transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] From The Secret Cabal Studios, it's The Secret Cabal Express. Today, Don, Chris, and Jamie present The Component Show. And now, please welcome The Secret Cabal Founders. Hey, now, cabalists, and welcome to another episode of The Secret Cabal Express. This is Jamie.

Speaker 2:
[00:32] Hey, this is Chris.

Speaker 3:
[00:33] Hello, hello, this is Don.

Speaker 4:
[00:35] Well, it is springtime, the birds are chirping, and the sun is shining, and it's getting warmer out. And any time that the weather gets to that point, I know that it is convention season just over the hill. I can see it. Two months from now, we're going to be in Columbus, Ohio, at Origins Game Fair, and I can't, I can't forget. I start, this is around the time every year that I start to get really, really, really excited about our upcoming trips for the summer.

Speaker 3:
[01:03] Yeah, there's something about the fact that spring has sprung that makes me go, okay, it's time to go out and do things. When I think about going out and doing things, the first thing that comes to mind is Origins, and walking around there and eating food and hanging out with people, it is our favorite time of the year.

Speaker 2:
[01:18] I'm always excited for the meetups. I can't, I can't wait for the meetup. That's gonna be so much fun.

Speaker 4:
[01:23] That's absolutely correct, Chris. That's a good thing you bring that up because we have officially booked the space for the Origins meetup this year, and it's the same place, the Whistling Keg. They've always been very, very kind, giving us their location to have our meetup, and it's been successful thus far. We love the place. It's right by the Convention Center, and it's gonna be on Friday night, again, as it usually is, from 7 to 10 p.m. So Cabalus, if you're at Origins this year, if you have a free evening on Friday, stop by, hang out with the founders, drink some beers, maybe get a wee boy or some other free games in the raffle. Man, I'm excited.

Speaker 2:
[02:03] Is there gonna be an honorary Steve boy there for us to see?

Speaker 4:
[02:07] I don't know. Actually, that's a good idea, Chris. Maybe I'll make sure that I have one finished and I can give a Steve boy away as a preview. We're all fired up. The meet up, we got all the restaurants, we got all the games are gonna play, all the people we're gonna hang out with. Of course, Don's been making a laundry list of games that he says he's going to take, and I'm excited to see actually which ones of those games are going to actually make the cut.

Speaker 3:
[02:32] I'm taking them all. Can you stop me?

Speaker 4:
[02:36] Well, remember, Cabalus, if you're going to be at Origins, we're gonna have our meet up Friday night at 7 p.m. at the Whistling Keag. Show up, join in on the raffle, hang out with the founders, drink some beers. It's gonna be an amazing time. And with that, why don't we dive head first into the topic of the day. The show is called The Component Show, and we're gonna be talking about board game components. Now, we talk about board game components quite often on this show. We talk about them in every discussion topic. We talk about them in every review. There's a section of the review specifically dedicated to the components of the game and how the theme integrates with them, how nice they are, and how they enhance the experience. Today, we wanted to dive into those components a little more. We want to talk about the goods and the bads of the board game components. We want to have an excuse to kind of talk about what we love and what we hate and how we've evolved over the years in our tastes in board games, what we loved in the beginning and where we are now with our love of board games and their components. When I first suggested doing this discussion topic, Chris jumped at it and he said, oh, I can't wait to talk about the very first moment that he discovered that board game components could be upgraded. And then Chris, I'd like you to talk about that for a second here.

Speaker 2:
[03:59] Well, man, I'll tell you, it was way back when we started. I think the first time I would consider it, I got triggered into this, was when Agricola came out and like all the components were these just plain wooden cubes. The farmers were just circled discs and it was just boring looking. And then I discovered the Anna meeples and the Veggie meeples and started gathering as many animal and vegetable shaped meeples that I could find every time I went somewhere. So I could bling out my Agricola. And I think I got meeples for all of it. But then I started finding other games that had wooden creature shaped meeples and I was addicted to those too. It was annoying.

Speaker 4:
[04:51] Think about it like this, this is so crazy to me. If you think about it as today to what we expect in a board game, we see all these Kickstarters with these upgraded components. The brass campaign just closed, Brass Pittsburgh. And the way that they're handling the coins and the components, and it's so lavish and beautiful. To think that when we first started off sort of back in those days early on with the Bobby Board games, we were excited when we could get a copy of the game that the cows weren't just cubes. They were now shaped like a cow or shaped like a sheep. And we were so fired up. I remember Tony talked about how he went out and he actually like looked specifically for the upgrade components, the, the, the Anna meeples and stuff so that he could have those in the game. The vegetables weren't just orange cubes. They actually looked like a pumpkin or whatever they were. And it's crazy how back then we were excited to upgrade to a shape. Now, now we're, that looked like a thing. Right. Yeah. Now we're pissed off if it isn't like screen printed or like plastic and yeah, like, yeah, I wanted my game to come with actual carrots. Well, that's funny you say that Chris, because I remember Tony and I were so enamored by the game Hamburgam. Hamburgam is a Matt Gertz game, which one of his Rondell games is a great game. I actually very much like it even to today. But we were so enamored with that game because literally every resource in the box is made of what it actually is. So if you get the clay, you actually get a little clay piece. It's like a little block that's made out of like a hardened clay. If you get wood, it's a wooden piece, right? And when you get a bell to build the cathedral, it's a metal bell, right? So every component in the game is exactly what it's made of, what it's supposed to be. We were like so enamored by that. And I open the box now and I'm like, you know, whatever.

Speaker 3:
[06:59] But Hamburgam, as good as it is, there were other games of the day that we felt, or at least I felt, were better games that didn't have such nice components. I think about Battlestar Galactica. It has the cardboard standees for the characters. No minis, no anything like that. They came later, if I remember correctly, with some of the expansions you could buy minis for like, you know, the Cylon Warships or whatever. I don't remember what they're called at this point. Take away my nerd card. But in any case, you got those things, those upgrades. But those games were viewed as great. So I think we've always been in this weird space when it comes to components versus gameplay and how the two intertwine.

Speaker 4:
[07:36] And it was always so interesting how there was a very specific divide between the Ameritrash games and the Euro games. Because Euro games are the ones that we're kind of talking about here in a sense, most of the time, where, you know, Agricola had cubes for its animals and its resources and things like that. And then you're talking about Battlestar Galactica. That was Fantasy Flight. Fantasy Flight in those days was known for the best quality components that there were on the market, right? They were the premium level components. And those were sort of the standard of the day for that kind of game, you know, plastic miniatures for your troops. And when you opened up Twilight Imperium, holy cow, that was a lavish production back in those days. And I would even say that today that was kind of a good production. I would be happy with opening up Twilight Imperium from 20 years ago. Today, although I do remember, Chris, remember when we first got Twilight Imperium at Origins? We bought it at Origins.

Speaker 3:
[08:38] Because we wanted to play it.

Speaker 4:
[08:40] And when we opened the box, all the miniatures were still on their sprues, like a miniatures game, right? So you needed like a little clippers to clip them out of their sprues.

Speaker 2:
[08:52] You need a clipper, you need a file.

Speaker 4:
[08:54] That's right. Well, we found out you didn't actually need to, because you could just twist them right off. But we wanted to do it right. And so they looked nice. But it ended up we like searched the convention for clippers and couldn't find any booth or anybody with clippers. So we ended up just like spending time, like kind of twisting them out of the thing.

Speaker 2:
[09:14] And then we spent another seven hours playing the game into like 4 a.m. There was not a single person in the minis hall that had some.

Speaker 4:
[09:25] I know, right?

Speaker 2:
[09:26] That seems like a requirement.

Speaker 4:
[09:27] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:28] It's funny that you talk about Fantasy Flight and how amazing we thought the components were. But Fantasy Flight spawned the droopy staff complaint. Because every staff was drooped and somehow that was still okay.

Speaker 4:
[09:46] Well, I mean, they're bored game miniatures, right? We always complained about them. We complained about Wiz Kids as well as their miniatures were always like kind of bending over and you had to do things again. You're absolutely right. And miniatures have come a long way as well.

Speaker 2:
[09:57] Yeah. Nowadays, if you got those in a game like, I forget what game I got recently that had plastic minis in it. And I noticed the stas were kind of droopy. And I was just like, this is bullshit. Come on. Nowadays, give me a break. There's no excuse for that kind of crap.

Speaker 4:
[10:14] Something I'm almost finding more exciting than miniatures even these days is, and you talked Chris about upgrading your agri-cola to anameeples. Well, anameeples are something that even to this day I adore. And we just reviewed a game called Rewild South America. And I got to tell you, I absolutely love the components of this game. The meeples in this game are, and I'm not exactly sure what you call them. I'm going to call them, you know, silk screened, because they have the full color artwork of the animal on them. Full color artwork. And man, oh man, it just makes the experience of playing that game so much better because of these absolutely beautiful components, these beautiful meeples.

Speaker 3:
[10:58] Yeah, and it just adds so much to the games. I mean, what I'd like to do is weave in a bit of game value with this as well, right? So, there's something to be said about table presence. There's something to be said about how it benefits the game play itself. And I think we saw that in Rewild South America. In fact, there's a draw in Rewild to get those meeples that live in the trees, at least in the base game, because then you actually get the meeple and you can put it up in the tree. And there's something super cool about seeing that on your personal terrain board. So, yeah, these things are almost, as you said, they should almost be in every game that has this at this point. It would just not feel right if we just had cubes or tokens or something like that, given the number of games that have antimeeples and those screen printed antimeeples in them. I think this is a, this falls the category of you got to have it in your game at this point.

Speaker 4:
[11:45] Sure. Yeah. And there's I think there's the there's a delineation there. There's the three levels of meeple. There's the wooden meeple that's just plain. And games still come with those just plain wooden meeples. And I generally don't complain when I have those in the game. But then you go to the next level up, which is the screen printed wooden meeple, which is most times a very stylistic approach. And I think Eagle Griffin Games has sort of perfected this, in my opinion. Their meeples, their screen printed meeples have a really cool, interesting design that's a monotone design. That's sort of an impression of what that thing is supposed to be. If you look at the new one, Speakeasy, that everybody's all fired up about, you know, the cops walking around, walking the beat, you know, they have just a little bit of artwork on them to make them pop off the board, but it's not over the top, you know, it's not fully colored, you know, silk screen artwork of the police officer that's there. And it's beautifully understated, I think. But then the third level is what we're talking about with Rewild South America, with games like Wild Serengeti, Life of the Amazonia, these have the fully screen printed, you know, artwork done by an artist right on the side of the meeple. And it's beautiful. It is very, very beautiful.

Speaker 3:
[13:06] And it is a little different than, I mean, we'll talk about standees in a few minutes, but I think about what the difference is between the wooden meeples, the screen printed, and the acrylic standees or even cardboard standees, where you see that full artwork. It's nice seeing the artwork. But I prefer the anameeples, and I prefer the full color silkscreen print because I get the advantages of both. I get to see all that nice artwork. I get the chunkiness of a wooden component.

Speaker 2:
[13:31] The screen printing, I think, is one that really draws me in. Because for the longest time, and I hated it so much, games would have stickers that you get the giant sticker sheet that you have to put on games. That's true.

Speaker 3:
[13:48] Commands and colors, it took me hours to put those stickers on those pieces because me and my OCD, I couldn't have it not lined up perfectly. It took forever.

Speaker 2:
[14:00] Yep. I remember Rampage having to put me stickers on all the meeples in Rampage. And I basically watched two movies while I did it. And I was miserable, miserable. That's why I love the screen printed meeples. I think they are great. I think they add a lot to a game. Now, I will say there are times where I don't like the wooden meeples. A good example, and surprisingly the game that I'm thinking about is early on. The base game comes with wooden chits for the resources. And the advanced game comes with wooden resources. Problem is that when you set up the game, you have to see the board randomly. So the way you do that with the Deluxe Edition is you see the board by putting all the cardboard resources face down, then you flip them over, then you take them off, and you put on the wooden resources. And it just makes the game so annoying. That was one where I'm like, this is not a useful idea.

Speaker 4:
[15:06] Yeah, absolutely, Chris. You know, just to jump back real quick, the stickering of the the meeples, I have a number of those games. And as a matter of fact, I have a number of them from the past couple of years that still have sticker sheets that you put on the meeples. Some of them are clear, that just have the artwork sort of printed on them or whatever it is printed on them. And you stick that clear sticker across the meeple or a resource that you have to like put a sticker on to make it look like whatever it is. That is not, even to today, that is not uncommon. As a matter of fact, there's a GMT game called Banish the Snakes that I spent over like almost two hours putting like stickers on those meeples. And in this day and age, it's almost unacceptable that you wouldn't just go that one extra mile to put that artwork straight on the component.

Speaker 2:
[16:04] Yeah, and I think, I mean, the one great thing is that the price of, I think in general, the cost of doing this, the technology has gotten cheaper. Yeah. So it's not, I can understand like, oh my goodness, doing some of these screen printed meeples in the past would have been so expensive, but.

Speaker 4:
[16:22] But I could also understand a certain ones like Don, I think I was talking about Banished the Snakes and I was, and you're talking about Command and Colors, Don. I think those are two that might not work with just straight screen printed meeples. They would require the fully colored, like screen, silk screen printed stuff for them to even operate, because there's so much information on there that you actually have to have clear artwork on them. So that might be a little more expensive. I would be curious to find out what the cost differences between the silk screen and just the screen printed monotone colors, because I'm sure there's a big difference.

Speaker 3:
[17:04] Yeah. Just like everything, I'm sure cost factors in, right? When I think about wooden components versus plastic components versus acrylic standees and metal coins versus cardboard coins, I mean, all that stuff you would think comes at it, it would be sort of delineated out by cost quite clearly, right? Even though I don't know what that is, I'm sure there's a big difference.

Speaker 4:
[17:25] I do want to throw out one more that's sort of a wooden component upgrade, and that is the game Rise and Fall. Don, this is a game that both you and I have, and we reviewed it probably last year. And a lot of people were really fired up to get ahold of this game. This one has some of the best wooden meatballs I've ever seen, and not only that, they are 3D pre-assembled, silk-screened meatballs. This is a really weird sort of hybrid of, I would say like, miniatures and meatballs, because it's different. Like, they actually assembled these meatballs from multiple parts, right? The cities are two pieces that are put together so that they're 3D. The ships have a sail that's a different color than the base, and you put the sails come attached with silk-screen images on it. You know, the little traitors is some kind of beast-looking creature with like a 3D thing sitting on its back. It's crazy the lengths that they went with this game to make these meatballs the most deluxe I think I've ever seen.

Speaker 3:
[18:35] Yeah, this is one of the pinnacles, right? Whenever you have a little meeple person riding a meeple cat on a big cardboard mountain, it's like, okay, we have reached the pinnacle of the wooden meeple era, right? This is one I love because you get the chunky feel of it, you get the beautiful artwork, and you get the fact that it is wood, and I think more and more I'm drawn toward the wooden components for a variety of reasons I'll talk about in a bit. But yeah, the wooden components are great, the ones in Rise and Fall I think are maybe the best, that I can think of at least.

Speaker 2:
[19:08] Rise and Fall, I think, and this is kind of why I do like 3D models in games, is cool because the board looks alive. I guess that's a good word to use.

Speaker 3:
[19:21] Oh, that's a great way to put it, Chris.

Speaker 2:
[19:23] Especially like some of these games where you're building cities and we talked about one game in the news recently where the buildings were huge. And looking at the board, I was like, that is amazing looking. It's almost, some of them were almost too big because I feel like I wouldn't be able to see behind them. I have to stand up and see what's going on around the board. But that, it does look, it looks impressive. Now, I do remember, I forget what game it was, but it was a game where there were wooden meeples and you would stack them on each other and they had magnets to stick them together. And somehow, somehow one of them had the magnet turned upside down.

Speaker 3:
[20:07] Oh, that was Wondrous Creatures.

Speaker 2:
[20:08] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[20:09] And it would pop right off. Yep.

Speaker 3:
[20:11] It's like, he's bucking, he's bucking the router.

Speaker 4:
[20:16] That was my copy of Wondrous Creatures. And yes, the magnet, that's how magnets work, by the way, Chris, just in case you didn't know.

Speaker 3:
[20:23] We know how they work.

Speaker 4:
[20:24] If you turn the magnet upside down, they repel each other. And somebody assembled it incorrectly for my copy. And the people won't sit on his mount. He just flies off. So here's the thing that's interesting. So I want to talk about what you said, Don, about how you are drawn to wood more often than you are plastic. Maybe, I don't know if that's exactly what you're saying, but you're drawn to wood these days. And this is what I was talking about early in the episode where our feelings are changing quite a bit over the years about what we actually want out of these board games. Can you describe your feelings a little bit about that?

Speaker 3:
[21:04] Yeah, and I have to admit they've been somewhat shifted a bit by... There was a Netflix show called Buy Now, the shopping conspiracy that I watched. It talked about the amount of plastic that's being produced. And it really made me feel like, man, we're just producing way too much plastic across way too many things, especially with things that are relatively disposable like board games. So yeah, that combined with the fact that the technology has advanced in terms of the screen printing meeples and how we put them together, the chunky feel of the wooden components, it just feels nostalgic to me about that. Because as you said, some of the first games I played 20 plus years ago, if you had wooden pieces, it's like that was viewed as like, oh, it just felt good. And I sort of relive that a little bit every time I play a game that has those wooden components in it. So yeah, I'm more and more drawn to the wooden screen printed as artwork rich meeples when they have them available. Like Francis, you mentioned Speak Easy. It's like, I love Speak Easy. You know, I wouldn't replace those wooden workers and the gangsters with minis even if they were available, because it just doesn't feel, it just wouldn't feel right to me. It would feel better to have wooden.

Speaker 2:
[22:12] There's a distinct moment that I think took my love for blinged out components to a next level. And I just, it is vivid in my mind. And I think this is what spawned my competition with Don that I had.

Speaker 3:
[22:31] I was going to say, tell me it has something to do with me.

Speaker 2:
[22:33] Yeah, it was that mental derangement where I was like, man, I can't get a game that looks worse than Don's. And that was going to beer mongers. And I believe, I believe it was Don broke out Euphoria with its awesome components. And I was like, I just loved that. And ever since then, I was like, I can't, Don would break out his beautiful version of a game. And I'd just be like, I don't want the base boring one. I want the awesome $500 one that Don has.

Speaker 4:
[23:08] But it's funny you say that, Chris, because that was a Stonemaier Games, obviously the game Euphoria. And originally that game shipped with wooden components. And Stonemaier put out a set called the Treasure Chest. And the Treasure Chest, there was a number of different Treasure Chest. So all the games that were in the Stonemaier Games lineup, those components were upgraded to a little bit better quality, like little miniatures of the little bags of wheat or whatever, and metal ingots of gold and metal whatever. And I know that he actually even designed them specifically for certain games, because when I opened up my copy of Stone Age, I happened to have all the Stonemaier upgrade components, and they matched that game perfectly. I was like, oh, this is the one that he used as the model for what components he was going to sell. So you could buy those components to upgrade any games. If you have wood, here are wooden miniatures, right? And Euphoria, I'm sure Don had all of those upgraded components for his copy of Euphoria for what you're seeing, Chris. So yeah, you can go out and pay $19.99 and get those components and replace your own. So Don, I wanted to comment about something that you said right at the beginning of when you were talking. You said that the board game is relatively disposable. And I think that's an interesting statement. Can you clarify that? Because I think some people would probably buck at that statement.

Speaker 3:
[24:36] Yeah, all I mean by that is that, well, it depends on where you are sort of on the spectrum of purchasing versus collecting or whatever. But we talked about this issue before, right? You'll get a game, you'll play the game three, four times. If you really like the game, it'll hang out and you'll play it a bunch of times. But a lot of times we're buying games, we're playing them a handful of times, and then we're either taking them to a thrift store or taking them to sell them to somebody else. But they're disposed of in terms of you. And so it's one of those things that these things are going into the world and then we're not playing them at some point and they're being disposed of, right? Now, depending on how you dispose of it, sometimes I'm absolutely sure it finds its way into garbages, right? Either you sell it at a thrift store, they don't want it, they toss it or somebody buys it and they're like, this is more complicated than I thought it was, they toss it, you know? So that's all I mean is like, these are not things like pieces of art that you put up on the wall and they stay up on the wall for 25, 30 years. Some are, don't get me wrong. Given the bulk at which we collectively buy these things, we are going through them really quickly. And so that's a lot of plastic or wood being sort of pushed into the world and then we... somehow it is thrown away. And again, slightly back to that Netflix conspiracy, there is no away that these things go to. They are stuck here somewhere. And so that's a lot of plastic coming into the world that is not going anywhere, right? It is accumulating somewhere.

Speaker 4:
[26:04] So, and also you talked about Speakeasy. And I think that is an interesting case study here for my perspective on board games and the components and the deluxe editions that come along. For years now, I have been saying that my favorite publisher is Eagle Griffin Games in regards to the way that they publish games. You know, we have gotten a number of different Eagle Griffin productions over the years. A lot of them are Vitalis Serda games. All of them have E&O tools, artwork all over them, and they're absolutely gorgeous. They're just great productions. Right, exactly. Here's the thing, though, with this Speakeasy, I have realized that as much as I love the production of Speakeasy, I think this is my upper limit. And as a matter of fact, I think it may even go over my limit for production. You know, we talked about the game, very hot game from last year, which was Galactic Cruise. And Galactic Cruise actually was well over my line, even though it's not terribly different. You know, it's all wooden components, and it's a lot of, you know, beautiful artwork, but it's, you know, like it's boards and wood, essentially, and cardboard. But I'm telling you, the size of that box is incredibly big. To the point where I was attempting to move it at one point, and it slipped out of my hands, and I dropped it on the floor, and under its own weight, it blew up. I'm not kidding. My copy of Galactic Cruise blew up. It hit the floor, the box broke in half, like it came off the sides, the components flew out all over the floor. So I had to, like, tape it back together, my box, because it was so heavy when it hit the floor, it like collapsed under its own friggin weight. It's so big, it's impossible to fit it on any table. And Speakeasy has hit that level as well. As much as I love it, I think it's great. It's really kind of, it's cumbersome. It's difficult to manage. We complained about Anunnaki and how big and such a table hog that is. Speakeasy is absolutely no different. It is just as hoggish as Anunnaki is.

Speaker 2:
[28:15] I think I had a similar experience when I saw the ultra deluxe edition of Luthier.

Speaker 4:
[28:22] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[28:25] And I was just like, okay, the musical dice tower is kind of cool.

Speaker 4:
[28:30] It's beautiful.

Speaker 2:
[28:33] Why is there a punishment stick in the game?

Speaker 3:
[28:37] And it was just a conductor's baton.

Speaker 1:
[28:40] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[28:41] I saw it and I was like, this is where you smack people.

Speaker 4:
[28:43] What a philistine.

Speaker 2:
[28:47] But it was so much. It was just like, this is too much.

Speaker 4:
[28:52] That's exactly right, Chris. That is a perfect example because that, when we played Luthier and, you know, our buddy John had the big all-in copy and that's the copy I played and he had the baton, the conductor's baton and he was using it. He actually found a use for it. When he was teaching the game, when he was teaching the game, he was pointing at shit with the baton. And I was like, there you go. There's a reason to buy the baton. But here's the deal, that's one of the games, I could tell you actually the exact game that changed my mind on all of this. But Luthier was the game we were playing around that time as well. And I was like, this production is lavish. My version doesn't have that stuff. I don't have the upgraded components where the resources are actual miniatures. Like they're just components, they're regular components from any other game. The game that I specifically, it broke me, was I was playing my copy of Septima. Don got me a Septima for Christmas one year. This is the Mind Clash game. And when you pledged to it on Kickstarter, you got all this cool stuff, like upgraded components, whatever, it was great. I have the retail version. I was playing it at the table. The table beside me was playing the upgraded version. And I barely noticed that there was a difference, even though all the resources were better, and there was just better quality, all of this different stuff. I was like, you know what? My copy's fine. And when I played Luthier, I was like, my copy's fine. I don't need all this shit. And really, that was sort of a revelatory moment for me that I just don't care anymore. I'm perfectly happy with the retail version if the retail version is the standard I set for myself. If it looks good and it feels good, I'm happy.

Speaker 2:
[30:42] I remember that game, because I think that Septima game was kind of an opposite moment from my experience with Don, where it was like, you know what? I think the deluxe stuff doesn't quite matter. And because I was in the game you were playing, it was your copy. And I made some dumb comment of like, well, my copy has the deluxe. I'm playing the slum copy.

Speaker 4:
[31:04] Exactly. You did. I remember that.

Speaker 2:
[31:06] After I walked away to go chat with another table real quick, and I felt like the world's biggest douche. Like, I was like, man, that was a real dick thing to say. Like, that was just not cool. And I started thinking about it, and I was like, you know what? Jamie's copy really is just fine.

Speaker 4:
[31:26] Cheapskate Don got me the junk copy for Christmas. Not Chris. I didn't take offense to that. But I'll be honest with you, I did take notice to the fact that you said that, and it did feed into it because it made me think. I was like, okay, I'm playing this copy. I was like, I'm not even noticing that I'm playing a retail copy. It's fine. It's nice.

Speaker 2:
[31:48] I like it.

Speaker 4:
[31:49] It actually looks good. And you said that, and I was like, you know what?

Speaker 2:
[31:52] I don't care.

Speaker 4:
[31:53] I'm fine with this. I'm happy. Shut up, Chris.

Speaker 1:
[32:03] So let's take a quick second here to talk about our wonderful sponsor, Restoration Games.

Speaker 4:
[32:09] Now, I've been talking about Unmatched a lot lately, and I'm going to talk about it again today because in the mail, just the other day, I received my copy of Unmatched Stars and Stripes. And in that box, I got a copy of Unmatched Adventures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well. I haven't gotten this one yet, and this is the first time I'm seeing this sucker. And I got to tell you, the miniatures in these games are starting to look so amazing. Unmatched Adventures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the cooperative version of Unmatched in which you get to play the Turtles versus either Shredder or Krang. And Shredder is a beautiful looking miniature because you know these are unpainted, but they are washed. So they look really cool. But the Shredder miniature has a beautiful blue flowing cape. It looks absolutely awesome. But Krang, holy cow, Krang's Android body suit is so cool looking, but Krang inside of it is loose in there. So when you when you turn the miniature, he's like looking around in all directions. It is like the coolest miniature. I was so surprised by how amazing those miniatures looked. And listen, those four turtles ain't no slouches either. Those miniatures are awesome as well. But here's the news. I got a hold of the new Unmatched Stars and Stripes set. This is the brand new set that features heroes from American history, myths and legends. She got super spy George Washington, John Henry, a beautiful take on Rosie the Riveter in her steam powered mech suit. And of course, my favorite, the gunslinging Wyatt Earp, the old West Marshall. I absolutely love this set. I've been wanting a cowboy for a long time. And Wyatt Earp is absolutely awesome. And you know, Cabalus, if you want to pick up unmatched adventures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or you want to pick up the new set, Stars and Stripes, or listen, you got to pick up the dual pack that has Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali in it. Wow. You got to head over to restorationgames.com. Don, you're into this right now, but I want to know your exact feelings on it, because I got feelings about it, too. And that is Awaken Realms and their incredibly lavish productions. I've talked about how I think that Eagle Griffin has hit the mark and may have started to step over that line a little bit with the productions that I think are some of the best. Awaken Realms is taking Agricola, Puerto Rico, Casasburg, and Concordia now is the new one that they've decided to tackle and make it not just deluxe, but it's like super mega deluxe. This is like golden faucets in your mansion level board game production. You have a couple of these, Don, how are you feeling about them?

Speaker 3:
[35:06] Yeah, I'm absolutely addicted to them, to be honest. When I played Puerto Rico, and in the past I played Puerto Rico, which is one of my favorite games. I think it's one of the, it's just pure and elegant, great gameplay. It's just a great game. And we had been playing with all the cardboard components and the ships that were cardboard, you know, and the resources were cubes. And now, over this new addition to Puerto Rico, where the ships actually have these little pieces that slide in and out of them so that you can set them to hold the right number of components. Because in different player games of Puerto Rico, you have different capacity on the ships. And in the base version, way years ago, you just swap those out with other cardboard components, right? Other ships have had different number of visual slots on them. And now, there are actual recessed holes, and the number of recessed holes changes depending on what you slide in and out of these ships. And they actually look like ships. And then, the resources that go into them are boxes filled with bananas or indigo or sugar or whatever. Yeah, and the acrylic pieces that are, you know, your buildings, I think it's kind of over the top to have the physical buildings, because I have that too, and I've never played with it. I don't think I ever will. But these acrylic buildings, these rather plastic buildings, that you can place on the board. So, it looks like a bunch of buildings physically that you've built up. That's a little over the top for me. But as far as those other pieces, love it. Castles of Burgundy. And the fact that you have the boards that hold the hexes in place, and you have the very cool looking player components that determine turret corner and victory points. Yeah, the actual silver pieces that you're using. Again, all those acrylic pieces. These things are over the top. And I think it's taking components to match the gameplay of those games. Now, if someone were to say, if there was a screen print wooded meeple version of that, and we had wooden components, would you prefer that? And I don't know what the answer would be because I haven't seen that.

Speaker 4:
[37:03] Sure you have. Great Wall is a perfect example of that. And it's Firewaken Rome. Great Wall had beautiful miniatures. Great Wall is a game about, you know, like you're defending the Great Wall, like the armies are coming. You have like the wall with the troops across the top.

Speaker 3:
[37:17] Great point.

Speaker 4:
[37:17] They have two versions of that. And that one is the one with all miniatures. You can get them all like pre-washed and beautiful and gorgeous, or you just get the meeple version of that.

Speaker 3:
[37:28] And the meeple versions fit better in those slots than the plastic versions. So, yes, it's sort of weird. At the time, I was praising that for offering two versions. I'm like, okay, pick a lane here. Just pick a lane, right? And let me judge the lane instead of saying, I will give you two versions of them, right? So yeah, I think Awakened Realms is sort of at the top of their game when it comes to all the lavish components.

Speaker 4:
[37:56] Well, Don, listen, I'm not in the business of yucking yums, but I got to yuck a yum here. And I have to be completely honest that I really, really don't like these versions. You know, when we talk about them in the news and stuff, I kind of try to pull back a little bit on my opinions. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to shit all over them, because there's a lot of people out there that actually very much like them, like yourself, Don, and that's totally okay. Everybody can have their own opinion about these things. I just want to share my opinion about this. I don't like the way that Awakened Realms handles these classic Euro games. I think what they're doing is running against the spirit of what makes those games great. I think these are games that need to be celebrated for the impact that they had on our hobby as a whole. And I don't look at what Awakened Realms does for these games as a celebration. When I look at these campaigns, I see a product. And honestly, it kind of turns me off. Like, I like the versions of the games that I currently have. I don't actually mind if they would upgrade some of these. I know the argument, you know, the artwork of the old versions of Agricola and things, it's a lot of people don't like them. Absolutely. We don't like the artwork from Concordia. That's one of the next ones that Awakened Realms is going to do. That was just some dreadful artwork.

Speaker 2:
[39:15] And okay, I actually like that because it is so bad.

Speaker 4:
[39:19] Yeah. Well, yeah, sometimes things are so bad you like it. But and even like some Agricola and Puerto Rico and some of that stuff, like there's some nostalgia based for the way that those games were. And nostalgia, I get that and I know that I could overcome that. You could make a newer version that looks a little better. Like I have the, I guess it's the probably the 10th anniversary edition of Puerto Rico, where they did redo all of the artwork and they did make the components a little better. And I was like, that's a really tasteful way to sort of honor a classic game. For some reason, I just feel like when I see all the stuff from these lavish editions of all the Awakened Realms versions, they sort of break the spirit of what I loved about those games. They were not those Ameritrash over the top, you know, like plastic everywhere kind of games. And you know, that's just, that's the way I'm feeling about it. And I think that's why I like the Eagle Griffin way of going things, because they're not breaking the spirit of what it originally was. They're just making it as deluxe as possible. I just hope they don't go any further than that.

Speaker 3:
[40:30] Yeah, I think it would be different if they had changed the game play in the sequence of sort of deluxe-ifying them. I guess I get the best of both worlds in my mind, because I get the game play from 20 years ago, which was top notch, with the components of now. So I think it would be different. I don't know that it's a fair comparison just because Peakeasy did not exist 20 years ago. This is the version of the game that was produced, as opposed to Castles of Burgundy, which did. We got to see how butt-ugly, but functional those components were. It's just nice to be holding acrylic pieces in my hand, and I think they will hold the hex board, right? So there aren't those detractions from the game play itself. But I get your point. It reminds me a little bit of Star Wars and the next version of Star Wars, the next version where George Lucas just kept adding stuff to it. And at some point, people were saying, this is not the Star Wars that I remember seeing when I was a kid. So I get that sort of, yeah, hesitancy to appreciate or like that new version because you feel like it's betraying something from the past. I get that.

Speaker 4:
[41:34] I think maybe then the game to put up as an example would be Struggle of Empires. The Struggle of Empires is an Eagle Griffin game with kind of that level of production. It's not as lavish as Speakeasy or Galactic Cruise or any of those, but it took a game from 2004 and brought it into a modern production era with beautiful, beautiful components, beautiful artwork on the board, all the stuff that you want from a deluxe production. I was really happy with that game. As a matter of fact, if they made a version of that that had plastic ships and plastic soldiers and resources and little buildings that you could build for the trading houses and stuff, I don't know that it would feel the same anymore. I think it would become something different for me.

Speaker 2:
[42:25] Yeah. I wanted to touch on two things you said a little bit ago, Jamie, because I thought they were actually really important. I like the fact that you pointed out not wanting to yuck someone's yum before you went on to yuck someone's yum.

Speaker 4:
[42:39] Well, I mean, listen, I'm pointing out that I feel bad, that I don't want someone to feel bad because I'm shitting on something that they like, right?

Speaker 2:
[42:50] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[42:50] Sometimes you got to shit a little bit.

Speaker 2:
[42:53] Yeah, exactly. For a lot of these people, the deluxe version of the game is like a source of pride.

Speaker 4:
[43:02] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[43:04] They are proud to own that super deluxe version and they love the experience of setting it up, showing it off. And so I try to not judge anybody's particular game for whether it's the deluxe or not anymore. Because yeah, there are definitely people, you watch them show off their game. It's like getting a sports car, and they're like, check out what I got. Right. And to your other point, I think that there's a great sweet spot, because I think at this point in my life, I'm thinking it has something to do with getting older, and at this point in my life, I'm trying to get rid of stuff instead of getting stuff. And sometimes when I get a deluxe version of game with all those extra things and all the expansions and all the extra minis, I just get this feeling of like, it's just too much. It's just too much to deal with. And one of the things I have a lot of problems with Kickstarter, one of the things I really love about Kickstarter is the pledge manager, where you can pick and choose what bling you want for the game. So it gives you a lot of customization. Like I'm a big fan of metal coins. Like I love metal coins. I like heavy chunky tokens or metal for like either my coins or my victory points or whatever, because when I hold them in my hands, they click and clack and I love it. That's why I love those clay tokens. Like they just make a noise and they feel really good while I'm playing the game. Right. And it's almost like a fidget spinner while I'm playing. I can just play with the coins. And so that's like my thing. But there are a lot of other things that bling out a game that I just don't care about. So the option of just mixing and matching, I think, is one of the great things that can come out of Kickstarter.

Speaker 4:
[45:07] Right. You know, Chris, you said like about yucking yums and how I just turned around and yucked a yum. Here's the thing. I'm an incredible hypocrite. It's just the fact. That's the fact. And honestly, we all are. Yeah, I would say Don is too because he went from saying one thing to then he's a sucker for Awakened Realms, which is completely opposite what he said five minutes ago. And I'm gonna say, I mean, I just backed this company here as we talked about in the last episode with all the tanks and the buildings and all this bullshit and whatever. It's like beautiful. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's an over-the-top lavish production. Do I want wooden meeples for these tanks? No, I want plastic miniature tanks. I'm a guy who collects Warhammer armies. I'm a guy who collects Blood Bowl teams and paints them and stuff. I'm proud of my plastic dudes, you know? So what's the difference between all of that crap and me saying, oh, I don't want my Puerto Rico to have a bunch of fucking plastic in it? Like, I'll tell you what the difference is. I'm an incredible hypocrite when it comes to this stuff. It really does come down to what our personal preferences and our viewpoint about what these games mean to us and how we like them to be presented to us. And honestly, it's all over the friggin map for all of us.

Speaker 3:
[46:28] Yeah, there's no question. I was thinking the same thing, which is, yes, earlier I was saying I wanted the chunky wooden stuff, and I do. But then I can see the value in some of the Awakened Realm productions, right? Yeah, so it's one of those things. I don't think finding consistency here is what we're aiming for in a sense. But rather just explaining the weird mix of our feelings about these things, right? I'll tell you one thing that I don't particularly care for too much, even though I have it in some games. And this is where, you know, I'm going to talk about Stonemaier games just a little bit. They have Metal Mechs for Scythe and also for Expeditions. And those Metal Mechs, I just, they don't draw me at all, even though I have them in my copy of Expeditions, right? I don't see the advantage of those. They are heavy and chunky and it sort of feels good, but there's something about picking up this thing that you got to be able to bench press 280, you know, to pick this thing up and move it somewhere else on the board. I'm like, is that really what we need in this game? It doesn't detract from the gameplay at all, but I also feel like it doesn't add to the gameplay at all. And in fact, it sort of distracts me from what I'm trying to do, just the itty bitty bit in that game when I look at those Mechs.

Speaker 4:
[47:39] Yeah, honestly, that's something that I never invested in for my Scyther Expeditions either. And those are the reasons. It doesn't enhance my experience at all. I know that the new Brass Pittsburgh campaign just ended. And if you look at that campaign and the stuff they're doing with the money in that game, you know how in the original Brass Birmingham, they had those iron clays poker chips, which are really beautiful to use. And they actually kind of work well with how Brass operates, because you have to get the money and then you place the money that you use onto this area so that you can dictate how much, you know, your turn order or whatever in the next one. In this Brass Pittsburgh, they've really leaned into the money in this game. You can get hardwood, or you can get the iron core poker chip versions, or you can get iron coins, which are actual metal iron coins. And they're poker chips made of metal, which is just like over the top. It's like it's over the top. This game is going to weigh like 50 pounds when you pick up this game, if you have all of these coins. They have copper, silver, jasper, steel, gold colors. There's so many different upgrades here that are terribly unnecessary for this game. And really all it is is a status symbol at that point.

Speaker 3:
[49:10] Yeah, at some point, like you said, it's like over the top. I'm looking at the prices. It's like these are what I think of as a super deluxe over the top, because it is not changing one thing at all. Almost not even visually about this game. But like Chris, I also like the metal coins in my hand. You know, that's a good feeling. But I have to admit, I like the feeling of the clay coins as well. So I prefer actually, fortunately, I prefer the clays that I already have.

Speaker 4:
[49:40] Right, right.

Speaker 3:
[49:40] So that's what I'm going with. I'm looking at my plans now to make sure.

Speaker 4:
[49:43] And a game that we're going to be talking about pretty soon on an upcoming episode is Armello. In my last Founders froth in the last episode, I talked about how I just received my copy of Armello. I know you have as well, Don. You just mentioned that you didn't crack your copy open yet. Well, I did crack my copy open and I have played it with the gang. And I'm telling you, this is an example of a production by people who are clearly not in the hobby board game space normally as publishers. This is like a brand new publisher. And they didn't really seem to pay attention to any other board game companies and what they're doing with their productions because they did very ridiculous things with this production. Now, I will say the production is nice. It's got miniatures in the box. It's got beautiful artwork. It's got a lot of cards. The card quality is good. The board is pretty and whatnot. But they made decisions that are sort of stretch goal upgrades to the game that are essentially things that I'm going to throw in the garbage because they are not upgrades. For example, they gave foil versions of the special cards. There are special magic items in the game that you can get here and there. And they have a little deck of those cards as foil cards. And they're not the highest quality foil cards because they're actually hard to read. So I'm like, they just replaced the ones that are in the base game, so I just threw them in the garbage. I don't want these things. This is a waste of money. This company wasted their money on this. And they also made these player boards that are like dice trays that you must assemble them. There are cardboard and you assemble them. And when I was doing this, I got them. I was like, oh neat, these player boards are like 3D. They're kind of cool. And then we got into the game and realized they're absolutely unnecessary to the game. You don't need them. And not only that, they don't fit back in the box at all. You can't package them back in the box.

Speaker 3:
[51:48] That's a major sin.

Speaker 4:
[51:49] Yeah, exactly. And they gave you a separate box to put them in. That's like this cheap thin cardboard box that you can put them in and I guess store them somewhere else. They're worthless to the game. They don't fit back in the box. They're going in the garbage as well. So it's, you know, a lot of times these companies are including these component upgrades that are completely worthless. You got to pay attention to the trends that are going in the market these days. And this company that did Armello didn't.

Speaker 2:
[52:18] I'll tell you a trend, just like you said, that needs to be a requirement. It should be a law that with whatever you provide with the game, the box should close. Because I don't know how many games I have that are blinged out. And there's like a little like maybe half inch of box that doesn't close all the way.

Speaker 4:
[52:43] Right.

Speaker 2:
[52:43] And it drives me up the wall. I hate it, especially like some of these games. I actually I know one, Tricharion, the big box edition drives me insane because it's like, if you don't put all the the the cardboard boards in there, right with the instruction manual and all the little trays and stuff, like if you don't put it in exactly right, the box won't close and it infuriates me. It's one of those things. It's kind of like Don said, his OCD kicks in. He's got to put the stickers on straight. I cannot, it eats at my brain when the box won't close.

Speaker 4:
[53:28] You're absolutely right, Chris. And I'll tell you, for the most part, this is poorly designed inserts that are causing this. And this is another thing that's sort of a component upgrade in this whole world of components, is these new inserts that they're doing. There's some games that have absolutely incredible inserts. I wasn't a fan of the game. My father's work had some of the best board game inserts I've ever had in my life. They had trays with lids on them that snapped into place, all the components kind of sit in there. It wasn't difficult to figure out where things went back in there. When you put it back in the box, it was very easy to kind of set everything and they like interlocked in there and it sat on the shelf perfectly every time. I find very often that these inserts don't actually fit the board games very well. And when you kind of spend the time putting things back together again, there's, you don't fit things in perfectly right, like you're saying, Chris, the box starts to push outwards. And a lot of times when you'll put them on the shelf, if you stack them the way I do, which is vertically, like a book, the box will start to open on the shelf and separate. And I'm very irritated when I see that.

Speaker 2:
[54:45] Yeah, I mean, you're right. There are some games that do the inserts, I think, really well. I think Carnegie has some great box inserts. I think they're awesome. They make games set up so quick, so easy. I love it. And then there are ones where it's like, okay, the cards fit, but if you don't, if you sleeve the cards, then they don't fit. That's a big problem.

Speaker 3:
[55:11] That's a huge problem.

Speaker 2:
[55:12] Or things aren't tight enough, so it doesn't matter that you put them in the tray nice. As soon as the box gets turned, any which way, they'll come out. Or there's not enough space in the trays for the components you're supposed to put in there. Or they don't tell you which components go in which parts of the trays. So you put stuff in and then you realize, oh crap, there's not enough room. They could be, I will say, they are more often a pain in the ass than they are actually good.

Speaker 4:
[55:42] They don't save time on setup. They actually add to time putting it away. Because a lot of times they'll say, oh, you can get this out of the box and put it out onto the table. And now you can use that as the trays that you pull the components out of. Well, that sounds great until you're halfway through the game and the components are all over the table because people are making their own separate piles of spent resources and stuff. And then when you have to put the game back together, it takes 30 minutes to put the game back in the box. Drives me absolutely insane. And don't get me started on the Suburbia Deluxe Edition. I've brought this up on the show before, and I will always bring this up when this topic comes up. I've never met an insert that I want to burn more than the Suburbia Deluxe Edition. The base game is on the bottom. You have to take all the expansions out to get to the game. Oh my God, I've never been so furious at a game as Suburbia.

Speaker 2:
[56:43] I think that Suburbia insert, they took all the negative things that I mentioned, and decided to make one insert that did them all.

Speaker 4:
[56:51] Yeah, I know. Listen, honestly, I think basically what I need to do is just stomp on those inserts and bag everything and throw them away. I know that's not for everybody, but it's my way and it's the best way for me.

Speaker 3:
[57:01] I think the best inserts of them all are where each individual player's components are. And it doesn't specify a spot for every piece, but rather there are wells in which certain types of pieces go in. And if they have a little bit of a raised image on the bottom that tells you what goes in the well, that's great. That's the kind of thing that can aid with setup time and aid with tear down time, right? You just hand somebody their box and you're like, hey, pop this box open and it tells you where these things go on the board, but you pop them out and there are some inserts that can help. 99% of them are just dreck, though. They just make it harder. I've got to now match up where the meanies go when we're done. It doesn't make any rhyme or reason or they fit perfectly, and that way if I get two components mixed up of where they go like, oh crap, now I got to take these out and put these others in. It just is a huge hassle.

Speaker 2:
[57:54] It is much harder for someone to just get up and walk away from the table when the game ends without putting their stuff away because there's a big insert sitting in front of them. And they're like, oh, I got to put this back. I don't know how many times I've seen people just be like, oh, that was a great game, I got to go.

Speaker 4:
[58:11] I tell you, the thing is, I've just as often, Chris, seen people, Don, I know is one of these, where he actively stops you from helping and put things away because you're going to do it wrong.

Speaker 2:
[58:23] Sometimes I do, that's not a lot. Sometimes you put it away right and Don yells at you that you did it wrong.

Speaker 4:
[58:30] That is true. But no, I mean, I don't want a board game packaging solution to actively add work to me because I don't want anyone to help me because I have to do it perfect. I want it to be freaking easy.

Speaker 3:
[58:44] If you mess up, put it in the wrong place, it's like, there's more work to back it up and redo it. It's like, sometimes you just do it all yourself. But that's a bad insert, an easy insert it should be. When you took it out yourself, and it has the raised images, now you know where everything goes back in. Pop that in, pop the top on, you're good to go. But that takes a lot of effort, and I think we undervalue that.

Speaker 2:
[59:05] The other thing that always gets me, that a good insert solves, is that I have a lot of games that are bagged, and the bags are labeled, so you know what goes in there. I would say nine times out of ten I play a game, I think I have all the pieces in the bag, and I seal the bag, and there's one piece just laying out there on the board somewhere, and I have to go back and do it. I've got this habit now where I don't seal the bags until I am done tearing the game down.

Speaker 4:
[59:32] I can't tell you how many times that I've put a board game away and done that exact thing, Chris, where I'm like, done, and I put the box aside, and there's one component sitting there, one piece of cardboard, and I just open the box and throw that piece in and close the box again. I'm like, I'll get it next time.

Speaker 2:
[59:48] Man, other annoying box story is I was playing a Chicarrian big box, and it was in South County, and I knew we had to leave, and I was trying to get the box to fit, and just get all the inserts together, and I finally was just like, screw this, and I just dumped everything in there.

Speaker 4:
[60:08] I was like, I've definitely seen that before, Chris.

Speaker 3:
[60:13] That is called drama, and people that have gamed with you, Chris, they've told me about it later, and it's been a cathartic thing. They're like, man, I saw Chris just dump all the pieces in the box, and it has scarred me to this day. Multiple people have come up and told me the story.

Speaker 4:
[60:26] Well, that brings up a fun story. I'm pretty sure I had told this on the show before, but I'm going to tell it again, because we're bumping up at the end of the episode here, and we leave off on a fun story. We used to do charity games at Gen Con. The Jack Vassal Memorial Fund run by the Dice Tower. They run a charity event where you put up things, you sell them, and all the money goes to charity. We used to do a thing with Jeff Engelstein where it would be, play a game at Gen Con with The Secret Cabal Founders and Jeff Engelstein. So one of the years, the person who won the auction requested that we play Tragedy Looper. And I was like, this is great, because Chris already has this game, so we won't have to worry about it, right? So Chris wasn't going to be at Gen Con that year, but we borrowed his copy, we took it with us, and when we sat down with this person that paid like $1,500 to play in this game, Jeff Engelstein's sitting there. I think Rodney might have been there, Rodney was playing with us that time, I'm not sure. But we were sitting there, we opened up the box to set it up. The last time Chris had played it, he had just dumped all the components back in the box. So there were cards all over the place, there were tokens all over the place. It was the most horrible mess you could ever imagine. It took us like half an hour to like organize the whole thing before we got to playing. And here's the thing, here's the funny part of it. When we finished playing the game then, we were like, well, you know what, screw Chris. So we just poured all the components back into the box. And not only that, we had put garbage in the back of the box too. There were receipts and like, you know, like straw wrappers and things. We're like, you know what, just let's add this for Chris as well. And I'll bet you $10,000 that if Chris goes to his shelf and picks up his copy of Tragedy Looper, he will open it up, all that garbage will still be in there. Because I don't think he's played that game since then.

Speaker 2:
[62:18] Yeah, I'd have to go find it. I don't know if I gave, like, I think Steve was, I was going to give him a copy to Steve. I don't think I ever got around to it.

Speaker 4:
[62:27] Yeah, he will remind you of it every year.

Speaker 2:
[62:28] I think it would be great if I gave it to Steve. And he's like, not only everything out of the bags and stuff, but there's trash in there too.

Speaker 4:
[62:37] Alrighty Cabals, well, that was a fun episode because I think it devolved into us bitching about the components that we don't like, which is always a fun thing to do anyway. But with that Cabal, this is going to bring us to the close of episode 117 of The Secret Cabal Express. Listen, Cabals, go over to our Discord. Tell us all about the component upgrades that you love. Tell us about the components that you hate. Tell us all about components in general. And you could find our Discord if you're not already a member at thesecretcabal.com/discord. Also, Cabalus, if you haven't checked your calendar, this month we have Five Wednesdays, which normally would mean that we have a Battle Tome. Well, we're not doing a Battle Tome this time, unfortunately. And that's because I really haven't been indulging in the miniatures gaming hobby at all this year. And that's weirdly, and this is a little strange story, but that is because I have developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both of my hands. This podcast is bad for my health, apparently, because the way I edit the show every single day of the week, I have developed bad hands. So pretty soon I'm going to be getting surgery to repair them. So because of that, I haven't been painting miniatures really all this year. Every time I try to paint miniatures, my hands just go numb and they ache and I can't do it. So yes, I haven't been indulging in my miniatures hobby, and I will restart indulging in my miniatures hobby the minute that I get these things fixed and I'm recovered from that. But that was a long way to say, yes, we're not doing Battletoam because we all haven't been really indulging in that hobby. But I am replacing it with something that I'm extremely proud of, and it's my new endeavor to do more interviews on The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast. I did the interview with Justin Jacobson from Restoration Games last year about the tariff situation, and doing that and the great reception that I got from that gave me a huge boost of confidence that I could actually do this. So, I'm going to move forward with doing some more interviews on the show. The first one of that series is coming next week, and I'm going to be talking to a dyed in the wool cabalist, and one of the hottest board game designers out there, Dave Thompson. So next week, tune in to hear all about Dave and his design process, and games, and all kinds of great stuff.

Speaker 1:
[65:03] Of course, after that, tune in for another absolutely fantastic, loud, crazy, fanatical, bombastic, brilliant, magnificent, monumental, and most sugared episode of The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast. Good night, everybody.

Speaker 2:
[65:19] Hey, good night.

Speaker 1:
[65:20] Have a good one. And that wraps up another episode of The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please join us again next week and every week for more content from The Secret Cabal. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and join our official Discord server at thesecretcabal.com/discord. To support The Secret Cabal, check out our Patreon fundraiser initiative at patreon.com/thesecretcabal. And remember our motto, striving lest our company be lazy cowardly manure.