[music] Inverse Genius presents On Board Games Episode 546, Euro Evolution. [music] You are listening to On Board Games, where game industry veterans talk about the board and card gaming hobby, while exploring topics of interest to gamers, designers, and publishers. This episode, Eric, is joined by Steve Jivers from Board Game Gin Wags to talk about how Euro Games have evolved over years. [music] On Board Games is sponsored by our amazing patrons at patreon.com/obg. Thank you so much for your continued support. Everything that comes in from Patreon goes to cover our monthly podcasting costs, which we incredibly appreciate. Hey, we have a merch store. If you find yourself in the need of some OBG swags, head on over to inversegenius.com and click on the store link. And as always, we live for feedback. You can send us email at onboardgamesmailbag@gmail.com. You can go to the Guild Guild 325 on Board Game Geek or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. And as always, we encourage you to share the news of On Board Games to those you think would enjoy it. And thank you for listening. [music] Hello, and welcome to another amazing episode of On Board Games. I'm your host, Eric Dewey. You can find me at EricDewey.com where you can look up the big book of everything or anything else about me. At least that I publish on the internet. And if you want to find me on Board Game Geek, I'm Eric, A-Y-R-K, pretty much everywhere. And with me, I have one of my good friends from down under Mr. Steve Chivers from the Board Game Gin Wags. Steve, welcome back. Hey, hey. Glad to be back. Glad you were here. We were joking a little bit earlier about how there's 24 hours in a day, but only four of them are we both awake at the same time. So coordinating this is a bit of a challenge. If one of us has to get up early, or one of us has to stay up late. That's right. I'm waiting for you to like to be up at 3 a.m. and that would be perfect for me. [laughter] Awesome. So Steve, have you played anything interesting or noteworthy lately? Yeah, I have, actually. I had a great game of distilled, a couple of games of distilled lately. The first time I played it was actually on the Podfather Cruise, where we met, and Clint did a great teach of the game, and that was excellent. And bought the game a few months later, hadn't really got it out of the box, played it a little bit on BGA, and then went to a friend's house, and we opened it up and played it again live. The heart game is, it really doesn't miss. The theme is excellent. The mechanisms tie to the theme. It's got even little things like, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the game, but obviously you're making your different types of spirits, and you've got to organize to make sure you've got the recipes. You've got to make sure you've got the right ingredients, the right barrels, and whatever else you need to make the spirits. Some of them required to be needed to be aged, so you need to put them in your store room. Over multiple rounds, so they can, and the longer you leave them there, the better they get, because the longer they're aged. Oh, there's other ones that just can just be punched out like your vodka and moonshine, and a few other ones that don't require any aging. But even down to that, the theme, so then I'm not a big drinker, and I'm certainly not a distiller of drinks, but apparently when you distill alcohol, you take off like the top, and you don't distill the top and the bottom of whatever is in the barrels. And to signify that in the game, yeah, to signify that in the game, you shuffle all of the items in your ingredients together, and you take off the top and the bottom ingredient and discard them from your drink. And even that's tied to theme, so it's a very, very well done theme. The folks that I played with you, the Shannon, she said about 20 minutes in. She said, "I think this is a 10 out of 10 game for me." So we played it straight away again two nights later, and it's a really good game. It's very hard. It's one of those games where the second game we played, I played terribly, but had a great time. And to me, that's the sign of a great game, if you can absolutely tank it and still enjoy yourself. So I am now, after being a bit of a listener of your fantastic podcast for a while and having guessed it on it once before, I can confidently say that Distilled is a green light game. It's a green light. Fantastic. So at TokenCon, we played a little bit of it. We played probably two turns of it before the room needed to be emptied out for some event or something. And so I got the taste of it, no pun intended, but I never hadn't played a full game and really didn't quite get the engine going on it. But it's neat and it's very, very pretty. It's a very pretty game. The bits are fun and interesting. I like the little labels for the different alcohols that you can make. I was watching the Board Game Geek has a series of videos from Foster the Meatball that are solo games, and she played Distilled Solo, and I was like, "Man, that looked really fun." And I saw on Board Game Arena Distilled, I'm like, "Hey, all right." But apparently they don't have the solo. It's just two to five players on BGA. I haven't actually pushed the button yet, but it only said two to five players. I don't know what to say. I have bought it. Cool. I haven't had a chance to play it solo yet, but I have heard it's really great solo too. So that will definitely be happening in the future, I'm sure, what I play. Tomorrow is Father's Day in Australia, and to celebrate Father's Day, all of my kids are out doing activities that I have to drive them around for. So, yeah, you mean, I'm going to spend a lot of my Father's Day sitting at home by myself. So maybe I should play Distilled as my Father's Day present to myself. There you go. I have done that. Mr. President, I have put the tables like, "I've got a week off from work" or for whatever reason, so I'm going to just take over the table for a week and play it. Awesome. Well, actually the same friend that owned Distilled, he texted me and he's like, "Yeah, you've ever played too many bones?" And I'm like, "No, I haven't." He's like, "What do you like solo games? You can play this solo." So he brought it to me. That's a heavy game. Let's just start, like, physically. And there's a lot of mass in that game. So have you played too many bones? Yeah, I love too many bones. It's a lot of fights. So it's a fun and interesting game. Chip Theory Games. And you're basically, for gear locks, I think, you're like, "Hobbity things." And there's big bad guy that you have to go adventure and get to the bad guy and defeat him to save your village. Is the overall theme. And so you have your guy and you got this mat and there's all kinds of holes to put dice. It's a dice. You get dice. And then as you build skills, you get new dice that can do different things. And so you have an entire sheet front and back that describes everything your character can do. And then there's another sheet that describes everything that the bad guys can do. There's another sheet that describes everything else that's going on in the game. And so the main core of the game, you draw a card, there's a little adventure, you get a little story, you get to make a decision, "Oh, do we meet these traders?" And potentially get ambushed by them, or do we bypass them and do something else? And then depending on what you choose, then an action happens. Either you gain some benefits or usually there's a fight. And the grid is a 4x4 grid. There's two on the top half, which are the bad guys starting places and two on the bottom, which are the heroes. And so since it's a chip theory game, there's chips everywhere. So you've got you, you've got your health chips, you kind of stack yourself on the board, and then you're drawing random chips for the bad guys, and they all have special abilities and you roll your initiatives, and then off you go. And so basically you're trying to fight these guys and not get killed, or at least have a total party wipe out. And one of the things that's interesting is each of the gearlocks is unique, and some of them are great if you're just playing solo, which I did. But if you have a party, there's great ones that are, "I'll be the tank, and I'll be the buffer, and you'll be the attacker." And you can really kind of build your gearlock to the situation. So what do you think of the game? Yeah, I really like it. I play it mostly solo because it is a long game, even solo. So it's hard to sort of convince most of my family will play the odd board game, but they're not nuts about it like me. So convincing them to sit down for a six-hour adventure through opener. It's probably not going to work. But again, the gearlocks are very different in their styles. So I really like playing it multiple times with like two gearlocks. I play two-handed solo kind of thing. But I won't chop and change too often. I'll play a fair few games with the same two. So I can really get a handle on how they work and how they can combo together. And then maybe I'll switch one out for a bit, and then I'll eventually switch the other one out. I say that like I get to play this all the time. We're talking over a large period of time here. It was actually not long ago that I got that out myself on another weekend where I had a lot of time to myself, which doesn't happen very often. So I set up and I've played through. I've got a lot of expansion content, but I haven't really touched any of it. So I've got the Age of Tyranny, which I think is their first kind of campaign style one they did. And I started that. So I'm a couple of missions into that one, which is interesting. You get a bit of carryover from round to round as far as you maintain some skill. And weirdly, when you lose a fight, you get a boon. No, you get a scar, which will give you something. No, how's it work? You get a boon, which helps you for the next round. And in some instances, you'll get a scar, which hampers you for the rest of the campaign. So it's got a little bit of a way to sort of drag you back if you're going too strong and a way to help you if you're not doing well. Interesting. Yeah. So I enjoyed the game overall. I agree with you on the length. I think the game is a little bit longer. It's so low, it's not a big deal, right? Because you can just get up, walk away, come back, finish it later. But with a group of people, I can easily see it kind of dragging on. And there are levers you can push. You know, you can pick an easier, bad guy that doesn't take as long. You know, that kind of stuff, but there is that. There's just so much information to grasp. It's not a difficult game, but there is a lot going on there, especially with your characters. I've played it a lot, and I still use those cheat sheets every game. Like there's, I don't think there's a way. You'd have to be playing that regularly, like a lot, like at least once a week, to be able to play that game and just not touch any of those sheets. That seems impossible to me. Agreed. Now kudos to chip theory for making them at a PVC as opposed to laminating cardboard. So those suckers are going to last for a while and the cards themselves too. You know, kind of funny. So the hit points everybody has are just stacks of red chips underneath you. And when you run out of chips, you're dead or the bad guys, the same thing. And it's neat. It works well. The chips are a little slippery. So I can't tell how many times I've kind of knocked them over. And I kind of feel like they're leaning into that whole chip theory a little bit too, too much. It's not, it's not a problem, but it, it's like, oh, that's kind of cute. All right. Let's. Yeah. Let's go. It's a, it is a funny juxtaposition with that game though. Like you've got, like you mentioned, you can choose a baddie that is shorter. So the game won't last as long. Or you can choose another baddie that's really long. And the benefit of that is you get to do more with your character. So yeah, you kind of want to play the long ones so you can do all the cool stuff and get all your dice out. Right. But then at the same time, if you want a shorter one, then your character's not going to evolve as much. And you're kind of like, oh, I didn't really get to do all my things. Yeah. You call and I want to play show up and you call and I want to play low. Yeah, because there's, I don't really know the number, but it's probably like 64 different skills that you can get. It's got to be eight by eight, seven by seven, something like that. It's a big old grid of dice that you can get and you can build up on it. And yeah, there's stuff that you just never touch because it just never comes around. So, so I liked it. I give it a solid yellow just because of time. And I'm going to say cost. The nice thing is the game in and of itself isn't outrageously expensive, but it's certainly worth, I mean, you get, you pick it up. You're like, oh, I got my money's worth just on weight, but there are so many expansions. If you're a completion, it's this game will bankrupt you. Yeah. I've only got a couple of, I've got a couple of the early ones and then I went on to the unbreakable Kickstarter, which was a couple of years ago. And I got the unbreakable and all the content that came out with that. And it is still all in shrink. Actually, that's a lie. I played with one of the characters last time I played. So I'm playing with one of the characters and it's just sitting there. And it's such a hard thing because it's such a time investment that I desperately want to play all that content. But how am I going to make that happen? It's it's you. If you're listening to this and you're like on the fence about too many bones and you just Eric to schedule away by telling you about all the expansions. Just by the base box, there's so much in that base box. You'll get hours and hours of entertainment and be like what Eric and I are saying, you'll get to a point where you'll be. You'll be wishing you could play it more than you do because it's such a struggle on time. It's also, I think the only board game that I'm aware of that's you could, it's fully waterproof played in the pool. That's true. There is absolutely nothing there that can be damaged by water. Because all of that will hold us. Yeah. Yeah, they're all made out of PVC or plastic of something. Yeah. You are you are absolutely correct. And yeah, you are right. The base game has plenty of gameplay on it. And honestly, by the time you play out the base game, you'll have an idea of, oh, it would be neat to see if a character could do this. And you you find the one that does you give them your 15 bucks or whatever and off you go. So, so that's too many bones. Excellent. How about if I have it again, I've got another one. Yeah, yeah. Excellent. So, great little to play a game. I actually coming into this podcast, I thought, I've got to talk about an orange light or a red light game because there's no point having instead of traffic lights, if everything I talk about. It's green. Green. But at the same time, I have another green. It's quite all right. So it's a, and it's a two play game and the, I think the reason this makes it green is because I first played sky team with my 10 year old son. And we loved it. We played a few missions back to back and we've gone back to a few times and it's, and it's been really great with him. I've then my wife is currently working away for the next few months. So we've been playing it together on board game arena and we really enjoy it in that way as well. We're a 15 year old daughter who isn't a board gamer at all. We actually played a game, a couple of games with it on last weekend and she really loved it. And it's, it is just a game that I haven't found anyone who has bounced off it at this point. So sky team is this cooperative two play game where you are one person's a pilot, one person's a co-pilot and you are meeting these criterias you need to meet to land a plane safely into a particular airport. And each airport will throw up its own different challenge. And as the pilot you have some functions that only you can do and the co-pilot has some that only they can do. And then there's a few that you have to work together to do. You've got to make sure that your plane is balanced right. You got to make sure that your speed is, is good. Make sure that there's no other planes you got to run into. Make sure that by the time you land or the landing gear and the flaps are down. And also that you can stop the plane before running off the end of the runway. So it throws all these different things at you and it seems overwhelming at first because there's so many boxes you have to check to land the plane. But invariably after six, I think it's six rounds, you're either very close or you're there. I haven't had anything where I've, I think once we, my wife and I, because BGA is so finite, final, like it's like you've clicked this button. It's happening. We've had once where we accidentally messed up our dice and we crashed the plane to the side because it went to 90 degrees in the air. But I mean, that doesn't really happen in, like you don't accidentally put a dice down in the physical version. But yeah, so other than that, I don't think I've ever had a situation where we've been slaughtered by the game. For example, my daughter and I, we played three games of it on the weekend. We played the very first mission, which is the easiest one in the box. We played Haneda, which is the second easiest one. And then we flipped it over and did the red side, which is the harder version of Haneda. And we lost that one by not being able to clear out all the other planes in the area. So, but that's kind of gives you the idea. We got right to the end and it would like, ah, we don't have another, we don't have the right die for the radio. So, so yeah, really good game, really easy game to teach, really approachable game. It only lasts like 15 minutes a game. So it's not going to be something that's, you know, it's going to blow out your time constraints. It's just great. And I think it's done really well recently in, like, I think it won the keta spiel. You won something, one of the spiel. Yeah. And I did really well at the ice tower awards and, yeah, deservedly so. It's a really good package. It's the best game from that publisher that I've played. It's probably my favorite two play game at the moment. So, yeah, Sky Team just being boring, another green light. No, no, I like Sky Team a lot. I love the look of it too. And kind of the pieces, putting the pieces in. I've downloaded some 3D printable files to make little switches. You know, you have the little switches for when you flip things on. Makes them a little thicker. You can kind of slide them. I haven't printed them yet, but cool. It's got an interesting mechanic where once you roll the dice, you can't talk with one another. So, you make all your plans, you roll your dice, and then you've got to do it. And I've played it with two or three different people. And for the most part, that works great, but there's one person I was playing with. And I'm like, all right. You know, we sort of talked about what we needed to do. I put one die out, and then they put just another die. And I'm like, well, why did you do that one? I mean, you can put that anywhere. Why did you put it there? But I can't say anything because we can't thought. And like three or four times. And then we, you know, nose dive into the ground. I was like, I don't, I don't, I don't understand. But that's what's fun. You talk about it regroup and say, you know what, I think would work better is if we did X. And if you go and see, go ahead. I was like, when you organizing your speed for the last round and you need to get it underneath your brakes, but because that's the first time you've ever had to worry about that, you're your teammate on their first turn puts a six down on the speed. What are you doing? For six turns, we're trying to go as fast as we can. And now we got to hit those breaks. Yeah. The other thing that's kind of fun is if you go on BGG, there's a couple of solo variants that are really straightforward. Generally speaking, you just place your die, then roll a die and it gets placed. And kind of that's the, that's the AI of it. So I haven't actually played it yet. But if you have the hankering to take your plane out for a flight or if you want to experiment because as you get to do deeper airports, there's things like deicing the wings and forget some other stuff that comes up. But I haven't touched yet on it because I'm still on the early stages. But I'm with you. I love Sky Team. I think it is, it is a lot of fun. I need to play it more often than I do. So speaking of kick starters, as you mentioned earlier, buddy of mine got one of his kick starters in and he says, hey, we got to play this. So off we go. Have you ever played Slay the Spire, the computer game? I have not. No, both both the computer game or the board game. I've missed both. No worries. It is a great game. Both of them are great games. So Slay the Spire is kind of the big hit of the deck building roguelike type genre of which there's lots of games now that are all kind of fun. Personal, I like Slay the Spire. I also like across the obelisk is a lot of fun. And then there's others that are similar. But regardless, the idea is that you pick a class and you're just trying to get all the way. To the top of the tower, defeating all the bad guys. And you have a handful of cards that are attacks and defenses and then the bad guys, you know what the bad guys are going to do. And so you just have to hopefully have the cards and you can play them and defeat the bad guys and then get some treasure and move your way up and increase your cards and off you go. So that's kind of the crux of both the computer game and the board game. So the big difference course in the board game is that you can play up to four players and because in the computer game, it's a single player thing. And so that's a lot of fun because you can kind of coordinate with one another. It's a full co-op game. So you coordinate with one another and say, "All right, I can take out this guy. You can take out this guy and kind of work your way up." And otherwise, it tries to emulate the video game almost verbatim. And it does a fairly successful job with it. The only part that comes in weird is when things work differently between the two. Like in the video game, if you make them vulnerable, it does X, but in the board game, it does Y. And sometimes we found ourselves, two of us had played the video game, two of us hadn't. So the two of us that had played it, we found ourselves making decisions based on how it works on the video game and finding out, no, that's probably not the best choice. So all in all, I like the game. It's funny, it has a solo mode, but I don't think I would ever play the solo mode because I'd rather just play the video game because then I don't have to deal with all the games. And that is one of the... Sorry, I believe this is, if I'm not getting it mistaken, this game was touted, the video game was touted a few years ago as, if you like board games, you should love this game. Yeah, and then it comes full circle. I should make this a board game, and then yeah, yeah. With an app, you don't need the app to play the game, it's kind of a supplemental thing, but there is an app for the board game based on a computer game that is originally inspired by a board game. Which I thought was funny. So one of the things that's interesting about this game is we ended up playing, there's three acts in the game and then a fourth act, which is a little bit smaller and you fight the big final bad guy. We made it through two acts in the, about four hours. So it's not a short game. Granted, this was a learning game and stuff, so it would speed up. But it is, and you can stop at any of the acts, there's nothing, nothing saying you have to go forward other than wanting to see what's next. And the game itself, there's kind of interesting stuff, like all of your cards are sleeved, and when you upgrade a card, you take it out of the sleeve and you flip it and you... Now the backside is the upgraded version of the card. And that's kind of fun and cool. And there's a lot of other little bits and pieces, you know, different decks for different acts. And so at the end of the game, this was something we didn't realize until the game was over, there is a lot of breakdown that has to happen. You need to flip all the cards that were upgraded back, you need to segregate out all the cards that are, you know, upgrades and not your base deck. And so that's sort of the other downside to the game, is that once you're done with it to reset the game, there is a bit of time involved in doing that. But it's a bit different from the video games. Yes, and that's why I say I wouldn't ever play it solo, because I don't want to have to deal with all the bits. But gameplay wise, it's real simple, straightforward fun, they did a nice job of... Because, you know, the game, the video game, of course, has a lot of our random number generation in the background that it can do. And the computer game has to do, or I'm sorry, the board game has to do it through shuffling of cards, essentially. So, but it does a good job of handling that. And there's some dice involved as well. But all in all, I really enjoyed Slay the Spire. I wish you could play the whole thing in a slightly shorter period of time. But I did like how the four-player interaction was really good. And it didn't really slow the game down other than having extra players. But it didn't add a lot of complexity to the game, I guess is what I'm saying. So, anyway, let's slay the Spire. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I give it a yellow light only because of the breakdown. Yeah, right. So maybe I'm giving too much credit to the strength of a green, a yellow light. For me, I thought a green light is a great game when I play again, yellow light's like, "Oh, I might play it set up." But by the sound of things, great games can also be yellow if they have a few drawbacks. You know, you're thinking that. That is a great point. It's been a long time since we've discussed what our lighting, raining yellow, green, red light system means. So, yeah, green, awesome game, a predictable day, everybody. Love it. Red light is a broken game. Obviously, we don't come across too many red lights, but we, they show up now and then. And then a yellow light is either a game that has a couple of things that hold it back, or something that doesn't have a completely broad appeal. Like, you know, if you really love Discworld, this is a green light for you, but otherwise it's going to be a yellow light kind of thing. So, that's, it's sort of the catch-all. And rightfully so, you know, we tend to play a lot of green light games, or at least we want to. And so, those are the ones we want to talk about. So, it's not unusual that we have a lot of green lights. If Don's on, he tends to get grumpy, so he gives a lot of yellow lights sometimes. Did you have any other games you wanted to chat about, or? Well, look, I can always chat about it. So, let's, yeah, I'll throw one more out there because this is an old game that has been one of my favorites for a very, very long time. And it's, it's coming to BGA, which is, I talked about BGA last time I was on here. If there was a game that was made for BGA, this is the game, and it's all the... Oh, yeah. So, I don't know if you ever played it all the way on, or all lanes, or have you want to pronounce it? It's a, it's a game from, I think it's 2014, and it's a bag-building game where you are, look, there is almost no theme in this game. And I say that not because I haven't looked into the theme, literally the flavor text goes for three lines in the rulebook. And in that, they mention victory points. So, there's no attempt, not even an attempt to make it a theme. But, so I guess, I guess you're in France, and you're trying to, I don't know, travel around and pick up goods and put guild halls down and earn the favor of the locals. Let's go with that. So, that's what you're doing in the game, but how you're doing it is what makes this game so great. So, you're drawing different workers out of your bag, and those different workers can get different spaces on your board that will trigger different actions that you can do. Either get more workers, move along the road on the map, build a guild hall on the map, or move along the water on the map. And why you want to do that is, at the end of the game, you have a level of reputation, and you multiply your reputation by all of the guild halls and that you have in the game, as well as a few other things that you can pick up along the way. And you're also picking up goods on the map, and the goods are worth victory points. They're also needed for each round. There'll be some event that happens that maybe you've got to pay tax, or you've got to harvest, or something along those lines, and you need to have goods and money for those things. But, essentially, what makes this game great is that bag building. You pull out a certain amount of chips, it starts off with only four, and they're basic chips, but then you acquire more, and there's only one place you can go to allow yourself to pick up more chips each round. So you can actually get up to, I think, seven chips as the most you can get, possibly eight. But the thing is, the worker you need to take to do that action is really only good for that action. So if you fill up your bag with too many of them, then they're kind of a bit useless. But you can send them to the town hall, which means you're retiring them, essentially, and you get a little bit of a bonus. So lots of levers to pull. There's another character that whenever you gain one of those people, you get to put a cog down, which kind of works as covering up a space that you need to fill. So it makes it easier to fill that space in future rounds. And there's another worker that'll give you a different building that's off the board that you only you can have access to that might give you some other benefit. So there's a lot to explore in the game, and we've done it a lot. It's one of my last favourite games, so we played it for years. And the reason I would give it a yellow light, there you go, is that the setup is arduous. It's so long because you've got to stack up all these chips and you mentioned in Timmy Bones chips stacks falling over. I've got the upgraded BGG Bakelite bits for this game. Oh, right. And while they are lovely, they are so lovely in the bag, when you try to stack them, things get a little bit out of here. So it's a messy setup, and then the board itself, all of the goods that are on the board are randomly drawn. So it just takes so long to play, and it's not a difficult game, it's not a particularly long game. So there's a fair bit of time investment in just setup and pack down in the physical version. So it doesn't get played anywhere near as much. However, it's now on coming to board game arena, and that makes me very excited because it gets rid of all of those chips. All those little bits of what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. So it's in alpha mode at the moment, and been lucky enough to have a couple of goes of it. And it seems to be fairly stable already, which is really good. If you haven't played it before, and if you get a chance to play it live, it is still great on the table. It looks impressive, and there's nothing better. It's that same quacks of Kredlenberg thing, right? Like putting your hand into a bag to pull out your chips. There's something about that that's really exciting. But if you're not sure about it, then jump on BGA when it comes out. And yeah, you won't be disappointed. It's a classic game for us. It's one of my favorites. But like you mentioned, I'll maybe not for everyone because of the very dry theme. And on top of that, the arduous setup and pack down. So all you all is fantastic. And yes, hopefully you're getting to play out a lot more soon because of its BGA adaptation. Fantastic. Well, we'll talk more about dry themes and other aspects of games here in just one second. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back. Hey, this is Eric. Hey, this is Eric. I just wanted to let you guys know that since 2020, we've been using Zencaster to do all of our recording, which has been a huge help to us because what it allows you to do is to have your basic website where you can connect with one another and communicate with one another, you know, like your zooms and your teams. But it also records everything in a separate track, which is critical when editing time comes around. So hey, I encourage you, check out Zencaster. Z-E-N-C-A-S-T-R.com. Thank you. And we're back. I'm still Eric. He's still Steve. So the original thought for this episode, I had kind of off-handed Lee said in a previous episode about Euro seem to have changed over the past X number of years. And listener Frank Feldman had said, you know, that'd be an excellent topic to explore, talking about games that are improved or what those kind of changes are and when this occurred. And I thought, well, that's great. And that's going to take a lot of research. So I did a little research, but it's an interesting idea, like the idea of, so let's back up real quick. Back in the 90s, there was a really strong delineation between what was considered a Euro game and what was considered an American style or Ameritrash game. And so we'll talk about definitions here in a minute, but they were two different camps. And not to say people didn't like both of them, but they did two different things. They set out to do two different things. And as time has gone, it appears to me, my hypothesis is that we're seeing a lot more of a merge of both of those kinds of things. I've definitely seen it on the American side. And then looking into the Euro side, I feel like I'm seeing it more. So that's the topic du jour. So before we jump into definitions and things, did you have any comments, initial comments? It's interesting listening to your breakdown there because I'm not too long into the hobby. Like I kind of started playing hobby board games in like 2019. And for the longest time, it took me a very long time to understand these definitions because there was already a lot of overlap at that point. And the term hybrid game kind of came around and it talked about that idea of like an Ameritrash/Euro game in the one box. But I feel like even that term has disappeared because it has become a little bit more common on both sides. Like Euro is with Ameritrash influence and vice versa. To me, it's really hard to look at a game these days and confidently say that's a Euro or that's an Ameritrash because they really borrow a lot from each other at the moment. Yeah, I agree. I don't know how apt this analogy is, but I'm thinking of, you know, in the beginning of America where we had different clusters of, oh, here's a group of Irish people, here's a group of British people, here's a group of French people. But over time, they just sort of meld their cultures together and become the melting pot of America. Okay, I don't know if that holds water. We'll see. For another American, it sounds legit, so that's good. You can't tell me I'm wrong, right? I don't know if it's the same on the Australian side, but probably not. Oh, one's got explained about American culture, and this is a bit of topic, I know, but in Australia, you're not a local until you've, well, basically, unless you were born in that town, like you're never a local unless you are your roots are in that ground. And then in America, if you just declare that you're American, then you're one of us, you know, like it's totally different. It's very, very, like, I guess it's that patriotic thing, right, where it's, if you're willing to, you know, put your name behind that country, then we'll accept you and call you one of us, which is very different to Australian culture. So, I can see that. Yeah, yeah, feels like it's less like that we tend to be a little bit more tribalistic right now, but I think that's more political than anything else. Right, like the red and blue kind of thing. Yep, exactly. Yeah. So let's throw out some definitions real quick, because I was, I was actually hoping, Steve, that you would say exactly what you said. So coming in post that sort of delineation, and we kind of see it disappear, I was trying to think the last time I watched a review or heard someone talk about a game and squarely said it's a Euro game, or, you know, American, American style game. You know, America, America trash is fine. I don't find it derogatory in any way. But there is a mild movement where they're like, oh, you know, trash, it's not trash, whatever, it's just a style. It's a, it's a weird, it's a weird name for it, for that genre, for sure. Yeah. So a Euro game is typically has slightly more complex rules, indirect player action. I think indirect player action is a big key one. And usually multiple ways to score points, and typically don't have player elimination. And often the themes are kind of thinner, and I'm going to, I'm going to stop right here. When we're giving these definitions, these are broad. You know, immediately you can say, well, you know, such and such isn't that complex or, you know, American games are more complex or whatever. But in general speaking, it tends to be a more social interaction. Well, I don't know if I want to say that now because the multiplayer solitaire is likewise a hallmark of a Euro, a Euro style game where you don't really interact with anybody else other than you're on the same board or something. Yeah, that interaction is more about you've taken my spot, or I want to try and I can't this round, not you've affected me specifically. Yeah, exactly. And which as opposed to the American style game where there tends to be a lot more direct conflict is your your risks and whatnot, or you're like you're directly picking someone to beat on. There tends to be a stronger theme and a tie between that theme and mechanics. You mentioned in Distilled about taking the top and bottom card off of your ingredients deck, which is a neat mechanic in and of itself because you're never quite sure what's going to end up in your alcohol for point scoring. But it also, as you pointed out, kind of replicates the actual theme of what's going on. And so, again, an example of that kind of a merger. One thing I meant to mention, a lot of Euro games tend to have randomness mitigation of some kind. So they will have randomness but there are either ways to catch up or ways to limit some of that randomness mitigation. Typically, the American games tend to have a lot of pieces now by pieces I mean like bigger pieces not necessarily cubes, typically, especially in the Kickstarter era it's you know miniatures out the yin yang. But it could be a ton of poker chips if it needed to be as well. All right, I think that's a big one for me is that Euro style is that it doesn't matter what the pieces look like it's all about the game. To me, that's like the classic Euro definition is it's we're not here to make it look pretty. We want to show you how cool these mechanisms are and how they work together. Exactly. The American style game is how good does this look like you'll stop as you walk past the table. Yeah, it is flash flash flash the game may or may not be there but it's going to look good one way or the other. And yeah, and a lot of the original I say the original because it's not like they suddenly came into existence around Catan, but you know a lot of the big Euro games that hit in the late 90s early 2000s. Dower looking medieval guys on the cover, you know lots of browns and grays in the covers and typically trading in the Mediterranean was such an overused theme that it became a meme unto itself. So you're looking at things like Catan, Puerto Rico, those are classic ones. Brass, Concordia, Keyflower, Castles of Burgundy, you know, those are those are some examples of kind of the European games. And you're looking on the American side, anything that's big and loud. Your Space Hulks, which oddly enough is a British game but regardless, Imperial Assault, King of Tokyo, Survive, Ziya, those kinds of things, risk, anything with a ton of dudes on the map is typically an American American style. It seems very, especially in those earlier days, it was definitely heavy area control on the American style. Definitely. But then you've got all Grande as a Euro and that's area control as well. It's not like we're already merging and we're talking about games that came out in the 19-somethings. Yes, yes, exactly. And you look at what's kind of funny is, you know, the European games, of course, typically came from Europe, but not always. I mean, Ticket to Ride is an American design, but clearly a European and styled or inspired game. So again, these definitions are pretty fast and loose, but as we've kind of hypothesized, they're going kind of away and because everything's just kind of merging, which hopefully is what you want. Right? We take the best of both and make something of it. So what immediately came to mind and why I reached out to you on this was you had talked about Wonders of the World or, right? World Wonders, yeah, yeah. Which is definitely in that Euro-themed type style of game, but just looking at it across the table, you wouldn't think so because it had all those neat, you know, unique Meples for each of the Wonders and that kind of stuff. So I'm curious how you feel that that, that, am I right, and I could be wrong, it's okay. You won't get kicked off the show. Did you feel that for that specific game in and of itself? Yeah, it's definitely because I'm a sucker for good component quality. It's for a longest time, I'd like to pretend that I wasn't like it didn't matter. And there are definitely some games, everyone's got some games that don't meet that mold and are just straight up dry euros and they're fine and I have some of my favorite games. But World Wonders, it caught me because of that amazing production and it caught me because of the fact that you get to place these things out and take a photo of your board afterwards and go out and call this look. I remember we played it on the cruise and I took a photo and I sent that to my wife and when I played it with her, because I actually got it when we started that holiday. And when I got home and I played it with her, she's like, oh, I thought this was way bigger because just looking at the scope of that map, you've got the pyramids in the background and you've got the aqueduct going over the water and whatever else. It just looked like it was this huge big table hog, but it's just this tiny little grid on your board and you're essentially, it's just a poly, poly, poly, no placement game where you need to meet requirements. All of those huge big pieces could just be more tiles. They don't have to be anything and the game itself holds up. I'm not going to play a game just because it looks good, but it certainly helps, but I get it to the table more often. And to be on to go into that theory, I'd probably talk about another game, even more so that did that for me and that's castles of Burgundy. I played that a few times and I was like, yeah, it's okay. It wasn't anything amazing. I think I played the original one and then I played that brought out like a 20th anniversary edition, but it wasn't 20th anniversary of castles of Burgundy, it was 20th anniversary of the company. So it was very confusing, and it was slightly better, but still kind of bland. And also, I'm colorblind, so the colors really mess with the farms and the beige and the green and the yellow together. But anyway, a friend of mine got the new Awakened Realms special edition and he invited me over to play. And I was like, ah, in the back of my mind, I would never have said this to them at the time. I have told him since, but I would never have said to him at the time, while I'm sitting there and he's going through the rules again, giving me a refresher. I'm sitting there thinking, why on earth would you spend this much money on castles of Burgundy? Like it's an old school Euro game. You could buy a copy on the second hand market for like 30 bucks. And it's not that special, like it's a shortish game, it's not a long game. I'd spend that money on a big game, like Dwellings of Elder Vale, and then I played it with him and it clicked. It's like, of course you'd spend the money on this game because it's going to hit the table more often than those big long grandiose games. You can pull this out on a weeknight and get a game done. And so why not have a look amazing? And we played it and it was the first time I'd played Castle of Burgundy, sat back and went, wow, that was an awesome game. And so yeah, I have to be a sucker, right? I have to be that person who needs to have it look amazing. But in the bottom line is, it just shows you that a little bit of attention and detail to that sort of stuff can bring so many more people to what is essentially a dry Euro. You're not doing anything particularly, I still don't know what the theme is to Castle of Burgundy, but to your point, when we talked about American style games, they're the games that when you walk past them, you stop and you want to look at. When you see Castle of Burgundy special edition, you want to stop and you want to look at it. Yeah, that is a fantastic point because yeah, base Castle of Burgundy, first of all, it's a point salad game, so there's like so many things going on. You get a point for opening the box in that game I feel right. And then trying to figure out the interactions and then eventually you know there's like a strategy. If you pick a particular bin or whatever, you're hampering your opponents, but until you kind of figure it out, which I honestly haven't completely figured it out, you're just kind of like, there's so much going on here. But you put, well, the original game especially desperately needed some sort of better way to present information. And so I think the new version helps with that somewhat because you're looking at the picture of the special tile and then you got to go find the rule book or the card to match the picture of the tile to what it can do, read about what it can do because it's just a picture of a building. Yeah, and you got to like look at it really closely to see what type of building it is. And again, with the colorblindness, it gets even harder. Is that the one where I get the goods or is that the one where I sell the goods? Yeah, but once you get it, you're right, the game, once you understand it, the game is phenomenal. And that reminds me a little bit for me, the big kind of aha moment was with Agricola. So when it first came out, I got the first edition. All of the animals and all the goods were cubes, different colored cubes. The people were discs. The fences were sticks. And you played it, you know, loved the game. It was hard, but it was fun. And then the immediate thing is like, well, I want my sheep to look like sheep. And so John had found, what did he find? These little educational toys, they're counting toys. How many sheep do you have? And they're just little, but they were perfect. So we scooped up a whole bunch of them and then we populated our games with that. And then of course they came out with the Anna Meeples themselves. And I think I printed out stickers to go on the discs. So that was like, here's the mother, here's the father, here's the kids, you know, that kind of stuff. And doesn't change gameplay, of course, but it does enhance the fun a little bit. You can't help but sort of play with the little animals as opposed to the cubes. So I think there is definitely something there to where it's not good bits won't make a bad game better, but good bits will make a good game better. Yeah, for sure. And you're right, 70 people just do this anyway, because so that Lords of Waterdeep is another great example. And that's actually probably worth talking about, because you've got Dungeons and Dragons in a board game. And this, well, it came out about 2014 as well, I think. So you are, you know, that would genuinely bring a lot of people from the role playing environment to the board gaming hobby, right? And it's so famous, it's such a hero. It's so funny about it. It's the cube pushing and, yep, yep, so it's half the time when I'm introducing it to people who aren't gamers, aren't, you know, role players, I always say, don't worry about the theme, you know, it's Dungeons and Dragons. We'll explain it, but it doesn't matter, you know, if you hate it, it won't, it won't impact you. And I think that even even the biggest D&D fan is not calling them rogues after turn two. Just like, oh, the Black Cube, the Purple Cube, the White Cube. But that being said, I don't think I've ever played a copy of that game with someone who owns it, hasn't upgraded the Meples to the characters, so they look like that. And even though it is totally themeless, people want to attach that theme, people inherently want it to match what is apparently going on in this environment, even though it's essentially go here to get resources so you can go here to build something or complete this objective and get points and move on to the next thing, you know, it doesn't require it, but we want it. Yes. And then one of the things I do appreciate about the game is they have the different types of quests. So if I'm doing a warfare quest, I tend to need more fighters, which are the orange cubes. So at the very least, I can associate, I need to focus on getting orange because this is a fighting type thing as opposed to having to constantly look at the card and say, now what colors do I need for this one, you know. Yeah, but yeah, you're right, I myself own the little Meples that are still roughly the same shape as the cube, or your same area as the cube, but, you know, have the little guy with the sword or the dude pointing at him. Whatever. And so yeah, yeah, that is, that is quite funny. So whenever we talk about sort of the dry Euro, there's plenty of great examples, but the one that I always come back to is Queen Games Kingdom Builder. Have you ever played Kingdom Builder? I only once, yeah, I played a game of Kingdom Builder. I think I played it twice, but yes, you are right. That's absolutely moving cubes on the hex grade, isn't it? That's like literally what you are doing. And it's fun. I enjoy the game. When I don't want to have to be too concerned about theme or, or you know, overhead and whatnot, because it's a real straightforward game, but it's still, it's still quite fun. But I don't know that that's particularly a game where you could adjust the bits and make it more fun. I think it's just kind of, and I think likewise through the ages, which is a phenomenal civilization type. But it's all in cards. And, and, and gems or crystals or whatever. And it's funny because it gives you enough of a sieve feel that it certainly covers it. And it's a reasonably heavy game. But it is, it is just a hardcore Euro in the fact that, you know, it's just cards, cards card. That's it. And whenever you're thinking of a sieve building game, decks of cards, unless it's a sieve game that's supposed to be condensed. Yeah, for like 20 minutes sieve game. Yeah, that's not what you're expecting. It used to be my playing game through the ages. So I got the app on my iPad very early on. And I used to live in a small country town where the flight from there to Brisbane, my state capital was about two and a half hours. And even on an app, I got one gaming on that flight. Like it's, it's still a long game even on the app, but it's, it's a really good civilization game. And you, like, I guess if you said to someone we want to play a sieve game, they're going to have a different idea in their head of what the game's going to look like. Right. For sure. Yeah. The moment you don't pull out a map, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes. So the other, the other side of the coin, we've talked about Euro games that are incorporating America style. So the other side of the coin, of course, is our American style games that are more incorporating more Euro stuff. And I have one example, then I have what I think is like the quintessential example, but the first one I'll talk about are the quartermaster general games. And so, the only one that I have on the cruise. Yeah, I never actually got to play it, but I played it otherwise. The one I've done is the World War II game. And we played it at BGGCon. And the pitch was, hey, there's going to be, it handles, well, how many people is there? Six players. I think it's six players. And those six players covers the whole World War II in two hours. And we're all like, okay, sure. Let's see how this goes. And every country has a deck of cards and each deck is unique. They're not even the same a number of cards. So different countries have different styles. And the big crux of it is you taking supply points. That's kind of the quartermaster general thing is you take supply areas, you get points every turn for all the supply areas that you have. And the rest of it, like the combat is very deterministic. I'm going to do combat. This tank blows up that tank. You remove your tank. Combat is done. The kicker is there's a limited number of combat cards. So it's not like you can have combat every turn, which is a distinctly European kind of mechanic there because America, and you want to fight every single time. And so you're resupplying. You're doing your different stuff. And darn, if you don't knock that game out in two hours, like the scores are 250 to 400 or to 178 or something like that. But you're moving bits over. You've got, you know, I'm blockading oceans and stuff. And it allows you to have that access and allies type feel without the access and allies type slog where I've got 30 infantry sitting in Japan. And I know that I'm going to win, but I've got to make my way through all of those guys and let's roll a bunch of dice. And so I found that to be an amazing design. It doesn't completely scratch the war game itch, but it definitely, it definitely covers a lot of it. I guess on the other side of that American American style game, I mentioned Dwellings of Elle de Val before. It's to look at it. It's an Ameritrash style game, you know, big monsters on the board. But I always say that game is a Euro game with an Ameritrash skin over the top, because you can just tablet builds and gain resources to do things you don't have. And sometimes going into combat. Yes, it's very like a lot of people have an issue with the randomness because you can go in there with five strengths against one and they roll a six and you don't say you lose. It has that. But I love that about the game. I think that's like the hook for me. And the way that they counter that is that losing isn't so bad. Like losing a battle doesn't ruin your game. It hurts you right now. But whenever you die, your characters go to the underworld and whenever any of your characters go to the underworld, you gain a sword. And then swords add one additional dice to combat in the future. So you can kind of go back and avenge your people who died. And sometimes you want to die because it clears out a space on the map for you to go back to on the latest age. There's all these kind of ways to play the game. But if you go into it thinking, "Oh, this is going to be an Ameritrash style game." You're probably going to get angry at the randomness of like going in with super strong army and then just getting beaten by one little fighter with his sword. You'd be like, "That doesn't make any sense." But then if you also go into it thinking, "Oh, this is just going to be a stress solid euro." You're going to ignore all of that fun out there. Like I mentioned before, it's one of these blended style games where to really enjoy that game, you've got to appreciate that there are some random elements. There are some euro, build your tableau and get a strong engine going elements. And there's some fighting McFight Fight elements that you've just got to be here. And if you're across that, it's a stellar game. But I've played that with some people who have bounced off it for either way. They bounced off it because it's not too fight-y fight-y or it's too random. Oh, they don't get enough cards in their Tamlo. They want to do something but they're digging for cards and they don't like that they've got the options. They don't have the options in front of them all the time. But to look at it, it's an Ameritrash style game for sure. But to play it, it really is that you've got to have your brain prepared to be doing it all rather than just one style of game. Yeah, and you bring up an excellent point. One of the things that I've seen a lot of American style games kind of take from Euro games is lessening the loss. Normally, when you gain somebody loses, it's a zero-sum game. But that's sort of the traditional Ameritrash style risk classic example. I destroy your stuff and then take your thing. Now you can make less stuff and I get stronger. But in Euro games, there's a lot of mitigation of that, right? I get something for winning. You lose something but it's not a lot, right? It's less. You lose less than I gain. And that keeps you in the game, keeps you a little bit stronger. And I see a lot of that in a lot of American games where the penalty for failure is much less than you would normally experience. I remember what was it? Stronger had space freaks. I think it was what it was. It was a three-on-three sort of gladiatorial combat type game. And so you had these kind of randomly generated dudes and you go out and you'd fight and whoever got the most points wins. But when you lost a dude, it wasn't that big of a deal. He just basically starts up next turn back at the edge of the board. As opposed to now you've lost a third of your strength kind of stuff. And I remember thinking, "Well, that's great because it's a goofy game to begin with. So I can just kind of go gung-ho in there and accept it." The other thing you mentioned made me think of Everdell. So my firm belief is Everdell is a pure Euro at its heart. And someone said, "Let's put a big honking tree on the board as well." And let's get little squishy bits and we'll make it cute and boom, there you go. It is clearly a recipe seems to work. Yeah, exactly. Because considering all the experiences they put out for it. But what I've recently thought about is the king of this because I just finished doing the Kickstarter for it is C-Mon's United Games. They had Marvel United. They just did a Kickstarter for DC United. So as I'd seen it, the little chibi miniatures and stuff, I was like, "Oh, that kind of looks cute. I like superhero games. Let's see what it's like. I played it at a convention. It was fun, but it's very light, right? You're matching symbols. Each card kind of has a certain number of symbols and you're matching them. There's a bit of flavor, you know, Superman or I was playing Marvel, so I forget Captain America does this, Iron Man does this. But it's really, don't expect to see this because that's not really what Captain America does. Instead, he gets these symbols predominantly. And you're just kind of matching symbols. But, and of course, a C-Mon game, a Kickstarter, you know, if you back the Kickstarter, you walk away with, you know, a ship's worth of plastic, right? A container's box worth of plastic to come out with this. And so it's, you don't need the Batman chibi miniature and the Superman one and the whatnot and the whatnot. But you're getting it, right? First of all, it's C-Mon. That's what they make their bread and butter on. That's right. A stack of cardboard, like boxes that are taller than you, if you want to. Exactly. There's so much content. Yeah. I mean, that's just kind of, you know, again, at its heart, it's a Euro game, but we're dropping all of the American style to go with the European underpinnings of it. One of the things, there's probably a tangent to take off that, which is, and I guess, I don't know whether this is the intention, but certainly from a gamers perspective, I love it because you look at a game like Marvel United, and my, my 10 year old, he's been playing that for a couple of years. I think he's, we got it when he was about eight. And he loves it. And it's very, like you mentioned, it's very simple. And he's still going into it. He loves it because it is Marvel and because it is Spider-Man and, you know, what all the other characters that you can get. We haven't got a lot of it, but what we have here, you know, we love it. We get it out of an end again and play it. But it's kind of like intrinsically getting him into that style of game that means that when he gets maybe older, he's into a broader range of games. He's not just going to look for the fighty, fighty games. He's going to be, he'll still want that, and I still want that as a 42 year old. But he'll also be like, okay, well, where's the strategy? Why, why, you know, I'm playing, you know, just taking it back to Marvel United. I'm playing this card now, not only for my benefit, but also for your benefit on your turn, thinking like that might lead to potentially opening him up to a whole range of games that he wouldn't have considered before. If he just played like, I guess your traditional style risk sort of game, he just won a different version of that. So I kind of wore it like instills that even at such a low entry point, it really instills that idea of those, I don't want to say Euro mechanisms like Euros are better, but you get them up like it opens up. It opens up a broader range of gaming for someone who had an entry level into the hobby. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think something like Wingspan is another one where it's introducing it, introducing these kind of concepts to people, you know, engine building. In a, in a, I was going to say deceptive, but it's not deceptive, but it's, you know, in a way that they're not expecting. Right. And it's lost on us either. Like it's still, it's still enjoyable for old school board gamers to play those games and have that time that for, yeah, I just, I just look at my son and I go, it's games like this that will be the reason why you're still playing board games in 10 years. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the last kind of piece that I was thinking about straddin in this particular theme is the idea of like, so what's a modern Euro game like, and I started to think the blog, the modern ones that I encounter tend to be a bit on the heavier side. You're thinking, you know, you're Ezra, you're Nehemiah's, you're, you're a golem, you know, I'm just trying to think of the ones that I've seen sort of like the hot games room at PGG con and stuff. But I mean, they tend to seem to be bigger games, because we've gotten, we've evolved mechanism wise to where we can do more with less cognitive overload, basically. And so that we can now do a lot more than we could have, you know, back with the castles of burgundy or, or teacowal or stuff where the mechanisms were solid, but there's a lot of interaction that you have to kind of work through your brain on. And so I'm kind of thinking, you know, the idea of the lighter family style games have just kind of merged together to where they're no longer euros, they're just games, right, they have American style, they have European style. And then as you start to get to the edges, I want a heavy Euro game, then, you know, it starts to get all in, or I want, you know, I want a whole table full of dudes on the map than I'm going on, you know, on the American side. So I think the, you know, the Venn diagram, basically, the circles overlap a lot more than they used to. For sure. And so now there's just kind of the edge cases are bigger. Yeah, that's probably fair. Perfect example is all of like the Vittala Sutter games, right? So, yeah, yeah, they are basically games designed for people who just love brain burning mechanisms. And there are some of them that I've played that I think are a lot of fun and some of them that I think and, you know, you can at me if you want, but some of his games I find are just heavy for heavy sake. Like, where the mechanisms are there, just so that it can be a heavier game. And, but at the same time, I play a game like escape plan or carbon EV, and then, and the heavier mechanisms make total sense and it's, and it's, it's a different. So it's not a criticism of all of his games, but I have felt that in the past with some of his games, but if that's what you're chasing, then you've got that avenue and you're not, you're not bothered with the other side of that Venn diagram because you're in the zone. And you're in your zone, which is that heavy Euro for our table hog, lots of different things to consider at a certain time. And apparently also your opponent, no matter how you can, your brain can work like that, but many people do. And I wonder if some of those are almost like lifestyle games, you know, you get your 18 XX players and, you know, they'll play other stuff, but that is the game that they play, right? And, and that whole sort of series and, and the complexity doesn't bother them. They've already absorbed it and off they go. And on the flip side of that, I've got a game group down in Brisbane and we get together probably once every, we try to make it once a year, but definitely once every two years. And we play Twilight and period, which is a 12 hour experience of ships blowing up each other and rolling dice and stuff all over the board and arguments. And fighting and all that kind of stuff. And then a pause for lunch. And then we go back. So, but I can only do that once every couple of years because it's not my, that's not really my jam. But when you put eight people around the table and you're playing a game like that, it's so much fun. And it's more the, it's almost the occasion outweighs the game in those instances. But yeah, I guess that's the other, that's the other side of the other vendor, the other circle where people who don't want any of the middle stuff. But then again, there's still a lot of optimization in that game. But yeah. Yeah. And there's been four additions of it. So it's definitely been, been honed or potentially honed each time. And to be honest with you, you wouldn't have the same feelings if it wasn't the same eight hour slog, right? If it's Twilight Imperium in two hours, it's not the same, right? I mean, you might, it's the difference between Eclipse, which is a fantastic game. Love it and Twilight Imperium, right? They do similar things. They do it. They approach it from a different banner. It's like Battlestar Galactica, right? I mean, yes, it's a two to three hour hidden trader game. And there are certainly other games you can play that are much shorter hidden trader, but it's because of the two to three hours that makes the hidden trader deduction so delicious, right? Yeah, that's right. I remember the first time I played TI, I was, they had the first voting phase, like the negotiation. And the first one that came up was that someone was going to get the power to not have to pay resources to get tech. So they could just get tech every round for free. And I was like, I just sat there and were like, what? Like, do we actually have to give this to somebody? And then everyone started pleading their cases to why it should be them. And I'm like, how is this balanced? How can you do this in a game? You know, like, it doesn't make any sense to me. But then it works because in the next round, there's some other bizarre game-changing mechanism that gets negotiated out. And I'm like, wow, that this is different. But then it's got the time to do that. I mentioned Eclipse, like, because it has that, you know, going in, I think the quickest game of TI 4, I've ever played, has been about six hours. And that was a pretty quick game in comparison to the other ones I played. But yes, it offers you such a great experience because of the length. And because of the length, it also allows you to do things that shorter games just can't fit into that timeframe. Yeah, yeah, and the investment. You're socially, emotionally, physically invested in this game. And it's got that great thing where it doesn't feel like nine, ten hours, right? You'd be playing, you'd be playing, you'd be playing, and then they'd be like, oh, dinner's ready. And you're like, what? Is it PM? Is it a PM in the day already? Yeah, that's actually 6 PM. So the last little thought, I know I already said I had the last little thought, but I have one more last little thought. And it's like, is there going to be nostalgia for the older style euros or the older style American type games to where it's like, oh, let's go back to this simplicity. And I kind of think, no, I think the best that will be is your castle's a burgundy example where we take the game and we keep the game the same, but we, we bling it out. We make it a more enjoyable tactile experience, but I don't know, it could be. Well, I mean, the proof is kind of already there, right? Like, our grande's got a new version, the granular's got a new version. There's a Puerto Rico, Awaken Realms doing Puerto Rico, shortly on Kickstarter. So, yeah, I think, yeah, I think you've hit the nail in the head, right? That's exactly where we're going. We're going to remember these classic euros that you, you know, you played in the 90s that were just cube pushes. Well, now they're not cube pushes. Now they're amazing, you know, visual masterpiece. I mean, brass. Brass is a perfect example. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you ever saw the original brass, but it didn't look that great. It is dry, and now it's got that, and it's got that Roxley games touch and they've added beer and suddenly it's the best game ever. So, yeah, in fact, it was funny because I never played the original. I'd seen it, but I never played it, but then some friends of ours got the new one. And I was reading the rules ahead of time so I could kind of get up there, and I was like, man, this game, I get it, but we're playing with our wives. I don't know if they're going to enjoy it or not, but when we started kind of getting into it, I was like, oh, man, this is, this is really smooth and, and it plays well. And what was really funny was like some of the choices. There's a dark board and a light board. It's the exact same board, but they're just like, you know, one's winter and one's, you know, evening or something. I was like, so I asked the guys, like, did you pick the dark one or the white one? He's like, oh, I picked the dark one. It's like, oh, okay. I wanted the light one. You know, same game. It doesn't change anything other than just the board. Yeah. I think you maybe the thing to come out of this, like this change in, you know, the way that games are made is that you just, I guess you've got to be aware of the other side. If you make a game that's heavy on mechanisms and the focus really is on that dry kind of forget the theme. We're just making really good content. Really, yeah, really tough decisions and that sort of thing. Then you've got to understand that that's not enough to sell a board game these days. And only if on the flip side, if you're just going to make a bang bang, shoot them up, throw dice and see what happens game, that's also not enough. It's whether we talk about America, that's, and I guess that's what I was saying right back at the start is this idea that there's two genres of games that everything can fall into. It took me so long to understand that because even five years ago, six years ago, it would already started to mold together a little bit. Yeah, and it's just happening more and more. And I think like what you said, it's for the better that there's always going to be, and if you're one of those people who doesn't care about them and loves the dry euros, they're all still there. You can still go and buy those games. They haven't got anywhere. Like Catan's the biggest selling game in the world, right? But even that's got rolling dice in it. So, yeah, you're not going to miss out, but yeah, the newer games, they've got to have a bit of it. They've got to have a bit of everything. The theme is so important these days, not only for, you mentioned in the early days, it was a lot of trading in the Mediterranean and, you know, random, random closeups of a guy on the front cover in the village in the background that Clemens Franz artwork. But it's, you require more than that now. You expect good art. You expect beautiful production. And if you don't deliver that, then it's not going to be a success. Yeah, yeah. When in doubt, just put anthropomorphic animals on it. That seems to be the current. Yeah. That's a win-print. Yeah. Well, for poker chips. No one says that a poker chips. That is true. Oh, my gosh. Just as an aside, there used to be little mini poker chips that somebody had, some company had made and they had gone away, but, you know, they're great for, for using as currency and whatnot in games. And there was a guy in Spain that said, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to make some more of these. And so he started having, you know, these are the designs and people who talk about them. They refine the designs and he found a factory and they've produced them and he's received them and they've been shipping out now and I'm just waiting for my mini poker chips. I can't wait. I'm just like, I love being in this, this time where something like that is possible, right? It's not this big manufacturing thing. You just made me think of something because you said small poker chips. So Martin Wallace lives in Brisbane and used to play a few games with him when we went to game days. And there's your perfect example. Martin Wallace is kind of world-renowned as one of the best board game designers and he's designed brass, number one game, age of steam. But he's also designed Wildlands and Bloodstones. And so if you've got one of the greatest sport game designers in the world, just totally blurring the lines of these two genres, then shouldn't we all, I guess? Yeah, that is, that is a fantastic capstone because yeah, I mean that guy's hardcore Euro design and then, yeah, then you see something else and I just, I love everything, not everything he does, but I've loved everything I've played of his. Yeah, yeah, and Discworld arc mop, which she mentioned earlier to love that game. Yes, call back. Well done. Yes. Discworld arc mop, which, yeah, I love that game so much. Anyway, before we just start listing off games, we love Steve. Thank you so much for joining us for getting up early and talking with us anywhere on the Internet if you want people to find you somewhere. So yeah, the board game Chinwag still exists. We are, we're putting out episodes rather slowly at the moment. It's been a couple of months since our last episode, but, and we always say, oh, we aim to make it every two weeks, but in reality, that's probably not going to happen. But there are episodes out there and very laid back. Yeah, yeah, so you've probably gathered that I'd just like to talk about board games. So the board game Chinwag is just an hour of a few was he's just doing that, just chatting about what they've been playing lately. So, but yeah, that's, that's pretty much it at the moment. And yeah, so if you want to listen to that, it's the quality isn't as good as some podcasts and the content is probably a bit interesting. There's a few swear words and whatnot, but yeah, it's a good time had by all. So don't sell yourself short. Awesome. Well, I'm Eric Dewey. I'm Stephen Chivis. And you've been listening to... "On board games!" That's it for this episode of On Board Games. If you enjoy On Board Games, join our Guild On Board Game Geek. You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, hard us on board game links, give us a five-star review on iTunes or patronize us at patreon.com/obg. Want to be on the show? Please be in touch with the topic ideas far and advanced as possible as our schedule does fill up. You can find out more about the On Board Games podcast at inversegenius.com. Email us questions, comments or snide remarks at on boardgamesmailbag@gmail.com. On board games is licensed under Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no-derivative works, 4.0 international license. Thanks. ♪ Nutter, nutter, nutter, nutter ♪
