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 31: Agricola's Comeback Tour & Board Game Mail Bag!
Tackling listener questions, we dive into board game characters we'd embody, house rules we implement, and how we respond when people dismiss board games as "just for kids."
• Clay defends his monthly board game budget overages as necessary therapeutic purchases
• When it's appropriate to change game rules (party games) versus when to follow them strictly (strategic games)
• Our approach to people who say board games are childish: embrace your inner child
• The dream of opening a board game bar with themed food and a self-serve tap wall
• Why Castles of Burgundy desperately needs a theme change despite its mechanical brilliance
Share the podcast with three friends to move up in the Operation Game Night Corporation ranks! The more people that listen on your behalf, the higher you climb in our totally-not-an-MLM scheme.
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 31. Yes, this is the Operation Game Night Podcast, episode 31. Yes, this is the Operation Game Night Podcast, the only podcast that may or may not be a multi-level marketing scheme. Good old manager of Colorado Springs Real Estate is Clayton Gable. How are you doing, Clay?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great Speaking of Colorado Springs Real Estate. You can see I'm back in my dojo because we did get an offer on the house.
Speaker 3:Was it one of our listeners?
Speaker 2:I think it was actually yeah, they came in with an offer far above list price and said leave the board games and they wanted to buy the rights to the board, to the, to the podcast right yeah, we have.
Speaker 3:Actually it was disney I heard it was walt disney, actually walt disney severed head. Yep, oh man all right, it does look good to have the the board games back behind you. That was a quick, that is true, because it was empty right and now it's back up.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I filled those suckers back up right away, right away. First thing I did since we got the offer on the house, I plowed the board games back in and put the couch back, and then you put all the board games back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, before you kissed mary. Uh board games up well. Congratulations, clay, I'm happy for you. Thank you. Mid-level manager of a hose repair company, jared. How you doing, jared?
Speaker 3:I'm outstanding. I'm just really glad you left that in there. From last week that was. I was a certain kind of way. Last week I was a force to be reckoned with. Hopefully I didn't upset Tay Tay, I'd love to go to KBBQ with you any day and the offer still stands, I'll fly to Canada. I've never I mean I've been to like Vancouver, I think, on a cruise, but I might have to go to Canada to play some board games.
Speaker 1:We should maybe just have a traveling OGN convention where we rent out the Gamers Mansion or we fly to Canada or we meet in exotic locales.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you You're giving me all those reels this weekend. I loved it. I mean, I saw Tara Tara's Bad Luck Club. She was there at the Gamers Ranch, oh really, With who's who the board game industry, and I was looking at all the goings on at that Gamers Ranch and I was like we definitely need an Operation Game Night retreat to the game, and why weren't we invited Tara?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Tara, if you're listening out there, can you please explain why Operation Game Night was excluded from this who's who?
Speaker 3:We must be B-listers or C-listers. Are we in the alphabet? I don't know if we're in the alphabet.
Speaker 1:We're down there. Anyways, I don't know if you heard, but this is a multi-level marketing scheme that we have going here at Operation Game Night. I'll tell you how it works. You send the podcast to three friends, and then they send the podcast to three friends and, boom, you are managing those people that are listening to the podcast on your behalf. So the more people that forward it, the higher up you move in the ranks. You'll never be as high as us. I'm sorry, but guess what? You're near the top. You're on the ground floor of something great. So go ahead and share the podcast with all your friends and become a manager in Operation Game Night Corporation.
Speaker 3:Wow, I mean, I'm just waiting for us to have our own cruise. I hear that's what MLMs do. They get so big, they have their own cruises.
Speaker 1:Why do you think Board Game Geek has their own cruise? They do not, dice Tower does. I've never heard of the Board Game Geek cruise. They, they do, dice Tower.
Speaker 3:Dice Tower, dice Tower.
Speaker 2:Dice Tower does I've never heard of the board game Geek Cruise. They might, though I mean I think they do.
Speaker 3:I feel like I've seen like little banners on BGG. I mean they might have like okay, this one is for you know this event or whatever. But like MLMs, you sell. This amount, you get on the cruise. So you listen to this amount of operation game night, you get on the cruise. How about that? That's right, I like that.
Speaker 1:There you go, it has been said, Clay, we missed a valuable opportunity to turn your house into a timeshare for our listeners. We should have done that. Hey, go on man.
Speaker 1:Anyway that's enough. Uh, we have a great show for you. Today. We are going to answer questions from the listeners that wrote in on instagram, so we've got some good questions to answer. But first we're going to debrief our week and then, after we do the mission objective, we're going to go over the fence and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming. So, clayton, take it away, tell me about your week in gaming.
Speaker 2:Will do boss. So first up this week got to play the classic Rosenberg. I think this might have been the game that put Rosenberg on the map. Tay got me fired up about Rosenberg last week with Black Forest they're talking about this Agricola Awakened Realms version. So it's getting the Castles of Burgundy treatment and they're going to deluxify it. And if I'm anything, I'm a sucker for a deluxified board game. So I figured it was a good opportunity to dive back into Agricola and be like do I really like this game enough to spend what amount of money they're going to be asking for for this deluxified game and not to bury the lead? I I like it a lot, don't play it as much.
Speaker 2:3.64 seems like a pretty hefty weight here for this game. I don't know that. I would think it's that that difficult. Strategy wise probably, um, but strategy wise probably. But again, worker placement games for me are just so easy to pick back up because you put your worker on a space and it basically tells you what happens. I put my worker on the plow field space. I can take a plowed field and put it in my little area. I plant grain, I take a grain, I put it in my area. So I don't know, worker placement games just never feel that heavy to me.
Speaker 2:But anyway, this game has been around since 2007. It won a bunch of awards. I'm sure it was at the top of the BGG Top 100 for some time number one game and it still sticks around. Obviously it's gotten new versions just a few years ago and now awaken realms is giving a new version. So you're not getting away from agricola in this hobby. So if you haven't played it, you should.
Speaker 2:Essentially you are farmers. You know another rosenberg game, so you're farming. It's some time in the past. Things are hard. You have your family. It's just a mom and a dad to start with. So each round you can place a mom out, a dad out, take two actions rounds over, move on, bang, bang.
Speaker 2:The cool thing about this game is it starts out like the actions evolve as the game goes on. So when you start there's like a core set of actions available and then each round you reveal a new action and so as the game progresses, your options grow, the actions get better. And I like that evolution because at the beginning it's a little more overwhelming. You're kind of constrained. A little bit more overwhelming you, you're kind of constrained a little bit and then as it grows, you you know maybe you're diving into more of a strategy so you can focus on some of the new things that are coming up. And it tells you on your little player aid, like, hey, in these rounds these are the potential cards that could come up. So you got your cow cards coming up in round 15 so you can plan for that. Like, gosh, I gotta get my cow.
Speaker 2:Because the other thing about this game is it is a diversification engine. All right, you cannot be just a sheep farmer. You will not win Agricola because there's several different categories that you score for. And let me get a better picture up here. There's several different categories you score for and each category is capped out at like four points is the most you'll score for it. So you can have five sheep and get four points. You can have 20 sheep and get four points. But if you have zero sheep you lose a point. So you want to try and get every type of animal. You want to try and upgrade your living quarters to like the fancy clay or stone huts, because they're worth more points. You want to have the different types of vegetables, so you have grains, you have vegetables. You also, yeah, you build these fences around different areas to make pastures and if you have unused spaces in your farm. That's also negative points.
Speaker 2:And what really popped off for me this time, playing the game in the past, I was overwhelmed by the cards you get at the beginning of the game. I wasn't quite sure how to properly use them and, you know, incorporate them into the gameplay. It was like it was just like a little too much the first couple of times and maybe this is where the 3.64 weights coming from is the options you get on these cards. So at the beginning of the game you get seven occupation cards and seven minor improvement cards, and so and this is different, I think, advanced players, you do like a draft, kind of like terraforming Mars where, where you pass cards back and forth between each other to pick the ones you want. But the way I play you just get seven of each, and so they give you like ongoing benefits, ways to you know cook food, or like turn your Holy cow. Whoa, you worry about tornadoes. The ring light tried to assassinate me, holy cow Look alive.
Speaker 3:Look alive the tension. I was just so, I know.
Speaker 2:Anyway, you get this hand of cards and you try and find out ways to use them because they're going to make things easier for you and they're going to help you develop a strategy for the game. So I had a lot of fun with that. I actually played like three cards which in the past I may have played like one in the games I've played of it. So getting up to playing three cards, I was really. I was really into it. And then the other thing that happens is every so often and it happens more frequently as the game goes on you have a harvest. So, like after three or four rounds, you have to do a harvest and that's where you can sow some of the is it sow, it's reap.
Speaker 2:You reap your grains, you reap your vegetables, your animals. They obviously are going to breed, they get busy, you produce more and then you have to feed your people and each person costs two food to feed. So you're trying the whole round to make sure that, in the middle of doing all the stuff you're trying to do to improve your farm, you got to make sure you have your food ready for the harvest to feed your people and there's chances to get more people and they help you take more actions, obviously, but they cost more food, so, and you have to have a place to put them in your house. So you have to build your house to get more people, you have to have more food to feed the people. So, man, it's just a. It's a tight game, it's a tense game and it's so good it's. It is a great worker placement game.
Speaker 3:It's a little bit of city planning to going on, right, because your house, house, you have to continuously build from your house. Yeah, you can't just like build part of your house on this part of your farm, no, uh, and you know, you want to build your pens in a certain way where it can hold enough. Yeah, animals, okay, yep, I absolutely sold on this one. Is this the one that we played? Right, I forgot my hip surgery. This is, yes. Um, I was like hopped up on painkillers and I was like sold. I was like I love this game so freaking much, getting my freaking hearthstone or whatever. I can't even remember what the cooking bread oh the cooking hearth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, this one is a lot of fun. I I had to rewatch a video and read the rule book because you sent me a BGA on this one. Me, Travis Clay, are hot on this one right now. I don't think anyone has another kid yet. I don't think that's an option yet. I think it forces you to wait a little bit, yeah yeah, they want to make sure you establish yourself a bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you don't want to jump right in and have kids. You know, make sure you establish yourself a bit. Yeah, you don't want to jump right into having kids, you know. Yeah, build up that farm first so you can provide for those children before you put them to work on the farm.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. One last thing is that the action spaces accumulate, so every round, more wood gets put onto the wood space. Yeah, and so if someone doesn't take the wood action for a while, it's going to build up a metric ton of wood and eventually you're like I don't even need wood, but I gotta take all that wood because it's. It's awesome. Um, so yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff going on in this game and it definitely rewards repeat plays and people that really want to like geek out on the strategy and get excited about seeing their hand of cards and like unlocking the possibilities, like, oh my gosh, I got a card that lets me go fishing for, you know, two stone less or whatever you know. Just endless possibilities for strategy in this game, and I am giddy with excitement about the awakened realms version so tell me, tell me about the awakened realms version.
Speaker 1:Like I'm, I know they're going to deluxify everything, but what specifically are they doing to it? Like each of the animals? I'm assuming it's like a 3d printed sheep and a cow and a goat and stuff, but it's all in my imagination right now.
Speaker 2:I didn't actually look it up, I just saw posts about it and it looked like it was in the awakened realms castles of burgundy sized box. My imagination has run wild with, with, uh, what they could possibly do.
Speaker 1:I know I, I saw the youtube video I saw the youtube video pop up where they do all their announcements for the year and I had it saved and I completely forgot about it. So I need to go back and watch that and drool over these beautiful components.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I also want to just point out the fact that we've been using some beautiful, wicked terms here deluxify I am getting very excited about this. The vocabulary yeah, I'm very interested in this new version that you're going gonna buy for me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, you can drive up from dc, we'll play at any time let's go, all right you guys got you uh circle back to me. I want to hear one of you guys talk for a little bit.
Speaker 3:All right, jared what you got all right. Well, I'm still crushing hard on, uh, terraforming mars. I think I talked about it three weeks straight now. Um, I laughed yesterday. I put gemstone down for a nap, hopped on bga, went three players with someone from, uh, france and belgium and after her two-hour nap and adri got her dressed hair done up, um, I had to text the other two players and be like, hey, I can't play anymore, I need to go. We were only like 70 done with terraforming mars how long was?
Speaker 3:it. Yeah, we were cooking on I think we're on our like going on the past two hours mark of uh playing it. So one guy was taken forever. That was his own fault, but it didn't feel like it. He had the little timer thing that said hey, you're done playing, or like, keep it up. These guys could boot you. And he kept like I considered booting him at one point but I was like, eh so anyway, still crushing hard on Terraforming Mars.
Speaker 3:Mars, I love it. Haven't played it in person yet, but I think I am convincing the others in my class that I did play in person to get bga. And then we're going to play a turn by turn because we're about to go. You know our separate ways here in the next couple months, but we could have a continuous terraforming Mars going that I can just keep. My extrovert self can keep these relationships going, just with a little touch here, a little something here. So I don't know I'm excited about terraforming Mars. Still, I am going to learn a little bit, little something here. So I don't know I'm excited about terraformer mars. Still, I am going to learn a little bit more about the prelude um expansion. Maybe I'll talk about that next time. I don't know, giving myself a challenge maybe.
Speaker 3:But what I did want to talk about today was rebirth. I had our good buddy, uh, mike Leland. He's in town. We played Rebirth. You guys just talked so highly about it the last couple weeks ago. I loved hearing about the art, the little figurines, how easy potential for Adri to get involved. Spoiler alert she's not interested. Spoiled spoiler alert she's not interested. Um, but um, also, I, I did.
Speaker 3:I did try to do like a unboxing video of this, and I'm an idiot because I I did it before I figured out how to play this thing and I was like about to open it. I was like I actually already cut this the cellophane off and I opened it up. I was like, oh look, how pretty this is. I'm like I don't know how to play this game, so I don't know what to tell you about this. So it was a good learning experience for me as a I guess, a growing board game influencer. I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but super fun action. You just grab a tile. Do you put it on a lightning bolt or on the one of those little farm tiles, you just place it down. Or do you have a city tile and do I put it on a city? It's like, like you guys said, very simple actions, uh cool, like little hidden objectives when you go to the cathedrals.
Speaker 3:Mike, he kicked my ass, yeah, it's true, but I am interested in trying out the Ireland's function or the other side. We just played Scotland and Mike's still in town. It's on a two-week TDY, so we still have this week coming up. But he said he was interested in Arnak. So sorry, rebirth, you're going to have to take a backseat to Arnak. Have this week coming up. But he said he was interested in arnak. So, oh, sorry, uh, rebirth, you're gonna have to take a back seat to arnak if you want to get out arnak.
Speaker 2:I'm getting out arnak yeah, you gotta take advantage of mike being there for a week.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want a big boy. Yeah, I want a big boy game yeah, this, this is with anybody.
Speaker 2:You gotta, you gotta capitalize on on the mic time yeah, I.
Speaker 3:The one thing that I really liked about this game, the one feature I really liked, was that hidden um objective. Like I had to try and get more three wind farms together or the, the little lightning bolts, those are like, yeah, your power stations or whatever, yeah. So I had to get more of the three groupings than him and but he didn't know that so, like he's doing his own thing, little did I know he, you know he had his own objectives, but he crushed me on the fact that he had this one wind farm that was, I think, nine long. So every time he goes there, every time that you grow your connected um wind, every time you count however many are in the group and that's how many points you get. So he was going placing one, getting five points, placing another, getting six points, then seven, then eight then, nine and I'm like I should have stopped him.
Speaker 2:What the?
Speaker 3:hell I was doing. I was too focused on getting my little groups of three that I yeah, I let him.
Speaker 2:That's what that's what Paul was saying when, when we had him on. He said that this game's like kind of sneaky me because you have to you. You can play in your own little world, but you can really let people run amok if they get those big groupings together and you don't do anything about it. That's how I won. The first time we played is I just I was loving it. Every time I got a lightning bolt I was like boom bop, ah, that's it, that's 15 points whatsoever, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's a cool game.
Speaker 1:It's so simple and it gives you enough to think about, to be like yeah, that was a good 45 minutes, you know I think the coolest of those hidden objectives are like the border controls, like you're controlling the most amount of farms that are along the ireland scotland border or the england ireland border no, england and scotland border. But yeah, yeah, yeah, um, those ones are really cool because you can get those so sneakily as you continue to build out. Or maybe you start at a castle, you're working your way down and then you start spreading out so it doesn't seem real suspicious until all of a sudden you control the entire border and you're scoring tons of points for it has anyone played this with more than just two?
Speaker 2:yeah, I play it with four two times Four.
Speaker 3:Whoa.
Speaker 2:Four people would be. That's a lot. Yeah, it's tight, it's a lot tighter. Does it leave?
Speaker 3:any empty spots by the end.
Speaker 2:Not many, I don't think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you'd fill it with even two, don't you?
Speaker 3:No, there were still a few empties, but it's a super fun game. I bet you, if I played against Mike again Mike is super, I mean, he's just a whiz, super smart dude I bet you, if I played him again in this one, it would be more like chess. I would question his every move and be like oh so you're trying to get the longest shoreline, huh.
Speaker 1:Let me just.
Speaker 3:But I thought it was a lot of fun and I would Easy to teach too, right? I mean, the only thing I had to call you Clay and figure out what the hell to do with those empty tiles. But those are.
Speaker 2:Turns out, I didn't know what to do with them.
Speaker 3:Grok figured it out, our friendly AI. He knows how to figure out a lot of things. Well my friendly AI.
Speaker 1:Ronnie Smith also knew.
Speaker 3:But anyways, tons of fun on Rebirth. I'll hit it again. Rachel, run it back. It deserves more of my love.
Speaker 2:Travis, what's been up with you?
Speaker 1:I am not going to belabor my debrief all too much because I am just playing games that we have already talked about many times. A friend of the show, amanda Lee, sent me a whole bunch of game requests, so we've been playing Architects of Amethyst Love that game. We've been playing a ton of Sky Team. We're terrible at it. We have lost probably three, four times in a row. And then I got to play Five Tribes, which Clay you talked about last week. I really like this game. I think the Mancala effect is cool, prioritizing which little meeples you're going to drop, and where you can kind of direct your man call a dropping as you go along to try and you know, screw with other people. Super easy to learn, super easy to play, and even I mean I'm playing it online. It's on BGA.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't even know this was on BGA.
Speaker 1:Well, tom, get my gaming in these days. So yeah, that's how I'm getting my gaming in these days. So, uh, yeah, I'm playing it asynchronously and we're flying through the game, so it's it moves super fast. I'm happy to play with.
Speaker 3:Play this one with you guys, if you want to run it back yeah, you have to do it like in one direction, or can you like?
Speaker 2:oh, you can say, you can say you can?
Speaker 3:you can cinnamon, roll it like you do.
Speaker 2:Okay, I just want to some of the coolest things you can do is if you get a big enough group and you pick them all up from that group and then circle back around to that space that you left and that you just left.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can double back on yourself yeah, really yeah, you can come up with some pretty clever things to do. I certainly was not being too creative about it, but I heard that you can. I I was like okay, there's an, a tile I can empty. How do I get to it? And that was my decision-making. But there's plenty to think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really enjoying it. I I don't understand a good strategy yet, I'm just kind of like winging it it. But it seems to be moving along fast enough to where I'm not like getting frustrated that I don't know exactly what I'm doing.
Speaker 3:so, yeah, if I'm gonna spend, you know, five minutes at a time looking at this thing, it's fun, for bga it's fine I'm just a huge fan of all these meeples, the camels, like those little uh like trees, the mary, the mary towers, the mary plugs, like yeah, they're great it's a nice geez, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a nice production. I it's days of wonder, so it's. It's good. Like they did heat, they've done ticket to ride. They. They make a good small world. Yeah, small world, memoir 44. So they, when they make game, they make it good. This game is a nice production. Those palm trees and palaces are way bigger than you think. I mean, they're massive wooden pieces that you're putting out there. It's a nice-looking game. It's a nice-looking game Any dates.
Speaker 3:I'm a big fan of dates Like the fruit From the trees, yeah. No, no, no, I'm a big fan of dates Like the fruit From the trees no, no dates. Oh wait, was that a date? It looks kind of like Mush gold.
Speaker 2:Mushy gold.
Speaker 3:Anyways, I digress, and every time it's a new game, because the board Can be randomized. I digress, I digress, but, and every time it's a new game, right Cause that the the board can be randomized. And yeah, okay, yeah, I'd got to give this one a try. Sure, well, let's run it on some BGA.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. Look at that genie. That's a terrifying genie. Wow, I'm excited. She allows you to do some crazy things. Look at that, jeepers.
Speaker 3:Look how small that guy is in the boat compared to her with her snakes in her hair.
Speaker 1:They kind of use a lot of the same iconography and fonts that they use in Small World. I wonder if these two came out around the same time Interesting 2014. Yeah, that sounds about right. It's pretty close. It might be the same artist too, honestly oh shoot, that's kind of graphic.
Speaker 2:Look at that. Blood spats on these naples on the assassination yikes. All right, we're down a rabbit hole on on genie art. All right, clayton. All right, I'll back to you. I'll quick debrief. One more item. Been playing far away, I think amanda, after our small box episode I might have been amanda, lord knows. We got plenty of um critiques not critiques but requests for different small box games.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God, you didn't have this game, and Far Away was one that was brought up, I think, by Amanda, and it has been getting a lot of praise lately. So picked it up at the old, friendly local game store, as I'm one to do, and this game is weird. It is super hard to wrap your head around. So essentially, you're just playing eight cards and each card has a scoring objective in the bottom, and so it'll be like you get a point for every yellow or green card you have in your journey. So on your turn you play a card, boom, boom, boom. You play eight cards and then you flip them all over upside down, and then you start with the card on the right, which was the last card you played, and you flip it over and then you score it, but you only score it based on the cards that are currently flipped over, so your last card has nothing to score off of, except there is an opportunity to get these persistent cards called sanctuaries, and those are, like, always available to be scored on, and you get those by playing a card that's time Duration is longer than, uh, the one you played previously. So in the top left of each card it has like how long did this little quest take you? And they'll say like 25 minutes. I don't know if it's minutes out, they don't tell you the the units of time, but if you, if the next card you play during the first phase is higher than that, so you go from 25 to 31, you get to look through the sanctuary deck and pick one of those cards to add and that, just you know, gives you more symbols and cards that you can score off of at the end. But yeah, this about broke my brain.
Speaker 2:The first time we played it I was like I was just putting cards out and honestly, it was just kind of fun to see what happened during the scoring phase, because I would flip over a card. I had not planned very well, so I'd just be like flip this one over, oh crap, zero points. Okay, flip the next one over. Hey, look at that one, I actually did score a point there. And then you're just like going through and flipping them over one by one and hopefully till you get to the ones that you played first. You've set yourself up to score some pretty good points there, but yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's a cool little quick 25 minute game. Uh, it's on bga. I'm playing it right now with spanky and mary, um, but yeah, it's, it's a cool small box and if that kind of puzzle sounds interesting to you, uh, definitely check it out, because yeah, it's not a lot going on, but that that core conceit of you play all these cards this direction, but then you have to flip them all over and like go the reverse of it to get your points. I've not seen it and it was interesting and I'm enjoying playing it a few more times.
Speaker 1:This is Christopher Nolan's tenant. In a board game. You're living, live forward and backwards. I'm trying to solve problems. The uh, what is it? What do they call it? The temporal pincer. That's what you're trying to execute here. Whoa, yes, this one was. This one was a big deal at essen. When I was there, like people were walking around with copies of this. They have like four different sets that all play the same but just have different art.
Speaker 1:I think yeah and um, yeah, this was a hot, hot thing and that's it. And people were walking around and bragging about how they got all four sets or whatever. I don't know why you would want all four, but um, yeah, pretty cool concepts. I've played this a couple times digitally, yeah are those little cards, the sanctuary cards?
Speaker 3:yes, yeah, like the tiny ones, the square ones are what you're playing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the sanctuaries are the ones that just hang around the whole time, which is, which is nice, mary, she I think that's all she cares about. She makes sure that every card she plays is in sequential order, so like 12, 20, 25, 30. So she gets a million sanctuary cards meanwhile. I don't know what I'm thinking about, but I'm like I'm like looking at these deer heads in the corner trying to be like, okay, I'm gonna need a deer head here at some point and I don't end up getting many sanctuary cards. So I don't know. It's a lot of tough decisions in a little small box spanky's probably pretty good at this.
Speaker 3:He's, you know, being a programmer and all like you know, making sure things are, uh, speaking the right language and yeah, he's probably going to take us to task on bga here, so I expect a game running on bga.
Speaker 1:What you guys have a game of this running on BGA.
Speaker 3:Yeah, apparently Not with Jared, though I mean, there's been a lot of BGA talk today and I have like one game with you guys going.
Speaker 1:I know I have.
Speaker 3:Terraforming, mars and Agricola. So that's two, that's true. Well, five tribes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll get some five tribes. We'll get some far away. We'll go back to Castles of Burgundy. We're going to play it all I know. Let's do some Heat.
Speaker 3:I need some Heat. Yeah let's do it. Petal of Metal.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:That's all I have.
Speaker 1:Good debrief, Clay. Thanks Travis, Are we ready?
Speaker 3:I think I might need to do some box breathing before our main event today. I don't know if you guys ask me anything. I didn't. I had enough like a m a. I didn't know that acronym was a thing. So again one. One more notch in my um influencer belt yeah, you're not the moderator of the operation game night subreddit no, you guys did give me access to the uh instagram and it scares me, so I I immediately closed it.
Speaker 2:So we need some of those creative reels that you had. You've generated some of our best traffic with your creativity in the real game. Nobody wants to see just clips of our podcast, which is all all I post.
Speaker 3:It could get real dark. Okay, guys, send it. You might get some weird people that like hot dogs, corn dogs, freaky things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see the reels you send me. On a personal level, I think it's good to really moderate your ability to post to our audience.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, we put out a call for our listeners to write in and ask us anything. This is a kind of mailbag episode and we got some good questions. Mainly from friends and family mainly from friends and family, but we do have some from friends of the podcast and family of the podcast. So, uh, first one from listener Brenna. If you could be any character from a game you have played, who would it be?
Speaker 2:Oh, if I could be any character from a game that you have played. Yeah, I, I did see these questions beforehand, so I'll let Jared think a little bit while I spitball and I had a tough time with this because board games just don't do a great job of developing characters. I don't think in general, Unless it's an IP game, and then I feel like that's kind of a cheat, like, oh, if I want to be Commander Adama from Battlestar Galactica, it's not because of the Battlestar Galactica board game is because I watched every episode of that show multiple times.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he's an amazing leader. But if I could be any character from a board game, it would probably be little Beth.
Speaker 1:Oh no way. I was going to say Bert. I was going to say little beth. Oh no way. I was gonna say bird.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say bird from spots, dang it yeah little, oh my gosh spots is the coolest cat out there and I would definitely want to embody her spirit and energy in my life I might get a little beth tattoo.
Speaker 3:You know, you watch yourself, watch yourself, because my, I have a niece, um, she, she like um, she loves going by beth and so, oh, ellie, beth and we've. I played spots with her this summer and I was like, look, it's little beth, and she lost it. So yeah oh my gosh, the little beth I love jared you got, you got an answer.
Speaker 3:So, as clay alluded to it, I wanted to come in blind to these, ask me anything so I could give you the real, true self. Um, I mean, I instantly thought of bonanza. Um, for some reasons, because the wheeling and dealing of the bean farmer. But then I thought of the sad existence working toiling. I'm not built for living a life of, you know, labor with my bad, my bad hip. I can barely like stand on my feet for three hours without being in pain, my bad hip. I can barely stand on my feet for three hours without being in pain. But I'd probably, I mean, if I wanted to be honest, I'd have to go feast Frodin. I want to be at the head of the ship going to go raiding with my fellow Vikings, going to go get that loot to bring it home for our families Feed. The thing Isn't that? The thing is where all the Vikings hang out. Yeah, the thing square, the thing square.
Speaker 2:Weird, what about?
Speaker 3:you.
Speaker 1:Travis. So I was going to say Bert from Spots until he brought up Little Bert. Bert is the best, bert is the top dog.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I can see myself in that light, dude.
Speaker 3:I'm kind of a fan of Honcho. I think he's the one with the. He's got the nipples he's showing off 10 nipples.
Speaker 1:I was going to counter. I was going to counter the dogs with maybe one of the space cats from Lem.
Speaker 3:There you go, that looks more like me.
Speaker 1:Do you mean.
Speaker 2:Lem's space cat.
Speaker 1:Maybe a space cat from Lem, but really I'd probably be one of the legends from Western Legends. That's awesome for you, you going out reveling at the cabaret. You know robbing banks and trains and you know wrangling cattle.
Speaker 2:So, man, I think, choosing you'd be on the vibes you'd be on the villain track.
Speaker 1:I've pictured you more of a sheriff well, you can go back and forth, you can. It's never too late to change. Go once you get arrested, once you go certain time, then you're ready.
Speaker 3:You'd be more of a sheriff. Well, you can go back and forth. It's never too late to change.
Speaker 1:Once you go a certain time, then you're ready Change man. Here is a critical question from Listener Mary. Listener Mary says why would someone consistently go over their monthly board game budget? Clay, care to take this Clay?
Speaker 2:First of all, I don't think people who are not current with the podcast should be allowed to submit questions to this show. Second of all, I generally stay within my budget. This month has been stressful and I did a little retail therapy and accidentally bought a couple of out-of-print Kinesia games from eBay Nice budget slightly. And then I proceeded to maybe buy one more from amazon, which she's telling me to stay off of as of late. So she wasn't happy about that.
Speaker 3:Um I a little like a little treat why would someone do this?
Speaker 2:yeah, I, I got nothing else. Guys, this is this, is it for me. You know I don't get much joy from other things. I wear the same same holy pants, the same holy underwear, the shirt I'm wearing here. It's got a hole. I'm not out here buying clothes to look fancy, I just want to buy board games, play around with cardboard. If I spend a couple more dollars than I planned on a month, you know, that's here or there. Maybe I won't get a energy drink tomorrow, I don't know. I'll make up for it somehow.
Speaker 3:I think for Clay he's got Christmas money, I mean he always has Christmas money.
Speaker 1:There's always money in the banana stand. Yeah, that's right, listener. Kumu95, is that Clay? That's my stepmom. That's your stepmom, kumu95? Is that Clay?
Speaker 2:That's my stepmom.
Speaker 1:That's your stepmom. Have you ever changed the rules of a game in order to make it more enjoyable or for you to enjoy it better? Oh, any house rules.
Speaker 2:In general, I respect the board game design process too much to taint the gaming experience they intended by changing the rules. However, I would say a category of games I consistently don't care about following the rules are like the party game type games. So, like you know, you're so Clover as your wavelengths you, you can score points and you can do that stuff. But sometimes you just play a couple of rounds and have a good time seeing people's answers. So I'm happy to subvert the rules in those games a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, with just one. I'm good with getting like a 13, which is a perfect score, you know. Get a 13 with an asterisk. You know, maybe maybe you got to do a two-word um uh thing in there. Maybe, like I don't know, like would this have helped you? You give them like a half of a point, I don't know. Like yeah, yeah, it's all about having fun at the end of the day with these games, you know, don't can't take yourself too seriously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was thinking mainly about party games, and the one that came to mind was that gorilla marketing game where you're supposed to like roll the dice and it's supposed to tell you what category you're doing. Or you know if you're designing the name of a brand or whatever, it should be like the one that's most likely made in a sweatshop or something, or it should be like the one that's most likely made in a sweatshop or something, or you know the one that's least likely to catch fire, or whatever. Uh, but yeah, you just pick one and roll with it and the categories don't matter. You're there to have a good time, not to, you know, fit things into specific categories. So, uh, next, but now.
Speaker 3:but I will say though, when it comes, when it comes to Feast for Odin, when it comes to Dune Imperium, I run a tight ship. You cannot do that. You need to put. You put your cards there. You do not put your cards over here. You can't shuffle those cards until this part of Don't you dare.
Speaker 2:Don't you dare it's bitten me, before somebody's got to hold the line jared I know so, uh, so deb it, it depends.
Speaker 3:you know, like every good answer, uh, it depends. But party good. Go Big boy game nights, it's it's a stress levels are high. Yeah, I was reminded of the high stress levels in Dune Imperium.
Speaker 2:The other night I I hadn't played a game like that in a while. Sorry, this is a tangent, but that that tension in Dune Imperium is just crazy. Oh my gosh, just like you have these sneaky little plans and you think it's all gonna work out and you're like hold on, if I can just win this conflict, I'll get two points. And they don't know that I have a card that's gonna let me go up in the fremen track and grab that alliance token and then boom, boom, boom, it's 10. I'm there and, yeah, that game is so tense and it must be played with the proper rules.
Speaker 1:That's right, uh. Sam from mesmeral games asks how does it make you feel when people tell you that board games are for kids? I will double down on that and say how do you respond when people say that board games are for kids?
Speaker 3:I say I am a kid and uh, you, it's a shame that you feel like, uh, you've lost your inner child, um, but but also, I mean, who cares? I love this hobby, um, like, if, if you feel like it's a childish, then uh, you don't have to play with me. I guess you don't get to have as much fun as I'm having. That's right. Sad, sad on them. But, and, sam, if someone's giving you some shit, you can send them my way. That's right, straighten them up. You got a couple of wrestlers here. I swear Travis is a shot putter, but he was a long jumper.
Speaker 2:High jumper, high jumper.
Speaker 1:This guy is a batter's instructor too he can choke people out with a look, I'm going to jump over you. That'll show him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nothing's more. He's got some strong legs. That would really be demeaning, though, to just have a person leap you.
Speaker 1:You try and like flex. I'm like what's up, what's up, and they just jump straight over you.
Speaker 2:I will say nobody's ever said this to me and it's probably because they are intimidated by everything, everything I bring to the table physically. So nobody has had the audacity to say that, but I I would I would not have much of a problem with it. I feel like when you're this flagrant about being into board games, you've lost all all care about what people think about about what you do. It's, this is what I like and you got one life, man, it's. I'm not going to waste it trying to make other people happy by doing things they think are for adults. What am I going to go out and sorry Scott Scott doing things they think are for adults? So am I gonna go out and sorry scott scott, whoever? I think? Scott's our main listener. That's a golfer. Am I gonna go out and just like stand around outside with a couple clubs and hit some white balls around all day? That's the adult thing to do?
Speaker 3:nah, not for me, hey, once we retire, okay, and you move back to colorado, because your ass better be moving back. Yeah, we can go golfing, because we'll be old and senile, that's right. We can't wrestle and we can't do jujitsu, but we can still swing a golf club. So we can go play golf in the morning and then at night that's when we hit the table. Golf's just a game too, it's true. Yeah, golf's for kids too. How about that?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's like when. It's like when people make things without meat tastes like meat. They make board games that play like golf, or you know, go both ways. So, uh, all right. Tan 14 asks what are your dream jobs?
Speaker 2:I think this is Tanner from.
Speaker 3:I believe so.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, wow yeah.
Speaker 3:Actually one of the one of the visitors on the podcast um dream job.
Speaker 2:I, I have a dream job and I hope it lines up with Travis's dream job, because we have a dream of opening a board game bar. Name is influx cardboard keg, Maybe I don't know TM.
Speaker 2:TM yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, I cut that, cut that, cut that. That I love, I love. I mean obviously this is board game related. I don't know if you want a realistic job, I don't really care, I'll do whatever. But in my dream world, in retirement, when Travis is ready to leave his air force fighter jetting behind, we can open up our board game bar where we can, you know, put on game nights for people, have a beautiful setup, a gaming library that people can come to have, like special board game tables. Get out, we want to have a tap wall where you just go up, you serve yourself some beer, you play some board games, you have a good time. That is what I want to do with my life is just be around people playing games and having a good time. You have to be playing them. I'm just happy to be there and seeing it going on.
Speaker 1:I was going to say data entry, but I guess that's OK too. Wow, Travis, oh yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great. And then Mary never has to worry about you going over your board game budget again, because it's all right. It's all right.
Speaker 3:I just wrote it off. I wrote it off. Yeah, I was. I was honestly thinking like I have always thought that my dream job and I still believe is to be a squadron commander in the air force and I could potentially have my own bar as a squadron commander where we play board games. Excellent, so maybe I could do both. I mean, me and Tan man got a little taste of that in Kunsan, where we actually did have our own bar in Kunsan and we played a lot of board games. There was no tap wall, though there was definitely a hole in the roof and, uh, it was a little dilapidated, but I mean it was free membership, uh, I mean, you know, service to your country isn't free, but I don't know. I would also say, once I retire, I, I would actually like, uh, I wouldn't mind doing something in real estate or something with food. I like food. Yeah, I could see myself doing diners, drive-ins and dives, but how about you be? I got to know the right people.
Speaker 2:You could be the food manager at our board game bar. You could be Done Revealing up all the. Come up with some creative board game-themed dishes.
Speaker 3:This is the stew from Agricola five tribes hummus and pita chips yeah yes there we go this is some salmon jerky from Feast for Odin.
Speaker 1:BearwinPlaysGames asks if you could change the theme on any game to fit your taste more. What would it be if you're changing themes to make it fit your tastes?
Speaker 2:well, in general, I I like a space theme. I the guardian in me is strong and I like sci-fi. I like sci-fi shows, sci-fi movies. So space themes always appeal to me. And one game that is just awful. I cannot even I don't, I can't articulate the theme of this game. I don't even know what it is. There is nothing less appealing to me on my shelf as far as theme goes, and that's whatever you're doing in Castles of Burgundy. I don't even know what it is, I don't know who I am, I don't know why I'm doing it. I'm just putting things out on a board to score points. So you could really pop any theme on that and it would intrigue me more than whatever it is. Yeah, make that a planet, I don't care, it's just anything's better. So that is my answer.
Speaker 3:I think the people of France would. Those are fighting words, I think.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:The French have no fighting words, oh damn Shots fired, jared what you got.
Speaker 3:I'll talk to my French exchange officer tomorrow about that. I don't know what I. I like all themes. I don't know what I. I like all themes. I don't know if I have a. I'm like that much of a connoisseur. I like anything you can dress up For. I mean Freaking. I still like Hitting the high seas as a Pirate every now and then. You know, yeah, but so it's yeah. It's hard to decide what you dress up. As for Castle of Burgundy, I guess. But you dress up. As for a castle of Burgundy, I guess you just show up with a wheel of cheese, that's, that's fine.
Speaker 2:There's so many better cheese themed games like fromage oh gosh.
Speaker 1:That's true, Clay. Do you remember that coffee shop game that we played on one of our marathon weekends?
Speaker 3:Yes, like the.
Speaker 1:You're managing the amsterdam coffee shop or something. Did we finish that game? I don't think we did. I think we gave up halfway through. Yeah, I think a game like that about running a board game bar would be great, because you're trying to like meet their needs with orders and stuff. I think you could meet their board game orders, like maintain your stockpiles and everything, while serving them drinks. That'd be great. That's an intriguing theme. Yeah, game about running a board game bar. Okay, uh, then we got two from the show amanda lee, all right. Amanda says besides, who is our dream guest?
Speaker 1:Our dream guest on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I've got two answers. I guess I should have to pick one. Jamie from Stonemaier Games, whoa. I just really respect that guy. I watch all of his stuff. I love his company. The games they put out are always well produced, well thought out. He engages with the community. He's super open about everything they're up to and why they do what they do. I think it'd be great to chat with him and you know see where he gets his relentless optimism from, uh, about the world. And you know, yeah, that would be my answer. And rodney is a plan b.
Speaker 3:I was gonna I was actually gonna say rodney, because, uh, I mean I think adri might actually listen to one of our podcasts if rodney came on here. He's got just he's got amazing personality. That smile, I mean he could flip me, like you know. Put me in that smile, he could flip me. Put me in a little box, he could flip me.
Speaker 3:If he gets on the screen, I'll just turn beet red. I would be starstruck. I'd just be like Rodney, I would just be so chuffed, that's what. I would know that we have made it as uh, the operation game night. As uh. If ronnie's like, yeah, dude, I'll come on for 45 minutes and yeah, we'll shut this, we'll shut it, we'll shut it down after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's nothing else to do, really yeah I think we could bring him on to talk about, you know, like teaching games and the art of the teach. Yeah, dude, yeah, that's a good topic.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:What kind of?
Speaker 3:story can we tell? Can I like?
Speaker 2:have your AI. Write them an email.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ok, I'm on it. I'm on it.
Speaker 1:I was going to say either Reiner or Phil Walker Harding. Yeah, and since Phil Walker-Harding listens to the podcast, he knows now that he is a dream guest. So please, phil, answer my emails. Come on, come on the podcast.
Speaker 3:I actually saw.
Speaker 1:You can't avoid a scrapper.
Speaker 3:Clay had the BGG up, he's got. He had a banner. There was a banner for Phil Walker Bo Walker hiring up there. There's some new game. I was like, ooh, he can't stop, can't be stopped.
Speaker 2:Can't be stopped.
Speaker 1:Close third is Cam from Petraeus. I was going to say that, oh my gosh, cam, I want him to come on and talk to us about what it takes to run your favorite friendly, local game store. He has not written me store. He has not written me back. He has written you back. Oh, he did. Oh, it was open because we shared the email.
Speaker 3:You have to mark it as unread I forgot to.
Speaker 2:Now we're ready. Cam is coming on eventually.
Speaker 3:Could he come on Friday when I am going? Sorry, sorry, travis, I don't know if you know this I'm going to colorado springs on friday and there's going to be a game night it's actually sponsored germany it's sponsored by operation game night no way, and disney can't expense that.
Speaker 1:I'm not writing that off, come on. Oh well, I'm super jealous, maybe I'll uh, I will like zoom in and then I can like give you guys my moves through the microphone okay perfect, all right that's fair. Uh. Amanda has one last question what are our spouses favorite games?
Speaker 2:Mary. Mary always wants to play castles of Burgundy, always, or QB dose is the other one. If you want a a more eccentric answer than I, feel like I talk about Mary loving castle of Burgundy all the time, but QB dose is a close second for her. She, every time it's Wine Wednesday and I just want to play something other than the game we've played a million times. She's like Castle of Burgundy, cubitos. I'm like okay, but yeah, those ones really get her fired up. She loves rolling dice and she loves Cubitos getting around that track.
Speaker 3:Jared, what about your spouse? Well, um, so I I'm in a hotel for the listener that's watching on youtube. Um, because we ran away from alabama. Um, what are the two games that adri grabbed? We ran away from alabama because there's some tornadoes this weekend. We're down here in Tallahassee. Tornadoes came over here too. No tornadoes landed, I guess it was just some hail and stuff. It's bright and shiny, but she grabbed spots. Will Bath is in here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Bert and.
Speaker 1:Dice Miner, dice Miner, baby, great choices Will.
Speaker 2:Bath is in here, yeah, and Bert and Dice.
Speaker 1:Miner, dice Miner baby, great choices.
Speaker 2:Do you guys play that at two players? I feel like that game would be crazy at two players because you would have so many dice.
Speaker 3:I don't actually know if we've ever played two players, if there's ever someone that's there, because we have people come TDY all the time to Maxwell and I'm like will you play a game with us? And she's like I'll play Dice Miner. So I'm pretty sure Dice Miner is her favorite game. She loves cheersing and she kicks her ass a lot of times. She's pretty good at it.
Speaker 1:Rachel's is 100% Splendor. She will play Spl a lot of the time. She's pretty good at it. Rachel's is 100% Splendor. She will play Splendor all the time. Those cards are getting worn thin, the chips have little nicks on them and the box is falling apart. Splendor is by far her favorite. She does like Jaipur and she likes some of the other rolling rights and stuff like that. But yeah, splendor all day. Every day, she will play Splendor. And that wraps all of our questions. Thank you, listeners, for writing in. Thank you for giving us something else to talk about. So we appreciate it. We sure are. Are we ready to go over the fence? All right, clay, tell me what you've been doing outside of board gaming.
Speaker 2:I just went into.
Speaker 3:I am thinking Well, I can go, I can go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you go ahead. I should have known think for a minute.
Speaker 3:I should have known this question was coming Every week. We've been doing this for 31 weeks now. What have you been doing outside of Oregon? He's been doing nothing else, actually Nothing. Nothing fun Down here in Tallahassee having some decent food walking around.
Speaker 3:We got to go walk around an awesome little outdoor park area, adrian asked while we were getting the tickets. It's kind of like a zoo nature reserve type area. Do you guys do a military discount? Not at this time. One of the first signs as we walked in was like why? Why does this nature preserve exist? And it's like protect from the military overreach of destroying habitats.
Speaker 3:I'm one of the good guys like it doesn't work quite like that. But what I was going to say was at the hotel we were staying at, a Hilton. What is this place? Hampton Inn, and they have Peloton bikes. I don't personally have a Peloton bike, but I have been on a Peloton bike enough to know that I love Cody Rigsby and every time I go to a Hilton I always try to jump on a Peloton to get my Cody Rigsby fix. He's kind of like a therapist to me. Sometimes he's a little mature for mature you know mature audiences. Sometimes he goes up on tangents, um, but he's right up my alley and I got my cody rigsby fix this morning. That's why I'm a little glistening sweaty, I my. I didn't take a shower, so luckily you can't smell me through the podcast, but um you never stank.
Speaker 2:I mean, I have rolled around with you in your sweat many a times, okay, and you never stank. You were certainly sweaty.
Speaker 1:As someone who has had him sweat in my mouth. He stinks a little bit.
Speaker 3:But Travis, you never specifically put a trash bag over your body. That's also true. I wanted to get a couple more minutes of work after practice and Clay's like no, I'm not going to touch you. I said, hey, can I just a couple takedowns? He's like wait one second. He went to the trash can, grabbed whatever trash was in there, pulled it out, grabbed one of the old like the new ones. At the bottom of the bag there's probably like drippings of nastiness. He would rather have that over his body than my essence of Jared.
Speaker 2:So that story is not completely accurate. It was before practice and you were already in a full sweat drenched. I had not even jogged around the mat one time, completely dry. It's one thing if we are peeking in sweat together. We're both slipping and sliding, yeah, but just to have one sweaty man Reaching sweaty climax together. Come on to your clean body. It didn't feel right to me, so the trash bag.
Speaker 3:Clay, that was like I mean geez, almost 15 years ago.
Speaker 1:I've forgiven you, get over it and as somebody, as somebody who had classes with Jared about five, six, eight hours before he was going to go to practice he was already that sweaty.
Speaker 3:He was still sweaty.
Speaker 1:I've been sweating since 2001,.
Speaker 3:I think that's when I hit puberty. Alright Clayton, what'd you do? Alright Travis, should we go to?
Speaker 2:Travis first. I I mean, I got nothing and I, we're still watching the sopranos. Um, we're in the final season now. It just keeps getting better. I keep liking it more every single week. I I started liking it in like the second season. I was like, all right, this is good, this is worth being in, but every season after it just gets more invested. I'm very excited every night when we get our chance to watch the sopranos and see what's up. So still shouting out the sopranos, shouting out.
Speaker 2:I'm on the second book of the war king series, got several hours into that and it's even better than the first, just like I mean, I guess everything. The more you get to know the characters in the world, it gets better. So I'm loving getting into that and that's about it from a fun outside of board games perspective. Lots of other stuff. You know job hunting and this and that you know, trying to orchestrate things. Oh, going to pennsylvania next week, unfortunately while the ericsons are in town, but we will get one good game night in before before I head out to pennsylvania for my cousin's wedding and that is all my over the fencing I have to do Kind of threw me off with the sweat talk there. I think I'm gonna have to get a shower.
Speaker 1:Oh man, okay. So this week I am participating in the German armed forces proficiency badge events, so it's like a kind of competition against yourself. You're participating in a bunch of different events that are related to the German military. So tomorrow I have a swim test. You got to swim in uniform, nothing new. You got to swim like 100 meters in uniform and then take your uniform off in the water and it's like under two minutes. So got that tomorrow. Then Tuesday I have a German PT test, which is a little different. They have like a chin hang and like a shuttle run, but you have to like do an up down between the lengths of the court and then a thousand meter sprint. And then Wednesday we are firing uh, we're gonna shoot some guns. And then thursday it concludes with a 12 kilometer ruck march. Uh, in under two, two hours with 35 pound ruck.
Speaker 3:So um yeah, we're gonna be training for this yeah, I was gonna say how's your fitness?
Speaker 2:man? I mean I did. You don't look like you've taken a steep drop off with the, with the baby weight, you know?
Speaker 1:I mean you seem like I don't know how to take that. Are you saying I'm still holding?
Speaker 2:no, I'm saying I'm saying the, the men. They gain the baby weight after the baby's born. So you haven't, you know, I haven't you know I haven't seen that from you.
Speaker 1:I've been doing okay. Um we I borrowed a ruck from somebody that had a couple of them laying around and I've been rucking with 50 pounds, so 35 should be nothing.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah.
Speaker 1:So two hours seven and a half miles Shouldn't be terrible but that's a good.
Speaker 2:That's a good time to get some hours in on your uh war of kings that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we can do it with headphones in. So that's a great yeah, that's a great yep. Um, I might just have to start that book over because I got distracted with the other 10 books that I have going at the moment. So, jeez, commit Travis. I know I got to commit. Did we do it? Episode 31 in the books for Operation Game Night? I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been Jared, we're out, oh crap.
Speaker 2:I got to end the recording.
Speaker 3:Wow, clay, thank you.
