Press B 172: Digital Board Games

Dive into the world of digital board games this week with the Press B Podcast! We explore a few of our beloved tabletop titles recreated as digital apps. From Battlecon to Waterdeep, how do these adaptions hold up, and are they an enjoyable way to play solo? 🎲

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00:00 --> 00:25 I'll sleep when I'm bored. Games today on is that the one we're using in or what?
00:25 --> 00:26 That's the one. Yeah.
00:26 --> 00:28 We'll talk over the intro.
00:28 --> 00:30 Don't talk over the intro. It's too late.
00:30 --> 00:32 There's no way out.
00:32 --> 00:33 Committed.
00:34 --> 00:35 Fuck. Go ahead.
00:36 --> 00:37 Just shows how unoriginal I am.
00:37 --> 00:42 Jesus. He's bringing that B game.
00:42 --> 00:44 I don't know if you saw his gesture, but we're on.
00:45 --> 00:53 I figured, well, amongst originality, it's one of the things I excel at, is being different from everyone else.
00:54 --> 00:58 It's one of those intra family memes they don't have in Canada.
01:00 --> 01:06 I want to have everybody get their bingo cards out, chard's pointing at my.
01:08 --> 01:17 Guys today. Today we're talking about something I have absolutely no knowledge about. And the fact that I'm going to be the host for this was.
01:19 --> 01:20 Last minute.
01:20 --> 01:29 Clearly made an error. Today we're talking about board games that have turned video games. Am I right on that one, guys?
01:29 --> 01:30 Mostly.
01:30 --> 02:07 Mostly. So I am surrounded by the aficionados of board game to video game in this podcast. Yeah, just in this podcast. I don't know about the world. I can't speak for the world, but I can certainly speak for the three gentlemen that I sit down here with wolf, Sinistar, and Jake. Your knowledge of the subject will hopefully either sway my decision to pick these things up or completely reject the idea they even exist. It's a lot like Jake's opinions on Dr Pepper. I don't understand it.
02:07 --> 02:08 Wow.
02:08 --> 02:13 I'm going away for two weeks and already he's getting them in early. Just just get him out of the way.
02:13 --> 02:52 Well, we love you, Jake, but today on but no anyways, so I have no idea. I'd have no pig in this race. I've got nothing. You guys need to convince me to want to try these small list of games that we have that used to be board games that are also video games. I give you gentlemen the floor and the time. Who wants to go first to try and convince me that I should play whatever board game, video game, or board game turned video game tonight? Who would like the first crack?
02:53 --> 02:54 Just called digital board games. It's easier.
02:55 --> 03:10 Also, I have a lot of video games turned board games over here. Get your bingo cards out. They're all on my shelf back here next to the race car and this goofy looking idiot right here.
03:10 --> 03:11 PC games.
03:12 --> 03:34 Those are board games turned video games. Don't tell me what's in my room, Jake. Okay? This is my location that I designed myself. Okay? No idea. This was not taken from anybody. This was completely off of this. Noggin, this design came out because Sinistar's got an active flame. Mine is very just chill.
03:34 --> 03:47 For those that are listening to the podcast later, you're going to have to go see the visualpodcast Youtube.com at pressbytocancel.
03:47 --> 04:02 See, this is how we lure the listeners in. I know what I'm doing, guys. Who wants to go first. Who wants to attack my mental dam? Who wants to break this mental dam of me not understanding these games that I should try? Who wants it?
04:02 --> 04:03 Who wants at it?
04:04 --> 04:08 Jake, if you or me? Apparently. Okay, steve it is. Steve's going.
04:09 --> 04:09 Steve it is.
04:11 --> 04:12 Where's Steve?
04:14 --> 04:17 You might be Steve this week. I'll fix that.
04:17 --> 04:22 Not necessarily. Sorry. We're apparently giddy and stupid today.
04:22 --> 04:23 We are stupid.
04:24 --> 05:36 Okay, well, my first board game turned video game, digital board game is Lords of Water Deep. It is a Dungeons and Dragons based board game, but don't let that fool you. Don't let that fool you. It is much more of a standard, almost European style board game where the pieces are little cubes. And it's not so much about dungeon delving, it's about resource manipulation. But it's one of my absolute favorite board games to play because much like a board game that will be spoken of later in this episode, it looks like it's complex at the beginning, but the minute it kind of clicks in your brain, it's actually a very simple game to play with the caveat that the strategy can become complex. Right. Like how you play against other players can become complex. So the whole premise of this board game is you are playing a Lord of Waterdeep. Waterdeep is a town or a city in the Dungeons and Dragons universe.
05:38 --> 05:41 Which rule set are we using here? And how old is this?
05:41 --> 05:47 This is forgotten realms. And really the rule set doesn't apply to the board game.
05:47 --> 05:48 No rule.
05:49 --> 06:03 You are literally a lord hiring people to go and do these tasks for you. And they basically, once you collect enough resources, you just say, well, my team went and did it, and it's success and move on.
06:03 --> 06:18 I'm already kind of sold on this game because it feels a lot like me. I'm very complex looking, but once you get to know me, I'm super simple. So I feel like this is going to grab my attention.
06:18 --> 06:20 Simple or simple ton?
06:21 --> 06:24 Mostly that okay. Five.
06:27 --> 06:35 You say resources, though. Resources. This game I thought were really cool because it's actually like character classic.
06:35 --> 08:03 Yeah, let me explain. So what happens is, as I said, you're a Lord of Waterdeep. You actually keep that secret. You keep your lord secret until the end of the game because each lord has a bonus based on the types of quests that you complete. And what you do is you collect quests. And so the quests are cool. Like, there's one that's like training owl bears, and there's another that's like, go defeat the beholder. But these are little cards, and literally the cards just say you need four warriors or whatever. The fighters. You need four fighters. You need two magicians, you need two clerics, and you need this. And there are locations on the board that you take your character's representative and you move them to that position and you get to collect those fighters or clerics or wizards or whatever. And once you collect the correct ones, you can complete the quests. The quests push you toward the end of the game. They give you a score, and whoever gets the highest score at the end wins. So really, it's a very simple concept. You add on top of it that those locations are one person and one person only, with a couple of exceptions, but one person and one person only. So each round, if you want to go collect the spot that has the two fighters and somebody gets there first, you can't use that spot this round.
08:03 --> 08:05 So it's like Monopoly kind of.
08:05 --> 09:56 Yeah, but they add another piece on top of it where you can actually put your person in a spot and buy an additional spot that you can put onto the board that gives you additional spots and those become advanced. Like, some of them are like, I can get a wizard and two fighters, or I can actually exchange some for others, stuff like that. And that's where the strategy becomes higher. Now, there are some expansions for this that are in the digital version that add some other layers. But honestly, I really love the core game. The expansion is called Scoundrels of Skullport. I can see that. And by the way, the board game and the computer game play essentially exactly the same. So this is like a one to one translation. So it's really cool because I can play it online with my friends and I don't have to go pull out the board game. I don't have to move all of the pieces into the right place. I don't have to shuffle this and shuffle that. I basically can just start it, get going, talk to my friends and say, let's play. We all jump in and we play. So it's a fantastic game if you've ever played. So those of us that are or those of you that are maybe listeners that are familiar with European board games, there's a game that this is very similar to called Stone Age. And I wasn't super sold on Stone Age when I played it. But I love Lords of Water deep. And I think it's that addition of being able to add the little shops and storefronts and stuff that you can use. That's my spiel.
09:57 --> 12:00 So I love this game. I'm glad you picked this one because I was torn because I love this game, too. My wife and I played this to death. I think we actually wore the board out. We played it so many times when we got it. I like the expansion a lot, too. I think it adds some more stuff to it. It adds a corruption mechanic, basically negative points that you can accumulate, but in exchanging those tokens, you get more resources. I love this game. I love the components. I have played Stone Age, but you're right, Waterdeep, the customizable board is different every time you play, you get to select which location you want. And that fight for the great locations is so good. And you're usually not worrying too much about the other players. You're not attacking the player. Generally, I think there's cards you can give them to make them do. But I love the theme of this game is so good. And the components are really good out of the box. Like the cardboard token coins. It's wire, deep currency, DND currency. So you have these little square pennies and you have these half moon things. They're really great. I know that the resources are cubes. I love this game so much. I found a guy off Etsy who made little meeples like rogues clerics, wizard meeples. The helmets for the warriors, the cleric cloaks the whole nine yards. I bought a full set of these damn things. I love them so much. They're really cool. I love this game. I pimped this copy of the game out. I'm almost sad that it's so hard to find. I have not seen it on a shelf in a while, and I'm sad they haven't tried doing another version of this or more expansions. This is one of my favorite tabletop games. I played the iPad version of the app a long time ago and I heard it. They recently brought it for Steam. And I heard that the AI is actually really good in this and I want to pick it up because I love that board game. You're right. This game is so fun to play. It's a work replacement game, and I really love the strategy of you have a handful of moves. You can make a turn, and you want to really just grab those spaces before your opponent does that you know they're going to use. If you see them trying to collect a bunch of warriors, you can fuck them up by putting your worker in the place that gives you warriors and you can get so vindictive in a non confrontational way. And I love that. It's a great game.
12:01 --> 12:02 So it's like Monopoly?
12:02 --> 12:04 Exactly like Monopoly.
12:04 --> 12:25 Passive aggressive, except for it gives you a choice as well because you can actively do the whole block and fuck your enemy, or you can just race for points and not try to mess up the other players. So you can play it either direction, right? Yeah.
12:26 --> 12:48 I'm watching the Steam video of this particular game, and it looks much like a board game. Now this is my ignorant speaking, so it looks a lot like the ticket to ride style of board game. So it's not like this is a game that turns into a dungeon crawler. This is just a digital version of the same thing.
12:48 --> 12:48 Just.
12:51 --> 12:54 Dungeons and Dragons, that's all.
12:54 --> 13:19 I don't think a lot of board games really need the bells and whistles outside of stuff. Like you see the digital version of Monopoly these days and that's got bells and whistles out the wazoo. But I mean, that's because they have to entice people to play it somehow, because everybody has their own house rules for the game and everything. So they had to work that in. And then even then, whatever you want to call it, the announcer oh, my God. Shut up sometimes.
13:19 --> 13:28 But, hey, look, this 100 year old board game now has a three dimensionally rendered hat. Enjoy.
13:28 --> 13:35 Let's fucking go. It's even got lighting, so, like, when it turns, you can see where the light at the center of the light is.
13:35 --> 13:36 It's pretty cool RTX hat.
13:36 --> 13:37 Yeah, it's great.
13:38 --> 14:01 Lords of Water deep. In all honesty, Lords of Water Deep is I can't think of anything that isn't a one to one translation from the board game. Really, like, the board looks exactly the same. The pieces look exactly the same. The way that the turns work is exactly the same. I guess the one advantage true to.
14:01 --> 14:04 The physical copy, basically the one advantage.
14:04 --> 14:21 Is I don't have to worry about setting it up. And really, the more important piece is I don't have to worry about because the board game has this nice tray where you can put all the pieces and have them, and I don't have to worry about doing that after. Like, it has a guide. Here's where this goes.
14:21 --> 14:42 I'd lose all these goddamn pieces. I feel like I'd lose every single one of these pieces. I'd be using dice and, like, hair, lint, maybe a tooth. Be like, here's your resources. I'd got toenail something floating around here. It's a crazy room. I mean, it looks a little nuts.
14:42 --> 14:45 Need warriors. We lost the warriors. Here's some weapons from Clue.
14:45 --> 14:46 Yeah.
14:48 --> 14:53 All right. The candlestick is a bastard sword. Okay. Imagine that.
14:54 --> 14:59 Anyway, I love this game. I love it both in physical form and in the digital form.
14:59 --> 14:59 Yeah.
14:59 --> 15:03 And you know, for $10 on Steam, could be a good yeah.
15:03 --> 15:06 Oh, it's a steal. This game is one of the best digital board games.
15:06 --> 15:19 Yeah, that's what I was looking at. It's very modestly priced. It's $10 for the game and then $2 for each of the two expansions. So $4, like, all in $14 in tax. Right.
15:19 --> 15:54 Okay. So that is a different no, that's a difference. Scoundrels of Skullport is technically two expansions. Remember, it's divided into and so I think they sell the DLC separately. So that's the cool thing about board game, is you buy the expansion, and it comes with both portions of the Scoundrels of Skullport. But I mean, when you're considering a board game is $50 at its base cost for a physical board game, for a base cost, most are 70, 80, $90 these days. Yeah.
15:55 --> 15:57 Even verified on your Steam deck, the.
15:57 --> 16:02 DLCs, there's the Skullport expansion, and then there's the Undermountain expansion.
16:02 --> 16:02 Yes.
16:02 --> 16:06 Those are both in the Scoundrels of Skullport box.
16:06 --> 16:08 Okay. The box had both of those together.
16:10 --> 16:13 You're all in at $14. Instead of 112.
16:13 --> 16:22 Well, I think that expansion was like 35, right? I mean, by itself. So, like, the box, the physical box, that's expensive.
16:22 --> 16:25 But I mean, you're paying for pieces, you're paying for meeples.
16:25 --> 16:26 Manufacturer.
16:27 --> 16:35 I don't want to talk shit about manufacturing costs and all that for a really nice board game. Is a really nice board game.
16:35 --> 16:36 It's worth it.
16:36 --> 17:12 A lot of games affordability is very much a thing with board games these days. It used to be, you want a board game, go to the store, pick it up for 15, $20. But now the board games are so intricate and advanced and have so many things going on that there's so many levels of manufacturing and all that, it drove the price up, and it's the nature of the beast. But at the same time, there are a lot of people who love collecting these things. I have some really nice board games upstairs, so I'm not talking shit on that, but the fact that it's literally not a cash grab of a digital version of the game is spectacular.
17:12 --> 17:35 Yeah, to that point. The other thing is, as much as I love the digital edition, board games are one of the fastest to be removed from sale items in the world. Like, you'll see a board game come out and two years later it's now on the lists of like, you go to board game geek and people are like, I'm selling it for 200 now. Enjoy.
17:36 --> 17:40 They become collectors items, like comics and cards and shit like that.
17:40 --> 17:42 That's why it makes sense to have.
17:42 --> 17:44 Such a high quality game like that.
17:46 --> 18:16 Like a quick side tangent, my beef with the board game industry is a lot of them nowadays are funded by Kickstarter, which is great. They get a lot of money from it. But if you don't get in on the Kickstarter and get all the piece and all the stuff there or buy it, odds are you won't be able to buy it at all if you didn't go all in. So I've had that with one of my games I picked today. If you didn't get that one expansion, it's not sold anymore, and they're never going to sell it again. They only did it briefly during a Kickstarter and that was it's. There's a lot of FOMO with some of these board games that are sold.
18:17 --> 18:20 Anyway, that's my spiel fair Jake's.
18:20 --> 18:25 Word of the day is FOMO. That's like the second or third time I've either read it or heard it.
18:27 --> 18:37 Makes a word of the week in board games. In all honesty, because of how fast board games go out of print, FOMO is a thing.
18:38 --> 18:38 I get it.
18:38 --> 18:54 Yeah. That's probably why he has it. You develop that stuff over time, you know what I mean? Doesn't just happen. Perfect. All right, well, we'll put a pin in that one. Who wants to? I'm like Shark Tank. Okay, give me your spiel.
18:55 --> 19:23 Who's next, let me go because I'll do the one that is also not DND themed, but it's Pathfinder themed. Pathfinder being a DND, a clone or inspired by I mean, they used to use the same engine for the longest while. So Pizzo partnered with I think it's card shark games or lone shark games to make a card game, the Pathfinder Adventure card game. And I want to say that was also on a Kickstarter. I could be wrong though, but Sinister is pointing at his shelf.
19:23 --> 19:25 I got it right back here. That one's.
19:25 --> 19:25 One.
19:25 --> 19:26 Yeah, I got that one.
19:26 --> 22:56 That's the book. So it is a tabletop RPG and it's quite an evolved RPG. And the great thing about Pathfinder is they had their adventure paths which are like set stories and there's a book for each of their stories and it's all the quests and stuff. I didn't at the time have a lot of time to play tabletop RPG games. I had A-D-D game going, I never really gave a fair shot at Pathfinder. But this Pathfinder card game, it's a card game themed after Pathfinder and each of the box sets basically I think they did four or five of them, each one is based off of one of those adventure stories. So the first box was I think it's something like something the Adventures of the Rune Lords. There's also Wrath of the Righteous came out, there was the pirate themed one so they did a bunch of them. I got to say I kind of went crazy with it. I bought the first three boxes completely. We're talking thousands of cards. And what this game is is it's a series of scenarios and the scenario will give you a list of several cards like location cards and then under each location card randomly amongst a bunch of loot like weapons and spells and items and stuff and monsters in each location. There's also these henchmen and ultimately a villain for that scenario. And the goal of the game is to take your character and go through each location and you're trying to work your way through each of the cards in that location. If it's loot, you can try and roll to get it. And if you get, it goes to your hand. It's a monster. You actually have to fight it. And if you don't, you take damage, which is discarding cards from your deck. But you're trying to find the henchmen and eventually find the villain and take the villain down. But it's very much in theme of Pathfinder Dungeons and Dragons in terms of the dice rolling for rolling for getting loot and rolling for attacking. It's like RPG light in a lot of ways but it's neat in that your character and you have a character card and you have stats, but your stats are basically what dice you roll for each stat. But each character has certain number of cards in their deck. So a wizard would have maybe one weapon and have four or five different spell cards and whatnot. Whereas a monk would have a lot of potions, right? Like Drunken Fighter style type of thing. Cleric would have some divine spells, but also have weapons and also have armor cards. And all those cards have their own abilities. It's very much a card game. I'm not going to say Magic the Gathering because it's more different than that, but each of the cards has an ability. But it just Oozes theme from a tabletop RPG, right? There's literally healing potions. There's potions of visibility, and they all have factors into the gameplay. When you're going through these locations, it's a lot of fun to play. It's especially fun I've played it with people who are not the type to do astral tabletop role playing games. My wife and my kids would never try Dungeons and Dragons, but they've played the card game. The card game is a little bit easier to get into, and it gives you that same feel without the imagination work. I guess. The problem with this game, though, and I do like it, is the setup times. As I said, there are hundreds of cards, hundreds of them. And if you're playing with different people in different groups and you're putting all your character cards back and having to take them all out every time, it can take you a good 40 minutes to set this damn thing up. It's really a pain in the ass. This is one of the few games where I actually went to the craft store, bought a bunch of, what do you call it, the foam core board. And I made my own freaking box organizer for this game.
22:56 --> 22:56 Wow.
22:56 --> 24:04 And I took all three, four sets, all the expansions I bought. There's lots of them and jammed it all in one box, like the box I have over there in the corner. It's like this big. It's huge, and it weighs a ton. It's so full of cards. So the setup is a pain in the ass. Now, Obsidian, who some people might recognize as a game developer between games, they made a digital version of this game. They started as an Android app. I believe it might be on iOS two, but they eventually made its way to Steam. But it's a digital recreation of the game they've made it a little bit prettier. There's music, there's some special effects, but it's basically a recreation of this card game. And it means minimal setup, no setup. You make your character, you save your character. You can have multiple characters, you can do whatever you want, and it saves your progress from quest to quest. And all the quests are there. I mean, they did the first box pretty accurately to the original board game. It's fantastic. Like, you roll the dice. It's nice 3D rendered dice. The cards are all there. It's fucking fantastic. Did you guys ever play this game. I feel like I might be the one who's played this game.
24:04 --> 24:08 No, the way that you described it, I was like, are you describing Munchkin?
24:08 --> 24:13 But then the minute yeah, getting Munchkin vibes from it.
24:13 --> 24:18 But the minute that you said the setup time is ridiculous, I'm like, no, it's not Munchkin anymore.
24:19 --> 24:19 That's not.
24:21 --> 24:43 So. It feels like munchkin. And I love munchkin, too. I have a big box of random Munchkin cards we throw together. It's like that, except that you have multiple locations that you can go and knock the door on and loot and there's dice rolling for combat. So it does have a Munchkin feel to it. Munchkin would be a good, I guess, gateway drug to pathfinder the card game, I guess, is what I would say. Because I do like munchkin too.
24:43 --> 24:47 Munchkin is the pot to this game's. Cocaine.
24:48 --> 24:48 Wow.
24:50 --> 24:51 You know what is too?
24:51 --> 25:39 This is also a cooperative game. And that was the thing I had for my board game phase. I used to have a board game group with some coworkers and we played a lot of co op games because when we played games, when you're against one another, it's less team building and more cutthroat. So at least with co op games, you're doing the team building things. We played a lot of those and this is a co op game that we used to play. Okay, so you're supposed to be working together as best you can because this game is actually quite difficult. There is a countdown to beat all the locations and find the villain each round. And depending on the scenario, that time is pretty tight. And honestly, I've lost more games than I've won since I started playing this game because it is quite difficult. But it's recreated so well digitally. It's so much easier to just spit it up. And you can play on your own solo, just managing your party as you want to. Or you can play with pass to pass and play.
25:39 --> 25:41 I have a question for you.
25:41 --> 25:46 Munchkin has never wanted me to do arts and crafts. This sounds like an undertaking.
25:48 --> 25:49 All right, what were you going to.
25:49 --> 25:50 Have to make your organizer?
25:50 --> 25:54 Sorry, Jake. You're saying that this is a cooperative board game?
25:56 --> 26:01 Yeah. So every player has their own character. What's wrong? Cooperative. Cooperative.
26:01 --> 26:07 I have never had a good time playing a cooperative board game. I don't know if it was people I played with.
26:07 --> 26:11 My favorite games, honestly, my favorite games are cooperative. Really?
26:11 --> 26:13 Seriously? You win or lose together.
26:13 --> 26:20 Yeah. Sinstrus just mentioned pandemic. Pandemic is the greatest time that you.
26:20 --> 26:22 Will have terrible time playing pandemic.
26:22 --> 26:24 Really? Such a good one, though.
26:24 --> 26:26 Okay, then you need better players.
26:26 --> 26:27 Yeah, maybe.
26:27 --> 27:06 It's quite probably, yes. Every time I would play a cooperative board game with someone, and it was generally a very similar group of people every time, one player in particular would often decide that they were going to make all the decisions for everybody. And I'm like, why the hell are we even playing then? But if we didn't do that, then that person would get upset and make it even an even worse time for this. That really put me off of cooperative board games.
27:06 --> 27:08 Yeah, I'll do it.
27:08 --> 27:10 You definitely need to play with better people.
27:10 --> 27:22 Yeah. Sinceris and I have some friends that we have played not only all of the Pandemic, like standard board games, but they have the what do they call them, the living board games or whatever, the legacy games.
27:22 --> 27:22 Legacy one.
27:22 --> 27:36 We have played through the legacy games and absolutely adore the Pandemic games. And it is seriously, if you have the right people with you, it is the most fun you will have getting your ass handed to you.
27:36 --> 27:57 Yeah, I've lost most Pandemic games, but I still had fun playing with it. It's something about when you're playing with people that you get along with, win or fail, at least it's fun along the way. And Pandemic was good for that. But every group that has that one guy who likes to railroad, who does weather in the turn, you have to usually have a talk with that person, say, back the hell off, player.
27:57 --> 28:00 Oh, that did not work.
28:01 --> 28:10 Yeah, you don't need to play. I don't know. These are the types of games that Optic and I are not allowed to be on the same team together for his mother that I not play.
28:10 --> 28:19 Well, when it's 100% co op, though, then your mother is in on the team with you and probably have a good time.
28:19 --> 28:31 No, just the two of us against the rest of the damn table. And they were like, no, you can't do that anymore. All right, find your card game.
28:31 --> 28:34 Is this still available?
28:36 --> 29:41 Thank you for bringing that up. So you can still buy it, but I probably wouldn't because it's not being updated anymore. I don't think it's sold well enough, which is a real damn shame, because like I said, the physical card game had multiple expansions. We're talking like five box sets on their own, plus character expansions. Like, I got a character expansion of wizards, and it gives you five different alternate wizard classes you can play as, plus additional cards. I got a bunch of those expansions as well. None of that really made it to the digital app. They did do a small goblin themed expansion that was exclusive to the digital app, but it's mostly cosmetic, not much in the way of gameplay changes. So they added stuff to it initially, but then I guess it didn't sell well enough. And over the years, it's kind of drifted. I hope you can still buy it, or at least hope you can still play it, because the digital version was quite good. But Obsidian, you would think as a big company, I mean, they're a fairly large company, makes a lot of. Great RPGs these days. I mean, they're the ones who did was it Pillar of Eternity? I think, yeah, recently. But they've really taken development resources off of this card game, unfortunately.
29:42 --> 30:06 Yeah. So two things. One, I was looking at it, just searching Pathfinder. I could not find it. You have to find it. I searched Obsidian Entertainment because I wasn't sure what the name was. I knew it was Pathfinder something and I couldn't find it. Under pathfinder and under Obsidian entertainment. I did find it. Pathfinder adventures. So you have to search Pathfinder Adventures to find it. Gotcha.
30:06 --> 30:07 That's too bad.
30:07 --> 30:17 And I think part of that is because it has mixed reviews. And I think the other part of that is it's only a $10 game. So with mixed reviews and $10, steam is probably not pushing it on people.
30:20 --> 30:21 For mixed reviews.
30:23 --> 30:26 That'S like another $36.
30:28 --> 30:31 They tried to make it a business model.
30:34 --> 31:11 I don't remember who it was. Catalyst. Somebody did a they came up with instead of a collectible card game, they called it a Living card game, an LCG. And the difference is, with the collectible card game, you go buy Boosters and you hope to get the cards that you want. With the Living card games, there was a Cthulhu set that I bought a bunch of and basically the boxes that you buy contain a complete set of that expansion, that Living set of cards. And so that's kind of the difference. Is this a Living card game or in the physical version, or is it.
31:11 --> 32:06 Yeah, I think the difference between a Living card game, though, so yes, fixed. There's no random Boosters, at least not in the physical game anyway. It's all fixed cards. When you buy an expansion, a character expansion, it's the same cards that another person would have, which is good for this kind of game. The difference with this, though, than a Living card game is that it's one box of cards. All the items are in this box. And when you're doing your setup and you're randomizing each location's loot any player can get those cards and build their character up. It's not like you're making a deck and you just use that deck and take it from game to the game. Your deck is only, like, I think, at most 1015 cards because your deck is also your life, from what I recall. So it's not a very stack of cards you have in your hand. So it's not like you're building a deck like Magic or something where you have 50 cards. So it's less Magic the Gathering and more Munchkin, like you said. I said with Munchkin, where you make a character each game, right, and you have a handful of new cards in front of you. It feels similar to that with more stuff on top.
32:06 --> 32:15 Do you create, like, a character sheet for this character card, for your stats? You get these cards. Like, how do you have a character.
32:16 --> 32:51 Card, and each stat has a dice that can be rolled like a warrior gets to roll, I think, a D ten for their strength, where Cleric gets a D eight, for example. The character card does have spots like Perks you can tick off as your character. The more campaigns you play, like scenarios you finish and beat, you can mark off your card advancements for your character. You can make some stats better. Sometimes they get more abilities. There's also a paragon class or expansion class to that character at a certain level. So you can actually carry your character from scenario to scenario and it grows kind of like I think Bloomhaven has a similar idea, where your character grow. Or you can just play the basic character.
32:52 --> 32:57 I have a shadow run card game that sounds really similar to now, what you just described.
32:58 --> 33:03 Yeah, I know a little bit about the shadow run game, because that one you also develop a character over time, I think, too right.
33:03 --> 33:06 Stickers, I think, and it has yeah, stickers that you can apply to.
33:07 --> 33:21 So for this game, I mean, we did mark the cards. I wouldn't let anybody touch my cards, but you can put them in sleeves and mark it off of the marker, or I had them tracking a piece of paper. But you don't have a DND character sheet per se. You get a character card, and that has all the information on it.
33:21 --> 33:59 All right, I want to point out one thing. When I first went into the legacy games, because a board game, you buy the board game and you're like, don't mark up the cards, don't do anything. Right. And then we played this legacy pandemic. Our friends bought it and are like, Come over and play this. And the very first time, it's like, Destroy this card. I'm looking at it, I'm like, no, this can't do it. No, but by the time they told me this, but by the time we got to the point where we were set up to destroy that card, I lit it on fire.
34:00 --> 34:17 You know what's funny? If they ever brought the legacy board games to digital, the only way they could do that, and you know it's bad, but they would do it, is as NFTs. Every card is an NFT. And when you have to burn your NFT, you lose that card. What are you doing?
34:17 --> 34:22 They do we get to 500 after comment? Fantastic.
34:22 --> 34:31 We just came up with this idea we're going to patent it, presby owns it. Anybody that wants to make NFTs this way, you have to pay us royalties.
34:32 --> 34:33 Square NFT.
34:35 --> 34:37 So we're getting into the patent troll business.
34:40 --> 34:42 No, we're covering a lot of ground.
34:42 --> 34:49 Today because unlike a patent troll, we came up with the idea we didn't buy it from somebody else.
34:49 --> 34:50 Right.
34:50 --> 34:53 Fair originators.
34:53 --> 35:06 That's right. Anyway, yeah. No, the problem is, I'm sorry, that the digital version gets those poor mixed reviews, because, honestly, it sounds awesome.
35:08 --> 35:08 Yeah.
35:08 --> 35:21 I wonder what the bad reviews are for. I wonder if it's stability or bugs, because it's not getting updated anymore. And if there's a bug in a game like this, they don't fix it. You feel it because there's hundreds of cards. So one card is an erota or bugs. Then it sucks.
35:23 --> 35:26 It's probably because it still takes an hour to set the damn game up.
35:28 --> 35:31 You have a shuffle button, and you have to shuffle the decks.
35:31 --> 35:34 Please go to your local craft store and make a box.
35:36 --> 35:47 I enjoyed the hands on building of something to organize my cards. Okay. Chard. It was fun. I liked doing it. It was better than having I got.
35:47 --> 35:50 A coupon to Joanne's crazy.
35:55 --> 36:00 I want this game. I want this game. But I don't know that I want the digital version.
36:00 --> 36:17 Yeah. I don't even know if it's in print anymore. I think there was a second edition of the first box that came out from Lone Shark, but I don't know if they're still making it. But for a while, it was hot. It was on Board game Geek as one of their top games for the longest while. So I don't know why it sounds.
36:17 --> 36:27 Like it'd be a lot more fun physically than it would be digitally in that respect. It just sounds like it'd be more fun to be around people playing this game, because you get as long as.
36:27 --> 36:30 You'Re willing to do the setup time right.
36:31 --> 36:41 I got to shuffle every deck, and this location needs five items, four spells and three monsters. This one needs five monsters, two items. That part of the setup was very tedious.
36:42 --> 36:47 And we're going to talk about a game. My next game is going to be very much in the same vein.
36:48 --> 36:50 Okay, I'll bring the glue and the wood.
36:50 --> 36:51 Yeah.
36:52 --> 36:53 What do you got, Wolf?
36:53 --> 37:23 All right, so I come to you guys bearing Talisman digital edition. Talisman. There are two versions of Talisman that are digital. There's talisman origins. Don't get that one. Get Talisman Digital Edition, because Origins was, like, sort of like a proof of concept relief release that's just single player, whereas Talisman Digital Edition is actually a faithful port of the board game to digital.
37:23 --> 37:27 I own this game. I own this game, and I've never played it.
37:27 --> 37:28 Yeah.
37:30 --> 38:55 I've played this game so many times. Physical, one of my best friends, he's got so many of the expansions, and they're all, like, 50, $60. So he's just got, like, a quarter of a closet full of Talisman. Right. But I'm like, dude, I love playing Talisman with you, but we live a thousand miles apart. Will you get the digital edition? He's like, I've already spent so much on Physical, I don't want to buy digital. Then I guess we can't play it, because this game is so fantastic. You described pathfinder as like RPG light. This is also like RPG light, but in a very different way. You play as an adventurer, but every single player is an adventurer. And you're all wandering the countryside trying to find items to help you get to the inner rings, because you have to do certain things to get to the middle ring and then certain things to get to the actual center ring. And so it's like an outer continent, an inner continent, and then the dungeon that you actually want to get through and kill the final boss first. So it's a race against the other players, but if you go too fast, you can sort of screw yourself and die against the final boss while he's killing everybody else outside as well.
38:56 --> 38:57 Damn.
39:00 --> 39:01 Is that how it is?
39:01 --> 39:55 Final boss? In a way. You actually gain artifacts that let you do more damage, take more damage, things like that. So there's shops and encounters and enemies and all sorts of things. You gain experience points, you get money, you wander around, you buy a raft to cross at certain points to get to the intercontinent, things like that. So you have to get objects that will let you pass through gates, basically, to get to the final boss. And the more types of objects you have, the better. So you can actually get a pack mule that lets you carry more stuff, right? Other players can kill your pack mule and make you drop your shit on the board, and then somebody else can wander by and pick it up really quick. What's up?
39:55 --> 40:16 I played command and conquer, the original command and conquer, and it has the little crystal collectors, right, that move around and whatever. And when we played multiplayer games, we came up with a term. We basically said the rule is no cow killing. And I feel like you just described cow killing in this board game.
40:19 --> 40:22 So it's not cooperative. I thought this was cooperative.
40:22 --> 40:35 It's not cooperative. It is very much. You can go out of your way to screw the other players. I will mention this is a game that got pulled out of rotation with that same player I talked about earlier.
40:37 --> 40:42 Yeah, this guy's got a reputation, but.
40:46 --> 41:08 This is just a lot of fun to me. And the wife and I have played the digital edition. Again, this is one of those games where there's a lot of set up, there's a lot of tear down. This does away with all of that. The upside is, like, the base game, digital edition, just $7. It's super cheap, but it has DLCs out the wazoo.
41:08 --> 41:14 Yeah, if you buy all of the DLCs, it's $205.
41:19 --> 42:12 It's worth mentioning. There's like 49 DLCs. There's 49 DLCs. Some are just individual characters, some are like actual expansions, and then you can buy a season pass for $60. That won't get you all of the expansions, though, so you have to be aware of that. The nice thing about this game is at least when I last played it. Every week they give you access to a different DLC and a different character so that you can sort of test run it. That's good cycles around. And there's just the one season pass. And if you look at the season pass review, it's really bombed because they did the season pass, which apparently promised all future expansions, and then they hit a point where they stopped putting the expansions in the season pass.
42:13 --> 42:17 Well, considering they want to charge $205.
42:17 --> 43:04 For all of it yeah. But if you look into well, that minus $60. So 145. Yeah. The other side is if you look at any individual DLC's reviews, they might only have like 30 or 40, maybe fewer, but they tend to be overwhelmingly positive. So the season pass bombing is not for the gameplay mechanics, it's just for how they package the season pass. Yeah, the game itself is very positive reviews with like 5000 reviews. So it is a very faithful adaptation of the board game. It is a lot of fun. And honestly, the wife and I, we've tried the various DLCs that cycle through. We never enjoy anything as much as just the base game.
43:05 --> 43:42 So I own this. I kind of said this at the beginning and I've never played it. I remember I got this I think I got this in a humble bundle, honestly, probably. And it means that I also have two expansions, at least. Maybe I didn't activate them all, but I have the Dungeon expansion and the Highland expansion. But I would love Jimmy to sit down with you sometime and have you teach me this game while we play it. Right. And if we wanted to do a press B, I would buy the six pack for $30 and gift the remainder of you.
43:43 --> 43:51 Yeah, that's a great thing. That's worth mentioning, too, is a six pack is just $30. And then you're like, you get it. You get it. You could be Oprah Winfrey with this game.
43:52 --> 43:55 You get a talisman. And you get a talisman.
43:57 --> 44:04 So this is a lot of fun to me. There's definitely a lot more depth than something like.
44:06 --> 44:12 Carcasson Lords of Water deep. Like Lords of Water deep is actually a simple concept.
44:12 --> 44:50 Yeah, it's a simple concept with a lot of depth. That's what this is. So you do have an inventory to manage or at least keep track of money. You have to remember where certain interactions are because you go to a spot for the first time and all of a sudden you'll put a fountain there, you'll draw a card. Now there's a fountain there and that fountain stays there. So that's where you got to go if you want to go visit that particular fountain to do the thing that gives you more hit points or more magic points or whatever. So it's interesting because it's a different experience every time despite the same mechanics. Right?
44:50 --> 44:51 Yeah.
44:53 --> 45:14 When my boardroom group and I were looking at this game. We were looking at a game to buy. This is years ago. We were down to Talisman or Descent, and ultimately we went with Descent. But I always was interested in Talisman because it was like one board. But then I saw the expansions, that rectangle board, the expansions, add to the corners, add to the side. It just morphs onto the board in a really cool way. It looked really interesting.
45:15 --> 45:31 And I have not actually played too much with those outer expansions because I'm not sure how that I just can't wrap my head around it. Because the base game is literally you work your way to the middle, and the expansions are like, oh, you go outside and go further away from the middle to do things.
45:33 --> 45:40 When you mentioned that you can put, like, a fountain down on the board and it stays there, does that mean you go backwards to get to it?
45:40 --> 45:52 You roll the dice and you can move north or south. You can pick your direction. Each ring of the board has basically two directions. You can move clockwise or counterclockwise.
45:52 --> 45:55 So you're saying it's Sorry, the board game.
45:57 --> 45:58 Sorry with cards.
46:01 --> 46:03 I guess, maybe.
46:04 --> 46:09 Is it problematic? Not even. I want the bubble.
46:10 --> 46:12 Yeah, I guess it's like sorry RPG.
46:15 --> 46:16 Sorry.
46:16 --> 46:23 PG. Explanation of it. Because you could actually fight the other players. You can land on a space and attack them and steal their shit.
46:23 --> 46:28 If you win, it's sorry. If you land on the same spot as another player, you send them back to the beginning.
46:29 --> 46:32 This sounds like sorry. This definitely sounds like sorry.
46:33 --> 46:36 If you knock someone out, they get sent to the inn.
46:37 --> 46:39 It's sorry that got swollen.
46:39 --> 46:41 Sorry, get stabbed.
46:42 --> 46:44 It's not sorry. It's condolences.
46:46 --> 46:47 Prison. Sorry.
46:47 --> 46:49 Get shaked.
46:50 --> 46:54 No. Jimmy. Let's play this. Let's play this.
46:55 --> 46:57 I'm down because I own absolutely down.
46:58 --> 47:07 Jake and Chard, if you guys have an interest, I will buy the six pack because I can send it to other people as well. And we can play a press B.
47:08 --> 47:24 How many people can play in a game? Six. That's pretty good. Yeah, I'd play this. I've been interested in this game for years. I just never picked it up. I think when I saw the digital version on Steam, I got put off because the DLC because I saw the 150 plus dollars for DLC.
47:25 --> 47:34 Don't be put off DLC. Literally, the base game for $7 will get you so much replay value, you don't need to worry about the DLCs.
47:34 --> 47:38 I'd be comic relief for this entire goddamn game because I have no idea.
47:38 --> 47:39 What the hell I'm doing.
47:39 --> 47:48 And it's great. You could get other people turned into fucking frogs and stuff. Right? It's not just it's literally RPG.
47:51 --> 48:00 I feel like there would be a convergence upon my square and you guys would just fucking ruin it.
48:00 --> 48:11 Okay. I want to point out that Steam sucks right now. Six packs are only available to those that don't already own the game.
48:13 --> 48:14 That's so stupid.
48:15 --> 48:19 Yeah. Include six copies of the game. Send the extra copies to your friends.
48:19 --> 48:20 Yeah.
48:22 --> 48:25 $7 is a steal for the base game anyway, so that's not seven.
48:26 --> 48:28 Yeah, it's seven. It's not even ten.
48:28 --> 48:29 699. Yeah.
48:29 --> 48:32 At least us. It might be ten Canadian.
48:32 --> 48:33 Yeah.
48:34 --> 48:39 For the amount you get out of it, as long as the expansions aren't really necessary, then $10 is totally fine.
48:39 --> 48:49 I don't think they are, but I think if you decide to buy different characters for yourself, you can play with those characters even if the other players don't have them, I think.
48:50 --> 48:55 Okay, that's three card games. Three RPG card games.
48:56 --> 48:58 Yeah. It is a card based game.
49:00 --> 49:03 My next one is totally different.
49:07 --> 49:13 I don't think that's true. Although I have been interested to hear about Gloomhaven because you talk about it quite a bit.
49:14 --> 49:17 Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess we're going to spill those beans.
49:17 --> 49:23 Well, that's about an hour in, guys. We've had a wonderful time. Let's tell everybody where they can find us.
49:27 --> 49:28 We're in Gloomhaven.
49:31 --> 49:33 Dungeon callers ever designed.
49:34 --> 49:50 According to Steve, honestly. So when this game came out so we're going to talk Gloomhaven. When this game came out, it was in the top three, and in fact, it might have hit top one for a while. On board game.
49:50 --> 49:51 It did.
49:55 --> 50:15 I have a couple of complaints about the physical version. The first one is when you buy it, it's got the little, like, pop the squares and the shapes and everything out of the sheets. The minute you do that, they never go back in the box, of course, because they no longer fit in the box anymore.
50:16 --> 50:19 You got to think on your feet like Jake and create your own carrying.
50:19 --> 50:20 Make your own organizer.
50:20 --> 50:25 And there are people that have made like these wood organizers for this game.
50:25 --> 50:26 I believe.
50:30 --> 52:12 And maybe Jake, your game is like this as well, but this is like take Descent, take Hero Quest, take all of these board games that are dungeon crawlers and take all the best parts of them and turn them into a board game. The problem is that it is one of those legacy games where as you go, you are opening packs, you are assembling cards, you are unlocking doors in the box and everything because it wants to keep certain things secret, obviously until you get through it. Because it actually has an entire scenario book that is a quest all the way front to back and every single scenario takes you at least an hour if you've got it well organized. To put this together, you literally have to go find the board game pieces and put them in the right shape. You have to put doors here and chests here and obstacles here and enemies here. And you have to go pull the enemy cards that determine what their attacks are all that stuff. And you literally do this every single time that you complete a scenario. And in a session, you may play three or four scenarios in a session. And so you are spending this time every time you go to a new scenario, it's like, well, you guys go get a snack or really, you guys go get dinner and I'll go get the next set of this set up.
52:12 --> 52:13 Damn.
52:13 --> 55:40 Now because of that, it plays epically. Like once you're actually in the game, it plays like a dungeon crawler. Like the immersion is fantastic. It's got 3D elements to it, doors and chests and everything. And then on top of that, so it also is a card game. And the way that it works is you pick a character and they have some really kind of ingenious classes. These aren't your standard fighter, cleric, wizard. One of them is like a steampunky kind of mix between a rogue and a mage, right? And they have these clever names and I can't think of the names of them off the top of my head, but every single one of them has a deck. And the deck unlocks different cards as you play. And depending on where you go onto the board and stuff like that, you'll unlock different things. But on top of that, every single character has a limit to their deck size. So even though you're unlocking these additional cards, every time you start a new scenario, you basically are like, what cards do I want for this scenario? And you're locked in. Now, the cards are cool. The cards actually have two aspects to them. They have a top aspect and a bottom aspect. And one of them will do move six spaces and attack for X. And the bottom one will be add defense or do this other cool thing. And basically what you do every round is you pick two cards and you pick a top and a bottom. Yes, I said you pick a top and a bottom. And you can't play two top portions of a card and you can't play two bottom portions. Like you literally have to look at your deck and you have to say, these go together. This is some combination of some way of something I'm going to do. And there are defaults. Like the top of a card, you can default and say, I'm just going to swing for X damage. Or the bottom of the card is I'm just going to move three squares or whatever. I don't remember the defaults. And so that's kind of that card game aspect. But it's really cool because you can start to build your deck so that there are these really powerful combinations that you can do. And then every single time you make it through your shuffle. So you shuffle your cards, you go through your cards, you draw your cards, you have expended all of your cards. You have to do a new shuffle, and you have to either take a short rest, which discards a random card, or you do a long rest where you get to discard a card of your choice. And the problem is, if you run out of cards, if you deck yourself, your character passes out for that scenario. And honestly, in most scenarios, one or two characters will pass out no matter what because you basically are kind of going balls to the wall to solve this scenario. And so a lot of people are like, I'll take care of this thing that's in front of you, but it's going to take me out as well, but get the job done after I'm out. Right.
55:41 --> 55:47 So when that happens to a player, how long are they out of the game? Are they waiting a whole hour before you guys finish?
55:47 --> 55:48 Well, maybe.
55:49 --> 55:50 It depends.
55:51 --> 57:19 No, see, that's where the digital version comes in. So the digital version solves a couple of scenarios. The first one is it solves the setup, right? You get your overarching map and you say, I'm going to go do this scenario, and you select it. And guess what? The game is all set up for you. The second piece of it is it accelerates all of the stuff that the board game does against you that the players are managing so you don't have to go find the statistics for the skeleton that you're fighting. It's already done that. Right? And so it really streamlines the process, which honestly and SinSTRESS will talk about. This for sure is Gloomhaven drove her away, mostly because of the absolute slog that it is to maintain the setup and to chase all of the aspects that you're supposed to chase as far as, like, I've got to manage what I'm doing and I've got to manage what the board game is doing as well. Because it's 100% cooperative, right? Yes. In the board game version, the physical board game version, there's so much to it that if a person gets knocked out, even if it's like four turns from the end of the scenario yeah. That could be an hour that they're just sitting there like, hey, where's the Mountain Dew? If there are any girls there, I want to do them. Like, you're not even here.
57:20 --> 57:22 Oh, I get drunk.
57:22 --> 57:50 Yeah, but with the digital version, turns take. If you're really in analysis paralysis, a turn is going to take five minutes for every player to get through. Right. For all four players to get through, it's going to be five minutes. Right. And so, yeah, if you're four turns from finishing it, it's 20 minutes instead of an hour. Right.
57:51 --> 58:03 I played a little bit of this and it felt like Falcon fasci tactics, but like, on steroids. And every turn is freaking critical. If you fuck up that turn, you were really fucked up.
58:04 --> 58:09 Hidden gem, though, jake it might be a hidden gem.
58:09 --> 58:15 Chard this game is much closer to Balder's Gate three battle than to tactics.
58:16 --> 58:23 Look at him backpedal selling it. No, not tactics. Not tactics. Balder's Gate.
58:23 --> 58:24 Balder's Gate. Yeah.
58:25 --> 58:42 No, it is a punishing game. But the nice thing is if you lose a scenario, you basically can rerun the scenario if you want and you can try and it has some save.
58:42 --> 58:43 Scum the board game.
58:43 --> 59:09 You can and it does have some like it already. It actually has a level system so that you can be like, this is too hard, I want to level it down. And it gives you a guide of how to change things to level it down because it is brutal. The first time we played it, we played it on the easiest level and we're like, how do you win this game?
59:09 --> 59:13 Right? That doesn't sound entertaining at all.
59:13 --> 59:26 I have played through the digital version front to back. I haven't played the expansion, but I have played through the digital version to its completion. And I adored it. It was my Wednesday family game night for like three months.
59:26 --> 59:39 We played yeah, you talked about it quite a bit when you would have your Wednesday video game church collection or whatever the hell. And you always talked about gloomhaven quite a bit. So I was always kind of like, what's this about?
59:39 --> 59:50 Yeah, no, it's great. And the aspect of being co op with your friends, right? Each person gets a character they're planning their know, all of that. So it's it's great.
59:51 --> 59:52 Two questions.
59:52 --> 59:53 Yes.
59:53 --> 59:55 How many players is this?
59:55 --> 59:56 Four.
59:56 --> 59:57 Four players.
59:57 --> 59:57 Okay.
59:57 --> 01:00:06 And it is always four players. It is always four players. So if you have less than four players, somebody controlling more than controlling more than one. Yes.
01:00:06 --> 01:00:10 Okay, so it's like Hero Quest in that regard, I think.
01:00:10 --> 01:00:11 Yes.
01:00:11 --> 01:00:28 The other question was, is there like a sort of end game final boss to this game? Is there an end goal or is there just like eventually you hit a brick wall and everybody dies and you.
01:00:28 --> 01:00:33 Lose the final boss of this game is what you find within yourself.
01:00:34 --> 01:01:25 There is an end goal. Like, if you look at the physical board game, it is a book of scenarios that literally is like, you work your way toward the end. You know what's funny is I need to play it again because I had so much fun playing the game that I don't really remember any particular aspect over the other. I had a great time playing it. And there are some scenarios that are absolutely brutal, right? Like, you start playing with against elemental enemies and it's like, wow, this is a mess. But you also unlock some really like I said, you unlock those really cool character types that add aspects that are there's a character that shoots people and does damage, but also moves the enemies around the board when they shoot them. It's almost like kind of.
01:01:30 --> 01:01:30 Scorpion throw.
01:01:30 --> 01:03:07 The rope with a hook at. The end, whatever. Anyway. But it's like that as a weapon. Like, the character has a gun that he shoots. It's cool because you're working with the other person and they're like, Well, I can do damage and I can move them here. Can you do anything with that? Oh, yeah. If you move them here, I'll delay my oh, yeah. And you select where you go in the order. Now you have an initiative, and so you pick your cards, and your cards have an initiative score, so it helps with the order. So you're working with the other people and you're like, well, I can either go at 98 or I can go at a two. Like, something like that. You can play this single player, and it's probably entertaining, but really working with your friends to come up with these tactics, as it were. And that's probably the other separation from Final Fantasy Tactics is it isn't just you, it's you working with your friends to be like, well, if I do this, it's going to impact them this way. Can you finish them off? Yes, I can absolutely finish them off. And it does have an RNG aspect. It does have an RNG aspect as well. There's actually a hit deck that can either increase or decrease your attack effectiveness. And over time, you can actually modify that deck as well. It's kind of how you level up. When your character levels up, you can either add or remove cards from that deck.
01:03:11 --> 01:03:12 That's fun.
01:03:13 --> 01:03:14 All right.
01:03:14 --> 01:03:18 It's overly complicated and it takes four people. Noted. And it's model fantasy tactics.
01:03:18 --> 01:03:19 I hate it.
01:03:19 --> 01:03:22 And when you play it digitally, it's much better.
01:03:23 --> 01:03:32 What's funny, though, is I looked up how long to beat for this game. I'm seeing numbers between 94 and 140 hours.
01:03:32 --> 01:03:36 Jesus Christ. Might as well play Persona Five.
01:03:36 --> 01:03:58 Okay, but imagine that it's basically a board game version of DND, where you play a campaign from level one to level 20. That's what this game is, is it comes with a scenario book. The book in the physical copy is thick.
01:03:58 --> 01:03:58 Yeah.
01:03:59 --> 01:04:42 This is an asinine question, I admit that. But do you do campaigns? Like, obviously you don't. I mean, that's 100 plus hours in a sitting. But is this something that you would get to a certain point, like a campaign, like a DND or a Pathfinder campaign, where you're like, you fight this, Albert, or whatever, you beat it. Okay. And that's done for the day. We'll pick up where we left off yesterday. Is it the same aspect as that you have to break this board down every time and then set it back up for a campaign every time? I hate this game. Okay, noted. At least the D and D. Yeah.
01:04:42 --> 01:04:50 What the GP, I think, mentioned in the past before that he played this game, and I think he said he devoted a table to it that was never touched between sessions.
01:04:50 --> 01:05:14 I believe that that makes sense because like I said in DND, you can have your map, whatever. If you have a dungeon map, cool. You fold it out if you're that advanced. We were never like it took us way later to get to that point, to where we're like, okay, get out the dungeon map. All right, your characters are here and little pewter pieces and whatnot, but all you need is the fucking the dungeon Master screen and your books and your paper. And that was it. Like, you were done. You were ready to go.
01:05:14 --> 01:05:28 And that's really what the digital version does for you, is it takes away the minutiae stupidity of tearing down and setting up a board game or dedicating a table in your house.
01:05:28 --> 01:05:29 Jesus.
01:05:29 --> 01:05:34 I have 100 hours in this game. 100.6. And I've completed it.
01:05:35 --> 01:05:40 It looks like there are 95 scenarios in gloomhaven.
01:05:40 --> 01:06:01 Yeah, well, and when you're trying to level up and stuff, there are kind of some grind scenarios that you actually play multiple times. Like, you're like, well, I need to try out this new card. Or you earn points to level up. And you're like, well, let's just go do the Black Barrow again. Let's just go do it to earn points.
01:06:02 --> 01:06:18 I don't even have 95 scenarios in my life. This seems complicated and complex. All right, that's gloomhaven. Jake, what are you going to pitch to me today, bud? What do you got? Shark Tank?
01:06:18 --> 01:06:33 I'll keep this one short. As I realize the two games I picked today maybe are considered failures for digital tabletop or digital board games. I've realized in hindsight, it's not the myth, not the homework I was assigned. I'm going to tell you about this game anyway because I love it.
01:06:33 --> 01:06:37 Hey, we're going to do a new segment that says that's. So Jake.
01:06:37 --> 01:06:40 Yeah. Why is Jake fucked up and wrong? This.
01:06:44 --> 01:06:45 Get out of here.
01:06:46 --> 01:13:42 Right? All right, look, we mentioned Kickstarter before and how a lot of games will go to Kickstarter to fund. And once you've got it, you're done. So Level 99 Games is a board game company, very small, very indie, handful of employees, and they make some fantastic board games. But if you don't get them during Kickstarter, you're pretty much out of the loop. I think they do reprints occasionally on their website, but they go fast and loose with these games. They had a series of games called BattleCON, and there's like three or four versions of it, and they've all been funded through Kickstarter. I think you can still get Balcon War of Indynes and Balcon Devastation of Indynes still on their website. And they do restock, but the other expansions and I'll get to them in a minute aren't available anymore. But what this is, imagine a fighting game, street Fighter or Guilty Gear or Blaze Blue, an anime themed fighting game translated to a board game, a running theme. Here there's cards. Each character is completely unique. And it has its own powers and functions. And it comes with five special cards or special moves unique to that character. And then in the same game, you're going to take five base cards that are the same for any character. And those base cards are like Strike, which does there's three stats. There's power, there's priority, which is like initiative, and then there's range. Okay? Each of those bases has one of those three stats on it, along with how much defense or guard or how much it moves you on the board. There's actually a five or seven track board, and it's a 2D fighting plane where you move your characters back and forth. Each turn you're taking in your hand, one of your base cards and one of your character cards, and you're putting them side by side together. Each card has a half of the stats. So your character card, I'm going to make up things, but we'll say it's like, I don't know, Moon Slash, I'm making these things up, has a priority of two, a range of two and a power of four. You're matching it up with Dash. Dash has an extra plus one to Priority and an extra one to Power. And it also makes you move after you strike a couple of spaces on the board. So each pair of cards makes one unique attack and then you flip it over. The other player flips their cards over and you each compare your moves. Whoever has the highest priority goes first and you're inflicting damage and doing what the cards say. Where this game is really freaking awesome is dexter for your character is very small. It's ten cards, five cards, you know, because everybody has those five base moves and five cards unique to that character. But there's nothing random in this game. Each player picks their cards and when they've done that turn, they put it aside on a track. The next turn they do their next move, it goes back in the track and that original move comes back to the deck. So it's a game of perfect information. After the first couple of turns, you know what they've been playing and you know what they've used and can't use. It's like a cooldown for two turns before it comes back into play. That's what makes this game so addictive for me is if you have two people sitting down to play a game and the games only take 1520 minutes, it's very much like a fighting game. It's very quick, at least for a board game. If you're playing that character, their unique moves combined with the bases feels different than what you're doing with your character, your moves and your bases. But then after a few rounds playing against the Ryu player, you kind of know what they're doing and you kind of know how they play in their style and you can see the moves as they use them. It's really addictive. Game perfect memory. It's perfect information, I think is the term. How varied are the characters? One character has a wolf. So on the track you have your two characters moving back and forth. She has a wolf. The wolf also moves. And depending where the wolf is on the board, your special moves do different things, whether you're behind the wolf or in front of the wolf. Another character does Portals, can put Portals on the far side of the board and teleport. Another one summons marionettes puppets on the frickin'board. And the puppets can do attacks and get like every character is dramatically different from one another. And there's like dozens of characters. There's dozens of these damn things because there's so few involved. The bounce is pretty awesome. They've done a lot of play do. They have done frequent updates for Arada when expansions come out. But during the Kickstarter process, there's a lot of open play testing with community and they take that feedback before they print that's. One of the reasons why I think they focused on Kickstarter is they get their fan base really helping them test the game. But it's meant to be a game you can play in a tournament setting. They actually sell tournament kits. That's the goal of this game. It's meant to be a competitive card game. A competitive card game that you don't have to go and collect sets for. You could actually just buy one character and play with that one character if you wanted to. And you have a Life counter and then that's it. So it's meant to be a game that you don't have to vest heavily into unless you want to. But they also did the DLC route with various characters you can buy from their store. And whatnot a terrific board game. But it's hard to find people to play with because whenever you had a board game day with friends, you're usually busy playing, like the Game of Thrones is brought out or you're playing gloomhaven. You're usually playing that. It's hard to get the smaller games to play sometimes. I always had trouble getting people to play this game and I love it. I thought it was really great. So one of the Kickstarters, one of the stretch goals, was a digital version of this game. They were going to hire a company to make a digital version of BattleCON and they did. It was funded and they made one. And it's on Steam and it's free to play. It comes with like a handful of fighters for free. They rotate a free fighter every other week. And you could buy characters digitally to use in the game. Awesome. But nobody plays. Nobody plays this game. You try and get a match now and you're waiting for hours. The only way to get a match in BattleCON on Steam, unfortunately, is to go to their discord. And you basically set play on discord, which is okay, but I mean, there's only a handful of people. I feel that play this digitally and it's such a shame because it's such an accurate version of the card game brought to life digitally that you can play online. What it needs is more single player stuff. It really needs better AI. Which I wish was there because it's not like you're playing Magic the Gathering. I feel it's less complex than a game like that. It's not like as complicated as some other card games where you have different strategies. Whatnot? It's only ten cards in the combinations of moves per character. It shouldn't be that bad to do AI. But they never got around to doing AI. I think fully. There's basic AI for a couple of characters, but it's not as good as it is. It's one of those things where I think a digital card game really needs to have the online component for sure, but also needs solid AI for solo play because that's one of the advantages I think I look for in a digital board game. And this unfortunately doesn't have that. And it's a real damn shame because it's one of my favorite board games and you only need two people to play like it's fantastic. And before you ask, I did not build an organizer chart.
01:13:45 --> 01:15:24 I laughed to myself. There was a moment that I had a chuckle to myself because I was going to say something. But the more I hear you speak of it, the more it sounds like darkest dungeon kind of aspect where you're I mean, it's not the same thing because it's a single fighter, but darkest dungeon is the same kind of concept, I think, where it's a card game and you're facing an enemy and it's on a track and you're just fighting things back and forth, doing whatever the cards kind of damage kind of does. Now, I know it's more of a Fire game, so it's based around Street Fighter Mortal Kombat kind of skill set where you probably have a light punch, heavy kick, all that crap and then whatever hurricane kick or whatever Chi blast power you have. So I was going to say how do we take a quick fighting game and make it 4 hours longer? Put it into cards. That seems to make sense to me. But it's not that long, right? You said it's like a 20 minutes long thing which is quick for these types of board games. That makes sense to me. And I was laughing about it to myself, but I was like, it's just like any other it's like Slay the Spire almost aspect. It's like darkest dungeons aspect. It's just one V, one versus a group of things versus you or your party versus another party. So this doesn't sound the bad. I did pull it up on Steam. I was looking at BattleCON on here and I was like, oh, it looks like Mega Man Battle net, but it's not. It has nothing to do with that. But the way they drew BattleCON makes it look like, oh, it's like futuristic, and then you're like, no, it's really not. And there's some pale faced girl on here that's terrifying looking, and I don't know if I want to get into that.
01:15:25 --> 01:16:35 All the characters are sorry, very unique, like cross armor. There's Sci-Fi characters, fantasy characters, gothic characters, magic fighters, warriors. The guy has partnered with he's partnered with a few different artists over the years, and each artist brings a really good style to the characters. And they've tried in their other they make a few other board games as well. And they've tried to bring those characters to other board games, but I feel they never played as well as Balcon does. They have another card game called Exceed, which is doing a lot better for them. And they've been getting licensed deals for Exceed in that they have a Street Fighter set, they have a Shovel Knight set. So each battle is a character for Shovel Knight, and they just announced a guilty gear set. But the problem with Exceed, although it's similar to BattleCON, you have a deck of cards and they're shuffled randomly, and it's much more of a luck based game. I don't know, what do you call it? It's like poker or checkers. And then BattleCON is like chess, where in chess, you know all the unique moves and the strategy behind it. Checkers. You just kind of randomly put things in the board. So Exceeds been doing better commercially for them, but BattleCON, I think, is the better game. It doesn't get nearly as much attention.
01:16:35 --> 01:17:41 I love board games that remove most, if not all of the RNG aspects, like Sinstris and I. Probably our favorite game is power grid. And Power Grid does have a minor random aspect to it, but it's barely random. It would be barely considered random. There's essentially a store element that you get to pick from eight things to buy, and where the the eight the deck that the eight things come from is randomly shuffled, but everybody chooses from those same eight. So it's not like you're chasing yeah, it's almost 100% strategy. The Battle con piece does have a lot of draw to me, where there is that perfect knowledge, as you said. Right. So I love the removal of RNG. I love RNG games because, hey, I love Dungeons and Dragons. I love tabletop RPGs.
01:17:41 --> 01:17:41 Right?
01:17:41 --> 01:17:53 But I also love games where it is solely I mean, why is this not taking off? It's free to play.
01:17:54 --> 01:17:56 Yeah. I don't understand. And it's not hard.
01:17:57 --> 01:18:07 It's $74 for the season passing one and two, which probably means you get different kind of characters. Right, but you said it only comes with a handful of characters to start with. Right.
01:18:07 --> 01:18:13 There should be no come with the whole thing. Is there a season pass listed on the store? Because they stopped developing it there's online.
01:18:13 --> 01:18:17 Season one, and online season two, and they are 35 each.
01:18:17 --> 01:18:18 Thank you.
01:18:18 --> 01:18:53 Okay. Yeah, that was how they're making the money is that you have certain characters for free and then they're adding on other characters because again, there's dozens of characters. And honestly, what they're doing is now what fighting games these days do. When you play Guilty Gear or Street Fighter Six, it comes with twelve characters, but then you're unlocking the rest of season passes. So they kind of did that model before the fighting games have actually done it, which is kind of interesting. But anyway, yeah, it's free to play and I wish people would play it. Each character is so unique. The artwork is fantastic and the strategy is fun. It never really took off online, which is a shame.
01:18:54 --> 01:19:22 And I do need to actually correct something I said from Gloomhaven. The deck that gets shuffled is actually the modifier deck, your move deck. It sounds like BattleCON Online, where your move deck. You basically have all of them, and once you use them, they become cool. Yeah. And so the only random portion is the enemy's moves and just the modifier deck to the attacks. Right.
01:19:26 --> 01:20:06 It's a shame. I wish now, in hindsight, I didn't pick two games that failed digitally. Real quick, while we're waiting for Walt to get back, I will say the other one I almost picked was Game of Thrones, which has got a digital version, which I've heard is really great, but I didn't have time to play it this week. Game of Thrones is one of those games I freaking love, but the setup time for Game of Thrones is ridiculous. And when you do play Game of Thrones with a bunch of friends, it can take hours and it's also incredibly cutthroat. I've had people rage quit in the middle of Game of Thrones when they had two people gang up on them in combat, and it's never gone well. It's like the Monopoly with daggers. I love Game of Thrones, the board game, and I want to play the digital version, but I haven't had time to.
01:20:06 --> 01:20:10 But isn't the idea of Game of Thrones to be cutthroat?
01:20:10 --> 01:20:14 Yeah, I was going to say so it's Game of Thrones, right.
01:20:15 --> 01:20:16 The books.
01:20:16 --> 01:20:24 But if you're on the losing, you know what it is. If you're losing Game of Thrones and you're out early, you're out for several hours by yourself drinking the Mountain Dew, watching TV.
01:20:24 --> 01:20:27 We all know in Game of Thrones, you either win or you die.
01:20:29 --> 01:20:32 So Sean Bean had to watch.
01:20:34 --> 01:20:41 Yes, Sean Bean went out early in this game and he was over there eating the Cheetos and drinking the Mountain Dew.
01:20:41 --> 01:20:42 That's?
01:20:42 --> 01:20:44 Who keeps drinking all the Cheetos and Mountain Dews?
01:20:44 --> 01:20:45 That's right.
01:20:46 --> 01:20:52 Drink all strategize better, man. Drink all them Cheetos. I said what I said.
01:20:53 --> 01:21:05 Before we jump on to my game, I do want to mention BattleCON. It came out in 2018 digitally, and it hasn't seen an update since 2019.
01:21:06 --> 01:21:07 It's a winner.
01:21:09 --> 01:21:17 And it's still marked as early access. They didn't even have the balls to be like, we're sorry, the game's dead. Put out their last update.
01:21:17 --> 01:21:17 And.
01:21:20 --> 01:21:24 All I'm saying they left you for that's why they did it.
01:21:24 --> 01:21:37 They can't really it's better than Circus Charlie. Look forward to my deep dive in BattleCON, my five part miniseries on press B, where I'm going to break down every fighter in BattleCON, and why you need to play online today.
01:21:37 --> 01:21:39 Please fucking do.
01:21:39 --> 01:22:23 Sorry, I'm about to break the rules for tonight just a little bit. So the game I chose as my second game is a game that seems like it really should have been a board game first because it's that good and it feels like a board game for sure. This game is called Cold Sept. It has never had a PC release, unfortunately, nor a phone release. I have it on PS Two, and I have an Xbox 361 as well. It's also been on DS three. DS number of things. I think only four of them have come to the US. But this is a game that imagine Monopoly and Magic the Gathering smashed together.
01:22:24 --> 01:22:28 Describe that. Because it doesn't work in my brain.
01:22:28 --> 01:22:30 I know, right? It doesn't work.
01:22:31 --> 01:22:32 Fireball. Not collect.
01:22:32 --> 01:22:41 Fireball. It's so weird because that sounds so jarring, but as soon as you see it in action, you're like, oh, that totally makes sense.
01:22:41 --> 01:22:44 I counterspell. You buying boardwalk?
01:22:45 --> 01:22:46 Kind of, yes.
01:22:47 --> 01:22:51 Each board has two swamps for the RnR railroad.
01:22:51 --> 01:23:27 Each board has four colors. You've got red, green, blue, and yellow. Those colors represent fire, earth, water, and wind. Right. So you have monsters of those four colors as well, or creatures that you have of those four colors that you can place on those colors. And you also have colorless. If you place a light colored creature onto a light colored space, it generates more rent than it would otherwise, and it also gets a boost in combat.
01:23:28 --> 01:23:28 Rent.
01:23:29 --> 01:23:48 Rent. I'm trying to liken it to Monopoly here for you a little bit. Basically, you collect gold coins from the other player, but it's like your monster is sort of taking it from them, right? Unless they opt to fight it with one of their monsters they have in their hand. And then you go, combat scenario.
01:23:48 --> 01:24:01 Wolf 1 second. So for those listening to this, wolf is recording some video footage of the gameplay, and it opens with an old man's sperm flying towards the Earth through a wormhole. Can you explain that, Wolf?
01:24:01 --> 01:24:02 Scepter.
01:24:03 --> 01:24:04 It's a scepter.
01:24:04 --> 01:24:07 I know, it looks so weird. Yes, it's a scepter.
01:24:07 --> 01:24:11 It's a scepter. D's nuts. What the fuck was that thing?
01:24:11 --> 01:24:15 That's a sperm. I'm sorry? That's an elven sperm.
01:24:15 --> 01:24:21 It's come to impregnate the world. I don't know what's going on.
01:24:22 --> 01:24:31 I like how when it's in the board and it stops, it looks like sad and decrepit. It's like the sperm that doesn't work after that.
01:24:31 --> 01:24:36 Is it just a brain with a spine with no body? Like, what is this thing?
01:24:38 --> 01:24:40 Is it a staff gulligan?
01:24:40 --> 01:24:42 It's a gulligan.
01:24:44 --> 01:24:45 Okay, sorry.
01:24:46 --> 01:24:48 All right, let's go.
01:24:48 --> 01:25:12 Okay, basically, you choose your direction at the beginning. You can go clockwise or counterclockwise, doesn't matter. You pick. There are checkpoints around the board you have to cross before you go back to what is considered the Go space. And every time you cross that, it's called a castle. There are fortresses that are checkpoints, and then there's castle, which is like into Go and Monopoly.
01:25:12 --> 01:25:16 When you cross and Go, when you.
01:25:16 --> 01:25:54 Cross that castle, you get money, you get gold, as well as all of your monsters get a little boost to their skills and a boost to how much money they bring in. So it behooves you to zoom around the board real fast and place a bunch of monsters real quick. It costs you nothing to place a monster except for the card that is in your hand to be put on the board. Right, okay. Every monster has strength and hit points, and some of them have initiative and things like that. They'll always strike first, or in some cases, they'll always strike last. Whatever.
01:25:54 --> 01:25:57 So it's magic. The Gathering here.
01:25:57 --> 01:25:59 Yes. It's Monopoly. The gathering.
01:26:00 --> 01:26:08 Okay, so wait, is Gulligan the Monopoly man? Is that his role?
01:26:10 --> 01:26:12 I guess you could say that.
01:26:12 --> 01:26:18 He's the one to give you magic. Monopoly. The gathering.
01:26:19 --> 01:26:44 This is a multiplayer game. I think you can play it up to four players, but it also has a main campaign that's like a full blown RPG story where you go through to various different boards and they're different kingdoms or cities or whatever have you. And when you win a board, you unlock new cards to put into your deck.
01:26:44 --> 01:26:48 So it's gloomhaven monopoly. The gathering.
01:26:48 --> 01:27:03 Yeah, kind of. It's a really cool game. I know it sounds super bizarre, but you can see in this footage here, I went one way and the NPC, like the AI went the other way.
01:27:08 --> 01:27:12 I want that as the emote for the discord server wolf. We need the Gulligan represented.
01:27:12 --> 01:27:23 That face is too good, especially when he has the big, wide open mouth. Like, he looks super angry. Okay, so how does this also pertain to Lords of Water? Deep.
01:27:28 --> 01:28:51 So every time you cross a fortress and cross the castle, you generate gold as you play your rounds. You get cards. Like, some of them will let you get gold based on how high you roll for that turn. Whatever. You get cards that let you cast yourself to go faster or enemies to go faster, slower, whatever you want to do. A lot of cards work on any given player, yourself or other players. You plant your monsters down as you pass over them a second time. You're allowed to upgrade them. And it costs each tier of upgrade costs more and more. So if you've got enough gold, you just huck a bunch of money at that space. And now when the other player lands on it, you see these numbers here, like 16 on the board, right? If the other player lands on there, they can either pay the 16 or fight it. 16 is nothing. So I'm like, pay it. Whereas I kept trying to lump up mine to be a hefty price tag. So I had one that was like, 250, and then another one that went up to like, 700 something, and I was trying to make him land on them. And I didn't care if he attacked my cheap ones. I wanted him to fight the big one and lose. And then I get all of his money, right? And it does the Monopoly thing where if you don't have enough money to pay that round, you got to give up a space to get some money back. So that monster is gone. That space is gone. You no longer have it.
01:28:52 --> 01:28:54 So this is now hotels?
01:28:56 --> 01:28:56 Yeah.
01:28:56 --> 01:28:59 The monsters are kind of like houses. Hotels.
01:28:59 --> 01:29:00 Okay.
01:29:00 --> 01:29:01 Holiday Inn.
01:29:01 --> 01:29:10 You pay your money, no problem. But when you land on the Ritz Carlton, you don't pay. The concierge comes with a knife and stabs you. This game actually looks really fun. I want to play this.
01:29:12 --> 01:29:18 Landing on Park Place or Boardwalk is basically getting attacked by Bahamut is what you're telling me.
01:29:19 --> 01:29:19 Yeah.
01:29:19 --> 01:30:06 No, not necessarily. I upgraded my friggin goblin. The goblin there is what won the game for me right there next to the spark space, because I had him upgraded so hard that he landed on that and had to give up, like, 90% of his spaces. And then once you hit a certain threshold so sometimes it's 4000 gold, 3000, 6000, whatever it is for that map. Once you hit that threshold of that's how much your spaces and your money on hand is worth, you cross Go, you win. So if you don't have that threshold when you get across Go, you got to go again, it's like Monopoly, but with strategy.
01:30:08 --> 01:30:20 So two questions, okay? First, when do you win the beauty contest? And number two, when is there a bank error in your favor?
01:30:20 --> 01:30:23 Is there a jail? Can I go to jail?
01:30:24 --> 01:30:47 I don't recall if there's anything like Chance and Community Chest cards. I don't think there are. Instead, you draw a card every turn from your deck, and I think your deck is 50 cards. Regardless, you have to have 50 cards in your deck. As you unlock more cards, you get to rebuild your deck how you like. I think you're limited to four of any given card.
01:30:48 --> 01:30:50 Okay, so that's like magic gathering.
01:30:51 --> 01:31:42 They do recommend a sort of balance of, like, this many monsters, this many spells, that sort of thing. But you can literally just do an entire deck of, I think, mostly just spells and have, like, one. Creature or something if you really wanted. Not a good idea, but I think you could. So it gives you a lot of wiggle room to build your deck how you like. So if you want to lean heavily into one creature color, you can. If you want to do everything you can, it doesn't really matter too much because every map, like you can actually change the color of spaces. So for 300 gold you can change the color of a space. So if you just plunk down on every single space you cross, if you're getting a lot of income, you can just next time you cross it be like, okay, I want to change the color of this space to something else. So that way it's all in line with each other.
01:31:43 --> 01:31:44 Interesting.
01:31:44 --> 01:31:47 Is there different board layouts or is it just the same square every time?
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