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 40: The Game's Called Risk, Not Safe...Press Your Luck Games!
We delve into the fascinating world of push your luck games, examining the psychology behind why these gambling mechanics create some of gaming's most memorable moments.
• How push your luck games level the playing field between experienced and new players
• The distinction between taking a risk and the push your luck mechanic
• Exploring the emotional response when we watch others push their luck
• Games that blend push your luck with other mechanisms like bag building and area control
• Favorite push your luck games including Wonderland's War, Quacks of Quedlinburg, Spots, Ink & Gold, and Captain Flip
• Discussion of classic push your luck games like Can't Stop, Yahtzee, and Blackjack
• How the push your luck mechanism creates memorable gaming moments
• Exploring potential future combinations like push your luck with dexterity games
Next week we'll be sharing a special announcement that will change how Operation Game Night delivers content, so be sure to tune in for episode 41.
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/
Show your support for the OGN Crew by contributing to the OGN War Chest:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2396881/support
Hey everybody, welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast, episode 40. We are officially over the hill 40 episodes we're feeling old. My name is Travis Smith and I have had a 40-year-old back since maybe 2012. Joining me, as always, he's got one false hip and butterscotch in his pocket. Called him Geriatric Jared Erickickson jared how you doing.
Speaker 2:Well, I I'm just glad that we're back up to full strength now and, uh, we have our fearless leader back at the helm, the, the two dirty boys. Um, we're just, we're just raw doggingging the podcast the last two weeks, holy moly. We're glad that we have more professional edge now. I'm sure the listener is glad to hear that strong, professional leader back at the helm welcoming them to the OGN. It's good to be here, as always.
Speaker 1:Thank you, jared, joining me, as always, he shook his fist at a cloud earlier. He might be catatonic, he might be curmudgeon-y. He's the one, the only, clayton Gable. How are you doing, clay?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great. It's comforting having you back here, Jared and I. I had to be on edge the whole time when it's just me and Jared, because you never know where we might go and I felt like I really couldn't relax because I was assuming some of your responsibilities. So it's good to have you back here to really steer the ship. And the intro didn't disappoint. I can tell you've had a month to think about it. Those are beautiful. It's good.
Speaker 1:It's good to be back here with you, travis, so I came in ready to like give you guys your flowers. I was so impressed. Episode 38. I was like these guys have some Geno say qua. They are like they have this rat tat tat, this repartee that cannot be matched. Like I'm just kind of the third wheel here and you guys are really running things. And then I tune in episode 39, and I just get slammed. Slammed on the internet, not only in a podcast, but you're putting my name out there on the internet. Didn't play any games, and not just me, not just me, but Rachel and baby Gwen got slammed as well. Slander. So you know whatever.
Speaker 1:Rachel probably doesn't like us very much, does she? Rachel saw that post on the internet and she said what the heck? We actually played games on this cruise. We wouldn't know. We didn't hear a thing how Smith is worked up and I would have been here last week, uh, except for uh, my co-hosts dear listener started a secret side conversation. Okay, we have a group chat where we plan all these podcasts and they went third party. They had a separate chat going on where they were secretly plotting to host a podcast without me. I would have been here, but they changed the date and the time just so I would not be Boo-hoo, the great leaders of this world have the nuclear missile, back channels, the red phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I got to hit up Clay on the red phone.
Speaker 3:Jared and I thought we had mission command. We thought we understood the intent and we didn't need to check in with the boss.
Speaker 2:Distributed control, centralized command, something else. There's a third one. I have graduated officially decentralized execution that's the one.
Speaker 1:Yes, there you go all right, glad I learned something on staff speaking of higher headquarters and command. Uh, we do have a frago coming next week, fragmentation order coming next week. Listener, uh, maybe you've heard us on other podcasts before, but next week we do have some special announcements going on and, uh, make sure you turn in tune into episode 41 for that. But today we are going to press our luck. Today we're talking about press your luck, push your luck games. But before we do that, we're going to debrief our weeks. It will hit the mission objective and then we will go over the fence and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming. So, jared, why don't you start? I'm really interested in this game. Debrief your week, for me all right.
Speaker 2:Well, before I get to the one, I'm actually going to debrief my. My board gaming experience has really been popping off the flight at professional military education. They have really been coming in strong lately. I've got a lot of people on board in rotation on board game arena, even one of them signed up on a premium account. He states that his goal is to be in the top 10 for Americans. Us of A for Azul. Wow, let's support him out there. I'll get his screen name. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That is a steep hill to climb.
Speaker 2:That is a pretty big one. I'm excited, though, because Azul is a. It is one of the World Series of board gaming games.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Definitely going to be iron sharpening iron there. Okay, a lot of, so a lot of Azul getting to the table. I actually got Travis sent me the awesomest little travel Azul. Hit that one to the table. I actually got Travis sent me the awesomest little travel Azul. Hit that one to the table yesterday. That was awesome. I have been playing Azul on BGA I also from the Travis special luxury box that I got Terraforming Mars dice game. That one hit the table, which I know I should probably be debriefing that one. But, um, maybe I'll debrief it next week, I don't know. It's a load of fun. Played it with my girl. Uh, sarah, she went out and bought it.
Speaker 2:Yes, no yeah, she said she went and dropped her house warming gift for herself. Three hundred dollars on board games for herself when she gets to italy.
Speaker 3:So um, dude, that is the best thing that can happen, in my opinion. When you play a game with somebody and then they buy it, that to me is like top tier. You've done it like you've.
Speaker 1:You've made it as a game master I've had probably the best rate of investment since I've been here that I have any other place or any other board gaming experience I've had. Like every time I bring a game to a game night, the people I game with go out and buy that game. That's great, I it feels so good, yeah, we need to.
Speaker 2:We need to hop on this affiliate link, uh program, um, I don't know. Well, yeah, anyways, I'll table that. So but she did tell me this is what she said. She said yesterday I bought terraforming mars dice edition because I play with I play with her and a couple other people from the flight um terraforming mars on bga, but she got the dice edition edition dice miner ticket to ride blockus, dang rebirth and azul. I mean, holy cow, you, that's a pretty good lineup right there. Yeah, you should be proud.
Speaker 1:That's true Also, jared. I love the mention of Blockus last week because I have very fond memories of playing Blockus Really.
Speaker 1:That was one of the very first board games that I ever played with some of my family. My cousins got it for Christmas or something. You were talking about going tip to tip and blocking yes, walking and like positioning man. That game is so good and it's deceptively simple. You're playing with like basically just the tetris, shapes, the tetrominoes and man is so strategic and simple and the colors and that and the little clickety, clackety plastic tiles feel nice.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, blockus is great and you just sit there and scheme the whole time and it's great, my OCD. I ended up lining up all the Blockuses from size 1 to 5, you know, and make sure I knew exactly how many I had and oh yes, it was a lot of fun. But anyways, guys, let me get to my main event here. Um, yeah, the great dal moody. Okay, um, I, this one from the 90s I was five years old when this bad boy came out um, the great dal moody. Uh, this one this is a crowd favorite plays four to eight players. Uh, there's a little bit of hierarchy going on here. There's a king, there's some, I think, field workers, there's a guy who services the king. I don't know.
Speaker 2:The thing about it is you got cards one to 13, I believe, and whatever the number is, that's how many cards there are in the deck. So there's only one Great Down Moody. There's 13 Fool cards, 12 Rat Catchers, as you can see on the screen. So what you do is it's kind of like a game of maybe go fish I don't know what you're doing is you're laying down a hand of pairs or whatever you do. You call it out. You say I got four fool cards, which is kind of common because there's 13 fool cards, right. So there's a high probability that you're going to have a lot of those cards in your hand and the play goes around and around in the circle. If you want to keep playing on this hand, you have to be able to lay down the same number of cards that was called out, but at a lower number, on the card, so you can't play also another set of four full cards. If four full cards were just played, you'd have to play the Rat Catchers next, which are the number 12 card. So these are different than the ones I played with. These ones are very scary. The ones I played with looked like they were actually from 1995. They looked like they were loved and that's because the Williams who I played with also they're going to come up in my over the fence a little foreshadowing. That's what I played with. That's a lot more cute. I felt more at home.
Speaker 2:Number five is like the she's the nun, like yeah, that's a lot less scary, there's no rats. You can also see there's a gesture in this hook card which is like the wild card. So if you have only two of the number 10 card but you want to sneak in on a round of hands that is being played that has you know three and you, but you only have two of the 10. You can slap on a jester and he pretends like he's you know a 10 for that, that hand. And so the name of the game is you want to get rid of all the cards that are in your hand, and the first person to get rid of all the cards in their hand become the Great Dalmoudi for that game, and you will actually change the orientation of the table. You stand up. The Great Dalmoudi sits at the front of the head of the table, of the head of the table, and he will get paid royalty from the lowest ranking person who goes out last in that the round.
Speaker 2:The way we played I don't know if it's a house rule um, like, you just agree on how many rounds you're playing. So we only played three rounds. So the order of where everybody sat changed up twice right, and by the end of the third one, whoever was the great dalmudi, they just won the game. Um, so, like, this is kind of like how it went. It was like okay, uh, I'm playing three of this number and then you throw it down and then everyone has to go down, go around, be like, okay, well, I play three of this number, but it has to keep going down, down, down, down. But as it goes down in the numbers, it's harder and harder to make those pairs because there's less and less of those cards. So it's very interesting strategy game.
Speaker 2:Again, these are the same kids that I played Dune Imperium with.
Speaker 2:So they are cut throat.
Speaker 2:People are freaking Throat People are freaking. Uh, they, they beat, they beat the tar out of me. Uh, I'll tell you that, um, when you, when you, um, you pay the taxes or whatever, at the beginning of the round, you have to give your two best cards to the King. Like, if you're the lowest person, you given the two best cards to the King, um, and then the King gives you his. The lowest person, you're giving the two best cards to the king and then the king gives you his two worst cards, which might end up helping you out in the end, because the two best cards are the Dalmoudi, like the lower numbers, yeah, but you might end up giving, you know, this field person, the field worker, two, you know 13ss, and now they have a great, I don't know. They got a great match, they got a great hand, that now they can rule the, the um, the tricks. I guess if you could say but I still don't know, I don't know the strategy, I don't think these games kick the tar out of me these kids.
Speaker 3:I don't rock these games, man. I like this is like a genre of games, right, like shedding games, where ladder climbing games, where you're trying to get rid of all the cards in your hand, and I play them and I like them. I'm like it's cool, like I'm trying to get rid of stuff. But I could not tell you, like strategy wise, what people are thinking like. Do you try and save your really good sets till the end so you people don't have any cards to beat it, or do you start with just a single card? I have no idea the strategy. They're fun games. I have a bunch of them.
Speaker 3:Uh, we played bacon that travis sent us not that long ago with the headings, and it was awesome. Like you had all these like menus of different combos you could play to get rid of cards. But again, I just had no clue why or when I was gonna do it. It's like if I can beat the person, I'm gonna beat them. Obviously you know, but this is cool. I I like that twist that you have to go down and that the the ranks get harder and harder to. You know, create is it all? Just sets, so it's all.
Speaker 2:You're playing a set of like three of a kind but you can also just lay down one card, so you can be like I'm just laying down a 10, but then, if you lay down a 10, you can't play any numbers above 10. You just have to keep going down. You're almost forcing people to play their lower numbers, yeah there's strategy there man.
Speaker 2:Whoever lays down the last card and then you can pass. Everybody passes. Yeah, but we played where if you passed and it came back to you, you could pass again or you could play again. But if everybody passed in succession, then no one plays again and the last person to lay down would start off the next hand. So then you would set like, okay, well, here's our starting number and how many are in the pair or the triplet or whatever that are actually being played, and I got my butt mopped across the floor.
Speaker 2:The best part of this game I forgot, best part of the game the wife Adina. She actually created a crown. She sewed this crown that the great Dalmoudi could wear and the youngest one he the one who won got to wear this dang crown the whole time. They let me, they let me wear the crown the first time. Um, because at the beginning he's like well, we'll just, we won't pay taxes, but let's all just like sit wherever you want to sit and, as the guest of honor, they let me wear the crown for one round. It was not earned, it was only just given to me and I immediately fell off of my crown of, or off my you know, my high stable, my high horse and uh, and I lost, but um I liked it.
Speaker 2:The iron price for it yeah, the iron throne, that's right cherry.
Speaker 3:Oh, the Iron Throne, that's right. Oh sorry, go ahead. No, no, I was just going to ask Do you know who Richard Garfield is? No clue. He designed probably the highest grossing game of all time. He's the designer of Magic the Gathering. No way, yeah. When I saw that I that I was like whoa, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Uh, I was just gonna ask you, clay, I was gonna ask you what wizards like what else wizards of the coast did before magic the gathering, because this is like some weird thing. I imagine they like tried other card games before magic came around. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what year magic started, but I'm I think it was. They probably have a bunch of weird ones like this that I am kind of into and want to check out yeah, no, that's a.
Speaker 3:That's a.
Speaker 1:I like a freaking cool find well, when we do a publisher, when we do a publisher, deep dive on what's next, we will have to figure out what else they've been up to. Yeah, for sure, nice.
Speaker 2:Anyways, great debrief. It was a blast, I loved it. So that's the great Dal Moody Excellent.
Speaker 1:Clay, tell me what games you played this week.
Speaker 3:I'm going to tell you about one game in particular because my co-host here, jared. We went through the winners of the Golden Geek Awards and we were a little coy about print and play. Neither of us have printed or played any print and plays, and so Jared put it out there. He's like well, let's just do it.
Speaker 3:It's like $5 to buy this thing I bought this one today, actually, yeah, what it's like five dollars to buy this thing. I bought this one today, actually, yeah, oh yeah, right after that podcast, I went on, bought it, downloaded the copies. Um, by the way, I didn't say it yet, but we're talking 52 realms adventures, this one, the golden geek for best, print and play this 2024, um. So after the podcast, bought it, got sent the files and basically, for a game you have to print out a single piece of paper that's a map and then a single piece of paper that is your character and your character piece of paper has two characters on, so you can kind of decide which one you want to be and you slide the other one underneath the map and you're ready to go. Slide the other one underneath the map and you're ready to go.
Speaker 3:All you need is a deck of cards and a couple maybe coins or anything really to track a couple things on the map, track where your character moves throughout the map. So you start in this dungeon and basically it's just a dungeon crawl and you're trying to make it to the boss at the end and beat them before you die by either sustaining too many wounds or you exhaust your deck of cards and it's just a 52 card deck and everything is about this 52 card deck Reminds me a lot of Regicide, honestly. So your character has a couple different areas of note. Your character has some four item slots so you can put cards when you gain them as rewards, as items, and so, like you can take a heart card and put it in your heart item spot and you can discard it at some point in time to get the benefit of that item. So as you get these cards you decide whether you want to put them as an item. You can store them in loot, so you count up your loot at the end of the game to see how well you did.
Speaker 3:Or you can use them as equipment, which is what I felt was kind of the most valuable thing to do with them, because your equipment you can have as many as you want and you kind of exhaust them to fight bad guys and go through doors and things. So your equipment you use a lot, um, and that's not at the bottom. So on your turn you kind of move from room to room and there are some passageways which just require you to exhaust an equipment card that has a higher value than the passageway. So you probably can't hardly see it, but in this, like, the first passageway has a value of four. So if I had an equipment card of like a seven, I could, you know, tap it, turn it sideways and then move to that room. And then each room has like a special effect where maybe you draw a card off the top of the deck and the room will tell you like, oh, if it's a club's card, you get to put it in your item stash, or if it's a, you know, diamond's card, you have to take a wound.
Speaker 3:Or you can go through passageways that have a monster at them. And this is where the game gets interesting, because you go through that passageway and then you draw two cards off the top of the deck. You go through that passageway and then you draw two cards off the top of the deck. The higher one is the monster's value and the lower one is the reward you get for beating the monster. And again the reward you can use is item loot or equipment. And so you fight this monster and basically you draw a card off the top of the deck that tells you what the monster's going to do on their turn. So you have a second to think about what you might want to do to fight against it. You can block, you can attack, and all this is with your equipment cards. Blocking and attacking, you can use one of your character abilities, so each character has its own unique ability, or you can rest, which lets you reset all your equipment cards back to an upright state so you can use them again. So sometimes fighting is the best way just to like reset your cards that you've exhausted and so, anyway, you get done the fight and you get your reward. You move on to the next room.
Speaker 3:But it's so clever what they did, with just a deck of cards and just two pieces of paper, I was blown away. I played through the first map, um, literally came down to the last card in the deck. I was about to lose and, you know it, the monster drew that card to fight me and I was able to exhaust one of my equipment cards to beat it. But it was really tense. It was exciting. I printed out the second.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I printed out the second map and, you know, immediately did that one, and these are like 15, 20-minute games, so it was super cool. There's this battle track so you keep track of the monster's HP and, if you like, use the right amount of attack to get them down to one of those black bannered spots, you get a bonus. So, like some of them will be like, oh, you can parry their next attack or you can refresh two of your equipment cards. So it's really cool the way you can kind of puzzle out, combat and try and, you know, figure out the best way to maneuver through it. But yeah, I I was blown away. Solo games don't do them. Print and play has never done it. So this was definitely out of my comfort zone and I'm glad I went there, because it is amazing what people come up with. I would suggest anybody that has a spare $5, check this out, print out a couple pieces of paper and just give it a go, because it's a good time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think print and plays, especially ones this size, are really slept on. They have like they'll show up every once in a while on kickstarter, game found or whatever, and you literally pay like one dollar. It's like pay what you want and we'll send you the files, and that type of stuff is awesome. It's just like people that are passionate about what they've done and what they've made and like they just want a little bit of money back to their time. And I've found a couple you know. So they're kind of hit or miss with how long you actually spend with them, but there are some out there like um.
Speaker 1:One of them that I just backed is not just back, but like back a while ago, is called night k-n-i-g-h-t and was a print and play and they have like Knight and then they have a separate one that's like space version of it and man, those games are like so cool and short and easy to pick up and play and I love games this size and I was packing for, you know, all of our travels. At the bottom of one of my bags there was already a deck of cards and I was like I have no excuse. So this is definitely one that I will play while we're traveling, because I'm really excited to get this to the table and you don't even need to print it out.
Speaker 3:You could. You could, if you had a tablet, just play it on the tablet screen. There's actually like when in the download file. There's like for print and for screen. So you know people that had an iPad or something could just lay it flat and use and move around on the map like that. So you don't even really need to print it and you can just play it. We might have to give this one a sustainability award right here yeah.
Speaker 2:Using you know a deck of cards you already have. You use little pennies and nickels for your counters clay.
Speaker 1:Have you ever played one deck dungeon? No are you into like dungeon, dungeon crawlers, like that?
Speaker 3:I was into this dungeon crawler.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it was like this was like 20 minutes yeah, one deck dungeon is pretty popular. Okay, I actually picked it up at petri's. They had it used and it had like a bunch of expansions and stuff and I think before I left colorado. It might be in storage don't quote me on this but I think I got rid of it and that has been like kind of bugging me that I may have gotten rid of it and that is one that I might pick back up, because I love dungeon crawlers like this that you can play solo.
Speaker 1:They're super light and easy and you can like get a fun experience out of it in like 15 minutes. I love that stuff. That's great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Jared, thanks for egging me on and and suggesting this, because I would have just blown past it and been like I'll never play a print and play. Why would I do that?
Speaker 2:Like past it and been like I'll never play a print and play. Why would I do that like you're not that hard to egg on, uh, if you haven't noticed. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty where did you print this thing out? Did you go down to your local library or you got a printer?
Speaker 3:now mary's got her diesel printer upstairs, so oh, yeah, yeah, wait.
Speaker 2:Does scott know about that?
Speaker 3:no, this, no, this is our printer. This is our printer. She uses it for Diesel Pro. Oh, okay, so it's fine. Yeah, it runs on diesel Travis. I really want to hear what the heck you've been up to. Give me a little bit of a debrief.
Speaker 2:You've got a lot to debrief.
Speaker 1:You've got three weeks of debriefing, yeah so you guys gave me all this crap on the podcast about how I didn't bring any games, didn't play any games. Okay, not only did I bring games, I tried to bring like a uh, thematic game experience because we went on a cruise. We went on a cruise and I brought a whole bunch of games that were all nautical themed. Okay, look at you, wait. The first one that we played a couple times was whale to look, it's an oint game from 2023. I've talked about this very briefly, but it's like a hidden movement bluffing game where you are using resources to look at these cards that dictate a number of fish that are going to show up in that quadrant and when you know that number of fish, you are trying to position your boats that have one, two or three sightseers in it into these blue spaces between the fish tiles. That will be where the whales appear. There's two whales in every game. There's an orca and a gray whale, I think, and the orca will go where the least amount of fish appear and the gray whale will go where the most amount of fish appear. So what you do is, once you are using you these little smaller boat looking things, these like kind of triangle shapes. You spend one of those on your turn to flip over one of the fish tiles, look at it secretly and then return it to its place, and you can go back and look at those at any time you want. Once you have placed your little boat there, then you also have a radar token or a sonar token, uh, which is like kind of like that wi-fi looking logo, and you can use those to permanently flip one of the fish tiles and reveal it to everyone. And so you're trying to position these boats and maybe like put them in the wrong space, uh, so that other people think that there might be a whale that appears there, um, and if you look at one of the fish tiles, you have to move one of your ships. So you can keep doing that back and forth so long as you have tiles to move. Or you want to continue to move your ships until you can kind of go around and kind of bluff people and move it back and forth, move it in a circle, like do all this maneuvering and stuff to try and bluff the other people into thinking that a whale is going to appear, and then, once everybody passes, then the whale appears and you score points equal to the number of passengers that are in that space. Okay, so if I put the boat with three passengers in it, I get three points. Uh, one other thing is like you also have an anchor. If you're like very confident that a whale is going there, you can place an anchor and not move that ship anymore and that scores you an additional two points for that boat.
Speaker 1:Then you start the next round and you play a number of rounds equal to the number of players, and this plays up to four, and each round you flip like an additional I can't remember what they call it, but, uh, there are these cards that will change the rules of scoring for the next round.
Speaker 1:So maybe, like, wherever the orca appears gets three extra points. If you have a boat there, or some of them have, like, uh, whalers where, like, you're trying to avoid where the whalers are going and, um, it's just kind of like you score multipliers or you score differently than you would normally, uh, or you're trying to go where no whales are, for whatever reason. Uh, so, yeah, whale to Look is like a really cool oink game. You know, it's the size of a deck of cards, like most oink games, and, yeah, it was a great starter to the cruise weekend, or cruise week rather. We also played, you know, sea Salt and Paper, the great beachy ocean theme. We played with the Extra Salt expansion, which I had not done before and there's not a whole lot different. It has the little jellyfish where you can basically prevent your opponent from taking another turn. It's got the seahorse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the seahorse can fill in a missing wild on one of the sets that you're trying to build. Um, man, what else is there? The lobster? There's like a couple of different things. Um, I got that one at essen spiel and I don't have the english rules, but I just pulled it up on my phone and it worked great. That game is so good at any player count. It plays so clean at two players. It plays good at three players, plays good at four players.
Speaker 3:I love sea, salt and paper it's the reason it won the small box beatdown travis that's true, that game is great.
Speaker 1:I cannot get enough that game. Uh, then what else I bring? I brought your escape room in a box that you sent me. Clay that like escape of the Nautilus or whatever. Oh, yes, yeah, it's got a big Kraken on the front or a big giant squid. That's like eating a ship. Okay, that one. It said playtime is 60 minutes and we were kind of limited on time. We didn't actually get to that one. But then I brought Jared. You said I didn't bring any button-shy games. I brought plenty of button-shy games. I brought At the Helm. I brought Wild Tales, which is like a pirate-themed game.
Speaker 2:I brought a whole. I'm starting to think that maybe you brought too many games. I brought a lot of games.
Speaker 1:But what I do want to say is, very first night we're there, we're hanging out, we're like kind of walking on the ship getting to get our feelers out there, see what's going on. And we look over at one of the like restaurant bar areas and these two guys are playing uh clay, help me out, what's like the chicken themed reiner kutia game with like tiles. I talked about it probably in episode two, yeah, picomino, two guys playing Picomino.
Speaker 1:They're playing a Reiner Canizia game right now. I told Reg I gotta go say hi and strike up a conversation. I walked over and I said this game's great. I love Reiner Canizia, love board games. Glad to see that you're playing them. They looked at me and said no English, struck out. Struck out. Later in the week I see somebody playing Catan in this corner booth. They have all the deluxe pieces, 3d printed castles and cities and stuff. I'm like these guys know what's up. I'm gonna go over there and say hi. Yeah, no english struck out. Oh, third time see another group, separate group playing katan.
Speaker 1:went up to strike a conversation and they were just rude and didn't want to talk to me but, turns out that europeans love their euros and Catan was a hit on the boat, so I was a little bummed. I should have carried around a big stack of Operation Game Night stickers to give them, but I tried to make board game friends on a cruise and I kind of struck out.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, travis, you got to go on the Dice Tower cruise. You'll make plenty of board game friends there, that's right what size was this ship?
Speaker 2:Are we talking like big carnival cruise? Are we talking the smaller like uh, viking cruise type?
Speaker 1:it was not viking. Viking has like a couple hundred people. It's like real small. This one maybe had, uh, maybe like 4 000 people, like it was pretty big cruise okay. Um, but yeah, if you have the means, I highly recommend cruising the norwegian fjords because they're awesome.
Speaker 2:My only regret where you could big enough, where you can get uh, ice cream 24, 7, uh no, no, 24 7 ice cream, which is kind of a bummer, I know.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. But we went on like kind of a budget cruise line. We went on kind of a budget cruise line where they don't have the soft serve, where you can just walk out of the pool and serve yourself.
Speaker 2:That's probably just such an American thing.
Speaker 3:Everybody else is like, who would want this?
Speaker 2:I want to put my mouth underneath the dispenser and just dispense ice cream straight into my mouth.
Speaker 1:Lots of good stories about the way that they operate a buffet on a European cruise line, but we're not going to get into that here, maybe over the fence material. Yeah, for real, we'll talk about that later. One time I did go on a cruise that had a Guy Fieri burger bar, bill Drum Burger Bar, burger bar next to the ice cream maker. It was awesome, so good, wow. Anyways, my only regret is that my grail games, a copy of fjords, did not come in before I went on this Norwegian fjords cruise. So once the fjords comes in I'll have to compare and contrast how being in the Norwegian fjords compares to playing a board game about the Fjords.
Speaker 2:More to come. Wow, beautiful, all right, are we ready?
Speaker 1:I guess we have to no.
Speaker 3:I just will, on behalf of Jared and myself, like to apologize that we assume the worst of you. Worst of you? Uh, you know, it seems like you did. You did your job as a operation game night member and took the appropriate amount of games potentially too many, potentially on your cruise.
Speaker 2:So, rachel I, I immediately eat my words and I apologize for everything I said last episode. Baby gwen, I'm sure you were not clamoring for the button shies. I'm sure they were piled on top of you, um, while they were trying to get out the door and I apologize, that's right, uh clay.
Speaker 1:More importantly, have you played the lord of the rings, trick taker, at two players or less than four players?
Speaker 1:no okay, I was so excited to get this played. I was so excited to get this played. I'm like I'm gonna bring it to the pool, we're gonna set up a little table, we're gonna get this played. Trick, trick, trick, taker. Baby gwen's like napping, uh. And then I open it up and I like get the rulebook out. And I discovered that you have to, like, run a third person pyramid in a two-player game. Yeah, I was just immediately turned off and did not want to do that that's why I don't, that's why I don't do that stuff.
Speaker 3:I'm like if, man, it's a four-player game for me, I'm gonna play it four players. If I want to play a two-player trick taker, I'm playing jekyll versus hyde fox in the forest. You know something handcrafted for that? I don't need to. We talked about player count already. I could go on and on about trying to force force a player count in there, but I won't yeah, you have to like.
Speaker 1:There's like this third person, that's like a pyramid of overturned cards that you then have to like, flip and play to the different area. It's probably not all that much work, but just like the fact that I have to reach over like the. The gaming time we have is limited. The attention span that we have, especially now, is extremely limited. I'm not doing that. So, jared, put Adrian. Notice, it's in the bag. We're bringing it. We're going to play it. Four-player. Four-player trick figure. All hands on deck. Let's do it, okay I?
Speaker 2:like it. Consider on notice.
Speaker 1:That's right. Are we ready to go over the fence?
Speaker 3:No Mission objective.
Speaker 1:Mission objective man, I'm rusty Mission objective. Today we're talking Clay. You say push your luck, don't you Press your luck. I would say push your luck, I'm a push guy. Is it push your luck or press your luck't you press your luck? I would say push your luck. Okay, I'm gonna push guy, press you know red, push your luck. Is it push your luck or press your luck?
Speaker 3:well, I think either is acceptable.
Speaker 2:I'll go to bgg and let you know I mean they call it risk for a reason. Right, it's not safe, right, it's called risk. I threw that out in the game, in the uh the chat yesterday the boys went wild and now we're talking about pressure luck.
Speaker 1:So game's called risk, not called safe.
Speaker 2:Today we're talking about your luck yeah, I'm surprised mary's not here to talk about pressure luck, because she is the one who's always just pressing her luck. So, uh, I hope we're talking spots. I hope we're talking that one where I run in with the monsters all around me and there's fire Ink and gold, Ink and gold. I love the little tent. Yeah For the record, for the record point of order.
Speaker 3:Push your luck in BGG Wow.
Speaker 1:Push your luck, press your luck. We're going to consider those the same thing for the sake of conversation. Push your luck, press your luck. This gambling mentality is one of our favorite mechanics, I think. Across the board, I think all of us had it in our favorite mechanisms when we talk with tara correct?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean it was in mind yeah, so when we're talking push your luck or pressure luck, we're talking about taking a gamble, taking a chance, relying on some sort of odds to gain advantage or to score more points or to meet in-game victory conditions. Yeah, some of our favorite games involve this. Games as old as time involve this. We're talking like dominoes. We're talking blackjack. We're talking most casino games. We're talking war. We're talking games as old as time. All involve this mechanism, but some of our modern day favorites also involve this mechanism. Jared, you mentioned a couple already spots, one of your favorite games. Tell me about the press your luck in spots well, I mean for specific reason.
Speaker 2:Spots is obviously coming to mind because press your luck, you know you're going, you're rolling these, die and if you can't place them on your dogs, because your dogs have very specific needs, you know there's some dogs that they need certain things. Maybe they can't have kibbles, maybe they got extra nipples, uh uh, maybe there's butthole bert um, he only needs one, he just needs one little to go, butthole bert, little beth um. But I just I love the mechanism within spots where, if you're able to press your luck and you're lucky enough to fill up all your dogs, you do an auto score. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Like that's one of my favorite parts of uh spots and like something that always just like makes you want to just go a little bit harder. You know, in the paint, you know, you, you're, you're, you know. Backed into a corner, your dog, your dog, pounds a little full. You can't have over seven in your dog pound and maybe you got six in there, but you can squeeze one in there and you just need to roll a four. But if you roll a four, you're going to get an auto score and you're going to get three new dogs. It's all on the line and you just grab that one, die and the crowd goes wild like you land that four, you get the auto score.
Speaker 3:It's I just love it. I love, jerry, what you're talking about. That is press your luck. In a nutshell, for me, the crowd going wild like that is what makes these games ones that I always want to come back to, because you are always interested in what other people are doing and even if it's to your detriment, it's still exciting. You know, to see somebody pull off the improbable, and just that. Those moments are just what make push your luck. Games constantly come to the table for me, like. I still remember the game where everybody hopped off. Mary had two die left in Lem and we were only halfway through space. Everybody had jumped off the rocket ship and she just kept rolling these two die and getting the things she needed to get to deep space. It didn't even matter at that point that this was bad for the rest of us.
Speaker 3:We were cheering, we were like wow, holy, cow, cow I can't believe you did it, and you know those moments are what make gaming fun for me. Um, it's exciting to see jared, you know, get to the top of the temple track in lost ruins of arnak, but it doesn't elicit those emotions like they do in a good push your luck game yeah, yeah, I agree, and I I think some of our I mean a lot of our favorite games involve that type of mechanism, or at least that like distilled down simple version of that choice.
Speaker 1:Right mary can choose to stop rolling dice and hop off the rocket ship.
Speaker 2:I don't know if she can. There might be something missing in her head.
Speaker 1:Well, that's also true I mean cognitively speaking but the actual decision, game-based decision that she's making is do I roll this again or do I hop off the rocket ship and be done the? If you're, you know, trying to fill out all of your dog cards and spots, do I roll these dice again or do I roll that one dice again, die again? Do we keep going or do I stop? Uh, you're playing blackjack. Do I hit again or do I stop?
Speaker 1:Like it's such a simple, low stakes decision that you're making. You're not like trying to screw somebody over, you're not trying to like you know it's not like combative or anything Most of the time I don't, I don't know of any like pressure, like combative type stuff like that but like it's such a simple decision with such a low stakes that elicits such strong emotions because it's you put this weight on it as you're continuing to press your luck and the stakes get higher and higher and higher in your own mind. Right, what's that? What's like the? What's the actual stake of losing that board game? Or, you know, busting on spots? You pull your dice off, you start over, like there's really no stakes to it, but like you get your heart pumping, you get your adrenaline amped up. You got people jumping on chairs and like going wild for it.
Speaker 2:Oh, like going wild for it. Oh yeah, I say uh, I I press my luck a lot when I play dead reckoning. Um, there you go, because I'm pressing my luck to blast clay as much as possible, because I don't know. Well, I don't know if that's really press your luck. You guys need to help me figure this out live.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know how many, how many cannons he's gonna have when I come up on his ship and I want to hit him with as many dice as I can and the way that I love the battle mechanism on dead reckoning, because you get to drop anytime. I get to drop cubes into this, like into a silo I don't know what you call that thing. A, a dice tower, a dice tower. I mean, it's the same thing that you get to see in wingspan when you drop the little resource. Um, die, you drop these little chits, these little cubes down into the, the channel and it pops out and then you get to see who gets blasted, who gets fire. But I don't know how many cubes Clay's about to unleash on me. He might have a couple upgraded gunners. He might jettison some of his loot so that he can blast me.
Speaker 3:I don't know, Jared. You know I'd never have gunners.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, you're an easy one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm a purser guy.
Speaker 1:I think that's an important distinction is like taking a risk versus press your luck or push your luck as a mechanism, like what is the distinction?
Speaker 3:Clayton fill me in. Well, I would say that what Jared's describing is more taking a risk than pushing your luck. And me, when I think of pushing your luck, I think of games where you can choose to keep going after you've already attained something. But you want more. You get greedy, you're in, you're in inking gold and you you've got all that stuff in front of you and you're like I could leave now and make sure I keep this, but I want to go further and get more and more, and you have that gambler's psychology about it. You know, taking a risk that's a one-time thing, it may or may not pay off and so I don't know, that's just like off the top of my head. You put me on the spot, I think, the the repetitive nature of being able to keep going with it.
Speaker 2:But I repetitively want to blast you.
Speaker 3:Well, that's true. That's the problem.
Speaker 2:Those are separate the end goal is to sink your ship so I can steal all your gold. So I repetitively drop the cubes.
Speaker 3:No, we're undecided. Leave it in the comments.
Speaker 2:I I mean leave it in the comments, but obviously, um, with spots it's very distilled down. Dice are like the easiest way to push the luck, I feel like. But another great game that we've recently been popping off on Board Game Arena Flip 7, a card-based push your luck where you're flipping these cards over and trying to rack up these points. Did I pull off the W on that one this week? Yeah, dude, I may have burned some friendships here, guys.
Speaker 3:Did you?
Speaker 2:guys, see that one coming.
Speaker 3:I did see it coming. I busted on like the first seven turns so I was pretty well out of it. But on the last turn of the game I did flip seven with a plus ten and I scored a crap ton of points and it felt amazing. I still lost. But again, that's why Push your Luck is so fun, because I was out of the game but I just kept hitting. I kept hitting and I had these low number cards. I was like I might be able to get seven and sure enough I did. Why is it?
Speaker 2:called Flip 7?.
Speaker 3:Jared, have you been playing this game and you don't even understand the core premise of the game?
Speaker 2:Why is it?
Speaker 3:called Okay. So if you manage to flip over seven number cards and they're all different you get an additional 15 points on top of what your normal score would be. Oh really, yeah, so it really incentivizes you. You got like five or six and you're like. You know what Hit me again.
Speaker 2:So Push your Luck was working on me without, and I didn't even know there was extra incentives. I didn't even know the auto score on your dog cards was there. I didn't even know that was a thing Like apply that to Flip 7. Now I'm really going to blast your ass.
Speaker 3:Oh, I believe it, my ass is ready for incoming fire.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, well, let's run it back. We need to run it back with emptiness.
Speaker 1:I'm fired up, let's do it Okay.
Speaker 2:Oh man, okay, now I know. Now you know that doesn't have the same kind of card distribution as the Great Dal Moody, it does, yes, when you're talking about it.
Speaker 1:The only difference is that Dal Moody doesn't have the zero points or the plus 12 or the times two or those weird ones that are specialized.
Speaker 2:And the zero point card is actually really good because it adds an extra card to get you to seven.
Speaker 1:Yep oh, yeah, yeah, wow. This game is unfolding, live and in person, just like rebirth did for me last week.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right seven's coming in the mail today yeah, I will have it with me. I'll'll play with the Williams' boys down the street Play with the Smiths, yeah.
Speaker 3:Let's go Dang.
Speaker 1:We've got off topic.
Speaker 3:Let's get back on, let's hop back on.
Speaker 1:Mission objective. Some of our favorite game shows out there involve push your luck right At its core. You're talking about your. What is it? Price is Right, yeah, price is Right. Your Jeopardy's your. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? You're pushing your luck right. You could continue to answer that next question, or you could take the money and run. So what is it about watching somebody else push their luck like that, even with stakes as low as you know, falling off the mountain in mountain goats or, uh, you know, busting on? Uh, can't stop. Like what is that that elicits that emotion? What do you think?
Speaker 2:I come on, biology major I mean I dopamine.
Speaker 3:There's dopamine going. There's dopamine we love, we love that excitement, always wanting more. I don't know specifically what makes that way for watching a show, if you will, but the excitement is there when it is around the table and you can feel that tension and excitement and because it encourages table talk, like you and the social pressure of like egging people on to you know, go ahead, hit one more time, I bet you, I bet you can get seven and then either see it fail or succeed. Either way, it's, it's fun as a spectator. So I can't speak to the specific psychologies of why humans like to gamble, probably something back to our caveman days of going out on a hunt, and you know, I don't know that's going.
Speaker 2:One extra mile for that.
Speaker 1:One extra turkey, one more, that's right yeah I think I think, inherently, people love gathering on a table to play push your luck pressure games because you want to see that person that is pressing their luck fail, like you don't want them to succeed. That means you lose, right. But then they get to a certain point where they've succeeded a couple times and you're like maybe they could do it, maybe mary could roll that one extra die that she needs yeah maybe they will go all the way on this one turn, and it's just like you kind of start to root for them.
Speaker 1:And then, when they fail, it's like, oh, but thank God Cause I, I didn't lose, right, yeah? And then if you're that person, you know that everybody else wants you to fail, which just like triggers something in your brain Like I have to keep going because, screw them, I have to win. Show them that I can beat the odds. Right, it's always about like beating the odds and getting that one more turn or that one more roll or that one more card, and that's like what really gets people invested and talking and like focus on what they're doing in those pressure. Like games, uh, I distinctly remember like we had family over and we were playing can't stop and I I won the game in one single turn. Like I started and I I won in one turn because I took six, was it six, seven, eight, and I took those three numbers and I could fill one of them every single time.
Speaker 1:And I charged all the way up and I did it in one turn. The whole time people were like this is it? You're going to bust, You're going to bust, Don't get greedy. And I was like you know's awesome regardless, regardless of what, like I have not really lost anything if I bust, because they still have to climb those ladders too. And I wanted one turn and like people were cheering at the end and like that's crazy it's so satisfying and so good and it makes for such a cool moment that is pretty epic.
Speaker 3:You know what else is awesome about push your luck games what it kind of levels the playing field a little bit.
Speaker 3:You know, oh yeah, but you can kind of bridge that skill gap where, yeah, just because I own the game, I've played a ton of times, there's still a way for somebody newer to the game to, you know, push their luck and make, take the right risks and they still have a shot. To, you know, win, whereas somebody plays lost ruins varnak with risks and they still have a shot to win. Whereas somebody plays Lost Ruins of Arnak with Jared, they don't have that shot. What are you bringing up this?
Speaker 2:Lost Ruins of Arnak. Are you what's going on BGA? Are you sad that you're in a BGA battle with me and Dallin right now? There's no pressing of lucking, yeah there's no chance.
Speaker 3:I just watch you guys slowly climb the temple track and have all these more. I'm passing and I'm just seeing things happening, Just so. Yeah, I'm a little sore about that and you got me in with your boy Obsidian in Feast for Odin. My board is not full at all and I'm looking over and I wish there was a way I could gamble.
Speaker 2:I guess I think there's a little bit of press your luck, I promise you. I feel like a little bit in the games of hunting and rating, because you could go a little bit more like oh, I did roll an eight, but I really want a 12. Do I want to press my luck and roll?
Speaker 1:this thing again say yeah pushing press.
Speaker 2:I want to, uh, nudge my luck a little bit here and see if I can get higher than an eight, but then you end up screwing yourself over and you roll a two, and so then you really can't get that piece that you really wanted, that is, but you should have just stayed with the eight. Yeah, so I don't know, but you get three rolls. Though. That's the beauty of it you get three chances.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a question for you guys. Yeah, press your Luck. You know it's kind of permeated into other games, like you've got Wonderland's War. That is, area control, combat and Press your Luck with the bag building and all these other mechanisms. What are some other mechanisms that you want to see paired with? Press your Luck in the future.
Speaker 3:Travis, I'll get back to that answer real quick. But I want to answer your previous question that we stumbled around about why people like it. I think people like these games because you can't behave that way in real life. Normally Normal people can't take those type of risks in their daily lives. So to be able to watch or see or yourself be taking those gambles and, you know, really shooting for the moon, I think that people like live vicariously through those like that microcosm of feeling risky avatar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, out of body experience.
Speaker 3:Back to your other Question. I will turn it over To Jared to see what mechanisms he would like to see paired with pushing His luck oh, don't you put me On the big screen, you're on the big screen.
Speaker 2:Now I'm on the big screen. Well, I mean, now that you brought One around lands war, I mean I just Thought you brought up Wonderland's War. I mean I just thought of Quacks, of Quedlinburg, yeah, also question mark Quedlinburg, quedling, quedlingburg.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I'm a big fan of bags, something where you draw the output randomness. I'm still we've got to get Phil Walker Harding back on here Output random. I'm grabbing something and now I've got to decide what the hell to do with it, cause, like I do like that. Well, once you pull it in input, input randomness input randomness.
Speaker 2:You are taking an input and deciding what to do with it I'm taking it and then, well, in that one you just grab it and then you're like, well, okay, now that's where I need to put it. But would it be cool if, like, you could pull it out and like, hmm, where do I want to like, where, where do I want to put this rebirth? Rebirth well, boom boom done.
Speaker 1:Is there a pressure?
Speaker 2:thanks, reiner yeah is reaper, but rebirth isn't really pressing any lucky. No, it's not, not really. So give me a rebirth with a press for your luck there you go.
Speaker 3:That answers the question does that answer?
Speaker 2:your question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you decide to, you can keep going as long as you can place a place, a tile, and then, if you draw one, you can't place. All of your sand castles crumble and you're back to square one whoa or just add the captain flip mechanism to rebirth.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you draw the tile and you're like, if I decide to flip it, I gotta keep it with that one and put it out. There you go. I like that, that's good. I do like that, captain Flip. Yeah, captain Flip's good. I like Captain Flip a lot.
Speaker 1:So sad.
Speaker 3:Clay, what would you like to see? Pressure Luck paired with Abstract strategy games. Those things are so dry. I I try and play them and I would just like to see a little more flair and flavor in those games. I guess it kind of defeats the whole purpose of a abstract strategy game like chess or checkers If there was some random way you could risk it to to get ahead. But yeah, um, perfect information is not my jam. So if I was just playing santorini with the kids and I was like you know, this game's good, but what if I? What if I could just have to decide randomly what to play instead of having to think 15 steps ahead for my only chance to win? So I don't know. You asked a tough question, travis. I know what about you, Travis.
Speaker 3:Yeah, put you on the spotlight.
Speaker 2:Put him on the front.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make him big, to be fair. I just thought of this question as we were talking, but I think Press your Luck with Dexterity would be cool and it exists some places, but it's not real prevalent and I think that that might be the next big thing. I think there was one where, like there's a game where it's about like crows picking up shiny things, and so you'd have to go with, like your little beak, which was like tweezers, and pick up these shiny objects and, like you know, carefully move them. It's like you know what was it? Twiddly sticks or whatever pick up sticks, where you're trying to pick them up gently, without disturbing the other ones, yeah, but you're trying to pick up little items that are like shiny items that these pros are collecting and continuing to do that until something fails. I think that would be a cool mechanism. Or like, uh, what is it? Like kerplunk? It's kind of like press your luck right. You're like pulling little stigs out. You ever played the big cylinder with the marbles up top.
Speaker 1:It's a big cylinder with marbles, with a bunch of sticks around the outside and you can continue to pull the sticks until you don't want to anymore. Or like Jenga, right, I can continue to pull these pieces off until I want to stop and then pass it to the other person. I think that's like an underappreciated market for the adult board game world. Like press your luck meets dexterity.
Speaker 3:Did we do it? I think we did it.
Speaker 3:Do we want to give a shout out to just come up. We've talked about some of our favorites, but I just want to wrap it all up here with some of my favorite push your luck games, please. And gold, what we got? Uh, captain flip just talked about it, quack sequoia, limberg flip, seven spots yeah, freaking spots. We wonderland's war for a bigger one. What else? I was just looking back there. Uh, yeah, oh rah, I think oh rah has. Oh yeah, you don't. The funnest part of it to me is the push your luck part, where you're like at the end and it's like oh man, do I keep drawing tiles? And if it's the, it's one of those red ones. I'm going to get nothing, but I can keep drawing and getting more. That's an awesome part of raw. So, yeah, any other push your luck games you guys want to shout out, can't stop.
Speaker 1:Can't stop. I have played probably more camp stop than I have played any other game out there. Heat Isn't heat a little bit can't stop. I have played probably more camp stop than I have played any other game out there uh, heat isn't heat.
Speaker 3:Heat a little bit yeah, with the stress cards maybe, yeah you're well.
Speaker 1:I guess you're like taking a risk taking heat into your engine in a deck building format, but uh, my parents would say Yahtzee. My parents love Yahtzee.
Speaker 1:Just like it's. They can be simple, they can be complex, but it's a cool mechanism that can get everybody involved. Clay, that was a good call about like leveling the playing field. Good, you know, people that are new to a game and people that have played a million times have the same chance at can't stop or spots, or whatever Brings people to the table. I love it. Alright, are we ready to go over the fence? Let's go. Let's go over. Jared, hit me. What have you been doing outside of board gaming?
Speaker 2:I mentioned my babysitter family that I was going to come back to him. Well, we went out skeet shooting here in Alabama knocking down some clay pigeons. It's been a while since I've shot a shotgun.
Speaker 2:Last time I shot a shotgun was when I was in Nellis time I shot shotgun was when I was in nellis, I still had a box of 12 gauge um like you know target shells and I hauled them from vegas to colorado springs and um, I also shipped them here to alabama and adrian's like those are not being moved again. So I'm like, oh yeah, I should probably just get rid of them. And like, randomly I was talking to the dad and he's like, oh, we like to go to this range.
Speaker 1:They have like a, it's like multiple, and I always forget what's the difference between skeet and trap one goes left to right and the other comes out from underneath you and it's in a random direction oh, we did both and uh, I'm bad at the one that goes at random directions, because I'm bad at deciding where to go.
Speaker 2:I like to know where things are going and where to hit it. But I had a lot of fun because there's also like these rabbit ones, where they like skip across the ground. You have to shoot it as it's popping across the ground. And they said the loser has to buy milkshakes. So I did have to go to Chick-fil-A after that Got me one of them delicious Oreo milkshakes. So that was my over the fence. So, travis, you definitely got to check out the uh lower what tumpka shooting club. Definitely a lot of fun. Um, yeah, it's been a while since I got out there and I shot my shells, and adri doesn't have to see him anymore in my garage and I'm not gonna move him. Wow reliability.
Speaker 3:I didn't know. I was on a podcast with a bunch of rednecks what wow?
Speaker 1:well, in high school it's an Olympic sport clay, okay, whatever me and my buddies in high school.
Speaker 2:We just used to get those little like plastic clay pigeon slingers and you just, yeah, we'd drive out to the the mountain and hook up a little clay pigeon, someone throw it in the air. You, there's a lot of fun uh, lower watumka gun club.
Speaker 1:If you want to sponsor the podcast, hit us up on instagram or chick-fil-a. Chick-fil-a just pay for our milkshakes. That that works too. I'll take a free milkshake any day. That's right, clay hit me. What have you been doing outside of board gaming?
Speaker 3:Oh, big week this week, so I took the PMP exam on Wednesday.
Speaker 2:Did you really?
Speaker 3:Yes and passed it with almost flying colors. You didn't even study. I did study. I studied a lot and that was the hardest test I've ever taken. I've a lot and that was the hardest test I've ever taken. It was just I've heard that it was just question after. I swear to you, if I took 180 of those questions and you told me I didn't get any of them right, I would have been like that makes sense. But it was just 180 scenario questions where it's like so you're a project manager for an IT firm and some key stakeholders want to change the requirements and then it's like five answers that all could be right and that's 180 questions of just trying to get in those scenarios and figure out what the right answer was. And it was brutal but I passed. I'm done with it, pretty excited about that because that was stressing me out.
Speaker 2:So that's a good choice. Will you put me at the end of your name?
Speaker 3:I probably won't. But in other news, more fun news, I went to see the Book of Mormon for our anniversary last night up in Denver. And Jared, feel free, have you seen this? No, oh, really Okay. And Jared, feel free, have you seen this? No, oh, really okay, I was. I didn't know how much you wanted to get into your Mormon background here, but.
Speaker 2:but I have a lot of questions maybe we can do it after over the fence, that's that's for special ops patreon if you want to hear Jared talk about, join us on patreon yeah, we're gonna get down and dirty into uh jared's background on uh patreon, but anyway, book of mormon it was.
Speaker 3:it's made by the south park guys and it is hilarious, it's entertaining, it's thought-provoking and I just enjoyed it so much. I mean we were up in the nosebleeds of the Buell Theater in Denver, but it was still awesome. And they're coming to Pennsylvania in September and I'm going to go again. I'm going again. I've already got tickets lined up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was that good. I want to see it again. I'm going to get up close and personal this time. I want to feel the spit come off their mouths as they're singing. It is, it's a good time. I definitely pokes a lot of fun at religion in general. So yeah, if that's a sore subject for you, it is not. A documentary about mormonism is certainly a comedy, so it is well informed, though.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think a lot of those south park dudes were, uh, former mormons and yeah, um, but yeah, it's not a gospel doctrine by any means. Um, but yeah, I've heard some pretty vulgar things about what what kind of uh things happen in that it's crazy, man, I are you interested in seeing it?
Speaker 3:are you just is it too? I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know I thought you guys had patreon. Save it for the patreon. Okay, it Save it for the Patreon.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll save it for the Patreon.
Speaker 1:I have. I am always tempted, like every time shows are available I've always been tempted to go see it and I never have. But are you, were you ever like a South park, south park guy, like, did you ever watch that show? Show, no, I mean, I've seen episodes, but it wasn't like a show I watch religiously. Yeah, I was just wondering, like how close the comedic level slash tone.
Speaker 2:I've heard. I've heard that it's like south park and then they ramp it up a little bit more past ramp yeah oh no I would say it's a little more highbrow than south park there.
Speaker 3:okay, the the second act gets a little bit off the rails.
Speaker 1:Just because you're sitting in a theater doesn't mean it's highbrow.
Speaker 3:It's highbrow yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, very cool. I'm interested in seeing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's great. So that does my over the fence. Travis, you've been obviously over the fence for quite some time.
Speaker 2:Other than the fjords. What's, what's?
Speaker 1:going on. I've been a wall for a while. I know, um, if you have the means, I highly recommend going to the norwegian fjords. They are beautiful. They're like we sailed this gigantic ship through these like rivers basically, and it's cliff spaces on either side, tons of waterfalls, not a ton of wildlife, but like little fishing villages or like herding villages and stuff along with fjords. Beautiful. Highly recommend. Crazy expensive, unbelievably expensive once you get there. Norway is so expensive. So if you the means, go ahead and check that out. But other than that, we've been getting ready to move. I've been reading a book about board games because I missed you guys so much. It's called your Move and what board games can teach us about life and society and stuff. And let me get my phone. I need to say the actual title because I feel bad if I don't.
Speaker 2:I'm going to look it up. On Libby, stand by. I've been watching or I've been listening to One Minute to Midnight about the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you want to get into history, adrian said that people my age get into history taking care of their lawn or smoking meats, and I got the trifecta. So I think I'm set. Okay, what's the book?
Speaker 1:It is called your Move. What Board games teach us about life?
Speaker 1:That is written by two people that work in a board game cafe and they have differing tastes and experiences. One of them is a board game concierge and will make recommendations to people that come into the cafe based on what they've played before, kind of like the segue person that can help them get onboarded into the world of board gaming and like open their apertures a little bit. The other person has studied more history and politics and stuff and gets deep into, like the transactions between people while they're playing Monopoly and what that means on a larger scale and what it can tell us about society as a whole. It's pretty interesting. Uh, it's pretty easy read. You can cruise through it. Um, yeah, been enjoying that one. That's cool. Tons of books and movies and podcasts and stuff. But I'm not gonna belabor that too much because it's my first day back. We gotta ease back into this a little bit yeah, I'm kind of overwhelmed by you right now.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm overwhelmed by those guns that you have out.
Speaker 3:I mean, have you seen? Some floppers like this before.
Speaker 2:Hey, we need a. We need a fricking coordinator or outfits soon, you know yeah.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's part of a post June. Yeah, oh, oh. Maybe that's part of post-June? Yeah, oh.
Speaker 2:Let's all get some. Is that a little spoiler for next week? Yeah, that's right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, listener, if you are tuning in tune in next week, listen again next week. Watch on YouTube, because we have a Frago coming down the pipe and things are about to change a little bit for OGN. So more to come. We'll talk about it next week. Change a little bit for OGN so more to come, we'll talk about it next week. But hopefully it's something that will help you enjoy our podcast throughout the week instead of maybe just one day when you sit in your car at lunch for an hour and a half and listen to us ramble about board games. So more to come, but we did it over the hill, over the hill, guys. Congratulations. Over the hill, over the hill, guys. Congratulations. 40 episodes under our belts. More to come. I can't wait to do this in 40 years, when we can celebrate our actual 40 year anniversary and we're in the old folks home talking about board games. We're in our 70s and we are like decrepit and all of our listeners have died off and it's just us.
Speaker 2:Well, you could still. You can still live in a normal house at 70, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, oh, not at this rate, all right.
Speaker 1:On that sobering note, I have been Travis, he has been Jared, he has been clay. We're out.
