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
Special Ops: Live from the World Series of Board Gaming!
The Operation Game Night crew reunites in person for the first time at the World Series of Board Gaming in Las Vegas, diving into an epic weekend of non-stop gaming and competition. From late-night Tapestry sessions to birthday celebrations with magic shows, the hosts share their experiences playing 14 different games while making connections with fellow gamers and industry figures.
• Friday night featured Vantage and Heat: Pedal to the Metal
• Saturday included Acquire, Blue Lagoon, No Loose Ends, and discovering Ruins at a local game store
• The crew met Mike from BearwynPlaysBoardGames in person after his popular podcast appearance
• Jared prepares to compete in Lost Ruins of Arnak competition with his pre-game rituals
• The World Series of Board Gaming offers both high-stakes competitions and accessible $25 Phoenix tournaments
• Conventions provide opportunities to meet fellow gamers, learn new games, and connect with the broader gaming community
If you're interested in board game competitions or conventions, check out the World Series of Board Gaming events happening across the country throughout the year!
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. We are here together, all in one place, at the world series of board gaming. We did it, boys. We are here all together joining me, as always in person, are my, my boys, jared and clay.
Speaker 2:How you doing boys? Oh, I'm doing great travis. I have not seen you in so long, and this has been just the most titillating weekend.
Speaker 3:For me, it's been magical, absolutely magical has been a magical weekend.
Speaker 1:We are going to awkwardly pass around these microphones today because we are kind of doing some guerrilla recording here at the world series of board gaming yes, in their giant convention hall. Yes, uh, but we just had a great weekend of gaming together. We played a lot of games, so many games. Let's talk about the games. Clayton give us a rundown of all the games that we played.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, yes, thank you, let's start with Friday night. We got in pretty late but we were anxious to get over here and start playing games. Yes, so we didn't have our badges. Let's check out games from the library. So we were kind of restricted to the games they had set out as like feature games, and one of those games was Vantage. And I have games and one of those games was vantage, and I have been loving vantage since mike came on the show and so I got these two saddled up and we started playing some vantage. Then mike bearwin plays games came and joined us as well. We played a game of vantage. We won. It's a good first experience for these guys. I think I love that game more every time I play. And then it was getting late and we wanted something a little comfort food game, played some heat pedal to the metal to end Friday night.
Speaker 3:And you actually taught me how to embrace the heat and actually play the game correctly. So thank you, clayton, for helping me love heat and really bring it into my life. So thank you. What a great Friday night. What a great, what a great Friday night Friday was great.
Speaker 2:But Saturday, oh my gosh, oh my God, this is where the magic happened.
Speaker 3:From start to end, no naps were taken. We wanted to Don't sleep on Saturday.
Speaker 2:We thought about it big time, so we rolled up. You know, there's so much to consider when you're coming to a convention like this and there's so many games to play. Yeah, and we were. I mean, I we were wandering aimlessly for a little bit and we stumbled across a choir on the table, like you know what. I think we can figure this out. So we sat down and none of us had played a choir before tried to learn it. We got, fortunate enough. I mean, if you haven't been to a convention like this, people are so nice like literally somebody just came up and was like oh, I can teach you guys that game. And he just taught us the game, just out of the kindness of his heart. And we freaking dug it and I I had a coach that was kind of you had about five rotating coaches yeah um, at least, at least five oh yeah, they're a little butthurt because I cleaned up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, I think $77,000 to my name and we both were in the $40,000 range. So Acquire, I mean. It's a classic Classic yeah, we dug it.
Speaker 3:That's one of the competition games here at the World Series of board games. Yeah, as well yeah, sure is.
Speaker 2:We followed that up with some blue lagoon, which, if you dig back in the archives, was one of the games that we pitched to jared um in one of our koa selection episodes, oh my gosh. And so I've been eager to make him play it, to realize the error of his ways, that you know. He went with a different game, pretty maliciously, I think. I think it was unwarranted.
Speaker 3:My only note love the game. Yeah, Where's the volcanoes?
Speaker 1:God no volcanoes in Boulogne.
Speaker 3:It's a glaring omission. That's for a little shout-out to my three-year-old. Gemma Loves volcanoes, so do I, so had a blast Actually that one. Just a little feedback for that game. Me and Clay went toe-to-toe. We tied 185, right, and it went down to tiebreakers. I brought home the gold Dang. I just want to put that out for time and all eternity out there that I beat Clay at his own game with no volcanoes.
Speaker 2:I was trying to keep your confidence high, oh he let me have it.
Speaker 3:He let me have it.
Speaker 2:So after that we got into something a little lighter. I had also had no loose ends from Game Head Games, the latest trick taker. I'd played that with my mom and my wife a couple times and I thought it was so slick so I was excited to play it with these guys. Mike from Bearwind joined up with us again and we played that one. Who won that? Did you win?
Speaker 1:Travis, I think Mike won it by one. He had like 15, I had 14, something like that.
Speaker 3:I can see Mike walking right now in the convention center. Actually we might be able to bring him over here live on Operation Game Night. We can flag him down if we can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got anything to say about, no?
Speaker 1:Loose Hands no, it was great. I own that one. I had not played it yet and that will definitely be hitting the table more.
Speaker 3:I just love the bidding on that, where you have to literally use cards from your hand to set your bid and you're literally changing the composition of your hand which is changing how you can reach those bids. Yep, and you have to also manage all the people that are playing as well, and I loved it real, real, awesome trick taker.
Speaker 2:And then Jared needed some food.
Speaker 3:I've been asking for food for three hours at this point now he was dropping hints.
Speaker 2:I brushed them off. I thought he could make it a little longer.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, I keep jumping in too much maybe, but they did also put out a notice, a notum to everybody in the room to make sure that you're eating food, drinking water and showering, and that's also very important for conventions. It was that for this one specifically, or just one you saw on.
Speaker 1:Reddit. That was, yeah, it was like what to know about going to your first board game convention and some helpful tips, and people get so invested in their games that they forget to take care of themselves.
Speaker 3:I got my bad boy on, I've got my deodorant. Anyways, they finally fed me yeah we got fed.
Speaker 2:We also went to a local game store here in Vegas. What was it called Night and Day?
Speaker 1:Games Night and Day Games. It's just south of the main strip. If you're in Vegas, go check this shop out. It is big, it's giant. They just moved to a new location. Tons of gaming tables. In the back they now have a used game section. They sell your Pokemon cards, your Magic cards, all that stuff. They have Kickstarter exclusives there. They have some really rare printed games. So, yeah, night and day games One of my favorites here in Vegas. So we really rare printed games. So, yeah, night and day games one of my favorites here in vegas.
Speaker 2:So we picked up some games there. So we had to go back to the hotel room drop those off and we took that opportunity to play a couple games in the hotel room. We played slambo, which, oh mike from barrowing getting a lot of air time here, uh still see him past that one. Yeah, he's avoiding us.
Speaker 1:He's walking closer every every few minutes.
Speaker 2:He's, he's a shark um, and we played that in the hotel room. That's a fun little romp from all play, just a silly little you know five minute filler game. Uh, we enjoyed that. And then travis and I both picked up the new all play game, ruins, which I knew nothing about. I had just been seeing people post about it but I literally knew nothing about it, and I'm so stoked about this game. We'll probably talk about it more later, but we played that in the hotel room too. Basically, it's a card-crafting, shedding game which was super cool.
Speaker 3:Callback to the Great Dalmoody that I talked about a few months ago with my babysitter family. It's like great dal moody on steroids meets dead reckoning with the card crafting. It is incredible. I I I'm kicking myself. I didn't grab a copy for myself, so maybe I'll have to go tomorrow to my friendly local game store.
Speaker 2:So heck, yeah, what's that place in dc? It looks awesome. Uh, I can't remember the name.
Speaker 3:There's some good stores in DC. I'm not prepared to talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not prepared either, but then these guys we went out. It's my birthday today. Happy birthday.
Speaker 1:Happy birthday.
Speaker 3:Oh, my gosh Happy birthday.
Speaker 1:Clayton. What a missed opportunity.
Speaker 2:Shoot. But anyway we went out to and they took me to see a magic show. Shin Lim and he did some close-up magic, blew my mind with cards. I couldn't believe it. So that ended at like 9.30, but we weren't ready to call it quits on the convention, so we came back here. We found Mike, he's here, he's going to make an appearance.
Speaker 1:You want to be on the podcast. Come on, get in here. Can we get another chair in here? Ladies and gentlemen, the V-est I-est P-e in OGN history has our most listened to episode.
Speaker 4:It's Mike from Bear Wind Plays Board.
Speaker 1:Games. He's here live in person with us, how you doing Mike.
Speaker 4:I've been playing some games. I'm good, I'm good. Happy birthday there, Clay. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Big happy birthday. We actually had breakfast at the Wynn this morning. Sorry to jump ahead, but they did sing happy birthday and gave him a little candle. I hated it. He hated every moment. But anyways, back to tapestry. I apologize, back to tapestry.
Speaker 2:We embarked on a bold journey of tapestry at five players at almost 10 pm. This is Mike's favorite game. I don't know if it still is after last night it still is. It was awesome. It goes long at five players, but I think Travis had never played in person. It was evident I did lose, by the way.
Speaker 3:Another call out to these conventions. Awesome people walk around who have similar thoughts, ideas and love passion as us. Some guy named Keaton walked up and dropped almost a 300 burger on us. He's like, oh, I haven't played in years and then absolutely throttled us. Um, he's like, oh, I haven't played in years and then absolutely throttled us. Um, super smart dude, we got to get him on the podcast, probably he's wandering around.
Speaker 3:I can probably see him right now. We'll probably bring him over to who knows, um, but just awesome people that you just meet, uh, everyone's has the same passion and I loved it Speaking of awesome people that you just meet.
Speaker 1:Everyone has the same passion and I loved it. Speaking of awesome people, we've been talking about playing Tapestry live in person for like a month now, leading up to World Series of Board Gaming. Mike, tell us about your experience. What did you think of Tapestry live in person? Three-hour game went till one in the morning.
Speaker 4:First off, I thought it was amazing. Okay, and I was super excited too to I hate to admit this I walked away from another game I was previously playing to join in the tapestry fun. Uh, first time playing at five, actually first time playing really at four, three well, we really played at two. And then call it to keaton if he ever watches this. He actually schooled me on a rule that I never would have known so great time. I don't know if five is the ideal player count at 10 o'clock at night.
Speaker 3:Maybe not at 10 o'clock at night, no.
Speaker 4:Especially because I still woke up at 4 am.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 4:So it was a rough one, but great time. I loved helping Travis get his feet in the door, even though all the trash talking coming from across the table wow and he still did better. Uh, so yeah, great time nice a lot of hate a lot of hate, but yeah, tapestry is great.
Speaker 1:I just needed a little help with iconography and the flow, the game flow. But yeah, I think five is. It would be good if you had the time and you can like sit down and enjoy it in the afternoon. Yeah, and you're awake, uh, but yeah, five people yeah, we had a long day very little sleep. And, yeah, that was, uh, the end of the marathon marathon. So, wow, how many games was that?
Speaker 2:how many have you played?
Speaker 4:that, as of right now, I'm at 14 games from Friday night at 7.30 till this morning and, mind you, that's not even the full convention here.
Speaker 3:Like you can start on Thursday to get your badge.
Speaker 3:I don't think the Dice Tower West library opens until Friday here, but still this thing goes all the way until Tuesday. We're here on Sunday, middle of the convention, so you could get here and enjoy almost a full week of board gaming and competition. Every day there's Phoenix games. So if you don't want to kind of pay the more higher price to play head-to-head competitions trying to win this big belt they have a big belt and rings you can win. But if you want to pay the lower price it's like only 25 bucks you can win a couple hundred dollars real quick in a couple hours playing one of your favorite games. I'd prefer that than playing literally one hand of blackjack down a couple feet. That way you could play with these amazing people and it lasts a lot longer than one hand of blackjack too. Yeah, that's for sure. But at the end of the day you meet great people. This is the first time we've met in person with Mike, so it's just really neat.
Speaker 4:First time you and I have actually talked. Yeah, that's true, because I missed the actual debrief with Mike, so it's just really neat First time you and I have actually talked.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true, because I missed the actual debrief with you and then playing Vantage with you. We did talk about Vantage without you, so I apologize. You'll have to go back and read Uh-oh, uh-oh, he's got Vantage shirt. He's got his Vantage shirt on. Probably you can maybe contact him for Vantage swag. Maybe on. Probably you can maybe contact him for vantage swag. Um, maybe not unlicensed. Uh, apologize, unofficial.
Speaker 1:unofficial, unaffiliated, just cricketed um don't sue us sorry um sorry, jamie sorry, jamie, and yeah, speaking of you know, playing games with interesting people, mike comes in and just grandstands us and says like hey, i'm'm playing a game with Tom Vassell now you guys can wait what the heck Tom Vassell walked up to me. He's hobnobbing with the who's who in board gaming, and then he gets his Instagram story reposted by Jamie Stegmaier. He is just on the up and up with board game. Who's who, the scene.
Speaker 4:Now I will say Jared here did try to hunt down people, even if they weren't famous, multiple times.
Speaker 3:I'm just the extrovert of the group you try, I'm not afraid to reach out to people Like. Even this morning we got to meet the chairman of the world series of board gaming uh john, uh hagmeyer. I believe his name is yep, um, so I think we want to get more involved with the world series of board gaming.
Speaker 1:I don't know about you guys yeah, it's a cool organization and, uh, they do a lot of cool events all across the country. It's not just here in vegas. They've got some on the east coast and the northwest or northeast corridor. They've got some out on the west coast. So, yeah, look at, look them up, see where their nearest event to you is and go travel to a world series of board gaming event, because it's really something to be seen.
Speaker 2:But I do want to shift gears a little bit yeah, we got about 15 till he has to head in.
Speaker 1:Oh, jerry is about to go into his competition. He is playing playing Lost Ruins of Arnak, his favorite game. We've talked about it on literally every single podcast episode since Inception. That's right. How are you feeling going into your first competition?
Speaker 3:I feel focused, focused, steady, steady, clear-headed, belly, full of how many plates did I put down this morning?
Speaker 2:Seven to nine, between seven and nine.
Speaker 3:We kind of lost track. I believe the number is somewhere at least five, at most nine. There were so many good little tasty treats at the Wynn this morning. We didn't stay at the Wynn. Little tasty treats at the win this morning. We didn't stay at the win, but I knew I needed to get the boys there for pre-match breakfast. If Joel Sherritt taught me anything about competition, it's to get your body and mind aligned.
Speaker 2:And for me Usually we just had McDonald's breakfast. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3:Joel Sherritt. Shout out to Joel Sherritt, my wrestling coach from the Air Force Academy. No, but I'm super excited for the competition today. Wow, I only am competing in one this year. Next year maybe I go all four days. There's four chances to win, up to four chances to enter yourself into the championship. So if you're the grand champion of your one game, you get to enter the winner's circle. Essentially, there's 16 winners that will enter into the final pool and of those 16, those 16 will play four games in the semis. And then, of those four games, one winner from each of those four games will play one final game to decide who is the world series of board game champion. Walk away with like 25 25 dollars.
Speaker 1:So it's crazy when we talked to john this morning, he's already handed out seven thousand dollars in cash to phoenix tournament winners.
Speaker 3:Yeah those are the little uh 25 dollar entry, like real small fun entries. You can probably hear him going off. John, that's john over there. He's getting the crowd ready, hyped up the crowd's been wild. My heart. It's going up and down. It races a little bit, so I know I'm in competition mode, but I do my box breathing. It's probably the sodium.
Speaker 4:Can I ask Jared a question? I'm ready. So yesterday, while playing our game and the random gentleman walked up and talked to us, and you found out he was the the judge.
Speaker 3:Oh, how worried were you that you're gonna say something to? Piss him off. Uh, I'm not too worried. No, again, I go back to like these. These aren't like cutthroat people, no one's like wearing. You know, blackout sunglasses. Like this is the World Series of Poker. I mean, I guess I'll give you I haven't been back there yet I do have these shades to. If it does get crazy and I need to lock in, I can do that.
Speaker 1:I'm ready for anything he's wearing his most reflective sunglasses to play a card game.
Speaker 3:Shit, I didn't think about that, so I will not be doing that. But, um, yeah, yeah, I met the. He's the lead ref, so he will, if there's any like big disputes ref. I don't know judge, judge sorry so each table.
Speaker 3:I think they have like roaming refs too, so he will make if there's anything that can't be just handled at the table level. I think people will be mostly cordial and we know the rules to the game. It's not like there's going to be anything that major that we can't handle at the table, I believe, and if not, it'll be raised up to a higher level and someone will make that decision for us. I'm not too worried about it. I made a great impression. I mean, look at me, I got the 5 milli. I got bad boy on me.
Speaker 1:What else do you need? I will say, like you talk to everyone's like in good spirits and cordial, and everyone's been very nice and welcoming. I feel like it's a subtle flex when people are walking around with their badges that say like I'm competing in everything and it's not like they're paying the $25 for a Phoenix tournament, they're in it to win it. You know those people walking around because they are entered into like four, five, six different games.
Speaker 3:But the reason why and this is my take Okay, To play one game, it's like the entry is pretty high To play another three more games. The incremental cost is not that much more. Oh, okay. So it's like when you buy six donuts and it's only like two more dollars to get a dozen, you might as well just get a dozen.
Speaker 3:Okay, so next year I'm getting a dozen. Next year I'm getting a dozen. So I don't know. Yeah, when we first started talking about this, like months ago, and I thought I was going to have to play 16 games, my head exploded and we did talk about this over breakfast. You still need to know how to play and be pretty good at 16 games if you want to be the World Series champion. So I will start preparing now, and I think they have released or have talked about it in the room. I don't know if it's online yet, but they have made decisions on next year's lineup so we can start preparing.
Speaker 1:The lineup doesn't change too much it seems like, yeah, they have a couple new games. I think two or three new ones that they're adding to the rotation.
Speaker 3:And returning games from previous years.
Speaker 1:Did you take a look at the list?
Speaker 3:I believe Ticket to Ride was coming back. Oh what.
Speaker 4:I think it was Ticket to Ride.
Speaker 3:So I mean people patronize us and ask us if we're playing Monopoly Like there's, but I mean there's not like these really hyper-complex games. There's pretty accessible games on this World Series list so I mean, give it a gander, give it a Google. So anyways, as far as preparation guys, I'm ready, ready, focused, flourishing. We're about 22 minutes to walk in. Probably going to go get a water.
Speaker 2:I'm going to hit the bathroom again as one does. One thing to know about traveling withared is he's in there a lot okay, this is out there on the internet, yeah okay, whoa, my grandkids are gonna see this, all right washing his hands
Speaker 1:that's right, he's washing his hands a lot. That's right. Uh, okay, jared, good luck to you. Thank you, we're rooting for you. We're excited. We wish that we could stand over your shoulder while you competed, but unfortunately, we're rooting for you. We're excited. We wish that we could stand over your shoulder while you competed, but unfortunately we're going to have to stream you Stream me in. So good luck to you. Thank you, sir. This has been an awesome time in Vegas. Absolutely. I'm sad to leave, mike. Thanks for joining us, thanks for having me again. You are the true VIP of Operation Game Night. So thank you all so much for listening. Did we do it? I think we did it. I think we did it For Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been Jared, he has been Mike. We're all in one place at the World Series of Board Gaming and we're out. Thank you.
