Unlocking the Secrets of Irish Mythology

Joe Mahaffey: Hello and welcome back to another edition of Lay It On The Table, the Southern Board Game podcast with the accent on Southern. ⁓ It is March 1st, everybody, and I am one of your hosts, Joe Mahaffey, and it's really great to be here. And of course, as always, I have my good friend and partner.

James Engelhardt: James Engelhardt, it's three days out from my birthday, so happy March to all us March babies.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ thanks for the public shaming there just because I didn't wish you happy birthday on Facebook. mean, how needy are you?

James Engelhardt: You Man, I tell ya, Everybody's just paying attention to my little guy. I gotta get something in, gotta get some screen time somehow.

Joe Mahaffey: That's fair. It's fair. ⁓ Last Sunday was a year since we lost my mom. Not that I'm bringing everybody down, but because of that, I don't look at Facebook nearly as much as I used to. She was the primary reason. So occasionally I'll put something out there, but I don't always catch the birthdays. I'm sure that my wife though, wished you happy birthday because that's her thing on daily basis. So consider that box checked by the Mahaffys. How about that? Yes.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. make sense. Yes. Thank you, thank you, absolutely.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, James, ⁓ this weekend is the weekend of Mythicon West. know, we had Richard Fortuna on a few weeks back and we had all hoped that, or we had hoped that I was going to be able to get to go, but I didn't get to go.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Travel, travel and ravine, I understand.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, I went to Detroit, which was 17 degrees, which was not what it was doing here in Charlotte. It was very cold. And then I turned around and had to go to Dallas, which was 81 degrees. And that was a very interesting way to have to pack my clothes.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. No. Was that 50 degrees of difference? 60 something? That is a lot of degrees of difference.

Joe Mahaffey: I don't do math on a board game podcast. sorry, the different podcasts are going to be... But no, did, but while I was there, I did find a ⁓ board game store. think I'll talk about that first and then we'll kind of jump into the other stuff. Yeah. So we went out to dinner Wednesday night and we went to this place in Carrollton called ⁓ Mina's, M-E-N-E-S, and nice little Tex-Mex kind of place. And right next to it is Boardwalk.

James Engelhardt: Final scoring. Awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: of Carrollton. So I was like, well, there's a board game. So we got to go in there. So it was Wednesday night magic was in full regalia. And as we're walking in, my my colleague says, well, what's magic? And I said, well, it's the crack cocaine of the board game industry. And there was somebody walking in that heard me say it and they turned and looked at me and go, you're not wrong.

James Engelhardt: Nice. Ooh, okay. Mm-hmm. You No you're not.

Joe Mahaffey: So we spent about an hour in the store and I gotta tell you, was, you know, the only other boardwalk I've ever been, and that's not true. I've been in the boardwalk in Greenville and I've been in one in California. But what struck me about this one, and maybe this is true in your boardwalk too, is that they had every single title that I saw on the shelf. They had at least three copies. Wingspan, Wormspan, Isle of Cats, Gartenbell. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Nice. That's awesome. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: you know, all the Azules, which typically I see more than one copy of Azul, because that's a fat move that churns a lot. But I mean, they even had 10 garden. They had a couple of copies of 10 garden, which, know, they've I mean, it was my point is it was a well stocked store. It was at least three million dollars worth of just board game inventory. I didn't even get into the cards. But it was impressive. And I was able to take my colleague and friend around the store and, you know, he grew up playing D &D and

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. Nice. Wow. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: like you and I did. And so he had lot of questions because it had been a hot minute for him. And so we had the Daggerheart book there and they had the all the other ⁓ the new versions of D &D and all the other flavors ⁓ popped up. You know, they had the Cthulhu's and the Stargates and all that kind of stuff. So it was just kind of an interesting find ⁓ in Texas. mean, obviously, Texas is going to have a board game. So I just didn't expect it to be right where we just randomly chose for dinner.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Thanks. Mm-hmm. Sounds awesome. That's fantastic. That is a happy accent. I used to do, when I was traveling a lot for work, I would always make sure that I was going to go to a board, find a local board game store. The thing that's, because if you go to a big conference, you're usually in the like the sort of downtown and or touristy district, right? Like we're gonna go to one in Baltimore at end of this week. And it's in the inner harbor. It's...

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah.

James Engelhardt: peak tourist Baltimore, But if you've, yeah, yeah. But if you're looking for a board game shop, it's not for tourists. You have to go somewhere in the neighborhood. it's always been, I always had a good experience, like trying to find it and then like, hey, I'm here for a lot of town. So yeah. This was before the I had a podcast. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I'll have to remember that. No.

Joe Mahaffey: Sure, fine. You dropped the, have a podcast card. I always drop the, have a podcast card. It didn't get me anywhere in Texas.

James Engelhardt: Carrolton is, ⁓ is that part of, like, the greater Houston area or Dallas or...? Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: And the Dallas Metroplex. if you, it's, probably about 30 minutes away from the airport. don't even know if I was East or West, quite frankly. I want to say I was East of the airport. Is that just seems right? But far as I was South, I look at it on map, but, ⁓ you know, in my, my IT world, I work with a lot of clients that have data centers in Texas is a great place to have a data center. It's in the country. They have their own power grid separate from the other parts of the United States.

James Engelhardt: Sure. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: And unless it's, you know, snowing or freezing, works. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Indeed.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, but it was crazy, ⁓ you know, traveling and those, the temperature extremes ⁓ was not my favorite part.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Hmm, no, as I was saying before we got on the air like that's like how do you even start to think about packing for that? Because you didn't come home between them, right? You just went straight from Detroit down to you know straight from the frozen tundra to the jungle, so

Joe Mahaffey: No, correct. So I went back to my scouting days and thought of layers. So I had like a shirt with a collar and then I ordered a zip to go over the shirt with a collar. And then I had a light jacket that was a little heavier than normal. And then I had a vest that I could put over the jacket. So I went like looking like I weighed 300 pounds down to looking like I weighed 275 pounds. So that was pretty

James Engelhardt: Always good. Yep. It's always funny when I start the semester because it's winter and the spring semester and everybody comes in these big jackets and by June all of a sudden like wow there's a whole lot less of you than I thought. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: But it's certainly a nice weekend here in the Carolinas. It's beautiful here in Charlotte and I hope it's beautiful up in Asheville where they are having Mythicon West and then it's a successful show. ⁓ You know, last time we were here, it sounds like you were able to score some tickets to Gen Con. How's that progressing?

James Engelhardt: It is. I hope so. I did. Well, I will be staying with a friend, so I will spend a little bit longer. stay Sunday night as well. I just kind of commute into the show. And so I don't have to worry about the hotel. Yay. But I've got my four days, the best four days of gaming reserved. So I will report back on how that all goes.

Joe Mahaffey: guide. ⁓ yay, that's good. Here you go. I had this like vision of you in a tent. Lucas, Lucas Stadium, you know, I could just see that.

James Engelhardt: It's not a bad vision. I've done that before. ⁓ yeah, yeah, I'd like, yes. Just right there in the corner of the stadium, yeah. Near the end zone somewhere, yeah. They've got space? Yeah, they got space. It's a board game, Percy, you don't need to shower, it's good.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. you homeless or? No, I'm a board game person. I work with a I use a different type of card.

James Engelhardt: It's all good. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: That seemed funny. But yeah, so that's cool. I'm excited for you. I look forward to your report.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it'll, I mean, I've been wanting to go to GenCon for, I don't know, 20 years or so, so it'll be interesting to see what it feels like when I'm actually there on the ground.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, that'd be awesome. I'd love to go as well. ⁓ Not on the cards for this year, maybe next. One day.

James Engelhardt: There are more years. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: you have a little comment in here about gamma. Let's talk about that.

James Engelhardt: Right says so the game manufacturers Association. They are having their annual conference ⁓ This week so and that of course is more Focused on the business side of things right? It's not really a consumer facing experience. So I Don't know. It's just something to be aware of people are making their plans and putting together panels and all kinds of stuff. That would be a fun one to see as well, just to see the sort of inside baseball-ness of it all. But that is kicking off, I think like tomorrow. And it'll go through the week, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Wow. Well, that's a nice, yeah, that's a nice segue of the one article I threw in here. see, know, cause a big fan of Cardboard Alchemy, the publisher of FlameCraft and T-Witches. Fun game. And yeah, they have the great artwork of Sendara Tang, which is sort of the basis of that. you know, and it's interesting cause you know, the FlameCraft game,

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ yes! They have a great aesthetic. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: was the game, the game of the year, the year it came out. I want to say that was 22. I think it was 21 or 22. It was recently. the difference, think, between Flamecraft getting Game of the Year and Wingspan getting in the Game of the Year is sort of how

James Engelhardt: Okay. I think that's about right. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: it came about. And what I mean by this is that, Wingspan when it was game of year in 2018, I believe

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: Hardgrave had found an established publisher. ⁓ when ⁓ Stonemaier Games. So there was a structure, ⁓ infrastructure for her to take her game design ⁓ ⁓ and refinement, et cetera. We talked to Jamie about that a couple of years ago ⁓ the process. Whereas in the case ⁓ FlameCraft Kickstarter basically kickstarted Cardboard Dock.

James Engelhardt: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yup. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: And the volume sold of just the Flamecraft brand alone, because there's now Flamecraft, there's the Dragons and Dragons extension. And then there of course is the Flamecraft duels. ⁓ Not including the T-Witches piece. They have finally gotten to a point of growth that they're moving into more retail establishments.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. That's awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, it is. I hope it, I wish them very well. I don't know how their overall distribution channel strategy is put together. But since you were talking about game gamma, I thought it was a good time to maybe bring that up to just sort of say good on them.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it was 2022, I looked it up for us when FlameCraft came out. So it's four years later and that feels like enough time to slowly establish stuff as opposed to trying to rush right in and really expand really quick. But taking it a little bit slower, I four years is still pretty quick, I think. But that's a lot of units for, what's that? I mean, people who play a lot of games like listeners to this podcast, right, are thinking, it's not the most challenging game out there. But if you get people who are used to Monopoly, maybe Catan, or Ticket to Ride, it's a jump up. And it's, that's fantastic. I mean, I think it's cute, it's adorable, that helps a lot. ⁓ And, but they've done a really nice job of slowly building that brand out.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, and they have this whole plushie aftermarket. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think it's, you know, it's, I don't know if they, when they did it, they thought it was going to be as explosively popular as it was. And I think it, it checks some of the boxes that ⁓ the aforementioned wingspan does. And just in the sense that it's not the typical sci-fi monster aesthetic that you have to really be into.

James Engelhardt: There's that as well. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: Yes, it's got dragons, but it's done in such a way that they're so like, they're so adorable. You know, you're, you're going to want to. Yeah.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Yeah. These are not edgy dragons and they've got puns. mean, and they lean into, you know, it's very adjacent to like Kiki's delivery service and the other Studio Ghibli kind of stuff, Yep. So, and well done, y'all.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, good on them. I'll be really curious to see if, well, a couple of things I'd like to see them, you know, obviously continue to publish games with that aesthetic. And I'm sure that part of that is, you know, is uniquely Sandara. So keeping her in the fold, I don't know exactly what the business arrangement is there, but I'm sure she wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't something, ⁓

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: for her purposes. I'll just leave it at that, right? You know, so we'll get out there. So hopefully that remains to be the case and that, ⁓ see what else they can come up with. Cause I think there's a lot of, you know, we've talked about it ⁓ a number of times on this podcast that there are a lot of game mechanics ⁓ are just ⁓ and it's the reskinning sometimes that makes that mechanic interesting.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: I think that they are kind of on to something with that design aesthetic.

James Engelhardt: Right, because there's nothing new about worker placement, gathering resources, fulfill the contract, do the recipe stuff, watch the cards go down, you know, and that's the end of the game. It's not a whole lot that's new, but yes, the reskinning that they've done here is clearly attractive to a lot of people. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: And it's a great gateway game. mean, every time I've used flamecraft in a social setting, it's been the same way I would use parks or wingspan as a gateway game. This is, you know, a level of complexity that is not so hard. can't get it after, you know, if you just play around, you're, you're in, you know, and I think that that's, you know, one of the nice things about this particular type of game that it makes the hobby accessible to people who think, I'm

James Engelhardt: Right. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: I'm not disciplined enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not focused enough, whatever your excuses are to play that game. You know, and I remember that feeling. I remember the one of the first games I saw in the game store that I really wanted to get more, no more about, but I was really intimidated by was root because it's not, it's not really a gateway game. There is that asymmetric level of play that unless you understand that

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

Joe Mahaffey: And, know, that's one of the things, I love Root, I almost wish I had discovered it later.

James Engelhardt: That makes sense. It's also deeply asymmetric. I I think about something like side there are other ones that give you it's a little bit different It's a little bit different when I teach the game it might be arranged a little bit differently in your card or or a rock hard right 1977 where it's you've got a little bit that's good You're gonna play the game slightly differently, but it's gonna be the same game and for root It's you know, you kind of have to teach it four times if you're gonna play with four people, So yeah

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, 100%.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, that's not what's something you want to put down in front of people. ⁓ Come on over, let me teach you a new game. Flamecraft is a much better, much more accessible, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, last time we were together, I had just received ⁓ Bordeaux and Wingspan. It was Super Bowl Sunday. We had a plan to have wings in Bordeaux. We only had wings. The Bordeaux did not happen. But we have played Wingspan, America's expansion a couple of different times, maybe three, I think.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. ⁓ ⁓ yeah. ⁓ that's right, yeah that's right, it was gonna be Wings and Bordeaux, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ And we played it differently than the way you and Laura played it.

James Engelhardt: Okay, how's that? ⁓ because you just did the base game plus this? Ooh.

Joe Mahaffey: We know we just played the cards. didn't even know we did. The only thing we pulled out of the base game was the dice. So we did the bird cards and the bonuses ⁓ and the hummingbird cards straight out of the game. We only got nectar. If.

James Engelhardt: Okay, wow.

Joe Mahaffey: a bird allowed you to do that. Like the hummingbird would give you nectar, that sort of thing. ⁓ And we've been able to play it pretty successfully. You don't run out of cards. You play your cards for a two player game to do that. And we both, think the last time we played, got 111 and Dale got 97.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: But I had, I had, a card that might had some bonuses that had to do with the, ⁓ the hummingbird score. I got like, you know, 27 points from the hummingbirds. ⁓ but, I like it because I think it does add to the game. adds, it adds the point salad component to the game. I mean, it definitely lets you get up into the stratosphere. can't imagine what the score would have been if we had played all the, you know,

James Engelhardt: Right. Right. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: the birds in there. But it was interesting. I actually had a card that's I had two cards on my board. One said at the end of each round, return to and this was the order that I had them in the the forest. I went and said, return to hummingbirds to the wild. Right.

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

Joe Mahaffey: And had one in the water that said attract to new homing birds. In the beach round, I was moving up the track and attracting two birds, which would either get me eggs or food or whatever I wanted, whatever the choices were, guess I should say. It really vexed Dale because she had a card that said she got a bonus every time I laid eggs. Well, I didn't have to lay eggs because I was pretty able to get all the eggs I needed through the hummingbird.

James Engelhardt: Nice. ⁓ man. ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. Yup.

Joe Mahaffey: mechanism and ⁓ it was very frustrating I think.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That makes sense. The other thing that I like about this expansion is that it lets you plan for combos a little bit more. You know, like, okay, if I fire off the forest or if I fire off the grasslands, then I'll bring another bird in. That'll move me up this track or I'll send them back. Send me up this track that'll let me do another actual. Let me brag, get one. Then let me do some food and then yeah. And there's some little combo stuff that's super fun. ⁓ as well as yeah, a little bit more of the, like those tracks a little better than the sort of area majority stuff from the Asia expansion where for the, two player board. I like the freedom here, ⁓ with those and that the combo stuff is a little more. available. I mean I remember on that that combo board you or the ⁓ the two-player boards you couldn't like you you were hoping for larger connections right at the end of the game right some more contiguous spots and it wouldn't necessarily give you bonuses and these little birdies give you little bonuses all the time which just feel like little drips of dopamine a little hummingbird sized dopamine hits that ⁓ that really sung.

Joe Mahaffey: Right. Well, and if the bird feeder is not being your friend, which oftentimes happens, ⁓

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: having the ability to get the nectar and kind of move your agenda forward. ⁓ because if you think about it, mean, the cards are there. ⁓ and there are a lot of heavy cards in there. that you need more than, you know, usually two to three foods to get it out on the table. So, but I mean, you know what I just, sometimes you play, like, I think we did this. I'm trying to think, we must have done this with the Oceana expansion or we did this once before where you just played with the new cards. And that one was less satisfying, that time was less satisfying than this time. I think it was just the volume of cards, perhaps. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. There's a lot of new cards in this one. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: And the bonuses you got, and then you also had, it comes with five into round, well really 10 into round goals. And so, yeah, exactly. we had to kind of, and I really liked the one that said cards with even number scoring on it or odd number scoring on it. kind of liked that because that actually helped you think about, what word am I going to place and all that kind of stuff. And so it was, ⁓

James Engelhardt: Right, because you flip them over here. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: I kind of liked it because those new bonuses, I'm going to say something controversial here that so Dale is the queen of the end of end of game bonuses. Any game we play, she will pay attention to that and totally never lose side. It's one of the reasons why she wins every time the first time we play a game. That she's paying to paying attention to all the places you can get points. Me, I'm always looking at what are the mechanics of the game and what happens if I do this?

James Engelhardt: Okay. Gotcha.

Joe Mahaffey: Which may not. Yeah, exactly. You know, and so that that is, think, one of the reasons. I mean, she's smart and she's good at what she does. Don't get me wrong. But I think it's one of the reasons why that that happens more often than that. ⁓ But this this approach kind of took that away from her. Because I was able to. It was a level playing field, I guess I should say. The cards didn't necessarily go her way. Where I was getting odd cards out, she didn't. So all of sudden I got a boost on the first.

James Engelhardt: pushing buttons a little more here. ⁓ Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: End of round. Goal. So anyway, just nuances that I noticed about the game. need to put it, we need to put it all together and play it full bar. I will say I'm not as big of a fan of the little piece that they give you to put on your board to flip back and forth.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just a little thin paper. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: the new. Yeah. Not a fan. mean, it just, I don't know, it just didn't really. I would have preferred new boards.

James Engelhardt: And so it's funny when you say that because I've gotten all of the ⁓ Wingspan expansions, right? And I have so many player boards, right? Not getting a whole new chunk of those things? Man, I think I brought about two pounds of those things just all by themselves.

Joe Mahaffey: You know, see, I also have the, mats.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay.

Joe Mahaffey: and I roll the mats up and I can keep everything in the box. I 3D printed inserts for the box. ⁓ So it gives you room for mats and stuff like that when you navigate a little bit differently. Anyway, it's fine. mean, it's, I'll get over it.

James Engelhardt: Nice. Well, and it does flitter, I mean, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: I mean, it works fine on the, the mats. It doesn't slide off and it doesn't, you know, know, craziness, but, I don't have a solution to how you fix it. You know, unless you want the mat that has like a folder, I don't know. This is the origami board. You've unfolded a certain way to play this version that you pull it back up and you unfold it that way. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Good? Good, good. No. glue it down. ⁓ I like that. Yeah, that would be fun.

Joe Mahaffey: So anyway, we're just going to have to get them to do the game board on your tablet. So you just put the cards on the tablet. Or you have to be a pretty big tablet, Anyway. Yeah, but all in all, mean, what's left for him to do? Africa?

James Engelhardt: There you go. It would have, yeah, there's a lot of birds. Whole table top. I know. We've got Africa and Antarctica.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay, a penguin or two.

James Engelhardt: Exactly. think Antarctica is going to be a small expansion and Africa is going to be a big one. And I remember he, one of his newsletters had a little poll about which one do you want? want to get the big Africa expansion or do you want the little Antarctica one first? So.

Joe Mahaffey: I think you should do both together. Yeah. Africa, Artica.

James Engelhardt: just simultaneously, drop them both.

Joe Mahaffey: And where would you put the Falklands? Would you put the birds in the Falklands in the Americas or would you put it down in Antarctica? Or even Africa?

James Engelhardt: You know, it's an open question. Yeah, lots of penguins. And like, storm petrels, I guess, or something.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Interesting. Well, but I, will, it's a total sidebar before we get into your games. ⁓ Last weekend, I played a game that I've done here. It's called, it was called the, ⁓ a double R DXCW contest. Okay. So what this is, this is what it was. So this is my ham radio thing again.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, yeah. Luckily we don't have to deal. Yeah. ⁓ what'd play? Okay. ⁓ there we go, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So a double RL is like the, is like a nonprofit organization that's for amateur radio. They do, they administer a lot of contests. In fact, there was a contest going on today, which is called the North Carolina QSO party. I won't get into that because I'm going to get to participate or not. last weekend, the whole weekend was the, ⁓ the, the DX and I'll explain what that means. CW contest. And so this was the deal.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: DX is you're trying to contact somebody that's outside of your country. Okay. So the goal was you wanted to, to connect with people in other parts of the world and you want to tell them, your call sign minus W four J O D. You want to tell them the signal strength, which was typically five nine nine or five seven nine, depending upon how solid their signal was.

James Engelhardt: Okay. All Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: And then I'm telling them what state I'm in. So they get to record. talked to some.

James Engelhardt: I'm feeling kind of happy, no.

Joe Mahaffey: They are going to give me their call sign. They are going to tell me how well they receive me. And then they're going to tell me what wattage they're using. Okay. So it can be anywhere from most people are at a hundred watts. Most radios do a hundred watts. There are people that have 500 watts. are people with a thousand watts. I personally have 200 watts at my disposal. So anyway,

James Engelhardt: You Okay. All right.

Joe Mahaffey: Long story short, didn't do it. I was very busy last weekend, so I was kind of doing it here and there. I did not get to do it with a full range of focus, but I made 13 contacts, 11 of which were outside of the United States because, know, somebody in the States responded to me. I'm going to take the log to the log book. ⁓ Anyway, long story short, I connected last week with the Canary Islands, with Brazil.

James Engelhardt: Nice. Sure. Nice.

Joe Mahaffey: Croatia, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Sweden, Norway. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Hey! ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: think that's enough that I remember. Nobody in Africa. But, um, and that was just my first time I'd ever done a contest. So I actually didn't report it I don't think I did it right. So I was like, I don't want to screw this up, but I, and plus it was all in Morse code. So it was not just me saying this. I had to do it with the dot dot, did it, did that, that, you know, kind of stuff. So still getting comfortable with that. Anyway,

James Engelhardt: Okay, nice. ⁓ well. Yes! Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: Last thing I'll say on this because it is germane to the rest of the story is the week before, as I was kind of looking at the bands. there's different frequencies we'll say. And there is one ham who sits in Antarctica. This is coming back to the story. And there is a certain time of day and year.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Right. Wow.

Joe Mahaffey: that I have the opportunity to potentially get his attention.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay.

Joe Mahaffey: And every, it's like, he's like the Albatross. Once he shows up on these, there are these databases out there that says so-and-so is out there looking to connect. It's like, ⁓ my gosh, can you get through the pile up to get this guy to pay attention? And he was active that week as well. And so it was just like, ⁓ I could see on the map, there's somebody in Antarctica. Can I hit that far south on the globe from the Carolinas? I did not get his attention. So anyway.

James Engelhardt: Hahaha! Right. That's awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: Enough of that. That's not really a board game, but it was a gaming kind of thing. the, our good thing did go back, but enough about that. ⁓ part of my nerd hobby.

James Engelhardt: Sounds like a gaming thing, yeah? That's good, that's good. That's good. But speaking of, you brought up Ireland, so we're gonna jump into Irish games. So, played a couple of games this recently. One that I've been meaning to talk about for a while, Tyr Nannogh, and one that just came to us a couple of days ago called Tenby, which is... kind of some funny stories. So, Tune and Oge is a 2024 release from the Grand Gamers Guild. It's Isaac Shalov and Jason Slingerland with art by Marlus Berens and Brigitte, or Bridgette in Delicato. That's a fun last name, in Delicato. ⁓ So it's about Irish storytellers and the other world. So I will tell a couple of stories here. ⁓ So this is kind of fun because it started with... The game itself started as part of Grand Gamers Guild Unreal Estate, is like the second year that they were putting games out. Slingerland designed it. Shalov was working as a booth, ⁓ you know, minion for the guild at like Gen Con or Origins or something. He liked the game, but he's like, you know, this is a really solid game, I there's something else you could do. And he like met for breakfast the next day and was like, hey, ⁓ Let's do this and let me pitch some stuff to you. So they worked on that for a couple of years, brought it out two years ago, guess, and a decent little Kickstarter. ⁓ Mark Spector, who's the guy who runs Grand Gamers Guild, was like, well, that was good. Fair enough. I thought it would do better, but it didn't. But.

Joe Mahaffey: You

James Engelhardt: It started selling out at conventions and people were like, oh, now I need to, know, there's suddenly there was a secondary market. He was like, what's going on? So another Kickstarter in late 2024, which included some expansions, other goodies and such that fulfilled late last year. And I've had it on the table since then. So, you are in Tir Nanogue, storytellers traveling to the underworld to gather stories in order to develop a saga. ⁓ But the actual what you're doing is exploring to do some with some light interactions and tactical play and you're solving as a two-layer puzzle. ⁓ There are two spaces for the game and this is the key and fun part. One is a central array, sort of grid of cards based on the number of players, so it's like n plus one in three rows.

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm. you

James Engelhardt: ⁓ And then you have a couple of pieces that you'll put on that array, like in, I think it's a snake draft kind of thing. And, but you put them between two cards and then you go back around drafting those cards out from one of those two figures. Taking it back. So if you've got three people that are like sitting on one card and the first person takes that card out Then the other two are kind of committed to that other card. Maybe they didn't want it, right? So you're there's a little bit of taking that kind of thing ⁓ And then you'll start with a hand of cards ⁓ of Five which is also the number of rounds in the game So it's kind of funny at the end of each round. You'll discard a card and so your hand slowly shrinks ⁓ Which is weird until they're just very small ⁓ but you draft one of those cards and then place one card from your hand. So you drafted that card from the middle and then you're playing one of them and it could be from your hand or it could be the one you're taking. You can do a lot of, there's some space for hate drafting. ⁓ And then you play that into this tableau, which is again, it's a three row grid. ⁓ The tableaus have specific scoring goals. There's another scoring for everybody based on majorities of the colors. ⁓ And that's kind of how it goes. There's a bit of take that as I was saying, but it's always a friendly take that. So even if you strand somebody in the other world, they can go and they'll pick up whatever cards are remaining. So you're never without cards. Something's always giving you a little bit. ⁓ There's a bunch. So. ⁓ you've got, let's see here, I brought visual aids. ⁓ So you start with top, bottom, middle, and then they gave you so many other cards to make top, bottoms, and middles with, so you can do a lot of customization there. ⁓ It's, also, ⁓ for that, you, let's see, you've got the regular rulebook, but then another rulebook with five different modules. ⁓ So you get a bunch of stuff there. It's still, it's not a heavy game. It's medium light and kind of the light side of that, particularly if you're just playing the basic version. It's, you can play it, it plays pretty well at two player, but it's really more fun with three or four. You can kind of get a little more surprised with the stuff that people are doing. And, Yeah, it's pretty satisfying to watch that solve that little puzzle of I need to have, let's see, for instance, like you get scored for sets of cards of the same value, right? Or strictly lower number than the card in front of it. You just score those things. But then you're also trying to put the little blues and reds and yellows in their largest group because you can score for that too. And it's...

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. You

James Engelhardt: very, very fun to just sit there and do this. It's also beautiful. ⁓ So you've got this very Irish inflected artwork there behind me. ⁓ And all of the scoring cards also have flavor text on them. There's flavor text all throughout. So if you want to dive deep into Irish mythology.

Joe Mahaffey: Yep. Thank you.

James Engelhardt: this is the way to go. Highly recommend it. Again, it's a nice beer and pretzels. It's a nice intro level kind of game because it's, you you're drafting cards from the middle and then you're laying them out. Pretty straightforward. But it's that interaction that's super fun and trying to solve the two puzzles at the same time, which is also quite delightful.

Joe Mahaffey: Yep. Very cool. Now, do you also play the Tir Nanag song by the Celtic woman in the background while you play?

James Engelhardt: I do not know this, but now I will. can put on a whole lot of stuff, playing a bunch of dropkick Murphy's and Clannad and...

Joe Mahaffey: I'm sorry that the guy with the Irish last name had to explain that to you.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, I mean, there you go. And I'm sorry that I never did find the Mahaffies that you told me to find. It's just... Couldn't get there. ⁓ Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: All good. They probably were still in Scotland before they came to Ireland.

James Engelhardt: It might still be. No, but it's a lovely and the pieces are beautiful. There's a whole lot of, you know, fun. They lean into the Gaelic spelling. So they'll have leprechaun. They'll have words that you'll recognize. You're like, oh, that's leprechaun, but it does not look like leprechaun in English. So it's super fun that way. And going to stay with the islands over there. So the other one that I played is Tenby, which is over there. This is from 2025, so I'm doing really new games this time, as opposed to 3,000 year old games. So this is Cozy Cub Games, who published it. It's run by a guy named Benji Talbot. The designer is a guy named Benji Talbot. And the art was done by this dude, Benji Talbot.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, that there in the background over there. detail but

James Engelhardt: Yeah, so, um, uh, it's a, so this, we got this, this was a game night last weekend. Uh, Tim Rogers from the Boardwalk of Greenville taught it, yep, taught it to Laura at her table and her crew there. Um, and so she was so excited by it that she was like, I really love this game. really need to have this game. was like, well, can we order it? And so she ordered it by the end of the night. Beards may have influenced that decision, but, but.

Joe Mahaffey: Of course. I've bought many games under the influence of beer.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, ⁓ and we were able to get it to the table a couple times. ⁓ Cozy Cub is the name of the company and this game is cozy. It is very cozy. ⁓ We used to use this acronym ⁓ SGGC, Single Game Game Company for in the hobby, like someone who are like, aw, you couldn't get somebody else to publish your games, you're gonna do this. ⁓ But it looks like, what? Yeah, yep, yep. But I think...

Joe Mahaffey: You know, that back in the.

James Engelhardt: Benji has plans for stuff beyond 10b. I looked at his website and he's got like a bunch of games in the hopper, actually following the Stonemaier pattern of like single syllable words and then having a chart of what stage of development they're in. So that was pretty funny.

Joe Mahaffey: love that. That's project management and roadmaps. Love it.

James Engelhardt: Yep, yep. And it's also a guessing game for the rest of us. Like, okay, what is that going to be about? Is the code name a hint what this thing is going to be about? So this setting is the seaside town of 10b Wales. Yeah, that's great silence. Benji is himself in Cardiff. So, and what you're doing is just... What? Cardiff?

Joe Mahaffey: He's in Cardiff. He's in Cardiff. Sorry.

James Engelhardt: So you're laying out the streets of the town of Tenby. ⁓ So you're once again laying out cards in rows ⁓ as a tableau for scoring. ⁓ The theme is a town building, but it's really about balancing strategy and tactics. And there's some familiar stuff here, but you've got three kinds of cards. have, look, more visuals. You have ⁓ terrace cards on the back here, and on the front they look like this. The art is quite interesting. ⁓ have Pier cards, so down by the water. And you've got, what do they call them? Landmark cards ⁓ for landmarks. You also have these day and night cards, which are super fun because the night cards are for turn order and day cards are what you're going to use as actions. And they interact in a kind of King Domino way. So you start.

Joe Mahaffey: Yep. Okay.

James Engelhardt: at night and they're numbered in 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever, however many players you've got. And so in numerical order, ⁓ you choose which day action by putting your piece on that piece, right, on the card. You can choose whatever card you want though. Lower numbers mean you'll go earlier in the turn order again next time, but doesn't have so much good fun stuff to do. Higher numbers mean you'll get more stuff you'll have to pick, but you'll pick later. And cards don't refresh, so it might be a smaller display, but you can still top deck, just draw things off the top. So it's a nice moment where you're like, there's that card over there that I really want, but I won't get anything else, but I'll get it. Or do I feel like... I don't really care, maybe I'll just go for loading up on stuff and see if anything good comes out. And mostly you'll be drawing these kinds of cards. ⁓ And then there are also resident cards that are just scoring goals. So like wingspans goal cards or ticket to rides, destination cards, something like that, just to sort of, you know.

Joe Mahaffey: Right. Well, the art, the art in a way reminds me of Santa Monica.

James Engelhardt: Okay, I was thinking it feels very much like Tintin, right? With the very clean lines and the like black outlines of things and... Yeah. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I think too, you know, Santa Monica, you're laying out the beachfront in Santa Monica and you've got pier and you have, you know, bench and, here's food and you know, so. Cool. Cool. Exactly.

James Engelhardt: Yep. Yep, and you'll score versus how many benches are nearby or how many trash cans are nearby and yeah, that kind of stuff. And it's funny because they don't like, you can score for clouds, but it doesn't say this cloud, this card has four clouds on it. You just have to pay attention. And there's, ⁓ yeah, and there's those life preserver rings. So in case you need to do some extra moves or shift things around or something. use some life preservers. ⁓ Some cards let you cap off the street. They've got a little check mark in the corner and on the side. that means once you've, if you've capped off both ends, you'll score more with the residence cards. The residents like to have a finished road, I guess. ⁓ You play, yeah, they like that. Yeah, it's continuously being built. You play 10 rounds because 10B.

Joe Mahaffey: Who's darn right?

James Engelhardt: Yeah, and then you score your streets. It's really light, ⁓ but you're setting yourself up the best you can with small scale little combos. And the art is again, really cozy, really clean, very tintin, I think, or tan tan if you wanna do that. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Ha!

James Engelhardt: If you're interested, if you like Castle Combo, Point City, this is very similar kind of vibe. There's a little bit going on, more going on. There's more physical stuff to keep track of. So it feels more like propolis or something, but still it's a small box. You can see it over there, small box. ⁓ It's a little bit bigger, just a little bit bigger. It's hilarious. like, why is it an extra quarter of an inch on a, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yep, the coin salad side. And it's because they're using A4 paper and not eight and a half by 11.

James Engelhardt: And yeah, well and these cards well and these cards are like smaller than poker just a little bit smaller than poker and or like magic cards and you're like well Was that a cost saving measure? What was what was going on there? Anyway, but I Really like it. We'll probably play it again this evening. If not tonight tomorrow, I'm sure And it's adorable and I also think it's funny that we got it just because Laura's like hey That was so fun Should I buy it? Yes

Joe Mahaffey: That's great. And, my, my ridiculous Cardiff accent was inspired by Tara Fitzgerald in the movie, the Englishman who went up a hill, but came down a mountain.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Cause it, you know, yes, yes, but she's acting like she's all very posh as they would say. And she's like, I'm from Cardiff, which that's not her accent at all. You know, uh, anyway, so that was where my, disrespectful accent came from. I apologize to anybody out there that was offended by that. Cause it definitely was not a Welsh accent.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen that, yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Cool. No. And then we have a, I know a Welsh woman and I was hoping to run into her today, I did not, but playing the game of tenby. And when we think of the UK, we think of the Victorian era.

Joe Mahaffey: There you go. We do because of Queen Victoria and her era, I guess. I don't know. No, I'm all kidding aside. Obviously ⁓ we're moving into the Kickstarter mode. ⁓ You may have been tagged a few months back by my wife regarding a game called Status, ⁓ Victorian Affair. And as you know, from our, ⁓ dwelling into all of the, Dark Summoner games and the Obsession,

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: games. love that Empire-ish part of the realm. well, this is another game that falls into that, but this was one that Dale found and just started pushing. And I was like, well, I'm going to, I'm going to discreetly back this Kickstarter.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: And then she started hounding me like we should really back this Kickstarter. We should really back this Kickstarter. I finally had to say, look, I already did. Just leave me alone. Let me, let me give me this. ⁓ but anyway, ⁓ but what's unique about this is that there's, there's, when you back the Kickstarter and you go in full bore, which I typically do, ⁓ they have a number of different ways to play the game and a couple of different, expansions or, or et cetera.

James Engelhardt: You've got a birthday coming up, just chill. Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: But the idea is, that there's like four or so manners that you can literally build a game. it's like, you know, so the only way I know to think about it is remember how you would build like a house out of a deck of cards. Well, this is a board game where you build a house that to me looks like a Barbie dream house when you're done. ⁓ So it was just.

James Engelhardt: I'm seeing that, that's amazing. Mm-hmm. It's amazing looking.

Joe Mahaffey: You know, it takes place in the Victorian era. It's a worker placement game. And you have to build the most prestigious name in high society, which probably has to do with how you do your manner. I don't know. We're going to get into it. ⁓ But it's almost like three dimensional obsession.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. It really is, that's amazing. They remind me a bit of like the Everdell tree, just in terms of like, they're substantial looking.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Yeah. Be curious to see the quality and usability and playability. You know, the tree after a while gets a little... I if you don't go, if you don't follow up and get the wooden tree after a while, you're putting tape on your tree.

James Engelhardt: I was gonna say, yeah, the cardboard fatigues.

Joe Mahaffey: But I backed it a while back. We just haven't talked about things we've backed in a while and I was looking to put in the agenda for today. ⁓ But I definitely want to check out this ⁓ turn an hog that looks that looks interesting and 10 looks fun too. ⁓

James Engelhardt: True. Yeah. Yeah, and they're both really accessible, really approachable. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Cool. Well, you know, it's interesting you bring up the Tirunenag. I'm seeing if I can move with a level of expediency here. So you mentioned earlier, Rockhard 1977. And that is published by, we lost James. going to give him a minute to come back. I'm just going to keep talking. It's published by Devere games. And I may just have to edit this part out. Let me just see if I can let him know he fell offline. you you you

James Engelhardt: Sorry about that. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay, no worries. Hold on, I'm going do this for editing later. Just a sound and a movement that knows to edit here. I see this a lot. Anyway, what I started to say before we were briefly interrupted by user is that the Tirna Nag is very interesting to me and it kind of reminded me, you know, we were talking earlier about Rock Hard 1977 and, you know, that's Devere Games.

James Engelhardt: Okay. my incompetence. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: And I was thinking Devere was like this, you know, Johnny completely kind of publisher, probably not a lot of games. Boy was I wrong. But when you were talking about turn an OGG, it made me think of a nickname of theirs. And I'm very curious about called covenant. It's a like a Dwarven, not suggesting that the people in Wales were dwarves, but I mean, it's that, but even the, the aesthetic of the, of the

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah! Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: the board of the cover of the game itself. It reminds me of that. And plus they have some really other interesting games like Color Monster, which I see a lot of, Cities, which I see a lot of, and there's even one ⁓ called Jerusalem that they spell with an I. It is a biblical based game and you know that that is something that I am interested in from time to time. And then they also have one called Trans Galactica.

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

Joe Mahaffey: What I had never heard of and never seen until I was, and I'll take it back to the beginning of this, was in the boardwalk in Carrollton, Texas. And that was one of the games that I saw. was like, ⁓ I'm not familiar with this title. So.

James Engelhardt: Yep. They also do a wacky little game called Stroop, which, yes, yep, and that's, that is, it looks like it's supposed to be a light little party game, but man, ugh. They set up, I mean, the Stroop effect is you see the word green, but it's written in red, and the question is what color do you see? And your brain is almost immediately going to say green.

Joe Mahaffey: Yes, I have.

James Engelhardt: because you're keyed into language. And so the whole game is based around that kind of puzzle weirdness. Yeah. Super fun. I've played it once. ⁓ It's been out of print for a while. They're supposed to be bringing it back. So that would be fun to keep an eye out for.

Joe Mahaffey: Love it. Well, I did reach out to Devere a while back to see if we could get our, the designer from, uh, rock hard, 1977 on the neighborhood on it. So maybe I'll have to use this as an opportunity to reach out again and say, Hey, just come on and talk to us about your games. You know, look at that. Something different. Well, that is all I have this week. Now I have some extra editing to do. Thanks Jane.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Yeah, we're fun. Let's do it. Sorry about that. I was trying to move a screen and poof, yep. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: It's all good. I'm, I'm, you know, I have, you weird lighting because I've got this HDR effect from my, one of my monitors. It projects like this purple hue, but I can't seem to drown out. I'm working on that. Anyway. Well, as per usual, uh, with first world problems, I am not bored. am bored gaming. Joe Mahaffey.

James Engelhardt: And I hope, and I hope, I'm James Engler, and I hope all of your tiebreakers break your way even as you step on the other person's lines. I'm so sorry. I hope you're joining me happy, because damn.

Joe Mahaffey: I hope you're James Ingleheart too. Otherwise, who the hell have I been talking to? ⁓ ⁓ jeez. We hope to be back in a couple of weeks, folks, but I don't know. Bye, everybody.

James Engelhardt: Bye.