A House in Chaos

Joe Mahaffey: Hello, and welcome back to another edition of late on the table, the southern board game podcast with the accent on southern. It is late April 2026 and I am one of your hosts Joe Mahaffey.

James Engelhardt: And I am your other host, James Ingelhart. Good afternoon, Joe. It is a warm day outside out there.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. And we finally got this really interesting thing from the sky yesterday last night. Liquid that fell on the ground. finally watered my lawn.

James Engelhardt: Yeah! Yeah, and it was funny because they were like, ⁓ it's going to come through and it will get like 15 minutes and it settled down here for a couple of hours, which was fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, we needed it. You guys needed it when we did for sure down there in Greenville. yeah. So, crazy fun stuff going on up here. ⁓ as you know, we've been, ⁓ in the process of adding onto the house and that finally is no underway, which has created a lot of chaos where we're running around this afternoon, trying to get things out of the dining room. Cause this week they'll be cutting through that wall for the new room and, ⁓

James Engelhardt: Yes. ⁓ wow!

Joe Mahaffey: you know, have to cover things with plastic and take things out of the And I'm creating like plastic barriers between rooms so that the dust won't fly into the living room or to the kitchen.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yep, I've been there.

Joe Mahaffey: crazy, crazy stuff, which unfortunately has not allowed Dale and I to really play a lot of games here lately. But I do have a couple that I intend to talk about. But before we get into all of that, ⁓ I don't know if there's anything in the news that you've seen lately that you wanted to bring up.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. I did, and this is just a fun piece. ⁓ I see a little ⁓ Bloom Report, is kind of a industry news around games and toys. A lot of toy stuff in this one. ⁓ But, and this happens every so often, it just always amuses me. So, fan funds wedding after discovering he owns three rare Pokemon cards. So, this dude in the UK, Suri, I think, he was digging around in his attic, cleaning up the house and found his old box of Pokemon cards, I guess, and was like, oh my god, at least a bunch of these, at least some of these are worth serious coins. So he went to an auction house and got the equivalent of like $44,000 to fund the wedding for him and his... Yeah. Yeah. So, I love those. I've seen other things that sort of like that, but I just like, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: wedding. That's a wedding. All right.

James Engelhardt: Fun way of working with.

Joe Mahaffey: No, it is kind of fun to see stuff like that. ⁓ that's cool story. I'm actually going to a wedding next weekend in Idaho. ⁓ My nephew flying out there Wednesday. ⁓ I don't think they've, I know they haven't spent Pokemon money on it, but yeah.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ wow. Okay. Well, and the thing that I find interesting about all of these occasional pieces is the sort of relative value of the stuff, those things we own, the stuff that we do, and you look at, you know, three Pokemon cards, can usually easily just pass that in a haul, right? There's a story from, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago of a guy who somebody broke into his car, stole a bunch of stuff, had a dozen board games in there, left them all. Well, thank you for not doing that, I guess. I feel judged, but sure.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, it's interesting too, because you know, these things can tend to have a cycle to them. Like a Pokemon card that's worth $40,000 today in a year could be worth $10. You know, you just never know. ⁓ I know that that's probably not a hundred percent accurate, but my wife tracks these things. Cause back during the pandemic, the hot thing was the,

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: it was not. It was a corning where the, you remember the blue and white corning where dishes ⁓ corning where became a thing until it wasn't. ⁓ what would happen is ⁓ would go into the goodwill ⁓ they would take their Google app and they would take a picture of something that they were holding in their hand. The Google app would say, ⁓ that's selling on eBay right now.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the classic ones from our, yeah, like the 70s, yeah. Right.

Joe Mahaffey: for a hundred bucks and they're selling it at the Goodwill for like, you know, 10 cents or whatever. I'm, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not by much. And then you would buy it for the 10 cents and then they'd it on eBay and they'd make 50 bucks for it. You know, they're 49 90 profit and not tell the government.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Right. Also a thing. But it's always interesting because these things... ⁓ mean, bubble markets, right? There's a couple of games about tulips and exploring how that happens. But it's... and I think it's... I don't know, it's helpful. The Corningware is a great example. But, you you could walk past any of our shelves and nine out of ten people would just look at them and say, well, that's just a lot of cardboard. And some, you know, there's a rare, those of us among us would look at us and say, ⁓ yeah, no, no, no, that's a hell of a thing. That's amazing. Can I open that up and see what's inside? I always wondered what the first edition of, you know, ⁓ Key Theedral looked like.

Joe Mahaffey: We have a really good, that's a really good point. Cause I have a first edition printing of wingspan and a second and a third or whatever happened. The one that we travel with is like one we bought a year or so ago and it's completely different on the outside. It's all cardboard. It's all environmentally friendly, which is fine. It's very minimalist compared to the original.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, right. It is.

Joe Mahaffey: But anyway, it was just sort of interesting. And part of that has to do with, you know, repeatability and production. But at the same time, I do wonder about these boxes that I have that actually have numbers on them. Now one of whatever of the first printing, if that will really meet at some point.

James Engelhardt: Right. Mm-hmm. This is just when you bring up Wingspan. We were playing, had some friends ever played Wingspan ⁓ because they wanted to learn how to play. So we had a nice time. But yeah, those first printings had the plastic ⁓ bits containers and the card rack was all plastic and this is now this sort of very formed, ⁓ rigid paper. But it ⁓ feels different, looks different, still works. It's not, you know.

Joe Mahaffey: and

James Engelhardt: a bad thing and it's far more sustainable but and you know kudos to Stonemaier and Jamie for pivoting that way but it's a yeah it's a very different experience.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, but I think too, the fact that there is this, back hobby of people that like to print 3d print what they want the way they want it. mean, you know, if I could say, if I knew that somebody was going to design something and people were going to be able to download it or either buy it on Etsy or whatever, then why not protect my profit margin, particularly when, you know, supply chains can be somewhat unpredictable.

James Engelhardt: Right. Sure. Indeed. Yeah, yeah, lots of good things. Yes!

Joe Mahaffey: So anyway, interesting. But, but speaking of wingspan, I have a client that I work with ⁓ and he, we were on a call and he goes, Hey, I want you to recommend a game that me and my wife should try. And I said, well, my wife and I, we started with wingspan and I began to name a few other games. He's like, Nope, Nope. Just bought it. Okay. Then we can half goes by. We're on another call and this got everybody on the call. He's like, Joe wingspan.

James Engelhardt: Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: That was a steep learning curve. I was like, what's it? But no, but then I thought about it and I remember the first time that we were trying, you know, when you have no game IQ.

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: In the sense that we mean that, guess I should say.

James Engelhardt: I like to think of it as a game literacy. Like, you have the background for it, know what you're looking for.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, yeah. I use probably more like a new cue emotional quotient. ⁓ But you know, you can say I speak game.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: I forget about that. I think of game, I think of wingspan so accessible is so accessible because nine times out of 10, I'm teaching somebody how to play it, not just recommending that they get it. And, and anyway, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Engelhardt: Well, and they have those whole script cards in there now, right? So this is the first player, your first turn, you do this. Second player, your first turn, you do this. And you sort of experience the game scripted, so you don't have to think, you just have to learn. So that was probably a good idea. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Anyway, just thought I would throw that out there. Well, because of the construction stuff that's been going on, I don't have a ton to talk about. fact, the two things that I'm going to mention, I actually have not had the opportunity to play yet, but they have shown up and I will talk about them once we do play them. And the first one I'm going to talk about here is the game Endurement.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ okay. Awesome. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ Endearment is from the publisher DocSominem. They're the same people that have given us like Botany and some of the other, ⁓ they have a new one, they have a new Kickstarter that we back called the Flower Dragons.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Ooh, nice.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. So anyway, ⁓ just a really great game designer, very beautiful kind of aesthetic, always got that Victorian feel. and so, you know, as many times as I've been corrected about obsession being about Jane Austen only to be told it was no, no, no, it's empire.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. very much. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: Jane, nothing. ⁓ Endearment is actually a game that is supposed to be in that realm of Jane Austen. In fact, you actually take on one of Jane Austen's heroines ⁓ in the game.

James Engelhardt: Ha! ⁓ I love an IP that's in the public domain, right?

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting too, because I think I shared with you that YouTube video about the Bronte sisters, where the guy, the the northern introvert, I think is his channel.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, I think that's right.

Joe Mahaffey: I think that's right on YouTube. He walks the Bronte sisters and all that. I thought that was kind of, that's been kind of an interesting play. But anyway, ⁓ we've also gone down to Kate Bush ⁓ realm with that. So we're excited. So it's actually sitting in the other room. It's still in, not only is it still in the shrink wrap, it's still in the box that it came in and Dale's like, you should do an unboxing.

James Engelhardt: There you go.

Joe Mahaffey: And I'm like, right in my spare time here while we're doing this construction. I might, when I get back from Idaho, I might give that a go. I might give that a go since I don't get to go to GenCon like some people. ⁓ well, actually I'm going to Tamarack, which is two hours north of, ⁓ Oisey. And it is going to be in the middle of this is actually a really good segue. It's, it's in the middle of.

James Engelhardt: That'll be fun. I don't get to go to Idaho, mean, geez. Huh? Mm-hmm. nowhere.

Joe Mahaffey: two state parks as a national one is a might even be a national forest. And then there is a state park and we're kind of like at this resort smack dab in the middle is that's what they call a destination wedding. I'm told so ⁓ because of that I've decided that I'm going to this is a game by the way I'm there. I am taking my my portable

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah it is. Hahaha. ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: radio setup here. This is an Ellicraft KX2 and I'm going to do a park activation and try to activate that park with what is known as QRP, which means I'm going be very low power, like five watts. that's one of the gamifications of ⁓ the Ham Radio hobby is parks on the air and the awards and the points that you can get for that.

James Engelhardt: Alright. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: And, know, we were talking about Gen Con just a minute ago. Well, not too long ago, there was what is known as a ham fest. Cause of course, you know, you've got to that down in Florida and a, wouldn't really say a publisher because this guy

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. He's in... yeah, he actually does equipment too, right?

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, his primary business is he does sort of like accessories, know, like propane and propane accessories, Bobby. Only there are ham radio and ham radio accessories. But anyway.

James Engelhardt: You Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: He and his family love board games, card games notably, and he created a card game called Propagation. And it's a very bespoke, ⁓ home developed kind of thing, because you get this box that's basically clearly a 3D print. It holds your cards and then you open and there's a die, but the box becomes your dice tower.

James Engelhardt: Awesome. ⁓ yeah. I thought that was a nice touch.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. So anyway, it's, it's, it is a game. It's card game for the amateur radio enthusiast. ⁓ Players collect, QSL points, which is a QSL is you're making contact. ⁓ I actually have, ⁓ is one of the things in the hobby is if you make contact or a QSL,

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ okay.

Joe Mahaffey: you send somebody a QSL card. I have my QSL card here that I designed and I had them printed. And then I tell people on the back when we connected what the circumstances were, et cetera. So this is my, little logo I designed on Canva and then a picture of downtown Pineville, which is where I live. that's literally taken, that's right across the street from a game store in fact.

James Engelhardt: Nice. ⁓ nice. Awesome. ⁓ nice, nice. ⁓ Have you picked this up? you played it?

Joe Mahaffey: see time all back together. So anyway, ⁓ I it's, in the same condition as in the, ⁓ but, ⁓ I am going to take it to, have a meeting Tuesday night. think I'm going take it to the meeting. anyway, ⁓ you roll a 10 sided die, you apply the appropriate band and the bands are different meters, you know, typically in high frequency, you go from six meter all the way up to 160 meter. I generally play anywhere between the 10 meter band.

James Engelhardt: Huh? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: and the 80 meter band, because my antennas are optimized for that. And all that really means is if it's a 10 meter band, then the radio signal goes 10 meters before it bounces again across the earth and 20 meter and so on and so forth. And so you either, you either get a big wave or a little wave, right? ⁓ Anyway, and then they have antennas and other modifiers and you try to figure out how you can make a conduct

James Engelhardt: Gotcha.

Joe Mahaffey: with all the changing atmosphere propagation issues and hence the name. Because we have this thing where the sun will send out ⁓ sunspots or release and that affects communications down here and it can be real thing. So for example, yesterday I was doing Morse code trying to hit somebody in Tennessee. The band was so bad I could not do it. But I was able to make a Morse code contact with

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: Portugal.

James Engelhardt: crazy.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. So anyway, but games, ⁓ I love it when two hobbies come together and that is propagation. as I really get a chance to get into it and see how it impacts the, you know, reflects the hobby I will, I will report it. So yeah, those are just two things, new things.

James Engelhardt: Indeed. Mm-hmm. how it crosses over the two hobbies, right?

Joe Mahaffey: Exactly. So those are the two things that are new to the collection that I still haven't had a chance to get out on the table that I will ⁓ and go from there. But it's always good to know that while I'm stuck doing these things that you actually have the time to get out there and play some games. Let's talk about those.

James Engelhardt: Gotcha. I do, right. ⁓ but these are, neither one of these are in shrink, and they haven't been in shrink for a long time. So, ⁓ so the first one that I've got here, ⁓ played at, ⁓ Game of Night last week, last weekend, and this is Fields of Green, which is, ⁓ designed by Evangelis Balliartakis. I've heard him say it once or twice, and I'm like, okay, I gotta practice, like, how to, like, how he says this. It's kind of fun. ⁓ And this is our tippia games, which I think he's also like the like director He's the honcho's is a Greek game company by that last name if you didn't guess I can't help you ⁓ So this came out in 2016 And he's also done. I think hegemony What is it? Battle for your class or lead your class to victory or something like that? It was like two or three years ago year two anyway, that's really new dice city was another one of his from probably five ⁓ But it's another, again, it ⁓ goes back, again, the cult of the fully cooked. ⁓ But it's well worth tracking down. So I'll describe it, but I want to go back in time a little bit. So Fields of Green began life in 2012 as Among the Stars. And in that game, you were building space stations. So it was a solid game, but it was not intuitive. I played it a couple times. I thought it was interesting. The graphic design, we'll call it moody. ⁓ It's a game, and it's a game about adjacency, these little square cards that you're playing down, and patterns in a tableau. And if you're doing this in a space station, it's not always clear what you're supposed to be doing, right? You're like, I don't know what the holodeck is supposed to do versus the, know, whatever else, right? Or do these aliens, should they be next to each other? Should they not be next to each other? How would they, it just... you had to work a lot to kind of get to where the game was. So that was 2012. Over a couple of years of refinement and reimagining, fields of green. In this, you're a farmer in the mid-20th century, and the reasons for putting anything near or far away from anything else makes a lot more sense. ⁓ Water, like, as opposed to like these weird energy, alien energy things, water can only be pumped a short distance away. Hey, can be loaded on a truck and driven across the farm with no problem. You're like, ⁓ got it. ⁓ You can't refill a water tower. Okay, but you can harvest your fields always, right? ⁓ And cows are great, but it's best if there's nothing else around them. Then they'll give you some money. Otherwise, once you fence them in with other fields, they're like, ⁓ we don't like it. ⁓ Fruit trees generate a lot of money, but they also drink a lot of water. So all of this stuff just feels like it just kind of snaps into place. You're like, I'm running a farm in the mid 20th century. It was awesome. Right, yeah. I think you can get chickens, ducks, turkeys. So there's some fowl to be had there.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. No fog for the hen house.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ And it's also a pick-and-pass drafting game with all of the strategies that you know kind of come with that like do I want to give this building to the next person over they don't really seem like they're building that kind of thing but they may be just like waiting for that to show up and but I Don't need it. But maybe yeah, so you think about all the hate drafting and blocking and all these things ⁓ So you'll be laying down various crops, farm animals, ⁓ fowl. ⁓ You'll get constructions that make life better for you, buildings that finally give you points, some equipment tiles that get placed on cards to make those cards better. ⁓ It's a really smooth pick and pass. ⁓ It's, I mean, the trick to playing the game well is knowing what the cards are, what might be coming up, what's in each particular like animals and... ⁓ ⁓ buildings and mechanisms and all of that kind of stuff, ⁓ So lots of really great decisions around it. And again, it's, I mean, it's a pick and pass. You take the card, you play it down, you pay for it, yeah. And you do that for over four years, four years, ⁓ you get to, you have choices for like which of the kinds of decks. There's four different kinds and you can, I want to get all of them. But you don't want to get all of the buildings because the buildings just give you end game scoring. So you don't set up an engine. So you want those early on the ones that like fields and that kind of stuff. So super fun. ⁓ And it's well worth tracking down if you can find it. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. not be confused with Sting's song, Fields of Gold.

James Engelhardt: Correct. Yeah, but it's... I don't believe it is. Let me go... Yeah, you'd have to find it on the aftermarket, I believe. Let me see. ⁓ Well, they say it's on Amazon, so it might be available.

Joe Mahaffey: Is it still in print? so you're on the aftermarket. Thank

James Engelhardt: We'll find out. Let's ⁓ do some... Yeah, so Stronghold Games seems to have picked up the license and run with it in the States, so it seems to be available as we speak. So, ⁓ rush right out! I mean, I don't know ⁓ if Stronghold did anything to change what the gameplay is. I don't think so. It would be strange.

Joe Mahaffey: Yours is a vintage piece from 2012.

James Engelhardt: I, this is a vintage piece from 2016, yeah? And so, again, again you would walk past this and not think, ⁓ this is a vintage piece of corning ware that I should.

Joe Mahaffey: I want to say I've seen it in the store. I I'm looking at the logo. I've seen it in a game store.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a solid. It's a good 7-1 on the geek. I think the weight, it's not... They have it as a 2.6 out of 5, and that feels about right. Most of it is like figuring out which cards you want to play and thinking about how you keep... You know, if there's four of you playing the game and you start with a hand of seven cards, you know you're going to see at least a couple hands twice. Like, will those cards still be there by the time they come back to me? So... all of that kind of thing. Which is... Yeah, again, I really enjoy this kind of game where you can... You have ⁓ head down. Nobody's really getting in your way when you're putting out your cards, right? But you can make sure that, ⁓ I see that you've... Let's see, you need another orange grove to really maximize that bonus card that you've got. ⁓ I have this orange grove that I'm going to be passing to you, but I also need a water tower. So you know what? We're just going to... Yeah. And then people look and go, ⁓ man, that was the orange grove I need. ⁓ that's so crazy. Yeah. No, it's, and... And it plays, they say 45 minutes, and I think that's right. ⁓ You know, that's one of the nice things about a pick and pass, because everybody's kind of playing at the same time, and so it moves pretty smoothly. Until you get the like, ⁓ wait, I picked one, did I pick a second one? Why do I have two stacks of cards here to my left? Kind of moment, right?

Joe Mahaffey: Well, let me ask you a question about that because last time we talked about Trinket Grove and sort of what Dale and I find about that. And then one thing we don't like about is that you have that faux third player if you're just doing your field of green play with two players.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. It does a whole different ⁓ market system. So instead of passing it back and forth, it sets out a market and you're picking back and forth. Because there's no point of being secret, right? So there's like, we immediately, once you hand your cards to me, we both know everything that's in the hand, right? So yeah, so I think the deal is you like flip out like six cards and then you go back and forth drafting and, yep.

Joe Mahaffey: So there is a lot of friction.

James Engelhardt: Which is, I mean, you're right, because it's tricky to do if you're trying to do two players for a pick and pass like this. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: All right, all right. That makes sense. Makes sense. OK. Yeah, I just was kind of curious how that was.

James Engelhardt: I remember playing with Laura a while ago and really enjoying the flow of that. It just felt a little bit different in terms of the market. ⁓ But the mechanical effect was similar, right? We're both picking one, picking one, and then you flop out another ⁓ half market, then another half market. And when you're done with that, ⁓ you resolve the end of season stuff.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, I'm just trying to think in the context of how can you get a game out that doesn't require a lot of space and a lot of time.

James Engelhardt: This does take up space because you're building out a tableau, right? ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Well, what I mean is, like if we're like, if Dale and I were going to play a game, like we wanted to play scythe right now. That's not.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ right, right, right, right. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: all the construction may have going on, if we had something like you quickly sit on the, at the kitchen table and you know.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, because it's just a couple of decks of cards. You've got the four different kinds of cards. ⁓ And again, what they're fields, constructions, livestock, and buildings, maybe I think is it. And so you'd need a spot for all four of those. And then you need a deck of ⁓ the water towers and the ⁓ grain silos. And then a little place for... equipment, are just these little tiny tiles that go on top of your cards. And then you just have to have enough space for the tableau itself, which again, know, tableau build, if you're building a sort of, you know, your own little carcass on in front of you, it can take, it can take a, take up a bit of space, but it sets up quickly. And the stuff that comes in the box is like this very little ⁓ pile of cards, but it's a giant box. It's hilarious.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Got it. That makes sense.

James Engelhardt: Yep. Yeah. I mean, you've got to... You've to have good shelf presence, so... That's what they do. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: A lot of dead space. You can 3D print. You can 3D print a lot of plastic and PDF rule book.

James Engelhardt: There you go. Mm-hmm. Yep. So it's a good one. it's... Clearly I'm not alone in this opinion, so that makes me happy.

Joe Mahaffey: So. Well, there you go. So.

James Engelhardt: I'm following, following behind public sentiment very strongly here.

Joe Mahaffey: I've seen you do that once.

James Engelhardt: Yep. And so then the other game is much more recent. So this is, and there's a discussion about how we actually pronounce this thing, kubitos or kubitos or one of those two. Pick one. Yeah, kubitos. And this is John D. Clare. This is an AEG game from 2021. So just four or five years ago. ⁓ John D. Clare has done a bunch of games like Space Base, Mystic Veil, Ready, Set,

Joe Mahaffey: We go. Okay.

James Engelhardt: Dead Reckoning, the recent Mistborn, the deck building game. So, lots of good stuff. Yeah, see? So I recognize, like, ⁓ look, it's John, oops, wrong one. It's John D. Claire. I know that guy. So this game is a of, is a push your luck dice rolling pool building race game. It's like if Dr. Frankenstein build a creature out of Yahtzee quacks of Quedlinburg and Quest for El Dorado. ⁓ which I would need another Q you name in there somewhere, this is kind of, you have a very good sense of what this game is. If whatever comes to mind, it's that. ⁓ And it's, so, no, there's no bluffing, alas. But yeah, some paired, Perudo, yeah. So you start with ⁓ a hand, a,

Joe Mahaffey: Is there any fire's dice? No.

James Engelhardt: bag of whatever, ⁓ basic gray dice. You roll like nine at a time. ⁓ And those basic ones have either feet for moving, in case you needed to wonder what the feet represented, right? ⁓ And then some coins, these little circular coin shapes on them, which are sort of like leprechaun money that they have to be spent immediately or they evaporate. And the coins let you buy new dice, which have a variety of effects. Some give you more permanent money, credits, which are little squares. ⁓ Some let you move faster, you get more feet. ⁓ Some let you get rid of weaker dice. ⁓ And so on, all that kind of stuff. Again, if you played Quacks, or played a deck building game, you know what the kind of stuff that these are doing, ⁓ And some of them let you deal with the effect of busting, because it's not a push or luck if you can't bust, right?

Joe Mahaffey: just like quacks.

James Engelhardt: Just like Quacks, yep. So you're racing around the main track, but there's also a secondary track called the fan track. So fans are yelling for you there. ⁓ And the fan track gets you some good stuff ⁓ and you will move on the fan track if you bust. So they'll give you credits, give you more dice that you can put in your pool. ⁓ So that takes care of some of that pain. And this Yahtzee thing, you roll some dice, you lock some, you keep rolling while trying to avoid busting, you move your figure around the track, picking up some benefits on that main board, and it's a race, so you try to finish first and farthest, because if you're a couple of you are close and one of you goes farther than the other once you cross the main line, or cross the finish line, then that's the person who wins.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay.

James Engelhardt: The dice rolling happens simultaneously, you're deciding what things are doing, ⁓ but then you do your move in player order. ⁓ So it doesn't play, and it plays up to four, I think, so it doesn't play a lot longer if you're just playing two or if you're playing four. ⁓ It's really light. ⁓ You have to choose when to stop rolling and then which new dice to buy, but that's kind of about it. ⁓ Most of the dice faces are blank. ⁓ And but it, you know, the more strong dice have fewer actual like pips on them and the yeah, so you're trying to figure out what the odds are going to be and it's and one of the nice things is if if you don't If you don't succeed you can just blame the luck and as you fall farther and farther behind Yeah

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I'm curious though. when you, say that you get the leprechaun money, you were just using that as metaphor that it's probably not really described as leprechaun money. ⁓ and you buy the, you can buy dice with it. Do you get to use those die right away or do you have to wait until your next term before you can actually use what you purchased?

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Correct. That is correct, yeah. Right, so much like a deck building game, you you buy the dice, they go into your discard. When you need to reroll and you don't have enough, you reshuffle and away you go. ⁓ So, And each of the game comes with different cards with each of the specialty dice. So you've got yellow dice or green dice or blue dice, and there's a stack of like three or four different...

Joe Mahaffey: Got it. Got you.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, cards that you can pull from. can say, we're gonna play this guy, you know, this blue one. And the next time we're gonna play a different blue card that gives... It's the same dice, but they assign the faces of it different powers, right? Or it's variations of the same power, right? Yep. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: based on the card that's put down at the time. Got it.

James Engelhardt: So you can mix and match, there's a ton of options. There's a bunch of other, there are like four racetracks that come in the game, come in the box. ⁓ It's a really fun, just beer and pretzels-y kind of game. And the art and design itself leans into the goofiness we've got. This guy with the later, the cheese with the later hosen, right? I mean, this is screaming to you that this is not a serious game. ⁓ But it is going to be fun. You can get one of the cards that can come out is smelly cat, right? ⁓ So, or I think this guy's actually the big cheese. Yeah, no, it's just a smelly cat. I don't know. Right, indeed. So it leans into the...

Joe Mahaffey: copyright infringement. Okay, got it. Lowercase S and C.

James Engelhardt: leans into the fun and it's very easy to just kind of sit back and start chattering about something else and go, ⁓ yeah, let's roll dice again. Yeah. So.

Joe Mahaffey: So that brings up a really good point because you know, a lot of times on this podcast, you'll start off by saying, well, we recently had a game night and we did this, this and this. I'm curious, you know, what, how do you go about deciding what you want to have on the table at a game night?

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. So... ⁓ What I have sometimes in the past had the very heavy table. But this would mean... So this would mean playing like Unconscious Mind or... ⁓ Faeus Swamp or something, Where it's gonna take us 45 minutes to get through the rules before we can even start playing. That's gonna be another two hours after that. And... you know, people don't live next door and, ⁓ you know, they have things they need to do. And so it occurred to me after a while that leaning towards more middle of the road kind of stuff, sort of medium, very slightly above medium heavy. ⁓ So ⁓ Artipia games, ⁓ the Fields of Green was a great choice because it's... Fairly straightforward to teach It's a 2.6, right? So right in that sweet spot of like medium and And it plays I mean it says 45 minutes what you could do if you knew the game well, but because it's a bunch of newbies ⁓ It takes a while to think through look at the cards evaluate the cards What how do they how do they start to talk to each other, right? And so I go for that kind of game, because I know that people who are coming to my table are going to be pretty literate. So I can say this is going to be a tableau builder, adjacency is key, and so is efficiency. And they're going, okay, got this. It's going to be a pick and pass. Yep, understand that too. So that helps speed things up. But what I've realized is that I need to have my table end about the same time as other ones do. Their teach will take longer because because it's people with a lower literacy, right? ⁓ And our games will have more decisions, but they're going to take longer thinking through their own decisions over there. ⁓ So I think about these kinds of things a lot. If that makes sense.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. And do you ever push the rules out in advance or if there's a how to play video, do you ever send that out in advance just so people have a chance to familiarize themselves?

James Engelhardt: I did that when we played Nucleum. And it still took 45 minutes of like... Because it's one thing, right? If you're watching it and you're looking at the rules, you're watching play and stuff, it feels different when you sit down with the things in front of you and go, right, I watched three videos, now here's the object in front of me. What the hell do I do with this? know? Like, what...

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. Yeah, no, I got you. mean, when we, when we would run the, the, the game club for the small group that we did, I would push the videos out, you know, like I would really like it if the, had a, in about three minutes, the guy from New Zealand is he's usually pretty good about just kind of giving enough of the gist.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah, okay. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: you get everybody together, can say, And even if the other nice thing about it, if you get there and you have that one person who invariably goes, I didn't watch it. And you're like, well, that's okay. It's about three minutes. We'll watch it right now. And I think that that I have found that that tends to help. Are you the kids show up in your classroom unprepared?

James Engelhardt: Right. ⁓ yeah, yeah. Welcome to my classrooms. Yep. Yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ my god. It's always funny too, because like, I'll walk in, like half of them have the lit journal out or whatever it is, the reading, they're clearly flipping madly through it. I'm like, uh-huh. You usually participate. I bet I'm not gonna hear from you much today. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Do you ever take their annual tuition and divide it by the number of hours that they're in your class and tell them how much money they're wasting?

James Engelhardt: I'm like, this is what you're burning right now. I'm gonna pull out a couple hundred dollar bills and just like flame it up for you. Yeah. No, but I think, I mean, the other thing is I'm trying to think about, because we've had the last couple of game nights, I've had three or four tables of players, right? So we've got, you know, 12, 16 people. And I... I'm trying to figure out how I can make sure that people are done within like five or ten minutes of each other, which is a hell of a juggling act, right? Like, how do we think we're gonna try to do, right? And so I've leaned into these more middle-of-the-road and... I don't know, still interesting, right? I still want that, right? QB does is a really fun, like, end of the night. Like, we don't have... Yeah. Let's just roll some dice. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Do you have, you sort of have the, everybody's there at the beginning and then some people leave and then you got a group that's still there and you maybe pull out something and it kind of goes a little later.

James Engelhardt: Yep, yep. think just one is always good for this. ⁓ There's a ⁓ game that's getting ⁓ reprinted called Bring Your Own Book, which requires you to have something of a library at your house. But it's like any other party game where you get a prompt that's like, lines from a country music song, or things you would never say on a first date, or, ⁓ you know...

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I learned from a country music song.

James Engelhardt: Right. ⁓ What not to text your mom, you know, this kind of stuff. ⁓ But what you're doing is instead of like having a deck of cards and offering or writing anything down, you have books from your host's house. And then you're just flipping through and looking for, you know, hopefully hilarious quotes and reading those out. And then after a certain amount of time, everybody rotates. You don't get the same book for the entire night.

Joe Mahaffey: Now have you and Laura thought about doing that but only using books that you guys have written?

James Engelhardt: Right, yeah. Jaws of life. Bone willows. Yeah. Stone catchers. Yeah. Mm-mm. No. Yeah, right. Yeah. That would be it. But it's fun when people bring, will pick like a ⁓ cookbook off the shelf. You're like, you know, ⁓ hope for something delightfully weird. What not to tell your mom. Braise for 12 hours or whatever. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Welcome to the game Narcissism. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Yeah, so that's what it's it was those kind of lighter party games. Let's just have a conversation. ⁓ If someone says, you know, it's it's finally my bedtime. Everybody's like, yeah, sure. OK, we played enough of this and had a good time. Nobody has to win this game.

Joe Mahaffey: And you're winding down the semester, right?

James Engelhardt: That is correct. Last day of class is Tuesday. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Wow, you're really, then you go into may X again.

James Engelhardt: And then we go into May X. Alas, my class has not gotten its feet under it this time. So ⁓ I will just be running May X and not running my class, which is a little sad, but ⁓ we'll try it again next year.

Joe Mahaffey: I don't know if that I don't understand that what you mean by that.

James Engelhardt: I don't have enough students signed up for it yet. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: I see. there's not, have to have a minimum to make it work. And if it doesn't happen, you just get that off that time off.

James Engelhardt: Correct. Yep, I mean, I'm still the coordinator, so I'll make sure that we've got our breakfast coffee and... Yeah, I don't know, it's wild. yeah, and which is fine, because I'm also going up for a senior lecturer, so it'll give me time to write all the material that I've got to do for that. So it's all good. Right.

Joe Mahaffey: How can people not want to take like college credit for board games? What's wrong with these people? Gotcha, gotcha, ⁓

James Engelhardt: And I'd have to finish getting my book ready for press, which I need to have done by the middle of May, so, you know, I won't have my class, but I will have time to get some stuff done that I need to. Balance, yeah?

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. I'm curious about that book, but we'll talk about that some other time. I'll have to get a copy for Stroud's library.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Struddle definitely needed this for his library, yeah. And so you've got, there's a whole bunch of stuff I saw on your back deck is all done, it looked like. Or there's a back deck. Excellent.

Joe Mahaffey: you Well, that's the that is the kitchen on the hill. Yes. Outdoor kitchen is done. The I put a roof on the contractors when they ripped off the old deck. They took the pergola and put it on the new deck. And then last weekend, a neighbor and I put a roof on it. Because, know, I'm handy like that.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: And ⁓ that's all done. ⁓ All the framing is on the, well, all the foundation framing is done, I should say, of where the room is going to be and where the decks and screen ports are going to be. Where we need to get an inspection on Monday and then they're going to start putting down subflooring on the new room and working on getting the roofs on both of them so that they can cut a door in.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Good. Nice.

Joe Mahaffey: So that's going to be interesting, particularly with me being gone half the week. ⁓ But it's a good crew of folks, ⁓ you know, very professional. So, ⁓ but it's just, you know, a little chaotic.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: you hear lots of banging and noise and all that. But I was nice. I'm the I'm the guy that shows up Friday after I saw one to gym Friday morning and my gym is right next to a Dunkin Donuts. So I picked up a nice showed up and I said beware of geeks bearing gifts.

James Engelhardt: Uhhh... There you go. A deep cut, but yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So I that and they seemed to enjoy that. like I said, they're a good, that's a good crew. There, there was this one, he's a kid to me, you know, he's like 20s. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Right.

Joe Mahaffey: I don't know why my camera just shut off. Let me turn it off.

James Engelhardt: I know, yeah, yeah. It was like, no, no, it's ⁓ now it's gonna be ⁓ yeah, laid on the table after dark there.

Joe Mahaffey: So I show up, I've been watching this kid all week and I said, I can't wait for the new edition of the mystery man comic book. I hear you're going to be featured. He kind of looked at me like, what are you talking about? And I said, are you not the superhero, the leveler? I level well. ⁓ I've never seen somebody so obsessive compulsive about making something level. I have no problem with it because it's me put together.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ sure.

Joe Mahaffey: But it's just, and the tactics that he uses to instill levelness when you have, you know, three two by sixes somehow nailed together is fascinating to watch. So these are, these are true, you know, they're not construction workers. They're artisans in their own.

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha ha ha! Mm-hmm. Right on. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So it's of fun. ⁓ yeah.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. I always think there's gotta be some kind of like... Surely in doing all of this, there's some kind of game mechanic to take out of what I'm watching and, you know, sort of make some sort of, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I there is a stack of wood out on my driveway that seems to be resources that they are using. So there you go. How's that? about that?

James Engelhardt: There you go. Yeah, see. Exactly so. ⁓ You need to build a house and it has to only have, yeah. I've got a game now that you said that called Pack and Stack, which is sort of a puzzly 3D building stuff up. You you have to roll and get certain amount of little cubes and lumber and stuff. So, you know, we're getting there. Yeah, sure.

Joe Mahaffey: But we're at the stage now where we'd just like to see it get done. What they've told us will be probably mid-June. So we're about six weeks, which... Well, I told him I... So Dale and I celebrate 35 years on June 29th. So it'd be nice if it was done by then.

James Engelhardt: Okay. So probably July. Congratulations.

Joe Mahaffey: He told me June 15th, I'm thinking June 30th probably makes sense. But a lot of that, mean, you know, obviously we haven't had any rain, which has been great getting this part done. We're not getting rain. So now it's a rush to frame and get a roof on. And then it's, and it's just all the detail work in the, in the bonus room that I'm, cause I can't call it a sunroom. Did I tell you that story?

James Engelhardt: Yep. Right. Excellent. Uh-uh, no, no.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, evidently in the, when you call something a sunroom, you have a legal distinction because they kept failing our permit. And in the state of North Carolina, maybe this is true everywhere, but in the state of North Carolina, the statute says a sunroom is a room with 40 % glazing around the outer walls and ceiling. We have to take the square footage of each outer wall and the square footage of the ceiling.

James Engelhardt: Okay. okay. Okay. And slightly less than half has to be, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: and your glass needs to be 40 % or more to be considered a sunroom.

James Engelhardt: Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, we were by 20, 25%. And they kept failing us and they wouldn't tell us why, or they, or they gave us an answer that didn't explain it, that a lay person would understand why. So I ended up taking my engineering drawings, the text of the North Carolina statute. Hello.

James Engelhardt: Gotcha. Yep. Hahahaha!

Joe Mahaffey: And I dropped it into chat GPT and I said, explain this to me like I'm 10. Why does this keep failing? And they go, Oh, because you're calling it a sunroom and you only have 40 % you don't have the 40 % glazing. And I said, well, what would give me the 40 % glazing? And it told me all these things I could do like do skylights instead of roofs. didn't want to do that. And I said, well, what if I just didn't call it a sunroom? Oh, then you would have an enclosed porch and then you're fine.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ Right. Hahahaha!

Joe Mahaffey: Nobody was telling me this. So the only, the only, well, is there a cost difference? And they said, maybe because of this, this and this. And what the cost differential was, ⁓ you have to use a higher grade of insulation. We already had a high grade. It's like, it's like pennies difference.

James Engelhardt: That's so crazy. ⁓ okay. ⁓ right, right, because if it's a sunroom, you're assuming it doesn't have to be insulated as much, but if it's a bonus room, you need to insulate it like someone could be there, Got

Joe Mahaffey: It has to be heated living. You have to be able to keep it at 68 degrees year round, which we can do because I was going to put a split unit in it anyway, but now it's officially in there and it passes accordingly. So it's fine. It's actually better because then they will work. It's better for me because it becomes true heated living area. And whereas if I hadn't, if I had left it in a sunroom, it would not be considered heated living area.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Awesome. Sure. Right, it's now, yeah, house and not, yeah. Fair.

Joe Mahaffey: But not until next year, you know. But anyway, that's sort of the world in which we are currently living.

James Engelhardt: I... yeah. And again, this feels like...

Joe Mahaffey: But I only had to get my county commissioner involved and get on a first name basis with the head of the land use department of Mecklenburg County.

James Engelhardt: Okay. But it feels like you're reading ⁓ rules from ⁓ a war game. Like, okay, so sub, this is 4.1.1.2.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, it is. mean, and you know, and you don't read, know, these things are written for people who just like we talked about, you know, your literacy, we, have no literacy for North Carolina state code. so chat GPT can be your friend.

James Engelhardt: Right. Yep. Right. Yep. That makes good sense. It's also, but yes, I mean, if we're thinking about games as systems, but there's some systems that are meant to entertain as opposed to other systems that are meant to vex, apparently. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: So. For the record, I was not trying to game the system.

James Engelhardt: Right, right, right. No, no, no. Right, right. ⁓ right. Yeah, sure, sure, ⁓ But right, but these are systems like, how do I operate within the system? What is the logic of the system? What is it that I'm supposed to be doing? Right, what do I bring to this game? What do I bring to this experience? What do I, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I will make the metaphor like this. One of the reasons this was so difficult is because Mecklenburg County, like many counties, this is not just a Charlotte Mecklenburg thing, implemented a system known as the Acela, which is not, which I know is high speed train in the Northeast, but evidently there's a software called Acela that is for permitting. And it is not faster.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: because it actually creates a layer between you and the person evaluating your plan. And the interaction is through this, I'm just gonna call it a ticketing system, because that's fundamentally what it is. But when I, so I did get my county commissioner involved because I live in a part of the county that is not incorporated in any city. And Charlotte pretty much takes up like 99.9 % of the county.

James Engelhardt: Gotcha. Fair enough, yeah. tracks. Okay. Right.

Joe Mahaffey: So they're like this little, little schmigin of just no man's land. And so that, when you get into a project like that, that somehow creates confusion for people. And the system wasn't really designed to, to, handle that. It's a, it's a bug. Yeah. So that was part of the issue. So I got my own commissioner involved just cause I felt like that was gummed up in the work somehow. And I was being very nice about it. was, I still go by the adage, you catch more flies with honey than. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Unincorporated County? What? Yeah. ⁓ yes.

Joe Mahaffey: And then finally, when I got declined the third time, think it was, it was like a Wednesday afternoon, I picked up the phone and I called the head of the land use director that I had gotten to know through the, you know, the honey process. And he got on the phone with me and my contractor and he said, you know, fellas, I goes, I've been doing this for 30 years. I'm old school in the old days. You know, you. you'd come in, you'd sit down, we'd look over your permit, we'd tell you what's wrong with it, and we'd explain it very explicitly. You were able to make some adjustments right there on the fly, and you guys were on your way. And he goes, so he set up a phone call the next morning for me and the lady, the permit person who was confused, or kept failing us, and why, it was because of the glazing. I don't want say she was confused, because she was not. It was confusing communications, what I mean to say.

James Engelhardt: Right.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ well, I on the phone with her. I, because I had done on this chat GPT stuff about an hour before the call, I got on the call with my, my contractor. said, listen, you have to deal with the County on future projects for future clients. Let me be the dumb homeowner that asks questions that will potentially piss people off. And I said, and this is what I'm going to go down the line questioning. And that's exactly what I did. I said, well, what if it's, if we don't call it a sunroom? What if I just call it an enclosed porch? What would be different? And they pretty much answered the same check mark. I was sitting there with my chat GBT saying, check, You know, and it was like.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: But we lost about a month in the process. That's really frustrating about it because we could have been, here we are at the end of April going into May and we could have been at the end of March going into April, which is really where I thought we would be.

James Engelhardt: Uhhh... Well, yeah, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Oh well. You gotta make it metric, double it, and add 30.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Is there, yeah. No. This tracks, it's the kind of thing that you're like, well, and you know, it starts to feel Kafkaesque, right? This is a very helpful, you know, word, but I'm glad that you didn't in fact either turn into a bug or, ⁓ you know, get put on trial for something, yeah. So well done to avoid that.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, and honestly, it's been very informative, you know, ⁓ learning how the process works. So I'll never use this knowledge again, other than to be able to tell somebody. I'm not doing it.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah, can, you know, just fulfill your dad role, that's what you're...

Joe Mahaffey: Well, there's that, yeah.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, yeah, so you like leveled up in dad, so that's Yeah, yeah. Trying keep the game metaphors going here is what the...

Joe Mahaffey: Hey, there we go. Well. Yeah, well, clearly I'm not bored. I'm clearly not bored gaming at the moment. I hope you're not bored. I will be activating a park. I'll get some points that way. ⁓ But...

James Engelhardt: Just nailing boards is what you're doing here. This is good.

Joe Mahaffey: look forward for us to getting back together in a couple of weeks since I'm not bored ⁓ bored gaming.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, and I hope to see us again in a little bit too, and I am James Aguilar hoping all your tiebreakers break your way.

Joe Mahaffey: And I'm Joe Mahaffey and we'll see you guys eventually.

James Engelhardt: Take good care y'all. Bye.

Joe Mahaffey: Bye.