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 30: Board Game Content Creation: The Inside Scoop
Taye from Instagram account Taye and Company (Instagram @Tae_Eat_Tea) joins us to share an insider's look at board game content creation, from getting review copies to maintaining publisher relationships while staying authentic.
• Tae started his account three years ago solely to get free games and now manages a thriving Instagram presence
• Creating high-quality content with minimal equipment - just an iPhone 13 mini and natural lighting
• How language barriers shape Tae's game collection - preferring icon-based games over text-heavy ones
• The truth about publisher relationships - being "blacklisted" by publishers for honest reviews
• FTC disclosure guidelines all content creators should follow but many ignore
• The unexpected challenges of content creation - customs fees, prototype storage problems, and constantly changing marketing contacts
• Why Tay deliberately keeps himself out of his Instagram photos to focus on the games themselves
• The board games everyone's been playing this week - Black Forest, Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd Edition, Daybreak, and Terraforming Mars
Visit Tae on Instagram @tae_eat_tea (https://www.instagram.com/tae_eat_tea?igsh=MXVyaGxmNHQxbnptNg==) to see his beautiful board game photography and honest takes on the latest games.
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 30,. Is that right? Check out my number. Episode 30, I can't believe it. 30 years old, joining us today. Very special guest, tay, from the Instagram account Tay and Company. He does some awesome board game reviews, some posts, some collaborations. Tay, how you doing Good, good.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're excited to have you and talk a little bit about the content creator life, especially in the board game sphere. So, yeah, really looking forward to that Awesome Joining me as always. Co-host and captain of the ship, clayton Gable.
Speaker 2:Hey, what's going on? Team, you might notice that I'm not in my normal location today. The Spanglers were kind enough to let me squat in their house for Operation Game Night, because we're showing our house right now trying to sell it and you know things are weird over there. So I have a different background but the same passion for board games. So let's get this thing going.
Speaker 4:You're like bivouacking, you know, like, uh, give it a military term here. You're going to continuity of operations. I love it, you know you're pulling up your operations, going somewhere else, continuing operations it's beautiful executing your pace plan.
Speaker 1:Yes, there you go, all right joining me from joining me from his typical house that he's always in jared. How you doing primary, primary I'm great.
Speaker 4:I honestly, tay, I was creeping on you hard, uh, because I am a huge fan of korean culture. I'm not sure if you've listened to the podcast much. Uh, my daughter just ran in. Uh, she's also a fan of korean culture. I lived in, uh, south korea for a year. Love the food, love the soju um, I love, I love korea. So hopefully we're gonna have a great discussion today, um that's awesome Any other food that you like other than soju.
Speaker 4:The alcohol Taboki. Huge fan of taboki. The yakwa was super good. I always get yakchae. Yakchae is that like the cabbage.
Speaker 3:Yakchae I'm not sure what that is. Jared the cabbage. Yak-che, I'm not sure what that is Jared's just making stuff up now.
Speaker 4:I know I'm just throwing things out there.
Speaker 2:You're losing your credibility, man.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for real.
Speaker 1:More importantly, Jared, what's your take on poutine? You?
Speaker 3:like poutine. Poutine, not the Russian leader.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I mean I love me some duck fat poutine the fries, some cheese and gravy on my chips.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Make me hungry. Today we're going to talk board game content creation First. Today we're going to talk board game content creation. First, we're going to debrief our weeks, then we'll hit the mission objective and then we'll go over the fence and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming. So, tay, take it away. Give your little introduction, tell us where you're from, what you've been doing, Talk about your Instagram this is your soapbox to get on and then tell us about what you've been playing this week Awesome.
Speaker 3:My name is Tay. I live in Milton, ontario, which is really near Toronto in Canada. I run an Instagram account. We basically I chronicle all the games that my wife and I play. We basically I chronicle all the games that my wife and I play and I pretty much started about three years ago, like around COVID time, and so I'll get into that why I started later on. But lately we have a two-year-old baby in the house so it's really difficult to get any games played unless he's asleep by 7 o'clock. So this week I only got to play one game of Black Forest solo.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a game by Uwe Rosenberg and it plays really well solo. I think all of his games have really top-notch solo modes, especially like Feast for Odin, where you don't play against an AI bot but it's a beat-your-own-score. It has a really interesting worker placement using two different kinds for Feast for Odin for two different kinds of meeples. With the Black Forest, you use pretty much all the meeples to place your workers at a time. It's also a feature-owned score. I heard it's a re-implementation of GlassRoll, which I haven't played, but some people like this better. Some people like the GlassRoll better. But, yeah, this is becoming one of my favorite solos. Now it's amazing and I just received the LaserAux insert, uh, which makes it like so much, uh, setup, it's pretty much like a one minute setup and just play, so I gotta plug that, yeah, so I play that like it's just. The weird thing about me is, uh, unlike you guys, I have a really difficult time describing games.
Speaker 2:Well, that's adorable that you think we're good at describing games.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know. Because I feel like Well, at least when I listen to you I can kind of follow along. Yeah, but like yeah. I'm so bad at this.
Speaker 4:We've been doing this for 30 episodes and I still feel like I just put my foot in my mouth every time. Yeah, 1% better every day, that's right Good good.
Speaker 2:So what I was curious about was the wheel, because I've heard about this game and a lot of people talk about this wheel situation with the resources. What's going on there?
Speaker 3:So the game is a resource conversion on there. So the game is a uh resource conversion. So on the picture on the right top right, those are the other basic uh resources. So while you're playing it you gain or you convert or you gain these resources and whenever there's a space, um, to upgrade to a class, it just automatically shifts. Upgrade to a glass it just automatically shifts. So you don't spend an action to upgrade those resources into glass, it just happens automatically. So sometimes you gain a resource but you need another resource to do another action. But because there's an auto upgrade, you might spend those resources to upgrade into glass. So you lose on those basic resources. Okay, so it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:I've never seen this kind of mechanic before so is that wheel just like rotate every so often, or do you have control of it?
Speaker 3:so in the picture there, uh, the green uh glass is at two, so which means you have two of the glass and whenever other resources move up and freeze up the space, it will automatically the hands of the wheel will move and it will just make the glass three. Oh, cool.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. The longer you sit on resources, the more you end up of them, or the more you have of them. Okay, that's pretty cool, and the end objective is to what? What are you trying to do in the game?
Speaker 3:It's a beat your own score. Just gain as much points as possible. Okay, you build different structures, farms on your own score. Just gain as much points as possible. So you build different structures, farms on your tableau, gain cows, pigs, they all end up points.
Speaker 4:This makes me feel just right at home. I mean, all the artwork just makes me feel happy.
Speaker 3:I want to make a farm.
Speaker 4:No raiding, though, no Viking killing, nope nothing.
Speaker 3:This one looks a little more friendly. Yeah, you can slaughter cows and pigs.
Speaker 1:That's about it as someone who's been at the Black Forest. This is how they live down there. They are making cuckoo clocks and raising their cows and pigs and stuff. Yeah, this is great. I love this Very thematic.
Speaker 4:Cool Is this on BGA Board Game Arena?
Speaker 1:I don't think this one is I haven't seen it on there.
Speaker 2:No, okay, you might have to make a procurement. Jared, I know you keep your tight four-game collection.
Speaker 4:Maybe I just need to go to Canada instead. I almost I'd rather travel than buy something new. You know, I'm going to go up and go drink some SOMAC with Kay and play some board games.
Speaker 2:Perfect Awesome, yeah, your two-year-olds games. Perfect Awesome, yeah, your, your two year olds can run around together too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome, cool, uh, clay, what'd you play this week?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I played daybreak just last night with Tyler, but to back it up a little bit, to give you the context, so my step-mom has done this twice now. She is a very sweet lady and she likes to make people happy and she knows I love board games. So before she has like a gift, you know a special reward for me. She's like you know what? I'll learn a game and teach it to you, because I know that it's hard, it takes you a long time to do that and nobody ever does it for you. So before she did innovation, she taught me, we played it and then, as a special reward for my Hall of Fame induction, she wanted to do it again and so I gave her the task of learning Daybreak and she did it and we played it at four players. When I was home the other weekend, I did play it again last night with Spanky.
Speaker 2:And this game is so cool, not to mention the theme is about trying to collaborate as the world to fight climate change. So you play as different countries fight climate change. So you play as different countries. They're trying to reduce your own country's emissions and start global projects that will help you bring down the CO2 you guys are all emitting together and reach drawdown is how you win. So, essentially, drawdown is when you're producing. You're sequestering more co2 than you're producing. So throughout the game you're trying to play these local projects that will help convert your dirty energy that you're producing into clean energy. You're getting rid of your different emission sources. So, like the us starts with like a ton of these car emission sources, so they're trying to get rid of different car emissions.
Speaker 2:And the course of the game flows. It's a, it's a co-op game by Matt Leacock, so you know it. It has a lot of the same, you know feelings of a pandemic type game where there's bad things are going to happen. You work to fight it, bad things happen, you hope you didn't lose and you start over and you know keep going through that cycle until either you lose or win.
Speaker 2:And in this game, the basic flow is you reveal crisis cards and they will. One of them will be revealed so you can see what's coming up at the end of the round and you can potentially prepare for it. There'll be other crisis cards that are face down that you just have to deal with at the end of the round and hope that you don't lose because of it. And then you get to collaborate as a team on a global project. So there will be four global projects you can have that you can activate. So usually they require you to do something to activate them, otherwise they're not very useful to you. And after that you move into the meat of the game, which is playing these local projects. Why are these pictures so weird?
Speaker 2:this is not anything that looks like daybreak was this when they like daybreak like uh launch it prototypes or something yeah, yeah, I don't know what those were. Hold on let me get back.
Speaker 4:I have a burning question in this game. Is there any uh, climate change deniers, the people who are, you know?
Speaker 2:so that's some of the crisis cards that come up. It'll be like oil industry sabotage and then like everybody has to add like too dirty energy to their uh production. Yeah, so it does have some some flavor that I can't wait.
Speaker 1:I can't wait for the 2025 expansion. That is just like a replica of 2025 nonsense that gets played in this game geez.
Speaker 2:But anyway, essentially the meat of the game happens in this local project phase, where you have these standard projects that you have in front of you that will have actions that like allow you to discard a card to create two green energy or allow you to get rid of some of your emissions.
Speaker 2:And then you get dealt a hand of five cards and with your cards you can either support a project so you tuck it behind other projects because you're trying to get these tags, because each card that gets activated has, like, tag requirements or tag benefits. So it'll be like you can remove one dirty energy for every grid tag that you have on on this stack of cards, and so you can support a card you already have in play, or you can play a card on top of one of your five cards. So now that card's no longer active and this card is your new card that you can take actions with, but the tag still stack, but the tags still stack. The tags still stack. So you're getting more powerful one way or the other throughout the game. As is typical in a cooperative type game. You're getting more powerful. Things are getting more dire with the temperature and, as you see that little thermometer temperatures climbing each round.
Speaker 4:It climbs more as you produce more co2, so the hotter the signal that's pretty weak oh, oh, it must be the last thing he says, and then he's gone yeah that was uh Tay. Hopefully our guest gets his Wi-Fi back online. Maybe he can still. Is he there? Yeah, there he is.
Speaker 3:He's back.
Speaker 2:He's back. It's my signal, right. It seems like it might be Okay.
Speaker 3:I'll just go downstairs right beside the other router okay, we'll be here, I'm gonna keep.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna keep waxing on about daybreak yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So when you get to the after you take all your local actions, you get to the crisis phase and, based on how hot the globe is at the time, you roll, these planetary die and they'll, like, contribute to, you know, defrosting the tundra or the drawback of rainforests or whatever, and when they hit certain triggers, bad happens. And then you reveal your crisis cards and usually there'll be something like the person with the most car emissions has to gain, like communities in crisis, equal to the amount of temperature bands on the thing, and there will be ways to reduce that with these resilience tokens. So you have social resilience, industrial resilience and ecological resilience, and so during the local projects phase, you're trying to, you know, clean up your energy and get rid of emissions, but you're also trying to get these resilience tokens so that you can survive the crisis phase, because they're what's going to help you survive that phase. So, anyway, the crisis phase goes and you check for victory, and then you have to, at the end of the round, increase the energy demands of your country. So every round, your population is demanding more energy of you. So not only do you need to make sure you're getting rid of your dirty energy, you need to start making enough clean energy to meet the demands of your population or else you get more communities in crisis and that's one way you can lose.
Speaker 2:So super cool thematic game. I mean I don't love cooperative games as a rule of thumb, but I am so stoked to have this one because it I mean it tells a very important story and I don't know the actual science of it all, but I mean I'm not saying I don't believe in climate change, I'm saying I don't know how realistic the you know the actual sciences of, you know adding a couple of trees and being able to sequester carbon dioxide, so you know. But it feels very thematic Like. It feels like you have your board of your country and you can see all your dirty energy in front of you and you have this goal to get rid of that dirty energy by the end of the game. Because you know you need to reach draw down by the end of round six or else you're losing.
Speaker 2:So it's a cool, maybe learning, but it's a cool take on a very important topic in our world. And it's a fun game too, like trying to stack those tags of cards and take actions in the right order to try and deal with these threats and warming. Planet it's a good game. I think it won the Kenner Spiel des Jahres this year. Planet it's a good game. I think it won the kenner spiel de jars this year. So it's uh, oh well, it's definitely worth your attention if you like cooperative games or if you just think this is a important topic and you want to, you know, dive into it as a board game so deb learned this and taught it to you, yeah she's like a pretty complicated game
Speaker 2:you know it's. I mean, if you've played cooperative games, you kind of know the the flow of things and like how they the rhythm of them. But she had never played a cooperative game before. So you know, like revealing crisis cards and everything was just an all-new activity for her. She did a good job. I was, I was impressed. She put hours into learning this game and it was. It was not, it was not lost on me and I do appreciate that people would be willing to do that. If you got somebody in your life that's willing to. They're not a board gamer and they're willing to go out and just learn a board game to teach you. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:But only when you earn it by being inducted into the hall of fame yeah daggone. Uh, it's actually a little known fact that at these climate summits, um, when all the world leaders meet, there's actually a moderator that walks around and hands out crisis cards to each of the countries that says, like there's an oil spill. You know, rainforests are dwindling. You said that the us starts with more automotive emissions so each of the countries plays different or they have like unique country powers, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Yes, so they all have different. Starting like this is your starting board. You can see, and every starting country has. At the very top you have your population demand for energy. So everybody starts out with a different population demand for energy. So I think this is China we're looking at here and you can see they start out with 14 energy units I don't know what they are that they need to produce, and nine of those energy units are dirty dirty and the next five are clean, and then these are the types of emissions in the next row that they produce. So industrial cow farts, cars, automotive yeah, I'm not sure what the actual verbiage is for some of these, but it tells you every country starts with a unique set of problems to deal with, and then you go on from that and you have your unique cards that give you abilities to deal with those problems I like the cute are those qr codes to help you learn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think they tell you about. I didn't, I'll be honest, I didn't scan them but I think they tell you about I'll be honest, I didn't scan them, but I think they tell you about. These are actual projects that might be real life things. That is Daybreak.
Speaker 4:I like it. Jared, what did you play last week? Oh, I'm doing a double tap here. I'm going back to Mars. Guys. I told you I was prepping for a showdown in my classroom so we quickly watched the Rodney YouTube on it, learned up real quick. We did miss a couple rules because we were playing fast and loose, but we are ready to hit it hard next time.
Speaker 4:I have this small core group of very interested board gamers and I am very excited about Terraforming Mars. If you want to hear the spiel about what the heck Terraforming Mars is, I guess, go to episode 29. I won't go into that one again, but just again, such fun engine builder with the cards and I was getting all these blue cards. So the blue cards are like the event ones that you can use over and over again as actions. So, like not only are you building your engine throughout the game, like now you have extra actions you can take that your opponents can't. Um, I absolutely love that. Uh, very complex, though. Yeah, there's lots of little cubies to to keep track of. So set up on it was a little tough in person. Uh, super fun one. I did. You know I played a. Played a board game this week, guys actually I played another one.
Speaker 4:This morning I played spots, so oh, with who? Yeah, um tanner uh oh, tanner's in the house, huh yeah, tanner, he, they just left, uh, about an hour ago so you played three quarters of a board game and one and yeah, I mean spots is like a quarter.
Speaker 2:So I kind of played like one board game how long did it take you, with two players, to to end up and still not get to finish it?
Speaker 4:so actually we it was just going to be me and zach we were gonna play and then a third was like hey, you guys mind if I watch what you guys are doing. I'm like, why don't you just play? So we got a third. She got spun up in a matter of like 15 minutes. I mean, these people are high speed. Okay, sarah, she's a maintenance officer. She's like dude, I play board games like all the time, like I like I try to explain like the icon. She's like no, no, I got it. I'm like, oh, okay.
Speaker 4:The one thing we kind of screwed up was the TR, the little orange thing. Initially we corrected it before it actually really messed us up. We thought our starting corporation was what we would get each round, because some of the starting corporations get like 50, some odd credits. They're like every round I get 50 credits. And we were about to do that and we're like well, okay, let me just double check the rule book because this does not feel right. And they were like oh, okay, everyone starts at 20.
Speaker 4:And then you go to the modifiers on the, the uh, player mat and stuff. But it was really fun, like it. It's just enough player interaction that it's like you are definitely competing and you can feel it and you can like feel the oh, I have this card but I can't quite use it, but I want to use it before they do that and this, and then I can't use it or whatever. And you know me, I love optimizing stuff. So I love this one even more. And don't be surprised if I throw you a couple more BGA invites for this one.
Speaker 2:I just don't. I don't understand. I think I don't feel the rhythm enough on bga because I never feel like I can do anything on my turn. Yeah, I feel like I'm passing constantly and maybe that's just the way it is in the beginning rounds, but to me it feels like because we've been playing it for like a week and I still have like no credits to play any of these cards, so I get these cards and I maybe play one and then like skip second action, I have nothing to do, like yeah so I don't know if that's just a product of it takes a little bit to build up or if I'm just playing very badly.
Speaker 4:maybe maybe focus a little bit on your uh. I think it's like the titanium and like the building resource that helps you like use resources to pay for cards instead of paying with straight up cash, so like that might be a good way to pay for some cards that are like to pay them down cheaper. But I'm going to throw a challenge to you guys Don't touch your mic. I would like I'm not touching it. I'm not touching it. I would like to. Sorry, I would like to challenge you to play in live in person for another little uh Twitch stream or something like that. You know, maybe if we're playing live a little Terraforming Mars, you might feel the burn. You might feel that excitement.
Speaker 2:I'll do it.
Speaker 1:Maybe if you make this available to me, then I would be down Last time. You're like. I know it's 2 in the morning there, but we're doing a stream, oh damn.
Speaker 2:Nobody told you to go live in Germany, Travis.
Speaker 1:Oh, somebody did. Somebody did Nice. Well, I'm glad you got this played in person. I need to wrap my head around this game because every day I open this up on BGA and I'm like I hate this game. Because every day I open this up on bga and I'm like I hate this game. I hate it because I'm like clay, like it feels like when I started playing lost ruins of arnak, and I'm like I can't do anything, I'm just gonna pass all the time and I am. It's starting to click a little bit, but I am. I'm putting my little lakes out there, my my oceans. There you go. And every time it asks me to add a resource to a card, I pass because I don't know what I'm supposed to do. But do that, do that. I am. If I can figure it out, I will do that. Thank you, I think you.
Speaker 4:I assume it's good, but I have not been able to do that I think just click the button and it does it for you, because you probably have played a card that lets you put a resource onto a card and in the future you get some benefit from it. Usually you just get like a tr or um. You can convert it into some other benefit, but I digress, um I I don't know. I really love it In person. The other thing that really surprised me was the project cards. Is like a stack of cards like this thick. There's so many project cards. I tried to shuffle them and I think I broke my thumbs. They're so big and beefy just like those Marines oh my God, Beefy space. Marines like those Marines oh my God, Beefy space.
Speaker 1:Marines, all right.
Speaker 2:Hold on real quick. Yeah, he's not done. I wanted to get our special guest, Tay. Have you played Terraforming Mars and what is your opinion on the game?
Speaker 3:I actually haven't. I have an allergic reaction to clip art and bad art.
Speaker 1:Oh my.
Speaker 3:God.
Speaker 4:Hot take, very hot take.
Speaker 3:But actually the real reason is my wife English is her second language, so Korean is her first. So we tend to play games that do not have any language on cards or on boards. Otherwise I have to explain every single card to her, which becomes very tedious very soon, very quickly. So any icon-based games like Lucerta, no problem whatsoever, but any text on cards that are more than three words, that's a no-no. Jeez, yeah, so that limits how many games, the choices of games, that we bring into our house. But I mean, there are plenty of really good games with a lot of just icon-based games. So that's fine.
Speaker 1:Especially nowadays, I feel like people put such an emphasis on accessibility for people that are colorblind or people that rely really heavily on that iconography because of that reason, just to get more people to the table and play the game, that's, that's a great take. I love it cool. Uh, so I actually had a game night this weekend and I think that they took inspiration from operation game night because we did a boards and boards night. Yeah, charcuterie, boards and board games. It was a competition like we have talked about before on the podcast, where make your best board, and we had judging sheets and everything.
Speaker 1:We walked around and we scored all the boards and then you had to pair it with a signature drink, so lots of good food to be had. We tied for first on our board and our drink, so no big deal. And then what was your drink? So our drink was a cucumber basil smash with basil gin, and then our board was a fruit and pretzel and graham cracker board with two different dips one for the fruit, a chocolatey one for the pretzels and stuff. Yeah, really good, really good. Wow, is that?
Speaker 3:a normal thing for Germany when you're entertaining in.
Speaker 1:Germany. I mean, typical German fair is like lots of shaved, dried, cured meats and fruits and veggies and breads, lots of broichen and pretzels and fruit and veggies and meats. That's what they eat here. So it is not uncommon to see that type of stuff on a German table. But you know, we played with a bunch of Americans and we had like a South of the Border Mexican themed. South of the Border to us means Mexico, not USS, so we had a South of the Border board and then we had a Greek board.
Speaker 1:Good food, good games, good company. And we got to play Betrayal at House on the Hill, third edition. Oh, no way, one of my, my favorites. I love this game so much I have not played this edition and this edition makes it way more streamlined. So betrayal house on the hill is basically adult clue.
Speaker 1:You start with your character, you start in a house that is not built out at all. You have your entryway hallway, you have a upstairs landing and you have a basement landing and as you go through the doors in these different rooms, you are building the mansion out, as you explore and when you flip these room cards, I don't know what these miniatures are, but as you flip these cards over that have the different rooms on them. They might have certain effects or they have a symbol on them that is either an item, a event that will happen, and or a omen, and the omens as they stock, as they pile up on the table. People are collecting these omens that can give them boons. Later on you will have to do a haunt roll. So previously what you did was, as the omens get flipped, you're moving this omen meter up and the second you rolled lower, a number lower than the omen number. Then the haunt was triggered. Now you have to roll what, is it five or greater? And then a haunt is triggered. Now you have to roll was it five or greater? And then a haunt is triggered. So you keep rolling these dice every time a omen is revealed and this gets you to the haunt way faster. Like we played with six players and we barely made it around the table one and a half, maybe two times before the haunt was triggered. So it gets you to the action faster. And then previously you went into this giant book of haunts. Now they have these different kind of scenario cards that kind of preface the whole adventure and kind of set the tone a little bit and it has a very curated list of haunts that can be triggered on this card and so you can actually like use this to tailor your experience a little bit. And it has a very curated list of haunts that can be triggered on this card and so you can actually use this to tailor your experience a little bit. If there are certain haunts that you like better than others, you can pick that card and it will help you kind of guide your experience a little bit. So got us to the haunt faster, and I saw a haunt that I had not done before, which is great a hot faster. And I saw a haunt that I had not done before, which is great. Um, it was a free-for-all type haunt where it was not one trader versus all. We had a hidden trader, so one of the players got dealt a token that showed that person that they were the trader and everybody else was kind of suspicious. It was a little bit of like a social deduction type game, as we're running around trying to kill each other for these traits and figure out who the traitor was. So super cool experience.
Speaker 1:The third edition is a great addition and it and it definitely streamlines, it makes it way faster, gets you the action faster. Uh, the player boards are much improved. You used to have these little clips that would slide around on these cardboards and they'd fall off and you'd loot, you'd forget what your value was. It actually has these nice little cutouts that like hold it in place a little better. So overall, a much improved experience. Um, really really enjoyed this one and it's one of my favorite, like thematic games, because everybody understands the concepts of clue, like moving through this mansion and this, just like, is adult clue. So yeah, betrayal at house in the hill, third edition, hey, travis, how many people you play with six, six dang.
Speaker 1:Okay, yes, and it was good we played it in a little over an hour. I, I think with six. Wow, that was with a teach, that was with a teach, teach and play, yeah. So we flew through this thing and I think because we got to the haunt faster with this third edition set of rules, it just made things move along a little faster and we got through it really fast. So, yeah, this is a great addition. This would be my preferred addition out of the three of them that are out there. Plus, I have not played the Scooby-Doo one, though I do want to play the Scooby-Doo one, yes.
Speaker 2:Clayton, yeah, sorry, I I often just get more curious about like the game groups and the dynamics than I do about the games, because that's what's interesting to me. I'm always playing games with different people and like how they land. Had anybody played this game before, or were they all basically new players to it, and what did they think?
Speaker 1:So everybody was new, except for me. Okay, one of the guys purchased this game on my recommendation because I said it's kind of like a cool entryway to this type of thematic game experience. So we purchased it, they brought it to a game night without us in attendance and they had not punched it, they had not read the rules, they were like oh pull the Callisto 2200.
Speaker 1:Yes. So they backed away from that. They're like we're not ready for this. We need Travis here to teach us um. And I pulled the clay and I sent them all an 18 minute video and said here's how you learn the game.
Speaker 3:None of them watched it none of them watched it none of them watched it, but I did.
Speaker 1:I refreshed my memory, I came prepared and we got to teach and the game played in just over an hour. So well gone. Yeah, it was a. It was a success, I think. Um, some people got a little frustrated with it because their character, like you move based on your speed trait and you fight with your might trait and, like you know, the different traits weren't aligning with people's strategies. And I think if people had a deeper knowledge of how the game would go, they would like adjust their strategy a little bit based on their different attributes. But you know, we got through it. It wasn't anything crazy. Nobody got upset about it or, you know, quit the game or anything.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it was a good experience, but people weren't standing up clapping at the end Like wow. Wow.
Speaker 3:Who I mean wow, this is amazing. Who?
Speaker 4:I mean who is the haunter or who got haunted? So here's the deal.
Speaker 1:We passed out these little tokens, yeah, kind of a hidden role type thing.
Speaker 1:One traitor knew they were the betrayer um and and so in this haunt in particular, you could reveal that you were the traitor at any time, to heal all of your attributes, so like we were trying to kill each other in this, in this house, and at any time they could have flipped their tokens that I'm the traitor and healed up. And this person waited until like the very, very end, like on death's doorstep, on multiple traits, before he was like, before he got outed as the as the traitor. So we killed basically everybody else and there's a way to force people to reveal and finally this person was like oh my God, it's them instead of the other person that we thought, and then he's like it's me, and he healed back up and he ended up winning, which I have rarely seen the traitor win.
Speaker 3:But this particular haunt.
Speaker 1:The trader won, so that was a success. It was great. It was tense, lots of twists and turns, and I love this game. Then we got Heat Pedals to the Metal as a bonus game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and with a teach and a playthrough of this racing game. We played it in maybe 45 minutes with six players. So yeah, this game is great. I was reminded how much I love this game.
Speaker 1:You are racing these Indy cars around a track twice. You are playing cards that are equal to your gear. So every time you are shifting your gear you're taking heat into your engine. It's kind of like either press your luck or like a deck management type game. You can't go around turns with a value that's higher than the turn value. So the one that's on the screen now says three. I can play as many cards as I want equal to my gear, as long as the total value as I go around that turn is three or less. Then you can take heat into your engine to get boost. You can draft off of people. This game is great because I was in dead last. I'm terrible this game. I've been dead last and even to race for the second to last place. It was like came down to the very last play of cards. It was still tense. There was still like excitement in the air. People were invested in who was going to get last place. Heat pedal to the metal never ceases to impress. I love this game.
Speaker 4:Have you always been slow with driving?
Speaker 1:I'm just bad at this game. I don't know what it is. I'm just bad at this game. I don't know. Maybe I was not pushing it hard enough at the beginning.
Speaker 4:Yeah, do you not watch Drive to Survive?
Speaker 1:I have, but the skills don't translate. Unfortunately, it doesn't translate. No, it doesn't translate.
Speaker 4:This game frustrates the hell out of me because I don't know the strategy. Do I go hella fast and put it in fourth gear every chance I can, because it always backfires and then so then I throttle it back. Clay always kicks her ass in this game.
Speaker 2:I don't like it I'm pretty good at this game. I'm not good at games, but I don't know. I don't know. It's just, it's like a vibe, it it's a feel you know you like. Okay, I need to, I need to get here.
Speaker 2:I need to get in this gear to rally. I need to make sure that you know if I'm coming up on a sharp turn. I don't want to shift down to get a bunch of gears, gear, so that as soon as I get through the corner I can ramp back up to four and hit it again. I'll take the heat, I'm not afraid to push a little and try and get out there. This game's great. You get into that tunnel vision. Yes exactly that's coming out right, I think. So, yeah, I'm excited about that.
Speaker 4:Is that an expansion? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Tay, have you played this one? I'm assuming?
Speaker 3:No, actually.
Speaker 1:What Bad.
Speaker 3:Art no. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. No, I think this game is for like three plus players, I believe.
Speaker 2:So I don't think it works well for two, two players yeah, I will tell you the the it does not if you're not using the auto. There's like, uh, auto drivers in there that you can use and it is actually a really clean solo. Or well, I've never played solo, but I still add like four of those cars when I play with just me and my wife and it's a lot of fun still, and I hate like upkeep in modes that require too much and this is just like as simple as flipping a card and it's like all right, the red car goes to space three or whatever and the yellow car goes here, and so it just adds some more interaction on the track while allowing you to not get too out of your own game. So I wouldn't totally avoid it for the two-player mode, if you're interested.
Speaker 2:If you hate the art and don't want to play it because of that. That's another thing, but I do think the way they incorporated it what are they called the legend drivers? Yeah yeah, the way they incorporated that was pretty clean and I've enjoyed playing it too.
Speaker 3:It's good that it has really low upkeep.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think we played PAX Premier two-player. That requires an Automa, but my wife always, always blames me for playing Automa in my favor so no matter how easy it is to run the Automa. She always blames me if I win yeah, of course of course, naturally, but I do want to check it out. I love the other Vincentinson detroit art on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 4:Maybe me and travis are like we're risk adverse. We're like engineers, we're worried about putting heat into our engine and clay clay. He's a space guy. He wants more heat in his engine. He just wants a blast freaking rocket power man. Yeah, maybe we just need more heat in our lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. You know our factor of safety is too high. Yeah, it's always, uh, all right. So, tay, you've mentioned some art before and your instagram for tay and co is like very pristine. The art is gorgeous, the pictures that you take are phenomenal, and we want to get a kind of behind-the-curtains peek at the content creator's life. So talk to me about how you started this, why you started it, where you want to take it in the future. Give me that rundown of Tay Company.
Speaker 3:All right, so one quick disclaimer. So everything that I'm'm gonna say is from one content creator's experience, so it's not representative of any other creators on instagram or on our youtube or any other social media. So I basically started this account, uh, three years ago, um, because I wanted free shit. That's the the only reason.
Speaker 2:The only reason.
Speaker 3:So, like during the COVID, we started this hobby and it was getting really expensive really fast. And one of my friends said he received a free review copy and I was like what? You can get free review copies even though you have like an Instagram account, and then that's the day I started this account. So basically, the way I create posts is I only use what I have, like all the equipment that I have. So all the photos were taken with my iPhone 13 mini. I don't use any lights, so any sunlight that's coming from the window I try to capture that, but pretty much nothing else, just on iPhone.
Speaker 4:Natural light.
Speaker 3:Portrait iPhone Natural light Portrait mode Natural light. That's it. That's cool. And Instagram posts have a limit of 2,200 characters, so you can do really extensive write-ups. So I have to pick and choose what aspect of the game that I want to focus on, can choose what aspect of the game that I want to focus on, and the language that I use. The tone and manner that I use is a little bit on the cheeky side, more personal, just to get away from other content creators, but this kind of language, the tone and manner can really fight back. I got into trouble a couple of months back for a review of a really really colorful game that I won't mention, but you can probably find it in my wall, so I wrote. So many vibrant colors were fighting and puking on each other while having an orgy of the rainbow. Oh no, Don't find it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's looking for it now. Yeah, don't find it, so the he's looking for it now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, don't find it. So the publisher, it was a review copy. The publisher left a really passive-aggressive comment and only to delete it like an hour later and they blocked me. So I do step over the line a little bit, but I learned. I learned from that and I left it on because that's an experience that I I went through. Yeah, um, so, when it comes to actually just posting, um, we I found a couple of people uh, on instagram with really like-minded and we came up with a lot of different strategies to grow really, really, really fast. We experimented so type types of content, different hashtags, when to post, what time to post, you know how many reels to post the day, what stores to post. So we experimented everything and we kind of streamlined our strategy. So we were, you know, becoming like a pacemaker to each other to grow as much as possible. So let's see.
Speaker 3:So the real meat of the talk will be, I guess, how to contact or how to maintain a relationship with different publishers. So there are a couple different ways. The first is obviously just call the email or DM, just look up their publishers. So there are a couple different ways. The first is obviously just cold email or DM. Just look up their contact information on their website, just give them a shout. But the publishers they get solicited nonstop from thousands of people like us, so they're busy. The review copies are limited, so don't expect any replies or reply in a few months. And when you are contacting them, showcase the links that you already posted of their games, if possible, for a better chance of getting a reply. So that's usually the bulk of like how to contact uh publishers.
Speaker 3:Uh, but and um, there's a facebook group uh for content creators and publishers. I don't know if you guys know, call uh borgen reviewers and media. So it's a. It's a private group, uh, so you have to be uh approved. But basically, uh, all the big name uh publishers are part of this group. All the YouTube creators, instagram creators, they're all here. So whenever a publisher requires a review or preview, they post on that group with a link to a form so the reviewers can make requests and they pick and choose, choose. You know who is appropriate for this game. So you see a lot of like independent publisher posting their kickstarter campaigns, soliciting for previews, and I think the third one is uh, once you become more established with uh the publishers, they have a list of reviewers that they work with, and whenever they have a list of reviewers that they work with, and whenever they have a new game coming up, they send out an email to the reviewers. And so you fill out the form and they select reviewers and they get the email or they get the game.
Speaker 1:Can you talk to me about that a little bit more, because you said that you listened to our talk with Sam from Mesmeralm and about you know Instagram will blow up about a certain game when it starts going out for review. Everybody's got the game, everybody says it's great. Tell me, like in your experience, what that interaction looks like between you and the publisher, because you're not guaranteed to give a positive review. There's going to be some sort of contract between publisher and reviewer that helps you maintain that relationship and also give an honest review. So talk to me a little bit about that dynamic.
Speaker 3:Okay. So in my experience, some publishers are not good with negative reviews. I think I'm on the blacklist of five different publishers, Okay, and there is no contract, at least for reviews. Anyway, it's a gentleman's agreement that if you receive a copy you should make some kind of content with it. So I stopped using the phrase review because I don't think I'm much of a reviewer, especially because of the limitation of characters per post. I like to do like session reports and whatnot. But basically it is a gentleman's agreement and if you do not create content within a certain amount of period, the review of the publisher will be less likely to send you more review copies in the future. So it's in your best interest to create some kind of content within a month or at least two months. So there's no money exchange, which means there's no content whatsoever.
Speaker 4:I would want there to be this almost free and open like tell me what your initial thoughts and feelings are. I don't want people to like that influencer, use my link to get 15% off. That stuff drives me crazy and that's still huge. But I would resonate more with like hey, this is my honest opinion and it might not be 100% glowing, because it's real and I appreciate the publishers for not being like and I'll give you four more if you say you really like it, but essentially they kind of are. Maybe if you get blacklisted for talking about orgies.
Speaker 3:I have never experienced a term like that Give us a positive review, you'll get a few more. I've never experienced that before. The publishers are usually you're welcome to do whatever you want. You're okay to give negative feedback as long as it's fair. For that example that I gave you the origin, I don't think that was fair for it. And because all the reviewers have a different taste, they come from different backgrounds, different games that they like.
Speaker 3:So Sam mentioned shut up and sit down how every review that their recent reviews were positive, like I kind of resonate with that. Um, because there was a post uh on reddit or on the facebook group where some people were complaining that rattle uh only posts positive reviews or he only reviews games that he likes. Yeah, that really resonated with the group. And he I think he was the one who explained himself where board games are not like video games, where if you play a bad video game, if you play like two, three hours, you're done. But with board games you have to convince other people to play with you and you have to play multiple times and if the first session is bad, like, you're not going to bring those people back for second or third or fourth. Yeah. So you're less likely to review games that are so-called that uh and go with uh, the game, the, the good games that you could play with other people, uh, so, and pretty much we played enough so that we pretty much know not guaranteed, but pretty much know that you're going to like a certain game that you review.
Speaker 3:So in my experience, I request fewer games than before and I researched quite a bit and I actually read a lot of reviews from other content creators Just to make sure you know all the criteria for reviewing this game meets, for example, the language dependency, good or bad or whatever.
Speaker 3:So I do a lot of research before making those requests. So I know like 60, 70 percent that I'm going to at least enjoy the game and recommend it. But I'm also going to point out all the negatives that I see, as is. So you don't see a lot of content creators that are just raving about certain games, because that also reflects their credibility as well. If you're known as a content creator that only do positive and is best thing ever, their audience might not stick around. It's in your best interest to be honest point out all the positive, point out all the negatives, because the games that I hate, others might enjoy the games that other people hate, that I might enjoy. So you know, as a content creator, like there's no um, like an evil plan, just to you know, post like positive review to gain followers or views.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all about just being honest, it kind of depends too right. Like if you are somebody who just loves learning the rules to new games, then getting sent a thousand games is gonna like give you that dopamine hit. Every time you learn a new game, even if you, even if the play is lackluster or the interaction is not there or you know whatever somebody else might enjoy is missing from that game. You might enjoy the learning or the teaching or the just sitting around with people that you care about and playing a game, and so that experience is different for everybody. For me, I love I mean I love board games in general, but I get a certain satisfaction from punching new games. Punching out the cardboard is like the most therapeutic thing.
Speaker 1:That, and like sleeving cards for some reason, and so like if I got sent review copies or promotional copies or whatever and I just got to like punch it and set it up and like see it on the table. That gives me a dopamine hit. That is leaving a like positive impression of that game. It's like skewing that experience for me, you know, and it's kind of interesting, like these people that do this longterm, or for you that does this over tons of board games, like how you keep that fresh and how you keep everything in perspective when you might be comparing a game that you are reviewing or promoting or whatever this week versus one that you did a month ago. How do you keep that scale in your head of how this game might fall or how you're interacting with the game itself?
Speaker 3:When you start reviewing games, you're going to quickly get a big pile of review games, and that happened to me. It was really overwhelming just seeing that pile, because every game is a contract not a real contract, but it's an agreement with a publisher. There's a certain amount of pressure there to create content in a timely manner. So I think, starting last year, I requested less and less, and I'm hoping to request even lesser, less games this year. Uh, just to focus on not only the review games but my permanent collection. So I have a. Compared to other categories, I have a very small collection of under 150 games, with all their expansions and stuff. Yeah, so I want to go back to all the games that I enjoy and create you know, stories and and posts to show that these games still are in my collection and are being enjoyed.
Speaker 1:I have, so I have another. I have one more quick question, I'm sorry. Go ahead, uh, you get these, get these board games and you put them on your Instagram and you take photos of the board games. Primarily, you do not appear in any of these photos, not that I've seen, and I know that that's a conscious decision. How did you tailor your brand of Tay Co or Tay Eats Tea and how did you decide on? This is the type of post that we're doing. This is the type of content that we want to promote.
Speaker 3:How did you decide that in the process of getting this up and running, Sure, that was a conscious decision that I made super early on when I was starting out. There was a lot of kumbaya, community love, people dancing with boxes, celebrating each other's like accomplishments, like first first anniversary, second anniversary, 1k follower, 10k follower, whatever and that type of content didn't really resonate with me. Okay, um, and if people are curious about how I look, I'm right there on the profile yeah, and there was another.
Speaker 3:There was an account called Board Game Shots, I believe, and all he did was pretty much the same thing. He only focused on games, like detailed shots of the games, overview of the games. He doesn't post any photos of himself, his wife or kids, and he's just under 20,000, I believe. So I knew right then. You know, even without my personality being in in the post, you could, you know, create pretty decent, sizable uh following, yeah, yeah. So that was the inspiration, uh, for that decision I find it kind of refreshing, honestly.
Speaker 1:Honestly, you get so many Instagram promoters, content creators, that stand in front of their shelf of games and they're just going to talk at you for 30 seconds however long a reel can be, a minute about the game and they're going to say, oh, I played this game, it was great, and there's like no, there's no, they might hold up a box and that's about it. Vers like no, there's no, they don't. They might hold up a box and that's about it. Versus you like you get to see what it looks, like you to see the art, you get to see how these things might interact and iconography and you might like give a quick rundown of the rules and that stuff like really helps, like tie those synapses in people's brains and it really like triggers people into getting interested in the game, versus selling somebody that's standing in front of a wall of board games just like every other content creator. So I can appreciate that difference and taking a different approach to it to stand out. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean not that there's anything wrong with no, no, no yeah with taking photos with the shelves and the boxes and whatnot, but I just want to take a different approach to it. And another thing that you guys mentioned with Sam was the ethics policy for paid content.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So there is a real guideline from FTC. I think it was created around 2019. And it's been continuously updated since then updated since then. So if you look up, if you Google disclosure 101 for social media influencers, you'll see a page from FTC and there's like a fancy little pamphlet that outlines all the do's and don'ts. So it's basically a self-governing policy. So you don't get charged or you don't get fined if you don't follow these rules. But if that becomes more prevalent and becomes a social issue, then I guess FTC will step in and we'll try to enforce it.
Speaker 3:But basically, it tells you if you're paid in any way, you have to disclose Paid, as in money and material things. If you're given free products or even if you get discount code for products, you have to disclose it upfront. So the, the, the pamphlet tells you for for YouTube, what you should do, this for Instagram, what you should do. So you have to be upfront on everything. Yeah, and the and the reason is to not to mislead your audience, but you have to be upfront that this is an ad, this is I was paid to do this. I received free copy or review, whatnot. So it's it's a really good thing to know and it's.
Speaker 1:it's a really simple thing, like everyone should be doing this yeah, I've listened to podcasts before where they say, like you know, we played this video game that was given to us by the publisher. You know, go to our website for the ethics policy and I just feel, like on instagram, it's far less like up front, unless it's a paid ad, and then it has a little banner that says paid ad with partnership with company or whatever. But yeah, I feel like it's kind of hidden, like you gotta go looking for that stuff with some of these influencers very bottom of the, or like the section hashtag ad yep right.
Speaker 3:So what I did, uh in my post previously was at the end of each post I always say this review copy was provided by publisher for completion purposes. But I guess, from researching this, I should add a paid partnership right on the top of the post, even if I didn't get paid for it. So I thought at first, if I got money from the publisher I should be adding the paid partnership tag. But I guess if I receive anything from them, automatically it's paid partnership.
Speaker 2:So I think that's what I'm doing uh starting this week yeah, that's super interesting yeah, listen, I gotta say I'm confessing right now to my operation game night crew and I don't know if I'm cut out for review copies I this is no shade. I've been super happy to get copies of a few games from some publishers that I've talked about on here, and I think I was upfront about receiving them. But I just can't take the pressure. I already hate the way I describe games. I think I do a terrible job.
Speaker 2:So the pressure of being like okay, somebody is expecting me to do a good job with this I it just it kills it for me and I already have so many games that I've bought myself and want to play that it just feels too much like a job to like do this. I want to always be playing games just because, like that's the game that's right for the moment, like I'm having these people over, I don't want to try and have to shoehorn a game in because I need to create content for it. Yeah, so I don't know, maybe travis will be the the arm of operation game night that can do that, but for me I just don't know that that suits my personality and my style of gaming at this moment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not for everyone, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think we have enough games to play to get some content for a couple years before we finally have to start taking on reviews and feeling comfortable with that. So sorry, tay, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean what you're saying is the FOMO is definitely real and people engage with newer games for sure, and the content creators get into the vicious cycle of creating content for the new hotness and when they go back to their old, dusty collection it doesn't get as much engagement, so they go back to the new stuff. So I think that's the cycle that they go through and that's why you only see all the new stuff, never the older, all the games in their collection.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think the moral of the story is everybody should go.
Speaker 1:The story is everybody should go out and support content creators that play old games.
Speaker 4:That's great. If you put up a feast for Odin, I will. I will just go wild, Okay.
Speaker 3:I did post a couple of feast for Odin content. If you go down, let's go Really. Yeah, yeah, Two or three, not recently like two post a couple of Feast for Odin content if you go down Really Recently, Not recently like two or three months ago.
Speaker 4:Really Okay. Shame on me, I should have seen it. There are a few.
Speaker 1:And by go wild he means he's going to like the post.
Speaker 2:Hey look, it's Daybreak.
Speaker 4:Perfect, oh nice.
Speaker 3:There you go. One last thing that I want to mention was there are definitely some negatives to being a content creator. One that people might not think of is you receive a lot of prototypes for Kickstarter previews, yeah, and for some high profile Kickstarter prototype they get passed around from one creator to another, but for the majority of the prototypes, they sit on your collection. They're on your shelves gathering dust. You don't know what to do with it. You can't sell it obviously that's really unethical and you can't throw it away, because it's a board game with really good components and you just feel really terrible about throwing it away. So you end up loaning it to friends, but when the final production copy comes around, no one wants your prototype, so they just sit on your shelf.
Speaker 3:Another big problem that we're facing is there's a really high turnover of marketing reps and community managers. So they get hired, they move, they quit. So you build relationship with one marketing rep and they leave in two months, so you have to start all over again. So that's a big headache. Sometimes you don't even know the marketing rep left, so your email goes unanswered for months at a time. But that also means if you build a really solid relationship with one marketing rep. The person moves to a different company. Now you have access to that company. So that's one positive thing. And for me personally for Canadians, we get hit with customs duty fees quite a bit. So any games coming from the States or like EU, I might not be paying for their shipping, but I get hit with like random hits with career fees and whatnot. For example, voidful packages that I received from a US warehouse I had to pay $80 for it, oh wow. And for Nucleum that was coming from a EU warehouse, I had to pay $40. So that's just coming straight out of my pocket, did you?
Speaker 4:still pick up the package.
Speaker 3:No. So when the games are crossing the border, like the FedEx and the UPS, they have to present the item to the customs the Canadian customs. Yeah, so it's really random. Sometimes I get hit one after the other. Sometimes I don't get hit for like months at a time, so it's purely random. But the weird thing is they might charge the tax like maybe like five, ten bucks, but the courier handling fee is like 30, 40, 50 bucks.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, so it's a highway robbery.
Speaker 4:There might be a black market here. Do you need me to start a rum running?
Speaker 3:That would be great.
Speaker 4:Avoid tariffs and customs. President Trump and Doge, please stop listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1:Awesome, great discussion, tay. Are we ready to go over the fence? Let's go. Clay, tell me what you've been doing outside of board gaming.
Speaker 2:I just want to say I wish I had known I should have scrolled back on Tay's Instagram so I could have gotten some good takes when I talked about Daybreak today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what I played that last year. I do not remember anything.
Speaker 1:You're like what's this guy talking about?
Speaker 3:The only thing I remember is the big crease on the main board.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's pretty thick that's what sticks out to you all that, all that fighting climate change, and you're worried about the crease. Oh my gosh, uh, yeah, over the fence.
Speaker 4:Um, I'm going over the fence, he's trying to sell his freaking house, and I mean the man is, I mean going. I wore his socks yesterday to give him some good energy. It's on the market.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful home. Yeah, if you're looking to move to Colorado Springs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, hit up Operation Game Night.
Speaker 2:Yeah, drop in my DMs, we can work something out.
Speaker 4:Wait, are you giving a discount to Operation Game Night subscribers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can have 5% off if you purchase the home through Operation Game Night's Instagram. Thank you, jared. Jared's handled by Over the Fence. I am selling my house. It is a royal pain. My wife and I have been fighting constantly for the past month about what needed to be done to get the house ready for sale. She wanted to listen to the people, the showers that told us what to do, and I thought that we didn't need to listen to everything they told us to do because I wanted to keep my things in the house. And so now we have no things in the house and we have to keep leaving so people can come in and look at the house and decide if they want it. So I'm over the fence. I'm at spangler's house. I'm doing. I'm everywhere right now trying to get this house sold, jared please, as any travis.
Speaker 4:Uh tay probably has not seen the zillow listing, but, travis, have you seen the listing? I?
Speaker 1:am gonna go look that up immediately.
Speaker 4:It is incredible just what they did what they've done with your giant ass sofa, the big one in your living room yeah like took it apart, shifted it around. I'm, I'm like whoa, what's happening?
Speaker 2:It's so stupid it doesn't even work. Half the couch is not facing the TV. It doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't know that.
Speaker 4:It doesn't look like it Like to someone who's never seen that couch before they go in and like, oh, it looks like there's more space. I think they did a really good. My feedback hot take for you. They did a great job. They did and it was worth it.
Speaker 4:And I know that it's a very stressful time, a lot of uncertainty, clayton, as you're transitioning and selling a home and trying to get a new job and buy a new house. God bless you. I love you, I'm here for you. The Operation Game Night family is rallying behind you. I love you, I'm here for you, the Operation Game Night family is rallying behind you and we love you. Anyways, thanks, man, I'll get off my stool.
Speaker 2:One last tidbit about the house sale and all the staging that happened. I mean, they they didn't want to see a picture of a fish on the wall for Colorado or like a mountain, like everything came down. Everything was gone. My entire wall of board games shoved in the closet, but they did In our staging. When we took the photos I had like three shelves in the game room with Stonemaier games on them lined up. They looked nice together and they came in to take photos. I was like you want me to take these down? They're like no, that looks good, leave it up. So those got to stay in the photos for the house and that's probably why we're getting showings. People are seeing those pictures of the games on the wall and they're like we got to check this place out.
Speaker 1:Well shoot. Jamie Stegmaier always does a good job of reposting. If you just tag him in your listing his followers, that's perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, yeah, so I'm, I'm over the fence, that's it.
Speaker 1:Well, clay, you want to do Jared's over the fence for him, since he's still yours, or?
Speaker 2:I don't know what this guy's up to what have you been doing?
Speaker 4:okay, um, travis is gonna hate me. Travis, I had to verify that my vasectomy worked and it didn't oh, no again yeah, I didn't know. So think of this, you, you break. Let's just think of a garden hose. Let's say you cut the garden hose, oh my God, it's spilling water out. You've cut the garden hose, little did you know there's still water going from this hose to the other hose. It's severed. I don't know how it happens. It's complete craziness.
Speaker 3:But aren't you supposed to tie the loose ends?
Speaker 4:No, they just cut it out. That's it well, that's what they did to me and I yield back my time. Travis hates me. He's probably going to cut that. I didn't say anything about anatomy.
Speaker 1:I talked about garden hoses thank you for joining us for the the men's health podcast. That's great, love it good luck, jared.
Speaker 2:I hope some people were just meant to procreate man, yeah maybe that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Oh, take it as a sign. Uh, if it sounds, if it sounds extra echoey in here today, it's because we have also started packing up our house to move. So we are calling all of our content creator uh, youtuber, podcaster, friends out there, friends of ogn that want to have us visit their podcast, because we'd like to do some joint ops for june while we're all moving. So if we can get some podcasts and stuff recorded ahead of time, we would love to feature that on our socials and on our pages and on our posts, uh, through june. So that's our joint ops, june, that we want to do. So if you're listening to this and you want to have us featured on, or you want to have us featured on your podcast and also repost it onto our stuff, hit us up, dm us on Instagram. So, tay, what have you been doing outside of board gaming? And I want you to give one last plug for your Instagram and your social media.
Speaker 3:So I need to cut my hose.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, the summer's coming up so I need to cut them up. Yeah, having a two-year-old is really really tough, especially at my age. Truth, yeah, how old are you? I don't think I can handle another kid. So vasectomy was something that I was thinking of quite a bit and I was kind of afraid to you know, actually proceed with it. But yeah, I love Jared's analogy. I think I need to go through with it Men's health.
Speaker 4:I love it.
Speaker 3:Aside from that, I think in the past you guys mentioned the Sopranos.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Actually I haven't seen the Sopranos, but that got me thinking of re-watching the Wire, oh yes.
Speaker 2:Which is also on.
Speaker 3:HBO. The Wire is my favorite show ever and when I was single, I used to watch the entire run every year. Wow, it just gets me every time, even though, like, the tech is really, really outdated. Um, just the way they uh handle a single case in the entire season, from writing the uh, the, the warrant, to wiretapping and the process of gathering all the evidence and presenting it in the court of law it's just dry as hell. It's slow, but the satisfaction you get at the end of the season and at the end of the series, there's nothing like it. So I end up watching it almost every year, but I haven't watched it in a couple of years now. So I think I should start watching it almost every year, but I haven't watched it in a couple years now, so I think I should start watching it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good one. I I watched that like seven years ago and I don't remember it that well that I think I could re-watch it and it would be awesome again because I can still think of the season where it was like features, the, the school kids and and, uh man, I, I like, yeah, want to start crying thinking about it already that was.
Speaker 3:That was a season four yeah, so emotional, oh my god yeah so because of that, like I started watching some of the clips on youtube and there was like a famous scene, uh with uh mcnulty and bunk, where they go to a crime, murder, murder, crime scene and they only use the F word to solve the crime. That's wild, it's an amazing show.
Speaker 1:That's great, Tay. This has been a great discussion. Where can people find you on the internet?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm only on Instagram. My tag is, or my account is, tay T-A-E, underscore E. Underscore T T-e-a. So that's the only place.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, if you didn't catch that, we will post a link to that in the show description, but this has been an awesome discussion. Thank you for joining us for Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been Jared, he has been the one and only Tay of Tay East Tea and we are out.
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