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
It's a Quick Games Roundup! (Yeehaw)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Eight games. One wild ride. We corral a posse of quick, high-impact titles you can teach in minutes and replay all night, from clever card shedders to a pocket-sized area control gem and a fresh twist on roll-and-writes. If your game night needs fast starts, tight decisions, and big table moments, this roundup delivers.
We kick off with Trio, a compact deduction game that turns “show me your lowest or highest” into a satisfying hunt for perfect information. Then we slide into Wolf Days, a two-player-only week planner where dogs pile up points with simple rules and snappy turns. Shedding fans get two flavors: Jungo, a Scout-style experience that keeps fixed card order and juicy set-building while streamlining the teach, and The Yellow House, a thematic duel where inspiration, skill, money, and passion climb a shared ladder as you manage tempo and timing.
Craving volatility? Fruit Fight brings push-your-luck fireworks and delayed scoring that changes with player count—thrilling at three, chaotic at six. For strategy in a tiny box, Small Fjords blends tile-laying and area control with Blue Lagoon energy: seed longhouses, flood the map with Vikings, and cut off routes in tense micro-battles. We also try I’m Out, a crisp number-line shedding game that forces higher-or-lower choices and lets you spike difficulty by stacking plays. To close, Take a Seat introduces a “share-and-write” format where you pass ticket stubs, stamp polyomino shapes, trigger one-off powers, and race for goals and local majorities across a crowded auditorium.
Along the way, we compare table feel, teach time, best player counts, and who each game suits—date night duels, family fillers, or tactical sprints for seasoned groups. If you’re building a travel kit or want fast options that still reward smart play, this mix has you covered.
Enjoyed the roundup? Follow and subscribe, share this episode with your game group, and drop a rating or review. Tell us which quick game you’re playing next and why—it helps others find the show and keeps the conversation rolling.
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
Well, howdy, y'all, and welcome back to the Operation Game Night Podcast, the Rootness, Tootness Podcast in the Wild West. Joining me, as always, is the City Slicker himself, Clayton Gable. Clay, how you doing?
SPEAKER_01:What is happening? Why are you in a cowboy hat and doing this?
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's a good question, partner. And that's because we have a quick game roundup today. Okay. Okay. Grab your lasso, grab your saddle, grab your trusty steed, and grab your quick six shooter because we're doing a quick game roundup. Games that may not take up a whole episode, but we are going to fire them off faster than a six shooter, and we are going to bust through these games so fast, so quick, and we're going to tell you the down dirty that you need to know that might entice you to go out and try these games. Clayton, I'm going to let you kick it off while I take my hat off and fix my headphones.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Sounds good. Wow, you really caught me off guard there, Travis. Yes, quick games are a staple in my gaming arsenal right now. So the first one out of the out of the six shooter, I guess, the first round fired is going to be Trio. Okay. Trio is a game by Happy Camper Games. Came out in 2021, I suppose. Uh basically the pitch for this game is it's like if GoFish were fun. All right. So in Trio, everybody has a hand of cards, and you have to organize your cards from lowest to highest in your hand. And everything depends on asking each other about their lowest or highest card. So when it's your turn, you're trying to find three cards that are the same number. And there's only three cards of each number that are the same. So out there amongst your fellow competitors are three ones, and you're trying to hunt them down by asking probing questions, such as, Mary, show me your lowest card. Mary reveals a one. I'm like, okay, that's one one. Now, Mason, let me see your lowest card. Mason flops out a two. Okay, I banked that away. I know Mason's lowest card is now a two. Since I didn't get a match, I don't get to go again and try to find a trio. If I had gotten a match and I had found two ones, I could ask again. I could ask somebody else. Or there's a pool of cards in the middle you can flip over. So the basic thing you can do on your turn is ask somebody else to reveal their lowest or highest card. You can yourself reveal your lowest or highest card if it's a match or we'll make a trio, or you can flip one over in the center. And the whole game is like a weird combination of memory and go fish that I was hesitant to think I would ever like because I don't like memory games and I certainly haven't very much enjoyed GoFish in my life. But somehow it just comes together and it's it's so fun when you puzzle it out and you see somebody, you know, they ask two people to see their lowest card, and you you find out that, oh, there's where the two twos are, and you have the other two in your hand. So when it get gets back to your turn, you're like, okay, boom, I got those twos down. I know where the other two is, it's in my hand. I reveal it, bam, I got a trio. And the game ends when somebody gets three trios in front of them. So you just keep going and kind of as as the game goes, you know, you at the beginning you're like revealing the highest and lowest, and then eventually you get down to the cards in the middle. They're a little trickier to find where they are. Uh so it's a super quick little game. I've played this with grandparents, I've played this with my kids. Everybody has a good time, it's over quick. And most of the time, people are like, Oh, let's play that again. So Trio has been a big hit. I I slept on it for a while. I'd heard people talk about it, and I was like, that just doesn't sound that fun. And then I saw it and picked it up, and sure enough, it's a good time.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. How many cards do you start with in your hand?
SPEAKER_01:Uh depends on player count, but it's you know, somewhere between like six and eight. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:What's the benefit of revealing your hand or revealing cards in your hand?
SPEAKER_01:Well, ideally, you don't want to unless you can fill out a trio that way. Because you don't want to give other people information without you know, if it's not going to benefit you somehow. So, you know, maybe if I have the 12, I'll ask other people first to see their highest cards. And if I get a match there, I might then show mine so I can try and poke around again to get another 12. So, you know, it's it just depends on the game situation, whether you want to show what you've got. I mean, if somebody else has already exposed your highest card, you know, there's no real I mean, they'd have to remember it, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Listeners at home might be thinking, that wasn't very quick and dirty. That took five minutes. Well, guess what? This next one, we're gonna catch us back up. Don't even worry. Here we go. I am going to share a game called Wolf Days. Wolf Days is a game about filling your week full of dogs. Not to be confused with Cat Days, which is their alternate version that has cats instead of dogs. And this is published by Far Place Animal Rescue or in uh I don't know, teaming with Far Place Animal Rescue and 25th Century Games. This is a super easy game about filling up a week full of dogs. You have seven cards, it only plays two players. Each player has seven cards Monday to Sunday. Then you get a couple cards in your hand, and there's a draw deck in the middle. And on your turn, you can either play a card or draw a card. And you are playing these cards to the different days of the week, and each dog represents different uh abilities and or points, and you're trying to maximize the points in your week via dog piles, basically. And so some dogs will play to the other person's hand, some dogs will pile on top of other dogs, some dogs can be tucked underneath other dogs, and you're trying, and some have to be placed next to certain days of the week, or your leftmost dog, or whatever it is. They all have special rules to them. There's a bunch of different breeds in here. There's maybe like I don't know, eight to ten different breeds, and then you have special cards that will allow you to swap entire days worth of dogs with your opponent super fast, super easy. Once somebody fills their week, game ends. You totally tally up all the points, and the highest amount of points wins. Questions about wolf days, Clayton?
SPEAKER_01:I don't think so. I think you've hit that quick and dirty. I have not heard of this. Um, it sounds interesting, it's a super lightweight. I mean, do you enjoy this game?
SPEAKER_00:I think it's actually pretty fun. I yeah, and it plays super easy, super fast. Uh, the deck is like a deck of cards size, and the rules are a single card in the deck, not a book, not a I don't know. They have a single card in this box that has all the rules that you need to play the game right on top of it. And they even add a added a couple of uh cards to you know shout out their animal rescue and how you can donate and give back to the animal community. So that's gotta love Wolf Days.
SPEAKER_01:And I I might have been in a stupor when you started, but I didn't realize until I'm just looking at this BGG page right now that it's a two-player only game.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, only two players. It's two players per set. So if all you and all your friends go out and buy copies of Wolf Days, you can play four players, six players, divisible by two as long as you have enough decks uh per pair.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, check that out.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like most of my foot, most of my card games that are like quick and dirty are for higher player counts. Yeah, you know, they're more like the party adjacent type card games. Yeah, um, so you know that's cool that there's a two-player only one I should look at.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Uh maybe I'll send you cat days because I'm gonna fill my my days full of dogs and you can fill your days full of cats. How about that?
SPEAKER_01:I guess I'll tolerate it. All right.
SPEAKER_00:What you got next, Clay?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. Whatever you pull up next. It's spinning. Okay, another happy camper. This one is jungo, and it came out in 2025. So this is new. Um, super lightweight. It is a shedding game, so trying to get rid of all the cards in your hand. Now, I know we're supposed to be quick, so I'm gonna save a lot of the preamble here. But Scout is a game that is so clever. I love Scout, I think it's a super interesting game, but I don't play it all that much because it is kind of hard to teach people. Like in the audience, I want to play Scout with, there is just enough interesting rules that are like, well, you can flip your cards over, um, and then you know, you can play a set, and that'll beat a run, or a run will beat a set in this circumstance, and then you can choose to scout and put a card in your hand. I mean, there's just enough going on that it's just not that entry-level game that I want it to be for shedding. Great game. I love still love scout, but this will probably replace Scout as my like go-to shedding game because it has the cool pieces of scout, but it's like so much more streamlined. The same thing, you get a hand of cards, you can't change your the way they're ordered in your hand. So you can only play pairs if they're next to each other in your hand, and you can only play sets, so there's no runs, you don't have to worry about that. So if somebody leads with two twos, the next person has to play something that is stronger than two twos. So they can either play two threes or they could play, you know, three cards or four cards of any number. And then the interesting thing is when you beat um a set of cards in front of you, you have a decision to make. You can either just discard those cards because you know you're trying to get rid of all the cards in your hand, or you can take those cards you beat and insert them into your hand anywhere you want. So, you know, it maybe you had one two in your hand, you just beat the two twos. Maybe I'll take those two twos and put them next to my one-two, and now I have a triple that'll help me play that two that I had in my hand, didn't really have anything to do with. Um, so it's it's like got all the nice pieces of scout in there, and it's just that much easier to teach and play, and it goes super fast. You know, first one to shed out their hand wins. Uh, I've played this a few times now, and I I really dig it.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. That sounds awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:The last time I taught Scout, I felt like we had to run it through a couple times before the rules really clicked, and people end up loving Scout. I mean, it's a phenomenal card shedding game and like very highly renowned. Uh, but I feel like it does take that, you gotta wrap your mind around those few intricacies before it really clicks. And if you can streamline that or bypass it altogether and just jump straight into something like this, then that sounds amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, definitely check this one out. It's great.
SPEAKER_00:I'm into it. Let's stick with card shedding. I'm going to talk about the yellow house. This is a game that's uh published by Mandu Games, got it in the 25th century reprint, and this is a game where you are playing as Van Gogh and Gogwin at this yellow house that Van Gogh would rent. And it was supposed to be this like community for creatives, and they would all gather around and paint and write and do whatever they needed to do as creatives. I don't know what creatives do. Uh, but this is a card shedding game where you are trying to argue, it's a it's really a conversation that you're playing through cards, and the cards represent inspiration, skill, money, and passion. And each of those kind of suits of cards is represented by a value, a little disc on this ladder of points. And when you play a card that represents one of those items, one of those subjects, passion, skill, money, or whatever the inspiration, you're going to move that little token up one. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to you have to play them in order. Like the cards that you play have to be in ascending order according to the points as like the little poker chips move up the ladder, you have to play them in ascending order. If you have a card that you cannot play because one is too low, or maybe it whatever, uh, you can boost one of those points higher than one step higher than the highest token, but it's gonna cost you some points. And there's some other rules where you can pick up these like inspiration cards and stuff like that, but really it's a conversation through card playing where you are trying to gauge the cards on the ladder or the you know, the different subjects on the ladder and their points, and shed cards strategically to play up the ladder to empty your hand of all of your, you know, I don't even conversation arguments or whatever. I think the cards are called arguments or whatever. Uh, so you're trying to shed all of those. First person to empty their hand gets to take the last round of cards and tuck it underneath their little like scoring chip for points. Those are taken out of the game, then you start another round, and you kind of go back and forth until the deck is empty. Plays super fast. It's kind of an interesting card shedding game. I don't know the strategy to it, I don't know it well enough to even know what the subjects are. I know that they're different colors and it's pretty easy to follow along. The weight is 1.57. So if you like card shedding games, this one's kind of an abstract one where you're trying to like push points as well as you know be strategic about what you think they have and you know trying to play off your partner's hand. It only plays at two. So yeah, another another good date night game that plays quick.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, man, that's uh that sounded like more than a 1.57, but it does it does is it easier than it seems?
SPEAKER_00:I'm probably conflating the rules a bit and making it sound more complex because I the verbiage hasn't linked in my brain yet. Yeah, but really you're playing the cards to move the chips and playing cards in ascending order to try and empty your hand first.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, down and dirty.
SPEAKER_00:There, there it is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, down and dirty. We're we're back to being down and dirty, quick shoot draw. I'm intrigued.
SPEAKER_00:Shooting from the hip now.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, yep. Let's keep shooting.
SPEAKER_00:All right, tell me about uh what else you got? Fruit fight. Tell me about fruit fight.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, fruit fight. Uh, from the controversial magenta line, I I am one of the weirdos that for some reason appreciates this excess of production for a simple card game. And this one is from Dr. Reiner Kenizia, master of clever little card games and all things board gaming, really. Uh so I was super excited to try Fruit Fight. It used to be called No Mercy, and it is kind of a mean game, but really it's just more of a random push your luck fest. Uh I'm up in the air about this one. So essentially, you have a mechanic that you see often where you start with a deck of cards and you can flip cards over from the top. And once you get to three cards, these are fruit, by the way. I'm flipping over fruit. Um, once I hit three fruit cards revealed, if I choose to keep flipping and I reveal a fruit card that has already been out, think flip seven, I bust. All right, all those cards go away. But you know, I can stop whenever, and then those cards stay in front of me. So maybe I've got a strawberry, two bananas, and an orange in front of me. Okay, nothing happens with those cards until it gets back to my turn. So this is where it gets kind of weird. So and on anybody else's turn, if they flip over a fruit that other people have in front of them, they just get to take all those fruit into their pile. Yeah, and so the fruit are worth different points. So the the, I don't know, I remember what it was. Maybe the oranges really suck, they're like worth one, and the strawberries are worth 10. So everybody wants the strawberries. Um, but yeah, so you could be sitting there with a bunch of fruit in front of you, but till it comes back to you, they could all be gone. And so when it comes back to your turn, whatever fruit was left in front of you and didn't get taken away by the other players, you get to flip over, and that's your score pile.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the game just keeps going like that until the end of the deck, and you see who got to stash away the most fruit. It's super fast, it plays vastly different in my experience. I played this at three, four, and six players. And at six players, as you can imagine, waiting for five people to take their turn before it gets back to you. It's pretty hard to score cards because if any one person flips those things you have in front, they go away. Yeah, um, and at two, at two and three, you have more of a chance to you know actually score the fruit that you get. So I saw people get frustrated by not like being okay with the fact that this fruit really isn't yours yet until it comes back to your turn, and then it's yours. Yeah. Um, so I love push your luck games. I don't know if this is best in class, but I like I like the art, I like the production, I like my big, my big pink box. So I'll probably keep pulling it out and playing it. But yeah, it's it's a big difference in experience from at the different player counts, but it's Kenitia, so I'll hype it up.
SPEAKER_00:Kenizia has a thing with like delayed gratification in his games, all the marshmallow tests, fruit fight, stuff like that, where you just you got the cards out in front of you, you're pushing your luck against yourself to make sure that you don't turn two the same, but then you gotta wait a whole turn before you can reap those benefits if you do it all. Yeah, and he's got a he's got a thing for it, and I like it. All right, let's move on to Fjords. Actually, it's small fjords that is re implemented by Fjords. This is a game, uh also came out in the newest like 25th century reprint bundle. Uh, but this has some firepower behind it. Uh the art is done by Beth Sobel. Which is kind of cool to see. Designer is Franz Beno de Lange. I'm probably butchering that. Uh, but it's part of a Grail Games lineup. They're small box. And this game is kind of like what if you had land versus sea mixed with uh Blue Lagoon or Through the Desert? So you have uh tiles that represent different land masses on a fjord, and you are building out these tile placement maps one at a time, taking turns, lining up the different geographic features on the tile with the rest of the map so that it kind of flows and looks like an actual map when you're done. There's not any big gaps. You're not building out this big peninsula. It's kind of this like central land mass that gets bigger and bigger, bigger. And then each of your each of the players only plays at two, has maybe 10 of these like long long houses. Uh, and you can choose to play those on any land mass. Can't play them in the ocean or whatever, but you can play them on any land mass, and those kind of begin. That's like phase one. You're building out the map, you're placing your longhouses. Phase two begins when the map is built, and then you take your Vikings, which are represented by these discs, and you start building them out from your longhouses on a very condensed map, and it gets really packed really fast. The person that can cram the most amount of Vikings on this island at the end of the game wins. And it plays super fast, super easy. It has a bit of strategy where you can like cut each other off with strategic moves. Uh, it has a solo mode where you're trying to get as many uh Vikings out onto the map as possible. It's kind of beat your own score type solo mode, but the two-player is where it shines. The box is like, I don't know, the size of a box of matches, like a big box of matches, like a value pack of matches. Um this thing's gonna travel with me. I think it's great. I think it's like if I can get Blue Lagoon to go with me wherever I want, uh, this is the package that I want. It's called Small Fjords. I would highly recommend people check it out that need a quick date night game or love Blue Lagoon mechanics, area control, map building. I I think it's great. I love this game.
SPEAKER_01:Dang, I you as you were talking, I was like, okay, this one piqued my interest more than the other two you talked about. Yeah. No, I'm thinking it's cool. Yeah. Well, maybe it's just because you invoked names of games that I really like as you described it.
SPEAKER_00:It's hard not to, right? Like you're kind of doing the same thing where same as Blue Lagoon, where you're like putting your little villages and then you're building out from there the next round, except you're building the map while you do it. So uh it's kind of cool because you start on this very condensed map that has three it the map only starts with three of the little hex tiles, and so people are eager to get their long houses out there, and so all the houses-at least, this is the couple of times I played, all the houses those first couple rounds are so packed into the middle, but as this map gets bigger and bigger and bigger, you end up in these like far reaches of the fjords that are less populated, and that's where you can really score your points. So being able to like strategically wait long enough to place your long houses like further inland and further into your enemy's territory, uh, the better. So, I I think it's really cool, man. I I like this game.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna want to check that out.
SPEAKER_00:Heck yeah. Let's hear you talk about 13 leaves question mark.
SPEAKER_01:No. In the magenta line, this is called I'm Out. I don't know why this refuses to exist on BGG, but it very much exists in uh this pink box here. Uh I'm out. It is another game where you're trying to get rid of all the cards in your hand. Uh, and the way this one works is you have to play cards to uh the center of the table, which are a line of numbers in ascending order. So if one person plays a six, you have to play on either side of the six. So the next person could play an eight that's higher than the six. Now the next player has to either play higher than the eight or lower than the six. You always have to play higher or lower than the highest or lowest number. It's sounding a little bit like trio in in uh practice here, but it's a pretty different game. Uh the other thing you can do is add to the higher the highest or lowest number that's out there. And so this game gets pretty interesting because you can also play multiple cards to the end. So if I play three tens to the end, now anybody that wants to play to the high end of the card number line needs to match that like strength of three cards. Yeah, so you couldn't play if you only had two 11s or two twelves. You'd have to play at least three of them to get those out of your hand. So if it gets back to your turn and there's like, you know, nothing you can do, the stacks of cards just aren't aligning, you have to pass for your turn, and you can reload your hand of cards by grabbing a card from the middle and putting it back into your hand. So it sounds kind of interesting and random, but there is a little bit of meanness and strategy that goes into it because you know, if somebody plays the 12 as their first card, now there's not really anywhere to go above. You're kind of putting people in a pickle. And then if the next person is really a jerk, they can play like three twos. And now people that have all those middle cards have no option, you know, they're just like, okay, I have to pass. Um, and same thing when it comes time to reload, like you want to take cards from the middle so it doesn't make it easier for everybody else to play cards to the end. Uh, it's a it's a pretty clever game. I haven't played anything quite like it. It's fast to teach again, and you know, you just play till somebody is out of cards, or I don't know what in 13 leaves what they say, but it's called I'm Out in the Magenta line. So when you're out, you win.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I wonder why they uh re-branded this, reskinned it as 13 leaves so soon.
SPEAKER_01:Because I think this is a newer version.
SPEAKER_00:It it must be. I I don't know why I'm out would not come up if like it automatically directs you to this page. So I I don't know. Who knows? I don't think it needs it, but um you've played this, yeah. Yes, I have a distinct memory of like us playing a bunch of these style games back to back to back at your place one time.
SPEAKER_01:Is this like newer to you? This is newer. I did not have this until like a month ago.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like the we played like no thanks and a bunch of these like small, quick and dirty card games back to back to back at your place one time, and it's hard to remember which ones those were. But yeah, that sounds awesome. I love it. Well, try it out. You have the magenta collection, don't you? I do. I do. I don't have all of them, I don't think, but um, I do have a fair amount of them.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, they're putting small box card games on the map, all right?
SPEAKER_00:In big overproduced boxes, yes.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, as much as we crowed about hating that early on in the podcast, I you know, I see the value in it now. You don't want these boxes lost on your shelf, they have value. And this these ones stand out for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, what do you got last, Travis? All right, let's talk about take a seat. This is a different one. This is a little bit heavier, a little bit longer of a playtime, but it also has a different mechanic. This is a you've heard of uh flipping rights, you've heard of rolling rights, uh, this is a share and write, and I gotta I gotta show you some pictures to make this make sense. This is a game where you are seating people for the hottest musical on the market opening night. You get people pouring through the doors, and you have to seat them all appropriately. And so you get your auditorium board. I'm circling it, I don't know if you can see that, but the auditorium board's there on top. You have this kind of seating map, and the map is broken up into the different regions, like the four different colors that correspond to the different types of audience member. So you have like policy makers and press and general public and movie stars or the stars or something like that. And then between those uh, like let's say we we're playing with four people, right? Each of them takes a map of the auditorium, they're all the same. Then you have your seating arrangement kind of ticket stubs that are these blue cards down here in the corner. And each of those has kind of this polyomino type shape on it with these bubbles on either side. I'm gonna try and zoom in so you can see these. That's a bad zoom. But these polyomino type shapes, the different colors correspond to the different types of audience members that you're trying to seat. And you're gonna start with one of these next to your board on either the left or the right. So on your turn, you're gonna mark off one of these spots, these dots within the tickets for the different categories. Then you're going to draw the corresponding shape on your map. So this ticket here is four by four, right? I color in the top left color. I cannot reorient this block when I draw it on my seating chart. So I go over one of the dots that I draw, the seats that are that I'm filling, has to overlap with this kind of suit of guest. So this has to overlap with the green guest, which is the press, I believe. And I cannot reorient this block. So it would end up being if I drew my, if I took this top left ticket, I would draw a three by four block. And then once everybody draws their block or whatever, they pass it to the other person. And so these seat, uh, these like ticket stub things will move back and forth between the people that are playing the game where you are stamping tickets, drawing them on your board, and then filling it, like you know, filling out your auditorium as best you can. Now you notice on these ticket stubs, there's also these columns on either side. And those allow you to have special abilities. The special abilities are things like I can rotate the block for that turn only. I can fill in a random audience member on my map so that I can complete different quests. Um, I can fill in two of these blocks, which I'll explain in a bit in a minute, on the ticket stubs. And so there's a bunch of different options for special abilities. Or I can neglect to take those special abilities and take points instead, like bonus points at the end of the game. All of this is in service of these goals that are uh either like one, two, or three difficulty. You kind of shuffle them up, pick which ones you want, whatever, whatever you want to do. And those are associated with these A, B, C, D kind of goals. Why is it A B C D? I don't know. But the A is always worth double points. So you want to focus on that one. And so these goals will have like, you know, completely fill your press block in your auditorium. Uh, it will be, you know, three subsequent rows that are completely filled. It will be, I don't know, there's a whole bunch of them. Um, but you are trying to complete those goals, earn the bonus points for filling out your auditorium, and earn the bonus points uh based on the ticket stubs that you're punching. Now, why are you filling in the individual bubbles on the ticket stub? Well, because each of these four different suits on the ticket stub is an area majority game in itself. If I fill more uh ticket stubs or fill more blocks on that ticket stub than the person to my left and my right, or one or the other, I get bonus points at the end of the game. So there's a kind of a lot of plates that are spinning here, but really you just focus on completing the goals, passing these things back and forth. They don't go around the table, like let's say I'm playing with the six people that it allows. Maybe I'm playing with three people. Those ticket stubs just bounce between the teeth the people on my left and my right. And so when it comes to my left, the thing slides up to the left side of my board. I'm punching the ticket stubs on the right. When it goes the other way, I'm punching the ticket stubs on my left. And so you're kind of able to keep track based on the color of your marker and the side of which these ticket stubs are coming in and going out of to fill up your auditorium, to score points. This game is cool. I don't know if I've ever had like a share and write like this where you're doing so many different things. It has a little bit of depth to it. Um, it's unique. If you like roll and writes, if you like these types of like, you know, puzzles, the polyomino puzzles that come with these kind of roll and write type type games. This was one to try out. I think it's really cool. And I didn't shout out the publisher, it's by Salt and Pepper Games. The artist is Meeple Foundry, which I'm starting to learn has done tons of stuff, but I don't really know who they are. Um, and yeah, this came with the 25th century reprint, and I like it. It's cool.
SPEAKER_01:Man, you uh hit you got that 25th century hit hard.
SPEAKER_00:I like it, man. That some of the stuff that they reprint is really cool. Yeah, I and they have so many, like so much variety in these uh reprints that they do on Kickstarter. Um, you know, that's where I got like Dracula versus Van Helsing. I got a whole bunch of these like older games. I that's where I got the um Penguin Party game that I sent to you, like all that stuff coming in these 25th century reprints, and it's cool to have like kind of bespoke collections of games that are gathered together in one Kickstarter, and you can kind of pick and choose which ones you want.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you're gonna have to let me know when that happens again.
SPEAKER_00:I will. They do it like maybe once a year, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah. Well, this is interesting. I it that doesn't sound quick and dirty, but it does sound interesting to me.
SPEAKER_00:I think like once the board is set up, like that the picture that I that I showed doesn't really do it justice. Like it's much easier to understand when you have like people sitting around a table because you have the your auditorium in front of you with your color marker and the little seat ticket stubs kind of slide back and forth. You've got your goals in the middle. It makes more sense in practice when you sit down around a table and you're able to pass these things back and forth. So I I mean, Mary is like a roll and write guru, right?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, she loves the roll and rights.
SPEAKER_00:This is one for her. She would really like this, I think. Okay, uh, only problem is I I don't know, I have not played it one player. I don't think it would be great at two because you're just passing the same two things back and forth. Maybe it is okay at two, I don't know. Uh, but I feel like this really shines in three or more, where you actually have a lot of people that are trying to make tough decisions, and I think you get a pretty widespread of success rate based on endgame scoring.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, Travis, I got two questions for you. Please quick holster, six shooter, all right. Did which one did Rachel like the best?
SPEAKER_00:Uh the fastest one, Wolf Days, like something that we can play in five minutes. Like, come on, that's the one that's gonna shine for her. Um, but I think small fjords, I think it I think it could get a foothold.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, okay. Um, and then which of the four games I talked about do you think sounds the most interesting?
SPEAKER_00:Oh man, um I like both the magenta games. I I mean if you can streamline scout for me, what was that? Young jungle? Jungo. Yeah, I think I gotta look into that one because streamline scout sounds like something that I would play nonstop.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, it's gonna hit the table a ton.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. Yeah, jungle sounds great. The magenta line sounds great. Uh trio, take it or leave it, but you know, you gotta see it to believe it.
SPEAKER_01:You gotta see it to believe it. I was the same way. I heard people talk about it like eh. That's true.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, all good. Nice.
SPEAKER_01:Small games, small games.
SPEAKER_00:Did a lot of games. That was what, seven, eight games? Eight games. Well done. Uh, if you are watching this, thank you for tuning into the Operation Game Night Podcast. Leave us some love in the comments and the likes. Hit us up on Instagram at the Operation Game Night Podcast. Tell us which game you would be interested in playing, or if you have played any of these, tell us uh which ones are your favorites. So for Operation Game Night, I have been Travis. He has been Clayton. This has been the Wild West of quick games, and we are out.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.