Weathering the Storm

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. As per usual, I am one of your hosts, Joe Mahaffey.

James Engelhardt: And I'm your other host, James Englehart. And here we are. After many, many days. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: I caught you off guard with my lack of energy because I looked at the last one and I thought, ⁓ my God, that guy's crazy. ⁓ my gosh. I can't do that every time. just, that just makes me come across as, you know, unhinged.

James Engelhardt: There's no way to go. There's no up after that.

Joe Mahaffey: That's fair. That's fair. Well, James, welcome back. ⁓ you know, it's, we always try to do these things every two weeks. And there's always something that gets in the way. And we live in we are we are, you know, we are the southern board game podcast with the accent on southern which means, you know, we never have to deal with things like snow or ice, except the last two weekends.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. plague of locusts. Two in a row. It's been crazy. Ice the first day. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, so in the first storm, how much ice did you guys get?

James Engelhardt: I don't know. ⁓ Mostly it came as sleet so it didn't really accumulate except in packed little... and poor Emerson, this little guy he's like he's four, he hasn't really seen this stuff before and he's like I'm gonna make snow angels and it's sleet that is packed down. It's just like skittering all over everything. That's hilarious.

Joe Mahaffey: you Yeah, we were very happy with the sleep because when it gets ⁓ freezing rain and breaks, you know, pipelines or not pipelines, but power lines, you know, that's the problem. So we kept power and that was great. So I was very grateful for that, particularly as cold as it got afterwards. But then snowmageddon came the next week. We got 11 inches up here. Yeah.

James Engelhardt: Right. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Whoa! We had like four and half five. That was not weird. Nowhere close.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, so that's why I still have snow in my front yard. Because I'm have a northern exposure kind of house and so there's just this one spot but just as I'm hanging around. I don't care how warm it is I'm hanging around it got to 50 degrees this week I still have snow in my yard. I know right. Anyway, ⁓ I guess that's what we should learn from the the silver frost game is that it's really hard to move the snow. There you go.

James Engelhardt: I can see that. 50 means nothing to me, right? It is hard to move the snow, yeah. You need fire. Fire. Burn it with fire, Joe.

Joe Mahaffey: I did like the fire pit yesterday and it burned out after about 15 minutes. I think it was too wet underneath. was trying to get her going. ⁓ usually around this time of the program, we talk about upcoming things like Mythicon. In this case, we're going to talk about Mythicon West. For those of you who follow this podcast, you know we talked to Richard Fortuna on the last program and we were hyping up Mythicon West. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: Obviously that is going to be taking place in about three weeks, maybe. Yeah, three weeks and up in Asheville, North Carolina. And I believe ⁓ you can still get reservations and still get ⁓ tickets. think the early bird tickets may have ended as of yesterday, but I think you're, good to go. Unfortunately, I am not good to go. I was really hoping to make it up there this season. ⁓ But the real world calls.

James Engelhardt: That's awesome. Does sense? ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: And I will be in them. I will be up north and I will be down in the Midwest or the Southwest. And by the time I get back, I will not have time to get up to Asheville, unfortunately. So I will not be able to make it. ⁓ But, ⁓ you know, there was always Charlotte in the fall and there's always next year. But anyway, doesn't mean just because I'm not going to, doesn't mean other people can't go. In fact, you might have a better time if I'm not there. So please go.

James Engelhardt: There is. They should go! It... It sounds like it's a great setup. Tuna was just really excited about it. And it sounds like it's a slightly more mellow, more intimate sort of gathering and a lot more just a good place to go and play games with good people that are drawn to those events.

Joe Mahaffey: And quite frankly, I'd like to go to burial.

James Engelhardt: There you go. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: The brewery in Biltmore Forest.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm, that's a good one. Yeah, that's just down the road from where they are and Wicked Weed is just up the hill and downtown, right off downtown, lots of good beer. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. There you go. But yeah, so that's that's Mythicon and I hear you might have some exciting news.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, so just as of this recording an hour and 11 minutes ago, tickets went on sale for Gen Con 2026. The best four days in gaming, I think, is their tagline, and that's going to be end of July, early August. And I, your humble journalist here, is going to be there for the first time. I'm looking forward to going to Gen Con 2026 up in Indianapolis with 200,000 of my closest friends. So... I'll report back on how it can...

Joe Mahaffey: All right. Am I going to need to equip you with equipment so that you can, that's redundant. Am I going to have to equip you with video equipment so that you can get some interviews in for the podcast?

James Engelhardt: take some shots, do some stuff. Yeah, we'll have to talk about that. That could be fun.

Joe Mahaffey: I've got a 360 here, an Insta360 you could take. That could be very interesting.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Bring a rig. We'll have to talk about it. Hmm. We've got a lot of-

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, that sounds good. I'm excited. Now is it just you or is Laura going as well? Okay.

James Engelhardt: It is just me. Laura is, we're gonna, there's a whole bunch of family shenanigans going on and I will be taking off from that to spend four days with other kinds of shenanigans, so should be a time. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: There you go. I understand. Well, that's great. Well, I'm excited for you. I'm excited you get to go. ⁓ Unfortunately, that is not in the cards for me this year just because of other familial obligations myself. ⁓ But we'll have to make that a goal for maybe 2027.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah man, that'd be awesome. I like that they've moved it a little bit, I like that they've moved it a little more onto the July side so that the academics can get there before everything becomes too, you know, new semester focused.

Joe Mahaffey: Let's see how long, let's. I think it's right on top of my 24 hours of booty. That might be the problem. That's a bicycle race folks. I don't want you to get the wrong idea when I say 24 hours of booty. Those of you who have seen a picture of me know that this is just a bicycle race and nothing else.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay. I was gonna say.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, that sounds exciting. I'm glad to know that we're getting out in the world and we'll have to get some business, some lay it on the table cards printed up before you go and you can use that. we'll, we've got a little bit of time to think about how that might look and all that good stuff. So that's great. I'm excited for you. Well, the drawback of the snow, ⁓ it means that, you know, we're, we're over, well, we're in February recording and we didn't anticipate being in February recording.

James Engelhardt: Yep. ⁓ yeah. little press badge on myself. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: to talk about this topic anyway. We certainly anticipated being in February recording, but not episode two. but back in December, I talked about that I was going to do the 12 days, or excuse me, the 12 games of Christmas and, ⁓ Dale, my wife and I, we successfully completed 12 games. I'm going to just sort of give you some highlights of what we covered. And then if you have a question or two about a particular game or so, I'll be glad to talk about it.

James Engelhardt: That was a hope, yeah a dream, Right on. Awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: Because there's 12 games and we have a lot of stuff to talk about. I'm not going to do the normal deep dive that we would do if it was just one or two games, but I do feel like it's important to just kind of kind of set the table here. So when I thought about it. So I typically take the last couple of weeks of December off largely because I've got pto to burn and I hate to just leave that out there. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Sure.

Joe Mahaffey: And so we were going to use this time to play some games. And in my mind, when I thought about this, I was like, Hey, we're going to play 12 games. And they could just, and then quite frankly, could have been the one game 12 times. And I would have felt like we had satisfied the requirement. ⁓ Dale on the other hand said, no, it's 12 games. Period. So even if we played one more than once, I only got to count it once. And we did play a few of these more than once, but I only got to count it once.

James Engelhardt: Right. We gotta do this. Okay, that's awesome. Okay. So did you go for... clearly not going to go through big heavy games to, you know, 12 days of ⁓ Vidal Asserta.

Joe Mahaffey: No, although ⁓ Speakeasy had arrived and that was a thought that we kind of looked at again and again. But ⁓ there were a couple of things. Obviously there were some games that we had already played before. But if you look at this, of these, most of these with a few exceptions were taken out of shrink wrap and played for the first time because that was one of the things was to try to ⁓ diminish the shelf of shame, which is the shelf of shrink wrapped games.

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

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ The other aspect of it was if there's a game on here, like I'll tell you up front, there's Wingspan and Kohaku. Those are games that we have played many, many times. The reason Wingspan is on the list, were at the in-laws for Christmas. The girls wanted to play a game. They wanted to play Wingspan. And so we did. So we did. So there you go. So that was the rationale. So let me.

James Engelhardt: Well there you go. Awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: Let me go through these games and I'll just kind of go through that. I'm going to give them to you in the order that we played them.

James Engelhardt: Well, you kick it off with a good thematic one too here.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, it was yes, because it was Christmas. So we started off with ⁓ Santa's Workshop, second edition. ⁓ And it was a cute game. mean, I had gotten it, gosh, well, it's from Elf Creek, by the way, the people that give us Honey Buzz and others. We really enjoyed the game. ⁓ You know, it was thematically interesting. And, you know, we kind of got to go through the

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

Joe Mahaffey: Because then of course what Dale and I do will, when we're playing a game that has a certain theme, we will put a YouTube theme channel up. And around the time we were playing this game, there was a YouTube channel that was sort of like, it was like, we have video inside of Santa's workshop. And so it would cut around to there, Santa in his office, checking the list and there's, here's an elf building toys, here's an elf sleeping and he gets caught by a supervisor and there's reindeer walking across. It's just really, it was very funny.

James Engelhardt: Have fun.

Joe Mahaffey: And it was clearly a loop, but the way that they had done it, you couldn't tell it was a loop. It was really, really creative. ⁓ So anyway, yeah, so we did.

James Engelhardt: Right. So did you play the standard game or did you do the advanced game?

Joe Mahaffey: We did the standard. was, ⁓ we had fresh out of the, the shrink wrap. We didn't want to get, you know, usually we'll start with the standard and then just kind of decide how many times we're gonna play it. I think we played this one twice before we moved on. ⁓ But that was, ⁓ that was the first one that we went to. And then of course we couldn't get into, sticking to the theme, we couldn't get into it.

James Engelhardt: Okay. I was gonna say, stay thematic here.

Joe Mahaffey: without doing the spirits of Christmas. You know, we interviewed Humble Bard games back just before Christmas ⁓ and was able to finally get that game out. we played that several times and even got to play once with our oldest daughter. And it was, you know, it's a game that, you know, it really holds up well. I really enjoyed it. It was very spot on to the book or the, yeah, the book. And, you know, it was, it's, there's a challenge to it.

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

Joe Mahaffey: because you, don't always get to decide where the cards go down and, but you have to go through the different chapters of the book basically. And, ⁓ so it's, it's, it's, I'm a fan. I'll, I'll, you know, I'll, I'll keep it.

James Engelhardt: Okay Cool. So is there way to, it's a co-op, right? Is there a way to like make it harder, easier to sort of tweak it or is it just?

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, there, you know, there is a variant of it that kind of takes it up a notch. We just played the base version of it. ⁓ But, ⁓ you know, your cards don't always go your way and you find, you know, there is, you know, some abilities that you can do that boost your score, but if you don't do it or you have to, you know, spend a feature that goes away. So there is a lot of nuance to it that can. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Okay. It's okay. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: very from time to time. so that was, yeah. Hey, I know. just say that was really a game. I'm glad we had him on. And now the next one, when I put it in the show notes, I'm not, I'm, well, I am, I couldn't find it on board game geek. That was a sad part. And so I have, I have some friends a while back that went to Iceland for a trip and

James Engelhardt: Awesome. Cool. And then the next one looks... ⁓ sorry. Cool. Yeah. It's unpronounceable. Go ahead and try to say it. ⁓ wow!

Joe Mahaffey: they, you know, we got their mail or something and they brought us back something in them. What they brought us back was this card game. And I'm going to try to pronounce it, but I'm sure I'm going to totally butcher this. Yoloco Turin.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ good. Okay. Sure.

Joe Mahaffey: I'm going to stick with that, but it's, it's fundamentally translates Yule cat. And it's the legend of the Yule cat, which is basically if you don't get new clothes for Christmas or you don't wear your new clothes for Christmas, you can get gotten by the cat, which is this huge guy. But anyway, it's this version is fundamentally old made. It's just fundamentally old made. They have a bunch of ⁓ traditional characters from North mythology that are

James Engelhardt: Well, that's awesome. ⁓ okay. Alright.

Joe Mahaffey: tied to the legend of the Yule Cat sort of people that are mischievous. ⁓ And you won't you don't want to get stuck with the Yule Cat at the end, just like you don't want get stuck with old mate. That is fundamentally the game. it was ⁓ the art. What made it interesting was the artwork on all of the cards. And so that's what what really drove it. We it was a fast moving game. It was something we could put out very quickly in play.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Okay. ⁓ cool. Sure.

Joe Mahaffey: It was easy to learn, easy to play. know, something you can just keep it in your pocket. mean, it's that small. So yeah. Then of course I mentioned Wingspan. We've talked about Wingspan ad nauseum on this. I will just say that we did play, not today anyway, we did just play the base game period. No frills, no, no Europe's no Afro.

James Engelhardt: It's all made. We're not gonna stop. Hehehehe How did that feel going back to the bass after playing? Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: actually, we like the base, you know, it's, it's a lower scoring game. ⁓ You have to be a lot more strategic around how you're getting your assets. You know, ⁓ but you know, we had this conversation last night, because we're to talk about some expansions here in a little bit. And, you know, Dale's philosophy is she always likes the original better than she likes the expansion.

James Engelhardt: Sure. Right. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: and I I could probably, you know, I would say that from game to game, I probably feel the same. Wingspan is not one of those. I kind of like the way, the one thing, you know, the one thing about wingspan is that I would say the addition of nectar has made it a little easier. I think that ⁓ was one of the reasons why I generally will exclude Oceania just cause I'm not, just cause I'm not really interested in the nectar component, but that's because it's more challenging.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ okay.

Joe Mahaffey: I find it to be more challenging without that, but that's, but it doesn't mean, you know, Oceana doesn't have a place. mean, I'm learning Morse code right now and I didn't start out doing 13 words a minute. started out with five. Just, you know, so there you go. ⁓ Then moving on. This was an old favorite that we like to play and it's easy to get on the table and it's Kohaku. It's ⁓ it's a tile laying game. You're basically building a koi pond.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Thank Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: pond. Try that again. And it's a pretty game and we've got the original edition which means that it's all plastic. ⁓ Like acrylic looking plastic. Yeah versus the reprinted everything's cardboard. Which is fine. It does. does. But ⁓ it's not nearly as pretty with the because we've seen both. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Yes. Nice. I was gonna say like nice chunky, yeah. Yeah. Brings the price point down. Right.

Joe Mahaffey: Cause that's, is one of those games that we've thought, you know, we should get another copy. Do know there's, there's certain games that we have that we're like, you know, let's, let's have a backup, you know, wingspan. We probably have like 12.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. That makes sense. Give it as gifts, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: But, but yeah. And then from there, we, one of the things that came from Kickstarter, I don't know if we talked about this previously or if it showed up after the fact, postcard showed up and we really enjoyed that game. You're, you're, you're on, you're on a bicycle and you're touring around France.

James Engelhardt: I think so, but yeah. A lovely time of year to go to France here in the middle of winter.

Joe Mahaffey: preferably without GNC help. Looking at you, Livestrong. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha ha ha.

Joe Mahaffey: And you're collecting postcards basically in stamps and you're trying to, you, you, get certain bonuses based on certain regions that you're assigned and you, you're literally biking around and there's, you know, different icons that let you do certain things like a camp and stuff like that. And it's just a really, it was a satisfying game. I, know, it one of those things that wasn't, it wasn't super easy. wasn't super hard. It was easy to

James Engelhardt: Nice. Good night.

Joe Mahaffey: get on the table. You know, a lot of the times we will look at, okay, it's a new game. How do we play this thing? Yeah. And is there a, is there a, game in three minutes from our friend in New Zealand? Nope, not on this one. You know, and in some instances, and we'll talk about this a little bit. In some instances, you only get the video that was done by the creator at the time of the Kickstarter and nothing else. Most cards, fortunately, was not one of those. was, it was a very enjoyable game.

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

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ it, you know, it fit, it fit the aesthetics that we like, you know, pretty cards, ⁓ diverse mechanism, moving around the board was a lot like, botany, which quite frankly, it's a lot like risk if you want to get down to it, you know, but instead of the world, you're moving around France. ⁓ but anyway, I,

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: said I wasn't going get deep in the weeds on these, I will stop. maybe ⁓ postcards might be a good, we'll get it back on the table and then we'll talk about it again sometime in the future. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Okay. Sounds good. More new stuff here.

Joe Mahaffey: More new stuff here, Flamecraft duels. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Woohoo! Yeah, and I- it seems like it's not- it's like it's set in the Flamecraft universe but isn't really Flamecrafty in terms of play. Mmkay.

Joe Mahaffey: Correct. ⁓ So this was part of an expansion. Haha, there's that word. ⁓ Where they came out with the Dragons and Dragons expansion as well as Flamecraft duels. And so the duels is just, ⁓ you know, designer, Manny Vega, artist, Sandara Tang again. It's in the universe. ⁓ It's a friendly two-player game. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha ha. Mm-hmm. Nice.

Joe Mahaffey: moves pretty quick, takes about 30 minutes to play. And you're drawing from a bag, you know, it's gets, which has added. Correct. Yeah. And it's, really well packaged, well designed. It almost looks like you're taking a lunch box somewhere. But yeah, now we, of course we love the artwork and we, we love what Cardboard Academy typically produces. And so this is.

James Engelhardt: Nice. Right? And the box folds open to become the game board, right? Or something like that? Yeah. Awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: This was good and of course, everything FlameCraft, it's kind of like, ⁓ well, I gotta get it, it's FlameCraft.

James Engelhardt: Do they have good punny names for things in this one as well?

Joe Mahaffey: do. Yep. ⁓ there's that, that, that's, it stays consistent. ⁓ But, but fundamentally it's described as a two player abstract pattern building game. So that kind of gives you a little bit of, you know, a little bit of ⁓ a little bit of anything by Frank West. ⁓ know, there's

James Engelhardt: ⁓ good. Okay. Sure. And it seems to recall Kohaku as well, right?

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, a little. Yeah, I would say that that's a fair there. There's rhyming there. They're cousins, maybe cousins. But but yeah, so that was ⁓ one we want to get outside was number seven. Five more to go. Five more to go. There you go. Actually, we've passed that. Okay, just checking. Then we did trekking through history, which ironically, I think out of all the games here has been on the Shelf of Shame the longest.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. There you go. Yes. Five more days until epiphany. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ okay.

Joe Mahaffey: because we loved trekking through national parks, trekking the world. And then I backed and got trekking through history and it just sort of sat. I'm like, okay, we'll get to it.

James Engelhardt: Right? Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: We got to it. And if you're familiar with the trekking series, you know, there's a, it's all card driven and action driven. And, and this one is, was really interesting because you're dealing with cards that have years on them and they are BC and CE variations. And you're trying to use the oldest to the newest cycle in your hand in order to score them.

James Engelhardt: Awesome. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: and you may get 850 BC or you may get 5 CE.

James Engelhardt: Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: And, you know, you then all of a sudden you find that your next card, may have like three BCE and then all of a sudden you get a card choice and your next youngest card is like 1492. And then you're like, okay, well, I really hope something comes out on the board that's after 1492, you know? And so it's pretty interesting the way that it plays out. And again, it's one of those where that you're subject to the whim of the deal.

James Engelhardt: That's a jump. Sure.

Joe Mahaffey: of the card, so to speak. ⁓ But it was was definitely a good game. We certainly enjoyed it has a little timepiece in there and you know, nobody started fading away in front of us while we were playing the game. So we knew that we were not messing up the timeline and all that. So yeah. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Everything was good. feed your background and history.

Joe Mahaffey: Yes, yes, that was it did. It did scratch an itch. I didn't know I had. But the next one was really the next game was really interesting and it was interesting for a couple of reasons. For those of you who know this show, we've talked about it before that Dale has never really been interested in a Dungeons and Dragons type game because she's like role playing like that makes her nervous or whatever. That's on brand.

James Engelhardt: Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: We played explorers of the woodlands, which is basically a DND game, but not. It's a co-op. You're revealing tiles very similar to ⁓ the betrayal series where you pull out the tiles. so your, your dungeon, so to speak, is revealed before you and

James Engelhardt: Okay. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: Maybe you encounter a monster, maybe you don't. Maybe you can counter treasure, maybe you don't. Maybe you encounter the inn, maybe you don't. And so it was very enjoyable. did, in our first play, did successfully defeat the baddie. The hardest part was that the dice were all...

James Engelhardt: Okay. And the innkeeper, yeah, that's the guy you want to talk to. Well done.

Joe Mahaffey: Six sided and there wasn't things like, mean, you had hit points and you had, I mean, you had health and stuff like that and things that you could do, but it was a, it was a good game to, for somebody who's never played Dungeons and Dragons and has no desire to kind of see this is kind of what it feels like in my mind. So, but yeah, and there is a, we just played the basic version. There is a mission version, so you can actually play it as a campaign. If you want to do that. did not.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ fun. Okay, good.

Joe Mahaffey: do that, we just sort of played the game. Yeah, think. Yeah, we both came out came away feeling like, oh, yeah, we play that again. You know, then just three more to go. Next up was La Patisserie Rococo. I don't want to say that right. And, you know, of course, you're you're

James Engelhardt: And how did Dale do? Was Dale like, yeah, that was kind of fun. Never want to see that again or? Yeah. ⁓ okay, cool.

Joe Mahaffey: basically delivering pastries to the elite. ⁓ yeah, it was a very, it's a very well-themed game. ⁓ Again, easy to learn. ⁓ It fits sort of that. There's a lot of games right now that just sort of have this time in France as the theme. ⁓ And so this is kind of in that rain.

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

Joe Mahaffey: This is obviously published by the same people that publish Vidal Lacerda, but this is not a Vidal Lacerda game. This is, is from Eagle. Yeah, it is from Eagle Griffin games. Um, but a lot easier, a lot easier to access or access in it. And it doesn't subs, and it does not also do double duty as a doorstop.

James Engelhardt: No, it's the Rokoko level, yeah. You Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. So, uh, that is, that is made tongue in cheek. love the fact that they're, always give us very chunky games that we don't have to go on to Nipple source to buy more stuff. Um, so obviously we were kind of, that was 10 games in and we were getting towards the, uh, the end and we were like, Oh my gosh, we're running out of days. What are we going to do? Cause you know, we were trying to rationalize, well, what are the 12, what counts as the 12 days, you know, cause in

James Engelhardt: It is true. Also also true

Joe Mahaffey: And the Christmas Carol day one is Christmas day and then you go all the way to day 12. So our goal was just to try to get all the games in before I had to go back to work, which was January 2nd. It was the fifth. Then I went back to work, which ironically the sixth was the 12th day of Christmas.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. That seems like a fair...yep. Okay. So just one day off, but still.

Joe Mahaffey: Just so you know. ⁓ But just to kind of move our process along, we pulled out another Elizabeth Hargrave game, Tassimati. ⁓ It is, it's a super quick game and we always have it in our game bag because it's like if you want to have a, we call it the pallet cleanser. If you've just played Wingspan and now you're going to play something like Allocats or Viticulture or something.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. It's a nice quick game. Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: before you just to kind of reset your brain, you do something like that to go, okay, I'm not thinking about bird cards anymore. I'm thinking about wine. Yeah. So, so that was one and you know, we kind of played that a few times just to kind of number one, remember to we know how to play it. cause it had been a little bit of time. And then, then lastly, Dale had got this because she had seen it everywhere. She went while she was Christmas shop.

James Engelhardt: right? Thermal flowers. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: and, ⁓ don't know why she thought it was funny, but she did. And, ⁓ so we got, ⁓ piggy piggy, which is a pretty fast paced family card game. ⁓ you're playing food cards, you're trying to steal pigs, you're trying to score points and the box is that's a plastic piggy with a big mouth.

James Engelhardt: Okay. That's funny. ⁓ That's pretty funny, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: And it's from has it's from Hasbro, you know, but, but, hey, it was fast paced game. got a couple of them in and they brought us into number 12 right under the wire.

James Engelhardt: There you go. Mm-hmm. Boom.

Joe Mahaffey: You know, we didn't even have to watch a video on it. I think we just sort of figured it out. ⁓ that was the 12, those were rather, those were the 12 games over Christmas that we played. ⁓ We'll have to revisit one and then talk about them in a little bit more depth.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. 12 games, woohoo! Yeah, I figure there's not a lot of depth for Piggy Piggy, but some of the others would be good to hear about.

Joe Mahaffey: You don't know. Be judgy.

James Engelhardt: I have a feeling. Just a vibe. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. And then just to sort of set the table. Well, first of all, before I that, do you have any questions or thoughts about any of those games that we played over the ⁓

James Engelhardt: No, I mean, I made my little comments as we went, I think. ⁓ Explorers of the Woodland sound fun. I do have the, Betrayal the D &D version, the Betrayal at Baldur's Gate. ⁓ so that's, that's a super fun one. ⁓ yeah, no, I mean, this seems like a great selection of ones. I'd like to hear more about postcards. so...

Joe Mahaffey: Yep.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, it sounds like a nice... I mean, and watching the kind of up and down of like, yeah, we've got time and space for a larger one and now tomorrow we're going to do something smaller. Yeah, that feels like the right sort pattern of things.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I'm going to, I'm going to switch up the order. I'm going to talk about what's been on our table since I'd like to jump to you and then we'll talk about the, the topic I had there right after that, because I think you'll cover some of that. So we'll, we'll set it up that way. Uh, the only thing I would say is it's incident with all the snow, we were trying to get a game out and we did pull out another one that was shrink wrapped, uh, for a while, Therian Getty sanctuary. Uh, and we have played that a lot in the last week. It's a very, um,

James Engelhardt: Sure. Nice. Cool.

Joe Mahaffey: fun card game. You're there is a tableau, if you will, of cards that are sorted by

James Engelhardt: Okay, awesome. Mhm.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ habitat. So you put down like this is in the valley, this is in the plateau, this is in the jungle, whatever. And you'll have different animals on them that you will find there. So you might see snakes and elephants and giraffes and their herd cards and all of that. what you're doing is you're collecting, you collect like

James Engelhardt: Okay. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: habitats, but you score based on like animals. So if you have two giraffes or three giraffes or snakes, et cetera, and basically the first person to 50 points triggers the end of the game. And each, it's a boomerang kind of round where you go first, I go second, I go third, you go fourth. Then I go first, you go second, you go third, I go fourth.

James Engelhardt: Okay. ⁓ okay. ⁓ right. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: And so there's that back and forth. And that really is interesting because you can accomplish a lot of things with that mechanic. And then you also have helpers that as you score points, you can spend your points to enhance what your helpers can do, which accelerates. The thing that surprised me though,

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hmm. ⁓ that's interesting. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: is, you know, it's, it's first one to 50 ends the game. So let's say I get 10 points through my cards. I say, I'm going to spend a point to upgrade this person. I'm going to spend a point to get a coin. I'm to spend two points to get a second coin, three points to get a third coin. get the idea. but I'm not deducting the points from the total. I think it would be a more interesting game. If you've got 10 points and you spent five, then you moved up to five.

James Engelhardt: Right. ⁓ interesting. and went backwards, yeah. Sure.

Joe Mahaffey: I think it'll take you longer to get to 50 because you can get to 50 in about 30 minutes or less. So maybe that, I mean, we can certainly play it that way, but that's not the rules. But anyway, it's a, it is, it is pretty interesting. mean, like we played two nights ago, maybe. And, um, the very last move I got four snakes and four, um,

James Engelhardt: Okay. Right.

Joe Mahaffey: must have been flamingos or giraffes. Anyway, I had 32 points in my hand. I was sitting on 26 and I basically ended the game in one move. And it just worked. And because the only reason I was able to do that is I was the boomerang player. So on the second round, I got all the things I needed to complete my snakes. And then on the third round, I got the other things I needed to complete my whatever it was. And then

James Engelhardt: Wow. Wow. Okay. Gotcha. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: we kind of got to the point spread and I was like, well, I have 32 points here in my hand. I mean, was really so it was it got us there very quickly. But ⁓ but anyway, that was ⁓ that's what we've been playing on the table. We have gotten some new things that I that I know we're going to talk about a little bit. But enough about me, James. Let's talk about you.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. ⁓ Sure. Yeah, we've played a couple of games recently. I picked a couple of ones that kind of stood out for a variety of reasons. So the first one, which is over here to my left shoulder, pivot that a little bit, Arboria. So Arboria is a 2023 game designed by Danny Garcia. published by AliCat and I really need to mention the art here by Javier González Cabe and Nicolas Gendron. have... this thing is like visually rich. It is... they've built a whole new fantasy world for this. ⁓ It's kind of amazing. Boiled down, it's a worker placement game with an efficiency puzzle, and there are even tracks, tracks to move up on. ⁓ And also a spatial puzzle. So there's a fair bit going on. ⁓ BGG gives it a weight of like 3.7, so you know, there you go. ⁓ The churn of the game is pretty straightforward. You must place a worker or move a track. There are four tracks, each with two sets of paths branching off, so it's a...

Joe Mahaffey: .

James Engelhardt: The decision space feels clear but a little complicated because it's like a 104, but then that's going to be eight things anyway. And then you may move a worker off the track, so the tracks move along and then you jump off. You can move up to two of your little guys like that for free, but you have to pay if you want to do a third. You may fulfill a card that goes into this ecosystem spatial puzzle. And then you must clean up the resource track and move those tracks again based on what workers you've got out there. ⁓ So there's, that's, you one, two, three, four. The heart of the game, ⁓ so the heart of the game has two chambers. This is a very simple kind of heart. ⁓ First, the paths that your workers follow drive most of what happens. You get resources, which you may or may not use. If you don't use them, you get points. Hooray. You can get more workers. You can unlock creatures. You move the game clock forward, generate bonuses. All kinds of stuff happen along those paths. ⁓ The second chamber is this little ecosystem of cards that you're building. And then you're getting animals there, creatures to them, and they are going to give you some big points at the end. And I'm gonna kind of stop there because otherwise if I keep going we'd be here for another half an hour. There's a lot happening. Yeah. 2023. And the board looks busy and lord of mercy looks busy. But the game flow is pretty good.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. It's all good. And you said it was the 2023 game?

James Engelhardt: You're pretty much always doing a little bit of something for the other players too, which is an interesting part of the game. ⁓ Moving tracks usually means moving other people along those tracks. If you bring the creatures onto the board, then somebody else can get them, but if you bring them in first, you get a better bonus. ⁓ If you generate resources, you'll get points if you leave them or have to leave them. So ⁓ as the game progresses, you'll have plenty of opportunities at the end, particularly for big splashy moves. But they're also still just like, I'm just going put this guy here and that's kind of it. ⁓ And it's kind of figuring out what those big moves need to look like and when. ⁓ somewhat hilariously, the game track says, you could probably score in the 300s. And I'm clearly not doing it right. But I'll figure something out. There's also a bit of a language barrier in the rulebook translation. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: you

James Engelhardt: So they've got, for example, biomes and ecosystems and you're like, those are a little close. you like, one of those resources track the ones, you know, so ⁓ there's some clarity that could have come along. But the game itself, everything that get on the game is all driven by iconography, ⁓ which is great means it's language independent, but it can take a little while to figure all that out. Spanish. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: What was the original language it was written for? Do you know? Spanish.

James Engelhardt: The movable tracks kind of have a zolkin feel where you're moving things around and people decide when you jump off. ⁓ And sometimes you set people up for better moves later, but they're also forced to do good things for you. ⁓ I'm not sure it blows your mind in terms of lots of new stuff, ⁓ new ideas, ⁓ but it's an interesting little game in trying to figure out all of those efficiencies of like, here's where I need to go first and move all of these things around. ⁓ That's kind of an intriguing puzzle. if the art looks good to you, think ⁓ diving in is super fun.

Joe Mahaffey: Cool. Sounds like a fun game.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. It is, and the critters, then they've got silly names for them too, so it's like antler worm and stuff like this. just like, what? Why did you do this? But it's okay. ⁓ And so, and then the other one that I've been playing, I played this a lot with a lot of different people because it's a much smaller game and a lot more just moving along quickly. This is First in Flight. Also, we've got a nice North Carolina tie-in, some history stuff here happening. This is also, yep, yep, also 2023 because suddenly I'm just playing games from 2023.

Joe Mahaffey: Love that.

James Engelhardt: And this is Matthew O'Malley and Ben Rossett, the same people who brought you Fromage. So if you want your Bordeaux with your Fromage, there you go. ⁓ And this was published by Artanna, who just for the record has a really bad website. There's a whole lot of 404s when you start clicking around. ⁓ Not well done, y'all. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah

James Engelhardt: But this also ⁓ has a sort push your luck stuff. So it's a deck builder with some push your luck when you're running your little engine of the deck. Which you're also moving pawns along a little looped board, is a... Each loop represents a year and you'll play four years, maybe. And you're trying to collect various sorts of improvements that either go into your hand, the deck building part, or you've got little tableau of different kinds of helper stuff on either side. ⁓ But then one of the spots on the board is the flight spot, which triggers you playing your deck out. ⁓ And you're hoping to add to your flight life while you play these cards, while avoiding problems. If you get four problems, you crash! ⁓ You still get the points for having flown, but you'll have to take kind of a turn where you just recover and don't really do anything. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: So not 99 problems.

James Engelhardt: No. And the crash is one. ⁓ But it has a last player goes... the person in last place goes first thing. So you're always... you can like string together for everybody else's way ahead. You can string together a whole bunch of turns in a row. ⁓ Or if you want to, you can just go as far ahead as you want just to make sure you can take the particular action. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: of you.

James Engelhardt: And the flow of this game is pretty straightforward too, certainly more so than Arborea. These things are relative, some different kinds of flow, right? ⁓ The challenge is in identifying which cards might be good combos for you that you will draft ⁓ and making sure that you have them before you launch your next flight. ⁓ And the game ends one of two ways, either you've managed a flight of 40 or you finish a year four. We've never, and it's funny the rule book says you probably won't go all the way to year four. You start year three and you're like, oh no, we're definitely getting to year four. And then two turns in, someone's like, nope, I got to 42. And you're like, damn, all right, I guess we're done. Well, and then everybody else gets one chance to fly farthest and the farthest flight wins. But like you were saying, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So even if you get to 42 first, you may not win the game at that point. You're just triggering the

James Engelhardt: But you just know the answer to it. Yes, right, right, right. You trigger the game, yeah. And you get the answer to life, the nerves and everything, And you were talking about games where you're vulnerable to the card draw. This is also like that, or like the bag pull in ⁓ Quacks. So I've had games where I'll have this...

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. And you know the answer to the meme. Thank you, Douglas.

James Engelhardt: Giant flights when I'm going past 40 and then there are some where I barely get past 20 because you're like, okay I've got a bunch of good cards shuffle shuffle shuffle. I've got a bunch of stuff to mitigate the bad draws this is terrible and you just don't get a chance to do that mitigation. yeah. But it does have a lot of great history to it, which is awesome because the pilot cards are all historical figures. Like whatever pilot you've got, it's like somebody from history, which is awesome. And all of the friends slash allies cards are also all people from history. That's pretty cool. ⁓ Upgrades and flaws are also like they match with heavier than air travel. It's not like you suddenly get some sort of magic thing that keeps you flying. It's, you ⁓ you've got a rudder. Hey. ⁓ And it's a great for gamers, players who might ⁓ already pick up, move quickly, have some good chance choices. I think. Trying to explain this to new gamers is probably not what you want to do because you have to... Yeah, because it looks like it feels like it might be if you're familiar with games because you're like, ⁓ it's a tableau. ⁓ it's a duck builder. ⁓ I'm moving around. And once you've moved past one core mechanism, gateway people tend to drop out real quick. ⁓ But if you've got friends who are like, hey, let's do something fun and zoomy, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Not a gateway game. you Well, that sounds pretty good. I mean, I'm a big fan of anything that involves, you know, the Wright brothers. They started, they, even though they're from Ohio and they made bicycles, they tried this in North Carolina because they needed the windy coast that got blizzard like conditions last weekend.

James Engelhardt: Yep, you can play it. Yep. I know, right? Yeah, Dayton does not get the kind of ⁓ breeze off the ocean that you want.

Joe Mahaffey: That is right. Cause it's dating.

James Engelhardt: So yeah, ⁓ but it's yeah, and there's a lot of French folk as you might expect, lots of Europeans in there, but it's super fun. I would definitely recommend it, and particularly for a first-in-flight kind of place. It's like, yeah, let's do that.

Joe Mahaffey: So the next on your list is on my list, but I haven't played it yet. We didn't play it last night like I thought we would. We're going to play it today. So I have some comments, but I'm going let you introduce it.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. So, uh, last night I got it, uh, I don't know, Friday or something. I worked through it and played it with Laura last night. That's pretty good. The card count now, you've got 550 bird cards. Oh! Wingspan Americas! Yes. Thank you, Joe. I got...

Joe Mahaffey: You might want tell everybody what we're talking about. Wingspan Americas.

James Engelhardt: Got distracted there for a second. Yes, Wingspan Americas. ⁓ Played with Laura again. 550 bird cards now, so there's a... ⁓ So one of the things about this is the effect of a particular set of cards is kind of diffused a bit, so you're not like milling through the deck looking for the Chihuahuan Raven or killed ears or something like that, right? You're like, well, maybe we'll see it. Maybe we won't. Another thing that I like. Yeah. Yes, sir.

Joe Mahaffey: you So just, I'm going to pause you right there if you don't mind. that implies that you played it as if it were all the way through, including Oceania, the whole deck. Interesting. Okay. Keep going.

James Engelhardt: Yes. Yup. Yeah, yeah, we shuffled the America's Birds into the tier, so it was mostly packed with them. Yep. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Okay. Cause we're to play it today and where we've been, I'm trying to decide, do I even want to, do I just want to play with these cards first and see how goes? We've done that before. We've done that before. See how that.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, I mean I think that would be... I it starts off with a... That's 110 new cards, so...

Joe Mahaffey: No, it's 111.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ 111, my mistake.

Joe Mahaffey: And the reason I know this is because I've decided that the, the Jamie Stegmeier is in with the sleeve King guys. Cause the sleeve King guys publish their, their, uh, their sleeves and packets of 110 and Jamie gave us 111 new cards.

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha ha ha! Hahahaha expecting some kickbacks right got it all right yeah

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Now, to be fair, 111 new bird cards, then there's bonus cards, then there's the autumn of cards, and then there's my hummingbird cards. So it was really more than 111, but when I saw that and I saw, was holding the sleeve Kings in my hand and I was holding the box and like, really?

James Engelhardt: Yes. Yes. As the hummingbirds yap. Uhhh... Okay, yeah. A wholly owned subsidiary, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, seems like, I mean, there are other, there are other sleeve manufacturers out there. personally use sleeve kings because they're very thin and they're very durable.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Yeah. So the other nice thing about this is, it's funny, the first two expansions, the Oceania and Europe, both have that little black dot on the bottom that has OE or EE, just a little black dot. And at one point, apparently with Asia, they're like, you know what, maybe we could color code these. So Asia has red, this one has a kind of blue, light green kind of thing. Yeah. It's pretty hilarious. was like, so that's nice. The big ⁓ addition of course is the hummingbirds ⁓ and they're pretty accessible. ⁓ You finish a row, you either attract a hummingbird for the bonus that it gives you or return it to move up the hummingbird track. That's pretty straightforward. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Now it's my understanding that you have to return it if you have it there and then you're doing a mechanic on that row, whether it's feed a bird, get some eggs or get a card. Okay.

James Engelhardt: Right. ⁓ And then so the hummingbirds, when you attract them, are great for resources and combos. So you can run the grasslands and then attract a hummingbird that gives you nectar, if you're playing with that expansion. ⁓ And if you've got another bird on the grasslands that gives you food, well, you can go down and get two foods. So it can make that nicely efficient for you. ⁓ But then keeping track of the hummingbirds that you're returning to the garden ⁓ is key because you start off with like negative three points per hummingbird type. So you want to move them up and keep moving them up. And ⁓ it's not a heavy lift keeping track of those, but you do need to pay attention. And then they've got little bonus spaces that can let you do the hummingbird action again somewhere, ⁓ which since you've got some little chains and combos that can happen, it's pretty nice. ⁓ Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So in your play through, I'm curious about a couple of things. I'm going to get a little deep here. So when you put a hummingbird back, if there is not an open spot, you cover an existing hummingbird.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Correct. And then you can go up either one of those tracks. If it's the like the Diamond track or the Mango track, whatever.

Joe Mahaffey: Correct. Yes. But then you go back and then later, if you go to get a hummingbird, not on the same term, you can get that same hummingbird again, or you can, or you have tossed it.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Correct. th- I the- the rules are like you can't double dip, but I think that's on the same turn. I think if you come back. And also things should be changed around a bit, ⁓ so you can- Right. Right. Or covered it up.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Cause somebody else may have gotten that Correct. Correct. And then that's, that's fair. Okay. That's, that's another way to think about it. Okay. yeah, because what I understand, I mean, if you get the hummingbird track going in your favor, that's like, if you did them all right, you're at 50 points, just put the hummingbirds.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so what's interesting is that is, it worth doing that or do you want to build your nine point American turkey or, you know, some other thing that's going to. So there's it. It creates a really nice tension between, I'm gonna build all the birds, or ooh, I could go up like a million points on these hummingbirds. But then to do that, I have to like get a bunch of food, or get a bunch of eggs, or get a bunch of new cards, in which case I might as well be playing those out too, because I wanna run my engine. So, and the hummingbird... ⁓ Bonuses are a little more, or quite a bit more I think, generous than the dual mode bonuses, right? Because if you're playing in dual mode you could land on some parts and they'd give you an egg or a card, which is great, but you're not doing that every time, right? ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I like that the I like that you can play it either as the base game or the Oceania game and still you can still get the nectar but use it as a wild food. Just thinking about our earlier conversation about the nectar. But so we're gonna we're gonna play it as if it were the base game. We'll decide. I kind of like that maybe we'll we'll shuffle in some some of the other cards to make it little bit more interesting.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Right, this little new... Mm-hmm, yep. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: I generally keep my cards segregated between base game, European, et cetera, because of the way that the big boxes set up for your card. ⁓ being able to kind of play with that a little bit, we'll be able to do that. So it's on the deck for today. Anyway, sorry, keep going.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. And I think, yeah, I know. I think it's, like the Hummingbird tracks are a little bit easier to keep track of, if you will, than the sort of area majority puzzle in the dual mode. At some point I'm just like, ⁓ So, I mean, but that depends on what kind of style of game that you want, right? Do you want something that's going to be a little more puzzling and thinkier and longer? Then this gives you an opportunity to, you know, pick a lot of different paths. It's sort of, I don't know. ⁓ I haven't quite reached expansion fatigue the way that I did with like Carcassonne, where it's like, ⁓ you know, now there's the one where you're just launching meeples onto the, yeah, let's not do that. ⁓ So, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: I'll be curious. I'll be curious to see if the hummingbird track negates the bonuses, you know, the end of round bonuses, because if, you know, if part of your strategy is, know, ever assuming everybody's going to come in equal. you win by the bonuses, which Dale is the queen of the bonuses. It's always five, five, five, five. So, you know, you, instead of 20 points, if you could, you know, negate if the hum, I'm just curious to if the hummingbird.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: I'll be curious to see if the Hummingbird track works more in concert with the end of round bonuses or if it ultimately becomes a replacement for.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, think... Yeah, I don't know that Hummingbird track by itself is gonna be all that vile, because again, you'd have to run your ecosystems and just move the birds and not any of your other birds? And so, I don't know. I think, you know, 50 points is great, but if your score, if the other person is scoring 125... you know, ⁓ yeah. So, Yeah, no, I'm excited for you to try it. So it's super fun.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, that's fair. I'll know more. I'll know more when I'm on the other side.

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, cool. Well, you know, super fun is perfect because it is Super Bowl Sunday. And I could just completely care less about either team.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. It is indeed. Hey, coverage has already started,

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ I'm sure. Now, now don't get me wrong at five o'clock, I'm going to be at the Publix and I'm picking up some wings and a veggie tray because our ritual is we will have the game on. I just won't be bent out of shape over who wins or who loses. Cause I don't really care. So we're going to play wingspan Americas this afternoon and this evening as a part of our having the game on. And we also.

James Engelhardt: This is good, Exactly. Woohoo! ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: You know, Jamie had two expansions come out at the same time. The other one was Bordeaux.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Joe Mahaffey: which is an expansion upgrade to Viticulture. I saw how to play video where the guy said, well, this is what the guy said. The guy said that on the back of the board, they give you a new board that's to play Bordeaux. And on the back of the board is the original board that you would use to play Viticulture. And he goes, we called that board zero or board O.

James Engelhardt: Oh, oh no. No. No.

Joe Mahaffey: And I was like, no, no, we don't know. No, we don't know. Stop. Stop that right now. But anyway, so Bordeaux. So I've only watched the video of how to play it and I've kind of looked at it and we're going to do we love viticulture. ⁓ We're looking forward to playing it in Bordeaux, but from what I understand.

James Engelhardt: Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: If viticulture is you getting an investment from your mama and your papa and they're kicking you out and say, go start your own business, leave us alone. And you struggle to get the business up and running. Bordeaux basically assumes you're up and running and now you're running the business. And so they've taken some of the, they've modernized some of the mechanics. They've made it a little, they've, they've elongated the seasons.

James Engelhardt: Yes. That's awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: They've elongated or they've changed from round to round what benefits you can get from deciding who goes first, second, third, et cetera. So I'll be curious to see how that plays too, because you're starting from a different place and turning through. And it was interesting because on the track, I don't have a visual to show you, but I'll try to describe this. So each round, you pick that one, two, three, four, five, six, seven kind of thing.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, the first thing could be or no, no, no, I'm so sorry. I'm off track. I'm off the track here. It's not that phase. There's another piece of it that's known as trade. And there's a matrix that says you can trade a coin for a wine or ⁓ a point for a worker or something like that. And

James Engelhardt: Right. Right.

Joe Mahaffey: But the way it's the matrix is set up is that you can trade a point for a point or a dollar or ⁓ a lira for a lira, you know, and so it's kind of like, so somebody asked Jamie, why wouldn't you gray that out? I mean, why would you leave that there? And in true Jamie fashion, he said something along the lines of, well, you never know if somebody's going to want to do that. And when the guy, the guy who, by the way, the, YouTube channel was Tara dice T E R R E dice. If you want to go see this video, the guy from Tara dice goes to that's what Jamie said. And I looked at Dylan and said, that's a very Jamie answer.

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So anyway, so we're to get into those today. ⁓ And that reminds me, by the way, I alluded to this earlier, the game that we played recently, where the only video we could find learn how to play it. That was was Serengeti sanctuary where there is no other video out there on how to play it except for the people that publish the video or publish the game. And there are these two very fine British gentlemen.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: And instead of saying this is the blue piece, it was the turquoise piece.

James Engelhardt: Well done y'all.

Joe Mahaffey: So anyway, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it was just interesting to say that this is really the only video we got. And they don't even start at the beginning. They're like, we're going to start like you're in your third round. I'm like, well, no, I want to see the first and second round, please. So many questions. ⁓ geez. But anyway, such is the life of the hobby.

James Engelhardt: No. How does this go? Aw man. I tell you.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, James, I think that's a lot today, an hour. But that is all I have to talk about. How about yourself?

James Engelhardt: Yeah! No, it's good. Yeah. Here we are. Early February. Yeah, no, that's, ⁓ That's it. Laura loves the pageantry of the Super Bowl, so we'll watch Green Day, we'll watch Bad Bunny, we will drift in and out of the football itself and look for ads. But yeah. That's what we got. We'll probably play the birds again tomorrow, Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, fair. Very cool. Love that. Well, ⁓ it is February the eighth, eight or the ninth, where are we on? Eight, that'd be the eighth all day. Today is three minutes longer than yesterday, so enjoy that extra daylight.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. It's the X. All right. Sweet.

Joe Mahaffey: And I'm Joe Mahaffey and as per usual, I am not bored. I am bored gaming.

James Engelhardt: I am James Engelhardt and I hope that all your tiebreakers break your way.

Joe Mahaffey: See you soon, folks.

James Engelhardt: See you all, bye.