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 13: Freshwater Fly, Gorilla Marketing, & Digital Board Games!
Happy Veteran's Day and Marine Corps Birthday! We venture into the dynamic world of board games, spotlighting "Super Mega Lucky Box," a digital game that adds a strategic twist to the classic bingo, and recounting our hilarious mishaps with "That's Not a Hat," a game that guarantees laughs even when we fumble the rules.
We then shift gears to a pair of party games that promise to spark creativity and camaraderie. In "Gorilla Marketing," players unleash their inner ad execs, dreaming up quirky product names and catchy slogans, while "Green Team Wins" challenges everyone to predict the group's consensus in a lively guessing game. Both games prove perfect for an evening filled with humor and creativity, reminding us of the sheer joy that comes from connecting with friends over a shared gaming experience.
Our conversation also delves into the realm of digital board game adaptations. We weigh the pros and cons of online gaming platforms, exploring how they offer a convenient alternative for complex titles like "Gloomhaven" and "Root." As Thanksgiving approaches, we share personal plans and aspirations, including a dream of opening a board game store, and reflect on the amusing antics of the Kelsey brothers during a football-packed weekend. Join us for an episode brimming with appreciation, laughter, and a genuine love for the gaming community.
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. Happy Veterans Day to all of our veterans out there. By the time you listen to this or it's posted, it will probably be past Veterans Day, but it's never too late to go out and thank a veteran, which happens to coincide with the Marine birthday this year. So to all of our Marines out there, happy birthday. And the big dog, the devil dog himself. He's got that dog in him. His bark matches his bite, Clay Gable. How you doing, Clay?
Speaker 2:I'm doing good. You can see, in honor of Veterans Day, I'm wearing my salute to service Steelers hoodie here, Also celebrating the Steelers victory yesterday 7-2. So feeling good. And I also just got back from watching my oldest son in a Veterans Day program where he sang some beautiful songs about their love of the military. So I'm feeling good. And I'm feeling even better that I get to spend some time with you talking about board games now.
Speaker 1:Yes, I got my Red Tails shirt on in honor of Veterans Day. So, happy Veterans Day. And, from those of us here at Operation Game Night, thank you to all who are serving or have served previously, so we've got a great show for you. Today we're going to debrief our week. We're going to fall in on the mission objective, which is digital adaptations of board games, and then we are going to go over the fence and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming. So are we ready to rock clay?
Speaker 2:Let's hit that. Debrief Travis, what you play this week.
Speaker 1:Yes, I will debrief my week. I actually got a game night in this weekend and we played a couple of party games. We played super mega lucky box, a philip walker harding production, which is always fun. So, phil, if you're listening to this, shout out to phil walker harding. We know. Big supporter of the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know you're our number one fan uh yeah.
Speaker 1:So super mega lucky box, super easy to teach and learn. It's basically like strategic bingo You're flipping a stack of nine cards to then check boxes off. On little individual cards that you have in front of you, when you complete rows and columns, you earn bonuses. And then at the end of the game you score points for completing those cards, the moons that you earn, the stars that you earn as bonuses by completing rows and columns. You total them all up across four rounds and then that's the game Super fast and easy to learn, super easy to teach. Great appetizer game for the evening. Got the juices flowing a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one that we used to have in a steady rotation for our game nights. What's it? Play up to Six people too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's six.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great one. Anybody that's even remotely familiar with bingo will probably pick it up pretty easily.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the reason I chose these games specifically was because I was told beforehand in reference to our uh, you know successful game night episode. I was told that there was going to be a eight year old, seven year old playing with us, and so I had to pick some games that could play down to the lowest common denominator but also brought my switch over for the boys, and they got sidetracked. So so they did not end up playing with any.
Speaker 2:No kids did not partake, but um, so they did not end up playing with any.
Speaker 1:No, kids did not partake. But that's the good thing about Super Mega Lucky Box it plays at eight years old and it plays at 99 years old. So Super Mega Lucky Box was great. Then we played a round of that's Not a Hat, which I've heard talked about on many a podcast. But that is a super easy to teach game as well. You are just passing gifts around and you can kind of bluff people. Or if you get lost, you just say what gift you're passing convincingly and they can either accept the gift or they call your BS and say that's not a hat, that's not a egg, that's not a bike, that's whatever it is, and they flip it over and if they're wrong then they keep that as like a demerit. First person to get three of those guesses wrong loses and everybody else is a big winner.
Speaker 2:So are you guys any good at this? Because I, I this game cracks me up and I mainly just bring it out just to laugh because it is amazing. Like when you say what's happening, people are like okay, yeah, whatever, that's easy. And immediately, like within one second of passing, like the first card, I'm like I have no idea where anything is anymore.
Speaker 1:So the copy that I have I bought here at SN last year. It was like eight Euro, I couldn't say no, it was pretty new then. It was like eight euro, I couldn't say no, it was pretty new then. And all of the instructions that were in the box were in German, and so I watched a video on it and I was like, okay, I got this, and then I set it up on the table that it takes two seconds to set up. You shuffle a bunch of cars together and you pass one out to each player, and then I immediately forgot what I needed to do. So I think we might've been playing wrong, because we each had like a bunch of gifts in front of us, like three, four different gifts, and then we were like picking which one to pass. So we made it harder on ourselves because you had to remember what was laid out in front of you, in what order, and I know that you're supposed to like put them on top of each other and pass them around, but we definitely did not do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, other and pass them around, but we definitely did not do that. Yeah, you, you're supposed to have two in front of you at any given time, and then I think you always passed the older gift that you had.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah anyways, we made it way harder on ourselves, but there was only four of us and it was pretty low pressure, so yeah um, that game took all of 10 minutes to play and we played it twice and it was pretty fun. So awesome that's not.
Speaker 1:not a hat, always a hit. Yep. Then we bust out a game that I have not heard talked about on many a podcast, which is Guerrilla Marketing. It's a 2020 production by Roxley Games. Designer is Adam Weiss, and this game is like a much improved version of Cards Against Humanity or that style of party game where you are trying to pick your favorite of the options that are given to you.
Speaker 1:The theme is that this big corporate headquarters madmen ad agency has fired all of their writers and they said gorillas can do your job better than these ad men, and so the whole premise is that you're creating products or names of products, and then writing slogans for those made-up products, okay, and so it comes in this like really long slim box. The artwork is awesome. It's got, you know, monkeys all over the place, but that's not really a huge draw for this game is the. Then, inside, you have these long cards that lay out the steps of the game, and so they have these overarching categories like products, companies, bands, organizations, charity I don't know. They have a whole bunch of these overarching categories. Then, down the list of those overarching category is subcategories, so we played products specifically, and so what you do is you take these dice out of a bag Every person takes a dice or a die and they roll it in front of them and it gives them a letter. That letter corresponds with a subcategory for the overarching category. So we did products I rolled and I got clothing, so clothing products. Another person got kitchen products, baby products and then office supplies or something. So once you have those categories, you write them at the top of your these like beautiful spiral bound right on white board dry erase marker boards that you that you use, whiteboard dry erase marker boards that you that you use, and so you write the category up top and then you roll up to four dice for the whole table to use that have letters on it, and so sometimes it's only two letters, which is the case in not in mind, because we rolled two reds right off the bat, but you could roll up to four and it can be, you know, a bunch of different letters and those letters, when rolled in order, make up the title of the brand name that you're writing for. And so ours was TS, which happened to be my initials, but we had to write products that started with TS.
Speaker 1:So for clothing we got like teal sneakers or what was the other one for baby products? It was like the Tobble snail. And we're like what the hell is a Tobble snail? And she's like I don't know, but it starts with the TNS. And so we come up with these ridiculous products and then what you do is you pick your favorite of those products as you pass them around. You know you pass the boards around and everybody writes their answer. The person picks their favorite when it gets back to them and then the person that got their product was picked. They pull a banana from the center of the table and then that product is written in the top section of the whiteboard underneath the overarching category, and then it goes around again and you have to write a slogan for that product. This is where it actually gets creative is writing the slogan for the product.
Speaker 1:So teal sneakers won for clothing, because people were not really sure what to do with clothing. So it was like get real, be teal or something silly like that. Or for the tobble snail, the one that I wrote was like Tobble slower than ever before, because I don't know what a Tobble snail is. And so then you get some creative answers. I think it takes a little more creativity than you know. Something like a cars against humanity, where you're just kind of picking a card that you already have given you. You have to use a little bit of creative juices. But, yeah, uh, you could get some really creative answers. And if you have creative people in your life that like these types of party games, this one is one to get, because I think it's pretty inexpensive and I think you actually have to flex your creative juices a little bit more with this one. So, uh, yeah, gorilla marketing was really cool.
Speaker 2:I, I really enjoyed it yeah, it sounds like you definitely would need the right people to play that, because I know some people that if they get put on the spot to like come up with something creatively myself included, I'm, I'm shutting down, I, I've that kind of pressure, just uh, it makes me shrink into a small little man that has nothing clever to say. But, yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun, like you said, with people that are inclined to like to show off their, their wit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like, if we would have written products that started with four different letters, we would have been sitting there for much longer. But, like TS, you can come up with two words that start with T and an S super fast. But yeah, some of those more complicated rounds could could really take a while. Um, we were kind of running short at the end of the end of the game night and that that was kind of our last filler game before we had to take off. But, um, you're supposed to play that over three rounds. You can switch categories between rounds if you want to.
Speaker 1:Okay, the one thing that I didn't mention is when you go to pick your favorite of these products or these slogans or whatever it is, you can roll these two dice and there's awards that you can give them based on the whatever letters that you roll. So, like, we rolled these two dice and it gives you options for awards that you can pick from. So one is like least likely to use child labor in manufacturing and the other one is like most flammable product or something and you can use those to help and decide.
Speaker 1:But, um, we just kind of picked our favorites and went with that. Guerrilla to marketing. Guerrilla marketing was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:I'm going to slide in real quick, since you're talking about party games. I just played last night Green Team Wins, which I hadn't played in a long time. You get this game for dirt cheap and it's nothing novel. There's a million games where people write things on a whiteboard and you have these fun moments. But Green Team Wins has been one that every time I've played has been a lot of fun and created a lot of laughter around the table.
Speaker 2:Essentially, you're trying to be on the green team by writing answers that the majority of the other folks around the table also wrote. So you get these fun dynamics people on the green team talking smack to the people on the orange team and just trying to get in other people's heads about how my dad killed me last night there. So there's some cards there like this or that you have to pick. You know, would you rather be able to hear a dog's thoughts or talk to a dolphin? And then there's ones that are just like fill in the blank, so public blank, and everybody writes down what comes to their mind or what they think is coming to everybody else's mind. So you can get on the green team.
Speaker 2:And then another category of question that comes out are multiple choice, so it'll give you four different options of. Yeah, I think it was like underrated games or something that gave four, and it was like duck, duck goose, musical chairs, and anyway there's four options. We all flip over and my dad had just written a random game. He wrote jacks, which was not one of the four options, and so kick the can, so he was definitely on the orange team for that one.
Speaker 2:But yeah, Green Team wins is a fun. Another like 20 minute game Get a lot of good laughs out of. Get a target for $10 probably. But yeah, just pile on your party game extravaganza with one that I just played last night and had a lot of fun with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is one that I definitely am going to end up procuring at some point, because Rachel's family loves doing the would you rathers, oh yeah, and I think that that would be right up their alley, because they come up with some of the most ridiculous would you rathers, oh yeah. And I know that would be a hit with them. So yeah, green team wins is awesome and I definitely want to get that someday it's not hard to get.
Speaker 2:So I know you're on a procurement ban. How's that been going? I know?
Speaker 1:debrief me on that pretty good I mean I've obtained plenty of kickstarters since the start of the ban, so as in they've come.
Speaker 2:They've come, but you haven't backed any new.
Speaker 1:Yes, they have delivered since the ban has started, which is keeping me satiated. It's definitely going to get me through the year, for sure. I've got Kickstarters holding me down for the next year. I will probably need to offload a whole bunch when I get back to the States. For now, we're good.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:All right, debrief your week for me. I want to hear what else you've been playing.
Speaker 2:All right. So Amanda, empty Nest Board Mama had posted on her Instagram that she played Freshwater Fly and nobody would know this again except my family, which is all of our viewers. Family, which is all of our viewers. Um, I, when I first became a second Lieutenant and was up at Buckley in Denver, I spent every weekend fly fishing for four years. Pretty much that was my hobby. I loved it. And you know, when I moved to Virginia and it wasn't and there wasn't that good of fly fishing around and I had kids Since I moved back to Colorado, board gaming is a nice hobby because it's very attainable and you can do it with children.
Speaker 2:They go to bed, you can just sit down and play some games. But to peel off on the weekend to drive up to the mountains and fish for four hours when you're only off for two days, mary would be fine with it and she would probably let me do it occasionally. But to me it just feels like I'm missing so much time on my two days off with the family that it's not, it's not worth it. Still love to do it, but just have not been in it anymore. So anyway, I saw her post about that game and that's a game that's always been on my radar, that I wanted to check out just because of the theme, and so I posted that and she was kind enough to send it to me to borrow and send it back, so I got to play it. It was published in 2019 by Bellwether Games and it was designed by Brian Suri, but anyway, essentially it's a fly fishing simulator and what you're doing is dice drafting.
Speaker 2:So you have a pool of dice, you draft one of them and you take one of three actions with that die. You either cast into the river or you reel a fish in that you already have on your line, and the third thing you can do is just kind of scrap the die, kind of like in Castles of Burgundy, to get two workers. You scrap the die and you get to move your marker up on this finesse track that you can eventually cash in to get some bonuses, such as changing the value of a die plus or minus one, changing out the fly that you have tied on, drawing another strike card, but anyway. So to cast. If I took a six from the pool of die to cast, the river is laid out into six different columns, so if I had a six die, I could cast to the furthest to the right column, which is good, because once you go to a column, if you have a fly on so I have a blue fly on at the bottom of that column there's all these hatch tokens. So there's blue, orange, green hatch tokens at the bottom of the column showing what type of food those fish are feeding on, hatch tokens at the bottom of the column showing what type of food those fish are feeding on. So if my fly matches the food that the fish are feeding on in that column, I can try to catch a fish and in that case another player will draw a card from this.
Speaker 2:It's a deck of four cards, four strike cards. There's three that are not hits and one that shows that you caught a fish. So on that first cast, if you match, somebody flips a card from the strike deck. If it is a hit, you get to take that fish and put it on your line. If it's not a hit, then you can drift down the river to the next spot and if in that next column you also have a matching hatch there, you can flip again. But this time you get to flip two cards and again, if you don't get a hit there, you can drift one more time to a column and try again, and in this one you're guaranteed to get it. So I don't want to really get into my thoughts just yet, but, like, you can always catch a fish if you play it right. Because, okay, like, if you cast the right spot and you can see that in the next two columns you also have a fly on that matches the hatch tokens at the bottom, you're going to catch a fish.
Speaker 2:It's just a matter of which one, and so there's different values of fish. So the gold ones are better, gray ones are decent and the green ones are, you know, whatever they're easier to catch once they get on your line. Then the other action you can take is to reel them in. So so again, you pick a die and if you have a six, once you catch the fish you'll flip it over when it goes onto your line and it has like a drag value on it that shows like how hard that fish is pulling on your line. So if you have a drag value of two and you use a six die to reel your fish, that two subtracts from the six, so you can only fish. That two subtracts from the six so you can only reel your reel four spaces. So this reel is super cool, the components are awesome. So it's like actually a reel that like this little wheel thing and you put your hatch token in to like move it around this circle. So anyway, back to my example. If I had the six, my drag was a two I could move that dial four spaces around the wheel. Oh, cool, yeah. And whatever space you land on on the wheel you get that benefit. And if you get all the way back to the top of the wheel, your fish advances one stage closer to being caught. So a greenfish starts already in the left column of your line. So if you make it one way around the wheel, you caught that fish. A gray one, you have to get around twice. A gold one you have to get around three times. But that's essentially catching the fish. And yeah, so I told you all the different actions Cast reel or trading a die to get these finesse icons.
Speaker 2:What I love about this game is the theme. I mean I talked about it with unconscious mind, like being somebody who really appreciates board games. To see a theme so well integrated into a game was awesome, especially when that theme is something that is near and dear to my heart. Like that it literally I mean this guy who designed it must've been a fly fisherman because you know, with the hatch, tokens and the way you drift down the fish there and that's fly fishing because you want to, like, when you initially cast, you like kind of stir up the water a little bit and so you want that nice drifted fly coming down the river. So it makes sense that you draw more strike cards as you let that fly drift down the river.
Speaker 2:So, again, like the way they incorporated the theme was so awesome, with the hatch and the tying on the fly that matches the hatch. So, as for me, there's many different reasons to own a game, and this might not have been, like, the most exciting game, and but having a game that like, speaks to me on an artistic level about, yeah, what it is to fly fish, like that is worth having to me. So I bought it for myself after she sent it to me. Again, there's a million games that are more fun for me to play than this, but the care they took to make this really feel like a fly fishing game, that's worth it to have, just as a work of art and appreciation in my collection so yeah, so that was I actually own this one as well, and that was the whole reason for me getting it was I.
Speaker 1:We went to that.
Speaker 1:You know game swap in colorado and this one jumped out immediately and I made a trade for it because I also appreciate fly fishing and, if nothing else, it's at least like cool to own. I don't know of a whole lot of people that own this one I it's not widely advertised or anything, but yeah, this one's like a cool production with beautiful art and really careful design that is pretty thematic, so I'm a big theme guy and freshwater fly was a definite procure for me Once I yeah, this, once I saw it.
Speaker 2:this is a game. You know a lot of games that themes pasted on. Somebody came up with a game and they're like oh, what theme can we put on this this? I can't say how they designed it, but it feels to me like somebody said I want to design a game about fly fishing and that's what I'm going to do, and they went to great lengths to make everything feel like fly fishing.
Speaker 2:So that's awesome, but again, the gameplay like once you catch a, once you have a fish on your line, your only option then really is to reel it in again and if and high numbers on the die are inherently better because you can cast further up the river and you can reel faster with the higher numbers as a game, it almost feels like there's too little and too much going on at the same time, because they tried to add a bunch of stuff to make it more interesting, like the finesse and being able to move the finesse track and get these special actions. And then you get these special cards if you end up catching a fish next to a rock, that give you ongoing abilities, which is all fine, but to me it just felt like a bunch of strapped on stuff because, like, the core of it is pretty straightforward and not, yeah, not even straightforward, because straightforward isn't necessarily bad but it just never felt like there was that much of an interesting choice on your turn. It's like if I didn't have a fish on my line, I was casting. Where am I casting? I'm casting to a place that has a hatch token matching my fly and ideally the columns below it have that. So, yeah, and there were ways to manipulate that with the finesse, but that's not why I'm keeping it for the gameplay.
Speaker 2:I'm keeping it because I love the source material and I think they did an awesome job of designing a game around that source material. So, yeah, that's Freshwater Fly. Thanks again, amanda, for giving me a chance around that source material. So, yeah, that's fresh water fly. Thanks again, amanda, for giving me a chance to check that out, and now I am.
Speaker 1:I have it in my collection. Yes, she is a great, a great friend of the show. Um, my question did you play this solo?
Speaker 2:No, I played it with Mary.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, what did Mary think?
Speaker 2:Kind of similar. She's like no, I played it with Mary. Oh yeah, what did Mary think? Kind of similar. She's like am I missing something? Are we allowed to have more fish on our line? I'm like no, if you have a fish on your line, you have to reel it in. That's just the way it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not trolling. We don't have trolling. We're not trolling for fish. That's great. So, yeah, it's a good game. Yeah, I definitely want to get this one to the table because, uh, I I know that a lot of people, especially in the comments on board game geek, are like this is boring, yeah, but fishing is boring like yeah, percent of the time it's just like relaxing to you know. Throw something out there, watch it drift down, throw it out again, even if you catch nothing. It's a, it's a good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was reading the rule book and seeing like different things about the theme in there, I was getting excited. I was like, wow, I can't believe they made a fly fishing game and took this much time to make sure it actually felt like fly fishing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wish that we would have gone fly fishing together in Colorado, but it's kind of hard when there's board games to be played. I know You've got to get away to go fly fishing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So to wrap up, Freshwater Fly. If you like fly fishing, definitely recommend it because you'll appreciate it. If not, there's probably better games out there to just have a good time with. But that's my debrief.
Speaker 1:But that's my debrief. Get to the table or you can't get a game night together, or whatever it is. Digital adaptations are a great way to fill that gap If you want to play some games but don't have the people or the time to get it all out and set it all up and go through the whole rigmarole of an actual game night. So we have games that have been digitized or apps that have been digitized to play these games on the go or at home by yourself, and we want to talk about some of our favorite digital adaptations. So, clay, how do you approach digital gaming?
Speaker 2:So I don't like it. As a rule of thumb, I am pretty anti digital games. They are more of a means to an end. If, if, if, there was nobody on the other end and I was just playing one by myself, I probably wouldn't. But I do love the ability that digital games gives us to be able to connect even when we're far apart and even when we don't have time to sit down for a synchronous game, that you can still pull up your app, take a turn and still feel remotely connected to somebody. Because, again, it's always about the people. For me, those like little hits every day of knowing that I'm still playing the game with Travis and Jared and Tyler and Brenna and Scott and Brittany and all the people that I have games going on with on board game arena and all the people that I have games going on with on Board Game Arena. That feels good, but the actual games I rarely will sit down and just play a digital game by myself, or even with people I don't know in a synchronous game online.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, great, so I'm not a star student for digital board gaming. I'm just not good at it. I lose, especially asynchronously. I easily lose the plot on what I was trying to do. It's hard enough for me to keep the plot when I'm in person staring at the game in front of me for two hours, let alone when I haven't looked at the board state in a day and then have to reacquaint myself with it. So I'm pretty lazy on digital games. I'll usually take the path of least resistance. If it requires me reading some card that gives a special ability, I'm probably not doing it, probably just going to hit whatever the easiest action is, and so if you see my elos on board game arena and you judge me, you're probably right too and it's warranted I would agree that it's always better to play in person, but these digital adaptations are improving every, every year, every time they release a new one, and you can get really close to the actual game in these digital formats, and sometimes it's even enhanced.
Speaker 1:So we mentioned Board Game Arena. So what makes a good adaptation for you on Board Game Arena?
Speaker 2:I don't know that the adaptation is what makes it a good game for me. It's more, what about the game makes it a bad game for board game arena for me. So bad games on board game arena that I don't want to see adapted or play on board game arena are games that have tons of texts on cards or big sprawling areas. I have to reassess every time and have to scroll on my phone left and right and up and down and try and look at other people's stuff on it. That's just too much work when I'm just logging on to take a quick turn. So I like a game that has clean iconography, clean actions, maybe one board and my own stuff, because, again, I'm just not gonna, when I'm taking a board game arena turn, I'm usually just like going to the bathroom or doing something quick and I just want to log on, get a quick lay of the land, pick an action and go.
Speaker 2:If I'm having like um, I played Terraforming Mars on there and I almost lost my mind Because you get like these hands of cards and you're, you know, looking at each card, trying to read what it does, then you're trying to look over. Okay, what's going on on the map? What do my opponents have going on, and that's just too much. So the simpler the game on board game arena, the better for me. What about you? Yeah?
Speaker 1:that's great. Yeah, I think, especially for me. I find it so tedious to set up large games that have a million pieces or they're games that are just like prohibitive, cost wise, like I'm not going to go out and drop. You know 200 on gloomhaven. But there's a gloomhaven digital game. That is actually pretty awesome. It has little miniature figs that you can move around this. You know 3d board, so stuff like that is like right up my alley. Yeah, so anything that is going to be too expensive to buy, or things like um feast for odin, stuff that are like these huge boxes or have a million pieces, or ones that I'm just interested enough in where I want to play them but not buy them. Stuff like that is great for digital adaptations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. Do you want to get into specific games?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk some specific games it were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's talk some specific games. What is a specific game?
Speaker 1:that you very much enjoy the digital adaptation of. So we've talked about it a million times already, but root on the root app, it's on switch, it's on ipads, it's on phones, it's on anything you want to play it on. It's on steam I'm going to talk about some other steam games later on. The root digital app, or the digital game by direwolf, is awesome. So direwolf digital has, like this, launcher that has a whole bunch of different games in it. I'm not sure why you need the launcher, but on phones it has Root, it's got Clank, it's got Dune Imperium, it's got Yellow and Yangtze, it's got Sagrada a whole bunch of different games all in this launcher. But you can buy those games individually.
Speaker 1:The reason I love the Root digital game is you can play it solo and you can play against factions that would actually behave the way that people would play them. It's pretty realistic. They have all the factions up through Underworld right now and they can just continue to add them. They're a little slow on the ad for some of their more recent expansions, but for the cost of the game you're getting a great value. The cool thing about this one, too, is that maybe you're new to root. They have some great training modules that you can run through digitally, and then they even have challenge modes. So there's like specific criteria you want to win, or that you need to win these different matches and they'll set you up at a disadvantage, or they'll set you up with an advantage and then you're playing against a harder difficulty or whatever it is. They have these really cool challenges that you can do, and if you buy the expansions, you could spend hours and hours and hours playing the digital root game. So root digital is probably my, my tippy top.
Speaker 2:Yeah, root digital is awesome. The animations are great and I've heard I haven't done it, but I heard learning to play Root via the app is the way to go. Apparently, it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have faction-specific trainings. So they'll say like they'll walk you through. If you are playing Lizard Cult for the first time, here's all the things that they can do, try this out. And then, once they feel like you've got the training wheels on, then they just let you go and they're like here, win this match as the Lizard Cult, that we've gotten you a couple of turns in. So stuff like that is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah and shout out. I think the next time we do a Twitch stream we're going to do a root play on that, so it's going to be fire.
Speaker 1:Travis will be the Corvid conspiracy yeah, so that's probably one of my favorites. Do you have a favorite that you like to go to on Board Game?
Speaker 2:Arena. Yeah, so I was just looking at the. The games I play often on board game arena and I know we've said it many a times, but castles of burgundy on board game arena is just so smooth and it's what I want from a digital adaptation. I have two dice. I click one, it lights up all the things I can do with it and it's either take one from the board or put one on my board and super easy to play on Board Game Arena and takes away all the muddle of trying to set up the market tiles every time and set out all the goods and all the scoring that comes with it. So I love playing castle bergen on board game arena.
Speaker 2:I play it constantly and it and it's one where I guess tactical games are the ones I like to play on there, where I don't have to remember some long-term strategy, like it probably would be better if I had some long-term strategy, but it's no real sense when in in the level I play castle of burgundy. To me the fun of it is see what numbers I rolled, see how best I can use them, so I don't have to remember anything. I just open up my app, I see what numbers I have. I'm like, okay, can I fill this section now with that four? Okay, oh great, I can grab that castle tile up there with this one, boom, boom done and turn yeah, just max maximizing turns every time, instead of like having to watch what other players are doing and like positioning yourself, like yeah yeah, you can kind of get by in castles of burgundy without having to sit there and watch what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 2:The good players I'm sure will peruse the other players' boards and see what they're after. I have no interest. I am solely trying to fill up my own board, get some nice pastures filled with sheep, score a bunch of points and heck. If I win, that's great. If not, I had a good time.
Speaker 1:My next one that I want to mention is the Spirit Island game. Spirit Island is one that, when you play it specifically solo, it's a great solo game. It's one of the highest rated solo games ever. It gets a bit fiddly having to move all these pieces around and stack and restack and do your blight and shuffle the cards and do all this stuff. That game takes care of it digitally and it actually has a awesome tutorial on how to play spirit island and what you're looking for each and every turn. The cool thing about spirit island digital is that they have all of the expansions and it's far less expensive to just buy them digitally than to have these gigantic boxes cluttering your house. So spirit island is definitely one that I appreciate playing digitally, especially solo I did try.
Speaker 2:I try this app out at one point and I remember liking it. I did not like playing spirit island in real life because of all the fiddliness you said and trying to remember that. That's just always my beef with a lot of these cooperative or solo games where you have to do 18 things with a enemy in between each turn it's like but yeah, that one.
Speaker 2:Although I haven't played the app in years, I can remember feeling like if I was going to play Spirit Island, I certainly would do it on the app versus in person.
Speaker 1:Two others that I want to shout out for in terms of music actually is the Wingspan and Everdell apps or digital games. If you have not played these with the sound on, the music and the atmospherics are awesome. In wingspan you actually like get the sound of the birds and like they have these like really relaxing music and you get to hear what these birds actually sound like, which is kind of an added bonus that you don't normally get when you play it like a hard copy of wingspan. And then everdell is always cute and cuddly and has great relaxing music. So those two are very inexpensive and, uh, super relaxing games to play digitally. I like those two nice.
Speaker 2:Another one I want to give a shout out to on board game arena is heat pedal to the metal oh yeah, I love playing that one on Board Game Arena In real life.
Speaker 2:I mean it's streamlined in real life. But you have like a seven-step process. You have to go through every turn to select your cards, move your car, what else is there. You can boost, you can cool down, you can slipstream, and if you went around the corner you have to check if you sped through it. And board game arena walks you through that so nicely that it's super nice. And when you're like picking your cards, it'll show you like where your car would end up on the racetrack based on the cards you're selecting. So you're not having to count and do math about where you might end up if you play these cards. So, yeah, I like playing that one. Again, it's when, when you take your turn, it's pretty obvious what you need to be doing. There is a big racetrack and you have a hand of cards and it says which cards do you want to play to move and then you can see how far you would go. So I like playing heat pedal to the metal on BGA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that one's great. This one is probably more expensive than it should be for a game that can be played with a regular deck of cards more expensive than it should be for a game that can be played with a regular deck of cards. But the regicide companion is great digitally because you can play it solo or I think there's a pass and play version of it on the app and it takes all the thinking out of like combining or adding health or doing all this stuff. You know each of the suits of cards that you play has a different ability and it keeps track of all those abilities for you, so you don't really have to think about it. It'll tell you, like, if you're boosting with a club or whatever it is. It'll show you which cards you can use to boost with and it'll actually keeping track of that stuff. When I was playing with my little regular oh, I have it right here, it's sitting right next to me when I was playing.
Speaker 2:Red.
Speaker 1:Decide. Yeah, and the app. I saw that they had an actual digital version that you could play right there on the app and it's been great and actually takes a lot of the thinking, especially if you don't have your little Red Decicide box or a deck of cards with you.
Speaker 2:so the regicide app is really cool there's some games, that of a type of game that I do not enjoy playing on board game arena, and those are games where everybody has to make a decision after everything, so what?
Speaker 2:I'm thinking of is mlem. I played that again. I still liked it, but I played on borgia, marina and uh, especially async. Like every time the commander rolls to die, every single person in order you can't like all do at the same time has to say whether they want to stay on the rocket ship or not. So what should be?
Speaker 2:In real life it's like a two second decision. Everybody's like, yep, I'm staying on, you have to wait till yeah, okay, mary's on the clock, now she has to decide whether she wants to stay on the rocket. And then, okay, tyler's on the clock, now he has to decide. And it just drag, drags the game out over days. That you know. And there's plenty of games like that where maybe you're card drafting at the beginning and it's just like, okay, now I selected a card, okay, now I have to wait for everybody else to select a card. So games like that where you're doing those actions that are kind of happening in sequence and everybody has to make these little decisions all together in a row it just drags those games on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we should play that one live. No, that would be fun. We should stream that sometime.
Speaker 1:Yes, that would be great. I don't want to drag this out too much because we could just go through and name every digital game there is out there, but a couple that I want to shout out. The best writing that I've ever seen in a digital board game app is through the ages. I've heard a lot of other people talk about this one, but this game condenses a like three, four hour game to an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and the tutorial for this super complex session system of through the ages is well-written. The character that you play as is like actually the designer of the game that is walking you through. He is one of the characters in the game. Is that Vlado Shabado? Yes, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel like he's funny. I think I've read he did Dungeon Pets and that rule book was hilarious. I I think this guy just got a sense of humor yeah or maybe that app is great?
Speaker 1:yeah, maybe it is, but, um, that app actually has some great writing and it teaches you these like really complex systems in a like narrative driven format that is really easy to understand and pick up right off the bat. So Through the Ages is one that I wanted to shout out. Then just a couple more. If you like Gloomhaven but you don't want to buy this gigantic box that takes up half of your shelf, the Gloomhaven app and it's available on Steam.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's an app per se, but I know that there's a digital version of Gloomhaven. That's really good app per se, but I know that there's like a digital version of gloomhaven. That's really good. And then you can buy the jaws of the lion expansion right out of there if you so choose. And then, if you want something in the line of a board game or a tabletop rpg tainted grail actually has a couple of games. Um, if you don't want a giant box, sit on your shelf and the tainted grail games are more like actual video games than tabletop games, but still in the same vein and same world as Tainted Grail, if you like that type of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've not experienced any of this, so I'm glad you are well-versed in the digital. I'm a BGA guy, as you can tell, and I have tinkered with other apps. Probably root was the one I did most, but for whatever reason my phone fails to notify me when it's my turn on root. So I've floundered in those games. When when I played those. Yeah, but yeah, I have one last piece of commentary about digital board gaming, specifically board game arena.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I'm not alone, but trying to learn a new game on board game arena is next to impossible for me. I just cannot get. It's terrible. Yeah, I mean, I'll read the how to play, I'll even do the tutorial and then it just I just need the in-person of it to really grasp what's going on. So if you've gone on to board game arena and don't like a game that you've only played there, it may be worth trying it in person, because board game arena is great for me to play. Games I already know, but the ones I've I've tried to learn on there. I always walk away with a bad taste in my mouth and I try to not attribute that to the actual game and just the fact that it's a bit awkward trying to learn something that's meant to be experienced physically via a digital platform yeah, yeah, that's it's worth mentioning.
Speaker 1:Like there's tabletop simulator out there that has just about every board game built into it, either through mods or through fan-made plugins and stuff, but that game has zero tutorial. You basically have to like set it up yourself digitally and then play through with no instructions. So tabletop simulator is great if you have a crew that likes to play a specific game but maybe not want to just jump in and play a game blind, because there is little to no hand-holding when you play anything on tabletop simulators.
Speaker 2:Travis, you've actually come a long way in some games that you've only played online, I mean Lost Ruins of Arnak. You had no idea what was going on and somehow you have now risen to a respectable level of play in that game only I still get stomped by jared every time, but I mean that guy's. He's got to be ranked soon in lost ruins of arnak. He's yeah, he's always on there just cleaning up house.
Speaker 1:But yes, he is. But yeah, like there's lots of games that we play on there repeatedly that I don't actually own, for a while I didn't have Heat Pedal to the Metal. We played that a bunch of times and I finally got the hang of it. Lost Ruins is a game that I own but never really got to the table. I got it in a swap a long time ago and Rachel's not going to sit down and play that with me, so it gives little to no love in this house.
Speaker 2:Come on, she might down and play that with me so well a little to no love in this house. Come on she, she might like it.
Speaker 1:It's not that bad mary doesn't mind, I don't know if she's, I don't know if she's ever played a worker placement game, so really maybe that's next. Yeah, maybe that's the next evolution of her board gaming journey bust out gateway island and uh yeah, and play the worker placement mini game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we kind of or we definitely buried the lead on this one. The reason we're talking about digital games today is because we did a stream last week. We played Distilled on Board Game Arena. If you missed the stream and you want to watch that video, it's up on our YouTube channel at Operation Game Night. And we're planning on doing another stream this week. We'll probably play Root on tabletop simulator, because people have added in all of the fan-made factions to that game in tabletop simulator. So, whoa, I kind of want to give those a spin, let's.
Speaker 1:There's like 50 factions in that game now holy cow so yeah, we'll definitely do more streams later on and we will keep you apprised If you are interested in that. If you missed, if you missed the live stream.
Speaker 2:you didn't miss much. We had some technical difficulties and, uh, from what I gather via my wife's viewing of it, it was mainly frozen and that's that. But the version of it we put on YouTube is clean, so check it out if you need something to play in the background.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just like the sultry sounds of our voices.
Speaker 2:See Distilled popping off on Board Game Arena.
Speaker 1:Alright, shall we go over the fence and wrap this up? Yeah, travis, what you've been doing outside of board gaming I've been hosting family so little to nothing outside of board gaming we want. I finished yellow jackets, which was a phenomenal show, season two. Can't wait for season three to come out with whenever it eventually comes out. But yeah, we've just been hosting and putzing around the house. So, looking forward to Thanksgiving, we're putting our menu together for Thanksgiving feast, pretty excited about that.
Speaker 2:Oh man, you guys do it up.
Speaker 1:We're gonna. I think we're gonna do a prime rib. We did a prime rib last year and it was a smashing success, so I think we're gonna do the same thing this year.
Speaker 2:Well, I can't think of what really I've been doing. Um, I've been, uh, I'm in the final stages of out processing, so I've got like 15 days left in my current unit and then I start my internship. Uh, that I'll be doing for the next five months before my separation from the military. So, yeah, it's getting real and getting through a bunch of uh examinations, finance briefings, all the things they're trying to make sure I'm set up for life on the outside. Hopefully my career as a podcaster really takes off, because I'm not seeing much other opportunities out there for me.
Speaker 1:Well, until you, until you open up your game store, and then you can like really push that here. You can push your game store agenda here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the dream. All the all the gamers in South central Pennsylvania will be going nuts.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, I'll be your first investor.
Speaker 2:All right, hey, we your first investor. We got the plans for the cardboard keg laid out.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm all for it. Still, once you decide you are done playing military hero, you can come and do something that really matters.
Speaker 1:That's right. Do something to really give back to this country.
Speaker 2:Open up a beer and board game store.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah. Well, by then this podcast will be huge and we'll have more listeners than the Kelsey brothers. Oh my God. Hey, okay, just use that seed money Over the fence.
Speaker 2:I'm going over the fence again. I saw the Kelsey brothers cereal in Target, what they have a Kelsey mix cereal in target, what they have, a kelsey mix, and it's a mix of uh reese's puffs cinnamon toast crunch and lucky charms all in one bag.
Speaker 1:Okay, that sounds awesome. Yeah, and I ate that last night, highly recommend okay, man, I need to get me a box of kelsey mix then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually it sounds pretty good yeah, I was skeptical, but I ate it. I was like you know what? I don't think I can go back to eating these individually. They're just a perfect medley of cereals together we were watching.
Speaker 1:You know we watched a lot of football yesterday when, uh, rachel's brother came in. Yeah, and jason kelsey is in all these commercials now. He's in like this campbell's chunky soup, or he's like laying on a bare skin rug eating soup. He's a man. He's in like this Campbell's chunky soup, or he's like laying on a bare skin rug eating soup. He's a man. He's in like a Hilton commercial, like he's. He's in all these commercials. It's wild. So when I retire from the military, I'm going to get all these endorsements and be on every commercial, because our podcast will be even bigger than the Kelsey brothers podcast.
Speaker 2:I have no doubts, although our listen, our listen numbers seem to be progressively going down, we're trending in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1:That's all right, just got to keep grinding. Just got to keep grinding.
Speaker 2:So if there's anything you guys want to see out there to our esteemed listeners, we're open to suggestions. We'll Twitch it, we'll YouTube it, we'll Instagram it, we'll do whatever, because we want to bring the joy of board games to as many people as possible. That's a fact.
Speaker 1:That's a great plug. Yeah, so hit us up on Instagram, write us a comment on YouTube. Whatever you want to see or hear, let us know and we will make it happen for you. That's right. That's right. Thank you for listening. I have been Travis, he has been Clay. Talk to you next week. I will talk to you next week.