Trends in Tabletop Gaming

Joe Mahaffey: Hello and welcome back to another edition of Lay It on the Table, the Southern Board Game Podcast. Ooh, so darn close with the dictionary.

James Engelhardt: It was close. I I was like keep going. Roll, roll. There we go.

Joe Mahaffey: With the accent on Southern. Yeah, there we go. Geez. Well, hi James. ⁓ wait, I should say I'm your host, Joe Mahaffey, and then say, as usual, my partner in crime.

James Engelhardt: James Engelhart, good to see ya, Joe. You've been a busy man.

Joe Mahaffey: Damn it, I need to get back into practice. I am I am yeah, that is true. It's been crazy. But it was it was funny too because for my company, the the real job thing that we will not talk about here, I interviewed somebody this week. And you know, you interview people, they that you you get to check out their LinkedIn, maybe they check out your LinkedIn and and this person showed up ⁓ having watched a few episodes of the podcast.

James Engelhardt: Yes. Mm-hmm. ⁓ my. Yeah. ⁓ that's funny. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, it wasn't creepy at all. Anyway, moving on. so let's go ahead and get into it. I know that you have a lot to talk about. I have some things to talk about, and we'll we'll kind of get into that. ⁓ I feel like pretty soon I'm just gonna be the interviewer of ⁓ James Eaglehart if I don't get back into playing some games here. But my my construction project is over halfway done. And ⁓ I did break my toe on the construction project because of my own stupidity, no fault of my con contractor.

James Engelhardt: I do. I have some things. Yeah. Mm. That's awesome. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Or anything like that. It was my own doing and ⁓ I am on

James Engelhardt: Or undoing, yeah. That is good. How long do you keep the boot on?

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, it's good to be on. I kept it on a week for sure. ⁓ and then it began to be able to be a real pain in the ass. And so I began to use Crocs because they also keep your foot rather stable. In fact, I was at the Publix the other day, and one of the managers there, she said to me, Wow, black socks and Crocs. That's a that's a choice. And I told her, I said, Well, you know, it's really important to me for all the ladies to know that I am not available.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay. ⁓ okay. Well good. Ha ha. There you go. That'll take you right off the market, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So there we go. Exactly. All right, but none of that has to do with board games. So let's get into it. ⁓ I see we have some news and notes, James, so why don't you get into that?

James Engelhardt: No. Yeah. I was just seeing that ⁓ Asmode has had a gangbuster year. ⁓ revenue surge surges to 1.68 billion euro. ⁓ but it's mostly driven by distribution. So ⁓ as much as they make games and they do a fine job making games, ⁓ they are making more money distributing ⁓ tradable card games. ⁓ so once again, Magic the Gathering continues to buoy up the tabletop world in so many ways. ⁓ And also looks like ⁓ Asmode has finally taken note of all of the interesting games coming coming out of Japan. So they brought a Japan brand from I think Kulmini or not, so C Mon, and they're starting a studio, a design studio there, and trying to sign on and distribute ⁓ Japanese games as well. So ⁓ moving across ⁓ the rest of that continent and over to you know, off of Europe, out of North America, over to Japan. So They're continuing to expand, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: That's great. I love that. Yeah, and it's it's it's it's great. You know, I mean, ⁓ obviously distribution is probably a little bit more profitable for them to begin with. They don't have any of the production costs, they just have the logistical costs.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: They pass a lot of that on to the rest of us, I'm sure. So, you know, they keep their profit margin right in place. It's almost like gasoline. Yeah. Sorry. Not a political show.

James Engelhardt: They do, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So ⁓ yeah, but that's ⁓ was yeah. No, but I thought that was an interesting like, you what we're gonna do? Distribution, distribution. ⁓ and thinking about like, you know, diamond and other companies that have continued to kind of fall, it's like, yep, there's some space there for them.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, no, that makes sense.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: Sorry, making a little little adjustment here in the studio. ⁓

James Engelhardt: You're all good. ⁓ yeah. You wanted to say something maybe about role twenty?

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I did. ⁓ you know, so because ⁓ again, I for those of you who have are aware, we're we have a little construction project going here at the house and that's just consumed so much of our spare time. but ⁓ I have taken a little time ⁓ because I have not I've never given up my role twenty subscription from when we were playing ⁓ the Curse of Stride. And ⁓

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: you know, get reminded every month, hey, you've got your free bonus to claim. You better get in there and claim it. And and so ⁓ I realized, you know, I haven't ⁓ ⁓ around the navigation in a while. ⁓ they've done some major enhancements. ⁓ I think that there's this whole notion ⁓ ⁓ are a lot of, you know, tabletop virtual tabletop platforms.

James Engelhardt: ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: You know, I think there are people who are really into Foundry. Foundry is ⁓ is an excellent product. ⁓ it's typically self hosted. So you really have to be somewhat technically adept if you wish to self host it. ⁓ I have deployed it on a home lab here in my house. I have deployed it on a an external cloud platform.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ and just played with it, but I've never really used it real time in a game because there's a lot of, you know, tweaks along the way that you have to have the time to do. So that's that's one option, right? ⁓ one of the these are not all the options, of course. ⁓ one of the other options, of course, is D and D Beyond. You know, we use that a lot, ⁓ not so much for the role play tabletop as much as we did for like your character sheet and

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: keeping track of your hit points. And so we we tended to use that in concert with Roll 20. And now I've seen that Role 20 has got a lot of that infrastructure in place with more modern designs on the, you know, ⁓ character sheets and just the interaction that you can get with it. And even some of the enhancements of the experience to

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: Make it not so much like a video game, but at least make it a little bit more interesting for the players, as well as in constantly improving their fog of war, etc. And then of course D Beyond is rolling out their subscription. I still have a subscription there, but I don't have like the the top tier subscription. I just have the one that protects everything I've purchased. Cause I think if I l if I end that, I think I lose access to those electronic books, which I think is kind of I'm gonna there's probably gonna be a

James Engelhardt: ⁓ nice. Fair enough. Cheers. Mm. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: There's probably going to be a class action lawsuit that fixes that at some point. So I may just wait for that before I make that move because, you know, that's technically not how digital content should work. But, or at least I should be able to download it and use it locally. Anyway, I don't want to get too far over my skis on that. But my whole point in bringing this up is I spent a little time inside of Roll 20 and I was just very impressed with the expansion of the universe because evidently they bought another platform that you can also.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Indeed.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ execute on. But it's but it's it's kind of universal in the sense. If you wanted to play the critical role platform, whose name is escaping me, it's over my shoulder and I'm not gonna look back to see it. But if you wanted to play that versus traditional Dragonheart, that Dagger Heart, Daggerheart, that's it, Daggerheart. So if you want to play Daggerheart, you can do that. If you want to play a lot of the other ⁓ games, I think but role twenty is

James Engelhardt: Okay. What dragonheart or ⁓ okay. Daggerheart, dagger heart, there we yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Done in my mind is, you know, we go back in time a couple years for this podcast, when we were talking about the OGL and it just caused an explosion of people doing their own thing. I think Roll 20 is best positioned to be a universal platform that allows you to pivot around those different games because they're not trying to steer you in the right direction. They're just trying to enable the gameplay. ⁓ I know.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Virtual tabletop gameplay can be a little bit controversial because a lot of people like to get together in person, but we do obviously live in a world where people don't always live in the same town. And in some places it can take you a long time just to go across town. So anyway, just some observations ⁓ from my standpoint, because I think ⁓ you know, eventually we're gonna get back into some sort of an RPG, particularly since there's new Strahd content that they've been releasing on Roll

James Engelhardt: It is true. Also also true. Yeah. Awesome. ⁓ okay.

Joe Mahaffey: I'm thinking to myself, hmm, maybe they didn't kill him.

James Engelhardt: He's still around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. It can be.

Joe Mahaffey: You know what I mean? So yeah, so that's just sort of my observation on ⁓ the roleplay tabletop, virtual roleplay tabletop ⁓ environment at the moment. so we'll see as it continues to evolve. Obviously, it's just going to continue to get better. I just want to see it get better in the way that enables the intention behind the game and not turn it into a video game. And I think that that's really where. the fork in the road is gonna be between D and D beyond and Roll Twenty in particular.

James Engelhardt: Hm. Okay. You think one of them's going to go more video game style, the other's going to stay virtual tabletop vibes? Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: I I I mean, you're already beginning to see that. and what D and D Beyond is doing in Hasbro. I mean, they're obviously they've laid off a lot of their staff. They've ⁓ they're fighting off a union right now, I think, ⁓ at least on the magic side, I believe. so, but I think that, you know, if you look at the way that they're structuring their platform, I don't think it's gonna be quite the, you know, by the mods that Cynthia was hoping for, but I think that

James Engelhardt: Yes. ⁓ I think that's right, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: They've used they've established what their new North Star is and

James Engelhardt: Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: So we'll see.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Cool. Well, ⁓ back in ⁓ not virtual flip places, I did get a chance to take ⁓ my gaming interest to May X ⁓ this year, even though my class didn't make. So I have a colleague who teaches a class about ⁓ using Photoshop skills to design creatures. He likes to make creatures and ⁓ does some animation with them. ⁓ and but also to think about design in general. So I took a stack of games to this guy's class and we just went through and talked about the rhetorical space of each of them. That is like who's the audience and how can you tell, right? So ⁓ we had a good time just like looking at like adult kid pairings. So I had the kids version of Quacks of Quedenberg and the adult version of like put the two up and then look at the different color schemes, right? ⁓ the ticket to rides, the my little side one is always hilarious because it's yeah ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: You wouldn't expect Scythe, right, to have the the kid version of it. So but ⁓ but that's fun. Mm-hmm. ⁓ it's super cute. ⁓ you're trying to get apples to make apple pies kind of vibe. But then you can get into pie fights, so that's the only fighting that you do is throwing apple pies at each other. Yeah. So but l just looking at like art styles, color schemes, the general character designs, you know, whether something like the cover of the original Quacks is kind of cartoony, but

Joe Mahaffey: I've seen it, I've never played it.

James Engelhardt: But still very realistic, sort of almost ⁓ versions of like comic bookish. ⁓ but then the kids' version, it's you know, big big round faces, big round eyes, that kind of stuff. So looking at those kinds of things. And even looked up, even opened up the rule books, took out pieces like look at all the all the art stuff that goes along with this, all the design it stuff that has to go in into this, ⁓ how different art can be used different times. And like say you've got one character that kind of shows up on a card, but then it's also used to illustrate a rule or something, right? So looking into

Joe Mahaffey: Right.

James Engelhardt: all how all that art gets used. ⁓ it was great. at one point the instructor wanders over and it's like, okay, you know, can you you just got two left. That's great. We can wrap it up shortly. It's like, yeah. ⁓ and we had been there for two hours. I had no idea. It was hilarious. ⁓ and some of the stu I mean the students weren't dropping out either. Like there was there was only like eight of them. So very engaged. ⁓ and some of them hung out after class to keep talking for a little bit. So it was a good time.

Joe Mahaffey: Nice. Yeah, I I am just out of curiosity, did the topic of AI design come up at all?

James Engelhardt: Not really. ⁓ we didn't, yeah. no. Yeah, we were just looking at I mean, so much of this material was just new to them generally, looking at these objects and thinking through. ⁓ and so and they were also practicing the stuff that they had learned over the last couple of weeks, like, ⁓ this is a cool, this is you know warm, this is, you know, how how do it it says to me cozy. How do I know it says cozy, right? So going through that kind of stuff.

Joe Mahaffey: Just curious. Where ⁓ Gotcha.

James Engelhardt: less about like what kind of jobs or what kind of work you would necessarily do, but just how what's out there and what can you how can you even think about it.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, well I think one of the you know, we just a few minutes ago we talked about Hasbro and some of the challenges that they have with the their folks. And one of the things that they're trying to get organized around is the fact that they don't want to be replaced by AI in terms of creating this content. And ⁓ anyway, we won't we won't turn any into that topic today, but I th I was just curious if it come up in the in the ⁓ discussion.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. No. I think they were just having a good time looking at the materials and just yeah. We did not. We took out objects, handled them. Yeah. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: But nobody played a game. Alas. Did you look also ⁓ I'm last question on this, I know you were talking about the visual, but I'm curious, did you also talk about the the ⁓ design of the inside of the box and the design and placement space and how that is functional and so on and so forth?

James Engelhardt: Sure, man. Yes. Yep. Yep. Right, because some of them are just an empty box with you have to organize it yourself. Yep. But like the ⁓ for instance the ⁓ My Little Scythe has great injection molded ⁓ interior with like lift out trays and stuff. So it is. That is true. Yeah. Exactly. I was with you there. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Your rattle, rattle, rattle versus yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, it's a Jamie joint. I'm coining that phrase right here and now. So you know. It's like a spikely joint, but it seems

James Engelhardt: But no, it was so we did point that out and point out the the different ones that had sculpts. So I have the third edition of Fury of Dracula, which has the little prepainted miniatures that go into it. ⁓ and then other ones that didn't have that or just had ⁓ you know, cubes. Who doesn't love a good cube?

Joe Mahaffey: Mm. ⁓ okay, I I said last question and I lied because this is my last question. Did you take ⁓ games from different years to kind of show the progression of the industry and how people like Beth Sobel and and others have kind of had an impact? ⁓ Sandara Sandara Tang, is that her name? Yeah. Got got got two right. Wow. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Alright. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hey, yeah, man. No, that's good. That's good. This is this is all good. Yeah. ⁓ we didn't. I was organizing it around different styles, right? And trying to find different many different like since the class is about characters and monsters and you know, how to design those ⁓ in different ways, I was trying to, yeah. So I was trying to focus more on that. ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Sure, no, I understand Gotcha. That makes sense. Well now you know what I'm curious about.

James Engelhardt: No, and it was I did have some we talked about some of the like political questions around it too, like you know, the lack of women on game boxes, the lack of people of color on game boxes.

Joe Mahaffey: Well women women get all the ⁓ the comic books.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ so we looked at some of that. ⁓ yeah. But that didn't come up. That would that would've been good as well. But we were just doing a whole lot of show and tell and having a lot of fun, just like, wow, here's all this stuff. So you know.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, I know that makes sense. Interesting.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. And then I have also played some games over the past couple of weeks. Yeah. And we're gonna start with the newest and work our way back. Start with the smallest and work our way bigger the whole time. ⁓ so the first game, this was from a couple of weeks ago that we played this, but this is da da da. Da da da. I know, right? ⁓ it's da da plus a da, I don't know. ⁓ so it's designed by Gustavo.

Joe Mahaffey: I see that. Okay. Is it from the police? Is it from the police? Yeah. Yeah.

James Engelhardt: Suchigan ⁓ Gimierz, something like that. Lee McGurr, TJ Spalty, and Julian Spinelli. I'm on much firmer ground with the rest of them. And this is published by the OP here in the States, also Pegasus Spiele, and my favorite game company name I've found so far, L'Espadon Insoucian, which is something like the ⁓ the carefree swordfish. I ⁓ yes, so and this is from 2024.

Joe Mahaffey: Sure. There you go. Okay.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ this is it's a it's it's a little box. ⁓ it's a cooperative party game in which you invent a nonsense language based on these single-syllable sounds that are on cards. You get a stack of cards, you flip some over, and line drawings of familiar objects, also on cards that you flip over. ⁓ start off you get five, you have a stack of five sounds, ⁓ and then 13 objects, and as a group, you decide.

Joe Mahaffey: Right.

James Engelhardt: Which sounds go with which objects? And you're not using actual language at this point. You're just getting, ⁓ so you might have like the letters V O, so Vo, and you've got like an object's like a bike and a boat, and somebody slides those two over to there and says vo, and you're like, vo. Everybody just kind of nods, thumbs up, whatever. ⁓ then you flip over a letter on sound that's Zem. So somebody puts a bird and a plane near it, and then someone looks at it and moves the airplane between the vo and the zem. So now you've got Vo Zem. Zem. Yeah. And yes. So you just keep doing this. And then you sort of set them all, all 13 out there. And then once and you kind of hope you're all on the same page about these things. And then it gets crazy. ⁓ because the ⁓ first clue giver draws a a new image and then as a target card and has five more, shuffles them up, puts them out in front, and then says, like Zem Zemvo. And then the rest of you around the table, look at those six cards and try to decide which one the clue giver is talking about and move it to the appropriate space. If you do that correctly, hooray! ⁓ if you don't, and it goes into a score pile. And if you don't, that goes into a WTF pile. And if you get two cards in the WTF pile, you all lose. ⁓ and otherwise, if you can go around without doing that, you win. And and of course, with games like these, the real fun then is the after. Right, where you're like, okay, so I thought that was travel. Like, no, I thought this was wield things. Huh, well. And so you go through and kind of do the ⁓ autopsy of what you all were thinking. ⁓ and sometimes you can say, I thought there was all these, and that's why these all went there. Like, no, I was thinking it was something else. But you all made the same correct choice, but for entirely different reasons. ⁓ it's a thinky little party game. ⁓ it's going for laughs and mass confusion as you try to talk in a nonsense language you've been building together. ⁓ small box, low price points, ⁓ definitely one you could take to the beach ⁓ with family kind of thing. So yeah, worth worth having a look at.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, what what's what's interesting about it as you were describing it to me is it reminded me a lot of that YouTube channel I like to watch called Rob Words, where he talks about word origins. And, you know, a lot of a lot of times he'll talk about the similarities between the way that the Anglo Saxon language was w before the n the the Norse come over, right? And and how much of these sounds were very similar, you know, from ⁓ you know, the Proto Germanic or or whatever era.

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

Joe Mahaffey: And it's just ⁓ it's just just interesting that that you're kind of you're playing out in a game something that pretty much so s sociologically actually happened. You know.

James Engelhardt: Yep, exactly. No, it's super fun. And if you are a kind of word nerd or interested in I mean you don't have to be, but if you are, I think it adds an extra level of like, ⁓ this is how language does come together. ⁓ yeah, so it's yeah, really fun for that. And again, you're and you have these moments where you're like, Zem, zem zem, vo, vo, vo like and because these are the only things you're saying. So, yeah. So you ha find yourself saying ridiculous things, which is also part of the charm.

Joe Mahaffey: There you go. Love it. Yes. Well I always say ridiculous things, so I but probably do very well at that game. See? Hmm.

James Engelhardt: So there you go. It's all good. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: up next is my favorite breakfast cereal. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Applejack. Yes. And I always I always hear this whenever I say the title, then I start thinking of a particular Billy Joel song. And I think that Applejack will get you high tonight and take you to a special island. ⁓ so yeah, it is and so then I yes, I bounce back and forth between the theme song for Applejacks and Captain Jack. So it's it's always a weird it is, yeah. ⁓ so this is an Ufe Rosenberg s ⁓ song. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Joe Mahaffey: There? No. Fair. Captain Jack's a great song.

James Engelhardt: It's a joint, it's a Uwe Rosenberg joint. ⁓ yeah. So the game builders over in Europe and Stronghold Games here in the States, this is from 2022. And this is a pleasant, lightish tile laying game in the Uwe Rosenberg tile laying series that starts back with patchwork in 2014. ⁓ in this case, we're building an apple orchard in the form of little hexagonal tiles ⁓ that come with a couple of different. Apples from like one to three, maybe some flowers, and some beehives on the edges. ⁓ it's pretty straightforward. On a turn, you move a die around the shared board that has little tiles raided out from it. ⁓ and this tells you like which spot you're on tells you whose turn it is, and then which apple you know hexes you can draft. ⁓ and it'll the the center board also tells you which ones you're gonna score.

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ and you'll go through that ⁓ center board right about two and a half times before you end. when you buy a tile, you can set it anywhere anywhere you want to on the board. So it's not like you have to have or you know connected things. You can just put them wherever the hell you want. But you want to like keep varieties of apples together, right? So this might this tile might have a blue and a yellow, and there's another here with a red, and there's a pink. Then there's another blue, and you're like, ⁓ but I want to put yes, you always want to keep those like blues together and all that kind of stuff, which is going to be the challenge as you keep going. ⁓ and then you pay with honey. Who knows? But anyway, money, honey is the money to buy the tile, and the cost isn't just indicated by those beehives. ⁓ but then when you place it down, and this is another reason why you might not put it just anywhere, ⁓ you get honey back for having.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: lined things up so and you get the lesser of the amount. So if you pay five to buy a tile, line it up with a six beehive, you get that five back. So it's it's not punitive in terms of like keeping the cash not flowing. You get a lot of cash coming at you if you're thinking about it right. Yep. ⁓ the game ends when you reach this designated spot in the center board, which as luck would have it coincides with you pretty much filling up your orchard. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Right. No, I gotcha.

James Engelhardt: Then you're some final scoring and most money wins. It's got some nice strategies. You keep those varieties connected, as I said. ⁓ looking ahead, see which varieties score next and making sure that you're, you know, getting some of those into your orchard. ⁓ and you've got some choices into some decisions, which type hex tile you're gonna place, but that's only gonna be there's not gonna be that many of them. ⁓ and where you place it, again, you know, it's it's still a decision. none of this is mind-crushingly hard. ⁓ and you can only kind of slightly vex your opponent, right, by like hate drafting, like, ⁓ I see that you need this other blue, and I'm going to grab it before it gets to you, but that's kind of about it. ⁓ it's a solid addition on the lighter end of UVs œuvres. I just wanted to say that. UVs œuvres. Yeah, thank you. it's a and there's different set of boards for each player count, so it'll change, you know, ⁓ as you go. ⁓ and then if you've played it for a little while and you want to

Joe Mahaffey: I you did a nice job of that. I would have yeah.

James Engelhardt: Crank it up a bit. There's some tweaks to make it more interesting, including the flip side of the B side of the player boards, ⁓ which are asymmetric. So it's a nice, nice little filler. It works really well with two players. ⁓ It's burn you burn through the apples pretty quickly. So yeah. Nice bit of fun there. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Very cool. Yeah, so I would imagine that ⁓ I I like to know that it's a good two player game 'cause you me, I'm always looking for a good two player game. And and you know, well we Dale and I really enjoy the the tile laying genres. We're we're big into Cascadia. We like ⁓ car Carcassonne, different varieties of those, you know. So

James Engelhardt: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm. And patchwork is a is a fantastic, you know, two player. ⁓ and this one and you can play again, you can play with more, which is nice. So if you've got, you know, the daughters over or friends of people who are like, ⁓ this is a it's super straightforward to get into. ⁓ the only only tricky bit ⁓ is that you are assigned, you know, and when you go around the table, you're assigned a shape like squared Triangle, star, that kind of thing. And so as you go around the board, it basically tracks, you know, all around the board, right? So it's like it'll be star, circle, square, star, circle, square. So I'm the first player, I'm star, you're the circle, you're the square. But it's easy to lose track of this because you don't have any piece in front of you that says, you're the square, you're the circle, you're the star, right? So I made some. Just like, okay, I'm the square, you're the circle, let's go. ⁓ because you know you

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: You get the talking, you go up to get a you know refresher beverage, you take a bio break, and you come back down to the sit, and you're like, okay, whose whose turn was it? I don't know. It's on the square. Who's the square? Yeah. So that's just ⁓ an interesting graphic design oversight. Should have brought that to the class. ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. ⁓ well. but it's I mean.

Joe Mahaffey: See, you should have. Yeah. Yeah. It's time to go back in time.

James Engelhardt: It's a comfy, cozy little game. You can sit down and knock it out pretty short period of time and ⁓ you got some fun decisions, but nothing that's going to like bake your noodle, as they say in the Matrix.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, that sounds good. And then now you this other game I'm very familiar with. I even have the expansion. Yeah. Yeah, the fall flavors or whatever. But yeah, no, we love ⁓ Honey Buzz. Honey Buzz is a is a lovely game. But I don't wanna steal your thunder, so please.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Ooh, the what is it, the fall orders? Yeah. ⁓ yeah, no, no, it's good. Yeah, so this is a Paul Solomon designer, Elf Creek Games published it back in 2020. So to remind you, we have gone back farther in time the whole time. So now we're in 2020. and ⁓ we've ramped up the complexity the whole way through. ⁓ but this time we still have beehives and hexiles. So we're trying to keep a theme going. ⁓ this has a bit more thinking going on. ⁓ and also the hexiles in this case are double-sided, so like dominoes. ⁓ which you'll be placing out to form your hives. but alas, you're not going to collect apple pollen or apple nectar that is not on your ⁓ table there. ⁓ so the I I like this, it's a it's a nice blending of worker bee placement and ⁓ tile laying, once again the tile hang. ⁓ and that's interesting to see how those two, the worker placement and the tile laying are connected. So we've been playing a lot of this recently, so it's it's pretty fresh in my mind here.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, no, we it's one of our one of our favorites. I mean, it was one of those games that, you know, we we like what we call the birds and the bees games. You know. So that's yeah.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Wingspan, honey buzz, yep. And I I feel like, yeah, they're both they're so different, but so both so fun. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: And there's there's another game and the name of it eludes me at the moment that is also a bee based game, but I think Honey Buzz I I haven't I don't own it, which is why I can't think of it, but I've seen it in the stores and I've looked at the back of it. And I think Honey Buzz has got the better play on this in terms of, you know, the way a beehive actually works, the way you grow the bees, ⁓ meaning more workers is what I should say, you know, and just all the different things that you're doing along the way.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: kinda to to to really build out that hive and then, you know, get the right kind of honey and make the sale and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. and then the bits that come with it are very high quality.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Fulfill those market orders and Yeah, so let me I'll I'll walk through this a little bit for listeners who might not be familiar. ⁓ so that you're you you take you've got your worker bees and you start in a two-player game, you start with one worker. So this could this goes pretty quick. ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. You're like, ⁓ my god, how am gonna do anything? ⁓ so your workers go onto a shared board that has little action area, well, tile drafting areas, really. ⁓ so you go to one of those spaces, you draft the matching tile, you put it

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Like viticulture.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ with these other little ⁓ domino hexes, hex dominoes. ⁓ and you're always matching yellow sides. There are white and orange sides as well, but those create sort of negative spaces, open spaces, an empty hex. ⁓ and that pattern of white and orange is going to tell you which nectar you can drop in there, if you do drop it in there. ⁓ and those the hex dominoes have one blank half and one action half. ⁓ and when you've made that nectar spot, that hexagonal gap. Whether you again fill it or not, you do all of the actions that are surrounding it, which which can be big, or you can do a lot of stuff. but it also means that you're you're frequently placing a worker and then taking the action, but not always. So you'll you know, you'll you'll place your worker, grab that tile, put it out. It might trigger actions, it might not. And I think this is a really interesting part of the game, right? Because it gives it delays things. You're not like, I want to do this. Like, not this time, Barbara. ⁓ right. So, and there are a handful of actions. We don't have to go into all of them, ⁓ but one of the key ones is forage, because there's a forage board. So they'll go over there and do that and collect either nectar or pollen, which you'll then need to take to the market, which is the other part of that big center board. and when you do that, you can either fulfill one of three face-up orders, or you can sell all of one type of honey or all the pollen you got. ⁓ so there's a couple of systems that are intersecting, right? The worker placement, that tile spatial puzzle of how to make those spaces, the gathering resources thing, the selling and fulfilling contracts. ⁓ it's a it's an medium amount of stuff to to deal with. ⁓ and so then you keep going until either all but one of the order slots is empty, or four of the five market tracks have reached the bottom. So If you really want to, you can hammer on one or more of those actions that just make things drop and end the game really quickly. ⁓ you get most of your points during the game. There's three goal cards, one of which you will score in-game, and two others at the end. Trade everything in for money, and then money is ⁓ how you win. ⁓ and as you were pointing out, the production is amazing. The art by Anne HideSeek is just adorable.

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ these really yeah, really s sweet little bears.

Joe Mahaffey: Right. It's like it's like influenced by Bolyn Melon.

James Engelhardt: With the girl in the honey? Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yep. ⁓ but it's it's that's this really soft ⁓ kind of children's book Animals. ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Sorry. Yeah. I mean it's a very family friendly game. It's very accessible to all ages. And I think, you know, that that's to me that's very indicative of Elf Creek's style. You know, they have, you know, they're very graphically oriented. And I believe Elf Creek is the one, correct me if I'm wrong, that has that lists their other games around the perimeter of the board or of the box rather. And so though there's like cities and some of the others that are that are inclusive on that box. And I kinda like that too, that you kind of know, ⁓

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yep. Mm-hmm. If you like this one, come and check these other ones out. Yep. What's funny? Yes. And other I so what's funny what's fun about the honey buzz, 'cause we've got it open now, is that all of those titles that are around the the sides of the interior sides of the box are all in honey bees. So it's got Atlantis rising, but bees as the figures instead of the Yeah, it was it's super fun. I know, I looked at it and I was like, ⁓ I should have brought this to the class as well. ⁓ well.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Or other wor other works by James Inglehart. Right, right, right. That's a great call out. Great call out. Yeah. Well now you know.

James Engelhardt: pretty soon I'd be bringing five hundred games like here kids, watch this. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: For the next for the next twelve hours.

James Engelhardt: Buckle up. Yeah. ⁓ but the the other thing that's amazing is the the honey pieces. ⁓ I mean the pollen is nice, it's this nice plasticky, it's funny shaped. Don't eat them. But the honey, it's this squishy, almost sticky like plastic capsule in different shapes and colors to correspond with the particular kinds. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: D don't eat them. Just don't eat them. Yeah. See, I think what they need to do is the Elf Creek folks, if you're listening, you need to get a like licensing agreement with jelly bellies. And get like the the the honeybuzz jelly belly package. Because then people could consume them at the end of the game and then they have to buy another package. It's like razor blades, you know.

James Engelhardt: Ha ha. ⁓ that would be good. And yeah, after buy a refresh pack. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but this it the game has a lot of fun little puzzles. ⁓ I've been losing to Laura consistently so far, but like one like I needed to do one more of the like final scoring, the like 20-point scoring things. It's like, ⁓ that's kind of the difference. Because if I had gotten it and she had lost it. We're within like fifteen, twenty points of each other and that would have switched the game. And it's like, well, there it is. So yeah. ⁓ yeah, lots of lots of fun stuff going on there.

Joe Mahaffey: There you go. Yeah, no, it's it's I'm glad you you brought it back up because it's one of those that, you know, w we're always thinking about what should we play? And, you know, we're we're like it's almost information overload. ⁓ I can't im I can't imagine what it's like in your house, but I mean, like here we're sitting with like three hundred games and it's like, Okay, what do want to play? You know, and for me it's like, ⁓ that's a pain in the ass to get out on the table. ⁓ it's still in shrink wrap, you know. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yep. Been too long since I read the rules. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: That doesn't bother me as much because we find ourselves, you know, between a three minute board game or the in about three minutes. Yeah. We he's he's great. And usually you can find a Rodney or ⁓ you know, somebody that can quickly in like ten minutes or less get you back in. And then once we kind of go, okay, I remember now. Let's go. Let's just go. Let's get it going. ⁓ wait, I forgot something. I get this point.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ right, right, right. The ⁓ right, the rules got yep, yeah, yeah. Get you to speed. No no you can't do that. You you you you don't get any points. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: I'm not winning. Sorry, I forgot this point. I thought I remembered it now. We gotta go back. ⁓ yeah. We've had that we've had that conversation once or twice. or I'll think this is usually how it goes. I think I've told her the rule.

James Engelhardt: Mm. Yep. ⁓ Right.

Joe Mahaffey: Or I will do something based on the rule and she's like, I didn't know you could do that. And I'm like, Yes, you did. I told you we could. And she's like, No, you didn't. And I'm like, Well, it's in the rule book.

James Engelhardt: It's on my little script for yeah. ⁓ yep. And I mean I I also I understand that I'm I'm giving you forty rules at a time, so if one of ⁓ drops out, yeah. That's

Joe Mahaffey: Well well, and it's you know, but the thing is it's also about the difference in the way ⁓ hello there. It's also very different in the way that ⁓ that Dale and I play games because usually she will look at all the components that the ⁓ the scoring is like there's in-game components, like you know, ⁓ if we were playing wingspan, it's like, okay, what are the goals per round? And how many eggs do I need? And yada yada yada.

James Engelhardt: Hey, yeah. Right. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: What am I bonus card? So she's got it all figured out. You know, it's like you can just see the math flying through the air as she's planning out her strategy. Whereas me, I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna point salad this bitch until we get to the end. And then when I think I've got an advantage, I'm gonna, you know, push the end game, you know, and stop her before she can. And and you know, when I typically win the game, it's usually because I have successfully done that.

James Engelhardt: Right. ⁓ see what we can do. Fast as I can. Yeah. It's funny, you were talking about the pieces on the boards and stuff, and like, what's going on? What's going on? What's going on? And ⁓ it was fun to bring out these big board games for these students. Just go back to them a second. ⁓ because like, okay, we pick out a game like ⁓ My Little Scythe, which just has hex it's a big hex map. And they're like, ⁓ yeah, sure, you can just gonna move thing around, right? ⁓ then we brought out Arborea, which is this giant, ⁓ amazingly produced incredibly intense art and it's all a fantasy world where nothing looks like anything. So you're like, there's this frog rabbit creature. I'm gonna go there. And you kind of lose track of like who's supposed to be what, right? It does it just doesn't. It resists interpretation, right? But we also looked at ⁓ Unconscious Mind, which is about so they look at the cover of Unconscious Mind and they're looking at and they're like, ⁓ this looks like Like, is this a psychiatrist? Is this is this about like Freud and shit? Like, yes. Like just by looking at the box, they're like, is this a game about Freud? It is. So awesome. ⁓ and just thinking about that legibility, right? So we open that game board, which is also there's a lot going on, but they're like, no, here's the map where you're going to go around here. ⁓ look, it's the map of Vienna. We're gonna go here, then there's this coffee house. You're gonna do stuff there. Got it. And I I know what's going on. There's coffee, there are buildings. Yeah. It and so we were talking about just the ways that you can look at a well designed board, right? And this is ⁓ Ian O'Toole, right, who does a great artist as well as designer, and you just immediately feel more comfortable like, Okay, I got my hand on this.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. This last one definitely has my attention and and there's a reason why it has my attention. ⁓ I don't know if you're aware that Friends of the Show, Keener's, are big into this series.

James Engelhardt: Yes. Mm-hmm. The last week of summer? ⁓ there's a series? Okay. Mm.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. I believe so. Yeah, this is the hold on, let me just double check. ⁓ let me click on this. I thought it was the like the mixtape, same people that did the mixtape. I could be wrong.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Yeah. And then this is this is I think a one off for these people.

Joe Mahaffey: Is it? No. ⁓ it is. It just it's got the same design aesthetic. Okay, my bad. My bad. I take back everything I just said.

James Engelhardt: No problem. All right. Well I c maybe I can introduce t ⁓ it's about the summer of nineteen eighty six.

Joe Mahaffey: I was watching Top Gun.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, I mean w we all were. So why it's set in nineteen eighty like the summer of s the setup is you've just graduated from graduated from high school. It's the summer of nineteen eighty six. And I was like, holy hell, I graduated from high school and had the summer of nineteen eighty six before heading to Wafford College. Still not a sponsor. ⁓ yeah. Yep. Yeah. So Yeah, so I don't know why they picked nineteen eighty six particularly, but

Joe Mahaffey: And listening to Kenny Loggins. Yeah, but I was just finished my first year. And was watching after that.

James Engelhardt: There it is.

Joe Mahaffey: I think I just told you Top Gun.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ I mean, talk about it I'm there were so many other, yeah, crazy fun movies that were ⁓ yeah. Anyway. ⁓ so there's it's it's a lot of mini games themed around teen life in the mid eighties. I know. It feels a bit like Rockhart in terms of like different doing different things in different areas, ⁓ and needing to go to work at least a couple of times 'cause that's another thing you have to do. ⁓ and but also a bit like Fromage in terms of the multiple kinds and like styles of games. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Okay.

James Engelhardt: So there's a lot of different stuff to do there. Though they all kinda make sense. Like there's a a tile laying area control game that's about ⁓ graffiti. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ yeah. I didn't do a lot of graffiti back in the eighties.

James Engelhardt: There's a Mm. It feels like feels like you. ⁓ the one there's one that's about going to the video store, which I remember doing a lot that summer, yeah. ⁓ but it's

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, I did that. Actually I worked I worked in a video store.

James Engelhardt: I worked at a video store, but after I graduated, so waffred, so yeah. I know. ⁓ so but the the video store one, it's Moncala, where you pick up those little stack of video cassettes and then drop them off. ⁓ and then the final spot, you grab up all the videos in that spot. I don't I don't know why. ⁓ it doesn't seem to line up with anything video-ish, but whatever. it is hilariously garish, as you can see. as you're clicking around. ⁓ which is always reminds me that's more of the like things you would see on MTV as opposed to things you would see at people's houses. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, it's very mi it's very Miami Vice colors. Which was already long in the tooth by nineteen eighty six, if I recall.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the the dynamic triangles all over everything. and the Kickstarter ended in September twenty-five. and the latest update on their on the Kickstarter page is that they're fulfilling as we speak. So maybe it will be in stores soon. Something to look for, the last week of summer. But I yeah, since it was ⁓ nineteen eighty six, I figured that was a That was a year we had in common, so

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, it is a yes, that is a year that we both are aware of. Yes. We are both aware of that year. ⁓ let me see here if I can

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. And I know that friend of the show, ⁓ Ben Griffith will also probably perk up at nineteen eighty six.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, yeah, because he was also graduating around the same time.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, I think he this is what in his junior year, right? 'Cause I think he was a year behind me, but yeah. Mm mm. Yep. But we all remember nineteen eighty six.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ was he? I thought you and you and he were the same here. Okay. Well, shows you what I know. Yes we do. Yes we do. I'm trying to find this ⁓ See can find this game. ⁓ Mixtape Massacre I'm thinking of. And so if you look at the box for mixtape massacre, it's very similar in terms of the same triangle. It's almost it's in fact it's almost the same triangle in color scheme there. And so I was seeing this as because in Mixtape Massacre, you're either in there's several versions of the game.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay. Yep. ⁓ yep.

Joe Mahaffey: One, you are the teenagers being stalked by the monster. One, you're the monster. Exactly. So you see why I thought this was like the last in the series. When I saw the graphic, I was like, ⁓ well, this is I mean, it's got the same the you know, you've got the sun and the triangle, you've got this the the bloodied moon and the triangle. I mean, I just assumed that this was the same, same series. So that was on me.

James Engelhardt: In nineteen eighty six What the hell? ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah. No, no, I that's yeah, that's the same yep, that yeah. And but also eighty six, I mean it could have been an a n indescript, non non dis who pick a random na year in the eighties, but no, eighty six. Hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: So I got excited. Sure. Slash movies were all over the eighties. I mean Halloween was even pre eighties.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. ⁓ that's fantastic.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ anyway. That that's why I that's why I went down I just you know what, I ⁓ th via design, we'll we'll end this where we began. Via design I judge the book by its covered and then I judged poorly.

James Engelhardt: Mm. ⁓ sure. No no. ⁓ I this was clearly when people have want to have some sort of ⁓ cheat code for the nineteen eighties, this is what they do. They draw triangles and use neon colors.

Joe Mahaffey: Yes. And watch Stranger Things.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's hilarious. Mm. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ And w go to the go to the video cade ⁓ there's a video arcade mini game, so you can you have to spend money, you have to spend your coins to win in the video arcade, which feels yep, spot on.

Joe Mahaffey: Let's go to the mall today. ⁓ wait, that's how I met your mother. Robin's parking. So in 1986, I worked at Camelot Music, which was also had a video store. So and it was the bane of my existence to do the video thing because you had to. This was when somebody would bring you the video empty box. And then you would go grab the video off the shelf and you would put the box there. So you would know that is rented out. And then you always had to flip it back when the people checked their videos back in and it was a

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay. Yep. Yep. ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. And then

Joe Mahaffey: And then people then the late fees and all the other stuff and

James Engelhardt: Unrewound, yep. Be kind, rewind. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: So that was yeah. A lot of memories.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, so that's ⁓ that's one to put on your ⁓ radar there. Yet another there's somebody could ⁓ have like a mini collection of like games set in nineteen eighty six. There's two at least.

Joe Mahaffey: Yep. Well, there's probably more that are set in nineteen eighty six. But then you'd have to first you'd have to rock hard in nineteen seventy seven and then jump up a decade. See

James Engelhardt: That's what I like. So what what others? Up to eighty six, yeah. And this is before we get into the eighteen XX games. It's a whole different yeah. But no, I I I mean, it felt it it kinda did feel like rock hard in terms of you have to go do different things and you wanna do this you have to do this morning, ⁓ noon, and evening, and you have to go to work. ⁓ so yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: There you go. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a fun game to check out. So we'll be on looking out for it in the local game stores. ⁓ there's that. last thing that showed up on my doorstep that was from Kickstarter was the obsession big box expansion. So ⁓ it is still in the other room with everything else that's been showing up for this construction project. Because I have no place to put it.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Or look for your copy if you kick started it. Mm-hmm. There it is. It's and that's what the new room will be for then. You can just put things just randomly stack things.

Joe Mahaffey: No, my wife will kill me. I'm I again I'm still trying to reimagine this room. I think what I'm gonna have to do is ultimately just move my office somewhere else in the house.

James Engelhardt: That seems like a wise choice. I don't know.

Joe Mahaffey: have to get one I just have to get one of the children out of here. Yes. Yes. And yes, and we're in our twenties, so it's time. It's not like, you know. Anyway, I digress. Well before we head back into therapy, yes. Well, ⁓ that's all I have this week. All right. Well

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yes, yes. That would be good. Launch launch that one. It is. It's a good time to launch. Yes, bef before we head into therapy. Yeah, that's all I got.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ I promise you I'm gonna get back to playing board games and I'm also gonna get these these episodes out. I'm still the lazy podcaster. I have a few ideas on how I think I can streamline production. We may just throw up the YouTube component and just go straight audio because I don't know if people really look at us. But ⁓ and if they do, I mean, I'll always have the video from this, and so if the podcast will do video, it'll always be there. But I just I just don't think the traction and is worth the the juice is worth the squeeze there.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Sure. Who would want her? Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Particularly since the algorithm probably means nobody ever sees us.

James Engelhardt: Probably true. Indeed.

Joe Mahaffey: That's different episode altogether. All right. Well, with that, ⁓ I am Joe Mahaffey. I'm not bored, but I'm also not board gaming.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ I'm sorry, man. I'm James Engelhart. But when you do get back to board gaming, I hope that all your tiebreakers break your way. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: I do too. All right. Well, that's it as we head into summer. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you soon.

James Engelhardt: See y'all.