Oh, I'm going to do the strategy. Okay. Okay. That's what I'm going to do. And I dedicated and I lost it. But it was like, well, I'll just move to the next strategy. So, yeah, I get what you're saying. It makes sense. I beat future game designer. No, I don't know about that. I'll be unbusy into what he is. But, yeah. I wanted you to say, I really like the components, that's a pretty game. It's a pretty game. It's a very pretty game. It's a simple game. It is a very simple game. It's a simple game. Pretty game, simple game. You simply put your stuff out there and your turn can be over in seconds. I like it because the game, what I like about these types of games is because you have a, you have a, you know, you can do one or two things. You can deploy what you're going to do that all over many, many times. And then at the end of that, you take them back, take them all back. I mean, that's pretty much all you do. Yeah. You're putting deploy and you put them out. You deploy, you're putting them out. And it that immediately makes it where the game becomes a streamline. Oh, okay. I understand what I'm doing. And you feel like, okay, I get it. And you also immediately understand you have to get it because you understand now the pressure of having no time to do it. So you have to get it really quick. I like that mechanism. I really do. It's a good mechanism. I think it's, the repetition is good. All right. What this game does that I it syncs you in real quick. Realize that I like on the, the bring back action recall, the recall, there you go, the recall. So you remember that game, the Manhattan game where you're dropping like nuclear bombs and all that stuff. It has that recall thing where like you have to spin a turn to get all your people back. Yeah, you must do it. Yeah. And lots of times that's just a wasted turn. Yeah. I can't remember if I can't remember if Manhattan, like that's when you like collected your money and stuff or not. But this game, the way it does that is whenever you recall, that's when you get your resources. That's your income phase, basically. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, because if you just recall them, just like, I don't know, there's games where you have to spend a turn to get all your workers back. And that's just your turn. You're done. And this, it feels like a wasted turn. Yeah. Another factor about this game that I found interesting when me and Mike and Crystal played is Mike was doing really good, as he always does. And the end game can be triggered. The end game is triggered by these incident tokens, depending on the player count, you put this many. So two player game, you put two incident tokens out for six rounds, so basically, and then the final one. I could, if I wanted to, I could put a drone out and recall it instantly and take an incident token. Yeah. So you can, you can trigger the game faster if you want to. Yeah. When me, Mike and Crystal played, I triggered the game, like, after I would put what drone out, recall, put a drone out, recall it, and I ended the game faster. Still lost. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't work. Yeah. But I like the fact that I could do that. Yeah. Many people may not like that, but it is a very tight game. It kind of reminds me of Merv and the fact that you do have this certain amount of Merv, you have a certain amount of turns in that's it. This game, you have 18 turns, you can choose a lot of other spots on the board before you get that final setting sun and everybody freezes a death. But we ended it as soon as it came out as possible. But I still realized this. I would suggest it. I like it. It's a nice game. I think that I could only play it so many times with so many different people. And, but I think it has a good replay factor to it. I think that if you get too many people the same type, you wouldn't enjoy the game. That's what I think. That's true. So, because I think I can see the need to be efficient. I immediately recognize at the end of the game, I said, "Oh, it makes sense. It only takes two moves to do that." And that makes sense. Next time I'll do that. What happens if we all do that? Now, I want to punish a person. Now it comes down to, and I know it feels like I'm wrecking on it. I'm not wrecking on it. I'm talking about the mechanism. You hated it. We get it. No, no, I like the game. I like the game. You'll never come over and play again. I got it. Yeah, that was good. But then it comes down to who gets to do it first? Who gets to put their pod into the salvage area? Or who gets to put your drone, you realize that if I put my drone on that one feature first, nobody else gets to do it. I get to do it. Nobody else does. Just the way the game works. And then your play turn is dictated by random order. And then I get to put it out every time. And so I'm going to do that if that's my priority. So now it shifts to where you can no longer have that mechanism in place. So now we're battling over priority who gets it first, which is I want to put my play out and build this, put my pod on this furthest planet. And then now you've whittled down the game. So that's what I mean by if you have two people who are that way, you probably want to enjoy the game as much. But, but I also don't really care about winning. I really care about playing and enjoying it. So I'm okay with doing that. Okay with that. And I'll make sure everybody else is fun because then I have fun. So so in your game, your designing, you should incorporate a way to take a claim for his player. Well, you could punish people for being too efficient, which is what games do. They recognize the issue with cryo like this and go, Oh, if I play it the next time, everybody else plays it, understands it. The replay factor goes down. When we play the game shorter, which is why I asked about you and Michael, you've learned the game how it needs to be played. And what do you do? You play shorter, not just because you have learned the game, but also because you are now racing to do the multi-fisher, which has nothing to do with you because you're a random order and you get, you figured out who plays it. So how do you, how do you take control back from Michael? How do you take control from that? Because he learned how to be most efficient quickly. He learns how to take control from him from that. You have to punish him for being efficient. First, oh, you have to wrestle over the methodology of how to be efficient. Now that adds a whole another complexity layer to the game, which that's why I was wondering if you play with three people, what do they do in order to do it? On this game, they just add tokens. In other words, they just elongate the game out. So how do I enjoy the game and add some, not complexity to it, but how do I, how do I do that five plays out when we're all very efficient now? How do I make it that game as equally enjoyable? The first time I had to play it five, three, four more times. Exactly, exactly. So, but that being said, that's that's a whole another way to think about the board game that is completely irrelevant if you're not in that type, but to enjoy the game, love the game and play the game. Oh, man, I did like it. It was nothing. That's why I say I enjoy playing it with you. I appreciate you giving me that. That makes sense. When this podcast comes out on August 14th, although it's somewhat kind of an evening, depending on if you're in England and all types of stuff, but I released this Tuesday evenings and Wednesday, so it'll be August 14th. That day will be World Lizard Day. Oh, wow. They have a World Lizard Day. Make like a lizard and lie in the sun while you learn more about them. Make like a lizard and lie in the sun. Why do lizards need a day? To lizards that get cancer. They're showing like a, just a green iguana looking thing to me. Oh, why do they need a day? Why do we need to lizard day? Why do we need to learn about them? I don't like lizards, the reptiles, or snakes with legs. I don't care for them. I mean, I think lizards are the closest to them. We have to modern their resurrection, but okay. How so? They can grow. Like their tails back? Yeah. Can they grow a leg back? I don't know. Or just their tails. I hope they can. If they can grow just their tails, they're still amazing. Well, their tails shouldn't come off so easily. That is true, but I think it's genetically the same. They like drop them and run. I know. I mean, think about it. They're like, we're dropping this extra weight. Yes. We got to get out of here. Yes. And I mean, that's a good, pretty good sacrifice. I mean, is it really sacrifice if I can go back though? But think about how amazing. It's awesome. Think about how amazing. If you know, you're going to get it back, it's not a sacrifice. But so maybe we're celebrating the fact that they could do it. I don't know. I mean, you know, hey, everything should be celebrated. It's amazing. The lizards are great. How about World Gobby Day then? I think everybody, I think everybody's having a day. They celebrate themselves. That's true. Yeah. World also on this day, World Calligraphy Day. Yeah, that's a waste a day. Grab your dip pens and inks and let your hand flow with art of calligraphy. Yeah. I mean, I know it's a, it's like an art form to do calligraphy. It is. But also, nobody cares about cursive anymore. That's true. Like, why are we, why are we doing cursive? Now, I think cursive is beautiful and you everybody should do it. But is it even talking schools anymore? I don't think it is. It's not. It's not. But I do get it. I think, I think it makes people dumber, but okay. Not no incursive, but I get it. Why were we doing cursive in the first place? Because it makes us more smooth transition than writing black letters. You can write quicker. It was our means. Is it supposed to write quicker? Yeah. You can do it fast. It's like, because you don't have to lift. You don't have to lift. You can just go and boom, boom, boom. So it makes sense. But the thing is, people don't write anymore. So therefore, cursive is no longer necessary. Yep. That's the problem. But then I think people should write more. It helps you, it helps you with your emotions. By the way, writing things down. Go ahead. It does. Writing things down in a way in which you can. Am I writing my emotions? You can write your emotions down in a fluid way, it helps you get it out. Oh, it's healthy. I'm feeling, I mean, I've seen that journaling, isn't it? Yeah, journaling is a problem. Yeah. And it's different. It's a different connection between typing something and writing it down. This way it works. So to this day, if I want to learn something, I write it down. Even though I can type it, I can type all day long. But if I write it down, because you're triggering your eyes, and then you're writing of it, you're triggering all these things to make it more in your memory. Yeah. So that's why we like art. Art embodies emotions and ideas. I mean, even though the guy just wrote something on a piece of paper, by God, why is that art? I mean, really? Why? But it is, because it imbues, can I use that word imbues? You can. I'm not sure what it means. A whole different emotional characteristic to something that's very typical. Typing is uniform, it's conformity, and you have to find deep meaning into the words themselves. I type. But yet books are all typed. Yeah, but it's emulating what? What used to be handwritten? So it's the most consistent way in which we can convey emotions, but even still typing is, it's like Zoom, right? Zoom, you still get to do Zoom. You still get to see people, but it pels into comparison face-to-face conversation. So you would prefer handwritten books? If I could have a handwritten book that I could read, yes. Well, I think that might be the issue. I mean, a lot of them authors were like like doctors, but they wouldn't know anything. Yeah. But if you're ever seeing a writer write something, and then they have all the changes, you see where they tortured over, it gives you a whole different meaning to it. It's like, oh, they tortured at this particular passage. Why? Oh, they were deeply. Why? I mean, it goes into it more. Yeah. Maybe I think too much about it. Writing is great. Let's just put it down. I don't know that you think too much. Maybe it's that a lot of people don't think enough. I like to think that you should only think enough about something that needs to be so you get what you need out of it. So not everybody has to think deep on every single thing, but you should think deep on what needs to deserve to be thought of deeply. Speaking of which, I've been thinking deeply about also on August 14th, National Tattoo Removal Day. Isn't that like National Regret Day? Exactly. Apparently this said say goodbye to that almost permanent mistake and make room for something new. So they're telling you tattoos are basically mistakes. Well, I think they're mistakes for those who don't think deeply enough about them. Exactly. Look, don't tattoo any spouse name on you. Yep. Not permanent. Put that in your heart. Put it in your heart. Kids? Sure. I guess they're permanent. Maybe your mama, your daddy. Don't put your spouse on you. I've seen it way too many times. Is there a National Tattoo Day? I bet it is. That's the pro. Yep. Then there's the National Tattoo Removal Day. That's the con. We made a mistake. We put, I love Jenny, my wife. Jenny ain't with me no more. Now it's Susan. How do I change this S to a J? I guess that's a good one. Her J to an S. I'm not, I don't have anything against tattoos personally. I wouldn't do it just for the pain factor. See, some people like the pain factors, don't pay. I know. I think there's like an addiction to that type. People love getting them. I think that people try to equate tattoos to doing other things and I think that in itself is devalues the meaning of a tattoo. I think that if you're going to put something on your skin that has way more meaning than just putting on clothes, that it should be something that is deeply meaningful for your everlasting place. Semi-permanent. You have to go through a whole process to get it removed. It's recognizing the art form of what it is. I've seen, I've seen pretty tattoos. Yeah, I've seen good tattoos that I think are idiotic, stupid, but they're really good. Yeah, they have a deep meaning. But I don't know. That's all tattoos is the whole discussion. Well, I'll say this. I think you can boil it down to this. It's like, if you were a cheap looking clothing, and I don't mean clothing that's not expensive, I mean, if you were something on you that makes you devalue you, it's the same way as having a tattoo that devalues you. But even in them, you can take clothes off and change your mouth. Can't do a tattoo that way. Hold on to punishment behind it. So do something that you're going to do something, make it valuable and make you valuable. And tattoos rely on two factors. The artist and the canvas. And I also think the perception. Nobody wants to see a tattoo, no matter how beautiful. Yeah. On my big fat belly. I don't know. That's debatable, but go ahead. You know, like I always look at the rock for, I don't particularly care for the rock. I don't hate the rock, but he's a big muscular guy. I'm like, he just has like these tribal designs on him. And some of them, they look kind of cool because they're around this huge muscle. Yeah, that's true. That's cool. Yeah. It's nice looking. But that's because the muscle's nice looking as well. Yeah. Around my arm, they wouldn't look as good. They don't have the same meaning. Not quite as cool. Are you connecting to your Samoan heritage? It doesn't even matter. Still don't look as good. I could have some like Chilean baguettes tattooed on my back somewhere, and it just wouldn't mean it just don't mean it's not the same. That's the same. That's the same. So I got to get in shape. That's what that led to. That's good. I think that people have to admit something very important about tattoos and all things external. What other people think matters. And I know people say this, well, tattoos, it matters to me. It matters to me. Well, then, why did you put it on your forehead? Right. It matters on your neck. Why did you put it on your arm? Were you everybody could see it? Well, it matters to me and only me. The only person that matters to is me. No, you want people to see it. It matters what other people think. Let's just. Yeah. Yeah. What's that? So artists do not make art to put into their house and only they look at it. That is just common. They want attention. Yeah. So when women put on makeup, this is controversial. Women put on makeup, which is an art form, by the way, to be respected. It is an art form. It is not cheap looking. It is an art form. The better you are at it, the more response you get. It is an art form. Your face is beautiful. And every woman's face is beautiful, by the way. So it is an art form, but it's an art form that is based not just on how you see it, but also how other people see it. So tattoos are no different. That's all I got to say. So, if you want to celebrate the removal of something, really, you're saying, I did this stupid thing. Yes. Or I'm perceived in a stupid way and I need to take it off. So let's to wrap it all up. And what makes sense to me? Got any other days, is this. I think that's it. I think that's going to do it for this episode. Bubba, thanks for showing up. I had planned on doing a Bubba Top 5, but we've. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have to talk about books and gravity rainbow books and all stupid stuff. So I'm sorry. I'm glad you didn't tell me that because that would have sucked. Well, that's all right. Well, hold it off for maybe in six months when you come back on the show. There you go. I appreciate you again. All right. Well, until next time, I'm not Bubba. I am Gabi. I'm Bubba. We'll see you guys later. Thank you for tolerating this episode of the Board Game Snobs. Stay classy. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
