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 27: SETI, Gizmos, Too Many Bones, & A Big Small Box Showdown!
It's the ultimate showdown in small box games, as we pit favorites against each other to crown a champion!
• Clayton shares his thoughts on SETI and how theme impacts gameplay experience
• Jared discusses his strategy and experience with Gizmos
• The competition begins with matchups revealing personal favorites and mechanics
• We explore auction strategies in games like For Sale and Castle Combo
Which games will fall short? Which ones will go the distance? Listen to find out now!
Have some thoughts/opinions on the bracket? Hit us up On Instagram and let us know what we missed! @Operation_Game_Night_Podcast
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!
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Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast, episode 27. Joining me, as always, are my co-hosts Clayton, gable, clay, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing good and I'm never going to forgive you for growing that beautiful beard and then shaving it off, because it's painful for me to sit through that intro and then have your bald face pop up at me. Oh man, it's alarming.
Speaker 1:It's so sad. And my co-host, jared Erickson.
Speaker 3:how you doing, jared, I'm outstanding I don't know how does rachel feel about it. She she's kind of she missed it too right from.
Speaker 1:I remember we already talked about this but I think I think she enjoyed it while I had it, I mean once I got past a certain point, once it's done being all scraggly and like patchy, then once you get into the lumberjack realm. Wear a lot of flannels, it goes good. We've got a good show for you. Today we are going to do a small box showdown, big bracket of small box games, to determine which is the best small box game, at least of the ones that we put on the bracket.
Speaker 2:Yes, this is all inclusive.
Speaker 3:This has been a couple weeks in the works, right, guys? I mean, it's been blowing up on the groups a couple of days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we. We put this back together a little while ago but we had too many hot guests to have on the podcast. So we are blessed to have many. So many people want to come on the podcast and talk board games with us, so we put our own agendas aside for the people that love to talk board games and we are back at it and then we'll have more guests later on. So if you're tired of listening to us talk, we will have more guests.
Speaker 3:Did you make a pass at our guests? You just called them hot. We only accept hotties on this podcast. Only hotties, hottie only hotties only we've gotten a thousand guys.
Speaker 1:We are hot anyways, uh, so before we do our big small box game showdown, let's debrief our weeks and talk about what games we played this week. So, clayton, debrief your week for me.
Speaker 2:I am going to talk about the one, the only SETI search for extraterrestrial intelligence Guys. I I have been faltering in my heavier gameplay and you can see said he's a 3.74, not the heaviest game out there, it's, you know, 0.2 behind unconscious mind, which did not compute from my brain at all. So I spoke about it last week how I had seen it at Petri's and I was old Me would have bought it the first time I saw it there, because everybody's talking about it. But I tamped down my expectations because I know myself right now and this game is probably not going to get played and it's probably too heavy for me to enjoy. So I had the chance to play it with four players in the local area and it took for freaking ever man. It was like it was. It was four hours to play this game. I don't know that I ever played a game that took that long, honest to God. And but despite that, I left and I could not get this game out of my head.
Speaker 2:So like a good podcast host, I went straight to Petri's the next day and picked it up and I sold poor Mary on the dream of SETI. I said, mary, I got to see what this is like at two players, because four players. I liked it but it was way too long. So let's see what it's like at two players. And we played it at two players. It was a lot shorter. We played that in like an hour and a half hour, 45.
Speaker 2:So it was good, but Mary absolutely hated it. She said she was a trooper. She barely let on that. She hated it so much. But after it was over she was like that every turn was just miserable. She had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. And every turn was just miserable. She had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. But anyway, just to give you a brief, that was just, like you know, the setting, the framework for how I've come to Game setter. Yeah, my opinions about SETI here. So I'm trying to find a beautiful picture. Oh, there's the whole board. That's going to be nice, it's got like a twister in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's the whole board. That's going to be nice. It's got like a twister in the middle. Yeah, I mean it's space, it rotates, it moves about.
Speaker 2:So in SETI, I think the theme is that your company is competing to find alien life. So you are doing this in several different ways. There are two alien species at the beginning of the game that are selected. Right now there's only five aliens that you can find, but there's two placed face down. You don't know what they are. They're going to change the game when they get introduced.
Speaker 2:And the beginning of the game you're trying to find evidence of these aliens. So there's three different types of evidence that you can find for an alien. There's pink traces, blue traces and yellow traces. So the yellow traces you mainly find by sending out your probes to different planets and landing a rover on that planet, and then you'll find a yellow trace of an alien. When you do, you get one step closer to actually discovering this alien species. The traces you find by scanning the night sky, you like, scan these distant stars and eventually you find a pink trace. And now you got two of the traces you need to discover the alien. The last trace is a blue trace and you get those by analyzing the data you've collected in your computer. Boom, you get three. You get a pink, yellow and blue trace for an alien and you discover it. Flip it over. It introduces some new rules and mechanics for the game of how to score points Super interesting. You discover both those. You move on.
Speaker 2:The game lasts five rounds. On your turn you can take one main action, kind of like Lost Ruins of Arnak, and as many free actions as you can muster up Varnak as many free actions as you can muster up. So the main actions you're taking are you can launch a probe, so your probes start at earth, naturally, and then you have to maneuver them about the solar system there to get them to the planet you want to go to. You can scan, which I talked about was the way to get the pink traces. When you scan you're kind of competing in this like area control game in these different sectors and once the that sector has been completely scanned, whoever has the most influence in that area gets the pink trace that they can place. And then you can also you can play a card. So your cards give you actions that are like standard actions but they're maybe beefed up. They give you different objectives you can complete.
Speaker 2:You can orbit your probe, so your probe's out there, going to different planets. You get to a planet you like, maybe you want to orbit it. You can take the orbit action to orbit around that planet. You can take the orbit action to orbit around that planet, or you can choose to land on that planet and that's how you get the traces of yellow for the aliens. Oh, so, as you're traveling around these different planets, you get publicity. So you're, you know, spreading the good word of your company. And when you get more than six publicity, you have the option to spend that publicity to get a tech upgrade. So they're just ways to, you know, increase your action efficiency.
Speaker 2:Add some cool bonuses to your player map. That's another thing you can do. I think I hit most of them. So you take actions, and then you have free actions that you take, which are, you know, adding data to your computer, covering up spots. You can activate different bonuses.
Speaker 2:Your cards are multi-use, so there's four uses for your card. You have the top left corner. Has just like an icon. You can throw it away to gain a movement or gain a publicity, whatever. It's simple. And then the top right are you know as a color, showing what sector you could scan with that card if you used it for scanning. And then the top right are you know as a color showing what sector you could scan with that card if you used it for scanning. And then the middle of it has an action that you can use that allows you to, you know, just play it as a main action for that effect. And then the bottom of it has an income bonus so you can instead tuck it under your like little income board and so at the end of every round you're like beefing up the rewards you get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this game was I don't know if it's the theme, but it just clicked for me. I don't know like this, when I tried to play unconscious mind, I was like I have no idea what I should be doing, but something about playing a theme about trying to discover traces of aliens, like I was just like have no idea what I should be doing, but something about playing a theme about trying to discover traces of aliens, like I was just like, all right, I gotta get my probe out to this planet, I gotta land there, gotta get the yellow trace. Boom, boom, boom. I gotta scan this star. I want to get that trace and it was just so much fun to me to like. And that discovery of the alien and the way it switched up the game was freaking. Reagan's in here crying like a baby Get out of here, go.
Speaker 3:What does Reagan think about extraterrestrial life?
Speaker 2:He's all in, he believes, and I do too.
Speaker 1:Now, now that I've discovered it, so can you ever just like find the alien on this in this game, or is it like you're finding traces of them everywhere and like whoever gets the closest to finding them wins? No, no.
Speaker 2:You collectively are finding the traces of the aliens. So maybe I found the yellow trace for this alien, jared found the blue, travis found the pink. Once we've all, once those three different colors have been discovered for the alien, you discover it. You flip it over and you know, yeah, the new rules are like yeah, one introduced this like push your luck danger mechanism that you had to. You could play these cards that would give you sweet end game scoring, but if you played too many you might lose some points at the end of the game. So, and then they give you new places to place, um, the traces you find to score points. So you're all collectively trying to discover these two different aliens and if you contribute more, you get more of a benefit once they're discovered. But it's awesome, man, I I don't know how I'm gonna play it anymore, but because mary she certainly won't, and I don't know that, I don't know that I'm ever going to try to play it at four players, or even three would probably be too long. But yeah, for for a heavier game, like I just had so much fun with it.
Speaker 2:I, and again, I think the theme really helps. But you know the actions are straightforward, what you can do. It's like launch a probe, land on this planet, scan this sector, but the like, the min maxing of the different free actions and how you can optimize your turn and maybe plan for that solar system to rotate at just the right time so that you're now lined up with Neptune and you can get out there, because Neptune has a moon you can land on for like 26 points and so which is huge, that's a lot of points. So you're just there's so many ways to get points. It's like a point salary type situation. Everything you do is get new points and benefits and you're just trying to maximize everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which usually isn't the type of puzzle I like, but yeah, this one I just had so much fun with, like the main theme and mechanisms of the game that, yeah, again, it just clicked, and these games don't often do that for me. So I am glad to have this one as, like the heavier and again, heavy is relative there's games that are over 4.0. I probably won't ever touch those, but this, for me, is a heavier euro game that I want to have around and I like. Honestly, I feel like after that first play, I didn't even, I wasn't even the one that taught it, and I barely needed to recheck the rule book before I taught it to mary, because the the rules just stuck in my head. It was on fire in your brain, yeah.
Speaker 2:I could not get this out of my head. It's definitely not for everybody. It goes long. It can be AP inducing with all the different ways you can maximize resources, so it can take a while between your turns. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Clay, can I ask you a personal question? Yeah, Do you? You're going to have more opportunity to play this in Colorado or in your future location in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2:I don't think. I don't think Keeler's looking great for me. I might have to dip into the solo roles, but then again that's probably not going to happen either. So I'm going to keep it around for a special occasion, when somebody is feeling ambitious and wants to play with me.
Speaker 3:But hey, I'm foreshadowing my over the fence, but pretty soon we might be all on very similar time zones. So yeah, um, just a little.
Speaker 2:This little uh breadcrumb for the, for the listener there, yeah, yeah, jared, when you come out here, uh, next month, you know, I know we got a short time.
Speaker 3:We do have a small port window to actually maybe get something to the table. I am going to Colorado, that's not part of my over the fence Travis, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Wow Again. Enjoy your game weekend. Okay, all right.
Speaker 3:Oh boy, he's leaving me. I'm going to Colorado Springs. I'm going all the way to Colorado Springs, and then he's going home. I'm going to colorado springs. I'm going all the way to colorado springs, and then he's going home yeah, I can't, he's already going home next week. Yeah, to do the selfish to do is, uh, we'll get to that later too. A little foreshadowing maybe for uh over the fence for clayton no man um I'll bring it up if you don't worry, okay.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, clay, this seems super thematic and a great fit for a Space Force veteran, so thank you for sharing study with us. Yep, of course, awesome.
Speaker 2:I would love nothing more than to play this game with you guys, because I think you both would be geeking out about it.
Speaker 3:Once a guardian, always a guardian, that's right.
Speaker 2:I wish I could do that. Oh, maybe I can. I don't have the dexterity in my hands to make the Star Trek symbol.
Speaker 1:I have a picture of me with Mr Sulu. What, wow, no big deal, jared, debrief your week for me.
Speaker 3:Yo guys, I played the most aroused gizmos recently on Board Game Arena. You know me. But can I please take a second to rock your guys' world? Please Rock it. I have an acquisition to pronounce yes, rebirth, I decided yes the way you guys were talking about it and I just got excited and I went for it. So I think it should be in the mail when I get home today, because we're down in Florida right now.
Speaker 2:Oh nice.
Speaker 3:So acquisition and a badass game, gizmos. Bill Walker-Harding. We talked about Phil Walker-Harding a couple weeks ago too right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's a fan of the show. He follows us on.
Speaker 3:Instagram. Well, phil, if you want to play Gizmo with us, please send me a BGA invite. But this is a really fun engine builder. This is a perfect photo. Here You've got three different levels of inventions that you're trying to build.
Speaker 3:And how do you build them? You get these sweet little Orbeez from this giant hopper. You know me huge fan of the hopper from Dead Reckoning hopper fan. Now you got Gizmos hoppers so you can pluck these little energy orbs out of the hopper. Or there's some actions that let you go. You know, fingers in the top, cookies in the cookie jar.
Speaker 3:Grab a random Orbee, right, but it's so frigging awesome because you can build these gizmos, these inventions build your engine. So, let's say, you grab a yellow orby. Well, that yellow orb. Now that you've picked a yellow one, that lets you do something else like it, maybe lets you grab another one from the bottom row that I think it only shows like six um orbs or so you can see the seventh one coming down the chute, but you can't touch that one quite yet. Yeah, um, so it's all randomized.
Speaker 3:Whatever's coming out of the hopper, which is kind of gives me maybe a little wingspan vibes a little bit, not a lot, but still similar kind of mechanism and love a hopper so you can grab those ones, or, I'm not sure, can you grab one. Is that an action? I can't remember? Anyways, you can get these, you get your resources. You can only hold a certain amount until you upgrade your storage, but you can also take one and store it for later, it for later and again anything that I'm saying. You can maximize any of it by by upgrading to let you maybe hold more uh gizmos in waiting, so then you can build them later once you have enough of enough resources. So love the game, huge fan of it. I don't remember who invited us to play that one.
Speaker 1:It was like the three of us and yeah, it was sam from mesmer realms ah, nice.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I missed him, unfortunately. I apologize. Uh, huge fan of gizmo, so send me another sam, send me another. Uh bga, I'm down to play. I, I got rocked, like my. I was nowhere near uh first or second, or I think I came in last.
Speaker 2:That spot's reserved for me most of the time. You can count on me to be pulling up the rear.
Speaker 3:When I get invited to games.
Speaker 1:I usually am in the back of the pack. It's a few and far between.
Speaker 3:We should give out bonuses on the back of the pack, but that's right, um. Last thing for my debrief I I found, I found a friend, guys, um virtual friend. He's from canada, I don't even know what his name is. He said he listened to the podcast but he plays feast for odin non-stop and he's got me on rotation now, like I can probably get like five or six turns in in a day with this guys we've been burning through. Go to my bga uh receipt list. I don't remember what his name is, but he he's been cooking up some it's a Pidian something, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, dude, we've been crushing some Feast for Odin. So I am becoming even more of a monster in Norwegian. So you watch yourself. I even have been challenging myself. I've been getting so many reps in. I played one game where I said you know what, I'm not going to get any ships and I strategy without ships.
Speaker 2:I went heavy on on animals, but there's so many paths to victory and fun, I digress man, I look at your I I look at the games you've been playing, sometimes just just out of all really and I look at the scores you have and I'm like seeing you in the 130s, 150s for feast throw and I'm like I am lucky to get out of the negatives Most games. I cannot, I cannot fathom how you are maximizing this so much. But that's a machine and that's crazy here that that's even in the midst of forcing yourself into a unfamiliar strategy, because I feel like that game would be easy to just say this is my strategy. I always get the red ship, I always pillage, I always get all these things and and then just always do that. But to keep pushing yourself like that man, this is why you're at the top of your game jared, so clay thought that he played a heavy game.
Speaker 2:I played a heavy game oh, you got me by 0.1 weight of 3.86.
Speaker 1:This is too many bones published in 2017 by chip theory games. I'm not going to go over this too much because it's way too complicated and I played it once and I I don't have a great feel for the game yet. So you pick one of four gear locks those those weird looking elf, gnome, creature things and you pick one of four and they're all unique and have different abilities and stuff, and you're running through one quest line to get to a tyrant at the end, and so what you do is you shuffle I played a solo and they have a unique deck of mission cards specifically for solo mode. Shuffle them all up with a tyrant card and a couple of their mission cards, and then you're running through this deck of missions and trying to defeat the baddies to eventually level up your gear lock enough to take on the tyrant at the end. And if you beat the tyrant, then you beat the scenario. And this game is great mostly because if you're going to play a heavy game at least for me, I'm going to play it probably solo.
Speaker 1:And just the organization. The organization in this thing, as with most chip theories, is just perfect. They have these little trays that have all your dice that are color-coded. They have neoprene mats for your player cards that you play on, so those have cutouts where you slot your dice in for upgrades and stuff. The components are top-notch. All of your enemies that you're fighting are on these nice little poker chips and so if you're going to play a game that's going to take so long to play, each of these scenarios is at minimum one hour, all the way up to like four hours, depending on how many players you have. But to be able to just like pull these things out of the box and have them ready to go and ready to rock, and it's super easy to sift through and sort and get ready to play your first round. Uh, I will definitely play this again. I'm not gonna go too deep into the rules, but basically you're chucking a whole bunch of dice that will give you attack and defense and all these different attributes. You're leveling up your character as you go through the different scenarios. You're slotting dice into these different upgrades to earn abilities and different stat points, and then all of that is in service of taking on the big baddie at the end and hopefully defeating the tyrant and winning your scenario. So I want to play this again.
Speaker 1:One, because each of the gear locks is different. I played, uh, picket the first time. I think it's picket, yeah, picket um, but there's like boomer, and boomer is like kind of glass cannon. She does a bunch of damage but she has a little health. There's a couple other ones and, once you get a good feel for the rules, I also have the undertow and the splice and dice iterations of this that have more gear locks and more scenarios and stuff. So I'm kind of bummed.
Speaker 1:I waited so long to play this because it's it does have great systems. Super enjoyable game, um, but it's one of those games, kind of like Root, where people could get comfortable with their gear lock and how they level them up and how they run through these scenarios. So I would definitely want to play it. One with more people because it is a cooperative RPG game. And two, I'd like to play this repeatedly so that people could like learn their roles and and really like play off one another more. But too many bones super enjoyable. I've seen this online for like solo play forever and I was just really intimidated by it. This box itself weighs probably like 10 pounds. It's so heavy. Uh, it's not a big box, but it's really heavy because it's got so much ice and so many stuff in it. But yeah, too many bones super enjoyable. I will definitely give this another shot soon hey, uh.
Speaker 2:So is the solo mode? Is it a solo mode or is it just like pretty streamlined solo like it?
Speaker 1:it's kind of designed to do that so they have a deck of encounter cards that are for multiplayer and then they have a deck of cards that's specifically for solo mode. So you take the tyrant cards and the solo deck that's specifically made for solo play and you shuffle them together. So it's like a bespoke, hand crafted solo experience versus like just playing the regular version by yourself but that's the only change.
Speaker 1:You just have to add the cards to the deck and but the gameplay is pretty similar yeah, yeah, okay, the only thing that you don't get is like there are interplay between the gear locks, so like one of them specializes in healing and they can heal members of your party, but if you're playing solo, you're basically just healing yourself. So it's not. I don't know, you can't take full advantage of some of their special abilities when you play solo. But you get.
Speaker 2:You get the gist okay, yeah, that sounds cool. I've heard about this being a great solo game too, so yeah, so definitely gonna give this another shot.
Speaker 1:I'll probably crack open my boxes of undertow and, uh, splicing dice. I've been sitting on my shelf forever. I was just really intimidated by it because I know that it's a heavier game. Um, when you open up the rule books, I think the rule book well, the actual rules itself are maybe like 23 pages or so and they're pretty densely packed, like it's. It's got a lot of rules and some complex systems, and the rule books are kind of vague in areas that they shouldn't be, and people have, like published online guides. So I was constantly going back and forth between my phone and the rule book. So, yeah, it took some time and it was definitely just a learner round, but I will definitely be going back to too many bones. Awesome, all right, are we ready to hit the mission?
Speaker 3:objective. Sorry, I need to do a pause exercise. Apologize guys. I told you guys this might happen. We're going to pull chocks and run. But before you introduce the, uh, the main event, you will be voting on my behalf. So if you feel like party guy jared wants to have a good time, you maybe give, maybe give spots a little, uh, uh, you know, give you know we'll see other and if you do need to text me in while I'm driving from Florida back to Alabama, please text me in.
Speaker 3:If there's a deal, is there like a tiebreaker, that you just need me Give me a call? Okay, perfect, but anyways, I love you guys. We'll see us. We'll see you next week, all right.
Speaker 1:All right, let's hit the mission objective, which We'll see you next week. All right, let's hit the mission objective, which is our big bracket of small games. So, clay, go ahead and explain the criteria for the bracket and how we're going to do this.
Speaker 2:Well, criteria was that the for sale size box is kind of our upper bounds. Don't hold us to that because there might be someone here that snuck through. But we pretty much just started texting all of our favorite small box games and we got we were going to do 16, but then we had so many more we liked so we got up to a 32 small box bracket. So we got up to a 32 small box bracket and we are going to just keep comparing and eliminating until there is only one remaining as Operation Game Night's premier small box game. If you can only have one, this one is going to be the best because it's got a lot of formidable opponents to go up against here.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I mean small boxes are some of my favorite games. They're easy to get to, they're usually easy to teach, they're easy to take around with you. So these games and they're cheaper, so it's easier to buy them. And they're smaller, they're easier to store. So I have a lot of small box games and this. This might shed some light on some that maybe I can get rid of if they, you know, are a one and done game in this bracket.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's what we're up to today if they don't place higher than like sweet 16, you're giving them the the ax.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they never deserve to be here.
Speaker 1:All right. So first matchup is sale versus spots. So spots is a press your luck game where you are rolling a bunch of dice trying to match the pips on the dice with the spots on the dogs. Once you complete six dogs you are the winner. But if you bust and you go over, you have to bury a value greater than seven pips. You wipe your unfinished cards clean and you go back to the beginning. So a little bit of press your luck, lots of dice chucking. This game is super easy to teach and easy to jump into. Lots of replayability with different cards that you can play or different tricks that you can do. And yeah, Spots definitely gets a.
Speaker 2:Jared bump. Yeah, you just gave a great intro for that. Don't expect that for the rest of these. Sail is a very interesting cooperative trick-taking game where you are working together to navigate your ship through this ocean, avoiding obstacles, and like the way you win, tricks determines like which direction the boat moves. So it's a really cool mechanism. But at the end of the day it is just a cool mechanism and I've had fun with it, but not nearly as much fun as I've had with spots.
Speaker 1:So I I was. I haven't played sail nearly enough to weigh in on that one, but yeah, spots is going to get my vote regardless, cause I love spots here we go All right.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is going to be tough for me.
Speaker 1:All right, fantasy realms and hot lead, I'm going to do fancy realm. So fancy realms is a set collection game where you are cycling through a deck and discarded cards to create the ultimate hand. Each card has keywords and suits that play off one another and in a really complex math algorithm, at the end of the game you're trying to end up with the most amount of points Once 10 cards are discarded.
Speaker 1:Clay, check me on that number, yeah that's right once 10 cards are discarded into the discard area that are free to pick up, the game is over and everybody scores. Super easy and easy to teach, but difficult to master.
Speaker 2:Fantasy realms yeah, hot lead. I you said lead, I don't know I. I always said hot lead, you said lead, I don't know. I always said hot lead because he's a detective searching for a lead, but it could be the lead of a gun. Either way.
Speaker 2:It's a set collection game where you're simultaneously selecting a number. You flip them over. Whoever has the highest number gets the card furthest from the deck. The lower number gets the card closest to the deck. So you're trying to position the card you place where you might want to collect the evidence from. You're collecting sets of these evidence. If you get more than three, you over-investigated a certain crime and you lose all those points. So it's got a fun little. Push your luck. This game's over in like 10 minutes. I've had a ton of fun playing this one, but for me, I really love the excitement of fantasy realms and the potential to just score crazy points by like, oh my god, if this card comes up, I'm going to have this combo that's gonna freaking kill and it's another quick game and I you some games you might score really crappy, but it happens so fast that, yeah, I love that, the thrill of potentially getting those big bonuses. So I'm leaning Fantasy Realms.
Speaker 1:Man, I wish that we would have gone with the Marvel Remix Fantasy Realms, because that one is my preferred way to play, where you have to end up with one villain and one area or something like there's certain rules where you have to end your hand with specific cards, and I really enjoy that. But I yeah, I think I'm gonna.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna go fantasy realms as well okay, yeah, I got the recently got the deluxe version of fantasy realms and it's awesome nice all right.
Speaker 1:Castle combo and startups. Nice Castle Combo and Startups. Castle Combo is a game where you are placing a worker placement it's like set collection but you're placing your little reserve token on a space to reserve areas of your fiefdom that play off one another and you're trying to build the best kingdom know kingdom.
Speaker 2:It's a nine by nine grid yeah there you go.
Speaker 2:It's kind of similar to fantasy realms, like each card has scoring criteria and it's like, okay, if there's other of this card in my row, you score six points per card like that you have in your row.
Speaker 2:So you got this constrained nine by nine grid and you're just trying to, over the course of nine turns, fill it out in a way that's going to maximize your point scoring. And yes, startups is a pretty popular oink game where you're trying to collect stock in different companies but to become the I guess, the lead shareholder and then at the end of the game, whoever has the most shares of a company, the other people that also were trying to get shares of that company that didn't get the most have to pay you for all the shares that they have in that company. So it's a cool little game where you're picking cards, you're putting cards in the middle for whatever reason. I just have a. I really like startups when I play it, but always kind of there's just like enough like interesting rules that I feel like I can't just pull it off the shelf and play it like I want to with one of these games yeah so I might lean castle combo on this I have played castle combo on board game arena.
Speaker 1:I have never played startups, but I am. I was more intrigued by startups than I was with castle combo and just because I don't know enough about it, I will defer to your choice of castle combo plus. It's like the new hotness, like people have been really enjoying that lately, and I've seen more about castle combo than I ever have about startups.
Speaker 2:Yeah, startups is good. Like I probably enjoy playing startups more, like it's more interesting, but I just I never have a smooth, get it off the shelf and teach it moment. I just I have to always refer back to the rules and I feel like, for a game this quick and short, I shouldn't have to do that. So, yeah, I'm going. Castle Combo.
Speaker 1:That's fair, next up For Sale and Parade For Sale. We've talked about a lot on this podcast, but basically you are auctioning off a bunch of properties and then you are selling those properties for the most amount of money possible. It's an auction slash, reverse auction or auction blind auction at the end, where you are playing those uh, those properties face down, big reveal and then whoever has the highest number gets to draft from the highest amount of money that's available and the goal at the end is to end up with the most amount of money. It's pretty simple, super easy to teach and uh has some staying power. It has a couple different iterations for sale auto um, for there's another one too, isn't there like another implementation?
Speaker 2:I've only seen the other one yeah, but yeah, it's great auction.
Speaker 2:Reverse auction game yeah, parade is a game where you're trying to get the lowest amount of points so you don't want to be collecting cards and there's this big long line of cards of Alice in Wonderland people out there and on your turn you have to play a card to the end of that parade and, based on the number, that tells you like what cards you might have to take from that parade. If you, if you, play a really high number, you might just skip over all the cards in the parade, not have to take anything. Whereas you play a really high number, you might just skip over all the cards in the parade and not have to take anything, whereas you play a low number, you only have to take cards that are lower than it. They're still out there. So it's got some interesting choices. Another great card game that's like 15, 20 minutes long. So I can't in good conscience not pick For Sale. I mean, I really like Parade, but for sale has been a staple for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm all in on for sale. We'll bang that one nice nar versus regicide man. I'll describe regicide so. Regicide is a kind of boss battler type game that you are playing with a standard deck of cards, where each of the suits that you are playing does different things, whether it's multiplying attacks or healing yourself or doing these different things to take out the face cards within a deck of cards and is quite challenging. It says it right there on the box a challenging, cooperative card game, super unique, um, really interesting um, and it comes in a standard deck of cards. You can play this game without buying the official regicide, but it has the awesome artwork that comes along with it. Yeah, if you have not played, played regicide, I strongly recommend that you give it a shot. Or they even have a companion app that you can play solo on your phone, which I love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gnar is just. It's an engine building game. You're collecting Vikings of different colors. The more Vikings you collect of a certain color, the more benefits you get when you collect a new Viking of that color. But eventually you have to turn those Vikings in to go. Sailing is where you get your majority of the points, and then you're creating this other little engine building tableau of the different lands you've sailed to that you can activate at certain times. I thought this game was interesting at at first. Um, I haven't really came back to it. I fell back to good old marvel splendor when I want my engine building fixed. So for that reason I think regicide is super cool and innovative and even though I haven't played it in a long time, I still want to play it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I love nar and, like you said, it was like touted as like the splendor killer, yeah, and there is some really cool dynamics to it where you're like trading in resources to go sail and explore new lands. But regicide is something that I if we're talking about small box games, this is the smallest box because it's literally a deck of cards you can carry with you. As long as you know the rules, regicide is a fit in your pocket, go anywhere type of game, and I've probably played it far more than I have nar, so I'm going to go with regicide, all right. Skull and cockroach poker. So bluffing games.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cockroach poker is a bluffing game where you are passing these different creatures around. It's kind of like that's not a hat, where you say this is a toad and if it's not a toad, or the person can accept the card or not. Accept the card and pass it along if they don't accept the card and eventually it's going to have to get to a point where somebody has to make a decision on whether to keep the card or not and it's kind of like that's not a hat where if you accept it and it's wrong, then you keep it as a demerit if you deny it and it's not the right card, then you pass it back to the person that sent it to you and whoever gets I don't know three or four of one of the suits, they are out and they lose and everybody else wins.
Speaker 2:So it's a bluffing game very much in the same vein, as that's not a hat cockroach poker you know, skull was jared's entry and I've only played this game once, so I don't know that I can do it justice with the description. I don't know if you can travis. I know there's coasters and you're trying to bluff about them I honestly I skull.
Speaker 1:Having just played cockroach poker, I think that it's far better implemented in something like that's not a hat, and I know that there's a lot of love out there for skull and that you can literally go to any sort of bar or pub and play it with a set of coasters and pass them around.
Speaker 2:I think I'm going to go with skull I can't argue, let's roll, and I know Jared probably would too, so for his absentee ballot we'll go with Skull. Yeah Oof Colorado or Mountain Goats.
Speaker 1:Mountain Goats is a press your luck game where you are charging your Mountain Goats to the top of these different hills. That correspond with different dice rolls, and it's what? Two, two to 12, three to 11.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think with the expansion it goes up to more than that. But but 12 is the standard game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but basically one goat can be at the top to earn points. There's certain number of bonuses per mountain that you're climbing and basically you're trying to knock each other off. It's like multi-lane kick up the hill, where you are selecting the number of dice that you want to contribute to send these goats up, these up this hill and earn the most amount of points by the end of the game. Mountain goats is an all-play game that fits in their tiny boxes, so it's like four by four, by two maybe, and it's a great press your luck game, kind of like a can't stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, colorado is a game where you are trying to collect sets of different colored chameleons and you do that by, on your turn, either taking a pile of chameleons that's already out, or you can draw a card, but then you don't get that card. You have to play it to one of those other piles, so you run the risk of making a pile more intriguing for other players. Or maybe you're mean and you know that somebody really wants the two blue chameleons so you put a red on there, which you know they don't want, because at the end of the game you can only score up to three different sets of chameleons. So if you collect more colors than three, some of those colors are going to be negative points for you, and it just. It's an interesting, very interactive game. I like it a lot. I also like mountain goats a lot. I'm gonna have to. I know, travis, you even play colorado I have not.
Speaker 1:I was gonna lean heavy in the mountain goats.
Speaker 2:but well, since I'm up in the air, I I will yield it to Mountain Goats on this one, I mean, if you really have a strong argument for Colorado.
Speaker 1:Please weigh in.
Speaker 2:I could go either way on this one. I've played Mountain Goats more and I really like it. But yeah, colorado's great Hate to see it hit the loser's bracket so early. But here we go.
Speaker 1:Got some tough matchups Like.
Speaker 2:I mean, they're all good. Yeah, this is all right, this is a bloodbath, yeah, tiny.
Speaker 1:Epic Game of Thrones Ice and Fire versus Coup. That's C-O-U-P. Tiny Epic Game of Thrones is a lot of game packed into a small box. It is a lot of game packed into a small box. It is an area control. It is a bluffing, bidding. Press your luck. It is so much game packed into a tiny box and I wish that I had played it more before we started talking about this as a small box game. But I was just impressed reading through the rules and playing half of a round because you are. It gives the the sense of a much grander game in such a small package.
Speaker 1:You are going around, you're traveling to these different areas of the seven kingdoms. You're controlling castles. The more castles you control, the less gold you can have. The gold is used to, you know, pay off armies and to and to pay off your opponents and you can block people from taking actions and it's a little bit of like input randomness because you are rolling dice at the beginning and drafting those dice to take actions and blocking actions. There's so much game packed into this game and I wish that I had played it more and I'm a little nervous of what you, what your argument is for Coup.
Speaker 2:My argument for Coup is as follows. I have not played Coup in probably three or four years, but in the first two years I was getting into gaming this game was easily the game I played the most. I played this with everybody all the time. Hundreds and hundreds of plays. You're trying to lie to each other, call each other out, you got assassins. You're trying to just manipulate each other's minds in a five to 10 minute game. And my argument here is that coup, while tiny, epic game of Thrones does fit in a small box, it does not have the spirit of a small box game. And for that, for that plucky fight of a true blue small block box game that can be taught and played in 15 to 20 minutes, I would go with coup.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean, if I'm picking up a small box game, I want it to last no more than like half an hour. Yeah, I think that tiny epic game of thrones like you're signing up for a much larger game. Although it is miniaturized and it can fit in a small box, it is a much larger game. So I I just wish that I had more experience with tiny epic game of thrones before we came on this podcast, because I would love to talk about it and wax poetic about how great it is and how easy the rules are to learn, but I don't think that's the case. So I'm happy to defer to coup if that's what the way you're leaning.
Speaker 2:That's the way I'm leaning. All right, oh shoot, we're gonna win this whole, this whole side can we?
Speaker 1:can we switch sides? I don't think so. I don't know how. All right, sponsor fantasy realms. I am gonna go with spas. I I love press your luck. It's a great mechanic. Uh, the artwork is super cute and it's very clear. When you have a winner fantasy realms, you have to use a app to decide, like, what your score is. You can total it up yourself, but it's much easier to just scan it into the app.
Speaker 2:So I'm gonna go with spots over fantasy realms I will reluctantly concede as well, because I know Jared would also.
Speaker 1:All right Castle Combo or For Sale. Clay, start us off.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm pushing For Sale. I've just had way too much experience with it. It never misses, it's always good. Castle Combo is a new commodity. It might get there someday, but I don't know that it's ever going to have the magic that for sale has been able to bring to the small box game space and it was our standard for the size of box that we were looking to beat.
Speaker 1:So, uh, yeah, I'm gonna go for sale. Castle combo wasn't. Although I've only played it virtually, it did not particularly stand out to me. Alright, we got Regicide and Skull man. I wish I knew more about Skull. I know Jared loves Skull.
Speaker 2:I did not enjoy the one play I had of it, so for that I'm going Regicide I have a lot of love for Regicide, so I think I'm going to go with Regicide.
Speaker 1:Sorry, jared, oh, mountain Goats and Coup for regicide. So I think I'm gonna go with regicide sorry, jared, oh, I'm mountain goats and coup. I am going to push for mountain goats. I have never played coup, I'm sorry to say, but, um, I do like that. We do have some representation of secret identities and deduction and, uh, that type of game on this list. I don't know how much else we have on here in terms of social party deduction games like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll also go with Mountain Goats as well. Now it's the game I play more, so I think it deserves the win.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right spots and for sale Clay. I'm going to the win, okay, oh, all right. Spots and for sale Clay. I. I'm gonna let you go first. I got. I don't know what I want to say.
Speaker 2:What are we in the quarterfinals here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, I. Man spots is great. It is such a cool theme and the production is so nice. I hope something comes up that makes me think that For Sale is lesser than it. But for now For Sale is whooping up on the competition because I've had so much fun with For Sale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this one's tough for me too. I think that we're going to get a lot of representation on Press your Luck on the other side of the bracket as well, and I'm trying to balance, like pushing mechanics versus pushing games that I just like love, and I love both of these. Games For Sale and Spots have both held a special place in my gaming experience, but I have had games of spots that go on forever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's when I won beef with spots, so I that's a drink in its armor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think specifically for that reason I'm going to go with for sale because spots you get that one bad game where people are like just either pushing their luck too hard or they're not pushing it hard enough. Yeah, then you just get stuck in this loop of like a never-ending game of spots. So I'm gonna go with or sale that's a good argument there.
Speaker 2:Oh, all right, regicide and mountain goats, clay what you got I would have to go with Mountain Goats on this one just because I have not. I've played more Mountain Goats than Regicide and I really like that. The decision of what dice to use and the freedom to combine them in any way. You choose pretty much to pick the different tracks you go up. Do you want to shoot up those one the values at the end they're going to give you those really high point totals or do you take your time and move up the middle, maybe get some real space between yourself and someone else so you can just keep ripping those point tokens off the top of the of the seven track, like there's some cool decisions to be made and like in timing with compared to other people in mountain goats. And yeah, I just I haven't played regicide enough to say that I I like it more than mountain goats I.
Speaker 1:Regicide is unique in that it's like it's so challenging, it's really difficult and it takes a lot of effort and maybe luck to to win a game of regicide. Mountain goats is unique in that it's like multi-tier press your luck, like racing to the top. You get to the very end when you know the score is. The score is tight and you're like just so anxiously rolling those dice and picking which one you want to keep or which ones you want to use to charge up the right tracks at the right time. The timing is important. I wish I had played Regicide more multiplayer, but I have not, so I am going to defer to Mountain Goats, although I do love Regicide.
Speaker 2:There we go, and now the semi-finals of the left side of the bracket here for sale and Mountain Goats.
Speaker 1:I feel like the last matchup was way more difficult. I think if I had to pick over these two, I'm 100% taking for sale.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going for sale as well. Mountain Goats is interesting and fun and a tight little good time, but for sale just those two phases of auctions. Just really put it over the edge, Because even if you get some crappy cards in the first half, if you play them right in the second half you can still maybe come out on top.
Speaker 1:All right For sale is our left side bracket winner to the finals, all right. Next station, tokyo, and hive pocket clay. Which one do you want to talk about?
Speaker 2:I'll talk about hive hives abstract game. You got these critters with special powers. You're trying to position them on the board to surround the other person's queen and, yeah, it's a very abstract game. That's what you're getting. It's two players and I've I've had a good time with it.
Speaker 1:Um, I haven't played it in a while yeah, but definitely like the smallest of the small boxes, like it comes in just a couple of little tokens and it comes in a little bag. Um. Next station, tokyo, is a flip and write where you are starting at different stations that have symbols on them. You are flipping cards to decide which symbol you are drawing a line to from your starting station and you are trying to earn points by crossing rivers, going through tunnels, meeting up at these like special destinations, and it's a fun solo puzzle where you are each each person that's playing starts in a different corner and you are building your branching paths out from there. Your rail lines can't cross directly, but they can like, if I think. I think Tokyo is the one that has like the bridges and the tunnels that can go across of each other at these special crossing points and basically the highest point total at the end of the four rounds wins. What do you think Like?
Speaker 2:I would go hive but I am not a rolling right lover, so those like automatically like lose 10 points at the start for me. So I've played next station, london, I think. Yeah, I've played tokyo, but I am at. They all just leave me feeling very the same. And yeah, hive pocket is interesting. The components are nice. You can take it, you can play it outdoors because they're like heavy little hex acrylic pieces. Yeah and uh, yeah, I, I think it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a cool abstract chess replacement game yeah, I had next station london for a while and I actually got rid of it because it's just, every game feels very samey and I feel like the like solitaire version of it or like the. You know you're passing these colored pencils around and like each round, you're just filling out your little grid. It's not a whole lot of player, there's no player interaction and it got stale really fast. So I'm gonna go with hive pocket cool, all right, whale to look and scout two oink games against each other.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Oh, so whale to look is a hidden movement bluffing game where you are trying to get your boat full of whale watchers closest to the whales, and the whales will appear in areas that either have the most or least amount of fish, and so on your turn, you can secretly peek at one of these little tiles that contain the number of fish that are going to appear and you can move your boat around to either get closer to the whales that are going to breach or you can bluff them and say like, oh, this one's got a high number and move. Your start moving your boat away from you know a high scoring area to try and swoop it at the end and steal those points. So super interesting. Wink box game comes in like basically a uh, like a deck of cards size box and I really enjoy will to look but scout is a juggernaut in the climbing, slash, shedding game category.
Speaker 2:In Scout you get dealt a hand of cards. There's two different sides to the card. So when you look at your hand you can make a decision. Because once you're dealt your cards you can't rearrange them in your hand, so how they appear determines how you can play the card. So if you have three threes in a row, just by picking up your hand you can play those as a set of three threes. But if you don't have anything that's like matching up nicely, you can flip your hand all the way over and maybe that gives you a better hand.
Speaker 2:But then from there you're basically just playing cards out. You're putting on a show and then if people can beat it, they will. Or if it's your turn and you can't beat it, you can scout from the show that's in front of you. So you can take one of those cards and insert it into your hand to try and make those runs or sets that are going to help you out later on getting rid of all your cards. So it's super interesting game. Uh, take on the shedding, climbing type games.
Speaker 1:Um, I I've never played whale to look, but I do know that scout is a great game I like whale to look and I I like that we had a hidden movement type game on here, uh, but scout is just unbeatable, like the unique style of trick taking that you're playing is just like when it clicks with people. It really clicks and people are like holy smokes, is what trick taking is so, um, or could be, and I think scout is more like redefining of a genre and I'm gonna have to go with scout all right, scout it is oh, all right, super, super, mega lucky box and bonanza.
Speaker 1:So super mega lucky box is like a flip and right where you are flipping over these numbers between one and nine and then you are marking them on your basically bingo cards. You earn bonuses based on completing rows and columns on this bingo card and you can manipulate the numbers as you see fit based on the number of lightning bolts that you get. You get moons and there's bonuses at the end.
Speaker 2:You get bonuses for completing your bingo cards and it's basically like a luck-based flip and write Okay, well, bonanza is Uwe Rosenberg's bean trading card game that also has a hand that you have to pick up and not move anything around in and you are planting your beans, cashing them in for points, but all the while you're trying to make these trades to get the beans in your hand lined up proper so you can plant your field of stink beans and get the most points possible. Lots of fun and excitement over negotiating. I played Super Mega Lucky Box. It's fun, it's a cool take on bingo, very approachable for people who might not be that into board games. But if you're asking me what I want to play and would have more fun with, it's Bonanza.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going. Bonanza. Okay, Biblios and lost cities rolling right. Lost cities rolling right is similar to lost cities, where you are rolling a bunch of dice that have symbols and colors on them. As the roller you pick, you know one symbol, one color and that's the track that you are moving up. Once you start a track, you're in the negatives and you have to work your way up to the positives. You're earning bonuses by crossing these bridges and the game ends once all of the bridges are crossed or somebody gets to the top of a certain number of tracks I can't remember which and you are totaling up your points to see who is the winner.
Speaker 1:You have your relics that you earn as you cross bridges and do different things, and then you have your passes, or I can't remember what they call them in game, but if you're passing on any of the dice, you can just scribble that one in Again. It's another track to move up. Super interesting. I love traveling with that game. It's a great travel game. You can play it poolside or whatever, and it's always enjoyable. So Lost Cities roll and write.
Speaker 2:And Biblios. The theme is ridiculous. You're like monks doing something. But the mechanisms of the game are really fun. It's a two-phase game, kind of like for sale, and in the first phase there's a big deck of cards and on your turn you draw three cards, one at a time, and as you draw the card you have to decide whether you want to keep it, you want to gift it or you want to put it in a pile that will be auctioned out in a later round, so you can get cards that are money for that second auction. Or you can also take cards that are of, like, a certain color, because at the end of the game whoever has the most cards in that color will score the points for that color. So it's a nice balance of like man, do I want money right now so that in the auction round I can like have a little more power to get the things I want. And yeah, you're kind of pressing your luck because again, you draw those cards one at a time. So you're like, okay, I could use this, but maybe the next one's going to be the one I want. So I'm going to put this one in the auction pile for the next round.
Speaker 2:It's just a great game and there's a way to manipulate the value of each color at the end of the game. So if you think you're going to lose a certain color, you can. There's ways to decrease the value of that that color at the end and increase the value of the color you might be winning. So this is a super fun game. I I love that. Pull off the top three cards and decide what to do with them. That's so fun and it's kind of been re-implemented in courtesans with a slightly different game. So I would go with Biblios on this, but you know my feelings on rolling rights.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean lost cities rolling right. It doesn't really feel like the other rolling rights to me. I it is a bit more of like press your luck. It feels like to me, but Biblios has me intrigued so I'm gonna, I'll defer to you and I'll go with Biblios on this one.
Speaker 2:Biblios for the win. Oh dang, wow. Who did the seeding on this? We got Ink and Gold and Sea, salt and Paper oh man.
Speaker 1:So Sea Salt and Paper is a set collection game in a little tiny deck of cards box, basically, where you are either pulling cards from one of the two discard piles or two from the main draw pile, picking one and placing the other down to one of the discard piles.
Speaker 1:What you're trying to do is you're trying to gather sets that earn you points, whether it's a set of a certain icon like anchors or seashells or penguins or whatever it is, or you are gathering cards that in a set, when played, will earn you points and give you special abilities, whether that's taking another turn, stealing from another player, drafting a card straight from the top of the deck, etc. Gorgeous handmade origami art on all the cards. It's super easy to learn and teach and plays pretty quickly. It's got a little bit of a press your luck type mechanic at the end of the round where you can either say like hard stop and in the round immediately, or you can say last chance and potentially earn a little bit of an extra bonus if you end up on top. So sea salt and paper is a great travel game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, inking gold has really been surging for me lately. Um, it's a push your luck game. You know I love those. You're all deciding how far into this temple you're willing to travel.
Speaker 2:There's a deck of cards that have danger in it and they also have gems. So every turn, a card slipped over. If it's gems, you divide it up amongst everybody that's still in the temple and they all get their fair share. And if it's danger, well, that sucks. Now you have decisions to make, because if you draw the same type of danger card later, everybody that's in the temple loses all the gems they've collected.
Speaker 2:So you're trying to make a decision about how long you want to stay in the temple, cause, as people start dropping out now you don't have to divide those gems up amongst five people. You can get all 15 gems to yourself. So the longer you stay in is good, but then when you leave there, you also get to pick up the leftover gems. So, like, whatever gems weren't equally distributed get left on the trail and the people that leave get to pick those up, and now all those gems and the ones they collected are safe. Yeah's super fun push your luck game, but at the end of the day sea salt and paper. On multiple occasions introduce this to people and they buy it for themselves and love it and I love it. It's a great game, but don't sleep on ink and gold just because it got knocked out in the first round. It got a bad draw on sea salt and paper. That's a tough matchup.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm going to go with sea salt and paper. High Society versus Long Shop the Dice Game this is also a tough seed. Yeah, yeah, I. Society is a auction, reverse auction game where you are bidding money on these different luxuries which are worth points at the end of the game and then occasionally you have these cards that come up that are negative, or you are losing points or you're cutting a card in half or whatever. And those are reverse auctions where you are bidding to not take the card. The object of the game is to end up in the game with the most amount of points without having spent the most amount of money.
Speaker 1:And it's a Rainer Canizia classic. It's been republished a couple of times. Just for that reason I love high society. You can teach this to anybody in 30 seconds and they understand it. And it's it always has a replay factor, like people will play it and they'll immediately want to play it again, and then maybe again, and then maybe again, and it just has this kind of carryover like oh, I was so close to winning type factor. So high society is great game yeah, long shot.
Speaker 2:The dice game is pretty much camel up the rolling right. Just talked about this a few weeks ago. But you you're betting on horses. You're rolling die to see how far they move and crossing things off on your board to get bonuses. Maybe move your horse forward more, buy some horses, bet on horses. It's a fun game. I really like it. I mean most games on here I really like. So that's uh, doesn't really need to be said, but it is a little more complicated to get into and teach, yeah, than I might want in a small box game. And high society when we played this at dice tower west and I ranked all the games we played all 20 games that weekend high society was the number one that stood out and I've had fun playing it since. Just another great auction game from the good dr kinesia.
Speaker 1:So I would lean on high society yeah, I think I'm gonna go with high society as well, just because long shot takes. Longer to play, longer to teach yeah and it's got a little confusing mechanisms in there. All right, no thanks, and that's not a hat. Um, that's not a hat is a bluffing memory game where you are passing cards around that have random objects on them and you are trying to keep track of where these objects are in this pile that is circulating.
Speaker 1:You have one in front of you that is stagnant and one that is moving and you can never have, uh, multiple cards in front of you at a time, although I played it wrong the first time and I had lots of big stacks of cards, but yeah, so that's not a hat, is a just a memory bluffing game where you're trying to pass off objects on to other people without earning demerits by guessing wrong or not knowing what is being passed to you.
Speaker 2:Super quick and easy and a great party game no thanks is the reverse auction game, where you have these beautiful black chits, you get a whole bunch of them and you're trying not to score a lot of points. So there's cards from like 1 to 33 and a card gets flipped over and once your turn you have to place a black chit on so you don't have to take it. So it just keeps going around the table. Around the table, everybody's putting chits on, boom, boom, boom. Eventually somebody's like they either don't have chits anymore or there's enough chits on there that they're like whatever, I'll take the card and you also get the chits that are on it. Which the chits on there that they're like whatever, I'll take the card and you also get the chits that are on it. Which the chits are worth points at the end of the game, like positive points instead of the negative ones of the cards you've taken.
Speaker 2:But the cool part is that if you create a run, you only score either the lowest or highest number in that run. So if I had lowest yeah, so if I had 31, 32 and 33, I would only lose points for the 31. So if a 30 came up, it creates these cool situations where nobody wants that freaking 30, but it's not, it's only good for you. So you can just let the thing keep going around the table, going around the table milking all these chits from people and eventually take it. But you don't know how many chits other people have, so if you push it too long, somebody might take it, and you know, it's just a fun quick game with a lot of sweaty chits in your palm and I would lean towards no thanks.
Speaker 2:I think that's not a hat, is like a fun party trick where I play it just for a laugh. But I don't actually like enjoy the game that much. But it is always fun and funny. But for a game that I actually like, like, like playing and gives you a little bit of strategy to think about, it's like no thanks has been a winner for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's more game in no thanks than there is. That's Not a Hat, and while I have not played that's Not a Hat competitively, it's mainly been for fun at family get-togethers and you know, at the end of the night I do prefer no Thanks. So I'm going to go with no Thanks, all right, all right. Last one Air, land and Sea Critters at War, or Reiner Canizia's Poison Air, land, land and sea critters at war, or reiner canisius poison air, land and sea, is a war card lane battler where you are playing cards to these different arenas, uh, the one that we have on the youtube is the critters at war, which is kind of a cutesy version, but they do have world war ii versions of air, land and sea.
Speaker 1:They also have spies, lies and supplies, which is another kind of expand alone version of this game, where you're playing these cars, these different uh theaters of war, and you each card has a special ability that will allow you to look at the your opponent's other card, to look at their next card they're going to draw to cancel out the effects of one of the other lanes. I think these cards have some really unique interplay that makes this game pretty interesting to me and you can play this many, many times and come up with unique combinations of what these cards can do to one another to keep it fresh. So so, yeah, I really enjoyed this game. I've only played it a couple of times, but definitely a unique lane card battler kind of like like a shot and Totten type thing, where you're trying to win these different arenas. So, yeah, that's a air, land and sea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I recently just played this like two days ago with Mason twice and I remembered how well designed this game is. It's super, super impressive. Yeah, reiner Knizia's Poison is a lot of fun. It is another game where you don't want to take cards, but there's a twist. So there's three pots in the middle, three different colors red, blue and green. No red blue and something another color purple and on your turn you have to play a card to one of the pots and if ever the value of cards in the pot goes over 12, you've exploded the pot and you have to take all those cards from the pot and at the end of the round you lose points for all the cards you have. However, if you gather the most of a certain color, you don't lose points for those. So there's a certain point where it's like okay, I already have a bunch of blues, I'm okay with exploding the blue pot and I'll just keep taking those, but I'm not going to mess around with the red and purple pot anymore. But there are these green poison cards with the red and purple pot anymore. But there are these green poison cards that if other people catch you tripping like that, they can put these green cards in any color pot and the green cards cannot be getting rid of, so and they're worth double negative. So there's these poison cards you can poison.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of fun. People are like, oh my God, I don't want to be the one that bought first this pot. It's been sitting at 12. Somebody's going to do it. Who's going to do it? Boom, oh crap, I took the fricking six red cards. So, yeah, I've had so much fun with poison. They're very different games, so it's hard. It's hard to pick, but I think I think we need a lame battler, a two-player lane battler, to move on.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I have never played Poison, but of the couple of times that I've played Air, land and Sea and Spies, lies and Supplies I really enjoyed the dynamics between the different cards. It would be really easy to crank this game out as a lane battler with no card abilities, but they make it thematic and they make it really interesting on how those not just the cards play against each other, but the lanes play against each other. So I think I'm going to go with air, land and sea.
Speaker 2:All right, I support that. All right, we're back up top, hi pocket and scout, I'm going scout, scout it is. I'm going Scout, scout it is. Abstract games just aren't my thing.
Speaker 1:Hivepocket is great and unique, though, but Scout has wow factor to it. All right, bonanza and Biblios. I know which way that Jared would lean, and he's going to dive in hard on Bonanza.
Speaker 2:I would lean Biblios, so I'm going to leave it up to you.
Speaker 1:That's tough. I may have played Biblios once a long time ago, but I do love the player interaction in Bonanza and it gets kind of wild and I find it enjoyable and frustrating when people bring things that are outside of the board game table into a board game, like if you trade me this bean, I will do laundry for a month. You know like people get way out of left field on these trades and you got to appreciate somebody that's willing to sacrifice their personal time and energy to win a board game. So I, I'm going to go a board game. So I, I'm going to go with Bonanza.
Speaker 2:I think in for Jared too might as well.
Speaker 1:Ooh see, salt and paper versus high society. This is a tough one. I'm kind of at a loss. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I'd have to go see salt and paper. I. I really like high society, but again, I have not. I've just had so many people that have introduced us to that have been like, oh, get on Amazon, let me get that game, like you know and I haven't had that with high society I have fun playing high society, probably just as much as sea, salt and paper, but I think I think sea, salt and paper plays. I think I think sea salt and paper plays is more flexible. It plays at two players really well and plays at four players really well. High society you can't even play at two players and it's better at the higher player counts. So I like the flexibility and the the fun of sea, salt and paper yeah, the player count is a big one and also the artwork and sea salt and paper.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the player count is a big one, and also the artwork in sea salt and paper is just phenomenal. Like the handcrafted, origami is special. It feels different, so I'm going to go with sea salt and paper.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:All right, no thanks. And Air, land and Sea man. I do love Air, land and sea, but it's definitely not as memorable as any game of no thanks. Like, no thanks is so tense and although you do have sweaty chits in your hand, like they're sweaty for a reason like. This game is like white knuckle, like please don't take that card. I really need it to start buying down. On some of these runs you can kind of bluff a little bit. It's got just a little bit of everything that is great about a trick taker, an auction game. It's got man I. It's hard to find faults in no thanks I. I think I'm gonna harden on no thanks.
Speaker 2:I'm right there with you Okay.
Speaker 1:Scout and.
Speaker 2:Bonanza. I'm team Scout on this one. I enjoy Bonanza to a point, but at some point the incessant trading or like it just starts to bog the game down.
Speaker 1:Scout runs clean and smooth all the time and is always, is always freaking good. Bonanza has not gotten a uh, a run it back from rachel and scout has, so I'm gonna go with scout scout advances to the semi-finals. That's right sea, salt and paper and no Thanks.
Speaker 2:Man.
Speaker 1:Oh man, this one's tough. I kind of want to vote Sea Salt and Paper just because I would love to see Sea Salt and Paper and Scout showdown in the finals. But no Thanks is also just so.
Speaker 2:I would go Sea Salt and Paper. Oh man, it's a tough one.
Speaker 1:What would Jared say? Jared might go. No, no thanks, I think he would too. I'm gonna go with sea salt and paper, just so that we can have the discussion between no sea salt and paper and scout all right, here we go in the semi-finals scout, scout and sea, salt and Paper.
Speaker 2:What do you think? This is kind of shocking me here. I mean, I really like Scout, but I think it appeals to a certain audience, people that are inclined to like these types of classic type of card games with a twist and if you're that person, this game is really going to sing for you. But sea, salt and paper, I think appeals to a wider audience with its presentation and with its mechanisms. You know, you're just, I got two crabs. I can play two crabs all right. Now I I'm collecting little fishies in my hand. Um, yeah, I think it's been more widely received for me. I would pull this out quicker around people than Scout. I would have to know the people I was playing with enjoyed that type of game.
Speaker 1:To play Scout, but Scout just feels so different than any other trick taker that you're playing right, yeah, trick taker, that you're playing right, like, yeah, the way that you can like craft your hands and purposefully like start scouting other people's acts and and adding your hand and setting up multi-turn in advance. See something, paper is great. Set collection is great. There's a unique mechanism where you get four mermaids and you win the game automatically. That's a thrill to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, man, I think honestly. I think sea, salt and paper has like just enough unique mechanisms thrown in where it's not just set collection right, like you get to a certain number of points at five, seven, whatever it is, and you can claim last chance versus stop. So I think, just because they added in those couple of unique things, like the twist, at the end I'm going to go see salt and paper.
Speaker 2:Wow, and now for the final Wow.
Speaker 1:For sale versus sea salt and paper.
Speaker 2:My heart is telling me for sale. I am endlessly charmed by those little properties that you're bidding for and trying to decide the right moment. There's way more to it than you would think. I mean, the bid you set is strategic. You know you take a big jump, hoping that a bunch of people pop out before it comes back around to you, yeah yeah. So there's so much to think about in both the phases and it's quick and I just love. I love auctions.
Speaker 1:So for sale is is my, is my winner for sale is, is my, is my winner, and, on the other hand, for sale you. You know what you're getting. Every single game see salt and paper. Like you can vary your strategy between games, whether it's like collecting a certain set, whether you're just trying to slam through as many fish as you can, or maybe you're going for all four mermaids, or like it feels very different when you play with more players and you do less players. And while it does scale appropriately, like your strategies can change, oh man listen, I have, oh, I have a ringer.
Speaker 2:I if, if we're split on this, I can call in the big guns. Mary, oh man, what she likes both these games.
Speaker 1:All right, let's. Let's hear what mary has to say mary, this is important.
Speaker 2:You're on the podcast for one second. We are at the finals of our small box bracket and the two games that have risen to the top are For Sale and Sea Salt and Paper and Travis, and I cannot decide. So we're phoning you in. I might say Sea Salt and Paper, just because we've played it more recently. Ok, all right. Well, you are dismissed, thank you. You have picked our winner for the small box bracket showdown more recently. Okay, well, all right. Well, you are dismissed. Thank you Picked our winner for the small box bracket showdown. Holy cow, wow, see salt and paper that the Mary lift. Can you believe it? The?
Speaker 1:young up and comer, wow, yeah, so our small box champion for 2025 is sea, salt and paper. Wow, I know that we weren't talking about expansions either, but sea, salt and paper has an excellent expansion.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:If you've never played it. So, um, wow, that was a great, that was a great discussion. I love all of these games and you can't pick a bad one off of this list. So, no, seriously. So if you are listening to this podcast and you can't pick a bad one off this list, no, seriously. So if you are listening to this podcast and you think that we missed a game or erroneously left a game in the dust, please hit us up on YouTube, instagram, let us know what games we left out, which games should have been the winner, which games you love. And, yeah, we'd love to hear from you and see what the audience thinks of this small box showdown. Heck, yeah, all right, we ready to go over the fence real quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's get over the fence action.
Speaker 1:All right. What's you been doing outside of board gaming?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Um, so we're moving and we got a lot of stuff to clear out this house. Apparently, you can acquire a lot of things in five years. I don't know how, like my grandparents and people that have been in a house for like a hundred years, like how much junk they must have, but the amount of junk we have in a five-year period is crazy. All that to say, I have been in the purging mindset, and this may be board game adjacent, but I have gotten rid of 150 games.
Speaker 1:What Yep Are you down to one shelter?
Speaker 2:All that's left is what's back here.
Speaker 1:No way, I was going to say you're missing a whole lot which is still a lot.
Speaker 2:So, um, that was tough. I had to just go off my gut. I'm like I haven't played. This was tough. I had to just go off my gut. I'm like I haven't played this. I haven't reached for it in a long time.
Speaker 2:Boom, boom, boom boom you're going like there was a lot of games. I was like how am I getting rid of this? But I was like you know what? I do not need to be hauling 150 games that I don't reach to play to pennsylvania with me. So so which ones did you ship to me?
Speaker 1:None yet. Wow, that's crazy 150 games.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's. That's been a lot of what's been going on here Just getting rid of junk, trying to take stuff to donations dumpster. We got sitting out front, we got a storage locker, like just trying to get this place ready to rock.
Speaker 1:When are you guys hitting the road?
Speaker 2:In June.
Speaker 1:Or the end of.
Speaker 1:May. We're all going to be moving at the same time. It's going to be crazy. Yeah, it's going to be wild. So what have you been doing? Awesome. So we were going to go to Budapest this weekend but our family came down with a cold that I think was brought into the house by little baby gwen. They'll do that her cdc cold. So, um, yeah, we kind of got taken out this week.
Speaker 1:But I have been reading a book that I want to shout out.
Speaker 1:It's called an odyssey a father, a son and an epic by daniel mendelsohn. And this guy daniel mendelsohn he and this guy Daniel Mendelsohn he writes a bunch of opinion pieces and essays and poetry and he writes for the New Yorker and he writes for all these opinion pieces and critiques and stuff and most of his books are collections of these essays that he's written. But An Odyssey is about the book the Odyssey and how he used it later in his father's life to connect with his dad. It's a really good book and it's kind of told in the same way that the Odyssey is by Homer, where it kind of jumps around in the timeline, where he'll kind of wrap back and onto important details. He kind of jumps around in the timeline and builds up this relationship with his dad and really what it is he's. He's drawing parallels between Odysseus and Telemachus, which is Odysseus's son. Yeah, and Telemachus is the main character at the first four books of the Odyssey, where he is venturing out to go find his dad that has been missing for 20 years.
Speaker 1:At this point, in the trojan war and odysseus is out there wandering and lost and he's, you know, trapped on the nile with nymphos and all this stuff and he's kind of using it like this guy never really understood who his dad was until he started to connect with him over these, over these epics, right. So he teaches these books, these Greek epics, in a class like a collegiate class and his dad actually like shadows one of his classes and they start to like bond over this novel and and these characters and the story and they, you know, they, they grow closer because of this um. This story that's really about a father and a son and the relationship between the two and the um, like what does the son of the father, what is the father of the son? And it's, uh, it's, it's been really interesting. I'm really enjoying it. I'm maybe three quarters of the way through. So it's called an odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn.
Speaker 2:Nice man yeah.
Speaker 1:Hey, did we do it? We did it.
Speaker 2:Wow, this is a bit of a longer one, but um we had, we had to, we had to get that small box bracket in. Man, I just wanted to. I wanted to crown a champion.
Speaker 1:It got so tense there at the end I was like man, such good games. Yeah, for operation game night. This has been episode 27. I have been travis, he has been clay. Thank you, jared, for joining us at the beginning and we're out, thank you.
