Rock caj cada maturing
I like you dream of me
Final night beyond
With the dawn I permitted
It's 2 4 6...
8
12...
26...
There you go. One steamy hot mug of cocoa.
Thanks. Thank you.
What's going on? You're so down on the dumps. It's Christmas.
I just, I feel really, I feel like, no, it's Christmas.
It's the time of year. Christmas makes me feel like, makes me think of death, you know?
Like what kind of legacy will I have? How will I be remembered?
Gwynne's knows the solution to that.
For me, as we pay a visit to the internet.
Paul, let me tell you about a little site called Wikipedale.
Wow, I've never seen anybody get deleted that fast. That was weird.
Hey, I know I'll cheer you up. Presents. It's Christmas.
Oh my God, of course.
Okay, let's do it. Let's do it.
All right. What did you get me?
Oh my God, it's Quarries is a game of summoning monsters, of casting spells.
Let's start again.
Quarries is as fetishistic as board gaming gets.
It is a dice game and it comes with some custom dice and some custom dice and, yeah, some
more custom dice.
Over 130 cute little cubes in total.
Oh my goodness, that is literally more dice than I've had hot dinners.
Sometimes we forget the board games are physical three-dimensional objects.
They're made up of bits and stuff and things that you handle.
For many players, this is as much a part of the experience as the rules or the competition.
Just think how much more appealing a game of poker is with a luxurious green felt table
and weighted poker chips.
Well, Quarriers maybe isn't quite there yet, but I can't deny that when you're sat next
to more than 100 lovely, beautiful custom dice, there's a kind of a magnetic pulse of
them.
You gave it to me, it's mine.
A game of quarriers goes like this.
A random assortment of its gem-like dice are laid out and up for grabs in this sort of
central market.
On their turn, players draw six dice from their velveteen pouch and roll them.
Eventually, the faces you roll might represent monsters or spells, but since everyone starts
the game with a bag of crap, to begin with, you'll mostly just be rolling a lot of quiddity,
the supernatural currency of the game.
Quiddity's great, because the last thing you get to do on your turn is spend any quiddity
rolls to pick up more spells on monsters or other dice that you'll pop into the mouth
of your bag.
In the early game of quarriers, the focus is quiddity, in building an economy that'll
let you grab dice at the table.
In the late game, what you really want are a ton of monsters.
You want your bag to be a fearsome monster spewing abyss, because it's only in keeping
monsters alive that you'll win glory points that'll ultimately win you the game.
Ah, it's almost like being back at school, you know, collecting marbles in the playground.
If you went to school in the 1930s.
Oh, Paul, where did you get those splendid marbles?
I'll give your tuppence for them.
What's thrilling about this game is the fact that every time you squirrel away another dice
in your bag, another wonderful little gem, you never know when that's going to turn
up again, and even when you do, you never know what face you're going to roll on that
dice.
And you'll notice, we're talking quite a bit more about the components than the rules.
Well, it is a dice game, and there is the element of luck, maybe more luck than skill,
but it's okay because you're choosing the dice that you want to buy, and if you want
an aggressive bag of dice or a defensive bag of dice, if you want to buy the big monsters
or the re-roll spells, that's up to you.
You still have that tangible sense of control and your own destiny.
I've seen quarries receive kind of a kicking online for that, that idea that it's more
down to luck than skill, but that's crazy.
Humans like to gamble.
They like to test our luck.
It's true that back in episode five and a half, Paul and I gave a bit of a kicking to
Arkham Horror because after a point, you know, the game just teamwork isn't as important
as random charts, but that's different because that game is six hours long with a manual,
like the instruction booklet for a washing machine, the discovery after that much time
and energy that the game doesn't really care about what you're doing.
That's crazy.
Yes, quarry, it hinges on its luck, at least as much as a door hinges on its hinges.
But you know, it's a 20 minute game, and if you're okay with that, it'll let you roll
dice that let you collect more dice and let you knock your opponent's dice back into their
bags.
And after, after it's over, one of you will be a big fat winner and the rest of you,
well, you'll all curse your luck and then you'll collapse the game back into its tin
for another day.
Or you'll just play it again immediately because it's different every time because,
because the cards that come with the game mean that I saw these two different things
and there's always more dice than there are slots in the market.
Basically courier straddles the territory between a game and a toy.
No, no, no.
I knew you're going to say that.
You think that because it comes in its own wee toy box.
The tin is actually designed after one of the dice from the game.
You're regressing back to childhood.
All right.
This is a proper intelligent game.
It's a fully fledged system.
It's clever.
It looks lovely.
It's a proper piece of design.
No, I'm trying to imagine it with like really basic D sixes, you know, and like none of
the art and it's, I just would have buried it in my garden within an hour of you giving
it to me.
It's not something I've wanted in my life.
Anyway, it doesn't matter that it's a toy because it succeeds as a toy game 50 50 thing.
Okay.
Well, I mean, twins is completely wrong, but we both agree that it's a lovely game visually
and a pleasure to play and you should really, really buy and whiz kids already created the
first expansion for it as well.
Yeah, I've already, I've already got it.
You know what I'm like with expansions.
I like to make things bigger.
Anyway, quarries rise at the demons adds 20 new dice to the game's total, bringing it
up to 150.
It even has new cards, new definitions for the original vice and these horrible corrupted
quiddity dice that you use to clog up your opponent's bags.
How because this for Chris, how did you already, what did you get me?
Twins, never forgets a friend, why don't you look under the tree, bucko?
Hey, it's a pair.
Yeah, because I know you like pairs.
Anyway, I'm going to bleed the old lizards.
You, I'll leave you two to bond, eh?
Good friend.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like mine.
Cheers for a happy Christmas and lots of wine.
Cheers, cheers for what a Christmas.
What's this, fuck, fuck, whaaat?
Paul, why don't you keep your beans, I feel like cooking up a batch of Quins's wicked
beans.
Quins, who are you going to spend Christmas with this year?
Um, well, this Christmas is probably just going to be me and the girl, which is to say
my girl, cause, we're like, um, yeah, she's got a leg, she's got two legs actually, but
she's not just a pretty face with legs coming out.
Why, who are you spending Christmas with?
The lads, the lads, I'm going to spend Christmas with the lads.
You know, David and Glamp and we'll talk about the scores and it's really good, it's a system
whereby we all sort of keep up to date with what's going on, nobody falls behind.
The lads?
Yeah.
Why haven't I met these guys?
They come around all the time, I don't know, they're coming now, so, um, should I go?
Yes.
Right.
Um, Merry Christmas, yeah, you enjoy, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So come and get me, let me, get in that ticket feeling that says my heart is on an all-time
Christmas alone, eh?
Well, lucky for me, my daddy always used to tell me that there's no home in partying
alone, and I'm prepared, I'm a veteran you could say, say hello to Phantom Leader.
The most hotly anticipated Solitaire game of 2011, oh yeah, there are board games out
there designed for one player only, haha, sorry Paul, tonight, Quinn's Fly is solo.
Well, Quinn's may have a girlfriend, I've got a printer, and a printer is like a big
square key that unlocks the door to the world of print and play games.
Did you know there are whole communities out there of people who play and design games
just for free that you could squirt out of a printer right away?
Now, I can get some Solitaire games now, haha, where are my scissors?
So an obvious question when it comes to Solitaire board games is why not just play a video
game?
And that, it's a question, another question is why play Phantom Leader, and the answer
is because it's awesome, look at all this stuff, okay, Phantom Leader is a game about
controlling planes and dispatching them during the Vietnam War on critical strike missions.
They can get a bit like Top Gun, except you're in control of these planes making you the
Top Gun, yeah, all right, men, you each and every one of you is my personal responsibility
in this war, the Vietnam War, and you under my experience, you're getting victory points
and experience, and are you eyeballing me, son, Kieran, is that your name, you Air Force
or Navy, because I've heard you Navy boys, you like big boats and you cannot.
We have to destroy cement plant, it has to not exist this time tomorrow because an Air
Force's work is never done, welcome to the core, and we need to send three of you for
that, so we could send Cajun, Papa, and Paul, yup, you gotta suit up and get in the air
in two hours, ah, your problem is that flying missions makes pilots stressed, flying to
targets further away makes them more stressed, having to take invasive action or get shot
at or even eject, they come home with cracks in their eggshell like psyches, so you have
to cycle them, let them rest, but that's hard because there's a god damn war on and you
only have one ace and one guy who knows how to fly the Super Saber, good thing I'm the
man for the job, whether I need my sluggy.
And then all I have to do is cut out the components, paste them to some card if I had some paste,
and then I've got look, I've got proper full size board game components as you can see
if I put them next to this pair, nothing small or wee or anything, thanks reference
pair, and the first game that I get to play for free is Inspector Moss 2.
It's a game of dice and deduction and it's smart, but it's quite hard, I thought a game
I'd download and print off would be simple, easy, but mmm, yeah, oh dear, Inspector Moss
2 plays like the nightmare a detective would have after getting shot and sedated by paramedics.
In Inspector Moss 2 you're a detective solving a murder by rolling dice, you allocate those
dice to help you move around rooms of corresponding numbers or you have to allocate several dice
together to gather evidence and pick up clues, and it all sounds a bit like Cluedo meets Yachty
but by yourself which it is, but that sounds about as much fun as having your head up a
cow's ass and no, this is fun, this is probably one of the most challenging puzzle games I've
played in quite a while, but you only have so much time to catch your suspect in and
whenever you roll the dice, oh no, one of those dice is always the amount of time that
passes every turn, but I'll get you next time you cheeky murderer, but it is a tremendously
taxifying game to play when you roll exactly the numbers you need or you risk a re-roll
and you find you're able to dash across the house and grab that piece of evidence that
vitally is the key to everything.
I wonder what I'll play by myself next from the internet.
This is the end, my only way to the end, I've chosen my pilots, I've chosen their loadouts,
I've tuned my Cubans as they've made their way to their target, now they're on their
final approach, and this is how I watch them.
This board is basically the puzzle at the heart of Phantom Leader, what vectors do you
fly in on, at what altitude, when do you choose to drop each of your bombs or fire each of
your missiles, what targets do you suppress, evade or ignore, and on the bad days, which
of your pilots can you afford to, Cajun, Cajun would you tighten it up, you're looser than
those women outside the airbase.
But while this board is the game proper, these are the boards that I'm really in love with.
These model all the persistent elements of your campaign that would be too self-indulgent
if you're playing with other people, look, these are my pilots, these are the requisition
points that I can use for tanker priority or laser guided bombs, and look, here's Vietnam,
the politic slider, this is really cool.
If I brought up something like a naval base or something, something big, or use makings
of blue one bombs, that's napalm, this will go spiking to the right.
The eyes of the world will turn to face the glorious USA, and the boys back in Washington
will tell me to cool it.
That leaves me and my pilots in a purgatory of trying to bomb bridges the sides of step
ladders or, worse of all, provide close air support.
My boys have one cup of coffee away from total mental collapse, and I have to tell them to
go and drop bombs within a mile of US troops.
I will tell you one reason this is better than a video game, actually, because it's
so abstracted, your imagination is left to fill in the gaps, and when Kieran fails out
in a secret mission of a louse, and you have to write down on your campaign sheet missing
in action, and take his card and throw it back in the box because he's gone, and it's your
fault.
There's such sadness there, and this game manages a similar level of poignance, at least
once every half hour.
Alright boys, I want a rocket barrage on those eastern sites, I'll be waiting for you Judy.
So, the D6 shooters, let's set up the game there.
This is a game that fits on just one piece of paper, and how many games can you say that
about, huh?
Or a piece of card if you had any card, anyway, that means you can fold it up and take it
with you in your pocket, and you could play it in the kitchen, or you could play it on
the tube, or waiting for a bus, or on the stairs, or on the toilet.
Anyway, this game is much easier than Inspector Moss, all you have to do is deliver a criminal
that you've already caught to the town of Reno, and along the way then maybe you'll
be ambushed by some people, or you know, your posse might run out of food, or some will
get shot, and you'll go to towns, and you'll encounter random events, and all the exciting
events of the Wild West will happen to you in this game on this piece of paper, that's
quite something.
Okay, so how hard can it be?
I've got this far to Gold Hill, and I've got some people left in my posse, so that's
good, let's have a roll.
That's good, that means I actually get to the second town, I can get there, and that
means I'm hot, but I can use that to not be hot, and nothing, ah, no, but then I'm hot.
It's alright, I can re-roll everything, that, and that means I've been attacked three times,
so if I can shoot up, but I've got no ammo, um, I'm just gonna, just pretend that didn't
happen, and roll, that's good, that I get one piece of food to feed three people, um,
that's, they're good, because they can, the fours solve any problem, they solve most,
they solve some problems, they solve a few problems, they don't, the fours, I'm gonna
roll the fours again, um, that's, that's cocked, that was probably what I wanted, which was
a one.
If I had, if I pretend that those two dice were a two, then I'm not really cheating,
because I penalized myself, and now, now I've got to a random event, so let's see what the
random event is, ah, I've been mugged, lose two posse or one gold, I, um, but I'm, I'm
nearly a quarter of the way through the game, so I'm doing really well, what can I, let's
see what I can buy in the town, I can buy, um, binoculars, I might roll that again, ah,
well you know, it's a fine game, and it gives me good memories, memories of the fighting
fantasy books, I used to play as a kid, where you take the book with you, and a couple of
dice, and you're scribbling down your inventory, and you say, I've got these weapons, and this
food, and this magical potion of, broth, and, and it's so portable, you know, you could
be playing it on a train, and just take some dice with you, and you're scribbling down
where you've done, and maybe somewhere on the train sits next to you, and they've got
an iPhone, and it's a kid playing, and you give them a saucy wink, because your game
was playing together on the train, and, and, and you're a bit more of a hardcore gamer,
because you've got the dice and the paper, and, and you're a hustler, you're a hustler
on the train, ah, what's so engaging about this board is that you're playing the odds,
you know, one Vietcong taking a pot shot with his rifle could shoot one of your 2.4 million
dollar Phantoms, clean out the air, or, you know, Paul here could go weaving his way to
the target, drop 2,000 pounds of bombs, and fly away unharmed. It's cinema, it's a perfectly
fair game, but it's cinema, awesome, although I am getting pretty tired of how much bookkeeping
is involved, look here, before I could even fly towards this mission, I had to equip
seven planes with all these different weapons, making this like Soviet chocolate box, and
it took me 15 minutes, and I kind of want the battle to be over now, but it won't be
over because, because now my boys have flown to the site, but slowed to the speed of hot
air balloons, because every inch they fly, everything shoots up at them. If the poignance
is the best thing about Phantom Leader, the worst thing is the fact that to play it, you
have to repurpose your brain into a side of fleshy clockwork, so that you can just run
it. I think I've been spoiled by computers, but look here, let me show you what I mean.
So all of these sites, all of them, anything in range gets to shoot at me if it can, so
first of all, let's do this site, one of many, let's see who it attacks, seven, that's Paul.
Okay, so the first thing that happens is I can try and suppress, Papa has good air to
ground, so take that rocket, throw it away, make a suppression roll, that's a fail, ah,
that's fine, because Paul can evade without being too stressed, so take the stress I can
put it on Paul, make the ten, okay, that's a hit, but he's amazing, so he gets a second
roll. Paul just got shot down, which is actually okay, because while you take all the tokens
and the cards and the stress and you move it away, you get a missing in action roll,
you know, it might take a few days, but sometimes you can do rescue missions and stuff with
it, um, so Paul's gone, hello? Paul, Paul come in, Paul!
Print and play games, what a great way to just cheaply play some really interesting
games, and if you want to take it that seriously, then you can mount them on card or the back
of a pizza box, and then your game's a little smell of meat, but there's all kinds of games
out there, for whatever you want, you want a Hex War game, there are loads, have a look
on board game keep, there's games about grand strategy and games with random generation
and maybe you'd like a game about time travel, well that's tried timeline, it's for two players
but that's fine, because I can play it with... Jagger, can you see any wreckage? Come on,
something! Hello Paul! The lads left me, they, they abandoned me for Christmas, yeah, I've
got nobody to spend Christmas with. Oh no. It was the football, they, they, they did too
much football, one of them lamp, he tried to do a head ball. Oh no. Yes, and now he's
in hospital. That's funny, cos, cos this girl, you know Mike, this old, this old girl of
mine, oh yeah, turned out, she wasn't, you know, she wasn't legal. What? She was illegal,
she was an illegal immigrant, yeah that, that's it, she had, I had to deport her back to Scotland.
Paul, do you want to come in actually? Please. That door was locked. Do you want to help me
review a print and play game? Cool timeline. Huh, do I? There's another thing about print
and play games that we haven't actually mentioned yet and that's that they are a great lucky
dip, because they're so often free, gamers can be a bit less choosy and game designers
can be a bit more experimental and you never know what you're going to get. For example,
with, with timeline here, I did, look, I mean I had no idea this was going to happen, isn't
it fantastic? Paul, what the hell is this? Why is your voice so high? It was like. Okay,
so look at this, this is a timeline, this is the past, this is the future and you're
spanning time, you're spanning time picking up. So you're time travellers. You're picking
up stocks and futures in the past and when you do so, you make the timeline shift slightly,
they shift themselves and you're trying to sell these things in the future, but every
time you pick something up, timelines move. So all the time tunnels, they, they, they,
they change, they, they shift themselves, the values, you know, they, you have come
upon my home with a simulation of navigating a foreign subway system. Look, this is a very
good game of cause and effect. Let me see if I've got this straight. So you have to,
you have to move to collect items along a given timeline, which changes the timeline,
which means that then you have to try and bring the, the timeline you're on in line
with something else without doing the same for your opponents. Paul, I've had jobs that
are less worked than this. All right, you're thinking too much. No, I'm thinking at all.
What's chess like? No, it's not. Can we go back in time to make sure the designs of this
game get like proper jobs? That's actually quite a mean thing to say. Look, I don't want
the last game we review in 2011 to be this vomited up spaghetti looking thing. I want
to finish in style. I want a game that erupts on your dining room table, a game that's an
honestly goodness contender for the greatest table game of the 20th century, something
that takes minutes to learn and a lifetime to master, something that tells stories and
makes you laugh, something that's colorful with a box that can barely contain the game's
possibilities. You mean? Yeah. Yeah.
Cosmic Encounter is a beautiful game, beautiful in spirit. These four mechanically beautiful
visually boring stuff first. In this game, every player controls an alien race trying
to spread themselves across the galaxy. Look, here are your plants, here are your ships,
and the object of the game is to land five of these ships, creating at least five foreign
colonies. First player to do that wins, but the only way you'll do it is by having encounters.
On your turn, you will draw a card from this deck. It will tell you who you're having an
encounter with. You will point the hyperspace gate at one of their planets, and you will
send forth some of your little ships, and then two things will happen. Firstly, you'll
invite people. You, the orange player, will say, hey, blue, hey, blue, you want a foreign
colony? When you send some of those ships in the green, you know, you want a foreign
colony, and then you'll have your big attack force, and then purple will get the chance
to say, whoa, red, yellow, how many fight these bastards back? Then you'll both have
your attack forces, and you'll both play an encounter card. An encounter card strong
enough is to make an underdog a powerful victor, or an encounter card so weak as to make an
unstoppable military force pathetic. But you have to play all the cards in your hand at
some point. You have to play that terrible attack card, or maybe you'll say, whoa, whoa,
let's negotiate. You'll play your negotiate cards into the encounter, and then you'll
get time to broker a deal. Maybe you'll both get a foreign colony. Maybe you'll say, let's
negotiate, and then you'll play an attack card against his negotiate, automatically
winning you the battle, but losing you a friend. Cosmic Encounter is just a game of tension
and talking, but this, what I just described, this is just the skeleton. This is what the
meat hangs off. Paul, tell them about the meat. Ah, the meat. I'll tell you about the
real beef of this game. It's the alien races that you get allocated. At the start they
look like this. The base game has 50 of them, but if you want to pick up any expansions,
the first expansion has 20 more, and the next expansion has 20 more, and all 90 of these
alien races break the game somehow. They change the rules. That's what I said. They
break the game. Take, for example, the profits, and I absolutely love these guys. These are
fantastic. These guys, if they correctly predict the outcome of any encounter, they get an
automatic foreign colony. So whenever other people fight, they try and influence that,
and well, if they're right, they automatically get a point. So annoying. The masochist, ah,
the masochist. If they lose all their ships, they win the game. What's going on there?
And then the Leviathan, well, they can just use their planets, their planets as giant
attack craft. That's ridiculous. I mean, are these races balanced? No. No, they're not.
They're not at all balanced. Let me give you a scenario. For example, you could be playing
the gooey ooze immebrant. They have their own advantages, but you find your traps between
the genius here and the claw. The genius, they just win when they get 20 cards. The claw,
they just, they steal planets from people. What the heck? These guys are not even going
to care if they win encounters or not. They've got their own objectives. But, but, you know
Quinn said this was a game about talking. The key to success is to not be perceived
as a threat. If you seem harmless and innocent, then people will invite you to their attacks.
They'll become their space allies and then they'll leave you to your space business instead
of trying to whittle down all your ships all the time. And in this way, the game self-balances.
People go after the more powerful races and the tiny, apparently harmless people get left
alone. And what could be more pathetic than the loser now? Remembering the Cosmic Encounter
has 90 alien races. Let's look at a case study, the interplay between just two of them. The
loser's power of upset means that if he chooses to use it before a battle, the winning side
loses and the losing side wins. If that sounds confusing, well, it's meant to. You're meant
to be using it to trip up your opponents. Add into this the profit. The profit, you remember
I mentioned them, I love them, they're brilliant, they're amazing. They predict what's going
to happen if they turn out to be correct. Well, then they get that free point. So what
if the profit predicts that the loser said the, and the, hang on, but the loser exactly
and this is what the game is. It's everyone trying to work out what the hell's going to
happen and just win. Paul and I could go on and on about how fantastic this game is,
about how every time you play it, it's a series of bluffs and lies and promises and frantic
negotiations we could talk about the decks you can have. Depending on your move that
evening, the science defender award and hazard decks that make the game more random or funnier
or richer. But we'd be treading old ground because this game first came out in 1977 and
it's passed through the hands of six publishers and in that time has amassed thousands of
glowing reviews. Instead, we're going to go one step further and we are going to end
the year by talking about why we think, why we believe the Cosmic Encounter is the best
example of a board game in existence today.
Since we started filming the show, I've had to listen to Quinsco on about the art in games
and the pleasure of bits, but maybe it has a point. You stack your chips like poker chips
in Cosmic Encounter. You point the walk gate aggressively at the other players and you
flip your cards in moments of theatrical triumph. Everything in this game is supposed to be
picked up and moved around and shuffled about. It's a physical experience, a stimulation
not just for the mind, but the eyes and the fingers.
I've had to listen to Paul go on and on about randomisation in games, which is the idea
that a game comes with lots of bits and pieces and then can remix itself each time you play,
offering a surprising experience. Cosmic Encounter could be the crown jewel of these games. It's
so surprising every time, and yet the rules remain so simple.
Self-evident truth. Board games are a bonding experience, but Cosmic Encounter is particularly
good for bonding, partly because it tells the story of warring alien races or cosmic
allies getting together and you can play the game over and over and every story will be
a different story. You can play it with a complete stranger. See them again in years
time and you won't remember their name, but you'll remember the game. That's a bit weird.
With its focus on talking, Cosmic Encounter plays to the single stroke of board games
as a whole, which is the fact that we're human. Our ability to negotiate, bluff, lie.
Cosmic Encounter even manages to tease out deeply human failings like greed and mistrust.
Don't get me wrong, video games are awesome, but the fact is that currently the interaction
is still extremely, extremely two-dimensional. Why don't you play board games? This is why
you should play board games, because you can't get this anywhere else.
Friends reunited, eh? That was fun. And hey, it's a good thing you got here when you did.
We have lots to do before 2012. No, you mean they arrived? Right here. All the games we're
reviewing in 2012. Oh my goodness. What is that? Oh, that, well that detaches. Oh, that's
disgusting. Don't do that. I'm sorry. How did you even get that? Well, it's not strictly
something I want to talk about. Are you alright? No. That, that game's banned. That's the game
killed somebody. No. That's banned in like 60 countries. Okay, first of all, it didn't
kill anyone and it's 70 countries. First edition. How did you get that? Ah, well, it's the Crown
Jewel in the collection. Original Latin. Bam-bass-bam. Barma's Barters. You speak Latin? No. Tell
you what, why don't we review this? Ah, Settlers of Catan. No. You know what, Paul? I think
this is going to be our best Christmas ever. I think it might be alright. Ah. Merry Christmas.
Oh, merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. The boys are reunited, proceeding to stage two of
the plan. Understood. I'll be in touch.
Thank you.
