Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
OGN Ep 8: Ironwood, Dinner Party, & Fall Game Cornucopia
As Travis makes his return to the Operation Game Night Podcast alongside co-host Clay Gable, the duo dives into playful conversations about board game hipster tendencies and the potential for a spinoff podcast. Clay takes us through his latest gaming escapades, particularly his thrilling yet humbling experiences with the game Ironwood. His infectious enthusiasm for the game's unique mechanics is something you won't want to miss.
Join us as we introduce "Dinner Party", a card game where history meets strategy, challenging you to recruit historical figures while mastering party arrangements. The game's web comic-style art and card flavor text add a vibrant touch, though the quirky scoring system may have you questioning your high-value character choices. Our personal gameplay anecdotes offer insights into the game's captivating thematic elements and strategic nuances, revealing why sometimes, less is more.
Fall brings a cornucopia of games to suit every mood, from Lovecraftian horrors to cozy autumn adventures. Whether it's the tension of hidden roles in "Unfathomable" or the charming simplicity of "Camp Pinetop," there's a game for everyone. We even pit Dracula against Van Helsing in a strategic showdown and explore classics like "Betrayal at House on the Hill." Our recommendations promise a blend of thrill, strategy, and cozy vibes to keep your game nights exciting throughout the season.
Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast, where the mission objective is to play more board games. Put your battle, rattle on and mount up. Let's start the show.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. We are back and more tired than ever, because I am now a dad.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the party, buddy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Thank you, Clay and Jared for holding down the fort last time. I'm here, as always, with my good friend, Clay Gable. How are you doing, Clay?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great Just pumped to have you back and so stoked for you and Rachel and your little baby Gwen back and so stoked for you and Rachel and your little baby Gwen and I'm super excited you made the time in between diaper changes to hop on here and talk board games with me.
Speaker 2:Like I said, board games don't stop, and neither do we. Heck. Yeah, I will say you and Jared, by yourselves. You guys have known each other a lot longer than I've been involved in this trio. You guys have some great energy, you guys are back and forth and I'm holding you back. So I'm proposing a spinoff podcast. Me, mason Isaac, we go do our own podcast, you and Jared can have your own.
Speaker 3:Good luck, buddy, cause I had to do a lot of editing on that tape with Mason and Isaac just to get those few moments of prescience out of them.
Speaker 2:So they had some banger picks, though I was pretty impressed they did good.
Speaker 3:I know Isaac's really trying to stunt on people with his Robot Quest arena.
Speaker 2:He's just trying to pick obscure games that people have never heard of, just to prove that he's an insider.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. What's the word Hipster about it?
Speaker 2:Oh, he's a hipster. He liked Robot Quest Arena before it was cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, he was the first backer on Kickstarter.
Speaker 2:That's right. Here's our pre-brief. Today we're going to talk about plays and procurements and a debrief our week. Then we're going to move into our main segment, which is spooky games or games for fall, and then we're going to do our quick hits and then we're going to get out of here because I probably have a diaper to change Right on. So, clay, debrief your week for me.
Speaker 3:Lots to debrief this week. Met up with Mackenzie again this week and he had just gotten Ironwood in so he wanted to play that and I guess I looked like a formidable opponent for him to try it out with jokes on him. We played it three times. This game's supposed to last 60 to 90 minutes and we play it three times in like an hour because I got whooped so bad I'm starting to think all the concussions I had in college are starting to catch up to me. Either that or he's just a genius, because in Ironwood it's an asymmetric dual game and you have a map, think like root root, so there's forests and there's like little mountain towns you can be in. One side is the woodwalkers and their pieces only move around in the forest and kind of like the vagabond in root, and the other side is the ironclad and they move around these little mountain towns and each side has a different objective to win the game. So if you're the Ironclad, you want to build these little forges on three different towns around the board and if you're the Woodwalkers, you have this vision deck that tells you where you can find these totems that I guess are important to the Woodwalkers and you have to find them and then scurry them to the outside of the map. And so three forges and three totems to find. I'm telling you, we played three times and he would complete all three objectives and I hadn't got one done yet. So yeah, I don't know if I'm going to get invited back. I put up little resistance on his way to three straight victories. I thought maybe it was because the Woodwalkers were tougher to play after the first one, but we flipped sides and he wrecked me with the Woodwalkers. So you know TBD on that. But anyway, it's a great game, awesome production. This is my first time playing a Mind Clash game. I mean, they have these nice metal pieces For the Ironclad and you have these nice wood tokens If you're the Woodwalker, so that's really cool.
Speaker 3:The main way You're taking actions Is via your cards. So each faction has their own deck of cards that will allow you to move about the board battle, try and get crystals, because that's kind of the currency of the game that each side can use for their own aims. The Woodwalkers did I already talk about the vision deck? No, okay, so the vision deck is unique to the Woodwalkers and that's how they figure out where their totems are.
Speaker 3:So you start the game with one vision and it'll say like you have a totem in this part of the forest and the ironclad they don't know what your vision card is unless they have a card that says they have. You have to reveal it to them. So you're trying to like get your troops over to where this totem might be so you can reveal it. And you can only reveal it if there's no ironclad folks in that area. So you kind of have to battle, get them out of there, reveal it and then try and get the heck out. Yeah, and the ironclad, they have this drill that they move around from mountain town to mountain town and every time you move the drill, you like move this little marker up a track and it like generates crystals and different resources that you get to help you build your forges, which is your win condition. Super cool game. I'm so stoked on it I immediately went to ebay and uh used my birthday money to buy it on ebay. Uh, it's coming, hopefully this week.
Speaker 3:So I mean it really is it really is like Root for two players. That's what it felt like to me. It's a little more card driven than Root, but it gave you those same feels with the different factions and 60 minutes. Nice production, man.
Speaker 2:I am stoked about Ironwood Do you think there's an opportunity to shoehorn other factions in later on, or do you think this is only two players and these two factions? That's going to be it.
Speaker 3:From what I can tell and I have no knowledge of what the publisher plans to do, but I haven't seen anything that there's going to be more to it and I think there is so much depth of strategy just with those two different factions. Oh and before I go on Ironwood, the combat is interesting because your cards are multi-use. So they either give you these actions that allow you to move, get crystals, do whatever, getting more vision cards if you're the ironwood, but they also have in the top left corner this flag for battle that like tells you your attack strength for that card, your defense strength and then your control strength. So when you into battle, each person can put one of these cards down and that card's no longer used for you for its like bottom action. You're just using those top three symbols and then you reveal the cards and you deal out hits to the other side. You take hits If you have shields, you defend some of the hits and then whoever has the most troops left in that conflict wins and can force the other player to retreat. So it's cool multi-use card situation kind of. Obviously the the ones with really sweet stats on the battle portion also have really sweet abilities that you're foregoing if you use it for battle. So yeah, pretty awesome game.
Speaker 3:The only cons I could see if you don't like being up in each other's grills probably not a game for you, because that's something I'm not great about and it hurt me. I realized how quickly you need to be up in each other's faces because when we switched sides and I was the ironclad, he was just bashing my drill. Like you can attack the drill and like steal crystals from the ironclad. If you're the woodwalkers and you have to do it, I thought I could just go out there and focus on all right, I'm gonna get my three little forges set up and everything's gonna be fine. But yeah, you have to simultaneously be very keen on taking out the other player's ability to set up shop. So great game, maybe not for you. You, if you don't like that type of negative interaction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw this when it popped up on Kickstarter and between the variable factions, the multi-use cards and the combat system. I was sold on it immediately and then, as a bonus, I saw all their deluxe upgraded components with the cool production. So I was sold and my copy just arrived the other day and I'm excited to get it to the table.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I don't know if it'll be Rachel's jam, but hopefully you can get it played with somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you think it's more complex than Root, less complex.
Speaker 3:Way less complex, nice, complex, way less complex, like I mean it was easy to hop into a game, but I mean knowing what you're doing. That's another story, clearly, because I proved that. I mean there's so many different cards that have different abilities on them, like it's so card driven, that you just have to get to know what kind of cards are in the deck and how you're planning on playing. So but, like to be able to sit down and just start playing. Super easy, you could explain it to somebody in five minutes. Nice yeah.
Speaker 2:That's Ironwood by man Clash Games. I had the opportunity to get a pre-release version of Dinner Party. The dice came about dinner with infamous people of history. A review copy was provided to me by Failure Factory Games is their handle on Instagram. Designer is Michael Spitzer and artist is by Michael Spitzer. It says self-published on BGG, but I imagine that he's standing up his publishing leg of his company and that is Failure Factory Games on Instagram.
Speaker 2:So Dinner Party is a game about recruiting historical figures throughout history to come to a party, and the more people that you have at your table at your party, the more points you're going to score. So how do you recruit them? There's five doors in front of you. The doors are piles that are sorted by value of character that's underneath. So you have a pile that is four through six, eight, 10, 12, and 13,. I believe. You flip the top one, all these piles in the center of the table, and so on the left you'll have your four through six pile, which is the value that you need to roll to recruit that member to your party. So let's say we have Genghis Khan or whatever, and he's worth four. If you say you want to invite them to your party. You roll three dice, so it's a little bit of pressure luck. You have three dice. Each of them have one through four pips on sides and then two that have a little chalice for a drink. So you roll these up to three times to try and get four or greater. If that is Genghis Khan's value, that's required to recruit him. If you successfully roll his value, then you can recruit him to your party. You add him to your table On subsequent turns as you recruit higher and higher value people.
Speaker 2:You will need to put them on either the left or right side of your table. So there's no rearranging cards and the cards are meant to play off of one another. So I wish I could remember some of the characters that we dealt with. But some of them need. If they're sitting next to a woman, they get extra points. If they're sitting next to another scientist throughout history, they get extra points. So the way and the order that you recruit them and seat them at your table is important. You also start the game with three envelopes in front of you and before your turn starts you have the opportunity to charm people from other players' parties. So if they have somebody that works well in your deck or can get you bonus scoring. At the end you can charm them and discard one of your envelopes and then it's up to the party host or the player that has that little party built in front of them to roll that value again to keep them. So it's pretty challenging to keep people in front of you or keep your party guests in front of you Because, let's say, I somehow managed to roll a 12.
Speaker 2:I rolled all three dice. Each of them had four pips. I got a high value, 12. That's in my party. That's going to earn me a bunch of points at the end of the game. I then have to do that again.
Speaker 2:So how do I maintain that person? I buy them a drink, of course. So you have these drinks that are in front of you that you earn through rolling the drink symbol on the die. You can exchange those one symbol for water, two symbols for wine. You can mix and match them if you roll multiple or three of the drink symbols. Wine you can mix and match them if you roll multiple or three of the drink symbols. So then you have these drink symbols.
Speaker 2:You can use those to modify your rolls. The waters give you plus two, the wines give you plus four. So I can use that to coax one of the members from the lobby or the people that are sitting out in the middle of the table to coax them to my party. Or I can use them to maintain members at my party. So let's say I roll this high value 12. Let's say last night we had Cleopatra that showed up. Cleopatra's worth 13. You can never roll that, naturally, just on your dice. So you're going to buy them a drink to recruit them. Then, once you have them at your party, you want to keep them. So you put a wine on them. So every time that I have to defend that person or you know, keep them at my party I'm going to discount the role that I need by four because they have a wine sitting on them. So I'd only need to roll nine plus.
Speaker 2:The cards can modify your roles different ways. There's pluses, there's minuses, depending on the different person or the the attributes. So, um, yeah, each of the cards is different. They, they play off one another. They give you bonuses on your rolls and then the end game scoring is you get one point per person that ends up at your party and then you get a bonus amount of points depending on the suit of the cards. The suits are basically occupations, um, you have, like your politicians, your artists, your scientists, your religious figures. And then there's one more I think it's just a leader trait, like presidents or you know political figures, so then you get a bonus for that and then you have a bonus amount of points depending on how the cards play off one another. So overall it's a fun game. It's super fast to play. It took us, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes to play it twice. Um, if you can keep people moving, the games go really fast.
Speaker 2:The art is kind of cool. It's pretty unique. Um, I think michael spitzer did a good job on the art because it kind of looks like a web comic and each of the characters all look unique. They all have different abilities on the card text, with a little bit of flavor text down below it, but the art is consistent. It looks kind of like a web comic that you would see about historical figures.
Speaker 2:My biggest complaint about the game was the end game. Scoring just never feels good. You can spend all this time going back and forth and recruiting all these different people, but really at the end of the day you get a number of points depending on the amount of people you have in your party. It's one point per person you have at your party. So reaching up to get high value people to come to your party is almost never worth it, because the risk of losing them is very high and it's difficult to get them when I can just keep cleaning up low level people. That would earn me the same amount of points and potentially build my party much larger than my opponents right off the bat. It's not a huge deal if I lose them.
Speaker 3:Why are there those high value people there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the high value people come with good abilities, like character abilities. So like Cleopatra last night my brother-in-law got Cleopatra in his party and at the end of his rolls he could just change any of his dice, or one of his dice, to a three value, so he could just automatically switch one and get a higher value. Let's say he rolled a drink. He needs a couple points to get up to secure somebody else. He can just change a value to a three. So they have slightly better uh abilities. I haven't seen a whole lot of high value ones because we tend to gravitate towards the easier to grab lower value characters. But I imagine, if you, there's certain higher value characters that play off better with some of the lower ones. So I played it four times. None of the times the end game scoring felt very good. There's probably a version of the end game scoring that feels really good, but in the ones that I played it just is kind of unsatisfying to go through all this. And then your points come down to how many people you have at your party and the number of suits and you maybe score one or two bonus points depending on how the cards play off one another. So yeah, it's a good game. It goes really fast, it's super easy to teach. They do have some interesting characters in the way and their character abilities are pretty thematic. So like, let me think of one, oh, marie Antoin. Like, let me think of one, oh, marie antoinette. Marie antoinette, you have her in your party. She's a pretty low value character. You invite her over, she's in your party, and then if somebody tries to charm her or steal her away from your party, if you have not placed a drink on her character to keep her there, she automatically leaves. Like, you don't even need to roll to keep her there because she needs to be entertained. She wants a drink. You know, martin luther king jr is one of the cards and when you put him in your deck, everybody else gets to rearrange their parties any way that they want, because equality and civil rights and everybody's sitting amongst each other. So I don't know.
Speaker 2:They have some like thematic character choices. Um, they have charlie chaplin. Charlie chaplin has no flavor text on his card at all, but he just like is there, you know. So they do have have a interesting way of, like you know, making the cards feel a little bit thematic. Some of them are better than others, but overall I just the end game scoring is just my biggest hangup because it never feels good to get to the very end. Count your cards, maybe adding one or two, four cards playing off one another. I think if the cards interacted more and there was like an easier way to get them to play off of each other, then it would feel a little better to me like you actually earned something, rather than just like recruiting cards off the deck and then you score that way, you know is this similar to like?
Speaker 3:is this occupying a similar space as any other games that you have?
Speaker 2:that you would be like, yeah, I'd just rather play that game instead of this there's a part of me that actually feels like this game is like a distant relative to munchkin or something. It kind of feels like munchkin, where you're like building up this little tableau in front of you and at the end of the day, it's like you kind of just encounter some bs at the end that undermines the whole game. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a party game. It's not one to take too serious and it's. If you're playing this game, it's honestly to see the different characters and how they like have their flavor text and their different card abilities. But it's called Dinner Party. It's coming out later this year.
Speaker 2:I think that he's going to launch it on Kickstarter. So it's a good game and I certainly don't get a finalized copy. I know that he sent me an updated rulebook so I know some of the rules and the interactions have changed and approved. I know he changed the box art a little bit. The copy that I have has a big sticker on it that says Hitler included. That has since gone away in future versions of the cover art, which is good. So, yeah, he's working on it. He's improving the game and we'll see what this looks like once it hits Kickstarter.
Speaker 3:Well, at least it doesn't take as long as Munchkin.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. It's a super fast play.
Speaker 3:So yeah, if you're gonna play something with that seems that swingy, at least it comes in a nice quick play time yeah, on bgg it's just 30 to 70 minutes.
Speaker 2:I can never imagine this game taking 70 minutes, even if you played with the max count of six players. We played it I don't know twice last night, maybe 20 minutes each, and that was with taking care of a baby in between rounds. So it's it's pretty lightweight game. It's a party game. It's nothing you're going to take too seriously anyway.
Speaker 3:So right on is dinner party.
Speaker 3:So that last night we went over to Tyler and Brenna's and we played some games because that's what I do when I go places Took over a bunch. But MLEM Space Agency was one that I had been wanting to play again and Tyler had played it on Board Game Arena and was interested in playing it in person. So we got it out. If you guys aren't familiar, blem is a game by Reiner Knizia Came out last year, I believe. Basically, the theme is your little cat astronauts trying to get far into outer space. Odd theme, interesting looking cover. It attracted me. You know, space Force, I'm into it, let's explore the cosmos, but you know it might not be for everybody the cats going to outer space. But anyway, it's a pretty cool little game and it comes with this like really long play mat that will take up the whole length of a table and it's really skinny and it's like this track that shows how far you can make it into outer space and there's this little rocket that moves up the track. So what you're doing is there's going to be a commander every turn and you all put one of your. I think you get eight cat astronauts, you put them on this ship and each of the cat astronauts has a little special ability I'll get to those later but everybody puts an astronaut on the ship. You guys are heading out on this mission together and the commander has a handful of die and each space on this track shows a different value that you would have to roll on the die in order to move. So, like, maybe, the first space shows a one, two or an afterburner symbol. So the commander rolls these six die and only ones, twos and afterburners will move. If you don't roll those, you bust and the thing crashes. Your cats come back to your player board because they don't die. They safely make it back home somehow.
Speaker 3:So anyway, you're trying to match these symbols based on the space you're at and the commander has to decide what to use. So if there's a one, two and afterburner and you rolled four, twos, that may sound good because you'll get to move eight spaces, but if you use the dice you lose them. So now the next place you go on the track, you only have two die to roll and your odds of getting whatever's on that space are even less. The exception is the afterburner symbol. So if you roll those and that's one of the things you can move with. You can keep the die that had the afterburner on. So you're kind of incentivized to try and roll those whenever you can and the commander decides. You know, if you use a two you have to use all the twos, so you can't just say, well, I'm just going to use one 2 to get this one spot. So it's just a weird little way of controlling the game. I don't know why it's like that, but it makes it fun because you have these tough decisions.
Speaker 3:So you're working your way up the track and as you hit certain spots like, the first planet you'll get to is like this little fishbowl planet, and every time you get to a place and you're in between rolls, everybody on the rocket ship has a chance to get off and take the points that are there. The planets score at the end of the game based on how many cats you have on that planet. So if you have the most cats on that planet, you get the highest value. Next, most cats on that planet gets the lowest value the moons. When you come up to a spot in space that has moons and you get off there, you just get the points immediately. So the first person to get off on like a certain set of moons, maybe you'll get three points. The next person that gets off on that set of moons will get two points, and if those moons are taken up you can't get off there anymore. So you're working your way up.
Speaker 3:Obviously, the higher up you get into space, the more valuable the planets and moons are, so you want to kind of stick along for the ride if you can, and the cat abilities add some extra flavor to it, because you put these cats on and it affects everybody sometimes. So the one cat ability lets you start like three spaces ahead at the beginning of the game. Another cat ability will give you times two points if you get off on a moon. Another cat ability gives you times two if you get off on the planet, for whatever you score on that planet at the end and the ultimate goal is to get to deep space. And you have a cat that gets you times two if that cat makes it to deep space.
Speaker 3:But that's my only beef with this game is that getting all the way to deep space seems darn near impossible. I've played this game maybe four, five times now and maybe once or twice you get there, and that's cool because it's like fun to think about the thrill of getting to deep space, but also I would like to see that payoff come a little more. And yeah, and I don't think that the point payoff is that much better to warrant how difficult it is to get to deep space. So if you get off at a midway planet you'll get six points maybe, and if you get off in deep space you get seven. It's not that much of a difference, like it's not that much of a difference, but do you think?
Speaker 2:do you think the good doctor put that in there just as like a goal, like if you can really outmaneuver everybody else, or is it like all the stars have to align because there is that press your luck aspect to it where you really got to be hitting to get all the?
Speaker 3:way out there. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, he it's definitely hard and you, everything has to go right. You know you gotta be rolling those after burner symbols, so you're keeping all your die. Uh, as you get further up you got to sometimes, you know that's. What's interesting is, each space has those different numbers you can roll, so some of them. It's like you can only roll ones or twos here, so you're probably not going to get very far off the space. But sometimes you go to a spot that shows like fours and threes and so if you roll a couple of fours, that's a big jump and I think the track is like 30 spaces long. So you get eight spaces off of one roll. You're doing pretty good. But but it's interesting. Interesting in the shared incentives of.
Speaker 3:It's fun to get hyped up. You're the captain. You're like all right, guys, we're going to deep space. This time you put your deep space cat on there. You look around the table, somebody else puts on their deep space cat, somebody else like yeah, let's go to deep space, and they put on their one.
Speaker 3:That starts you a little bit ahead, and then there is one cat that can screw over the rest of the crew. Um, that makes you the captain has to discard a die when that cat hops off the rocket. So, like, you can just jump off at the earliest exit point and screw the rest of the people on the thing. So it I think it's a lot of fun. It's like 45, 60 minutes. It's very interactive. You're all in it together. I don't know that I love the scoring, but I have so much fun playing it it hardly matters. You know you definitely the smart move if you want to win is definitely to hop off, get your cats off, get your points like and and live to fight another day. But I'm going to be ride or dying for the deep space trying to get there.
Speaker 3:And yeah, melem is a super fun game, if you like, pushing your luck and you know, having all that, all those shared incentives amongst the players and the retail box, comes with like a few different modules in it that make it interesting too. There's like this alien module.
Speaker 2:But yeah, super stoked about mlem, I'm just a hype man for board games apparently I, I didn't realize that mlem was one press your luck, like I guess I didn't. I didn't register with me that was the main mechanic. And two, I guess I didn't realize that it was such a long game. You said 45 to 60 minutes for a cooperative press your luck game. That seems like a really long time.
Speaker 3:Semi-co-op yeah uh you know it's. I mean it can be quicker, probably. Uh, it's tough to say.
Speaker 2:We last night, jordan, had to go to bed in the middle of it, so my sense of time might be off it sounds like there's like like a 20 minute version of this that comes in like an all-play box that you can like play in yeah, much faster and with the same mechanic and get it over with much faster.
Speaker 3:Probably the two ways it ends are either you've crashed a certain amount of times, like most trips are going to end in a crash, unless everybody gets off at some point. So there's like a little crash track at the bottom and when that reaches the end, the game's over. Or what usually happens I've seen is it ends because one person has got all their eight cats out into a planet or a moon, and that's this. I mean that person is probably going to win because they've got eight cats that are scoring and I've still got three on my rocket ship that have done nothing for me because I've been trying to get them into deep space. So yeah, I don't know, I have fun with it. I don't take it too seriously, but it's yeah the scoring is pretty.
Speaker 3:In my opinion, if you want to win, it's probably boring. I saw you playing Cascadito in the hospital. How was that?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, we did. We played baby's first board game, cascadito. It could only be Rainer Canizia and Ian O'Toole. This is the kind of pared down roll and write version of Cascadero, kind of pared down roll and write version of Cascadero. In Cascadito you are trying to connect neighboring villages of different suits to score points and you move up tracks by connecting these villages to score points and eventually win the game. So on your turn you roll a bunch of dice that are shared between you and all the other players. The person that rolled picks one out. They put a little X next to the suit that is displayed on that dice that they selected or on that die that they selected. They put a little X or whatever symbol on their sheet and then the next person draws from the dice and the next person, the next person. All the dice are run out and then whoever's up picks them up and rolls them again and you just continue on until the game is over.
Speaker 2:So as you connect these villages and groups, you score points by newly contacted villages of different suits. So if one group grouping of I don't know I think it's supposed to be roads, but on the grid it's like just connected little hexagons. So let's say you have a cluster of marked hexagons on the left, a couple of villages scattered and then a group on the right. So anytime those individual groups contact a new city, which is a little colored hexagon on this map, then you score a point. If those two groups merge, you don't score a thousand points for all of the villages that each group is now touching. It's only new villages that are, or new cities that are touched by that group. So that it's kind of a confusing mechanic and it took a little bit of time to wrap our heads around, because you're playing in the negative space between these cities rather than like a Catan or whatever where you're building routes through these hexagons. So what you're trying to do really is be most efficient with your placement of these different Xs or roads that you're building on the field between the cities.
Speaker 2:And it kind of reminds me of like the Lost Cities roll and write game, where you are trying to move up the individual tracks and the faster you can move up the tracks the more bonuses you get. You get to a certain level. Let's say you mark the second spot on all four of the tracks. We only played on the first map. There's like four different maps that they give you in the core box. You get to the second spot on all four tracks and you get to mark a bonus point at the top or a bonus two points. You connect three matching cities like different colors, you get another bonus. You match all five different cities that are all the five different suits of cities you get a bonus. So it's like different ways to earn points as you go along.
Speaker 2:Game ends once you score or once between all the players the top level of bonuses have all been taken, or one player gets all of the city bonuses. So city bonuses is connecting two different blue cities, connecting two different orange cities, connecting two different yellow cities, and so those are pretty easy to pick up as you go along. So either somebody connects all of those and earns all those bonuses, or between all the players, all the bonuses at the top are taken, which are a bunch of different things. Then outside of the city and all these different tracks and stuff, there's a river at the bottom. Then outside of the city and all these different tracks and stuff, there's a river at the bottom. So if you ever kind of run out of choices or you don't want to mark an additional space or it doesn't help you. You can always take one of those spots and mark the next spot on the river, kind of like Castles of Burgundy. You're like moving your little ship up the river and as you move up the ship you get bonuses where you get to mark additional spaces out in your field. And if you get halfway down the river you get 10 points, and if you get to the end of the river you get 20 points or whatever the bonus is. So that's an additional bonus that you can get as you move your ship down the river.
Speaker 2:We neither of us got down the river far enough to earn any bonus points, but you could probably score some big points if you focused on that instead of connecting your villages, uh, if you wanted to extend the game a little bit. So we only played it once, only played on the first map out of three or four that they give you in the core box. I'm curious to see how it compares to cascadero, which I also have downstairs, so I'll have to play. Give that a play and report back, but super fast to play Once you get the hang of it. It's just understanding the groups, the groupings and how they score points. Uh, that is a little hard to wrap your head around, but I I enjoyed it. It's uh kind of fills the same space in my brain as the lost cities rolling Right. So we'll give it a couple more plays and I'll let you know what I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got Cascadero and Cascadito and I regret to say Cascadero was the first Reiner Knizia game I ever got rid of. Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I kept Cascadito. I played it solo and it was good. I was like you know that's an interesting enough little game to play by myself, that I'm going to keep that one. But yeah, Cascadero, like you said, the scoring is. So I don't, I just didn't like it, Like the whole thing about the first time. You know, you're just going up these tracks and I, for me, I'd much rather play through the desert, I'd much rather play blue lagoon.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just I was like I'm probably never going to play this again After I played it once. It wasn't bad, like I had a fine time. But yeah, when you have those other Canizia hits on your shelf, I didn't see myself ever going back for Cascadero. So you have to let me know what you think if you play it. But yeah, cascadero was a nice little small box version that you can play alone or with somebody else, and the dice drafting is cool. So yeah, let me know what you think once you've gotten Cascadero to the table.
Speaker 3:But it wasn't on my top of the Canizia list.
Speaker 2:I couldn't start my baby off with anything other than Reiner Canizia, and that was one that I hadn't played yet, so we had to get off the shelf of shame. There you go, baby's first board game, cascadito.
Speaker 3:You did Glenn right.
Speaker 2:Yep, okay, do you have anything else for debrief?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll talk about one more, because I don't have a lot to say during fall theme, so I might as well get shoot my shot here in the debrief section.
Speaker 2:Please played courtesans last night with the spanglers as well.
Speaker 3:I just got that in the mail yeah, as as soon as I heard about it I think I heard about on the shut up and sit down podcast and he was describing and I have to have that game. That's exactly where I heard it and I was like I'm buying this right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, sometimes you just hear about a game and you're like, yeah, that's going to be fun. And that's what happened with Courtesans and Courtesans. When I heard about it it immediately made me think of Biblios, because you have three cards. You play one for yourself, you play one to a common area and then you play one to one of your neighbor's areas, and in courtesans the common area is this table, the queen's table, and there's these six or seven different families sitting at the table. And so all your cards are going to have the colors of those families. And when you play a card to the queen's table of that family, you either put that card above the table or below the table. If you put it below the table, you're saying that you want that family to be fallen from grace. If you put it above, you want that family to be fallen from grace. If you put it above, you want that family to be esteemed. And at the end of the game, if the family's esteemed and you have cards of that family in front of you, they'll be worth positive points. If the family has fallen from grace, all the cards you have of that family will be negative points, and if it's a wash, then you just get no points for those cards. So yeah, that's what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Every turn you have three cards, giving one to yourself, one to some other player and one to the middle. There are four special cards that kind of add these fun wrinkles to it. So there is a spy that you play face down to any of those locations. So you give it to somebody else they don't know what the heck it is. You'll reveal it at the end of the game. There is an assassin that, whatever area you play it to, you can discard a card from that area. So if someone had given me a spy face down I don't know what it is I might play an assassin to my own area to get rid of that spy, because I'm just assuming they probably were trying to screw me. And then there are guards that they can't be assassinated. So if you have those out, they're they're safe. And the last one is a noble and those count as two cards, wherever you place them.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I really enjoyed it. It's feels like maybe you're not so in control of what's going on, especially with four players. You just kind of got to hold on and hope. But for a 20-minute game I really enjoyed it. You're just trying to sow chaos at the queen's table and try and hope to keep your families esteemed and try and hope to keep your families esteemed. The other thing is there's two secret objective cards that you have that can score you points, and I'm really glad they added those.
Speaker 3:At first I was like, oh, this just seems like a board gamey thing to overcomplicate what's otherwise like a simple game. But really I think those are necessary because they give you a little direction. It can feel like, okay, what am I doing? I have got three cards. I guess I'll put this red one up here at the table and then I'll give myself this green one. But having those objective cards like mine was at the end of the game. I the the toad people to be fallen from grace. So whenever I wasn't sure what to do, I was like, well, you know, I'll throw this toad under the table. So at least I know I'm moving towards that objective. But yeah, courtesans, fun, quick little game, super simple.
Speaker 2:I mean, you just heard all the rules I think it was the shut up and sit down podcast, where they uh related it to a stock manipulation game. Yeah, like a stock manipulation game that's dressed as a medieval tug-of-war type thing, political intrigue type game, and yeah, I'm like just talking about this game or thinking about it gets me all excited, so I'm going to try and bust that one out tonight after dinner.
Speaker 3:For sure, text me when you do. I want to hear about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:All right, that's all for my debrief.
Speaker 2:All right, let's move on to our main segment, which is games for fall. So uh, games for fall, so uh. To me, games for fall, it's october, it's spooky season. I'm not a big horror guy, but I can handle horror and board games and, um, maybe it's a horror game, maybe it's spooky, maybe it's thematic, maybe it's cozy and you like to, you know, cuddle up with a good board game when it's nice and rainy and cold outside. So so we're going to give some back and forth recommendations on games for fall and games that get you excited for the fall time. So, clay, what's a fall game?
Speaker 3:to you Fall game. Let's start with scary for Halloween and kick it off with Cthulhu Death May Die. If I think about the scariest game I got is Cthulhu Death May Die. If I think about the scariest game I got, it's Cthulhu Death May Die. And it might just be scary to me because I always lose and there's these huge scary miniatures, but that game is a horror movie played out. You're trying to race to solve some sort of episode that you set up. Like every episode is different. Maybe there's a fire somewhere and there's these necromancers trying to summon the great old one, and your job is to run around and, you know, turn off these computers. It's different with every episode, but all of them set the stage and are super thematic and make you feel like you're in the middle of a scary movie Good one. What do you got?
Speaker 2:In the same vein of Lovecraftian horror Unfathomable. When you, me and Jared played Unfathomable, which is a reskin of the Battlestar Galactica board game, that got my heart racing. It's a hidden role, semi-cooperative objective game where you're trying to fend off these giant Lovecraftian sea monsters that are attacking this steampunk ship and you're running around the galley and the crow's nest and the I don't know dining hall and all this stuff, trying to gather equipment and do all this different, uh, achieve your objectives. But then somebody is the secret traitor that is trying to sabotage the whole mission. And when the three of us played and you two were going back and forth like well, maybe he didn't have the card he needed, maybe he's not the traitor I was just dying inside. It came down to the very last couple turns, last couple cards, and I was sweating the whole time. I ended up winning because I think you guys played the wrong card. I don't even know how it ended.
Speaker 3:No, jared, put me in jail. Oh, that's right, put me in jail.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right, he was convinced. He was convinced that you were actually the traitor and he threw you in jail and I was like.
Speaker 3:I was like Jared, I'm not, I'm just. I always look like I'm up to something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that game gets me so amped up and it kind of like fills the same space in my brain as, uh, like nemesis, because you're doing secret goals and running around a ship trying to achieve different things and it's kind of you versus monsters and you versus other people. So, yeah, unfathomable.
Speaker 3:That's an awesome game side note, I just got rid of unfathomable because, no, no, no, it's not like that. I love Unfathomable, but I was like I like this game and I don't care anything about the theme. So, as you know, I'm a Battlestar Galactica fan boy and I was like it's time.
Speaker 3:I'm just going to get rid of Unfathomable and I'm going to go on eBay, I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to get that OG with the theme on it that I really love. So I've got two weeks from now, the crew is coming over and we're throwing down Battlestar Galactica, and I'm pretty stoked about it.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, but anyway, quick aside, unfathomable, great game. I just like Battlestar Galactica. What's your next fall game? Let's uh, keep the spooky vibe going with campy creatures. That's a key master games production. It's not like the two we just mentioned. It is a quick little card game in the vein of you know you get these games that are everybody selects a card and then flips up and, based on you know what numbers there are.
Speaker 3:You get these various rewards. So yeah, I don't know that I've played this recently enough to give you a great description. I just know it's a fun, quick little card game and I played it last year at this time and I'm probably going to play it again soon. But great production, great art, definitely in the spooky season vibes, and I do love. Again, I can't give you a great description of it, but it has that mechanism. I it's in Hot Lead, it's in Six Nimit, where everybody picks a card simultaneously and then reveals and that's what you're getting out of Campy Creatures, quick, little 30-minute game with a cool little monster theme on it.
Speaker 2:I like it. Yeah, I'm going to just take a step back from horror. We'll be back with horror in just a minute, but I'm going to recommend Camp Pinetop. Camp Pinetop is a game by Talon Strike Studios. This is one that I picked up, used and it came with all the expansions and it is a grid movement area control hand management type game where you play as woodland critters that are running around a summer camp or a camp for kids or whatever, and you're like scouts that are trying to level up and accomplish goals and earn little badges, and it's pretty cute. So to me, this is like a cozy game. This is a good fall. Leaves are turning, you can just sit down. It's not super stressful. Art's beautiful. If you look it up online, all the colors of the cards and stuff are all very fall colored. Camp Pinetop is a cool little puzzle game and it's great solo, which is a good fall game. To me, it feels cozy. It's a cozy game.
Speaker 3:I'll follow you into cozy land with Everdell, nice. Technically that game can fall in any season because it literally has all the seasons as different phases of the game, but to me fall is the most prevalent season in that game. Yeah, if you don't know about Everdell, it's awesome little tableau building worker placement game. Huge, gorgeous tree in the middle, a fall tree. Some would say. Leaves are turning. I actually don't know if that's the case. I think there is maybe some leaves turning on that tree. I'm going to have to get it out.
Speaker 3:If not, they'll probably sell you an expansion where the leaves are turning yeah, yeah, but big centerpiece tree, this market of cards in the middle. You're sending out your workers to gather resources and play these cards in your little village Cozy game. Looks great, get berries, sticks, fall things. As ever, though.
Speaker 2:Excellent. I had the opportunity to pick up Witchcraft at the last Essence Spiel. Witchcraft is a salt and pepper game and it is a deck-building, solo-only hand-management game where you are a witch that's leading a coven of witches against a bunch of monsters. It is a re-implementation of the game called resist about the spanish civil war. Witchcraft is thematic and, uh, pretty fun, fast to play. It's got cool systems. I would highly recommend witchcraft to anybody that likes solo hand management games. It's great and small box. It's a relatively small box so all right.
Speaker 3:Next up for me is castle party by devere games, and it is a light little flip and draw game. So you're gonna be flipping over these cards that give you like a polyomino shape that you have to draw on your little personal board and there are all these different witches and Frankensteins that you're trying to draw their symbols to connect in certain ways to score points. But super light, interesting little polyomino mechanic with drawing it. Yeah, Castle Party. Fun little monster game. Interesting little polyamory mechanic withdrawing it. Um, yeah, Castle party. Fun little monster game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that one was pretty cool, the the flip and right aspect of that and like kind of building out your little uh, what do you even call that? Like the party or whatever it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you're trying to get get the monsters in the groups that they want to be in. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That one was fun. Yeah, it's cool, all right. Next up for me is final girl. We're going back to horror.
Speaker 2:Final girl is a van rider game and you buy the core box that has some of the stuff that you need to play your little player mat and everything. And then you go out and you buy these modules for it that are themed after different horror movies. And in final girl you are playing as the last survivor of a horror movie where it's you the final girl versus the big baddie and they have pretty thematic and ip related ip adjacent themed expansions for this game. Now they've got alien, they've got friday the 13th, they've got poltergeist, they've got all sorts of different expansions for this thing.
Speaker 2:Now, anything that you are scared of or any horror movie that you're a fan of, there's probably a final girl set for it. It's got dice rolling, hand management. You're cruising around this map trying to save, uh, other victims, you're collecting items that you can then use against the bad guy and it's just mono e mono and it feels like a slug fest and it's create some pretty tense moments that are pretty thematic. So final girl is my next recommendation for a spooky game I've really been wanting to try this.
Speaker 3:I'm not a great solo gamer. It's got to be so simple. If there's any fluff to it in terms of long setup or managing a bunch of different stuff in between every turn, it's probably not for me, but I am very interested in the Final Girl system and it seems like it would be a lot of fun I know that you have been willing to play arc nova by yourself and I know that you've played arc nova many times solo.
Speaker 2:So if you can play arc novos, arc nova, solo, you can manage final girl and I've got a. I've got a couple different sets for it now and each one feels pretty good. Um, you buy a box and each box comes with two different encounters with two different monsters, so you get a little more bang for your buck when you buy those, and every time you play it, you can play it at different difficulties and it's pretty fun.
Speaker 3:Maybe I'll have to jump in.
Speaker 2:Plus, I love the little magnetic clasp boxes. I'm such a sucker for those. And they have dual-sided magnetic clasp boxes. I'm such a sucker for those. They have dual-sided magnetic clasp boxes. They're tucked away, all nice. I'm a sucker for that stuff.
Speaker 3:I got one more and then I'm going to leave it up to you. My last one is Witchstone, a Reiner Knizia game that is themed around being a witch. It is a very point-sality game. It's actually a dual design between Reiner Knizzi and somebody else, but the theme is there for witching.
Speaker 3:You got your little cauldron and you take these I wouldn't even know what to call them you know Ingenious. Have you played Ingenious Travis? You got those two-sided hex tiles. Oh yeah, I don't know if there's a proper name for them, but anyway, in your cauldron is this little mini Ingenious board and you're putting these tiles into your cauldron and you're trying to connect different actions together. So, like, if I connect three of the witch symbols together in the cauldron, I can take three witch actions instead of one. So you're brewing this little cauldron in front of you and that's how you take your actions. Yeah, there's lots of different things going on in the game. It's definitely a point salary game. I haven't played it in a while but maybe I will this this fall season, because I remember enjoying it and and Just got to get Mary back on board, but it's a good one.
Speaker 2:I have never heard of that one. That sounds awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's cool, I like that. I like that action selection mechanism of using those little tiles to try and create these groups in your cauldron.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Well, if you are falling out, I'm going to keep rolling on, roll, because I'm pumped to play these fall games. Next up is Horrified and Horrified Greek Monsters. I picked up Greek Monsters at Essen last year. It's basically just a reskin of the Horrified system and it's a cooperative game, action point driven, dice rolling, and you play as characters that are trying to beat these mythological creatures. Characters that are trying to beat these mythological creatures. Um, the original horrified had, you know, your, your warner brothers, classic monsters, dracula, frankenstein, the mummy, that type of stuff. Greek monsters is off, obviously, from the, the greek pantheon of gods and stuff. So you've got minotaurs and three-headed dogs, cerberus and all that good stuff. Um, I have the american monster one we played that a couple times where you're going against Bigfoot and Mothman and Chupacabra and stuff like that. So pretty fun, pretty thematic. Each of the different monsters feels pretty thematic and appropriate for what you would believe that that monster would, how they would behave. So that's the horrified system. That one's pretty good.
Speaker 3:I don't know why I haven't gotten this yet, because I remember being so impressed with it. I had written it off like I was like, oh, this is a target game or something, and yeah, and we played it last year, a couple years ago, and I remember thinking, wow, this is pretty streamlined and fun. I had a great time with it. So I definitely need to get that off my back and just go ahead and spend my birthday money on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you look at the box it definitely looks like a Robinsburger game, which are sometimes hit or miss, but I think it's got some pretty cool systems and it's uh, it's pretty fun. Next up I have dracula versus van helsing two-player card game kind of a trick take like a multi-level trick-taking game where you are playing these different hidden cards across six different areas of a map. So you've got this city map. There's little victim tokens on each of these areas and you play these face-down cards to each of these areas across the map. Van Helsing plays his face-down, dracula plays his face-down and then there's a tiered ranking of the different suits. So there's I don't know three, four different colors that are ranked against one another. As you play these cards, you can take different actions to swap cards around between these areas, to reveal cards on the opposite side, to change the lead suit or the trump suit or to swap cards out. Do these these different actions and then, once you do all of these different things, you you're playing these cards, these different areas. You simultaneously reveal all of your cards and dracula is trying to kill all the victims or the town folk that are in these different areas. Van helsing is trying to protect them and you're trying to defend those village people, those townsfolk, and um, it's super fast. It's on bga, which is where I've played it a couple times, but I actually just got it in the uh 25th century reprint, so I'm excited to get that to the table. It's a it's a pretty fast, fun two-player game. That is has some pretty interesting mechanics and it's super thematic for halloween. This is like mono e mono dracula's trying to kill these village people and you're trying to protect them as van helsing, and so it's kind of this like tug of war, where you're playing these different lanes to try and glean out information about what cards they have hidden. Is it a high number? Is it the trump suit? Do I have my people in the right spots? Once you start losing village people, maybe you prioritize protecting the other ones versus that single lane. If dracula kills three of the village people or something, then dracula wins, and if he doesn't, then van helsing wins. So, um, I have a couple of a couple more quick ones.
Speaker 2:Uh, first, you cannot get to the spooky season without playing betrayal at house on the hill. This game is freaking awesome. I love this game. Uh, I know it's not for everybody and so there's some people in the board game community that kind of poo-poo on it. But betrayal at house on the hill is like adult clue.
Speaker 2:You start as survivors that are in the entryway of a house. That's all you can see is the entryway. As you explore around, using action points, you are revealing this mansion and there's an upstairs, a basement and then the main level and as you explore the house you flip these tiles to reveal omens and events and items and all these different things that keep popping up. Your character has different attributes that you can improve or decrease.
Speaker 2:You can lose sanity, like any good Lovecraftian story, and you go insane and then you lose or you lose your strength or you lose your endurance, whatever it is, and at certain points it is, and at certain points you will reveal a omen card and when you reveal the omen cards then the omen marker continues to move up this track and when you roll these dice you have to roll higher than the number that the omen track is on and eventually that number gets so high that you're going to roll under that omen track number and a haunt is triggered.
Speaker 2:So then you're going to pull out these rule books and one of the rule books will tell you, this room was revealed by this person and this was the omen. So this is the haunt that is triggered. So then it becomes a one versus all scenario and that one person might be trying to collect things in the house. They might be trying to get out of the house. The other people might be trying to get out of the house. They might be trying to kill that betrayer for the haunt. And you can have sidekicks and items and Betrayal at House on the Hill is great and thematic and you can play it a thousand times and never see the same haunt twice, because there's so much bang for your buck in just that core box and it's super cheap to buy.
Speaker 3:So I would recommend betrayal at house on the hill for anybody that wants to have a good halloween party themed game night I really feel like I need to give this one another shot because in my excitement and naivete when I first got into board games, I grabbed this game at a Walmart on the way to a cabin weekend with some friends thinking, yeah sure, I'll just open it up, punch it and teach it to these people that aren't gamers, and we're going to have a great time, it's going to be fun. And we never got it played. I think I played it once with Mary just the two of us, which probably is not the ideal player, count so that gave me a poor impression of it. And the other time was me trying to ham fist it down people's throats when I didn't know how to play it and had never even opened the box. So yeah, a checkered past for me and mainly my fault, just for not playing it in its ideal circumstances.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think if you get a crew together and you're like we know the concept of this game, it's not that difficult to teach and the mechanisms are not hard to engage with.
Speaker 2:It's just you have to be able to get people together and focus and have them sit down and enjoy the game together. This is a super thematic game that requires a little bit of attention. So people getting up and wandering away during this game is probably not ideal. But once you get to haunt, it's like people need to be locked in and know what's going on, because if the condition for the, for that other person, which, so the, the betrayer, will have their win condition, the survivors or whoever's left will have their win condition, and neither knows what the other is trying to do. Um, so you have like this kind of theme that's set up or this storyline, but you don't know what the other group is trying to accomplish. So that's like really this like cat and mouse type game that develops and people got to be locked in for that portion, otherwise you lose very quickly yeah, yeah, definitely would be willing to play the game with with the right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, a couple quick ones Nemesis and Alien, fated and Nostromo. We just played Alien, not 20 minutes ago, it was great, I guess it was over 20 minutes ago. We've been recording for an hour and a half, but right before this we recorded, we played a game of Alien. We finally won. It's like a scaled-down version of Nemesis. Nemesis is down version of nemesis. Nemesis is much bigger, super thematic, great storylines, super spooky and scary. Put on the alien soundtrack and play some nemesis, uh. And then we're going to go less scary and shout out to harvest.
Speaker 2:Uh, harvest is a game about tending crops and raising crops and selling crops and a harvest is a good fall game because it's all about the harvest. And then I wanted to shout out, uh, beer and bread. Because that game feels like fall to me. It's a two-player game where you're collecting the ingredients to bake bread or brew beer and then you are passing cards back and forth in bountiful years and you are keeping the cards the recipe cards and the ingredient cards on famine years, and that game just feels like fall to me. And it's a good two-player game that you can knock out quickly on a nice fall day. Preach, preach. And that are our fall game recommendations. We kind of went through them quickly, but if you want to hear more about them, reach out to us on our instagram at operation game night, or leave us a comment and we can certainly uh, give you some more recommendations or we're happy to discuss further.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're on YouTube. Check us out there. We are on YouTube. We are on YouTube now. So, Clay, how? How do people find us on YouTube?
Speaker 3:Operation game night on YouTube yeah, where our faces aren't on there there yet, but you can listen to the podcast there. But if you're listening to the podcast somewhere else right now, then you that probably doesn't apply to you. But if you are on youtube right now and listening to this, that's awesome. Hit that like and subscribe button that's right.
Speaker 2:Leave us a comment, share us with your friends. We need all the help we can get. So, uh, we are on youtube, spotify, apple podcasts, iheart radio and anywhere that you might listen to your podcasts and or watch your youtube videos. Yep, all right. Uh, let's do. Uh, let's call this final portion scattershot. What's it scattershot? Clay, what you got going on besides board gaming?
Speaker 3:scattershot. Um, we have been watching the Americans. I watched it many, many years ago and I question my memory every day because it is like I'm watching it for the first time, because I cannot remember what happened in this show, but I remembered really liking it and Mary had never seen it. So I was like Mary. We were trying to find a new show to watch that would keep us going for a little while. And there's six seasons of the Americans and we're in season three.
Speaker 3:Great show about spies in the 1980s, maybe Reagan era Russian spies living in America Acting like a normal family, doing a bunch of spy stuff, but really the intriguing part is like their family dynamic and how they make it work and with their kids. So it's an awesome show. If you're looking for a show that's been out, it's battle tested, lots of episodes to get through, something to binge it's on Hulu. So yeah, americans is what we've been into and that's my scattershot.
Speaker 2:Excellent. I don't have all that much to share because I am just learning how to become a father, so if you have any father recommendations or recommendations on how to be a better father, please shout out to us in the comments or write us a note. Just DM, but we have been watching. Yellow Jackets just came to Netflix.
Speaker 2:I don't have a Showtime subscription, but I had always heard good things about Yellow Jackets and it is a great show. It is about a girl's high school soccer team that's in a plane crash out in the middle of nowhere in Colorado and they are stuck out there for like 19 months and it is a real Lord of the flies situation that evolves over time and what they do is they show you kind of where they end up in the woods, then they flash way forward to those that survived, that are now trying to adjust to life in the real world, and then they flash way back to when they first crash and then they flash back to present time and, uh, it's a great show. Uh, the characters are all pretty good. I'm like three episodes in and I'm hooked. So yellow jackets is a very cool.
Speaker 2:It's a. It's a good fall show for sure, because it's got a little bit of mystery. And how do they end up here? What's? They show you these like really pretty nihilistic views of society once they're removed from the outside world, and you're like how you're just wondering how they evolved or how they uh, dissolved into anarchy over time. So I'm excited to finish it. I've heard nothing but good things about it. So that is yellow jackets now on Netflix, originally by Showtime.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Well, you better get back to that baby Travis, and again, maybe time. Congrats to you and Rachel. That's awesome, so pumped for you guys. You can come to me for tips, but you can probably find better tips elsewhere oh, if I can.
Speaker 2:Uh, I listened to your episode on gaming with kids and I think that the connection that you have with your family not just your but your wife and your ability to you know, turn off all electronics and spend some quality time together, whether that's going on a hike or doing a workout or playing board games, you are, uh, you're a good dad and a good husband, and I remember you you saying to me one time that you have no aspirations greater than that of being a good husband and father, and that is really inspirational and touching, and I appreciate that as something that I hope to take from you.
Speaker 3:Oh, I know you're going to crush it. You are awesome with my kids and I'm sure Gwen's going to be in good hands over there in Germany.
Speaker 2:So All right, jared, we miss you. And to our listeners out there, if you are liking the podcast, please leave us a rating, leave us a comment, shoot us a DM on Instagram at operation game night. Find us on YouTube at operation game night. Like, subscribe. Just spread the good word If you are enjoying this podcast cause, we hope to grow our community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it may not sound like it when you hear me talk, but we put a lot of effort into this.
Speaker 2:And we're almost at 1,000 Instagram followers. We are almost there. I think we're at 920-something the last time I checked, so let's get over that 1,000 mark. Big deal For Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay. Have a good one, buddy, and we are out.
Speaker 1:The Operation Game Night Podcast was created, produced and edited by me, travis Smith, and co-hosted by my good friends Clay Gable and Jared Erickson. Thank you for listening and hope to see you again next week.