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 41: Changing the Playbook - The Future of Operation Game Night
We're transforming Operation Game Night to better serve our listeners, with exciting changes to our format and schedule coming after a month-long hiatus featuring collaborations with other podcasts.
• Jared reviews Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game, praising its simplified mechanics while maintaining the feel of the original
• Clayton explores the historically-rich Molly House, a game about creating joy in 18th century London among non-gender conforming communities
• Clayton shares his experience with Iliad, a tight two-player abstract battle game designed by Reiner Knizia
• Travis introduces The White Castle, a resource exchange game with unique 3D bridges and challenging decisions
• Special announcement: We're taking a hiatus for "Joint Ops June" to feature collaborations with other podcasts
• Starting in July, we'll restructure our podcast into three separate weekly segments for more consumable content
• Personal updates include Jared's graduation, Clayton's imminent move, and Travis dealing with home construction chaos
Join our Discord community by clicking the link in the description! Follow us on Instagram @OperationGameNightPodcast for updates on our new schedule and format.
As always, come interact with us online, let us know if you have any feedback, and leave us a review/comment anywhere you get your favorite podcasts!
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Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast, where the mission objective is to play more board games. Joining me, as always, my co-host Clayton Gable. How are you?
Speaker 2:doing Clay. I'm doing great. This is awesome getting to be with you guys on a Thursday For the listeners out there. Usually we do this on Sundays and we're really trying to cram one more episode in before we all hit the roads on our moves. So we met up on a thursday. This is great. A little extra jared and travis time this week, so I'm excited. We do it thursday listeners.
Speaker 3:Thursday is underrated. It's a great day, it's fun day, it's almost friday, you still get a lot of fun work done and you still have fun at work and it was our board game day in Colorado.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, Thursday was it's appropriate Thursday game night.
Speaker 1:Damn my other co-host joining me as always, jared Erickson, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Jared Boom. Actually, I don't know if you can tell I have a slight brown On my face. Absolute tragedy Struck Alabama this week. I was cleaning my bathroom and my big butt Hit this little thing that's in my bathroom. That bad boy was on. Bad boy fell Four feet to the ground, smashed on the ground. I was only able to save a few ounces. Um, holy cow. Actually I think it's probably in the trash right here. Um, I don't want to cut myself on it, but oh my gosh it's. It reeks of bad boy in the house because, uh, it's been shattered. Um, look at that.
Speaker 1:You can kind of see the jagged edge right there wow, lightning bolt huh yeah, so I'm a little sad, but I will, I will survive, I will, I will continue I'm surprised you didn't come in with a bunch of stitches, because you were like rolling around on the floor to soak up every last ounce of bad boy into your skin.
Speaker 3:Okay, you guys are going to judge me a little bit, but my hands after cleaning still smelled like bad boy and I went to one of my jackets that I had made in Korea and I kind of like shoved them inside the armpits Holy cow, you're a piece of work. Shoved them inside the armpits.
Speaker 1:Holy cow, dear piece of work. He's trying to wipe his hands on every item of clothing he's going to wear in the next year, just so it has an essence of bad boy. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:I didn't even tell Adri that. Don't worry, she doesn't listen to the podcast, so she won't hear it. Shame on her.
Speaker 1:She might not listen, but for those of you that are listening, I'm going to go ahead and put out a call, as this is a very special episode. Go ahead and, if you're watching on YouTube, like subscribe, share the podcast with others. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple podcast, leave us a review. Share the podcast with friends and family. We want to make sure that these numbers are going up and we want to have our community engage with us all the time. That being said, we do have an Instagram that is very active, so go ahead and follow us on Instagram at Operation Game Night Podcast. What is so funny, clayton?
Speaker 2:I'm just looking at you in that empty room with your little tree back there.
Speaker 1:Listen, we're doing our best.
Speaker 3:I own right here. You just wait until we go viral and that little tree is going to have a partner. That's right, paid for by the affiliate links that we're about to pop off on our Instagram.
Speaker 2:That's right, travis, get back to your social shout outs.
Speaker 1:I just was looking at you all sad. Good news for our listeners that want more of Operation Game Night or just want to engage with the community find another avenue to do so. We do have a Discord that we have set up the Operation Game Night Discord. Clayton, can you give us a shout out?
Speaker 2:for the discord. I don't know what you mean a shout out. I'm going to put the link in the YouTube video and I imagine it will also be on your podcast player the link to the discord. So hop in there If you want to. We got places where you know people can set up some BGA battles with each other. We got places to talk about games and what we're doing. We got an over-the-fence section. So if you just want to talk about your favorite TV shows, whatever it's there, we want to talk with you guys. We want to engage, we want to hang out. So hit us up on Discord.
Speaker 3:I was actually going to start a channel for Cologne Bad. I was actually going to start a channel for cologne Bad boy unite.
Speaker 1:Describe the scent of this cologne in words on a discord channel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, board game related adjacent. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:But we do enter, we do engage with people that are on the discord. Already we did a trial run with some of our closest fans and friends and that's been going well and we love chatting with people, seeing the content, seeing reviews, seeing what people are playing and getting invited to board game arena battles. So go ahead and click the link for the Discord and join us and converse with us on Discord. Today we do have a special episode. We have a fragmentation order coming down from higher headquarters, a fraggle to the mission objective. So we're going to hit that. But before we do that, we're going to debrief our week and then we're going to do 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, debrief your week for me All right gaming.
Speaker 3:So, jared, debrief your week for me all right. I had an absolutely fabulous week of board gaming. Um, I am going to talk about terraforming mars, the dice game. Okay, this thing came out in 2023. A fun twist on my personal favorite engine builder, terraforming Mars this one, in my opinion, it scratches the itch real good on the engine builder. It simplifies terraforming Mars in a great way, where you you don't have to keep track of all these, like eight different. You know resources, that you're resources, that you're increasing your production, and then you also have to keep track of how many of that resource you have and then like, oh my gosh, that is painful to do live and in person, but it is so fun but it is so fun.
Speaker 3:That's why I do lean very heavily on the BGA, you know computerized help of Terraforming Mars. But this, live and in person, is very fun, easy to keep track of. It makes a lot of sense. I could probably teach this to a 12-year-old quite easily. I mean the age tracker on Board Game Geeks is 14+. I could see a 12-year-old taking this one on. It still gives you the same touch and feel of terraforming Mars. You still get that beautiful Mars mat where you have your little hexagons. You still have your oxygen track, you still have your heat track, um, you still get those, those uh different awards that you're fighting for, competing for, and you still get to be your own little um corporation. So you get a starting player bonus and then you're pulling these project cards and you're trying to use the dice to get the right resources based off of the six-sided die and get the die to the right position to be able to pay for those project cards. And, just like in the normal Terraforming Mars, once you have the right makeup of resources, you can pay for the cards, which then give you other bonuses, which then pushes the game along, getting more and more, either dice or the ability to get more dice when you take a specific turn. So the main two actions are you either do a main action turn where you support yourself and then do a main action where you can do a project card or terraform on Mars, where you put down a little city or a plant or put an ocean down, or you can restructure or, like um, rebuild yourself. So then you get to reroll all the dice that you have. So, um, you still get those same three types of cards, like a blue card where has that's like an ongoing um like benefit where you can keep using it. Um, but it's like a one-time per, uh, one-time use, and then you kind of turn it 90 degrees and then, once you re-up yourself using the I can't remember what the actions are. I'm sure if you go to one of the other pictures you could tell me but, um, once you like re-up yourself, then you can turn all your blue guys upright again and then you can use them again. And then you have the green cards which actually benefit you each time you re-up yourself. So then you can get more die, you can roll more. But the cool part is, when you go to get more die and you roll them, you don't know what resource you're going to get. The cool part is, when you go to get more die and you roll them, you don't know what resource you're going to get, so then use other actions to try and change what you did roll. You can play those red cards you see on the left-hand side to get really good bonuses, but you have to have very specific resources to get those bonuses.
Speaker 3:Again, huge fan of Terraforming Mars, huge fan of engine builders. Played this one with my besties sarah it's not on pga um, she really liked it. She got this one, she bought it. I did tell you guys about this last week, but I just wanted to debrief it this um, but just had a blast with this one. Um, jared, yeah, hit me with the questions. What do you?
Speaker 2:get. I got some cues, uh one. How long does this one play?
Speaker 3:um, we played it and it took us about over an hour, under hour and a half okay, that's not bad first time play first time play and you know what the cool thing was the and this came in my travis super mega lucky box that he sent me from um from germany. So shout out to my boy, trav, um inside the box, which I think this one. Did you get this one on Kickstarter? No, is this a Kickstarter? No, oh, there's a QR code inside to Diced. I think, yeah, this website called Diced it was a tutorial.
Speaker 3:That's how we learned. We didn't even read the rule book, I didn't even watch your YouTube. I used this video slash tutorial. Hey, do this action, click the next button, set up the table, do this next button, and, like, I loved that. That was really cool. But, uh, apparently there's a diced plus that, uh, you can also subscribe to or something. I don't know how much it costs, but it would remove the ads and probably make it a little more streamlined. But even the baseline, I didn't pay for anything. Diced tutorial really cool.
Speaker 3:I learned really quick and we played it pretty quick. Yeah, definitely under two hours. I think the normal Terraforming Mars you're sitting at two hours, plus if you're playing with two to three, if you've got four players, be ready to be there for a long time. So I had a lot of fun with this one. I love it. So I think I can teach people this one pretty quick. On BGG it says 45 minute play time. I think it probably took us about an hour and some change because it was our first time. Yeah, next time, and especially if I played with someone who has already played terraforming Mars, we we would rip through it pretty quick. So I love it. It's best at two. Oh, that's interesting. That's it pretty quick. So I love it. It's best at two. Oh, that's interesting. That's what it says.
Speaker 1:In this version you're terraforming your own planet, Mars. You're not doing a communal board like in the regular terraforming Mars, correct?
Speaker 3:No, you're both battling for that same resource. It's a lot smaller hexagon space, right, like it's not this vast area of mars like you're used to in terraforming mars, and maybe why. That's why it says best at two. The game ends when two of your um end end of game conditions are met. So when all the the ocean tiles are placed, all the O2 is all the way maxed up and the heat is all the way turned up. So once two of those things are maxed out, the game's over. You don't you don't have to get all three. So I like that too, so it makes it a little bit quicker. You don't have to max out all three. Us being kind of, you know, engineers a little more, was that right brain type. We got really close to maxing out all three anyways because we were like let's do it all. So that also probably added some more time to it. But it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:It was a blast yes, clayton, yes. Another question yeah, I know you don't have regular terraforming mars, but I don't. If you had to only have one of these two games, which would you want to keep around?
Speaker 3:oh, the dice game really wow. Okay, it was easy, easy nice and honestly, I am a little bit uh influenced because I got bGA in my back pocket. I actually prefer playing Terraforming Mars on BGA because of the freaking cubes and my sausage fingers those little freaking cubes. I can't keep track of them all and I'm so massive. I get up to go get a drink of water, go take a pee. I hit the table. Everyone's cubes are off by three. No one knows what round we're on anymore. Maybe I need the little inserts.
Speaker 3:I don't know, yeah, probably that costs, you know, another 40 bucks for someone to 3D print had this assignment.
Speaker 2:I think it's in your super mega lucky box from Travis, but Ares expedition terraforming?
Speaker 3:Mars.
Speaker 2:I want, I want your verdict on that game because I preferred that to regular terraforming Mars. It's quicker, I don't. The cubes have little inset places to keep them, so that might address some of your concerns there. So I'm I'm very anxious to hear, when you finally get to play that, what your opinion is of the three terraforming Mars games.
Speaker 3:So I is that it does. It's a standalone expansion.
Speaker 1:I don't need.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, I do have a different buddy from the flight coming over today. Ooh, I could, and he has played Terraforming Mars on BGA.
Speaker 2:That's a quick learning curve between the two.
Speaker 3:That could be Okay. Yeah, I might have to watch YouTube and maybe it's already on Diced or whatever Might be, or what is it called.
Speaker 1:Dized D-I-Z-E-D. I use Dized to learn what was it? Oh, tiny Epic Cthulhu, and that thing is awesome. I was playing solo and it just helped me make the moves for me and walked me through the tutorial. Man, that thing is so smooth. I wish they had more games on there and I I'm sure it's some agreement with the publisher, but yeah, for the games that it does have on there, the, the learning curve is shortened.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Tenfold Cause even when it goes like okay, what action do you want to take, this one or this one? And then you click on that action, it's like okay, what did you do? What happened? And it will walk you through with a video and everything's shown, and I'm a very visual learner. It's even better than a Rodney, which is hard to say. I can't believe. I just said that I I love rodney man. If is rodney, could rodney do one of those? Could he start his own dized he should a rodney.
Speaker 1:Like a rod. Somebody needs to digitize him and make him like an ai companion. Like a rodney bot.
Speaker 3:I want, I want to. I want Rodney in my pocket, you know oh.
Speaker 2:I bet you do.
Speaker 1:Anyways, that's my debrief. Yeah, great, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to hearing the review of Ares Expedition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, clayton debrief your way for me. Okay, this is another somber debrief for me. So we went through the hotness a few weeks ago. Molly House came up and we were all like, wtf, what's Molly House? I looked into it. It's by Whirlygig Games just came out in 2025, designed by Joe Kelly and Cole Whirly, and the theme is what I had to buy this game.
Speaker 2:I knew it was going to be a pain in the butt, but for the theme and just artistry alone behind this game. Essentially it's like 18th century London and you're playing as Mollies, so you're non-gender conforming people in the 1700s in London and you're trying to create joy amongst your community, while the society for the reformation of manners is trying to infiltrate the society and give you indictments for your lewd behaviors, and so the game, the scoring, is getting the most joy and you get joy by throwing festivities, and so I'm like this sounds awesome. You know they're the theme of the game trying to create joy, throwing parties, trying to avoid getting caught by the society for the reformation of whatever. I had to give it a go. So I watched a playthrough. I watched the same how to play video two times. I read the rule book cover to cover two times and like broad strokes it's not that complicated of a game. On your turn you roll to die. You can move around the board it's like a roll and move and then you can take various simple actions. You can draw a card from the top of deck, you can add cards to your reputation, you can take the action of the site you land at. But as with every Cole Whirly game and I know he's only a co-designer and so Joe Kelly has some responsibility for this too, but they dig so deep into the theme and the verbiage.
Speaker 2:Nothing is as simple as it seems. When you throw these parties you're a festivity runner and then you know the community plays cards to the party and if threats are played by the community it'll expose all players who have reputation of that suit. And then when you're exposed, you have to discard your reputation and get cubes. And there's just so many little intricate things that happen in what seems on the surface like a relatively simple game, because you throw a party and you're trying to basically create like almost poker hands where you have the best party possible if you have like a jack and then three cards in the same suit that increase in value like a jack and one, two, three of the fan suit and then you throw a surprise ball and everybody gets a ton of joy. The community gets joy, boom, boom, boom. But then any cards that weren't part of that scoring set get added to the gossip pile, and the gossip pile at the end of the week exposes people. So if you had some of the narcs in the gossip pile that came to your party, yeah, they come out and they start tattling on people and saying this person was here, this person was there, and that's bad for you. So the theme is awesome.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I told you a lot about how to play it, because I didn't actually get to play it. Um, I brought it out last night with mary and it was just. I was so in the rules, I knew what to do, but it's just like every little thing you need to check up on in the rule book. I'm like I think this is how it works when you get exposed by a constable threat or and I think this is what happens when a rogue is added to the thing. And so, again, I commend leader games.
Speaker 2:I commend worldly good games in a world that like wants to just produce games that are like easy to get to an instant joy.
Speaker 2:But people move on from them quickly, like we're in this culture of just like play a game a couple times, put it on the shelf, get rid of it, and they really fight against that.
Speaker 2:They know their games are not easy to play and they don't care. They think that they're making a game that people can play for the rest of their lives and they want this game to be like a game your group plays hundreds of times and I imagine, if I get up the nerve and the people to play with me, that you know, after play three or four, this game would be awesome. Because right now I just don't understand the interactions of the mechanisms enough to really know what you're supposed to be doing and how that all plays out. Like there's a a point where if one of the Molly houses and they're on the corners of the board, if they generated enough gossip against them, they get raided. And when a Molly house gets raided you get an indictment if you have reputation in that Molly house's suit. But you have a chance to now turn informer, because if all the molly houses get raided, everybody loses. But if you turn informer you still have a chance to win at the end of the game.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so that doesn't feel good, yeah I know you talk about not not playing for the right team, but it's just so many interesting things going on in this game and it's so steeped in history and I mean I've just I've enjoyed learning it and reading the rule book and just kind of immersing myself in it and I really want to play it, but it's. It's not going to be an easy first play, I know, and so I will report back if I ever do actually get it played, but I think this is an awesome work of art. This is an amazing feat of game design, an important game, and I hope you check it out again. All the caveats out there I said about how hard it will probably be to get to the table. But yeah, that's Molly house, a debrief, more like a pre-brief, hoping to play it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, like you said, the artwork looks classic, it's of a time and it looks like a timeless game. It looks like you could pull this out 10 years from now and be like guess what year this came out, and people would guess all over the place because the artwork is just so classic. The board looks super classic. It looks like an old style, like monopoly style board.
Speaker 2:Now. I listened to an interview with cole worley and he like talked about how they really wanted to like lean into the mechanisms and like the roll and move mechanic and like the board games of that time, like you're playing beautiful, you're playing with like a standard deck of cards for the most part, so like they. Really they go above and beyond with these games and like making sure every little thing is tweaked just to perfection. But again they use language that just like everything has a word for it that you've never heard before. But it's also important to the theme, like being an informer and the gossip pile and the safe car like it. Important to the theme, like being an informer and the gossip pile and the safe card like it. It just all works to create this experience.
Speaker 3:That really brings out the essence of the theme, but it does make it a chore to learn there's not like a great uh player aid, like a little player aid sheet to help you with the vocab there is, but it's also just, you know, like I had that next to me.
Speaker 2:But then there was also the the rule book right next to me and usually I was like, okay, I understand that part, but now I need to go in the rules to make sure I'm actually doing it right. So we played about two turns and said maybe we'll try it again tonight.
Speaker 3:This is a shout out for our need for the machine learning ai uh little, you know notebook lm bot to help you with the rules. Just be like, hey, this is what just happened. What happens? What happens because of this? It'll be like mary just uh shat in the middle of the party and you just be like, okay, this is what happened, and then you just move on, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Clay, I have a like player question.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There is not one player that is playing the opposition, correct? No, okay.
Speaker 2:You only have this chance.
Speaker 1:Certain games that try and tackle tough themes like this will oftentimes pit players against each other because they think that that's where the fun interaction is. I'm thinking of specifically like votes for women. Like votes for women, you have one like the suffragettes and then you have, like the opposition that's trying to crush the suffragettes and yeah, or a game that like wants to age gracefully. I don't know how that will hold on, hold up to scrutiny over time, because man that feels bad to like be the guy that's trying to crush votes for women and I just want to make sure that there wasn't one player that's going around like no you.
Speaker 2:You have that decision to make. If, if your, your Molly house gets raided, you have a choice to make whether you want to continue to be loyal to the Molly's or you want to start narking on them.
Speaker 3:So does Mary know? Does Mary know if you became an informant, or do you keep that to yourself?
Speaker 2:So one of the basic actions you can take is to accuse another player If you think that they might be, they may be an informer. If you're in the same location as them, you can accuse and reveal one of their tokens and see if they were loyal or informing wow, yeah, I want.
Speaker 1:I want paul solomon to talk about that on decision space. Like your molly house just got raided, it probably feels bad, like morally, ethically, to decide to become an informant in a game. That's about like creating joy in a repressed community. I would love to see a discussion about where that decision comes from. Like I won't. I want to hear the interview with uh colt worley about why they chose that. Because that that's super interesting and a tough decision to make, not like mechanically, because it gives you a chance to win. Right, that that's the logical thing. Is like I turn informant but man to like put a moral, a moral and ethical dilemma onto the players is but that's how.
Speaker 2:That's probably how it felt at the time, though I mean, I mean, if you're a molly at that time and you you're about to catch some indictments and your options are, you know, it's a tough theme to tackle and when you are in that position, where you're even in the game, where you have to decide whether you want to keep striving to be a part of this community or you want to save your own skin, it's not an easy decision, it shouldn't be. Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, props to whirligig for tackling a tough situation like this or a tough like subject matter in something that is supposed to like bring joy to the players and to like be a communal experience, because nobody wants to get around a table and like feel bad about themselves afterwards but man, that's. That's really interesting.
Speaker 2:I love that yeah, so I just wanted to talk about this game because I've been immersed in learning it for like the past week now and I just had to get it off my chest oh wow, wow. Yeah, you got anything else, so you wanted to hear about Iliad, so I can talk about that real quick. Yes, I want to hear about.
Speaker 2:Iliad when the heck 2025. Open link in your tab For the listener. I am just pulling this up on BoardGameGeek here. So Iliad BiteWing Games, bitewwing games and ryan knitzia have a love affair and I'm here for it, so of course, I backed. They came out with this mythology line and it was two two-player head-to-head games um themed around like ancient greek mythology, and the one game Mary and I've played a couple times now is Iliad. It's a very abstract battling game. One player is Hector, the other player is Achilles, and you essentially have this grid You're laying your tiles. What's a phalanx?
Speaker 3:I feel like, is this the phalanx they got? The two warriors are coming up against each other. Yes, those are the.
Speaker 2:Spartans oh yeah, different historical term, they're Greek, they're warriors. But this game is a tense, head-to-head battle, super simple. I mean, it's Kinesia. So on your turn, you have two tiles and you place one on the board, and most of the tiles have, like a special effect. So if you place a one, it allows you to move one of the other player's tiles to a new spot. If you place a two, it allows you to move one of your tiles to a new spot.
Speaker 2:Three lets you switch out these success tokens. So you're collecting these success tokens and you need one success token from each god to win the game. So there's five different gods. You need five different success tokens or you're not even eligible for victory. So threes let you. You have them in front of you and then there's a display of a few sitting up and you can take one of yours, put it on the display and grab one that you want.
Speaker 2:Fours lets you flip over that tile as well as the tile someone has next to you. And then fives don't have any special ability because they're the most strong tile in the game, and so essentially you're doing this and if at the end of your turn, a row or a column is complete. You score that column and basically you just add up the values of everybody's tiles in that column. Whoever has the higher value gets to pick. On each side, like on the top of the column, there's a success token, on the bottom there's one. Some of these are bad, they're like negative points. So if you win the column, you get to pick first and then the person who loses gets to take what's left.
Speaker 2:And so basically you go through this until everybody's played all their tiles and you see at the end if both, if one person didn't get all the god tiles they needed and the other person did, they win. If both people got all the god tiles, then you count up the values of your god tiles because they vary in strength. If neither people got all the god tiles, then you count up the value of all your tiles as well to see who wins. But it's a 15 minute, super quick playing, interesting strategy game. I haven't even scratched the surface of like how would be the right way to play. I lost every all three times I played against mary never quite could get all five of the god tiles, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:uh, it's a awesome little two-player game and I'm anxious to play some more of it I'm interested to know why reiner decided to focus on specifically the battlefields, because this is the siege of troy, 10-year war that went on between um, you know, the, the trojans and the greeks, and I am really curious to know why he focused on the battlefield. I know that that's where, like the majority of the epic, the poem deliad takes place and the gods are walking amongst the battlefield granting favor to their, the people that they want to like, pull the strings of their lives, like achilles and and hector and paris and uh, you know the main cast of characters. Yeah, and I was thinking like you know, why wouldn't they focus? Why wouldn't he focus more on, like the siege right, like people storming the castle and trying to get in past the Trojan walls, and I thought to myself well, that's basically just siege of Rundar, instead of trolls, it's basically just, you know he already made that game I get it.
Speaker 1:He made that game, yeah, and this sounds awesome. I am super interested. I really wish that I would have gotten this played before it got packed up and shipped. It sat there for a while and I kept looking at it and we never had the time.
Speaker 2:But a 10-year war that you can play in 30 minutes, I mean that's yeah, good, and it's interesting just the way those um success tokens line up on the outside of the board, because there's quite clearly at the beginning of the game, some columns and rows that you don't really care about because, you know, maybe the tokens are pretty much the same on either side, and there's some that you really care about because, like, one's got a plus 10 and the other one has a negative 10, so you really don't want to lose that one, but then, even if you lose that one, if you have a three, you can switch that out for another one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's very tactical, um, and it's it's awesome are those uh victory tiles placed at random, like do you just grab?
Speaker 2:them and drop them yeah jerry, oh do, uh.
Speaker 3:If you finish a row or a column, uh, do you. Can you move those warriors ever again, or they're stuck so there is rules about what can be moved.
Speaker 2:As long as one of the sides adjacent to it is open, that troop can then move. So if it's completely surrounded, like um, you know this two up here yeah, that one you couldn't move that, but you could move this four and yeah. So even if this bottom row scored here and there was nothing blocking this blue tile in the corner, that could eventually move, yeah so yeah, and the god.
Speaker 3:The god switching the gods is what's you've already collected or what's already on the board what you've collected.
Speaker 2:So you take one that you've collected and you switch it with.
Speaker 3:There's a display separate from what's around the board oh, I thought it was like you could swap what's already been placed on the on the okay yeah, so like here's the display of ones that you could swap them just off to the side so you could swap it, and then whatever you swapped could would stay in the display yeah, yeah so you could, you know, populate the display with some junk, but yeah you can see and if I'm looking at this.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no. I'm just like when you look at this board, you just start looking at the rows and columns and like, oh, where do I need to win to try and get my best chance at getting all the God tiles I need?
Speaker 1:If I'm reading these pictures that you're showing me correctly, you have your tiles face up like face towards you, so they're secret yeah.
Speaker 2:But then on the back it has a symbol that tells your opponent what type of like troop it is.
Speaker 3:No, oh, the backs of all the tiles are the same. Oh, okay, it's just the color, the team.
Speaker 2:Team Trojan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah so all the backs are the same for each one okay, man, this looks awesome, I'm excited to display yeah, but you place them on the ground, face down on the no, that's the special ability for the four tile.
Speaker 2:So if someone played a four, like, say, this blue four, the blue four lets you flip an adjacent tile and itself. So if this was a five, you know, maybe you want to just cancel out their ability to use their five so it's not like it's a hit.
Speaker 3:It's a hidden number. It's like that doesn't even matter yeah, yep whoa yeah, yeah, lots of interesting stuff.
Speaker 2:And then you have these tiles that um take on the value of the two tiles on either side of them. So I didn't talk about those. Those are dolos tiles. But yeah, where are they? Yeah, that's in the weeds. But you see this red one up here. Yeah, that that has a value of 10 because it's right in between two blue fives.
Speaker 3:So if you can place that, yeah, that's quite the move there.
Speaker 2:But they said yeah, so much to think about on this game I like it. I like it a lot yeah, I like this, a this a lot. Yeah, so that's Hylia Travis. How about you debrief us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what have you been playing From one historic period to the next? I got to play the White Castle. The White Castle was published in 2023 by Devere Games. It has an expansion called White Castle Matcha. I've not played the Matcha expansion, but this is basically a very pure resource exchange game where you are drafting dice off of these little 3D bridges and putting them on squares. That will earn you resources, and the resources are fans coins, rice, metal and the resources are fans coins, rice, metal and mother of pearl.
Speaker 1:And the objective of the game is to get your family members embedded into the white castle and it's like the castle of the white heron or something, and I don't understand the strategy of this game. I don't understand the resource exchange. I am very new to this game, but at its heart it's a resource exchange. I am very new to this game, but at its heart it's a resource exchange. So you're going to draft either on your turn. You're either going to draft either the left or the right die on one of these three bridges and they come in different colors, and then those die will be placed out onto the main board to earn your resources. Once you earn enough resources, you can exchange those resources for positioning within the castle and I'm gonna have to report back on this one once I wrap my head around it. But it's basically like draft to die get the resources, exchange the resources, place the worker and those workers will score you points the higher up they get in that castle.
Speaker 1:And this one I actually got this one at essen and this was like brand new when I first went to essen and when you walked in to the main hall they had like this giant white castle background. It was like feudal japan with a big like 3d bridge that you could like stand on and take pictures in front of the, the big castle right there. They had that like background. You could stand on and take pictures in front of the big castle right there. They had that background. You could stand on the castle and take Instagram photos and stuff.
Speaker 1:But man, this game is, it feels, simple because it's just an exchange of resources. But getting an upper hand and finding the most efficient pathway to get the resources you need to place your family members into the castle has been quite challenging for me. I've been playing it a lot. It's on BGA now, so that's been a good like walkthrough tutorial and I'm going to have to report back once I find out a decent strategy, because this is kind of frying my brain. But you guys should give it a try. It's pretty cool. I know that the matcha expansion adds like a couple extra resources and different places to go and, uh, you know dice to draft and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you're basically just drafting one or the other. Yeah, I think jared should give it a try. This is.
Speaker 3:This is a world series of board gaming oh it is really yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm paying you to look up the meta. I know I I have been trying like there's just too many. Right now there's earth and, um, freaking, the other big zoo, one that I nova, that I they're. I think both of those are on bga that I'm trying to digest first. Maybe I should just go after this one, because just looking at these pictures and hearing travis talk is getting me excited this is a jared game.
Speaker 3:This is, yeah, this feels like a jared game, and I don't know why I've been sleeping on it, because I need to eat the elephant one bite at a time, and this seems like a tasty bit of the elephant right here, so I might have to give it a go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, the tutorial is pretty decent on board game arena. If you want to give that a shot. It's pretty fast too and the game actually only plays over three rounds. So the faster people draft their dice and put them out there on the board, the faster the rounds go. Um, there's like a, a movement of time component. Once it like shifts to the next time period, then the next round begins and you're basically like it's just a pure resource manipulation game where you are drafting dice, putting them out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you, when you draft one of the die, they have obviously random values. When you place them onto these main sections of the board, the main sections have printed die on them that has a certain value. So it's typically like four, two, three, whatever it is, and the higher up it goes, the higher that printed value is. If you place a die that is greater than that value, you get the difference in coins, so you get a bonus resource. If you want to place a die there for its other attributes of the space, but the value is lower than that printed value, you have to pay coins to go there. So it's kind of like a risk reward type thing. Like do I give up the coins now to be able to reap the rewards later on. So, yeah, I this one's kind of blowing my mind right now and, uh, I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 2:I just do not understand the strategy yeah, jared, same company, same box size as red cathedral.
Speaker 3:Yep, really yeah yep, really I like red cathedral yeah, this is the artwork very, very similar vibes too, yeah, so definitely give this one a shot.
Speaker 1:It's on bga. You could fire it up between the three of us and get this one going do it.
Speaker 2:I will click through perfect.
Speaker 1:Uh, the other thing. I have one other thing to shout out. Yeah, friend of the show, amanda lee from have a seat with amanda lee podcast gave me you guys are talking about prints and plays how you were unfamiliar with them. You'd never played them. Place trying out a couple of them. Uh, she said, hey, you're traveling. I have a whole bunch of print and play files that I have not cashed in yet. I haven't played them yet. Let me print them for you and I'll send them to you. So first off, she sent me a printed and laminated copy of shallow regrets. This one just came out on Kickstarter, but it was also on Kickstarter with Deep Regrets. It's like a button shy version of Deep Regrets. Looking forward to playing this one. I'm really excited about this one Plays two to three players, 15 minutes, boom.
Speaker 1:Then she sent me this binder of games, all print and play. She printed out the rules and she laminated the play, the play boards for me. So all I need is like a set of dice and like, maybe, a dry erase marker and I have a whole bunch of print and play games to take on the road with me, stick it in a backpack and games on the go. So, amanda, thank you so much. I owe you time. You are a great friend of the show and we need to have you on again. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Also shout out to back to our discord. She posted after I had my first print and play experience last week. She posted a link to Reiner Canizia's decathlon dice game and I played that yesterday. It was awesome. You basically just need eight dice and you basically go through a decathlon. So there's 10 different events and each different event has like different rules for how you roll the dice, how many attempts you get, and it was a lot of fun just going through. I really want to play it with Mary, but yeah, I just got out my copy of spots, took out eight dice and I was off to the races going through this. But yeah, print plays man, I've been sleeping on them. Thanks, amanda, for uh shouting out in the discord and obviously you know travis shows you big time yes, yes, I definitely do.
Speaker 1:Uh, the decathlon is that? Is it track and field decathlon? Yeah oh yeah, there was a high jump. I was I'm down, I'm going to go print that after we're done. Yeah, you should. It's, it's, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Excellent.
Speaker 1:All right, are we ready to move on to the special fragmentation?
Speaker 2:order mission objective.
Speaker 3:Let the people know.
Speaker 2:What's a FRAGO?
Speaker 3:for the people not in the know, a FRAGO is a fragmentation order.
Speaker 1:It is a change to a current order that is issued by higher headquarters. So when a unit is tasked to go do something, they will issue an order to that unit. The unit is tasked to go do something, they will issue an order to that unit. When they need to change that order mission, people, equipment, whatever it is they will issue a fragmentation order. We have a fragmentation order coming down from Hire Headquarters for Operation Game Night.
Speaker 1:We want to let you know that we are going to take a month-long hiatus and do some Joint Ops June. What that means to the listener or the viewer is that we are going to feature other podcasts that we have appeared on. Uh, friends of the podcast amanda lee we've shouted her out many times, our very first guest on the podcast and our good friend vick from games emos, and he covers video games, board games. He's a really cool guy. He's on our discord as well, and so we're going to feature their podcasts on our streams. So probably won't mean much to the youtube listeners, but go out and look up. Those two podcasts have a seat with amanda lee and games emos with vick, you know, then we are going to post their audio files onto our stream so you will see Jordan Obstune GameZMoss, listen to us talk about Castles of Burgundy, listen to us talk about this or that. We do a this or that challenge with Vic Clay and I. Both appeared on Amanda Lee's podcast.
Speaker 1:So you're going to see some different content over the next month and then when we come back stronger, better than ever, in July, we're going to change up how we do our podcasts. So we typically have our three segments debrief, mission objectives and over the fence. We're going to break those three sections up and sprinkle them throughout the week Timing still undecided, and so so that way, the listener, you don't have to sit down and listen to us for an hour and a half. You can break us up and have a little taste of us throughout the week, a little taste of snacks. So you know we want to. We want to make our content as consumable as possible. We want to make sure that we're giving the highest quality content. Where our debriefs are going to change very slightly, you know our mission objectives are going to be better than ever. We're going to maybe slot in some more guests, some more special topics, maybe we'll do some more. You know, racket stacks. We'll do some bracket challenges. We'll do some more board game pitches, so more great content for our mission objectives. Then our over the fence. We're going to continue to goof off and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming, but those will be broken up into three separate posts throughout the week.
Speaker 1:So if you are subscribed to us on YouTube, you probably won't see a difference. It'll it'll come out throughout the week in segments and then, if you subscribe to us on Spotify Apple podcasts, I heart radio the week in segments and then, if you subscribe to us on spotify, apple podcast, iheart radio. Wherever else you get your podcasts, you'll get three separate feeds, three separate episodes all in your feed. So make sure that you set your spotify or apple podcast you auto download so that you don't miss an episode. Three times a week. We're coming at you bigger, better than ever. Gentlemen, what you got Three times a week, we're coming at you bigger, better than ever.
Speaker 3:Joe what you got. I just want to know if we can get any call-in numbers. You guys see that guy who's a green frog Kermit, no, is it like Lyle the Frog? Some of the things he says is pretty ratchet and probably not safe for work. He has people call in and they just tell random Ratchet. I think that maybe that's out of vogue now, but I would just like live people to call in and tell us their board game nights, game breakfasts, game mornings, and maybe they need some advice. Maybe they want us to do some good pairings, maybe food with a game. Maybe they give us their library and some suggestions. I don't know.
Speaker 3:That would be a fun thing for a good main objective. But I don't know. I'm looking forward to the restructuring. The Frago is welcomed here. I mean, sometimes in the military you get a Frago and you're like aw snap. I've been doing things one way, but now we're going to change things up. But we're getting close to a year. We've been doing this for a minute at people. We've been yapping our little mouths for a long time. I think this is a great way for you know, the listener to really dial in on what they want to listen to. For the, the true listeners that just they're. They just listen to all of it. They're just going to listen to all of it. But maybe there's some people out there that just want to get more. Uh, like, they just want to listen to more about what we've been playing and then they just listen to just the debrief. So I think that's that's something that I think will help out our listeners. They can can get more specific. You know, content, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2:Listen, I don't want to make any promises, but this is also exciting that we're all going to be in relatively the same time zones and I don't again, I don't want to make any promises, but I think it would be a good, ambitious goal for when we come back to, once a month, have an operation game night live play on bga that we post and that we invite some of our um listeners into so we can chat it up with them and play a game on bga.
Speaker 2:I think we should try and do once a month at least to get a game in on BGA with some listeners.
Speaker 3:That's a good stretch goal right there. Yeah, and we already have a Twitch. I think we've Twitched once or twice in this first year of Operation Gamelink.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. Plus, I just want to play more games live with you guys, because I like talking to you guys while we play. It's not the same. Just I'll wake up and it says you're, it's your turn on this game on bga, and I click a button and then I don't hear from you guys chats until we wake up, until it's like this eight hour stint where I'm just like twirling my thumbs waiting for you guys to play and it'd be great to just hop on, get it all done. We can chat while we, while we play, talk through our decisions. You guys can actually teach me the games instead of me just clicking buttons until it goes. So yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's gonna be more of that, for sure. Right now, we have a very small window where we can all get together, so we really have to prioritize getting the podcast out, but I think you're gonna see some more content content coming in terms of playthroughs, live plays.
Speaker 3:And I just want to shout out Travis here for the intro today. You brought it back to the good old days, where the objective of this podcast is to play more board games.
Speaker 3:So, I mean that just got me riled up right away and not not saying that, like you know, we we got this awesome intro and but now we're bringing it back to where we started. You know that's what we used to say. You know, at episodes like one through ten or something like that, I used to hear travis's voice, where the main objective is to play more board games, and that got me super excited, and it still does. And now he hit me with it this morning and I'm excited.
Speaker 1:So, so big changes coming to operation game night. We still want to keep delivering quality content to our listeners, to our subscribers. Please help us share the show, make it bigger. We want you know people to engage with us on discord. Hit us up on Instagram, you know. Let us know what you want to hear, because we are open to ideas and nothing is off the table right now. So if you want to have Kermit the frog on to say some ratchet stuff live on a stream, sure, hit us up, let us know. But we are here for you.
Speaker 1:We want to keep giving you good content and, yeah, big changes coming. I will say if you're like well, what's the schedule? Still undecided, we still haven't decided on our posting schedule, but we will put something out before we come back from Joint Office June. So tune into our Instagram and we will make sure that we post something there that has our new schedule so you can tune in and make sure that you don't miss a single beat of operation game night.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't miss a second. Yeah, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2:I would like to say the change I'm looking forward to the most is Jared has made some big promises about his background not being blurred and he's going to really, he's going to really cater a nice background for the video watchers out there.
Speaker 1:So that is the goal also part of the frag work. Maybe he can get some nice plants like me well, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 3:I'm kind of worried about it because I think the office is not gonna have a door, because right now I get to lock Gemma out, because sometimes, you know, during the podcast you hear a couple of baby bangings and some some yelp, yelp scratches on the door. There might be like a flash of light and a blonde haired, you know, three year old, that just naked probably comes on the screen. So it might have to be like a lot more muting going on, a lot more, yeah, going off camera. I'll have to be with the hot keys, I'll have to be a lot better with my hot keys, um, but uh, we'll figure it out we'll be good, so exciting things to come you know I'm excited.
Speaker 3:Do we do it? I think we did. It was the quickest main objective. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1:That's okay, big thing's coming. Are we ready to go over the fence? Let's get going. Let's go. All right, jared, hit me what you been doing outside of board gaming.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing I did outside of board gaming I graduated. Yeah, I DG'd, I done graduated. Yeah, I DG'd, I done graduated.
Speaker 2:I did not DG'd.
Speaker 3:I did not distinguish graduated. I am not that distinguished. One person from my carpool did straight up distinguished graduate. Nice Shout out to Gilly, joshua Gilly. He was in my freshman squadron at the Air Force Academy. He's a C-130 pilot. What a badass. I mean absolutely crushed it. He's going to be the next General Minahan. I don't know if you guys remember him. Four-star general, just servant leader, tells great stories. General Minahan, his dad was also in the Air Force. His grandfather was a coal shoveler in the coal-fired ships in the Navy. So just imagine being in the coal-fired ships in the Navy. Just imagine being in the Navy, never seeing the sun, and your job is to shovel coal from here and put it into the furnace. To fight the Germans and the Japanese, not the Nazis and Imperial Japanese.
Speaker 3:The Nazis and Imperial Japanese. Yeah, I'm trying not to be racist here. That's good, keep trying.
Speaker 2:Keep trying. I'm working on it. Just quit while you're ahead.
Speaker 3:But that's not even my. Over the fence, guys, I have more hose details.
Speaker 1:Fill us in on the saga.
Speaker 3:I was given from my doctor, they sent me to a specialist. The third hose has been identified and it will be eliminated shortly, oh my God. So just know that during Join Ops June it will also be Jared Convalescent Leave June. That one's for Tay Tay. I hope you're listening and you know that I'll be sterile before too long.
Speaker 1:Jeez, we've all been doctors. I'm surprised the doctors didn't say like this is the B, you know, morally unethical for us to clip this third hose Like you're meant to procreate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I actually have it on my calendar right here. I drew a, just a set of testes, and a and big x through it, so nice yep cash graded yeah, that's really all you can do at this point yeah, so I I hope to, I hope to. After the restructuring, I'll try and clean up my language. Uh, less talk of my testicles. Um, I can't, I can't guarantee anything.
Speaker 2:I think we're really just going to break your testicle. Talk out from over the fence and we're going to deliver a fourth episode every week, just on the Patreon.
Speaker 3:We could start the Patreon where we start talking about the. Book of Mormon. Oh yeah, the play and more testicle talk so great okay, men's health weekly.
Speaker 1:All right, clayton, what you've been doing outside of board gaming yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:so really gearing up over here. All right, the we're leaving town next week. My everybody's coming out for Brooks' graduation on Tuesday. Oh my gosh, things are really coming to a head with this whole separating from the military and moving back to Pennsylvania deal. I've been selling things, I've been throwing things away, just trying to make life a little easier on the other side, and got in trouble last night. I sell things low. I. I don't like to wait around. I put a price tag on these things on Craigslist that people can't can't look by. Mary caught me. We've had like some outdoor patio furniture that she claims we spent like $900 on. I posted that sucker up there, sold it for one 25 and she was not pleased she. So I'm making decisions like that on the regular right now.
Speaker 3:Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Just wheeling and dealing. But, on a fun note, we have been since we finished severance Travis. You weren't even here when I talked about how I dove back into that, since you cried about us not watching it so many times. Um, and it was great, which made me reconsider other shows that other people say are great, that I gave up on pretty early, and so now we've started back into mad men and this was a show that just never really interested me. I watched like the first four episodes a couple times, quit every time. But now we're almost through the first season and I'm starting to, I'm starting to get into it, like when you get to that point where you're like you know what, maybe we don't need to play a game tonight. I just kind of want to see what's going on in mad men, like that's, that's that's when it starts to really take root in me and I'm digging it. So, yeah, that's that's my over the fence.
Speaker 1:Well, when you finish, mad men, we just started the Apple TV show featuring Jon Hamm, called Our Friends and Neighbors, and the premise is he's a hedge fund manager in New York City and gets fired from his job and basically blacklisted from the hedge fund community for various reasons, and he decides that, in order to make ends meet, uh, he decides to rob all of his rich friends that live in his community. And that show is really good. I I'm really enjoying it. It's got john ham he's the main character, obviously and it's got, uh, olivia munn and, oh, I don't know, but well acted. It's got like, just when you think you know where it's going, it'll give you a little zigzag, it'll, uh, have some twists and surprises. So, our friends and neighbors, we've been, uh, we're almost done with the first season and it's awesome, it's really good.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I wanted to brief is that, uh, we are also out of here very soon. On top of moving our whole life out of our house, we are bare bones in it now we have next to nothing. Our second shipment just went out. You have that beautiful plant behind you. This is the last thing I own right here.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, right here, uh, oh my god our.
Speaker 1:Our landlord decided uh, because we were moving and he wanted to get a tenant in as soon as possible that he would let a construction crew tear up our whole yard. So they're like digging a moat around our house. Right now we're trying to work on the drainage and we live in a construction site and the dogs hate it and they're barking all the time and, yeah, our life is chaos right now, but pretty soon we'll be settled and we'll be. They're barking all the time and, yeah, our life is chaos right now, but pretty soon we'll be settled and we'll be able to play all the board games and hopefully we can get a in-person board game night Jared once we overlap Pretty excited about that.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited to hear about the overlap.
Speaker 3:Yeah, next to my, next to my testes on my calendar is Smith's in the US of A.
Speaker 1:Perfect, I'll send you my flight info, so you can use your flight tracker app.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I'll just share my location with you, as I drive you better, so.
Speaker 3:I can watch you as you come down the what is it? Highway 85? Yeah, I don't know. I'm excited.
Speaker 1:So yeah, lots of change coming for the OGN crew. That's my over the fence. We did it. Episode 41 in the books. It's going to be a while until we do this again.
Speaker 3:I know I'm going to miss you guys, I'm already sad. Can we still just call each other and maybe not record it?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Of course we can always call, we should do course we can always call A three-way call. Just a three-way call.
Speaker 1:We should do that. All right, we should do a like cocktails night. Just have a drink, oh, get on a voice chat or a video chat and BS Go over the fence for real.
Speaker 3:We could talk about who we're going to have as our first VIP in the new.
Speaker 1:We can't talk shop, can't talk shop, but now that you brought that up, travis.
Speaker 2:I need you to get danny starting. Is that her name, danny starting? Oh, did you see jared's message? Oh yes, yes yeah, she and jay. I like I kind of just want to watch her and jared have a conversation. Yeah, and maybe yeah.
Speaker 1:A one-on-one interview special with Jared live in the field the vibes are real.
Speaker 3:If you're listening, I extend an offer to you to be our very first VIP after the restructuring, which you probably don't know what that is Be our first VIP of the restructuring of the Operation.
Speaker 1:Game Night podcast. Can you please do it in like a VIP room of a club?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'll make sure my background is not blurred Perfect.
Speaker 1:All right, before we get too off the rails. I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been Jared. We have been Operation Game Night. We'll see you next month Night.
Speaker 3:We'll see you next month we'll see you next month, thank you.
