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 10: Ankh, Horrified & Desert Island Games
Have you ever wondered what board games could keep you entertained on a deserted island? Discover our top picks for the rest of our lives as we celebrate nearing 1,000 Instagram followers and give special shoutouts. With Jared away, we still manage to hold down the fort, sharing our latest gaming experiences and exciting plans for a new logo that might just turn into fan merchandise.
Get ready to be transported to ancient Egypt with Ankh: Gods of Egypt, where we explore its intricate two-player strategies and unique action/event system. Ankh shines with its card-based conflict system and stunning miniatures. We also take a close look at the different Horrified editions, with a special nod to the Greek Monsters set, comparing its cooperative gameplay to Marvel United and discussing the replayability and thematic appeal of these games.
Debate with us as we try to choose the ideal collection of board games for a desert island scenario. From deduction games like Blood on the Clocktower to strategic card games like Lost Cities, we aim to cover every gaming itch. There's also a spotlight on under-the-radar gems like Spirits of the Wild and euro games like Merchants Cove. Whether you're a board game enthusiast or just enjoy a casual game night, this episode promises engaging insights, spirited discussions, and plenty of laughs.
I'm not the guy on the island who's going to be building stuff or, you know, contributing any meaningful way to forming a society there. I will just be there playing against Thanos and the Sinister Sticks.
Speaker 2: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. Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast. We are back at Better Than Ever. With me is the Robinson Crusoe of the podcast, Clay.
Speaker 1:Gable how you doing Clay, I'm doing great. Where do you come up with this stuff, man? Do you have that planned out beforehand, or does it just roll off the tongue when you get on the mic?
Speaker 2:It's just a free flow, whatever pops into the brain. So since we're talking Desert Island games today, I figured you could be Robinson Crusoe.
Speaker 1:I want to be the volleyball Wilson.
Speaker 2:Wilson, the Wilson of the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that suits me better.
Speaker 2:Jared can be the Wilson of the podcast this week, since he is MIA. He drifted off from the raft and he is floating away.
Speaker 1:You can't pin that man down. He's just a busy guy Just traveling and hosting people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's an important dude, but we will hold it down again without him, and this week we are going to debrief our week in gaming. We're going to fall in on the mission objective, which is our top 10 desert island games. We'll talk about what that means later and then we will go over the fence and outside the wire and talk about what we have been doing outside of board gaming. Before we start, I do have to give a couple of shout outs. One we are so close to 1000 followers on Instagram. We have six more people to go, and then we have 1000 followers. Then we have over 300 downloads on Buzzsprout and various podcast apps.
Speaker 2:So shout out to our listeners who have been listening every week. One of those followers I want to shout out Amanda from Empty Nest Board Mama. She has been super supportive since episode one, has been chiming in on all of our posts, has been going back and forth with us on Instagram, and now she's friends with us on Instagram, and now she's friends with me on Board Game Arena and we are playing a game of Castles of Burgundy. So, yeah, shout out to Amanda from Empty Nest Board Game Mama. And also to our other listener, just as important a one, phil Walker Harding. So, phil, thank you for listening. We appreciate your followership. We appreciate you tuning in every single week. I know that you wait on baited breath to hear what we have to say about board games.
Speaker 1:Thank you, phil walker harding yeah, I mean it's tbd if he's actually listening. I, we don't have those stats.
Speaker 1:I don't want to give any misrepresentation of our influence here, but he did follow us unprovoked on Instagram, which I don't know how else you stumble across Operation Game Night without having given us a listen. So yeah, phil Walker-Harding, if you're out there, love your games. Big fan Sushi Go great Baron Park, love it. Gizmos awesome game. Yeah, the list goes on and on. He's almost like Kinesia-esque in my esteem of the ability to put out approachable games. So, phil, we love you.
Speaker 2:He may be on the board game Mount Rushmore, mount Rushmore, the Mount Rushmore of board gaming, yeah, yeah. So, phil, if you're listening, please hit us up on Instagram. Chime in. We want to hear from you. Leave us a comment, leave us a like, a subscribe, and we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, echoing what you're saying about Amanda, she's awesome. Definitely give her a follow.
Speaker 2:So and Amanda, I have not forgotten about your operation game night logo shirt that you want to wear to pack. So thank you for chiming in and we have a new logo forthcoming and by the time this posts, we should have a new logo up on website, up on your different podcasting apps, so maybe we can turn that logo into a shirt and we'll get that to you for PAX. Anyways, clay, debrief your week for me Alright.
Speaker 1:So the big debrief item this week was Mary, and I got Ankh, gods of Egypt, played this week. So if you're not familiar with Ankh, it is the third game in a trilogy of games by CoolMiniOrNot and Eric Lang. This came after the success of Blood Rage and then Rising Sun and then along came Ankh. And what drove me to pick up Ankh was it promised to be a big old troops on the map game that played well at two players. So, generally speaking, a lot of my gameplay is at two players with Mary. So, you know, playing a Blood Rage or Rising Sun didn't seem as likely and I definitely wanted to try out one of these three games because they are very well regarded in the board game sphere. So Ankh was the one that seemed the most likely to get played for me, and it has. We've played it many times and this week we got it played again. So in Ankh you are gods of Egypt and you are fighting for control of the most followers. You know getting the most devotion from your loyal religious. I think they're called followers in the game, yeah. So you're trying to gain followers as a god and you're competing against the other gods, which in my case was just one other god. But anyway, ankh has this super cool action slash event system. So you have this shared track action slash event system. So you have this shared track of the different actions you can take. So anytime you take an action, it moves a marker along this track. So either person taking the move figures action will move this marker and then if that marker gets to the end of the track, it triggers an event that's beneficial for the person who triggered it. So it's this super interesting push and pull of knowing that if I take this action, I'm going to set up the next person to trigger an event. You usually want to try and be the one that triggers events, but sometimes you just got to do the stuff. So the actions you're taking are moving figures about this board and these figures are beautiful. I mean you got it's cool mini or not, and the minis are cool. All right, the god figures are massive, beautiful, beautiful miniatures. So you can move your beautiful miniatures around the map and the movement is super simple. It's just you can move all your figures up to three spaces. The only restriction is they have to end in an empty space. So pretty streamlined movement. You can summon it's summon one figure. So if you take that action, you can summon one figure next to one of your other figures or a monument that you control. The third thing you can do is gain followers. So you gain followers based on the amount of figures you have adjacent to monuments. And the fourth thing is unlocking these Ankh powers that you have on your board that give you these asymmetric abilities and special powers. So those are the four actions. They're super easy to understand as you play. But, man, this game is like a.
Speaker 1:You can get big brain about this game, like I was saying, with the event triggering. So when you trigger those events, you're going to gain control of monuments that you're adjacent to. So you have to try and time that up right so that your figures are adjacent to a monument. When you trigger that event, you're trying not to set somebody else up so that they can trigger the event and gain control of those monuments, because that's going to be how you score a lot of points. And then I talked about the monuments being an event a lot of points. And then I talked about the monuments being an event.
Speaker 1:There's also an event that lets you put out these camel caravans. So the board is divided up into depending on the scenario. You play different regions and they'll have markers saying this region one, two, three and those come into play when you go into a conflict. And if you trigger the camel caravan event, you can split up these regions even more, and so you get to decide where to split up the region that might be beneficial for you and add this new region to the board. So big brain stuff. I have not figured out what the strategy is for using the camel caravans. I'm just like I'll split it up here, um, but then the fourth event and this is where you spend a lot of the time of the game is a conflict and the comp, the battle in ankh.
Speaker 1:I love, I love the, the card system they have here, because each player has the same set of seven battle cards, and so when you trigger a conflict, you start with the lowest numbered region and you start battling, and so you each secretly choose one of these cards that have these. They either just add strength to your troops in the region or there's ones that give you devotion for your followers. If you you, for how many people of your figures died in that battle? So you're trying to like get in each other's head like what are they going to do in this region? Because if they're going really big here, I don't want to necessarily, I don't think I can win, but maybe they're not going to play that card. So you know the seven cards, you know what they have, you know what you have and once you play that card so you know the seven cards, you know what they have, you know what you have, and once you play a card, you can't play it again until you play in a future conflict a card that lets you reclaim all your cards.
Speaker 1:So if you're going through every conflict phase, you have four regions that you're going to.
Speaker 1:In the first phase you play one of your cards. Next phase you play another. Now I know you've used your two good cards, so maybe in region three I think you're going to reclaim those two good cards. So anyway, it's just this interesting like getting in each other's heads trying to figure out when to play these cards. One of them lets you build a monument and immediately gain control of it.
Speaker 1:So in conflicts, when you're scoring all the points, you score points for how many monuments you have control of majority of in that region and then you gain another point if you won the battle Again. There's other ways to score points based on the cards, but that's generally what you're trying to do and you're racing to get to the top of this devotion track, so conflicts are neat. It's very chess like trying to set yourself up on this thing and I am not good at it. Mary has beaten me most times. We've played this and again I got it because it promised to be a good two-player troops on map game and it is. But I would be remiss not to mention that there is not controversy, but there is a very it might be controversy, it's a bit contentious.
Speaker 1:A bit contentious about the merge mechanic, which I've only played this game with more than two players once, so I can't speak very well on my thoughts about it. But essentially, if you play with more than two players, you get to a certain point in the game where the last two people merge together and they combine the strengths of their god into one, and so you basically wipe all the pieces off of the person in last place and they can take actions now as if they're using the pieces of the person in second to last and you can combine all the powers you had. If you had any guardians which are like these special monsters you can unlock as you go through the game, you share those. Now. Yeah, some people enjoy it, say it makes it interesting. Some people don't like it. It feels like just player elimination by another name.
Speaker 1:I personally don't care for it because I don't know. I just don't know that it was that Obviously I was one of the merged characters because I'm usually pulling up the pulling up the rear in most games. So when we did do it, I remember thinking like, ok, I don't really enjoy having to consult with a person about every little thing I'm doing here. Something to think about if you're planning on playing this game with more than two players. But I would definitely give this game high marks for a two-player. Troops on a map game beautiful to look at, very streamlined in the actions you're taking, but super thinky, too thinky for me. But fun.
Speaker 2:yeah, as somebody who has only played this, my couple of first impressions when you and I played it was the miniatures cool, cool, many or not is often like hit or miss with their miniatures. This is a hit, like, those miniatures are beautiful and they're big and they're awesome and they make me want to get really good at painting, but it's a little daunting with the size of some of those God figures. Two make me want to get really good at painting, but it's a little daunting with the size of some of those god figures. Uh. Two, this game is easy to pick up and difficult to master. Like, like you said, there's some deep strategy there. I think the first time I got swept by you because you were building the monuments all over the place and in the rundown of the game I guess I did not grasp that like the monuments were worth that much money or that many amount of points and so I just got trounced. But yeah, this game is awesome, super thematic. I really enjoyed Ankh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was a great one. I did get Rising Sun recently.
Speaker 2:I see it back there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am very anxious to get that played, so just gotta find the right group. Is that uh? Is that not two player as well? I don't think so. I think there's a lot of like uh alliance forming in rising sun. That's like the kind of hook of it from what I gathered and I don't I don't know that two-player alliances work well in a two-player game. Fair enough, yeah. So what's your week been looking like Travis, besides Glendie and the little monster?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a bit of a busy week, a bit of a busy stay-at-home week, but we did get horrified Greek monsters to the table and man, that is more horrified, if you like the horrified systems and you've played a horrified game before it is more of that. They have some unique monsters, they have, uh, some unique locations and items and instead of villagers or civilians you have what are called legends and the legends are figures throughout greek history. So you have, you have, like jason from jason and the argonauts, you have these kind of mythological type greek legends that uh move across the map like you would civilians or or townsfolk in the other horrified games, the starter game or the first time you play it, ravensburger recommends that you play with Cerberus and the Basilisk and Cerberus you have to open up the gates of hell and push him through the gates to beat him. So the gates of hell are a little five piece puzzle on his player mat. Once you move and you reveal the different gates and you find the gates of hell, gates of Hades, you have to roll these. You discard items to roll these dice. If you get matching symbols, as the ones that match the different pieces on his puzzle, then you pull that piece off Once you have all five pieces done. You have to discard items to push him to that area. So when we were playing, we ended up gathered on the gates of Hades and he was just tracking us down turn by turn and by the time we unlocked it, he flipped his card, he came right to us and we won the game.
Speaker 2:The basilisk is a little different. I can't remember their unique player powers, to be honest, but every monster has their own unique player powers. The basilisk we had to go to the four corners of the map, to these different temples, and discard items to the player mat. Then, once we had all four temples filled on the player mat, we had to go to the space of the basilisk and discard a point value of items 30 or greater. But when, uh, you use the items that are already discarded on the, on the monster mat the basilisk monster mat each of those items gets plus two strength and some of these physical items, the, the gold ones were like value seven, value six, value five, and so by the time we discarded those ones, we were like 28 and we had to discard one other item to beat the basilisk. So it's meant to be easy.
Speaker 2:For a reason the first time we only played with those two monsters, but I kind of flipped through the other ones that were available. They have medusa, they have a, the minotaur, and so those two were pretty interesting and they kind of stuck out to me because each of the monsters has a different kind of puzzle that you have to solve to beat them. So the minotaur, as you find his puzzle pieces, you put them down on the mat, and the puzzle pieces are maybe I don't know, there's maybe five or six, but they make up a maze, and so when you put them on the mat they might not be in the correct order because the maze is like just a bunch of random lines, and so you put them down on the mat in whatever order you think they go in, but then you can discard items to rearrange the pieces on the puzzle until you have a completed maze. That makes sense. So that might be a little interesting. I don't know how much longevity you can get, because once you like memorize where those pieces go on the player mat, it'd be a little easy. But Medusa has a cool one where you have to find the areas that have the. She has four areas that have mirrors on them and you have to discard items to push medusa to the area that has a mirror and she has to end on a space that has a mirror. And once you take all four mirrors and you add them to your her player board, then she's she's frozen in stone and you and you beat medusa. So they do have some thematic ones.
Speaker 2:I don't know how many of these horrified games I actually need in my collection, because they kind of feel the same. I wish the monsters and stuff were interchangeable between the different sets, but the items and the maps are very specific. So yeah, if I'm going to keep any of them, I'd probably keep horrified Greek monsters over the American monsters, just because I have more greater awareness of the Greek pantheon of gods than I do American folklore or the Horrified Monster movie villains like Frankenstein and Dracula and stuff. So I'll probably keep one of them. I know that they have the world of monsters coming up that has yeti and cthulhu and a couple of other ones, and that one's a little unique because with the cthulhu map you go back and forth between two different maps. Don't quote me on that but.
Speaker 2:I think that that's how it works, like you're actually traveling to the other side, to cthulhu's world, to solve problems, then go back to the other one. So that's kind of an interesting mechanic that continue to evolve on these and make them more complex. But for now I think I only need one of these in my collection and I'll probably end up sticking with Greek monsters over the others.
Speaker 1:That's fair. I I uh, as promised on our fall episode, when you said talked about horrified, I was like daggone. I know I liked that when we played it. I'm going to get it. And then you a couple of days later sent me it on sale Prime Day, and I got it.
Speaker 1:And this week I played, you know, just the standard first version of Horrified with Mason and Isaac. Again they're eight and six and it was pretty easy to get them up and running. Again, with cooperative games it makes it pretty easy because you can kind of guide them in the right direction. But yeah, I really enjoy the Horrified system. It's growing on me the more I play it. Just the way you use those items both as defense against the monsters attacking you, and they have so much versatility in the way they're used for each of the different monsters you're trying to defeat. It's great. And it gives me a lot of Marvel United vibes too, because you have that like advance phase and then you can defeat the monster. Just like in Marvel United, you have to complete two missions before you can actually start attacking the villain in that game. So they're very similar in how they play and I feel a little weight. But I like having a horrified game on the shelf.
Speaker 1:Which monsters did you fight against? The first time we did the Invisible man and Dracula and we beat that pretty easy. And then yesterday we tried the Invisible man, Dracula, Dracula and the creature from the black lagoon and we ran, we ran out of time, Deck ran out. So, yeah, we were kind of dilly dally and wasn't a lot of focus amongst the three of us about you know how we were going to approach, approach the different challenges and we were just kind of trying to survive. So, yeah, we got time capped but it was still fun, Did you?
Speaker 2:guys lose a lot of what do they call them villagers? In that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we lost a couple.
Speaker 2:We lost almost all of the legends that they call them in Greek monsters. They would come out and, for whatever reason, it was the the luck of the draw and I pulled the wrong legends at the wrong time. But they were spawning like right behind the monster and they were having to go across the monster's space to get to wherever they needed to go. So it was really hard to go in and rescue them and like escort them, and they were just getting eaten up by Cerberus every single time. We lost probably four or five of them. We were almost at the end of the horror track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was advancing. And then, um, but Rachel played one of the characters whose special ability was, every time the horror track moves up, she got a perk card for her character. So she was just rolling in these perk cards that were helping us out and that's probably why we won in the end. So, yeah, it's a fun system, it's, it's a, it's a good game and they're readily available. They're cheap and they have some cool systems. They're accessible to all ages and, yeah, horrified, it's a cool game nice.
Speaker 1:I got one more item for the debrief, if you're please, if you'll allow it. Yeah, so not a gameplay, but something I'm super excited about and we we chatted about it on WhatsApp. But Bitewing Games I think I mentioned them in my collection episode about a publisher that has really been coming on for me, mainly due to their love for Reiner Knizia, but they just launched a Kickstarter called the Epic Sci-Fi Trilogy by Reiner Knizia and I am so excited about this. I mean a lot of these Kickstarter games. They look awesome and you think, man, that looks great, beautiful pieces, going to be awesome.
Speaker 1:But they're usually like these bloated games that I'll probably actually never get to play that much because they're either too complex or just got too much of a setup. But I know the folks at Bitewing take good care and they kind of have a similar taste in gaming as I do, and so, after looking at the games Silos is the first one and it's a reimplementation of a older kanitsa game called unicipium or something. But I looked at the rules, for that seems super straightforward. You're just trying to get like area control and your aliens trying to collect humans on these, uh, different spaces. But uh, that one looks super interesting. I love that that UFO maple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my God, sucking up cows and townsfolk and yeah, it's going to be great.
Speaker 1:But and then, uh, ego is the one I'm most excited about, because I recently got Bay of Wolf the legend after hearing it talked about on I think it was, uh, so very wrong. About games podcast they're they're big fans of that game and if you don't know this which I don't know why anybody would who's listening to this except for my family, which I guess is most of our listeners? I gave myself the nickname Clayowolf in high school and so Beowulf has always held a near and dear place to my heart. So when I heard good things about a Reiner Knizia game that was auctions and it was themed around the Beowulf a poem, is it a poem? But anyway, when I heard that was a decent game, I picked that up on eBay, played it once and I don't know what to say about it. I'm not going to like go into a review on it because I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:It's a different type of game for sure. Like it's just all these different. You just move down this track and each track is like a different thing in the game. So you move the guy a space and it's like okay, everybody draws two cards now. Then you move the guy a space and it's like, okay, everybody draws two cards. Now then you move the guy another space and like, okay, if you want to, you can risk it and try and draw two cards, but if you don't get the cards that you're supposed to get, you have to take a wound and then all that's like building your hand to try and go into these auctions, which are either a like clockwise auction, kind of like for sale, almost where you're, one person plays one card of the symbol needed for the auction. The next person has to at least match that and you keep going around until someone passes and that person that passes they get the lowest choice of reward for that auction, and so there's that type of auction. Then there's like a blind auction where everybody just puts down cards of these symbols. So the whole game is just collecting cards with different symbols and then going into these auctions where you're trying to use those symbols. But there's these like certain events that let you risk to try and get more cards. But if you don't get it, then you like take wounds and such, and ego is a re-implementation of that game and I watched some gameplays of it.
Speaker 1:Looks awesome and I really enjoyed like it's so basic, like the, the gameplay of it just gathering cards and then auctioning them. There's it's hard to call it theme, but they try, uh. But ego looks cool and I'm anxious to, you know, get a refresh. Take on that game from Bitewing. And then the last one is Orbit, which just kind of looks like an abstract game where you're trying to race to get to these different planets. And I'll be happy to play that too because, again, it looks easy to get to the table, simple rule set, and I am straight up pumped about all three of those games. I backed it. I'm there, you, about all three of those games.
Speaker 2:I backed it. I'm there, I'll get it Number one backer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll get it in a year whenever it comes out, but bite when games. If you're listening and you need a review, I will probably give a favorable one. Just kidding. Yes, I'm an unbiased journalist here, so that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going list here, so that's right. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you to talk about those because I'm also pretty excited. I want to get those tried. I watched a couple playthroughs of silos and that looks great. I'm super pumped about that. Yeah, go get them. Bite wing, go get yeah, always bite wings, always coming in strong with their production, so I'm pretty excited about it. Now we will move on the mission objective, which is our top 10 desert island games. So what games you would play for the rest of eternity if you're trapped on a desert island with nothing but board games and assuming people to play them with? Yeah, that's a big assumption. That's a big assumption. That's a big assumption. So, clay, how did you go about choosing your games?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I went with 10 games that occupy a different genre or space that I feel like I would definitely want to have a game for this scenario or for this genre if I only could have 10 games. So that's how I approached it. I kind of went through and said you know, this is my party game that I'm going to have, and for the rest of eternity it's just this. So that's how I approached it. How about you?
Speaker 2:So I kind of threw a bunch of games together that sprung to mind when I thought about Desert Island, but I'm going to do my best to try and de-conflict mine with yours. So maybe we're trapped on the island together and now we have 20 games, or I know that we're going to have a couple of overlaps, but I don't want to just repeat the same games and say ditto every time. So I also tried to have a good swath of mechanics and types of games and some different weights of games, and we'll see how we shake out and see which overlaps we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is my 10 game collection.
Speaker 2:If I could only have 10 for the rest of my life, uh did you put yours in any order, or are you just gonna, you're just gonna, say them no, there's no, no order.
Speaker 1:They're all equally important to me and I am making the assumption that expansions are on the table. Sure, why not? Okay, all right. Cool, I was making a big assumption there. All right, I'll kick it off with the game that I'm taking to occupy primarily the solo mode of my life, and that is Trailblazers, by the aforementioned Bitewing Games.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I love Trailblazers. It is so simple. It packs up in this cool little what would you call that thing a carabiner.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or yeah, so you can fit everything. It's like a little baggie that attaches A carabiner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or uh yeah, so you can attach this to a carabiner? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Just like uh, so you got this cool little rugged production on it Perfect for a desert Island and you're essentially just trying to create these different loops with these cards, with all these weird squiggles on, and you know, you sit down to play it solo and you can be done in like 20 minutes. And it's also kind of a cheat for a solo game because it actually does play up to eight players and it does it pretty well because it is a drafting game, so everybody is picking and placing their cards at the same time, so it comes with enough cards and components to play with eight players. So although I like to play it solo because it's just a simple little puzzly game, it does play with eight players, so I could also use it for that. Yeah, so Trailblazers is the first game I'm bringing with me to a desert island.
Speaker 2:Okay, I see your solo game and my number one game is going to be Marvel Champions Living Card Game. This game is super complex and deep and there's a thousand ways that you can deck, build and swap cards around and they just keep coming out with more and more expansions. But even the base set itself. People can put hundreds of plays into that thing and never get the same game twice. So it could play solo, you can play two-handed, you can play up to four people. It's a great complex card battling system that is well automated and easy to jump into. Difficult to master. Marvel champions living card game by fantasy games.
Speaker 1:All right, I should have assumed that was going to come up on your list. That's a good one. You saw my little baby solo game and you raised me a complicated solo game. But that's why we make a good podcast, because we have slightly different takes. My number two game that I'm taking is gonna fill the role of the epic battling game and I'm, as I am looking at my list right now, I have two on there and this is kind of a theme of my whole list.
Speaker 1:Here is that I'm having trouble with the prompt because there's games I've played a lot already and know I love. But there's also games I'm like if I'm going to a desert island, do I want to bring this game I maybe haven't played so much and worn out yet. So for the epic category, I've got Arcs and Root here as the two I know. Root is awesome, especially with all the expansions. You could play that game into eternity. I mean you could probably play the base game, like you said with Marble Champions. You could probably play the base Root with people and the strategies are just endlessly evolving with how those characters interact and how the players play them. But Arx, with the Bladed Reach expansion, I haven't played it but I want to.
Speaker 1:I know I love Arx, the core gameplay and those little mini campaigns that it gives you. I don't know, I'm going to go with Root. I, I know, I know Root, I love Root. Arx is still it's still still too new, but Root is a game that if, if you're on a desert Island with people and you have the time which I was assumed between catching fish and lazing around the beach, you would have some time to play Root and you get a group of your island buddies together, man, you could really dive into this one the way it deserves to be dove into. So that is my epic category of game.
Speaker 2:It's like chess at this point, like there's so many complex starts and moves and strategies to root and shoot. There's like an entire podcast devoted to just each faction and the best starts to each faction, depending on the other factions that you're battling, and how to set yourself up. And it's yeah, it's pretty wild, yeah, but what's your next one?
Speaker 2:If we're sticking with epic battle games, I also have a campaign game. I think I'm going to bring either Gloomhaven or Frosthaven and I'm leaning towards Frosthaven because I don't know anybody that has actually finished both of those campaigns and if I'm stuck on a desert island, I know Frosththaven. That box is like 60 pounds by itself. It's like this giant chonky boy and I really enjoy the uh jaws of the lion and I know it's got some pretty awesome, easy to learn, difficult to master battle systems, dual use cards. You can play different roles. Uh, I just got the uh the gloom haven, buttoned bugs, the solo only campaign, and that was really fun. It's pretty cool. I've played it, I've played it twice already and it's got a gloom haven systems just miniaturized into a tiny little box that fits in my backpack. So yeah, I think I think if I'm going to invest some time in a giant campaign, it'll probably be frost.
Speaker 1:Haven. Yeah, I, that was definitely on my, on my short list of a game to take God, so much content. I mean, if you're only going to have 10 games, you want something that's going to have some real legs to it. So that's a good choice. All right For my uh, my Island parties parties. I'm going to be hosting my party game. Entry to my 10 Desert Island games is going to be Wavelength.
Speaker 1:There's so many good party games, but Wavelength is the one that I enjoy the most.
Speaker 1:It's got the cool little pop-out component with the wheel that you're spinning, it's easy to pop in and out of, you can get on teams of any number of players, so you're really not limited by components in any way, and it generates such cool conversations afterwards.
Speaker 1:So if you're not familiar with Wavelength, basically there's just like this meter wheel and one person spins it randomly and looks at it secretly to see where the little dial is and then you get a card that says like hot on one side of the wheel, cold on the other, and you have to give a clue that tries to get somebody to guess where the dial is. So if it was like dead center, I would say like tap water or something and they see hot and cold and they're trying to figure out where I think tap water is in between hot and cold. And so you know, the team's like working together to get that placement. And then they're trying to get in your head like what's this guy thinking about that? And it just creates such fun conversations afterward and you reveal it and you're like, oh geez, it was way off. What were you thinking um? But anyway, wavelength is my party game forever nice I.
Speaker 2:It's not really a party game, but my next game is actually. I'm going to call an audible and go with blood on the clock tower. Whoa, blood on the clock tower by pandemonium institute and bumblebee interactive and fun tales. Blood on the clock tower I got to watch this uh played at sn last year and I am pumped about this game. I'm eventually going to get it someday, but it's pretty low complexity and it can play up to 20 people, so that flight that you crashed with can all get in on this game. It's got deduction, it's got bluffing, it's got hidden roles, negotiation, it's got all sorts of mechanics and you're trying to deduce who is playing what role, who the betrayers are, and it's got some awesome interaction and I I just love this type of party game, that hidden role type deduction party game.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna go with blood on the clock tower as my next game that sounds like it would be an awesome way to kill some time on the beach while sipping some island painkillers. All right, my next one is in my two-player category and I'm looking at it now and I'm having second thoughts. I had Sky Team written down here Great game. But I have to go with my heart, and my heart is calling me back to Lost Cities. Lost Cities is almost a perfect card game. It just is so tense the dueling of two players. If you're not familiar with it, it's a Canizia game. It is themed around going on these expeditions, but that obviously doesn't matter because it's a Canizia game.
Speaker 1:Essentially, you have these different suited cards from two to ten and you're trying to stack them in order, on your side of the table, to score points. So I'm going to try and make this not sound as complicated. It's not as complicated as I'm going to make it sound. But essentially, once you start playing blue cards on your side of the table, once you start laying blue cards down, you're like immediately in the negatives for blue, because you start with negative 20 points just for starting that expedition. So you're banking on getting a lot of blue cards in that column and your opponent sees that, and so on your turn, you're either playing a card to your column or you're discarding a card to the middle area where your opponent could pick it up.
Speaker 1:Card to the middle area where your opponent could pick it up and, man like, sometimes you're just like I, I do not want to start this expedition yet because I'm hoping my opponent throws out some cards that I could use for it. But eventually, like you have to play a card and you don't want to throw a card out they might want. So you want to start an expedition on your side, but it's so tense, like. It's a great game, mary, and I play it all the time and if I'm only having one two-player only game, that's the one I want nice, good choice.
Speaker 2:I thought about that rolling right actually because the lost cities rolling right is also great and I have played that probably more than any other rolling right because that's our go-to travel rolling right game.
Speaker 1:It's a good, good system. They got. They got. There's a lost seas empire. Now I think they have a board game too. There's like lost seas, rivals lost, yeah, yeah dang okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad you picked a two-player game, because my next one I will counter with another two-player Spirits of the Wild. Spirits of the Wild was released in 2018, designed by Nick Hayes and published by Mattel. This is a hard-to-find game now, but it's pretty awesome. You have a bunch of gems in a bag and you are pulling those gems out of the bag, putting them in a little bowl and drafting those gems out of the bowl to fill your player board, and your player board has different sets that you're trying to complete. So it's sets of two of this, of matching colors, a three of a kind, you know, a full house, one of every color, and then you have the option to draft these clear gems that will double your score on that section but close you down from putting any further gems on that section of your board, and you do that by flipping these cards in front of you.
Speaker 2:Each player has six cards in front of them. Each of your decks of cards are the exact same and when you use that card, you flip it over, and two of the cards have half of a fox. When you complete the fox by flipping those two cards, you take this little plastic fox token and you get to put it on a section of the other player's board which blocks them from playing into that section. It's just really fun back and forth, it's super simple to understand, the games go really fast and you have these unique spirit powers that you can use, that you can draft from when you earn the right to do so. It's awesome and it's I'm really bummed that they have not continued to produce this game, because it's a game that I would recommend to anybody. It's rated eight and up and it's really easy and pretty fun and it's a great quick date night game yeah, you let mary and I borrow this game, and I was.
Speaker 1:It was awesome, and I was super bummed out when you informed me that I could not find this game anywhere. So, yeah, good choice, I'd like to throw. I was sitting there thinking I did not do lost cities justice in the way I described it. So if, for whatever reason, you don't know lost cities, just watch a five minute YouTube video and they'll do a much better job explaining it. But just know, for this podcast purposes, it's the two-player game I'm taking with me. It's super easy, tense and you'll love it.
Speaker 1:Uh, my next one falls into my euro game category, and the one I'm going to be taking with me on a desert Island is merchants Cove. So merchants Cove is like the root of Euro games, essentially, where each player is playing their own separate game. So I'm definitely banking on like needing a lot of replayability. I don't know Cause. I was up in the air about this. I'm like man castle of Burgundy should be the choice right? It's one of my top games of all time. I've played it millions of times. I'm like, ah, it's already starting to get old. I've played it so much. I still love it, but would it definitely get old if it was my only Euro game.
Speaker 1:But Merchant's Cove with the different factions is probably not as solid of an actual gameplay, but it does make it interesting to be able to be like oh, I want to be the faction that does the dice placement this time, and there's a faction that does this cool little potion explosion marble thing. So you're all trying to do the same thing, essentially and creating these goods to sell as merchants, but you all have these separate ways that you're doing it. I think it's super cool. I backed two years ago the update Kickstarter that's adding a bunch of new characters, like there's a bakery which has this cool little wheel system. There's like a deep sea diver which is like I think it's going to be like a push your luck type of character. So Merchants Cove is definitely not the best Euro game I have. So Cove is definitely not the best Euro game I have, but I love the variability in the characters and I think that would keep me coming back and occupied for some time.
Speaker 2:Is that like an engine building, like you're trying to build up an engine as you go along, or is it strictly like get as many points as you can?
Speaker 1:It's just getting points. So you're yeah, you're just. Yeah, it depends on your person what you're doing, but at the end of the day you're just oh yeah, there's like a rolling right one too. It's the Oracle. There's one that's like a Mancala system where you're, you know, moving your little track. I think you're picking up dragon poop as a dragon keeper. But anyway, all that to say, you're just trying to create these goods of different colors. So everybody at the end of the day, is going to create green goods, red goods, yellow goods, and then it's like a stock manipulation game where you're trying to make the goods that you're making worth more during that round by, like, putting these characters on ships. But it's a cool game and I thought I deserved a shout out as a desert island game for being a unique euro game with all that different asymmetry in the characters I am going to go with castles of burgundy then.
Speaker 2:If you did not take it, castles of burgundy is so much fun, it's great. It's got a little bit of luck, a little bit of strategy. It's got pretty tense moments where you're waiting for that next turn to come around so you can use your dice, you can take advantage and move your ship up the track, and it never gets old for me. I think this game is great. I do find it kind of a pain in the butt to set up and place the tiles out between rounds and do all that stuff. Like the maintenance of the game is a little difficult and kind of tedious. But if you're stuck on a desert island you have plenty of time for tedium.
Speaker 1:So castles of burgundy is my next choice and you're really doing a good job of uh bobbing and weaving with me here.
Speaker 2:I like it doing it on the fly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some people are just built different.
Speaker 1:So when I'm on my island and I need to go across the island visit somebody else, I need my small box game of choice to carry with me, and for that I'm taking For Sale. So For Sale has gotten so much play. For me it is a simple auction game where you're laying out properties and you are putting money out to say how much you would spend on those properties. The first one that passes has to take the least valuable property out there, but they also don't have to spend all their money, so that's good. And then, once all the properties have been bought up, then you enter the second phase of the game, where you're then selling those properties for money, which is like a blind auction Kind of. Everybody puts a property down, whoever has the highest value property gets to take the highest money showing out there, and so on. But yeah, this game is super easy to teach, super quick to play. I like auctions and for sale is a great small box game to have around when I need to trek it across the island.
Speaker 2:Hmm, good choice. Small box game huh, I will go with. I think I'm going to go with Mountain Goats by AllPlay Dang nice A little. Push your luck. Small box. It's kind of like Can't Stop where you're trying to push your Mountain Goat up these different tracks but you don't end your turn once your Mountain Goat goes to the top. You have to keep it there and continue to score points there, because there can only be one Mountain Goat at the top of each of these tracks. And this game actually has a little bit of strategy. It's not just roll the dice and see what you get and move up. You can kind of pick and choose your time to attack and take the place of the mountain goats and score your points. So I'm gonna go with all plays mountain goats for my number six yeah, I love, I love Mountain Goats.
Speaker 1:That's a good game. We should fire a game of Mountain Goats up on Board Game Arena after we finish.
Speaker 2:We absolutely should. I love that game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nice. So my next category of game I want to have is a racing game. Because I enjoy racing games, so I need to take one. Because I enjoy racing games, so I need to take one. And the one I'm picking is Thunder Road Vendetta. Because this game is just racing, but with fighting and fun and chaos, and just creates the most awesome moments where you smash your car into somebody else's car and that ricochets them into this crash that was already there, and then they go off the map and their car's out for the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's kind of. I say it's a racing game, but it's. It's a fighting game too, because in order for anybody to win the game, somebody has to get eliminated completely. All their cars have to be eliminated from the board, or else nobody can win. You just race forever. But yeah, thunder Road Vendetta so much fun, it's easy to teach. I don't know who I'm with on this island. I'm not trying to tell them a million rules every time. Just be like here's your cars, roll your dice, move one Shoot if you want to, and that's Thunder Road V road vendetta. And that's coming with me. Did you back that?
Speaker 1:kickstarter no, oh, I am very sad about the fact I didn't well, my uh copy of thunder road should be arriving here shortly so hopefully it comes to my house, if you all might okay.
Speaker 2:Well then, I'll talk about a different Kickstarter that recently arrived, and that is Dungeon Cart by Brotherwise Games. Dungeon Cart is based off of the Boss Monster franchise by Brotherwise Games, and those different Boss Monster games are based off of old, retro video games, and so Dungeon Kart is the Mario Kart 64 of the Brotherwise boss monster series and you play as the bad guys, and this is a kart racer, so it's got a modular board. Every race is different, all the bosses play different, they all have their own special player abilities, and you are racing around this track. You are shifting your cart up and down. That allows you to do different things. You got to go slow on dangerous terrain, got to go fast on the clean terrain.
Speaker 2:There are heroes that will pop out. Because you're playing as the bad guys, the heroes will pop out and try and stop you, so you have to fight the heroes and each other as you race around this track. There's items, there's magic, there's all sorts of nonsense that goes on. It's a little bit of battling, a little bit of racing, plus the Kickstarter version that just arrived came with a thousand heroes plus a bunch of bonus heroes from the Kickstarter. So I'm taking that bigstarter pledge dungeon cart game with me on my desert island for my racing game that sounds super fun and yeah, my kids are.
Speaker 1:My kids are very into mario kart right now. So when did this deliver?
Speaker 2:it got here a couple months ago. I just haven't busted it out yet okay, maybe I'll see it somewhere eventually. Yeah, maybe I'll get Rachel to play with me sometime. It's pretty light. It's rated 2.25. Weight on BGG. I'll definitely have to teach it, and play it sometime and maybe I'll post something.
Speaker 1:Alright. The next genre of game that I can't live without is a push your luck game, and again I have two sitting here waiting for me to make this decision. I'm going with mlem. I didn't want to go with it just because we talked about the other week and I didn't want to give it some more airwaves when I could be spreading that love to another game. But I really enjoy Mlem. It's just fun in that, trying to ride together in a rocket as far as you can into space and rolling those dice, seeing how far you go. Yeah, I enjoy it very much and there is enough decision-making to make it interesting if you're trying to be all gamery about it or you can just have fun and try and get as far as you can before hopping off. But yeah, I'm taking Mlem so I can get my fix of rolling dice and trying to tempt the gods, hmm.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have to come up with a good oh push your luck game. All right, I'm going. Quacks of Quedlinburg.
Speaker 1:That was the other one I had written down right next to Millenium, so I'm glad you went with it. It deserves to be on the island so good.
Speaker 2:You build your bag. There's tons of replayability because all of the different items that you're putting into your bag have alternate versions that you can play with that all do different things. The expansions are all great and make the game more complex. There's a little more to think about as you build your potions and man. The feeling of reaching into a bag and pulling out chips is always a plus for me. So I'm going Quacks of Quedlinburg, the big box for my. What was that number eight? Yep, I got two more here. Awesome Number eight game. Quacks of Quedlinburg.
Speaker 1:That's coming Coming in for my cooperative game of choice this will be probably the least surprising one is Marvel United. I mean, obviously I love the gameplay and I love the theme. I love Marvel. Gameplay is super clean, cards are easy to understand what you're doing. But all that aside, the amount of content there is, if you have all the expansions for this, you could play this game every day and still, probably until you died and have a different combination of heroes and villains. So Marvel United is definitely coming with me because that would give me a good reason to actually get through all the content there is for Marvel United. If I had the time on my hands, that, I would on the island, because I'm not the guy on the island who's going to be building stuff or contributing in any meaningful way to forming a society there. I will just be there playing against thanos and the sinister sticks and I can't boil water.
Speaker 2:Right now. I have to defeat thanos yeah so that's coming excellent.
Speaker 2:Well, since you picked a large, many, many expansion cooperative game, I guess I will go with Zombicide for my number nine. Zombicide has a bazillion expansions. They all play different. You can kind of mix and match them and when you get a huge game of Zombicide going, it's pretty tense, makes for some good moments. You can have the Black Plague and they just released the. They just released the Marvel zombies, which I have not gotten to the table yet, but it's sitting downstairs Pretty excited about that. They've got prison outbreaks, They've got shopping malls, They've got all sorts of different areas and expansions and enemies and you could spend forever playing just on the side if you're into that mechanic. But it does make for some cool moments. Every game is different and pretty thematic, so I'm going to go with Zombicide for my number nine.
Speaker 1:Okay, nice. If I'm on an island and I only have 10 games, I probably would make the time and find the people to play this game that I know I'll probably enjoy, but I know it's going to be a lot of work. I've never played it, I've barely read the rules, but it has the pedigree of a game that I need to play before I die, and if I'm going to be on an Island, I'm probably dying there, so I'm taking oath with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I am hoping that I can get it played. I don't really have much to say about it other than it it's a campaign game from Leader Games and it looks super political and intriguing the way they've set it up. Yeah, Nice metal coins. Okay, that's my game.
Speaker 2:Complex law. Okay, your bold game. I'm going to go with War for the Ring. Lord of the Rings, war for the ring. Lord of the rings, war for the ring. And that is a game that I own, uh, and I bought it used and I had to take the opportunity while it was on the on the shelf and discounted, but it is a very long game and one that I cannot commit to in one sitting. So, yeah, I want to figure out War for the Ring. They have tons of cool expansions and some of them are as simple as just booklets. With new rules and scenarios in it. You could really dive in deep to Lord of the Rings, war for the Ring.
Speaker 2:I really want to get that played at some point.
Speaker 1:Awesome Dude, we did it. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm this is. This exercise has been enlightening for me. I am looking at these 10 games. I'm like, could I, could I be happy with just 10 games? Like if that's all I had forever, could I be happy? I'm thinking you know if these are the 10 games.
Speaker 2:I had, I think I could do it. Yeah, I mean, you would certainly have enough on your hands to keep you busy and to dive into, and some of those have pretty complex, deep systems, like Root alone. You could play thousands of games and never have the same scenario twice. So, yeah, I don't know if those are my favorite games, but those are certainly ones that will buy me enough time until rescue arrives on my desert Island.
Speaker 1:I'm not leaving the desert Island. If I'm there with games and I got some people with time on their hands, that's an ideal scenario. You don't have to drag me off the Island.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't even take that much energy. You got to rest during the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm setting up. I'm making a little sandcastle table. It's going to be beautiful.
Speaker 2:Excellent, you and Wilson playing all of your favorite games. Oh no, okay, are we ready to move on and go over the fence? Let's head over. All right, clay, what have you been doing outside of board gaming?
Speaker 1:last week we took the kids to see wild robot oh yeah and I it's hard for me to accurately judge a you know, an animated kids movie because, for whatever reason, every time I'm in a theater watching a kid's movie I cry. I don't know. They just make these things so daggone emotional and every time I see them I'm like that's amazing. That's amazing. But Wild Robot was really good and telling the tale of this robot crash landed on this island. Oh my gosh, how appropriate. The Wild Robot basically was on a desert island and she didn't have any games, but she did have this little gooseling gosling I guess they're called Gooseling Gooseling imprints upon her and she has to figure out how to be a mother. And it's a beautiful story. Definitely had me in tears, but I would definitely recommend that if you're a parent, you got kids or you're just a person that likes to feel something, go watch Wild Robot, because you will feel I promise, I heard good things about it.
Speaker 2:How does it stack up against the Iron Giant?
Speaker 1:I won't watch the Iron Giant. With my track record I'll fall apart.
Speaker 2:You get all worked up just talking about it.
Speaker 1:I know, yeah, I can't watch it. I haven't seen that since I was like a kid, so I can't. That one's heavy. Yeah, it's probably less sad than that from what I remember, but it's emotional.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, from what I remember, but it's emotional. Yeah, um, okay. Well, mine is kind of board game related, but not necessarily playing board games. I fell down a rabbit hole. Now that I am a father and don't have all the time in the world to sit down and play board games. We actually had to leave horrified greek monsters on the table overnight. I fell down a rabbit hole of board game tables and, oh, there's an, there's an awesome resource on board game geek. There's like a community post thread about people that post actual plans and layouts and budgets and stuff for board game tables and how to build them, step-by-step instructions, link to youtube videos. And I went down a rabbit hole at like 2 AM when I was rocking my daughter back to sleep.
Speaker 2:And man, now that I don't have time to sit down for multiple hours and now that I have all of these like big beefy single player campaign games that I could potentially leave on a table, I might need a board game table. So are you thinking about building one? I am considering it that I could potentially leave on a table. I might need a board game table. Are you thinking about building one? I am considering it. Somebody actually took a side table not a side table, but a round kitchen table that you would seat maybe two to four seats at and they actually built that into a board game table. I think that that might fit my needs. For now we have one that we thrifted in Colorado that I might rip apart and turn into a board game table someday.
Speaker 1:Dang. I won't lie to you, I am not handy enough to even dream of building a table. I can barely replace a light bulb when it goes out. So that sounds awesome. I would love to have somebody mentor me through the process, but on my own not going to happen. But recently I did go down a similar rabbit hole about standing board game tables. Because I like standing. I don't like sitting for that long. That's one of my biggest beefs about playing board games. I was like man, I wonder if they make standing board game tables. I didn't find any out the box, but there were threads on people taking a standing desk frame and turning it into a board game table. I was like shoot, that might be.
Speaker 2:so ikea makes a place for yeah, ikea makes those nice standing desks now that are motorized and people have been attaching board game toppers to that and so they just have this nice standing like raised and lower as needed table. That was once a ikea desk that they're turning into board game tables. But yeah, there's a. There's a big rabbit hole and I am also curious. I saw somebody the other day that has a um, somebody on instagram. I wish I could shout out their actual handle. But they had like a paint station that's built into the wall and it's got cabinets and drawers and stuff that all pull out and fold and it's got lamps that fold out and it's all compact into this nice like six inch deep cabinet. Man, oh my god, something like that would be so clutch for solo games yeah, there's a lot of ingenuity out there.
Speaker 2:I wish I had just a little if you are a manufacturer of board game tables and you want to have us do a review of a board game table, please hit us up.
Speaker 1:Yes, I will review your table, I promise.
Speaker 2:We will review your table, we will put it through the ropes. We will play all our games on that board game table. So yeah. Hit us up at operation game night on Instagram. Heck yeah, we did it, episode 10.
Speaker 1:We did it man heck, yeah, we did it, episode 10, we did it. Man, this is big 10 episodes. You still, you still feeling good about it, we still, we still cruising.
Speaker 2:I'm feeling great.
Speaker 2:I'm feeling great better than ever, yeah, yeah but if you are enjoying this podcast, uh, give us a like, a subscribe, a comment. You want to hear us talk about something board game related or not? Write us a message on instagram at operation game night podcast and uh, yeah, we read every single thing that you guys send to us. So please hit us up, let us know how we're doing and let us know if you like our new logo, because we'll have a new logo by then. Super excited for that. Thank you yet again for listening to the operation game night podcast. Jared, we miss you. Hopefully you'll be back with us next week. But for operation game, thank you yet again for listening to the Operation Game Night podcast, jared, we miss you. Hopefully you'll be back with us next week. But for Operation Game Night I have been Travis, he has been Clay. Have a good day, everybody, and we're out Bye.