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 26: Finspan, Mint Tin Games, The Astral Freight Company, & Keeping Up With Board Games (ft. Sam from MesmeRealms Games)
Our conversation with Sam touched on important aspects of the board gaming community, especially in how to engage with it without succumbing to the pressures of FOMO. We discussed how listeners can keep their gaming experiences fresh by revisiting older classics, attending local meetups, and taking advantage of second-hand options. Sam’s journey in game design reveals the layers of creativity within the hobby and emphasizes the significance of community in enriching our gaming experiences. We encourage everyone to reflect on their own gaming habits and how they can find joy in connection rather than consumption.
• Discussion on the perils of FOMO in board gaming
• The importance of revisiting older classic games
• Tips for keeping gaming experiences fresh without overspending
• The role of community in board gaming and access to diverse titles
• Insights into game design and creativity within the board game space
• Sam's venture into designing board games and his experiences in the industry
Check out MesmeRealm Games on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mesmerealm_games?igsh=ZXd5bXE4Y2U5MzF3
As always, come interact with us online, let us know if you have any feedback, and leave us a review/comment anywhere you get your favorite podcasts!
https://www.instagram.com/operation_game_night_podcast/
Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast, episode 26. We are halfway through one year of podcasting. Can you believe it?
Speaker 2:He's taking the toll on me, Travis.
Speaker 1:Joining us today. Special guest Sam, designer of the Astral Freight Company board game and owner and operator of the Instagram page Mesmer Realm. Sam, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Good Fano. How are you going? Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me on and wanting to listen to me talk garbage about board games.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what we do best. So Sam is joining us all the way from New Zealand. So we have hit like four different countries at this point. We are worldwide. So, sam, how is the future? How is Sunday?
Speaker 3:Is there anything we need to be worried about? The future is gray and cloudy and it's honestly, it's looking good, looking good. You guys are in for a real treat tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I can't wait.
Speaker 1:Nice. Thank you for the heads up Joining me, as always. Co-captain of the ship, Clayton Gable. How you doing, Clay.
Speaker 2:Uh, joining me as always. Co-captain of the ship, clayton Gable. How you doing, clay? I'm doing good, travis. I've come to the sobering realization over the past few weeks that our podcast seems to be at its best when there's less of us, so I'm glad Sam is joining us to continue the trend.
Speaker 1:Should we just hand off the podcast to all guests Like oops. All guests Like what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, all the people that have been on so far, yeah. Excellent.
Speaker 1:This is great Clay. Do you understand how time zones work? Because clearly we do not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we. There's a lot of panic. This morning when I looked up what time it was in New Zealand at 8 AM and I thought pm my time, but Travis was sure it was 12 pm my time. There was quite a back and forth and we eventually found out that Travis was right and everything's well.
Speaker 3:Do you guys do daylight savings in America? We do so. It might be the difference we're currently in daylight savings, so that could be a little confusion.
Speaker 2:That's what it was.
Speaker 1:I was looking at the non non-daylight savings version of new zealand time and to complicate matters more, we do it here in germany, but it's different than when they do it in the states and it's different when than when they do it in new zealand. So everything's all messed up. We're. It was a struggle, but we got to figure it out.
Speaker 2:We sunk up and here we are.
Speaker 3:Here. We are Great engineers in Germany, but it's all just a bit confusing sometimes, that's right.
Speaker 1:All right. So we got a good show for you. Today we are going to debrief our weeks, then we are going to fall in on the mission objective, which is keeping up with board games. How do you learn new games and keep your gaming experience fresh without chasing the cult of the new and falling into an Instagram board game pit? And then we're going to go over the fence and we're going to talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming. And then we're going to call it quits and let Sam start his day as we go to sleep. So, sam, go ahead, introduce yourself and tell us what you've been playing this week.
Speaker 3:My name is Sam. I started board gaming as a child. I think my cousins got HeroQuest when I was gosh. I would have been five when they got HeroQuest and they wouldn't let me play with it. So I used to sit on the outskirts and watch, because you know who wants the younger cousin playing board games with you. And they also had things like Catan, obviously, monopoly, but that's not really a board game. We don't talk about that.
Speaker 3:And then, I don't know, just spent my life playing board games with my dad lots of trivia games. So I'm still a huge fan of like trivia, word games, bananagrams, that kind of thing is just a real good go-to. Um, but I think I started board gaming as an adult, maybe in around 2014, with the likes of. You know, I discovered z-man and we are grande games so powerids, one of my all-time go-tos. And then Agricola by Z-Man Games Well, it's by Z-Man Games now, but it used to be Mayfair, I think.
Speaker 3:And then I only really started collecting, because that's a different hobby, isn't it? Sure is? I want to say, like two or three years ago, um, yeah, so my collection's not huge. I've only got, I think, like 70 games or something like that. But uh, I'm quite picky with what I, with what I choose, a bit like jared in that sense, I guess. Yeah, yeah, um, and then, yeah, I me and my friend oran decided to see if we can try hand at making our own game, and we've got uh prototype here, the, the astral freight company, which is we can talk about that later if you want yeah, absolutely. And the instagram page, mesmer realm games. That only actually started in august because we realized that we probably need to have a presence online If anybody wants to know anything about what we're actually doing with our lives. So that's yeah, that only started in August, about the same time you guys started up actually. So, yeah, that's. That's a bit about me.
Speaker 1:And your content is so primo on your Instagram. I always love looking at all your posts and you have good reviews, hot takes, if you're. If you are listening to this podcast, put the podcast on pause. Go on Instagram. Follow him as my realm If you're into board games, cause he has some great takes and some great posts. So thank you for sharing that stuff with the world on Instagram. Tell us what you've been playing this week.
Speaker 2:Hold on, hold on hold on. I'm interjecting.
Speaker 1:One, do I sound better, because I realized my mic was off. Yeah, you sound fine. Yes, okay cool.
Speaker 2:All right, I think I made the switch, but anyway, sorry, I'm not going to cut that, that's too much work. But anyway, I think you might have been the first person, apart from our mothers, that actually confirmed they listened to our podcast.
Speaker 3:Did you? Did you not know, clay, I am your father.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I have been searching for you and I didn't know we'd meet like this. But that's that Wow.
Speaker 1:Family reunions here live on the air, okay.
Speaker 2:So you weren't our first non-family listener.
Speaker 3:No, I think Just another family listener. I think I messaged you guys a bit on actual Spotify Because I think in your first episode were like you know, it's shout out and I was like, yeah, why not? I never? I actually had to figure out how to comment on spotify. I've never done it before and I was like oh, okay, easy enough. I think, clay, you were talking about like a chat feature that you can have on spotify or something like that, so you can live talk. But yeah, the heck is so long ago.
Speaker 2:Those were ancient days. Anyway, it motivated us to keep going. I was like what have we been doing here? I was like at least one person is listening, so we should keep pushing on.
Speaker 1:Here we are, 25, 26 episodes later.
Speaker 3:Look, it's the best part of my week when I get in my car and I click podcasts and I see there's a fresh episode sitting there waiting for me for my drive. It's excellent.
Speaker 1:I'm curious to hear I'm curious to hear this week when you hear yourself, because I have spent hours and hours listening to myself ramble on.
Speaker 1:I'm really curious how you react to listening to yourself in your car on your way to work I'll be honest, I'm probably gonna skip that one yeah, tough to get used to, but if you are listening to this podcast I know we told you to pause already go ahead, pause it again, go on spotify, go on youtube, go to wherever you get your podcasts and give us a rating, leave us us a comment, interact with us, follow us on Instagram. Whatever you need to do, just shout us out, share the podcast, thank us, help us make this podcast bigger.
Speaker 3:So and don't base it on this one.
Speaker 2:It's going to be our best, yet this is going to be great.
Speaker 1:So, sam, tell me what you've been playing this week.
Speaker 3:What have I been playing this week? I have been playing Thin Span.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I was talking to Clay about it yesterday actually, and he was talking about how good it was on Cardboard, and Clay his separate page there, and I said to him I was like I want it so bad, but it's so expensive here, because we don't just have to deal with the exchange rates, we have to deal with ridiculous shipping costs. Sometimes, if I buy a game out overseas, it actually costs more to ship it than it did to buy it. It's a whole thing. But, um, I'm on a buy trade sell page on facebook and, uh, someone bought four copies from Stonemaier Direct so that he could get the free shipping, nice, and he put it up and I was like, oh, I've just sold all the copies.
Speaker 3:I've got my, my copy that I want to keep, though, but if you want it, you can have it. And I was like, yes. So I, I drove to the deep South of Auckland, which is about 30 minute drive, and I walkland, which is about 30 minute drive, and I was like, yep, I'm on my way. I went and picked it up and there she is, in all of her glory, excellent.
Speaker 2:Yes, wow, my god, look at that beautiful flying fish. It was a hilarious exchange because, like you said, like two nights ago, he's like ah yeah, that game I it's too much, I wish I could play it. And then, like a day later you're posting whoops, and you had, but not, so you just borrowed it. No, oh yeah, I thought you said the guy wanted to keep his copy.
Speaker 3:No, oh wow, he did, he did but uh oh, but you convinced him otherwise. Well, my, my daytime work is a um, I work in sales, okay.
Speaker 2:Made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Speaker 3:Exactly, gave him the old five-finger discount and just took it from him.
Speaker 1:Wow can.
Speaker 3:I look at it Run, run, run, yeah, perfect. So I played that last night, forced my wife and my brother-in-law to play it with me, and you know she's a bit of a champion.
Speaker 3:She goes oh, we'll play it tomorrow. I was like no, I want to talk about tomorrow with the guys. Yeah, yeah, Also been playing heaps of dominion, which is just fast becoming one of my favorite games. It is perfection. It's so good. Um, and then what else? We've been playing, um zogar's revenge, which is a single player game didn't mention that one before, but it's a green home games. Um, yeah, just the usual go-tos.
Speaker 3:you play a lot of like bga, but I don't count those towards my stats, you know, okay, they're not real board games.
Speaker 1:If they're, online I would. I would have no stats if I had no bga, so I have to yeah I like.
Speaker 2:I like that you're purest about it, though. That's good, that's impressive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, only from the table, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:So give us your hot take, like what is your hot take on thin span, having only played it once, what?
Speaker 3:do you think controversial? Controversial, that's not controversial there you go but um, I think it might be better than wingspan okay that's.
Speaker 3:That's. That's a huge call. I love wingspan. Wingspan I I uh, back in 2020, we, when we hit the lockdowns and all that kind of stuff for covid, I bought wingspan and, um, me and my wife and one of our flatmates played it a lot. We, you know, we were locked down in our houses for 50 something days straight and so we played a lot of Wingspan. I really, really love it.
Speaker 3:But, oh my gosh, this is just so good. I know it's supposed to be a lighter game, but it just feels like there's better fluidity to it. You don't have to spend so much time reading and looking at the cards and being like, oh you know what does that mean? I'm looking for wingspans and I'm and I'm only if someone else activates the brown power. You may do this one like. I love the fact about laying the eggs. Only one fish can hold an egg and then you got you can hatch it into your little young and then turn it into a school of fish and they can only pass through. You know certain ways. It's great, I love it, excellent, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I just want to chime in, cause I too played my first game of Finn span the other night and I share your. I predicted a few episodes ago, just based on what I knew, that I thought I would like this the most out of the span of verse and I stand by that. After playing all three of them, I've only played it once. So I don't, you know, I've definitely played the other ones more, but theme alone, like I said, I the fish are awesome, like looking at, I got this freaking whale shark and I was so pumped about it wanted to play that sucker. It was worth 12 points.
Speaker 2:It was huge, um, and just yeah, looking at all the art was awesome, but yeah, it's so it feels more fluid, like the, the actions you're taking, because you don't have to go get food and all this stuff. You're just pretty much paying with eggs and your cards for most things. And yeah, and yeah, those schools were so interesting. It like add this spatial game kind of where you're trying to get some young, but then you can move the young so they all come into the same spot and they form a school and schools are worth what like six points at the end of the game. So, yeah, I was one round where I barely played any fish cards and was just maneuvering these little young fish around trying to make schools, and it was a lot of fun and snappy good time.
Speaker 2:Definitely multiplayer solitaire, like I mean. Yeah, there's a lot of things that like I don't think I looked up at mary the whole game. I was just like looking at my fish doing my thing and then eventually, every now and then she'd be like you can lay eggs on your green column and I was like okay, and then just right back to my stuff. But yeah, I like it. I mean, those games all feel like that to me so I'll choose the one that I can enjoy the theme the most and feels the cleanest of a design to me.
Speaker 3:I had the same experience. I was like sitting there looking at my board reading my fish, being like, oh, what the hell is that thing? That fish is disgusting. Yeah, oh, I just don't want to play that one because it's a bit putty. And I'd be sitting there and I'm moving my schools around and things, and then my wife's like all right, everybody can lay an egg on a uh, I don't even know what they're called the solid fin. Yeah, large, large fish. I think I've got like seven of those. You know. It's like well, thank you, now you know.
Speaker 3:And then the thing about wingspan is like um, if you activate, like one bird, or one thing when for the pink powers, when someone does something, but this it's, like you know, lay eggs on your, like you say, your green column, and then you do that and it actually completely changes what you might possibly do on your turn.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's very intuitive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's just play a card or dive down one of the columns and it's. It's not. Yeah, it's a good, freaking game. It deserves to exist. All you haters out there, man.
Speaker 3:Wait for dairy span.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sam, I was going to ask you from from the future, since it's Sunday there has Jamie Stegmaier announced his new game there, and what span is it?
Speaker 3:I did see. I've seen so many memes flying cows, flying pigs, all that kind of stuff and then so much hate about this. But I got it and my wife's like it's just going to be Wingspan, just with fish, and I was like it's not.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Don't you dare. Yeah, like I said, we played it and it's similar enough that you can be like oh, that's like this thing in Wingspan, you can reference back, but it's different enough that it's a totally whole different experience it's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm super impressed by what they've, what they've done with both shoot offs of wingspan, because it would have been easy to just reskin it and just be like now it's wingspan with dragons you're doing the same exact thing, but they've tweaked each of them in different ways. That makes them feel unique and it's worth having all three of them. But my personal ranking, now that I've played all three fin span, wingspan, worm span yeah I've seen a lot of people say the same thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, worm span is just like if you're really into dragons or whatever, totally. But if you're not, then just don't even bother. There are other, better dragon games out there, you know it's just a little too much.
Speaker 2:It's a little clunkier. Like, yeah, where finn span streamlined things, worm span went the other way. It's like and now you need to excavate a cave before you can put a dragon in it, and you've got coins. They're your actions, but you can get more coins. So you can put a dragon in it and you've got coins. They're your actions, but you can get more coins, so you like it's just. Yeah, it's a, it's just a more complicated version. In my mind it's still. It's still a good time. Like I'd still play it, but with thin span around, it's going to be hard for me to get to those other two now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:That's great Clay. Tell me about Beowulf.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I need to add that to the stage. Look at that professional work. All right, so Beowulf I talked about this before. I've mentioned it in passing. This is a older Reiner Canizia game and you're essentially playing through the legend of Beowulf as told in the in the story, the song or whatever it's called in British literature. But you there's. Can you pull up a picture of the board Travis, if you can find one?
Speaker 2:This is similar to like the Lord of the Rings game. You can see there's like a track and basically every space along the track, thematically, is an adventure. That you guys are all like Beowulf's little cronies, following him around as he does all this awesome stuff and you're and you're trying to impress him is the theme. But it's a Kinesia game. So you know it is what it is. But every spot along the way it's a kinesia game. So you know it is what it is. But every spot along the way it's like okay, now you're at king hygelax court and you are king, you're getting rewarded for your good deeds, and the next one's like okay, grundle attacked, and. But every space is pretty much just an auction and there's open auctions where you play a card that matches the symbols required for the auction. So like one might need a fist symbol and a boat symbol and the person who starts plays one boat and then the next person has to play at least one boat to match. So it's interesting because you don't have to beat the person before, you just have to match it, and every time it comes back to you have to be able to at least play one card to stay in. And if you pass out and like it's kind of like for sale, if you're the first one to pass, you're going to get the worst reward for that round. And so, like some of the auctions are, you know, like I said, you're getting rewarded for something, so they're all good things.
Speaker 2:Like the first place person might get five victory points, the last place person might just get one. And then there's the like scary events where, like the dragon attacks and you definitely don't want to be the that was a cool picture. You definitely don't want to be the first person to have to pass out of there because you'll take two wound tokens and at the end of the game, if you have three wound tokens you can't win. So anyway, you're just like marching along this track. There's auction spots and then there's like recovery episodes where you get to like refill your hand with new cards. There's these risk episodes where you can draw two cards off the top of the deck and if you get one of the symbols that it shows you can keep them. But if you draw two cards and none of them are the symbols, then you take a scratch. Three scratches equal a wound, three wounds you lose. But yeah, it's an interesting little game where you're trying to manage your hand and you're trying to see what's coming up in the future and what type of symbols you might need for upcoming auctions. And, yeah, just choosing the right time to take those risks, because that's really what the fun of the game is.
Speaker 2:And I know Bitewing is remaking this in their sci-fi trilogy and it's called Ego. I have bought that because I suppose I know I have this already, but apparently they changed a little bit and my biggest complaint about the game was the stuff on the board is so small. Like I could, I couldn't see what the symbols you were supposed to have were or what the rewards were from my side of the table, so I said to ask people what was going on. So maybe in the bitewing version where you're trying to woo extraterrestrials, it'll be a little more clear. But yeah, this was a. This is a fun auction game, pretty simple, but you know, classic design from kinesia, nice anything else, you guys want to brief.
Speaker 3:No, should we hear about your obscure games that you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, here we go talk about some mint tin games.
Speaker 1:All right, travis is gonna prove his metal by I have talked about some mint tin games before and I got three of them to the table this week. Some people some people will, just you know, buy all these big box games whenever they come out. Others like to support the little guy Okay, and these are three, like kind of indie developers. The first one is cursed, question mark, exclamation point, exclamation point, question mark. And this is a mint tin game that was published by goblin hour games and sold on game crafter. I've had this in my little drawer for a while but because I was talking up the game crafter sale the other day, I pulled out a bunch of those games and got them to the table. So first one is cursed, and this is a solo only press your luck game. It says play time is three to 10 minutes. I probably played this four times in 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:So basically the setup is you take this deck out of the box, you shuffle the cards together, you flip one over as your starting item and away you go. So on your turn, or it's always your turn as a solo game. What you want to do is you're going to flip a card, and these cards are not double use or dual use, they are triple use trio use cards. So there's a monster on one side, a weapon on this on the along the long edge of the card, and then a effect or an item on the opposite side. So you flip a card. It'll show you what enemy you're going to be facing and you put that in front of you. And the enemy has a certain strength, ranging between I don't know, five and 11. Then what you're doing is you are turning over cards, one at a time, to add up their attack value. That is seen on the on the weapon side, and when you feel like you are close enough to your weapons matching that enemy health up at the top, you can discard that enemy. Take all of your items that you use or all of your weapons and then you discard them. For every point between the enemy's health and your weapon value, you have to discard cards equal to that value. So if there's 11 on the health and I have 9 out there, I would discard all the weapons that I use and then I would discard 2 additional cards.
Speaker 1:The object of the game is to get 8 of these enemy creature souls by killing them before the deck runs out, which is supposed to represent your health. So you're pressing your luck to be like, okay, I can turn that next card over and I might get closer to the enemy's health, but if I bust or if I go over, like let's say it's a, this has an eight and or the picture that's showing now is eight and a five. So if I pull one more card and it's a I don't know a four, then I would just discard that four and it doesn't count. Okay, so you're like burning cards as you continue to try and get closer and closer. So you're trying to get just close enough without busting, and some of the some of the villains that you're fighting have like different effects, like your first melee attack does no damage, your first even value attack does no damage, and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:The closest I got to six in the four plays that I did in my 10 minutes I got the closest I got to the eight souls that you're supposed to capture was six. And this game is quite challenging because you have to be really super efficient and I'm not sure if it's like a luck of the draw or if it's like I'm quitting too early or I have no idea, but it's really challenging to get eight souls before that deck runs out. So it's kind of a fun little solo game. It's like I don't know, maybe 35, 40 cards all in a mint tin size and then you can fit this thing in your pocket and it's a cool little solo game that you can pull out and play at cafes and stuff. So that is called Curse.
Speaker 2:Next one All right, travis, that's exciting. I like that.
Speaker 1:A little, press your luck in your pocket.
Speaker 2:Keep them coming.
Speaker 1:All right. Next one is Dust Runner. Dust Runner is this like post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk Mad Max race to the finish line, also in a mint tin. So what you are trying to do in dust runner is you have your little post-apocalyptic uh, mad max vehicle that has ammo and fuel and health and on your turn you are flipping these encounter cards. So there's two of them face down and you pick one to flip over at a time and, depending on the order in which you flip those over, will dictate what the enemy vehicle that is chasing you through this post-apocalyptic wasteland will do. Sometimes they will, like, try and catch up with you. Sometimes they will attack you. Sometimes a giant sandworm will come and damage your vehicle, and what you're trying to do is you're trying to manage keeping ahead of this enemy vehicle that's running up on your tail, attacking them and potentially, uh, killing them to win the game, or you run all the way across the desert to the finish line, and so it's a card-based game.
Speaker 1:It comes with these two little minis. You don't really need them to play. You can customize your car so you get little upgrades for your fuel or your attacks or your weapons, and this whole thing fits inside a little mint tin and really what you're doing is you're trying it's like a resource management game as you're running through this kind of maze like desert, to get to the finish line. The story is that you like stole some plans to the enemy base or whatever, and you're trying to run back to your base before they catch up to you. But really what it is is it's kind of a luck based, like the luck will determine what. What is the? The terms that bow used the other week input randomness versus output randomness that's right this is.
Speaker 1:This is input randomness, right. So you're going to flip a card and it may attack you, he may run up on you, he may do different things and then you have to react to that based on using your fuel or using your ammo or using items that can get you ahead of this guy. So game ends when either the enemy, dust runner, blows you up or runs your health to zero. You run them to zero. They catch up with you on the spaces, the little tracks, through the desert, or you reach the finish line. And this game is pretty cool. I definitely need to give it a couple more plays to see how different each run is, but I think it's a pretty smart game and I would love to see some of the other upgrades to the vehicle and see how they impact the play. So that is Dust Runner and I really enjoyed this one.
Speaker 3:Is that actually based on Mad Max?
Speaker 1:It is not. No, I'm not really sure if it's based on any sort of license, but the art is really cool. The bad guy is this cyberpunk-looking dude with a pink mohawk and a big face mask. And you've got your different vehicles that have like cranes and jet engines and guns on the front and all sorts of random stuff, but it's all very like thematic and and the artwork is cool. It's all pink and black and blue and I don't know very striking on the table.
Speaker 3:I'm totally here for a resource management, upgrade your stuff kind of game. I've just added it to my list.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the cool thing is when you're building out your vehicle at the beginning, the cards that have your vehicle picture on it, this three-panel car. Each of these panels have an opposite side that has different artwork and different values for the ammo, the fuel, the health and a bonus. So, like this one that's shown right here has two damage. The other one has one damage and these stars along the bottom are like representative of points that you end or points that you earn at the end, if you win or if you lose. So what you do is you either you win or lose. Win or lose, like blow them up or they blow you up or whatever. What you're doing is you're comparing like a score value to a sliding scale of success and so it'll tell you, like you know, you know 30 plus points is radical or whatever some some nonsense point scale. But um, yeah, what you're trying to do is you're just trying to score as many points.
Speaker 1:One of the cars is sort of like point tracker. The cool thing is, like, because you're competing for points, there's certain instances where, like if I'm about to take damage, I can actually like burn points on my personal score to prevent that damage from happening. Oh, nice, and so there's like this kind of give and take. Like man, I really want to like have a personal high score this time or whatever, but I might have to sacrifice a couple points here and there to prolong the game or maybe make my escape or do these different things. So, uh, yeah, dust runner pretty cool. I definitely want to give it a couple more plays. Clayton.
Speaker 2:I would just like to implore the listener out there to check out the YouTube video of this, because I was trying to think, while you were describing it, I was like if I was just listening to this, I probably would have tuned out a while ago, cause I couldn't imagine how that anything interesting could happen in a mint 10. But looking at these pictures really brings it to life. I'm like, wow, it actually looks pretty cool. So, yeah, yeah, it's definitely worth checking out.
Speaker 1:If you, yeah, either look it up on bgg or check out our youtube stream, because I'm interested as well I'm telling you I I'm a big proponent of game crafter and the the stuff that people come up on this site, because people can design their own artwork and create their own miniatures and stuff like that. And they pack it all in this nice little mint tin and it's super cheap. You could get this game for I don't know five bucks or something and have this in your bag when you go on the on the run or while you're traveling. You could play this on an airplane drop down table like these things are awesome. I love travel.
Speaker 3:mint 10 games they're awesome does it have the figurines in there as well, or are they?
Speaker 1:it does. It has little minis that's sick. Comes with these two dice. The dice are used to keep track of the enemy's health. Comes with these little cubes that track are used to keep track of the enemy's health. It comes with these little cubes that track your ammo, health and fuel. Yeah, it comes with all of this.
Speaker 1:The interesting thing is it does a little bit of like IKEA, where they punch out all these cards and then they just slap them in the tin and they mail it to you. So the cards are a little out of order, but they all have unique backs to them them. So you know how to sort them, and then all the instructions are like have page numbers on them that you can put together. So it's not like you're I was not flipping through this thing like, oh my god, what do these cards mean? Like you just have to sort them out yourself. It takes 30 seconds. So nice, yeah, that's dust runner.
Speaker 1:The next one is called Doom Pilgrim Pocket, and Doom Pilgrim is originally a much larger box game that has been shrunk down into mint tin size. The reason they did this is because Doom Pilgrim itself is originally a much larger box and what they really wanted to do was make the art shine, and so it has this like really striking art style. It's very like gothic and dark and you get like a character sheet and it looks like this uh, all the art was like watercolored and drawn by hand. Really cool artwork. And really what it is is like a dungeon crawler that you read through and you are making decisions based on the texts that are on the cards, and so you're like this traveler going through this like fantasy, post-apocalyptic world, and so you'll like flip a card. You read it. It offers you some decisions. It's like. It's like one of those choose your own adventure books that you're doing in a mint tin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's pretty cool. They I mean they took the game that was originally this, you know much larger, like the cards themselves originally were like these big tarot cards, and they shrunk them down into a mint tin. This one's like the mint tin's a little thicker, it's like maybe double what the other mint tin games were in thickness. But this game is pretty cool and it's unique and it's like an rpg in a box. If you want to like, just go on a little adventure for a while. This one I will definitely need to play again because there's like branching paths that all lead different places. Um, you could probably spend a couple hours going through this. If you don't want to read or I don't know, don't want to spend so much time reading, this game is probably not for you.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of text that you have to read on these cards, in particular because they've been shrunk down. The text is very small. So if you have bad eyesight or you don't like reading small text, probably not for you. But Text is very small. So if you have bad eyesight or you don't like reading small texts, probably not for you. But Doom Pilgrim is like a cool idea. I used to play this like game on my phone that was like a traveler in space and you're like on the moon and it would like give you these prompts and you kind of read through it and then you pick what you're going to do next. It's like a text-based adventure, it's kind of like that that, but it's on cards and it has really cool art style. So, yeah, doom pilgrim is unique and different and I kind of enjoyed it. I. I need to give it another shot, but it's like an rpg.
Speaker 2:Choose your own adventure book in a tin. Yes, clayton. So did you play through like an entire game of it and how long did that take you? I did a good branching paths like have you completed a? A whole doom pilgrim thing?
Speaker 1:no, I have not completed like one run through yet. Yeah, um, I kind of just like got a taste for it, so I I need to give it more of a serious chance. But uh, we are traveling next weekend, so I definitely will bring this along and maybe play it on the airplane or something.
Speaker 3:Yes, sam they just look fun. I want to do it. Yeah, based on what you've played so far, do you think there's enough variation in the storyline that you can? You know, is it one path and you have to stay on that pass and you can vary off, but can you come back to the main path, or is there? Like multiple paths to get you to the end I have not played enough to tell you that.
Speaker 1:Um, I'll have to report back later on, but for I mean, for as cheap as this game is, it's worth like just playing through once and handing it off to a buddy. Like these mint tin games are so inexpensive and it's worth it just to play through them a couple times that if you get bored of them, like pass them off they're not taking up that much space in your house like throw them in a drawer or something like. To me, this, a game like this, can stick around for a while and like I'll probably forget about it or I'll play other narrative games or different campaign games or you know, and then I'll circle back to this one and it'll be like kind of fresh, you know. So I I'll definitely report back when I have played this more and have played through the campaign a couple times. But, um, yeah, it's like an rpg in a mint 10. I felt like I had to give a shot.
Speaker 2:So that is doomed over travis. Mint 10 sm Smith here getting us all wound up about Mintin games.
Speaker 1:I told you, man, that there's some like seriously cool stuff. Like somebody took, man what is that Mint Knight? It's called Mint Knight and it's Mage Knight in a Mint Tin. Somebody took like Twilight Imperium and shrunk it down. It's called like mint imperium or something. People are so innovative and they come up with such cool ideas and they cram them into tiny boxes. So if you are struggling for space, check out game crafter, because they have some awesome games that come in very small packages is game crafter run by?
Speaker 3:is it jason glover, the guy from granome games? Is it his website, because he's got a lot of games on there?
Speaker 1:I'm not entirely sure who owns it. I'm gonna have to, like, do some research, because I've shouted them out plenty of times but I don't actually know the background.
Speaker 2:You should yeah, I was gonna say good god, there's so much free advertising for game crafter on this podcast, it's's going to make me spew.
Speaker 1:Whatever, I'm sure that Cam is sitting fat and happy based on all the advertisements for Petri's on this podcast. All right, so I just love the concept, right, like, people can go on and they can actually like build a game from scratch. They have a bunch of different components that you can pick from. You pick the quantities, you can upload art straight into the website and then they will print the game for you. And they can even do like a pre-sale, where they will put it up on the website for a month or two or whatever, and then the number that you sell is the number that they print and they send them out. So they're super responsive, like that, and they have great resources for people that are looking or, like, have an idea in their head but need to translate it, translate it into a game. So, yeah, I, I really enjoy these games, I think they're cool and I I think that they will stick around for a while because they're they're not taking up space on a shelf.
Speaker 1:So, all right, are we ready to move on to the mission objective? All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, let's talk cult, of the new and how to keep up with board games. So everybody is out there scrolling through instagram. They're getting pushed all the board game content, all the board game influencers. It's hard not to go out and buy all the hottest new releases all the time. So, sam, I want to hear your hot take on how you keep up in the board game hobby without spending every last penny that you've earned on all the new board games. Tell me your approach to it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I literally just did that yesterday yeah, this is gonna ring a little hollow yeah um, it's hard, right, because, like I was saying, even with Kickstarter, you get these campaigns.
Speaker 3:You see the advertising. I don't just see it on Instagram. You get Facebook ads, you name it and I see it. So it's super hard. When you see a game, they've got these amazing visual campaigns and things that they're doing. And then you've got influencers for want of a better word who get the preview of the game or they get sent a copy or whatever, and I don't know if it's just the ones that I see, but they're always super excited about the game. It's the best thing they've ever played in their life. It's this amazing.
Speaker 3:You know, nobody's ever come up with a game like this before, you know. But then you look at the Lord of the Rings trick-taking game. That's just the crew. It's the same game. You know what I mean. So it's hard. So what I do is if I see a game that I like, I chuck it on a little note on my phone, and if I'm still thinking about it later on, then I'll maybe consider getting it. Um, most of my games that I buy, I try and buy second hand, unless it's one that I've been waiting for for a long, long time, and and then I'll grab it um, but it's just yeah. Yeah, I know the board game community is small right, especially on Instagram, which is where I see most of my stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And when you see, when you're scrolling through and you see 10 people all who are just like, oh, this is the best thing I've ever seen in my life, it's so amazing. You can't help but be like, oh well. Well, you know, maybe that's for me yeah I don't know how to get past it. I don't know what the cure is. Yeah, um, but they just know that I hate money.
Speaker 1:So it's difficult to me. I I compare this to like the video game industry. Right, like video game publishers will put out review copies and they'll give codes to all these different media outlets and influencers and all this stuff. Right, they put it all out there with the stipulation in the contract that says that somewhere you have to state in your ethics policy that you were provided this game for review for free by the publisher, right? And I don't think board games is there yet, at least from what I've seen.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm way off and people have been publishing their ethics policies forever, but I don't think that's really the case.
Speaker 1:Like, people will send out a couple of review copies and I think specifically the influencers out there that are looking for views, they'll like tag a bunch of people and they think specifically the influencers out there that are looking for views, they'll like tag a bunch of people and they'll tag the publisher and the publisher shares it and they probably have more followers than anybody and they're doing it for follows and views more than they are for an actual review.
Speaker 1:And that's where this like it kind of diverges is like the ethics of getting out there and saying this is the best game I've ever seen and then they play it once and they never talk about it ever again. Versus, like I was provided this for free, my review can be less than positive and, yeah, actually get the truth out there, versus like blowing it up for views and likes and follows. So I, I don't know, I don't really know where I stand on this because I it's a tough challenge to tackle without like shifting the industry and maybe we'll get there in like 10, 15, 20 years, but clay what you got thoughts.
Speaker 2:I do think that at least on youtube I've seen a shift. I think I do think that at least on YouTube I've seen a shift. I think Instagram's a little more of a scrappy group that's out there, just maybe shilling a little more for views. But I think they cracked down on YouTube a few years ago and I think they're a lot more specific about the language they use and call it like a preview or a playthrough versus a review. So when I see preview, that immediately to me is like okay, they're just telling us about this game, this isn't a review. They're like literally doing this for the publisher to get the spread, the word of the game Versus. If I see a review out there, I expect that it's going to have some level of like critical thought to it and not just, you know, for the, for the company.
Speaker 1:yeah, I do think youtube has been a little better at least the channels I watch and follow about being specific about whether this is a review or a preview yeah, and it's interesting you brought up the language, because I just saw somebody on instagram the other day talk about I can't even remember what game it was, but they played it a couple of times and they said this is just the first impressions versus a formal review. Like, yeah, the, the language is kind of there, but I'm not sure if that's actually built into, like any sort of contract or the reviews that we've done. We've done a small handful like, yeah, what? They hit us up on instagram and said you want to review this and we said, sure, but there's no like contract there, there's no agreement. Like we got a copy of the game, which is great, I love.
Speaker 1:If you want to send me games to review, I will play them all day long. Please, if you're listening out there, please send me your games. But you know there's no sort of like contract or anything that's that's built in there. But, besides the point, if you're out there and you are consuming this content on instagram and on youtube, it's so hard to avoid getting sucked into that like, oh man, this is a hot new thing everyone's talking about. Like, I gotta play this game. So, sam, like, what's your approach to?
Speaker 3:you know, keeping your gaming routines fresh without buying all the new games so there's a select few games that we play all the time at home. You know I fell into the hot new take. I see a game. I'll watch heaps of YouTube videos on it. I absolutely shout out to the goat Rodney Smith man, how does that guy flip his boxes and catch them perfectly every time?
Speaker 1:I want to know how many tries that takes.
Speaker 3:One, he's magic.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:But I'll watch it. He's I think he's really good at being really unbiased and he's saying exactly what the game is.
Speaker 3:So I really appreciate, uh, watching those. I watch that. For finspan, um, I kind of I try and stay away from, I mean, most of it's opinion-based, but some of it can be opinion-based because, I don't know, people hate capitalism, I don't know. Or it's opinion-based, like you say, because it's just for views and things. So if I see a game that the art captures my eyes or the mechanics or um, something like that, I'll try and watch the absolute death out of every video review, play through, um, anything I can find on YouTube. Uh, before I make my final decision. And like for FinSpan, it didn't take long, I think I was like three videos deep and I was like, yeah, that's the one, but one that I had recently was Harmonies.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Don't know if you guys have played Harmonies Yep Digitally. It is amazing, yeah. So I actually first played this on BGA. I saw it and I was like, oh, what's this? I can see the hype on, you know, instagram and all that kind of stuff. I'll try it out on bga and I think I was. I played two games and I put it on my list of games that I want to buy um, and it's not an, it's not a huge list. I'll put them on there. Sometimes I'll put them on there, sometimes I'll put them on there, and two, three months down the track, there'll be more reviews and things that come out which are not the paid partnerships, as Instagram calls it. They're more. You know, I played this and this is actually what I think you know you've got.
Speaker 3:You don't want to talk crap about other people, but you know, like I listened, I listened to the Shut Up, sit Down and Shut Up, shut Up and Sit Down, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, and they've gotten a lot better recently, but there was a whole stint of time where every single game they played, they loved oh, and it was like you know. And so there's been a couple times like, oh, they, you know, not them specifically, whereas I've got a game and then I've been like actually this is not that good, or you can tell that it's like being rushed to production or it's just meh, you know, and those games get sold by me pretty quickly. Stonemaier Games absolutely love most of what he does. Have you ever played his? I don't know if it's his game specifically, but Pendulum.
Speaker 2:No, that is like the one game of Stonemaier I don't have.
Speaker 3:Okay, do you like real-time strategy?
Speaker 2:I've never played a real time strategy you know, like there's no turns.
Speaker 3:There's uh, there's sandals, and you turn the sandals and everybody, just it's a free-for-all. Whoever does this action first gets to do it. It's, it's. My brain doesn't work that way. I get destroyed every time I play it. I hate it. But that was one of those ones where it was like, oh, it's the new stone, my game, everybody you know rushed out and went to go and I was like, oh man, I saw it on that page. I was like I need that. I got it, hated it, it's no longer in my collection.
Speaker 3:Um, so I think, I think the key is to have some sort of list, have some sort of guidance, like I know the games that I like and don't like yeah so if I see the new hotness, I'll put it on my list and then, as more and more information trickles through the media, whatever you want to call it Then I can go back on that and I'll move it down my list. But, like, I'm still kind of interested, but not as interested as when I first saw it. So there's that kind of thing, but it's not just the new hotness. You know, keeping my board games fresh, I go to board game night most Wednesdays and it's there's like 10 people.
Speaker 3:Everybody brings their massive all play bag of games and it's just the who wants to play? I've bought 10 games. I bought 10 games. I bought three, you know, and you sit down and go. Well, I've never tried that. Who wants to try that with me? And so that's quite good. There's a couple of games where I've played there that I've been like actually, this is, this is really good, and I'm like, oh, never heard of that. No, this game's like 15 years old, like how have I not seen that before? Like, yes, 15 years ago there wasn't Instagram and whole community around around the board games and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:So that's a really good way, I think I I like to play a game in person, or at least play it on bga, before I make a total decision yeah except for finspan yeah, I, I like that too, because I find myself, when I listen to all these gaming podcasts and stuff and they'll talk about a game a long time ago, like oh, have you ever played this one? Or have they talked about games that came out 10, 15 years ago, or whatever I find myself looking up, looking up those games and adding them to my list, far more often than like the hot new game that I saw on instagram and something. Every once in a while I'll jump in on that and I'm I am probably the biggest sinner when it comes to Kickstarter and GameBound.
Speaker 2:Shame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, real shame, serious shame. But I find myself especially now that I have taken a break from backing Kickstarters and buying games. I'm working through my backlog, I'm listening to podcasts and stuff and I might add older games to my list, but I'm not like constantly looking through Kickstarter and looking through game found and, you know, buying it on these giant plastic monstrosities that come in these giant boxes that will sit on my shelf and probably never get played by anybody but me. So you know it's it's really challenging and I will say, if you have an issue with that and it has become a serious issue. One, go get help, go talk to somebody. And two, instagram just opened up the new feature where you can actually scrub your algorithm. So you can reset your algorithm on Instagram and Instagram will wake up tomorrow like it never even met you before and you can build your algorithm on Instagram and Instagram will wake up tomorrow Like it never, like it never even met you before, and you can build your algorithm from scratch.
Speaker 2:You can only do that so often, but yeah you can go in.
Speaker 1:You can go in and scrub your algorithm and reset it, yeah, and and potentially scrub all that stuff from your feed, so you would never see any more Instagram board gamers, except for the ones that you follow. So, anyways, there's a couple of options out there if you are really sucked into that hole. But, yeah, it's a challenge for real.
Speaker 3:I've got some Kickstarters on the way. I mean, you know what Kickstarters is like, who actually knows. I've got three on the way that are supposed to be coming in the next few months, which I'm excited for, but that's another one. You know, like you go on Kickstarter and you see the the pre preview hype and you see the production videos and stuff and the effort that goes into it and and as someone who is, you know, currently trying to make some games, I totally understand why you want that hype around it, because it's so important. So I add those to the saved before I might go back, and then usually I won't even bother backing a Kickstarter unless it's already successful. Yep, but then that's tricky as well. Right, because I'm also of the opinion.
Speaker 3:I'm coming to the realization now that it's not the be all end. All you know, sometimes you want to go to your FLGS, your little friendly local game store, and you want to see the games on the shelf. You want to pick them up. You want to feel the weight of them in your hands. You want to see the games on the shelf. You want to pick them up. You want to feel the weight of them in your hands. You want to sniff the cardboard. You know all that kind of weird stuff us board game nerds do, and so if there's a game on Kickstarter that like really catches my eye that never comes to retail, then in the back of my mind I'm like why?
Speaker 1:Yeah retail.
Speaker 3:Then in the back of my mind I'm like why, yeah, why has that not become a staple on the board game shelf when there was so much hype about it while the kickstarter was live? You know, that's because kickstarter runs its own. You know games, we love all that kind of stuff because they make money from it. And yeah, you, everyone's just trying to take my money. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Kickstarter feels like really extra dirty about it, though, too, because they're like oh, we have these stretch goals that we're going to release after we've already been successful, and then those will never come to store. So you better back now and they capitalize on that FOMO. That is just so like predatory, and it gets people to spend their money. So it's obviously working, but yeah it, it feels it feels dirty, it feels a little dirty two of the games that are backed don't have any stretch goals.
Speaker 3:They were like straight away top line, don't see any stretch goals. We're not interested in that. We just wanted to give you a good game. Yeah, which I really appreciate. Um, which you know, bagging on kickstarter a little bit but probably going to end up putting down kickstarter. Yeah, because they won't watch this. Don't watch it, don't watch it. You know what I'm talking about, um, because you know, at the end of the day, it is just a passion side project that we're doing part-time. So you got to get it to the world somehow and if 100 people buy it and nobody else ever buys it, then at least you've achieved something. So as a creative, I kind of understand that. You know, um, but yeah, it's, it's hard, man, it's hard out there love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, travis might be the biggest center in our operation game night group about kickstarter, but yeah, I am certainly the center of going into the local game store and being like, oh, I heard about that game, I see it. My impulses are just raging right now because, you know, I'm making connections with all those cool posts I saw in this game right here, I can buy it right now, and then I walk up to the stinking counter with it. But I do think we're, like all of us have come far enough now that we're, like, privileged enough to understand what we like. But I remember getting into it and my driver to play games was just like, what is out there and what do I like? Like, what kind of games are the ones that I'm going to be drawn to? So I was playing everything Like it didn't matter I was. I just wanted to see what the world of board gaming had to offer, after coming to it from only playing Monopoly, to it from only playing monopoly and, and so, like I I don't know that that phase of it was deadly, 10 and probably not healthy, but also I learned a ton about what I like. And now I'll still get sucked into the hotness Like I um, I admit it I'm, I'm bad about it. Um, I admit it I'm, I'm bad about it, I, I but I'm more informed now.
Speaker 2:Right, I went to Petri's a few weeks ago and I saw SETI sitting on the counter and I was like everybody's talking about SETI? I, a few years ago, would have bought it, no thoughts, and I left it sit. I was like you know what? I'm know what I knew. A guy locally has it. I'm going to play it, literally right after we get off this podcast. So I'm like I'll give it a try and if it's any good, maybe I'll get it. But Lord of the Rings the trick-taking game was sitting there and I was like I love the crew and I love Lord of the Rings, so this is a no brainer, I'm going to get it played. I'm going to buy that one because I know it's something I'm going to get to play.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that's, I think that's it right. Like if you, if you have a game and it's just a reskin or whatever you want to call it of another game that you already know and love, then why not? Yeah, yeah, because then you can love the theme, you can love the game as well. Yeah, um, a big driving factor for me as well is I pick a, I look at a game and I go is there something my wife will play with me or am I going to buy that and is it going to sit on?
Speaker 3:the shelf for six months, until I can finally drag one of my friends around for a game night same same, uh play.
Speaker 1:I think you hit on something like really important, though you've been in this hobby long enough and you've played enough games to know what you like, right?
Speaker 1:I think that's a pretty common thread that people in the hobby go through is like they they start off, they realize what games can be and they're like I gotta play and buy everything, and they go on this like just spree, whether that lasts a month or years, and then they hit this kind of like inflection point where it's like all right, it's too much, and they slow way down, they cull their collection until they have exactly what they want in their collection and then they kind of hit this steady state for a long time.
Speaker 1:And I think it's at that inflection point whether that happens in a month or 10 years, after you've blown all your life savings on every board game out there like that stuff matters and really taking a certain look at your game collection and your gaming habits and tailoring your collection that fits your lifestyle and your budget More importantly, your budget, but your lifestyle as well. Is it a game that my spouse or my game group will enjoy? Is it something that fits in my collection or fills a hole in my collection, whether it's theme or mechanic or whatever it is and tailoring that collection down to where you're happy with it. And then maybe if something fills a different hole or something it's like a mechanic that you love or they're iterating on a mechanic that you love, then maybe you consider it for your collection. So yeah, tons of different approaches, different strokes for different folks, but yeah, it's tough, it's tough out there stuff on the wallet yeah, I've started um logging all my games on on bg stats, you know, okay, shout out to whoever made that.
Speaker 3:It's the coolest app. Yeah, and I think what I'm going to do is maybe once every six months, quarterly, even look at it and be like okay, what didn't I play?
Speaker 1:Ah what?
Speaker 3:what have I not played this year, this, this, these last six months that I'm not really that attached to? And that's how you can also keep it fresh, I guess is just get rid of the games that you don't. You don't play all the time, like we were talking about Munchkin earlier. I love Munchkin. Munchkin is the coolest game, and I had four expansions. I had the boxes of holding which hold all the treasures and the doors and everything, and it sat on my shelf and I don't think I played it, probably for two years solid, because it's just. There are so many other games, you know, and so I was like you know what, I'll move it on to someone who can enjoy it, and that's another thing I'm like I don't want to just want to cause. You know, it's cardboard, it's plastic, it's all that kind of stuff. You know. I'd rather buy a secondhand game or pass on a game than have it just sit there doing nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I sent Clay and Jared a box of games that I needed to either offload or were sitting around, or I had extra, and I'm going to probably do so again before I leave, and then I actually just went in and talked with our local library and they take donations of games. So I'm definitely going to offload a bunch that way as well.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I'll message you my address.
Speaker 1:Perfect, absolutely, let's do it. I'll do a game swap with you. Are we ready to go over the fence? Did we do it? Okay, sam, I want to give you the majority of the time. Talk about what you've been doing outside of gaming, and I want to hear about the game that you designed right outside of gaming.
Speaker 3:Um, honestly, I don't do a lot. Okay, I go to work and I come home, um, we've just started watching westworld. Nice finally jumped on that, got through the first season and we were like, what is this show? Started watching the second season. We were a bit like, is it, what's going to go on here? So we got a couple of shows like that on the go.
Speaker 3:We went on a massive hike with our friends. We've got a couple of shows like that on the go. We went on a massive hike with our friends on Thursday. So Wednesday, your time, was Waitangi Day for us, which is, I guess, kind of like your 4th of July. We've got the Treaty of Waitangi, which is between the Māori people and the colonizers, the dirty white people that came over and stole everything. You know how. It is British, and so the Treaty of Waitangi is basically like your Declaration of Independence or something like that, kind of, I guess, like that, and so we get a day off for that. So me and my wife and some friends went for a walk, went for a massive hike, got sunburned this is actually my skin, it's not a T-shirt, but outside of board games, not a huge lot.
Speaker 3:So board game adjacent is this little beast right here astral freight company the astral freight company is is an is an idea I had while I was lying in bed in the middle of the night, and I'm like man, how cool would it be to have a game that you play on the table? That was like no man's sky okay you guys play the computer video game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that is literally just about going out there and finding resources and building stuff. Yeah, so we've condensed, condensed, cut back on that and so this is you go out, you mine your asteroids, you collect your resources your iron, your energy, your cobalt, titanium, that kind of thing to upgrade your freighter, uh, and then so the the I won't get it out, but, um, you'll have a dual layer player board where you start off with level one lasers, car, um, cargo hold and engines and you spend your resources to upgrade those, and then they give you more dice to roll when you're mining the lasers so you get better results. They give you more space in your cargo so you can hold more resources. They upgrade your engines so you can move more than just one spot around the asteroid belt at a time.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:It's all cards, cards and dice and obviously the resource, chats and tokens. You can buy crew. You can upgrade your. You can upgrade, upgrade, level up your captain so your captain has better buffs. You know you start off with basically nothing. Upgrade them, hire your crew, you get coins. Yeah, there's events that happen in space which I've been told. I need to chill out on them because I've made them way too hard. You know, you get an event card and 60 of them destroy you are bad things and I'm like well, space is a is a fickle mistress, you know, and so we've been working on that since about about august. Okay, we're at the stage now where we're about 95 percent of the way done with the mechanics and all that, and we're just we've got an artist in mind. Now we just need to basically get the capital to pay for said artist, because that's a, that's an expense. Yes, it is. We've also. I've also started. You guys might have seen it on Instagram. I've got another little card game. I think you guys gave me some name ideas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think mine was the winner. Mine was good, it was good I think Coin and Pain. I think you said no, mine was like the Prince's Coffers. Yeah, the Prince's Coffers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and so I don't know if you've ever played the card game. We call it presidents and a holes over here, but we call it scum.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:And it's that it's not really trick taking it's, it's climbing and shedding, which is you have to put down a card that's of higher value than the one that's there, and I really like that game. It's easy, it's fun to play with a bunch of people, because you just hand out the card, you just keep going, you just keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I took away the president and the scum parts of it and turned it into a rounds where each card also has some sort of ability that you can activate when you play the card. And then, in the same kin as Bonanza, those cards the back of them have coins and you put them in your pile. So as you're playing the game, as more rounds go by, cards disappear from the deck.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it gets harder and harder to count the cards and harder to know what people might have in their hands and then at the end whoever's got the most coins wins. So we're thinking about, you know, getting that one to get that one out to maybe see if we can fund the art for the old big boy. You know, that tiny box is about the size of a box and it's probably sitting at about two kgs at the moment, which is okay. Two kgs, four pounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's a heavy little chubber I loved your sample art for the your trick taking the prince's coppers. Yeah, I love, I love the sample art that you had, like that kind of stained glass style art on the back of the cards. That was.
Speaker 3:That was really cool yeah, so I just I took, uh, some ai images and some you know hand-drawn bits and chucked on the cards. That's not going to be the end, but it'll be something quite similar to that. Um, it just pops, really, catches your eye. Yeah it's beautiful, really cool yeah, cheers awesome maybe I'll have to send you guys a copy so you can uh test it and plug it oh yeah, we'll rave about it, we'll chill.
Speaker 2:We'll chill for it on here.
Speaker 1:Best game we've ever played. Yeah, put us on the box. Awesome, you got. Anything else you want to shout out? I'll give you one more round at the end.
Speaker 3:Yeah, go on. All right, you guys tell us what you've been doing for the week.
Speaker 1:Clay what you been doing.
Speaker 2:I had my first job interview. Okay, I mean, yeah, my life really I mean the military I've had like sort of interviews, but it was never a really high stress because they're going to give you a job, no matter what you know. They just move you around and give you jobs. So this was my first real interview. It's like a phone screening but went pretty well. I'm probably going to get get it handed to me in the technical interview when they want to see what actual skills I have. But man, this job hunt stuff is stressful. So I'm staying alive with that but still pushing on the Sopranos.
Speaker 2:But I did not know. You opened up last episode with some obscure thing about data refineries and I had no idea what you're talking about. I'm just standing there like okay. But then my mom texted me. She's like oh, have you been watching severance? I was like no, uh, that that totally went over my head. So now I'm getting a lot of pressure to watch severance. We tried it before and didn't make it past like episode five. It just seems so slow. But yeah, there's like almost nobody that's like current with it. That's not saying how good it is, so I don't know. Maybe, maybe we'll try it again after we finished the Sopranos.
Speaker 1:Nice, Well, I have been watching severance. That was my over the fence because that show is so good. I, I didn't. I did the same thing. I like started it. I got like three, four episodes in and I fell off.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like if you push past that mid season slump, the second half of that first season gets really spicy and it continues straight into the second season, which just aired. We've also been watching the old seasons of the white lotus oh yeah, it's great. I love the white lotus. Um, jennifer coolidge is phenomenal so good, she's so good. Um, but season three is coming out this week, I think this coming weekend. So, oh, no way. Yeah, really looking forward to that, but are you a?
Speaker 3:are you a season one or season two?
Speaker 1:phonetic uh, I really like season two better. Season one, I appreciate like yeah, it's good, you kind of get a feel for what the show is trying to do. Season two they like really let you connect with the people that are in this like weird, bizarre story and I think they do a better job of like really hitting home the messages that they're trying to send. Like season one is like we get it, they're all privileged, we get it, they're like completely oblivious to these struggles of real people in the world. Season two like there's more nuanced stories that they're telling amongst the different groups and they all connect a lot better than they do in season one so like season the concierge in season one, he's so good.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's good, he's great yeah yeah, he's pretty wild, um, but like season two, they have like the three, the three guys the son, the dad and the grandpa or whatever that are traveling together and it's like a story about the sins of the father and like do the sins of the father automatically get past the sins of the son and how do you break that cycle and can you strive to be a better person? Or are you trapped to repeat the mistakes of your past? And yeah, this, I got a million good things to say about the white Lotus, but really looking forward to season three this week, yeah, same.
Speaker 2:Dang, I didn't even know it wasn't tracking that, but I'm excited now too.
Speaker 3:Yes, have you seen the other seasons?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they're good. That's just a fun time it's weird.
Speaker 1:It's very strange. I this one's in Thailand and I can't imagine what they're going to do. I can't wait, I'm so excited, it's going to be horrendous oh yeah, oh yeah, all right. So, sam, great conversation today. Where can people find you on the internet?
Speaker 3:Um, on the internet I'm only in one place, I don't. You know, social media is just like, honestly, the bane of my existence. But I'm trying, you're doing good, so you can find me at Mesmeralm Games.
Speaker 1:That's.
Speaker 3:M-E-S-M-E-R-E-A-L-M. Underscore games which you know we came up with that name because you know you want to be mesmerized by the, by the games and and the realms that they take you to. Yeah, so I guess the whole part of right you, you need to be emerged and actually know and feel connected to what you're playing, not just, yeah, it's a loose theme on top of a dice rolling game.
Speaker 2:yeah, I felt I immersed Like I was in the ocean with those fish. When I played fence I was riding that whale shark man, it was great.
Speaker 3:I'm like man. What can I make my fish eat? Which one do I hate? That one, Awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah so just on Instagram there's my own games. Um, message me. I love talking to people. I love connecting. I've met with heaps of just amazing people through that page. If you want to hit me up on BGA, I'm always down to play a game which you can find me. It's Mr Wimbaum. You can put that wherever you want to put it. Funny story, but the reason it's Mr Wimbaum, but you can put that wherever you want to put it. And funny story, but the reason that it's Mr Wimbaum is because so my last name now is Hart. I took my wife's name when we got married, but before that my last name was Windy Bank, and one of the kids that I used to teach in Korea could not say my name. I'd say to him you know, jun, it's Windy, windy Bank Bank, and I'd go Windy Bank, wimbom. He just couldn't do it, that's hilarious.
Speaker 3:So that's. I get asked that all the time what the hell is that? But you can find me on those, you know. Send me a friend request, follow me. You know, if you've got some, I'm at the stage now on Instagram where I don't follow everyone back but like, if I see that you've got 14,000 followers and only six likes, then I'm like you might be a bit spammy. You might be a bit spammy, yeah so, but I'm always keen to connect, always keen to, to have a chat and talk about board games, cause it's an obsession, I'm addicted and I don't apologize for it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yeah, we will definitely provide a link to your page in our show notes. So if you want to check out Sam and his content, which is great, go ahead and look in the link in the show notes. So if you want to check out Sam and his content, which is great, go ahead and look in the link in the show notes. And, while you're there, go ahead and follow Operation Game Night. Go to our Instagram, go to our Spotify, go to Apple Podcasts, go to YouTube. Subscribe, follow Automatically, download every episode, leave us a rating, leave us a comment. We love interacting with people on the internet, so please give us a rating, leave us a comment. We love interacting with people on the internet, so please give us a follow and give us a rating.
Speaker 3:Help us make this show bigger and better. Before I leave, I should also probably give Oren so the other half of this. He doesn't really do the social media or anything like that, but he's the other one that's helping me design these games and publish, so I should probably give him a shout out and say he does exist, but 99% of the time if you're on Instagram you're talking to me. He'll occasionally jump on and chime in.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Oren.
Speaker 1:Way to go, oren, we believe in you, the GOAT. All right For Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been the one and only Sam from Mesmer realm on Instagram and we're out, thank you.
