The Final Frontier, Great Sci-Fi games, boardgaming in space! Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast Ep 231

Hello and welcome to the Tabletop Bellhop gaming podcast, episode 231, "The Final Frontier." Great sci-fi games, board gaming in space. Brought to you by our sponsor, Grand Gamers Guild. I'm Sean and here with me, the Tabletop Bellhop himself, Moe. I am Moe Tousignant, the Tabletop Bellhop, your cardboard concierge, working with you to make your game nights better. We're here live on Twitch, as we are most Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern. You're always welcome to stop by and see some of what

goes into making the show and hang out with other fans in the lobby, our chat room. - So the plan tonight is to spend some time talking about our favorite sci-fi themed board games. To go with that, we will also be reviewing Starship Captain's, a game with a familiar theme, and Mlem, a rare case of us talking about actual new hotness, as it was just released to retail this week. We wrap up with a solid week in review, including my first thoughts on My City, Cartographer's Heroes, Zensū, and the

just re-released Dominion app. Find links for these games and more through our show notes, which you can find at tabletopbellhop.com/episode231 Links there may be affiliate links and many of the games we'll be talking about will have been provided by publishers for review purposes. - And before all that, though, we do have a bit of feedback from the suggestion box. - Welcome to this week's suggestion box. - So up first, a comment from T Mills on our topic of great games to bring out to a bar, pu

b, or brewery. - Well, they write absolutely great list. Ones I would add is Zombie Dice. That's a great one to play since it's basically only dice. And In Vino Morte, which is a card game that can be played up to nine. - First of all, thanks for those suggestions, T. Zombie Dice is a game I tend to forget exists because I've never owned my own copy. I've played it many times with other people's copies and that's actually happened at a few bars. So it's a perfect recommendation. Now, as for In V

ino Morte, I've never actually heard of that one, but I looked it up. And what it really reminded me of is a cool mini or not game, a CMON game I have called Raise Your Goblets. Now, of course, the CMON version has like plastic mugs and you drop glass beads in them to figure out who's poison. Whereas In Vino Morte looks more like a card-based version. I gotta say, it looks like the perfect thing that I would wanna bring out to a wine bar or a vineyard or a tasting room. Though, I don't know, bri

nging a Game about poisoning wine to a wine cellar may not be appropriate. - Well, next we have Wayner 396 who commented on our conversation about gaming with family over the holidays to share some game suggestions. They write, "If it's a whole family gathering, we found games like Rummykub Tripoley, No Thanks, and Uno and Scattergories are easy and big hits with all ages and family members." - Yeah, there's some real classics there, Wayner. Tripoley is one I actually forgot about. I saw it and

I'm like, I know that name. So I looked it up on BoardGameGeek and I'm like, oh, I totally know this. My dad used to love this game. This is a game that uses a traditional deck of cards, right? A Hoyle style game. But what it is is you are building one hand of cards but then you score it based on three different other games. So you're actually trying to make a hand that's good for all three times poker, standard poker, hearts and Rummy all at the same time. So you're trying to get points for all

the three different things. And I got to say for my dad, that was perfect for him. That was right up his alley, the card counter he was. Now, sadly, I've never actually tried it myself at the events when he was playing it with our family. I was probably off in the other room playing Talisman. - Well, next up, we've got an important follow-up to our Groundhog Gambit review from a couple of weeks back. We heard back from the designer of the game after letting them know about the glitch that happe

ned while Moe's family was playing through the game. - So Jonathan Chaffer wrote today, just earlier today, to say, "I've managed to reproduce your issue. What's happening is that, depending on the web browser you're using, there's a size limit to the amount of information that can be stored in a single cookie. I believe you got into a state where your phone's browser couldn't store the entire game history. And so the existing saved history was loaded every time it was open." Now he deployed an

update. He did, sorry, I should be quoting him. I'm reading his letter. I am deploying an update that addresses this situation by breaking large data into multiple chunks, which will be more resilient in these cases. Thanks again so much for bringing this to my attention and for your help in tracking it down. Future gamers will benefit. - And that is certainly great to hear. - Yeah, I actually went in and updated the written review today to add in a paragraph and actually added a whole section t

hat says, "The bug's been fixed." And then I went on our YouTube video and added a comment because there's not really a really good way for us to go edit the YouTube video at this point. And I've also added any comments where it's been shared. So hopefully we get the word out that the bug we had, no longer a problem. - Well, that's it for tonight. Thank you to everyone who comments and shares and interacts with our stuff. Well, we've been warning you for a few weeks now, but we will not be here

live next Wednesday, which means no podcast will come out on Tuesday, the 13th of February. - Yeah, I think we've given you lots of Valentine's Day themes and the games and date night games and couples games to get you to when we get back recording on the 14th. - As we move into February, it's time to start the GAMA Expo hype. For the first time ever, the Tabletop Bellhop will be at GAMA Expo at its new home in Louisville, Kentucky. I won't be making it to this one, but both Moe and Deanna will

be there. The original plan was to attend as GAMA members, but then they actually offered us the chance to go as hosted media, which is fantastic, something we'd never been offered in the past, in a way a big step up for us. And well, we couldn't turn that down. - I'm sure Moe will be sharing pictures and info from the show on his social media accounts, tabletopbellhop, (one word,) pretty much everywhere. And I do plan to live vicariously through those, and I encourage you to do the same. - Now,

the big thing I wanna know is who can we look forward to seeing at GAMA? If you're gonna be there, I'd love to know. And if you run into Deanna or I while there, do please feel free to come up and introduce yourself. Just please don't be offended if I don't remember your name, especially if we've only interacted online. We talk to a lot of different people, and I have one of those brains that does not remember names. So please introduce yourself and we'll do the same. - We're here to answer you

r gaming and game night questions. - You can send your questions to us by emailing questions@tabletopbellhop.com or click on Ask the Bellhop over on our blog. - Tonight's question is, What are some of your favorite sci-fi themed board games? - So now sci-fi is a pretty broad category, especially when you compare it to say fantasy games. And we've talked about fantasy games fairly recently, sharing fantasy games that have long campaigns as well as fantasy games with lots of miniatures in them. An

d fantasy though, like when you say that, people have a pretty good idea of what you're talking about. They're thinking knights and dragons, elves and dwarves, dungeons and exploration. When I say sci-fi though, not everyone gets the same idea in their head, right? Many different people are gonna think of different things based on what they're personally into. - For some people, sci-fi could be superheroes, one of my favorite genres. It could be cyberpunk, time travel, spaceships, hard science,

bring dinosaurs back to life, or space wizards. - Now due to this, I think we're better off just limiting our scope just a little, just a little bit. So I think for tonight, we wanna stick to games that are set in the far future and in space in some way, just to eliminate things like cryptids, classic sci-fi like Frankenstein, superheroes and scanners and psychic abilities, as well as the entire cyberpunk genre, because that's a topic all on its own. I wanna leave lots of room though, that still

gives us plenty of space for things like aliens, galactic empire, space exploration, starship battles and so on. - Indeed, while many things can be science fiction, sci-fi is its own category that exists alongside horror supers, fantasy and others. Space and future technologies, as well as time travel however, all solidly fit into the sci-fi category with very little overlap elsewhere. - Now I also wanted to keep the main list tonight to games you can actually get right now as of January 31st,

2024. They're all verified available today. Either games that are currently in print, supported by the publisher with new content still coming out and expected for future print runs, or games that may be out of print, but are readily available online right now at multiple different online stores and most friendly local game stores. I'm not talking about the game that's available used on noble night, or the one store that happens to have an online shop that's in the middle of nowhere that happens

to ship worldwide and has that rare copy. - So while you might be able to find a copy of Quantum Online, the fact that it's listing for hundreds of dollars despite only being 10 years old takes it off the list. - Now we're also gonna feature a few older harder to find games, or popular games we haven't personally gotten to the table in our usual honorable mentions. That'll be at the end of the list. - Well with that, let's get into the game list, which as usual is in no particular order. - So t

he first game that comes to mind anytime anyone says sci-fi board games to me is still Twilight Imperium. That is just the first one that pops into my head. It is an epic 4X game. I'm not even gonna get into my complaints about it. It's 3X nature sometimes, but a popular epic sci-fi game that plays many players and lots of planets and building empires and tech trees and voting and all the stuff you want from a 4X game. Of course, to be that detailed and that epic means there's a lot to learn, it

's hard to learn and it can play very long. Now, an experienced group can get it down to a manageable time and Twilight Imperium fourth edition does a way better job than third edition does in fitting in a shorter game night. But it's still epic and long and you're signing up for a journey when you sign up to play this game. This is, if you haven't played this, if you are a fan of digital 4X games, stuff like Stellaris, MoO, Masters of Orion or Galactic Civilizations, this is the game for you. -

Yeah, it's interesting. This is one, not surprisingly, it was already called out in our chat room. Although surprisingly, it was the second one called out, not the first, which I would have expected. Second on our list is Eclipse Second Dawn for the Galaxy. Now this is a much more approachable and manageable take on 4X sci-fi. The new second dawn version is fantastic with upgraded components, some rule tweaks and new techs that really balance the game out, making overall for a fantastic, experi

ential 4X game. - Yeah, of those two, I prefer Eclipse Second Dawn. And I know that's heresy to some folk, but I definitely prefer it's streamlined. It's got more of a Euro feel, a little less of the favoritism and the voting. I would most of the time rather sit down and play Eclipse over Twilight Imperium. Now the next one I have is Terraforming Mars, which I was on board Game Geek today and I can't believe how high it still is on the top 100. It seems people have finally found this game. Back

when we were playing regular, they kind of felt like it was still a niche game. Not everyone had discovered it yet. Now the game has grown a lot since it was first released. It is a card drafting, well, you could or may not use drafting, but it's a big engine builder with lots of cards and lots of bits and cubes and it can get kind of sprawling and it can run very long. Now, yes, the prelude expansion helps and there's a prelude 2 expansion on the way or maybe that's out yet, I'm not even sure b

ecause I haven't kept up. That does speed it up, but it is a long game now because of how kind of it's all Frankensteined together into this kind of monster with voting phases and everything else. It's almost its own 4X, the game now. But you know what? I still love Terraforming Mars. Every time I play it, even if it takes five hours, it's a very rewarding experience. - Yeah, Terraforming Mars is one of those games that people seem to either love or hate. And some people have come around, but it

's become almost a lifestyle game with the people who really love it going all in with the 3D sets and pieces and 3D printing things in intricate deck boxes and card holders and ways of doing things. Whereas the people who don't like it complain about people who may have been involved with the game early on and artistic choices in the game more than anything else. Because really as a mechanical game, it's really hard to find fault with it. - I'm gonna call it out since our chat room pointed out

and thank you for that, is the prelude is due July this year. See, I didn't think it was out yet, but I knew it was coming. That's on my list to pick up. - Well, next up is a favorite of mine, Pulsar 2849. This one's a little less epic. This is an engine building Euro about exploring space and spinning up gyros to produce energy. And find it wonderfully thematic for what it is. And that thematic nature makes it really easy to learn. As a Euro, it was one of my first sort of more complex Euros an

d it just felt natural. Like it wasn't a slog to learn despite it being a reason, quite complex game for what it is. And being reasonably early in my career of those complex games, it just felt natural and things made sense as you were doing them within the concept of the sci-fi theme. - Yeah, I am a big fan of this game. First got to try it at the first origins we ever went to and while learning the game at the table, a little frustrating because we're doing a demo game and a guy is sitting the

re and he's like, yep, I like it. And he ordered a copy and then showed the guy who was demoing us going, look, I just bought a copy. And then he got up and left. And we're like, I want to play the whole game. You don't just walk out in the middle of a game. What are you doing? And it wasn't like a demo. It was like, we were supposed to play. Like it was supposed to play a whole game. And now the person teaching the game had stacked the deck and put things in certain places and we had like compl

eted a few phases, but I was so frustrated. And I think that's the main reason we bought it is Deanna was enjoying it. And Deanna's like, I need to finish that game. So we need to bring a copy of this home now so I can finish a game of it. So that's actually why we ended up with it. And yes, it's fantastic. A recent discovery of mine is Terraforming Mars, Ares Expedition, which is a standalone complete, you don't need anything else. Yes, there's expansions now for it. It doesn't have anything to

do with that other big box Terraforming Mars. Now this is on this list in place of Race for the Galaxy. Now the chat room is already called out, Race for the Galaxy and good call on that one. It's a solid game. But now that I played Ares Expedition, like if I hadn't played Ares Expedition, if we didn't try it at Origins this year, if we didn't do a short demo, I'd still have Race for the Galaxy on this list. It's a fantastic game. But this is everything I love about Terraforming Mars and the en

gine building in it, with the role selection of Race for the Galaxy mashed together. And to me, it's a match made in heaven. Race for the Galaxy, what is, probably still is my most played game of all time, especially physical. It's the game I physically played more than any other game in my collection. And I doubt I'll be unpacking it that often anymore. - Well, I, you know, it's a shame, but not every game can last forever. Next up, we've got Dune Imperium. It's Dune and deck building and area

majority and worker placement. And it oozes theme, but it's still approachable enough that even if you don't know the theme, if you're not a fan of the Dune IP, you can still pick it up because the mechanics just all work nicely. And you don't need to know that, you know, this is doing this or that's doing that, or what the Baron's doing versus what the Atreides are doing. But if you do know that, it works and it makes sense how the different factions are playing. - And at this point, our only e

xperience is the base game. I know there's multiple expansions out and everyone I see raving about them, it's like makes the game better, makes the game better. And I'm like, man, it's good already. I can't wait to try out those expansions at some point, but really we just need to play the base game more often. So I totally with you on this one, it's a great recommendation. Next, I put one on the list just to prove everything we've talked about so far is kind of heavy-ish, right? Or really heavy

and epic or meaty or big thinky games. Well, you know what? Not all sci-fi games have to brain burn you. I wanna mention "Galaxy Trucker", a game about building a ship out of plumbing because it's cheaper than putting the plumbing in its own ship and shipping it. You just build your ship out of the plumbing and arriving and selling all the plumbing that is your ship when you arrive. And that's done through real-time ship building where people are flipping tiles and putting them on their pile un

der a time limit so you're rushed. And then going on a voyage with that ship where honestly, it's just as much fun watching your ship get destroyed as it is to build it. Terrible things are going to happen along the way and no one's gonna get back to base in full shape that they left in. Super silly, excellently written rule book that kind of sets the tone for the whole game. And for those that don't know, like this is an older game, they recently did a second edition that actually improved on i

t. We do have a review on that, which I'll link. But the new edition actually switches so you don't have to do a full run every time and has it set up so you can do nice, quick little 45-minute runs in "Galaxy Trucker", which I think perfectly fits that light, whimsical theme. - Yeah, "Galaxy Trucker" never really got to me. I think that real-time aspect of it, and I know De tends to be the same, real-time stuff isn't a big thing, but it is definitely a fun, quirky, sci-fi game. So next up, we'v

e got "The Artemis Project". Now we just reviewed this one last week. It's a dice-based worker placement where you have to shift your focus from engine building to end-game scoring partway through the game. Now I will admit that this one often feels to me a bit like it could have been in the Arctic as opposed to a far-off planet, but it is absolutely taking place on a moon of Jupiter, and some of the technology in there definitely makes it sci-fi either way. - Yeah, the flavor text is definitely

there. Now what I do wonder is we have the satellites and commanders expansion for this that we haven't tried out yet. I wonder if having satellites spinning around the board would make it feel less like the Arctic and more like you're actually in space. Next, one that I think anyone who's listened to the show for a long time or knows me personally is gonna know what's gonna show up on this list at some point in that "Star Wars" "Imperial Assault". I am shocked we're still putting this on list

because they stopped supporting this game a number of years ago, but they didn't stop producing it. Like the game still exists. Fantasy Flight just stopped producing new content, but they keep putting out more and more waves of the existing content, which I'm shocked. That's the Fantasy Flight continue to support a game that long after it's, like really it's lifespan. So it's awesome to see this game is still going on. You're still able to get all of the expansions, all of the stuff, and if it's

out of print, it seems like it's just gonna keep coming. It seems to be an evergreen game for them. Now for people who don't know it, this is a "Star Wars" dungeon crawler. This is "Descent in the Dark", "Star Wars". This is, you make a party of adventurers, you go into, you randomly get a dungeon, you build it with map tiles, and you play out a one versus many battle or a co-op versus a battle against the empire. It's one of the best dungeon crawlers I played, yet it has a "Star Wars" theme. A

nd yes, there's also a whole other way to play where you can do skirmish battles, where you collect your own miniatures and battle each other. That is a totally other way to play. Everyone I know that was doing that has moved on to "Star Wars Legion", which is another Fantasy Flight game. But yeah, "Imperial Assault" still, every time I go to do a list on dungeon crawlers or best theme games or licensed games or any of that, I'm like, "Oh, let's see, has "Imperial Assault" had a print yet?" No,

still here, okay, goes on the list. - Well, while it's not all that heavily tied to its theme, the crew, "Quest for Planet Nine", is a sci-fi based trick taking game that manages to capture some of that feel of the dangers of space through limited communication rules. And so while it's not far future, it is certainly space adventure, and that definitely falls under our definition of sci-fi. - That's a fun one. I don't know if the deep sea fits, I don't know if the deep sea is on Earth or not. I

didn't look into that one. We haven't tried that version. Sticking with "Star Wars", next I have "Star Wars Rebellion". This is the "Twilight Imperium" for "Star Wars" fans, right? It's an epic two to four player game where you end up playing out the entire intergalactic war. People like to refer to this one as "Star Wars in a Box", at least the original trilogy with if you have the expansions, a bit of "Rebels" and what was the one with Jyn Erso, I'm totally blanking on, whatever. The prequel t

o the original series. Rogue One, that's the name of it. If you have the expansion, you can add some Rogue One in. This is the empire is searching for the rebel base. The rebels are trying to survive and supplant the empire and you can blow up the death stars and they could play out just like the movie or the last time I played, I made Chewbacca a Jedi. So it is a fantastic big folk on a map, diplomacy, epic "Star Wars" game. - All right, well, next up we have "Star Realms". This is now a classi

c deck builder that we've been talking about quite a bit lately after discovering the newer "Frontiers" edition and what it brings to the game, which includes solo and cooperative play. Now this is still one of the best deck building games ever published. There's no question that this one is sci-fi. - Yeah, we're still playing this one. "Frontiers" got us re-hooked. There's a big Kickstarter going on now for an all foil edition, not something I'm particularly interested in, but that's definitely

shows that "Wise Wizard" is still supporting the game and putting out new content, which is good to see. Well, I put "Star Wars" in a box on the list, so I don't wanna upset the other half of the sci-fi franchise fandom. And no, I know there's more than two big series out there, but that is "Star Trek" in a box. That is in the form of "Star Trek" ascendancy. This to me is zoomed out "Star Trek." Like you're looking at "Star Trek" from the command, like Starfleet command, not on an individual sh

ip. You're at like a quadrant level. You're moving fleets of ships and exploring galaxies and establishing space lanes. The really brilliant thing in this game though is the asymmetry between the different factions. And it kind of does the root thing before it was as popular as it is now where every faction has their own way to win. And they're each trying to do their own thing. Now it's not a coin game. It doesn't go that far where you have to help out some other players to succeed. But like th

e Klingons play completely different than the Federation, which play completely different from the Ferengi, which is one of the expansions. And I also love the fact that if you do include the Borg, which is an expansion, they can be an AI enemy that everyone has to deal with or someone can play them. And I love the idea of playing like a three or four player game with the Borg in the center of the galaxy messing with everyone. - All right. Another dice driven work and placement game, Alien Front

iers, which was called out first actually in the chat room by our lobbyists. Again, a dice driven worker placement game, one of the first ever published and still one of the best. I haven't gotten to play this one nearly as much as I would like, but it's definitely there. - Yeah, this is one that confused me because it is still in print with a brand new edition that I had heard nothing about. It just kind of slipped under the radar and I'm like, oh cool, Alien Frontiers is still out. I wasn't to

o worried because I have my copy and I'm happy with my copy. I've got, I backed a Kickstarter somewhere in the reprint line that gave me all the cool little domes and everything for it. A fantastic game. I've been, I wouldn't say obsessed, but enjoying that game since it came out. Okay, I threw Star Trek in there. Maybe I should have kept all the Star Wars together. But anyway, the next one is another Star Wars game. And that is the new fantasy flight game, Star Wars deck building game. Now this

is a two player only game that Deanna and I have really been digging. It has some similarities to Star Realms. And honestly, when I taught the game to De, I'm like, think Star Realms, but of course, I'm a big fan of the theme, but I just really like the way the confrontations work in this game. You're not directly attacking the opponent, like as a person. You're not reducing their health like in magic or their glory, I think it is in Star Realms. For the amount we play Star Realms, everyone jus

t calls it hit points. Hit points and damage. In this one though, you're attacking specific cards, you're attacking your opponent's bases. And then there's the really neat thing where you can actually attack cards in the market. And I think that's really well done. I've never seen a game with the dueling game with the attacking each other where your cards don't stay up every round, right? And that's what, it's just funky, right? It's got kind of that magic feel, but then if you had to wipe all y

our creatures at the end of every turn, really enjoying this one. Don't think we're getting sick of it anytime soon, strongly recommended. - All right, well, Moe covered Star Wars and Star Trek. So I'm gonna cover Stargate SG-1, the board game. No, no, I'm not. Please don't go find this game. There's a reason it's rated 4.5 on board game geek and you probably can't buy it anyway. - I would love a good Stargate game. I'd be all for that. - Well, what I'm actually gonna talk about is Space Base. N

ow we have played this one a ton, both with Mo's physical copy, but also online through both Tabletop Simulator and BGA, once they finally added the game there. Now, looking forward, we are going to be diving into the mysteries of Terra Proxima that you got for your birthday. And hopefully that will reinvigorate us yet again on this fantastic game with its funny little thin cards. - Yes, funny little thin card. One of the few games I sleeved because they gave me sleeves and one of the expansions

. So I figured well they gave me the sleeves. I might as well use them. We can finally get to it again. So we're gonna have to plan at least a game night, if not multiple, to get through that expansion so we can let people know if Terra Proxima was as fun as Shy Pluto was. All right, I'm gonna go to a classic game. This one has been around for a very long time, reprinted by Fantasy Flight Games. Another one that I was kind of shocked is still being printed and that is Mission Red Planet. This is

still to this day, one of the most pure and best area majority games ever published. And that's probably why they're still printing it. This actually has some similarities to Mlem, which we'll be reviewing later because this is one of those games where you have a set of crew members and you're choosing which crew member to use each turn, each crew member has different special abilities. There's obviously some inspiration going on there. This is a fantastic game, really good. This is one of thos

e games that like Fantasy Flight can be really good at components and they did a fantastic job on this with these little kind of chunky aliens, not aliens, astronauts with flags and colorful tokens and the great looking board. And it's got kind of a steampunk feel. It's that retro rocket look instead of the, you know, sleeks or the dirty. - All right, well, next up, we've got the Babylon Five collectible card game. No, I'm sorry, you can't actually get that one either. Clank in space. It's clank

, but in space. Now I still adore the original Clank and still regularly play it with my kids. This version puts the game in space and features a more active adversary and modular boards, making it more re-playable than the original. - Yeah, there's something about this one. I still prefer the original and I don't know what it is. I don't know. Usually I like sci-fi, but that one didn't quite do it. All right, one more. We are the last one on the list. It'll be 19 full, fantastic sci-fi games. A

nd I'm gonna cheat because this one isn't set in space. Actually, I wasn't sure and I had to look it up, but it's in the far future here on Earth. It's now near uninhabitable and you have to jump in a giant mech like exosuit to leave your settlements, go visit the Capitol. So yeah, it's post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but it's far enough in the future that it feels like you're another world, I guess, whatever. You know what? I had to include it on my list because Anachrony is my favorite game of all ti

me. It is my number one game and it's definitely sci-fi, even if it doesn't quite fit our constraints quite right. And while it's my show, so it goes on the list tonight. And I did mention sci-fi or time travels fits specifically into sci-fi as a category. So I think we're safe there and I love it too. So tough to anyone who complains. Next up though, we have a few honorable mentions. - All right, Battlestar Galactica, you're pulling in the other licenses. So I figured it's time to bring in one

that actually is good. The now classic hidden traitor game, one of the best, if not the best hidden traitor game I've ever played based on the new show, well, it's not new anymore, the newer show. I think someone pointed out something about us being old where the new Battlestar Galactica is now as far away from the old one as we are like our age. Oh, terrible. Anyway, based on the new show, tons of expansions, fantasy flight threw everything at this game probably put a bit too much into it at on

ce. Got a little frustrating to fit set up and half the game was arguing with players over what expansion to use. And yes, we've mentioned it multiple times, it can be fragile if especially if you get role players who wanna play the characters from the show instead of playing what they should be doing in the game. A great game, yes, it's been replaced by Unfathomable but that's not sci-fi and plus I don't care about the Cthulhu license at all. I am just really glad I got a copy of this when it w

as readily available. - Well, neither of us have played the Avalon Hill classic Dune or any of the modern updates to it but it continues to be very popular and tops almost everyone else's best sci-fi game lists. We really do need to find a way to play this at least once. Someone in Windsor has gotta have a copy of, you know, perhaps the newest one that we can give a try. - Yeah, and to be fair, I have a Canadian version that's all in French. We could try, my kids could play it and I'll watch, I

don't know. I do actually own a French version of it because I thought I was getting English version and no wonder it was so cheap. Speaking of classic games that people seem to love, I have to throw Cosmic Encounter on the list. It's another classic Avalon Hill game, like from the 70s that's still around and still popular. Now I gotta say it, I don't like this game but I only tried once. Maybe it was the group I played with but based on what I can tell, everyone who praises this game, the stuff

they're praising just doesn't sound good to me. The game is far too random, far too ridiculous and the theory that everyone's power is overpowered so therefore it's fun doesn't really sit well with me. People love it though and you know what? For those of you who are out there who would love the game, all the power to you and it's still one of the most popular sci-fi games ever published. Like it was originally published in the 70s and people are still playing it now. - Well, the math guy Dave

mentions and I'm just gonna jump on this because it fits with my theme. The Firefly 10th Anniversary game is coming out this year sometime but that means that it's going to be canceled next year after 11. So we'll just move on because another one we would both love to try is Nemesis. Aliens with the serial numbers, you know, rubbed at a little bit. - Yeah. - Now the first version proved very popular and we hear it's even better than ever with Nemesis Lockdown but now a third version, Nemesis Ret

aliation, will be releasing apparently in 2025. - All right, I don't wanna frustrate anyone who's listening at home but for those of you in the chat, you can get Lockdown for 90 bucks at Miniature Market today only. It's their deal of the day today, literally today, while we record on Wednesday the 31st of January. Like that is $100 off the MSRP. It's a $190 game, you can get it for 90. So I'm gonna throw in a little plug there for Miniature Market. If Deanna wasn't snoring over there, I'd have

her toss a link in the chat for you to use. Now, speaking of aliens, one of my favorite sci-fi games of all time remains the two player miniature game Space Hulk from Games Workshop. I adore the first printing of this game. I got the White Dwarves and I bought two copies of each White Dwarf that had Space Hulk stuff in it so I could cut out the pages with the map tiles and glue them to cereal boxes so I could expand my game. I know Sean remembers those days of me showing up every week with somet

hing new for Space Hulk. Now, this one has come back into print a few times, three times it seems, but I checked this morning and I went to Games Workshop. They don't currently have Space Hulk listed as one of their games at all. Now, I do see copies of the fourth edition at a few online stores. I wouldn't call this one readily available though. - And the digital version is absolutely worth playing just to hear the voice acting for "Purge with Flame." - I think the latest version doesn't have th

e D Rock soundtrack, but man, it was good. - Oh, that's all kinds of wrong. So the next up we have Beyond the Sun, otherwise known as Tech Tree, the board game. This is on both of our lists of games we need to figure out a way to play. It sounds like it's right up our alley, though I have to say, looking at setups of it being played is a pretty wild experience. I think it's gotta be, the setup rules in that have gotta be something special. - Now that one is on board game arena now. So that's how

we should sit down and play it. But like even the chat rooms, like I think it's gonna be my next sci-fi game. It just, I've heard so much good stuff and I like Rio Grande style games. - All right, next. One I don't think will be reprinted ever, but you know what, I said that about HeroQuest for years and that actually happened, but that is Forbidden Stars. This is a 4X epic game by way of Warhammer 40,000. This is one Sean needs to try badly because he's a fan of Warhammer. And I know you're mo

re into the fantasy than the sci-fi for Warhammer, but 40K still has that feel, right? The John Blanch-ness of it all. We need to get this one once the basement's back together and get played. It features a fantastic order placement system and kind of initiative system. It's got a cool way to break up the boards to make it feel more 3D. So people that are next to each other one turn aren't the next turn. But yeah, this one, the licensing is not, it's not like Robotech messy, but this is one I do

n't think we'll ever see again. - All right, well, next up is, oh, that's what I've already, we already did that one. Another game that's currently impossible to find, but one that may actually get a reprint that we love is Xia, Legends of the Drift System. Now this is a sci-fi sandbox game, but let's players play it how they want. While it's not the most tactical or strategic game out there, it can be a ton of fun, as long as you're willing to just play to see what happens. Now we have also poi

nted out many times that Embers of a Forsaken Star is pretty much a must-have expansion to really get the most out of this game. - Yeah, I gotta say, if they do another printing, I hope Far Off Games has listened to fans and just like makes it part of the game now. Like if you're gonna do, I don't know what they're on, fourth or fifth print run, every time they do it on Kickstarter. So if it does come back, I'm assuming it'll be some kind of crowdfunded project to bring it back, but I just hope

they, if they do it, at least get the all-in pledge, if they're not gonna improve the box and put everything together. All right, before we wrap up our talk on our favorite space-themed, sci-fi themed games, let's give a nod to the TTRPG segment of our fans, with some quick space RPG recommendations. - Well, I think we would be fools to ignore Alien the RPG from Free League, with its two separate styles of play and a fantastic starter box that we have reviewed here on the show. Next up, since we

have talked about Star Wars a little bit on this show already, SCUM and Villainy, for all those Star Warring fans out there. And last, but far from least, Stars Without Number is really one of the top rated TTRPGs out there for sci-fi. - And then there's the Star Trek one, which I actually got a copy of for my birthday, but I haven't actually even done more than to crack open the tricorder and look at what you get inside. So that's one that may be on our list by next year. Now for me, for sci-f

i RPGs, the one I had a lot of fun with was Eclipse Phase. It's a D100 based system, so it talked to my 1e Warhammer roots in a pleasing way. And it's mash-up of cyberpunk trans-humanism and space opera all in one really intrigued me. I'm also a big fan of the fantasy flight Star Wars games. I actually ran these. This isn't just, I read a book, right? I ran Edge of the Empire for a while. Fantastic system with a narrative dice pool system that again came from Warhammer 4E. So I guess I think I j

ust like games inspired by Warhammer. Well, just to prove that wrong, the West End games classic D6 Star Wars. Now this doesn't belong on our list really because there's, well, you could find copies pretty easily actually, but not necessarily legally. The classic West End Star Wars after playing, I played the D20 Star Wars, a big Star Wars fan, right? D20 Star Wars, I played D20 Star Wars revised. I played fantasy flight Star Wars then I had an old school gamer challenge me to try the original W

est End games. Wayne Humfleet, the Star Wars guy. And I tried it and I was like, oh my God, this is fantastic, where was this all my life? So all of them are great. Now locally, I am also a big fan of Numenera. Now, yes, I was a play tester on that game. So I did get to see it before anyone else did, but you know what? We ran a short campaign with the play test rules and my personal group at the time absolutely adored it. To me, that was fantasy star online, the RPG, and I loved fantasy star. Th

e last one though, I've always wanted to try. I want to throw this one in here is Traveler. There's a million different additions out there and there's fans, it's kind of like the D&D crowd. There's fans that prefer the little black books and fans that prefer Mongoose. People who, I don't know if anyone plays T5, but anyway, that doesn't matter. I've always wanted to run a campaign in Traveler. - All right, well, that's it for our sci-fi game recommendations, but we have had some great chat here

in the lobby, starting with some we've already mentioned, but games like Artemis Odyssey as opposed to the Artemis Project. - Right behind me on the shelf, still in shrink. We'll get to it. Now, what I do know about that one is I'm going to like it, because it's actually a re-theme of an older game called Ad Astra, which is one of my favorite sci-fi games, but it's so long out of print, I didn't even put it on this list. And I figure I'm not even going to pop, pimp that one, talk about that one

until I play Odyssey, since that's the latest version. And sorry, Marc, we haven't gotten to that one yet. - Among the Stars came up as well. - That's an RPG, is it not? - No, I think you're thinking of, I doubt it because it was mentioned by Ryan. - Or maybe there's both. - So, okay. And then-- - Oh yeah, yeah, okay, the old classic drafting game. That was also re-themed to a farming game. There's a new edition of that, but it's now a farm game. Fields of Green is the new edition. - That defin

itely doesn't belong on the list. - Yeah, definitely doesn't fit on the list. I loved that game when it first came out, but it did a bad thing with the expansion, in my opinion. It did one of those expansions where it gave you all new tiles. If you don't get to just max them in, you had to swap in tiles in and out. And then the game became a pain to set up and I didn't stop playing it anymore. - Roger mentions Cosmic Frog. - He keeps trying to tell me I have to play that, but every time we get t

ogether, it doesn't happen. - Co-op Conquest of Planet Earth. - I've heard good things. - Last Light. - That looks good. That sold out everywhere really quick. There's actually a current Kickstarter Live now for another printing of that one. - Ryan mentioned Roll for the Galaxy was just too dry and abstract for him. - There was a period of time when it was new, I liked it, and I liked the expansion for it. It kind of refreshed Race for the Galaxy for me for a little while and actually got its ba

ck playing both because it'd be like, oh, let's play the dice version. Let's play the other one. There were some really neat mechanics in that one, but I'll have to say that one sat on my shelf gathering dust, which is why it didn't make the list. - Yeah, I enjoyed it on Board Game Arena. It was a solid implementation on Board Game Arena, so if you do like playing Roll for the Galaxy, it's a great way to get into it there. Cryo was mentioned by Roger. - That is one I don't know. That's a newer o

ne, okay. - Ryan also asked if they could be using Legion as a way to side load Imperial Assault content using Legion minis. - No, because Legion split the whole Imperial Assault crowd. It was the silliest thing they ever did. We have a Star Wars skirmish miniature game, but let's put on a new one and make it so the miniatures aren't compatible. I will never understand that marketing decision. Even worse, they've now put out Shatterpoint, which is a new Star Wars miniature game that has a differ

ent size than Legion. - Jeez. - Like, I'm baffled. I really am. - Roger's mentioning Cosmic Encounter is a real hoot. - That was on our list. We said that one. - Yes, yes we did. Ryan says, "Get the SG-1 board games for the minis." - Are there actually minis in the SG-1 board games? - They're not that kind of minis. - Oh, okay. - Figure things. And then what else we got here? Ryan, Roger mentions here, and this is worth mentioning not here, but it might be a cool idea to do an episode of "The Sa

me Under the Skin" games that have been re-skinned, like Glory to Rome, which is now Mottainai, or recently redone again, as Fort. And complaints of the 30 versions of Star Wars monopoly or Star Trek tic-tac-toe. - I gotta say though, Star Wars life was actually good. You had to choose if you wanted to go down the dark side or the light side. Like of all the mass market Star Wars games, that one was pretty good. Star Wars monopoly I bought. Sadly, the episode one version that was released before

the movies came out and had like gold figures and I paid way too much money for it. And it was terrible because it was just monopoly. Like I really thought it was going to have some sort of one. - Well, yeah, I thought it was going to have some thing in it. Yeah, okay, Math Guy Dave saying it was okay. Okay, it was good for a Star Wars theme of an old game. And I'm not saying it was good, like go buy the Star Wars risk because that actually is really good. Which is a re-theme of Queen's Gambit.

- Math Guy Dave recommends Star Wars Outer Rim being pretty good based on the one pre-pandemic play. - So everyone I talked to about that game said it's fantastic, but you go through the entire deck, halfway through the game and it's just a little too repetitive and it needs an expansion. So I actually held off. I'm like, I'm not going to pick this up if they don't put it in an expansion. Well, they put it in an expansion and then COVID hit and it just, I never picked up either. So I just haven

't had a chance to try that one. Again, if anyone local owns that, I'd love to try it at one of our events. - Because we started talking about time travel, Roger's asking is Euphoria is a space game. - It was on a lot of people's sci-fi lists. I thought about putting it on the list tonight, but is it, it's more dystopian future than sci-fi, right? Like we were talking, I didn't put it on the list because it didn't have that space feel to me. - No love for Outer Rim, masks Ryan. - Again, that's t

he Star Wars one we just said, haven't had a chance to play it. - And Eclipse phase, love for that from Ryan. Roger says the captain is dead. He's heard is a good game. - I want to try that. We're gonna be talking about that style of game later tonight in a way. That is a, you are on the bridge of a starship and the captain dies and all that's left are basically lower decks before lower decks existed. It's all the lesser crew members need to now take over the ship, which sounded a lot of fun. I

have not had a chance to try that. - And I mean, EggManJunior is asking, did we mention apiary, these in space? - No, again, these were games we've at least tried. So we could talk about our own opinion because we have not reviewed viticulture world. We were not in the reviewer pile for apiary. - All right, Ryan's mentioning he solved setup for ATS. - I might have to ask him about that, but I can't even remember if I kept the game. I honestly don't remember with the game room being a mess. Cause

I had that and I bought the first expansion, ambassadors and like I said, I just didn't like the fact that it was like, oh, if you're gonna add in a green room, you have to pull out another green room. All right then, so for those of you at home, did we miss your favorite sci-fi game? What space theme games that we may have missed, should we check out? I would especially love to hear about any hidden gems we may not even know about. So I gotta say between Sean and I and the chat, we covered alm

ost every sci-fi game I can think of. Junk orbit there, we didn't bring up junk orbit tonight. There's another one on the silly side. But I would love to know about a hidden gem, like a solid decent game that everyone's kind of overlooked, maybe because the theme wasn't that popular. You can post a comment, reply on social media or let us know on our Discord, which you can find at discord.tabletopbellhop.com - A word from our sponsor Grand Gamers Guild. - If you don't already subscribe to the Gr

and Gamers Guild newsletter, you probably should. Just last week, Marc put out a big crowdfunding state of the guild address where he outlined all of their plans for 2024. In there, there are three big projects they're working on for the new year. One is Bouba Kiki, which I gotta say is fascinating when it's based on. Pasaraya and Endangered Australia. I think we might get drop bears. - Now everything is subject to change, but that's quite the range of stuff. A party game based on the Bouba Kiki

effect, which is the mental association between sound and shape, a new deck builder, and another big box expansion for Endangered, which we've really been digging into lately. - Yeah, the whole Bouba Kiki thing is the fact that if I say the word Bouba to you, you tend to picture something round. And if I say Kiki to you, you tend to picture something spiky, which just fascinates me. I went down a bit of a hole earlier today looking into this. And yeah, Endangered, we are actually really enjoyin

g this one, it's been quite the hit locally. And it's to me that the happy part about this is seeing the game continues to be supported with new content, which goes well with our theme earlier tonight with a whole bunch of games that are no longer supported. So it's great to see Endangered supported because we are enjoying it. And I gotta say like that Bouba Kiki game, just like a game based on that just sounds fascinating. And well, everyone knows how much we love deck builders. - All right, we

ll, you can subscribe by entering your email at the top of the Grand Gamers Guild web page. And we tossed a direct link into the chat and it'll be in the show notes. Oh, and remember, if you do any shopping while on the page, use our code BELLHOP B-E-L-L-H-O-P to save 10%. (bell dings) Welcome aboard our review of Starship Captains, a sci-fi themed board game that puts you in command of your own Starship. This one comes from CGE, who we have to thank for providing us with a review copy. - Starsh

ip Captains was designed by Peter Hoffgaard and published by Czech Games Edition in 2022 with disappointingly little fanfare due to everything else going on in 2022. - This Trek inspired game plays one to four players with games taking under two hours on average and being quicker the fewer the players. While recommended for ages 12 plus and having a decent amount of weight, we could see some younger kids also getting into it. - So in Starship Captains, each player is a spanking brand new shiny c

aptain just given command of a not so shiny, not so new Starship and about to set off on its maiden voyage. You'll have to manage your crew of cadets and ensigns, split over three different crew member types, explore the galaxy, battling pirates, completing missions and working on diplomatic relations with three different factions. You're gonna use medals to promote your crew. You're gonna upgrade your ship with new technologies and seek the help of the ancient tin can, sorry, don't call them th

at, tinkan empire with the goal of becoming the first among equals. - Check out the very cool components in this sci-fi engine builder through our Starship Captains unboxing video on YouTube. - There you will see the highlight of this game actually mechanically or aesthetically production quality wise is the best designed two layer player boards I've ever seen as they pull off the effect by using folded boards, a board that's folded in half instead of gluing two sheets of cardboard together, thu

s avoiding the very common warping problem that we have seen many times in games with two layer boards. - You'll also see some very cool cadet and ensign miniatures that come in familiar colors and a variety of random sculpts so that no two crews are the same. Additional miniatures for the Android's cards featuring excellent and clear iconography, pirate and artifact tokens and more. - Yeah, there's actually a lot of bits in this game, quite a bit of cardboard in the box and honestly all of its

top line, like including the very clear rule book. The only thing you're not gonna find that I kind of wish was there is some way to organize all of this except for some plastic baggies. Like you didn't even get like a fantasy flight trough insert here. Like the baggies work for me and it's quick enough to set up the game but packing up at the end of the day can be a little annoying and I know there's gonna be some people out there seeking a third party insert for Starship captains. - They've re

ally thought how things work together. Even the 3D ships are quite impressive though we still have no idea what the tiny extra, nicely printed, folded bits of cardboard are for. Really its what you expect quality wise from CGE games. Now up next, let's launch into a high level overview of play. - All right, you're gonna start the game of Starship Captains by seeding the board with tokens. Some of which are gonna be replaced by mission cards. By the end, the board will be filled with a base for t

he Tinkans and one for the Ni'an pirates, some missions, some numbered spaces that will hold missions in the future and some pirates scattered on the paths between spots on the board. Everyone starts at the cooperative HQ, that's what they are calling the Federation in this game and places their 3D cardboard ship markers there. Each player gets a ship board with its starting crew and damage counters. Yes, your ship starts beat up with seven damage counters split over its tech board and cargo hol

d. Your starting crew consists of two ensigns of each color and one cadet, but three of the ensigns, one of each color start in the queue and not the ready room. You also start with one medal. - So the three faction diplomacy boards are placed to the side of the main board with a tracker for each player placed on the zero spot. A random card is assigned to the cooperative and pirate faction boards and the Tinkan board starts with its same card that it has every game but does get a random technol

ogy card from that deck. The central tech board is filled with starting tech cards and you're ready to go. - Each turn in Starship captains, you select either pass, complete an away mission or select one crew member to activate a room on your ship and take the associated action. Each room has a color that matches one of the crew types and those rooms can only be activated by a crew member of that color. - Now, before you do anything though, you get a chance to promote and manage your crew. At th

e cost of one medal, you can promote a cadet to any of the three ensign types or you can laterally promote an existing ensign to a different crew type. Now, later in the game, once you've earned a few more medals, you can also promote any ensign to a captain by spending three medals. Managing your crew complement through promotion is a big part of the game. - Sorry, I said captain should be commander by spending three mon- You're the captain. - You promote them to be with you. Good for you. - Ye

ah. - Every ship starts- - I'm sorry, commanders. - Every ship starts with four main rooms that you can activate. There's the red room that lets you move. If you move through a space with a pirate, you take one damage. You use this to get to the missions you want to complete to be able to get into position to take out pirates or stop at one of the three faction bases to get rewards. - The yellow room is your phasers or proton torpedoes or whatever you want to call them, your weapons, which lets

you destroy a nearby pirate. Now this does damage your ship, but gives you the rewards shown on the pirate token. This will either be a medal and an artifact or a captured tinkan, which will join your crew. You can also keep the pirate token as bounty, worth points at the end of the game, or they can be used for a few different things throughout the game during missions and some technologies. Some of those uses are a little questionable. - Well, that leads us to the blue room, which lets you dra

ft any one card on the central tech board. These include permanent bonuses that are always in effect and game scoring cards and new rooms you can send your crews to. When you get one of these cards, you place it on your tech slot board where you may get a bonus action based on matching symbols on the edges of cards and on the board. - Now the final core room that everyone gets is for enacting repairs on your ship. Now this one's gray. It means any color crew can use it and it's the only room the

gray cadets can use on their own. Using this room lets you remove one damage counter from your ship, either freeing up more room for tech cards or room in your cargo hold. - Now, instead of using a room on your ship, your crew can instead complete an away mission if they are at a mission card, that is. Each mission requires one to three crew members and lists specific bonuses that are unlocked if you send the matching colored crew on that mission. But one thing people often forget is that you d

on't need to have the right colored crew. Having them only unlocks the bonuses on the card. Also, any tinkan crew you may have count as all colors for completing missions. - Every completed mission awards you points at the end of the game, but they also have a huge range of other potential benefits. Again, if you send the correct type of crew on the mission. These can include going up on the various diplomacy tracks, taking damage, repairing damage, gaining tin can crew members, earning medals,

promoting crew members, taking tech cards, warping anywhere on the board and a lot more. - Now, after a crew member is used either in a room or on a mission, they move from the ready room to the back of the queue track on your player board. At the end of each of the game's four rounds, the queue will slide forward, letting you use a selection of your crew again, though there are always three members left behind and managing the order of the crew is another big part of this game. Note, the tinkan

s don't fit in this track and are discarded after use. As someone who has a quality background, seeing an actual poka-yoke on a board game fills me with joy. Now, one thing that can mess with the queue system are those commanders that you've promoted, right? You need three medals to promote a commander, but once you do, they become very powerful. A commander, when used to activate a room, can activate it twice. You just get double the benefit. When sent on a way mission, if they're matching the

right color, they can get double the reward. Or instead, a commander can take a regular action reward, just like any other crew, but then order another crew member of their color to skip the line and move from the queue to the ready room. - Another thing that can mess with timing are artifacts, which are gained through missions, defeating pirates and some rooms and tech carts. Each artifact has two colors on it and takes up space in your cargo hold. Now, any turn, instead of using a crew member,

a player can turn in two artifacts that have matching colors to activate a room as if they used an ensign of that appropriate color. - I think all that really leaves are those faction boards. We kind of mentioned at the beginning and talked about going up on those. So various technologies, room actions, and probably mainly mission rewards are going to have players moving counters up on one or more of these tracks. As your counters move, they're gonna collect minor rewards when hitting certain s

pots. And how far everyone gets on every track is part of endgame scoring. Now, along with this, each of the three factions has like a power that's represented by a card. And that activates when the first player reaches the top quadrant of those tracks. - For the Tinkan, this means that a random technology card is now available for everyone else to use. For the other factions, those the effect is randomized every game. The cooperative faction cards tend to help all of the players, while the neon

pirate cards tend to do something nasty. Now, interestingly, only two of these cards can be in play in a single game. After the threshold has been reached on two of the tracks, you flip the card on the third as that faction is jealous of the time you spend with the other two and refuses to help. - Play continues with players going on missions and or activating rooms until everyone passes, which usually happens because you're out of crew members and you don't have or don't wanna spend your artif

acts to take additional actions. You then get ready for the next round, or if it's the end of the fourth round, figure out everyone's final score. Now, at the end of the first three rounds, everyone does get a bonus from the cooperative, kind of some help from home. The first round, this is a free medal that you can use to upgrade your crew. And in rounds two and three, this is a new recruit in the form of a new cadet who goes right into your ready room. There is a bit of reseeding done and the

starting player passes to the left. - At the end of the game, players get points for their completed missions, their progress on the faction boards, Omega Tech cards they have collected, Commanders, androids, pirate medals, artifacts on the ship, and finally, everyone loses one point per damage counter still remaining on their ship. - And I'm gonna quote the rule book for this last bit as it does a good job of showing kind of the tone of this game. "The captain with the most points should tell t

he other, less accomplished captains, that they also perform very well under tough conditions. Try not to sound condescending. It's hard, I know. You have the best ship and the best crew, and that obviously means you are the best captain in the fleet." - There's also a very cool bit that we always forget to do, where you look up your final score and read your personal epilogue in the back of the rule book, which is based on your final score. - So I'm sure it's obvious, but just in case somehow s

omeone missed it, Starship captains is very obviously a non-licensed, but definitely Star Trek game without actually having the license at all. As soon as you see the cover of this game, you're gonna know its roots. And while the game just calls them red, yellow, and blue ensigns, I think most sci-fi fans are gonna know what those colors represent. - Now that said, it's more of a lower decks game than one based on big, fancy ships. You're not starting with a great crew or a healthy ship. - No. -

You have a rough road ahead of you. - Now, in addition to its Trek inspiration, there are lots of other sci-fi Easter eggs and references to other license, especially found on the various mission cards, like investigate alien eggs. Now this is not based on your hard science Trek. No, this is very tongue in cheek. Sean's call back to lower decks, I think is very appropriate here. Now with the mechanics and rule description we gave, along with the publisher's previous track record, you might thin

k you're gonna sit down to a heavy euro, all about micromanaging your crew. And that's not what you're actually getting with Starship captains. This is more of a lighter romp. Having you move around the board, complete some missions, maybe blow up some pirates, laughing at some of the mission names and noticing some of the dark humor on the tech. Like you really aren't nice to pirates in this game. - Honestly, this game doesn't feel like what I expect from a CGE game. Now the quality and detail

in the game does, but while "Galaxy Trucker" certainly has some of the comedy stylings, this one also has more of a random element than I expected. - And knowing what this game is and what it does, is the key to figuring out if it's gonna be the right game for you and your group. My first play of "Starship Captains" came as a total shock, because it wasn't at all what I expected. Now I don't know exactly what I wanted from this game, but what I got that first play was not it. I think I wanted mo

re of a complex euro. I wanted something more like CGE's dungeon lords than CGE's "Galaxy Trucker." - Yeah, I was completely shocked by my first play as well. I'm not actually a huge fan of "Galaxy Trucker," so I wasn't even thinking about that when I sat down to play this. So the tone and randomness felt completely out of place. Now all that said, well, it wasn't what we expected and what I expected. I really enjoy it for what it is, but it took a second play to realize that. More so than any o

ther game I played, the second play of "Starship Captains" completely changed my mind on the game. Going into it with the right expectations, knowing it's kind of this silly point salad with lots of random factors and isn't nearly as tight and punishing as I was expected, completely changed my enjoyment of the game in a positive way. And I couldn't agree more. My second play was night and day from my first, and it was just about those expectations being correctly aligned with the game. I knew wh

at was coming, and the game met those expectations with fun gameplay and enough thinking despite the elements of randomness. Now a good example of this is the queue system, which I didn't want to get into in too much detail in the how to play, because I don't want people to think it's this huge, heavy thing you have to worry about. When I first heard about this game, I thought this was going to be the key element of play. This was the thing in this game is this queue that you have to manage, and

you're gonna have to plan your moves like three, four turns in advance. And if you mess up in the first turn by using a character too early, you won't have it in the fourth turn. And in reality, it's really not that constraining. Well, yes, some members of your crew will get tied up, but there are so many ways to avoid that being an issue. Now, a big part of this is that promotion system with the medals. You don't have the crew member you need, just promote someone to the right color, whether t

hat's an Ensign or one of your, or a Cadet. Metals are actually one of the most frequent rewards in the game, and they're pretty easy to get. And yes, you always want more medals, and you can't upgrade everyone you want, but they aren't like this super limited resource that you have to hoard. You can usually make the promotions you need when you need them to be able to do what you want to do. - Then you add in the plentiful tinkan rewards. It even matters less who you have stuck in the queue, as

you can use a robot to collect so many of those mission rewards. - So do remember the tinkan refuse to actually activate your rooms. That's just beyond them, below them, sorry, below them. And then like, even if you don't have the medals, right? You don't have the right crew, you don't have the medals, you can't complete the mission you're at. - There are a variety of other missions, and the speed at which the missions change and rotate and repopulate the board, usually there's some valid optio

n up, even with limited crewing crew types. Even if you can't do one thing, there's still something valid to do. Now, of course, it is a random game. The missions are randomized, and there is a chance you may just be stuck. But even then, your leftover crew can always be used to repair your ship, and that damage is negative points. You're gonna wanna fix it at some point. And though it doesn't happen often, you can always keep your crew to use in the next round. - One really tricky aspect that w

ill catch you off guard and make you think far more than you expect is the layout of your tech cards. The symbols on the sides, which you're trying to line up, are valuable rewards. But whoever designed these cards was not nice about it. You will grumble and growl about how things are laid out. And you will replace some and still not be completely happy. - Yeah, and to be fair, I think the organization of tech cards possibly has more of an impact on the game than that queue system. And that's re

ally what this game ends up being, is a bunch of puzzles for you to solve. That's what "Starship Captains" is. It's like this big puzzle. It's one that's not really about the queue, but rather about squeezing every last action you can through a combination of what you do and what order you do it in. And that's where your focus needs to be. Like, it actually reminds me a bit of "Lost Ruins" in "Arnak," where you figure out that perfect pattern of moves that lets you avoid passing and get one more

action in, or just get one more turn in before the end of the game. Now, this comes through a combination of rewards for completing missions, figuring out interesting ways to move without having to use your red crew to move, using androids to complete missions, like Sean mentioned, defeating pirates and collecting matching pairs of artifacts to get those extra actions in, and matching those tech card symbols, and of course, promoting your crew. Now, one thing to note that might've come across i

n the lengthy setup description is that it is a bit of a table hog. With two player boards, mission cards, faction boards, the main board, tech market, and all the tokens and extra figures, it really can add up. - Yeah, I agree. It takes up more room than I expected it to. Overall, despite a not bad first experience, but not what I expected at all, I ended up really enjoying "Starship Captains." It took readjusting my expectations to get there, but now that I'm there, this is a fantastic game. I

t's a very fun, lighter than you would expect puzzle, all about action optimization and squeezing out everything you possibly can using a limited number of crew and options. You don't get a lot of turns. There's only four turns in this entire game, and you have to make those turns count. - Now, I will point out one potential negative that we have struggled with playing this game. There is one mechanic that is how you replace missions as well as being a timing mechanism for pirate placement. Now,

while I'm not sure of a better way they could have implemented it, it's somewhat fiddly, and if something is going to get forgotten or played wrong, this is the mechanic. So be aware of moving and flipping your numbers every time a mission is completed. - Yeah, I have yet to play a game where this didn't get forgotten at least once, where someone went to move and you're like, "Wait a minute, there's no card there." Wait, when did that happen? When did you complete that mission? It has happened

every time. So yeah, I'm with Sean though. I don't know how they could have done it better. I don't know if there's any indicator. Maybe they should have put it on the back of the mission cards because when you complete your mission, you put it face down so everyone's scores are kind of hidden. And it just said, you know, whatever, check next number and big, bold letters. I don't know what they could have done. Now, one thing also to be aware of, speaking of expectations for this game, this is n

ot a bridge simulator. There are other games out there that try to simulate that feeling. This is not one of those games. This doesn't really make you feel like a member of a Starship crew. Instead, it's zoomed out, it's higher level. You're the captain of the ship, responsible for all its crew. But it's also not so far zoomed out that it's a tactical game. There's no Starship combat here, other than literally you take a yellow action and collect a pirate token. Like that's not a battle system.

There's no real combat. And this is also not a game for fans of the genre about managing your energy level and transferring power from life support to shields. - And while you're completing missions, you certainly don't feel like you're beaming down to a planet. - No. - And even the faction interactions are quite abstract, moving around aboard. This is for a large part, a human resources management puzzle game. - Now, if you ever wanted to be the head of HR and sit in the captain's chair on a St

arship and come up with your own saying from when the warp tribes turn on, you'll probably dig Starship captains. It's a fun sci-fi point salad that's got a great flow and plays much quicker and easier than you would expect, especially from a CGE game. - If you're looking for a serious game with nothing to distract you from the perfect execution of a plan to maximize your points, you're gonna be disappointed as this has plenty of randomness and doesn't take itself seriously. - No. - While it is

a Euro, it's very much on the lighthearted side, if not mechanically light. - Now, you don't have to be a fan of Trek or other popular sci-fi to enjoy Starship Captains either. While it has been a huge fit with my, fit, a hit, not a fit, a huge hit with my Trekky fans, other players not so familiar with the license and my kids who actually don't really know Trek at all. (Yeah, I know, I'm a bad geek parent.) They also dig it. So to me, the license is a bonus and you're gonna get more of the insi

de jokes. But other than that, they literally call the crew red, blue, and yellow. You don't need to know that blue is science. - Our mission here is done. We have successfully imparted knowledge of Starship Captains to the people of Earth. Now, we can only hope that they take that knowledge and use it for the betterment of humanity or at least to make their own fun game nights. - Now, we've seen a number of these based on a license, but not actually licensed board games over the years. We menti

oned some earlier this episode. What's your favorite game that was clearly inspired by a license, but doesn't actually have that license on the box cover? This could be sci-fi like we were talking about tonight, but it could be something else. I would love to hear about it in the comments. - Support our efforts to explore a strange new game, seek out new themes and mechanics, and to boldly review games that have probably been reviewed before by tipping your bellhop over at patreon.com/tabletopbe

llhop. - It's time to talk about ♪ Cats in Space ♪ - As we review, Mlem from Rebel Studio, who we have to thank for sending us this meme inspired dice Chucker. - Mlem Space Agency was designed by Reiner Knizia. A name most board game fans are gonna know pretty well. It features some rather striking artwork, odd for a Knizia game, from Joanna Rzepecka. It was just released earlier this week. How's that for new hotness for you from us? - By our friends at Rebel Studio. This competitive push-your-l

uck DICE game plays two to five players and is better the more people play. Games take about an hour at the highest player counts, getting shorter with fewer players. As a family weight game, this one is good for gamers of all ages, though younger kids may need a bit of help with some of the strategy involved. - In Mlem, players will be sending their team of cats into space. Each round, the commander chooses which of their cats will lead the mission. Each of their cats has a special ability. The

n in turn, each other player will contribute one cat to the crew until the ship is loaded with one cat from each player. The commander then blasts off through a push-your-luck style dice system. Once into space, you'll encounter various moons and planets, and if you go far enough, deep space. At each leg of the journey, players will have the option to disembark their cats from the ship, earning points in the form of cat toys for where they land. Progress is never guaranteed though, and at any po

int, the commander's luck could fail and the ship could crash. Don't worry though, everyone gets their cats back, nine lives and all that. The ship passes to the next player who then gets to be the next commander. - This game does have some striking artwork and fantastic components, including one of the best Neoprene mat style boards we've ever seen first party. Now see all this and more in our Mlem unboxing video on YouTube. - Yeah, that mat really is great, but it's long. So table size can be

a concern here. I don't think it would fit on like your standard fold out card table. Now the rest of the components do stick out as great as well. The dice, well, they look like they're just D6s, and I would have sworn they were D6s until I did the unboxing video, are actually custom dice. The player boards are nice and thick cardboard instead of just card. The scoring tokens have these cool toy artwork on them. The bonus metals look like actual metals, and honestly, my kids are like, "Can we g

et some of these made in real life?" The rule book is solid with lots of white space, tons of examples, and a great summary on the back of the book. It's also short enough that you could probably get away while reading it if someone else was punching the cardboard so you can get the table right away, get to the table right away. Now, speaking of rules, here's an overview of how Mlem plays. You start by rolling out the playing mat and giving each player a player board in the eight hat tokens in t

heir preferred color. The starting player, who's the last player to clean the litter box, gets the ship board and the six custom dice. That's it. That's pretty much it for setup. Each round, the player with the ship board will pick one of their cats to command the ship. Then each other player going around the table will contribute one of their cats to the voyage. Each cat has a different ability that will affect the upcoming voyage. So three of the cats are pretty simple to explain. They just sc

ore double points if they land on the feature that matches the cat type. There's a times two point cat for planets, one for moons, and one for deep space. If the ship blows up, any parachute cats can choose to land at the spot the ship crashed if there's room. The satellite cat lets the voyage start a little further up the launch track on the board. Now, having multiple satellite cats on the same voyage does do nothing. You either have one or you don't. There's a plus or minus one cat that can c

hoose to disembark from the ship at the spot it's on or at the spots just before or after the one landed on. Then there's the one pip cat. That can be used once, as if it was a die with one pip showing. Multiple one pip cats can be on the same voyage, but each one can only be used once. You flip them over to show this. Finally, there's the nasty lose a die cat. When this cat disembarks, the current captain loses one die for the rest of the voyage unless they were already on their last die. Now,

once everyone's boarded their cats onto the ship, the commander rolls the dice and then sorts them by matching sides. Now, these are custom dice. They include one rocket booster symbol, two, two pip sides, and one side each showing one, three, or four pips. You then compare the roll of the dice to what's shown on the current spot the rocket token is on on the mat. Only dice sets that match what is shown on the mat at your location can be used. Other dice should be placed on the mat, and then the

commander picks which remaining dice to use. They can use any number of sets from one roll, but they must use a full set. So if you have three twos and you want to use them, you have to move six. You can't move only two or four. Now, once decided, you move the ship the total number of all chosen dice. Now, any dice used for movement are then lost. We recommend passing them to the next captain to use when it's their turn. That is except for those rocket booster dice. You get to use those again,

and their value ranges from one to three based on the symbol shown on the mat. If none of the dice rolled, including your available bonuses match any of the symbols on the mat at your location, the voyage was a disaster. The cosmic failure marker is moved one on the track at the bottom of the map, and everyone still on the ship gets their cats back, except those with parachute cats who have the option of landing those cats instead of getting them back. Now, after each successful roll of the dice

, everyone starting with the captain gets a chance to disembark from the ship. Each space on the board after the first seven or so connects to either a number of moons or a planet. Each moon has a number on it that represents the point you'll get if you land a cat there, and each moon can only hold one cat. Planets, on the other hand, can hold any number of cats, but don't score until the end of the game where it's awarded on a majority fashion. In addition to moons and planets, the very end of

the board features two spots representing deep space. If your rocket makes it to deep space, the first cat to disembark gets a special reward of seven points, and everyone else earns five. Remember, when collecting points, to take into account if a two times point cat was used. Now note that if the current commander disembarks their cat for the other players, the next cat in line becomes the new commander and the dice should be passed to that player, who now makes all further dice decisions on t

he voyage. Note you don't pass the ship board though, as turn order isn't affected by the order the cats depart. Instead, after each voyage, successful or not, the ship board is then passed clockwise, and that player becomes the new commander and picks which cat they will use first. They will roll all of the dice for the next turn, et cetera, throughout the turn. Now when disembarking their cats, players are also competing to earn medals. There are four of these, and they're awarded to the playe

r who first accomplishes the goal on that medal. There's a medal for having cats on four moons, having cats on four different planets, having three cats on the same planet, and one for having two cats in deep space. The game continues until a player has played all of their cats, or the cosmic failure token reaches the end of its track, which is 11 spaces long. Cats in the future have evolved to have 11 lives instead of nine. Points are then awarded for each planet, and then players total their s

cores. The player with the most points wins. Those are pretty much the full rules for a basic game of Mlem, a very straightforward push-your-luck dice game. Now Rebel Studio has also included three variants in the rule book of each, which adds a bit more strategy and player agency to the game. - So the UFO variant involves placing a UFO meeples token out in deep space, and a set of randomized expedition tokens. At the start of each round, the commander will draw the top token from this stack. Th

is will probably move the UFO closer to the start, and will indicate what dice the captain will have for this voyage, and a bonus they'll get. - Note that captain and commander are being used interchangeably here, because Moe is used to the last game where we accidentally used commander, or captain instead of commander, but there's commander and captain is the same in this game. Now while you may not start with six dice, these bonuses are quite powerful, and include things like being able to kee

p a set of dice after spending them, a free re-roll of any number of dice, or sets of virtual dice that can be spent as if you rolled those numbers during the voyage. - Now the only other change is a new stack of UFO scoring tokens that start at five, and there's five of them they count down to one. If the commander or captain can get their rocket to stop on the same spot of the UFO, they get to claim the top token from the pile. - Now the next variant adds explorations to the game. This is a st

ack of exploration tokens, one for almost every spot on the board. You shuffle these, and then draw five, and place them on the appropriate spots. If a commander lands on one of these, they get a bonus, and then a new token is drawn. Bonuses include gaining one to three points, regaining a die, or warping ahead on the rocket track. - Now the final optional rules are for secret missions. At the start of the game, each player gets a set of four tiles, each of which shows a single moon or one of th

e planets. Everyone chooses three of these to keep, and then will try to land a cat on each of these specific places. At the end of the game, they get bonus points for the number of the missions they completed, either two, five, or 10 points. - Mlem is exactly the kind of game you expect from Knizia, except that it looks fantastic as well. - Yeah, Reiner is known for thinky math-based games that usually don't have much of a theme. The mechanics in Mlem fit that style perfectly. This game is all

about rolling dice, figuring out your odds at each step, and then deciding if you wanna push your luck or not. But remember, this is a family weight game good for kids. The odds aren't hard to figure out. And honestly, you don't really have to figure out them at all if you just wanna chuck the dice and have some fun. - Now, unlike Moe, I'm not a Knizia fan. These games generally don't do much for me. Yet I found this one, while certainly on the lighter side, was really a fun game, especially for

that family vibe. While the theme and certainly the name is silly, the game isn't. It's straightforward and understandable. - Yeah, the dice system here is actually solid and very interesting, which comes about by not using standard D6 dice. The odds aren't always what you'd expect. And then there's the fact that the one side has rockets. And if you roll rockets often, but not always, when you do this, you can keep dice between turns. But the interesting part is the designer here, puts spaces w

here rockets don't work. So it's kind of interesting the way that plays out. And this all leads to a variety in how each actual voyage, each full turn plays out. Like sometimes you don't even get far enough to score any points. And then on the next run, with the exact same odds and dice and things in play, you find yourself in deep space, even though you totally planned on getting off at the first planet. - I think one of the biggest selling points of this game are those dice. If they were just

D6, it would be more straightforward and obvious as to the odds. And it would become almost a simple betting game. - Then the entire system for disembarking and choosing which cats to send each mission is just interesting and fun. And the most fun part of this game to me is that it leads to this weird mix of semi-cooperative play and then take that play like interchangeably. And you never know which it's gonna be at the start of each round. And I find that so fascinating. Like some turns, everyo

ne's all on board. Like, no, we're gonna go as far as we can. We're gonna go to deep space. I'm gonna give you a satellite to make sure we get it there. I'm gonna give you my one cat. I'm gonna give you another one cat. And the last player is like, I'm putting on my two times because we're gonna make it this turn. And then the next time you go around, it's like, no, no, I'm gonna use a takeaway, a die cat. I'm putting a parachute cat because you're not getting anywhere. And everyone's hoping the

ship crashes as soon as possible. But then of course it doesn't crash and all the players are groaning because some lucky roll means the voyage went way further than they thought. - So that's only the base game. - Yeah, so this entire system gets much more interesting once you toss in the optional rules. And I had a feeling the first time I played the game, I'm like, okay, neat, push your luck family away game. But I wanna get to those optional rules because I think that's where the pudding is

gonna be. And it is in my opinion, because everyone you add has more interesting decision points, ways to mitigate bad die rules, and overall just giving the active player, the commander, more agency over what's going to happen. And I greatly appreciate that in this type of game. I think the average hobby gamer is gonna wanna toss those in right away. Perhaps even including all three variants in your first game. When I taught the game to Sean, he'd never played it before, I just threw it all at

him because I figured he's played games before, he's gonna get it. It's just more interesting when you're not just trying to go as far as possible because without the expansions, generally you just wanna go as far as possible and score as high up on the track. With the variants though, you do end up with a slightly longer game. There is more decision points. We've noticed we get further because there's way to mitigate those bad rules and the scores do end up higher. And I think all of those are

good things. That said, I do like that I still got that base game. If I bring it out to a barbershop bar game night and it's 10 at night and most people are heading home and we decide to stay for another round, I don't want those optional rules. - Yeah, the fact that players are no longer simply optimizing for the furthest point when you've got those expansions in really shifts the game strategies as you can no longer guarantee the same rationality as in the base game. And that's one thing that

the Knizia games are kind of focused on. It's that rational, almost economic play. - Now as for theme, honestly, I couldn't care less about Cats in Space. I admit it, I had to look up what Mlem went meant if you were here for our last live stream. I think you got to see us look up what Mlem meant during our after show. Now my kids on the other hand, they saw that and are like, oh my God, oh my God. There's a game called Mlem. It's about Cats in Space. I hadn't seen my kids as excited about a new

game showing up on our porch or on our door than I did for this game. The only thing they're actually disappointed by is the fact Rebel Studio didn't send the blep mini expansion. And yes, I had to look up what blep meant too. Sorry, I'm old. Now I have found out in since that the blep expansion is actually an FLGS only stand alone expansion that you can only get if you pick up the game from local game stores. So, yay for supporting your local store. Now as for tying the theme to the mechanics,

it's Knizia, it's a math-y dice game, but it is tied in through the artwork at least and the multiple puns in the rule book. So that's kind of nice. Like I love that the point tokens are cat toys. Something about that, I'm just like, that's awesome. The point tokens are cat toys. And you're going to upgrade your one ball of yarn for a fish toy for three. And like that fascinates me. I think that's really cool. And I love the look of the planets. Like there's a one planet, a ball of yarn, and ot

hers a scratching post. Mechanically though, this is a Knizia game and there's not a lot of thematic crossover. Like honestly, like at least give us nine different cats. At least there's some tie into the theme there. - No, it's interesting. Even the player boards with their really nice thick cardboard are completely extraneous. They give you a surface to put things on and some fun art with a hint of the player color. But that's it. - Even the rocket ship, you could just line up the cat tokens i

n front of any player. They don't need that rocket, but then you get this cool, nice big rocket that looks pretty. They even did a two-sided. I don't even know if you ever flipped the rocket, but it looks awesome on the other side. I said artwork tie in fantastic. Thematic tie into mechanics, not so much. Overall, I had more fun with Mlem than I expected, especially once tossing in the variant rules. Like honestly, I agreed agreed to review this one for my kids I thought they were gonna dig it a

nd I was right. I've never seen my kids so excited when a board game showed up. They both love it. Both kids love the theme. They easily picked up on the mechanics and the probabilities involved. They agree with me that they liked the expansions. Though the youngest did find once we put in the third expansion, it got to be just too many chips and things to manage. So with her, we keep that one out. They both dig, push in their luck. And they are the type of kids that like everyone leans over the

table when the dice are about to be rolled and they're like, you know, cheering or oh, yeah, we did it. Keep going. The one that shocked me though was Brenda, my mother-in-law who we tend to play with on weekend game nights was particularly taken with this one. Like she actually said, please bring this over next week. And noted something about having just the right amount of thinking required. Like you have to think about what you're doing to play well, but you never have to think too hard. - I

found this game was something I could very much see playing over drinks with friends, especially just that base game, rolling some dice, moving along a track and laughing at what did or didn't happen. And once you're adding those expansions though, it does become more of a thinking game, but not too much. I just might not want to manage all the extra components while I was relaxing. - Yeah, which is honestly what Genevieve's problem with the game was, I think it was, it was trying to remember w

hich planet she wanted to land on and well thinking about how far she wants to move. It was just a little too much. - Now the other thing I do feel I have to call out about this game, and this is a positive thing that I'm still baffled by. This game is ridiculously cheap for what you get. Like the neoprene mat is one of the biggest contributors to the cost of the game, but also the amount of cardboard. Just like I showed it off in the review, I'm like, there's a lot of cardboard in here because

there's tiles and tokens and player boards on a rocket ship and scoring counters. And then the fact it's custom dice. These aren't just standard factory D6s that are in here. These are screen printed dice. And there's even like gold UV spot coating on the box for those who enjoy that kind of thing. - Honestly, the price point almost seems like a mistake, but apparently it's not. - Oh, I have to assume they printed a lot of copies or something. I don't understand. Like this is a $30 US game, that

's it. So if you dig, push your luck games, especially dice driven ones, you're gonna love them. It has that, it feels like an Knizia game. You can tell it was well-designed, it was play tested. The mechanics have probably been rattling around in his brain for 10 years before he put it down. It's an Knizia game without any of the brain burden though. You can play it quick and furious, or you can take your time figuring out the odds and both ways are just as fun. - Fans of the old Sid Saxon can't

stop. We'll likely love this one as well. - Now, "Mlem" was published with families in mind. Rebel Studios has produced a bunch of family-weight games. And I think this fits that family game night genre perfectly. It's super quick to set up, which is something you don't have to worry about with kids and you get playing right away. It's simple enough to teach and play that even younger kids should get it, but it's also engaging enough with enough hard decisions that even the most experienced hob

by gamers can have fun playing it. - Which is especially true if you toss in the advanced rules. - Now, if high randomness, push your luck style games, aren't your jam, you can probably avoid "Mlem" with a clear conscience. These style of dice games aren't for everyone. And even if you play the odds perfectly, that doesn't mean you're gonna come out on top. - This isn't chess or gold or even checkers. You live and die here by dice rules. - Now, of course, there's also those people out there that

just love cats and will want anything cat themed. And for them, all I have to say is, well, we probably had you at cats in space, but sleep well knowing you're also getting a very solid game and not just a cute theme. - Well, our roles were good and we have the right crew, so we've managed to pull off another successful game review. What we would love to see next are some comments letting us know what your favorite push your luck games are. - Now, if you don't care to comment here, feel free to

hit me up on social media where I can be found everywhere as TabletopBellhop, one word. You can send me an email to moe at tabletopbellhop.com. - And now in the Bellhops tabletop, we look back at the games we played since last episode. - All right, I'm gonna start off with the new to me game. This is off the pile of obligation and pile of shame. That is "My City" from KOSMOS Games. This is another Reiner Knizia game, which is very different from Mlem we just reviewed. And I used it as a great e

xample to the kids of how the same designer can put out two very different games. This is a 24-part legacy game that we've decided to play with the kids. So it's Deanna, Gwen, Jen, and myself. this was one, we had to sit down and have a conversation with the kids. Like, are you going to be willing to play the same game 24 times? And sat down, and I was seriously concerned about my youngest daughter who does have some learning disabilities and issues with focus. But they wanted to, they were in.

So we'll see if they stick through it. - Well, yeah, I mean, this is a big step. Also, I mean, convincing anyone to play a game 24 times can be a stretch these days. And your kids, they're very much used to living in a family with a board game reviewer. So if they play something for more than a month, that's pretty impressive. A month of games on weekends is about what most they're going to see, except for the ones that they fall in love with and bring to school. - Yeah, exactly. Now, one thing

that did sell me is that really it's kind of eight games. It's eight game sessions, more so than 24 games, because each game is surprisingly short and they expect you to play through one season of the game per sitting. So three individual games in one setting completes a chapter. So once I realized it's eight games, or eight game nights, eight times sitting down to play games versus 24 times sitting down, it seemed a lot more manageable. - Absolutely, although I would say that that might actuall

y be more of a killer for some people who would rather play a bunch of games in one night rather than the same game three times in a row at once. Again, that depends on who's all involved. But that could actually be a deal breaker for some people, I think. - Well, really, you're looking at like 15 minute to half hour games. So you're going to get three games in the time you'd normally get in one game. So I think you'd still have room for those multiple game nights. - Though, as you mentioned in

the chat, she does wonder if the individual games do get longer eventually. - Now, that is highly possible, and I can't answer that question. Because all we've done so far is played the first, I can't remember if they're called years, seasons, or chapters, whatever, we played the first chapter. So for those who don't know the game, this is a bingo game, right? It's one of those same input, different output. Everyone is going to get the same input, which is place this specific poly-omino building

onto a map that shows an overland area. Everyone starts with the same board, and every round of buildings flip, then everyone has to place it. Now, your first building has to go next to the river, which kind of runs down the middle of the board, and then each subsequent one has to be touching an existing building, and that's basically the core mechanics of my city. - So you're gonna start, but even with the river coming down the middle, you're still not necessarily gonna be starting in the same

place as any other player, which means the variation starts right from point one, even if you aren't allowed to use the entire board for placing that piece. - Yeah, and honestly, it was interesting, because after the first game, no one placed the same, but I think it was the third game. Three of us placed our first building in the exact same spot, so it's gonna happen sometime. Now, when you first start the game, again, don't worry, no spoilers here. You are just trying to cover as much of the

map as you can. You wanna cover up rocks, but leave trees exposed. At the end of the game, once you've gone through the entire deck or everyone's decided, "I've given up, I'm done. "I don't wanna touch my map anymore," you calculate your points. The winner's gonna mark dots on their individual board. Anyone who's played Charterstone's gonna be used to this, where you kind of fill out your little board at the end. The person in first gets two dots, the person in second gets one. That's gonna be y

our overall pain-pain score at the end. You're gonna look at how many dots people have filled in. And I gotta say, there's a lot of room for dots, so that could be interesting. Then you play stickers. Now, interestingly, as a catch-up mechanic, the victor is punished. At this point in the game, you're going to put more rocks on your board. The person in second just gets off free. They get their point, they go to the next game, no changes. Other players, though, if you're playing with three or fo

ur, get a bonus. In this case, get to place new trees. And again, trees good, rocks bad. - Is there any way to get your rocks off on the board or? - Wording, phrasing. I need the phrasing meme there. You cannot get the rocks off of the board. (laughs) Now I'm broken. (laughs) - All right. - So with those rules, by the end of the second round, we've scored twice, two different people have won. The rankings have been different. We had unique boards, like completely unique. Now, no matter what, it'

s different because our boards are all unique. The De had more rocks than anyone else. I had a tree, one of the other kids had a tree, and one of the other kids, their boards are still like the starting board. But like by the end of the second game, the whole bingo thing that I love where, we all have the same input, we technically could all do the same thing. No, it's gone out the window from turn one for every game and the rest of the campaign. Now I don't want to say much more, even though I

don't think if I told people what's in chapter one would really spoil anything because everyone starts at chapter one. But I will say that each section added some new scoring rules, and the final section added a new feature. And that was something that got added to everyone's map and featured a new way to score. - So you're not, it's not like anyone's getting buried if you've made a couple of mistakes. - No. - They're keeping it fair, but there are still winners and losers. - But again, even if

you win, you get two points. If you come in second, you get one, and if you lose, you get none. So the overall score for the game, your spreads at most, two points. But your boards are evolving, and that person who's in the lead is, I'm gonna assume every chapter probably keep putting bad things on their board, and the people who do badly get to put good things, which should balance everything out. Seems to be working really well. Now what I thought was most fascinating is that the progression w

as surprisingly neat, since basically you are playing the exact same game with the exact same poly-ominoes with the same deck of cards on the same map over and over. But it was cool to see how just a minor little rule change made that feel completely fresh from game one to game two. And then when you get to game three, going, "Oh, now I have this other thing to worry about," which totally changes all the plans, and anything I figured out in game one about how buildings fit together, didn't matte

r once I had to worry about other aspects of those buildings. I am really looking forward to chapter two. I don't know when we're gonna get to play again. The envelope says churches. My guess is we're gonna have some new tiles, but I have no idea. - Yeah, and it's interesting. This seems to, at least, again, you've barely started, but at this point, it is still less asymmetric than Charterstone. Charterstone changed things a lot, and there were some big, big differences in how things went depend

ing on how you played and what choices you made. Whereas this, while everyone is different and everything is very different, you're not playing vastly different games to that level. - No, you're still trying to cover up most of your board. You still want trees to show. You still wanna cover up the rocks. You still don't want any empty spots on your board by the end. There's a few other things you now have to consider as well. So who knows? I have heard a lot of people complain that the game was

too simple at the beginning, but oh my God, if you finish it, it's amazing. So I'm looking forward to that. I will say, I don't find the game too simple now. It's enjoyable poly-omino game. Like it's not overly complicated. There's not too much to think about. It's nice and quick. It's fun to see what people are doing different than you. Like I gotta say, I have great joy if I play first and I'm done and I kind of look around and see what everyone else is doing. And I'm like, oh wow, yeah, okay.

That fence interesting. And pretty quickly you realize that, oh, the deck is each of the poly-ominos, which I should have known right from the beginning, but obviously it is. And like that first game, you're just putting stuff here and there, right? By the third game though, you're like, I have these tiles left. I have to make sure I leave room for them, right? It just, fascinating game, right? From the start, in my opinion. - So I do wonder if the difference between playing with your family an

d playing with your, you know, regular board game group might affect how easy that feels at the beginning. - That's true. That's true. I only have one copy of the game. So I won't be able to talk about it as playing with a bunch of highly competitive Euro gamers. It felt like this. You're not going to get that from me this time. So up next, I co-hosted a Barbershop Bar game night. Not a big crowd, but at peak time, we had four tables of games going, which is pretty good. Started off with me sitt

ing down and teaching a game of The Artemis Project. We just reviewed that last week. I packed satellites and commanders. I had hoped to get that to the table, but while people were sorting out the boards, I decided, no, you know what? We'll put that aside because there were two totally new players to the game. I got that one started, then went off to teach a three player game of Starship captains, which we just reviewed, which honestly went over way better than I expected. And this was somethin

g that actually upped my opinion of the game and its design and how well it's done. Because one of the players who sat down, let me set up the game, let me start teaching the game and then went, wait a minute, this isn't cooperative? And I'm like, no, it's not cooperative. It's competitive. Well, I don't play competitive games. And I'm like, excuse me? He's like, no, no, I don't like competitive games. People take them far too seriously. I said, well, okay, well, the interactions in this, you're

never directly going to attack another player. You're never gonna do anything negative to another player. The only way you can really do anything is you might take a card they want or move to a spot they were hoping to go to, but there'll be plenty of other options. So like, all right, fine, I'll try it. And they played and they ended up winning. So that was interesting. And I explained the whole thing where, the game's not as limiting as it looks. There's always other variable options if you d

on't get your first choice. And this person who normally wouldn't even play a competitive game won. And the other player who played loved it so much, they wrote me two days later to thank them for teaching the game and how much they liked it. So. - Yeah, no, again, it's not quite multiplayer solitaire. - No, it's not. - But it's close enough that again, it's got that Star Trek, everyone's happy feeling, but there are pirates out there that you're occasionally feeding into food processors. - Yes.

Yet again, this game, there was a thing you could do with pirates. And I was just like, what are you doing with these pirates? - Yeah. - I had a tech that let me trade in a pirate to reduce damage by one. And I'm like, what are you doing with these pirates? - Scraping the barnacles off with the pirate crew. - All I could think of is maybe the pirate represents you captured their ship and not an actual pirate, but that wasn't clear from the rule book. And I was like, okay, maybe it's like platin

g, I'm putting on my ship from the pirate ship. Because well, of course we were talking about strapping people to the outside of our ships as armor, which I think they might've had the Reavers do and start in that firefly game. - No. - Anyway, other games I saw played, multiple rounds of "Eight Minute Empire," Camel Up, Fort, there were more. Dutch Mayhem, I think. When we were getting near the end of the event, because people tend to filter out, once it gets to like nine o'clock, people tend to

finish their games and they head home. I was just Deanna Gwen and I, who happened to be not playing or teaching anything. So I borrowed out our review copy of "Cartographer's Heroes." This is the first review game we've ever gotten from ThunderWorks Games. So it'll be nice to work with them. And we fumbled through a learning game. And it was a learning game, it was extreme, and we fumbled a lot. We tumbled, we fell down the hill. The play and teach was rough. And slightly, I can blame it on a l

ess than intuitive rule book, and I think that's being a little polite. And I don't even know how they'd fix it. Just having read so many great rule books recently, "Mlem", "Starship Captains" being great examples of very clear, everything's where I expected to find it. Lots of examples to this little tiny book with a bunch of words that thought they were teaching me how to play. It was a little rough. - This is actually one thing that we don't do. And it might actually be an interesting thing t

o try. So I don't normally see the rule books, other than when you unbox the game. You teach games, that's what you do. And we are generally happy to let you do that. But it would be interesting to see, especially on games that I haven't played yet, for me to crack open the rule book, it's pretty rare that we can't find a copy of a PDF rule book these days. Although we have noted that there are some-- - Making sure it's the most up to date. - Some are not always up to date, yes. But for me to be

able to read the rule book and come and sit down and for it to make sense, quickly and easily, without maybe even a full teach, depending on the rule book. But to have that experience of, oh, I read the rule book and I have no idea what I'm getting into with this game. Or I read the rule book and I could set up and play this game without ever having opened the box. - Right. Oh, it's not a bad idea. The one I keep thinking, I keep forgetting when it happens, when we finish up a game night, I'm t

empted to like, here, take the rule book home with you and read it and see what we did to extreme. Cause I've already read it twice, maybe I missed something. Now, as for the game, cartographers seem solid. I have not played this as technically like a second edition or revised version of cartographers. It's cartographers heroes. Once we had everything figured out, and I gotta say that I'm glad it was just De, Gwen and I, cause I'm glad we did that because now next time, I could definitely better

explain it, especially answering certain questions about how you use carts. Now, for anyone who doesn't know cartographers heroes, this is a flipping right where you're building a fantasy kingdom, flip over a card, then everyone draws that feature somewhere on their own personal map. And I realize as describing it, just how similar to my city it is really. For most cards, you're either gonna pick which shape to draw or which terrain type to put in that shape. And sometimes you get to decide bot

h. While flipping up these cards, there's also a chance other things will happen. Now there are four randomized starting cards and you're gonna score two per round. So there's like A,B,C,D cards, you're gonna score A and B and then B and C and then C and D and then D and A. So it works out that all of the different scoring options happen twice. And that took a bit to get our head around that. I wait, I'm still trying to build forests when I'm never scoring them again. For example, we had one tha

t was literally the longest column of forest on your map. Another one was called something like Gnomish village and you got rewarded for two by two squares of town terrain. - Okay, so and each of those would score twice - Right. - Around things, but then - But if it had scored twice, you could ignore it. - Dwarven civilizations, I think it was. And that was like, you had to have a full row or column that had a mountain in it. And then the other one had to do with farms being near water. I can't

remember. Now there's a deck of these two and we just used like the starting recommended starting scoring things. So there is that. - Right. - Now, I think that something's eggman said in the chats making me second guess this, I might be off on this. From what I understand, cartographers heroes is an update to cartographers and added heroes and monster cards. Now, I don't know if that I might be off on that but what happens is you're gonna shuffle in one hero and one monster in the deck during t

he first season. And then the second season you're gonna add one more and one more. And the interesting part is if they come out, they stay out. Well, in our game, no monsters came up until winter. And so winter was rough for us with all kinds of monster attacks. And what's neat is when a monster comes up you actually pass your sheet to one of your opponents and it shows in the cart, if you go left or right who then draws the monster on your map. And I'm like, that's just a neat mechanic. And th

en heroes on the other hand, have like they take up, you draw a sword on your map but then have like an attack pattern. And if those hit monsters, they kill the monsters and they defend spaces from people drawing monster. It's neat. This isn't meant to be anything close to a real teach. But I gotta say the heroes and monsters definitely added an interesting aspect to the game. They really gave it that fantasy feel even though really you're drawing abstract things on a grid. - So "Cartographer He

roes" is the sequel to "Cartographers" but you can actually be played on its own or mix in components from the original game for even more. And there are a number of expansions for the originals. So that really kind of gives you a huge amount of re-playability for this game. - It does, it does. So yeah, Eggman say monsters were in the original. Maybe the heroes weren't. Like maybe there was no way to kill monsters in the original. I don't know. I didn't play the original, sorry. Yeah, fortunatel

y, brave heroes have risen to the defense of Nalos. So it really does seem like heroes are it's-- - But there were monsters. And like the other thing I know is on all of my maps there's little ruined squares. Those do nothing in this version of the game. They're only there if you're playing with the original rules, which I don't know. I could look them up. So anyway, it was fun. It is for a flip and right extremely thinky, holy long-term strategy. You see those scoring cards from the beginning g

ame. It's open information. And you know in fall, you're gonna score that D card. And in winter, you're also gonna score that D card. So you've got two seasons to build up to score that. But if you're doing that, you're probably ignoring scoring what's scoring this turn. Surprisingly thinky for a flip and write. With the monster thing, not as much multiplayer solitaire as I expected. And honestly, it's not even as much a bingo game even though you're flipping up the same card because there's mul

tiple options of what to draw on each card. So you're gonna like this one, I think. The only complaint I have is I already just wanna go by colored pencils, cheapest I can find at the dollar store and put in multiple greens for the forest, browns for the cities, because drawing the little symbols is just annoying. - Crayons are probably even cheaper actually. - Yeah, crayons, whatever, just something. And of course I played with my daughter who's the artist who had to make everything look pretty

. At least she tended to do that between turns. - Yeah, that's the key. You don't necessarily wanna wait for the artist during your turn. - But yes, she had the most beautiful map by the end of the thing. - And we do some great photographers we could connect her up with if she wants to get into that. I mean, we've got connections there. - Yes, there we go. And honestly, I'm gonna say the Sean thing and I don't usually say it, it made me feel it might make a really good digital game where you can

just click, click, click, rotate, rotate, click, probably work pretty good and they can make it, oh man, they can make it look awesome if they did a steam full on, like they did with "Terraforming Mars" for no reason with little animated things. - Well, all we need to get is a branded version from some of the different cartographers we know. I mean, think about getting your own custom version with maps by filling the blank. - There you go. All right, we're gonna be here all night if I don't kee

p going. So Sunday, mug cubs, social, out at Bandit Ghost Brewery, managed to fit it into the schedule, but none of our usual stops. I usually try to make that a full day deal where we stop at coffee shops and bakeries. Now we just went out to Kingsville, got our free round of beers, had some really good, they call them tatchos, which were tater tot pulled pork nachos. And finally, again, off the pile of obligation and shame, another game new to me, "Zensu." - Which you guys have been looking fo

rward to for a while. - Every abstract strategy game likes to claim, simple to learn, difficult to master. "Zensu" had the balls to put it on the box. And honestly, they deserve it. I don't think I have ever found a game that is more simple, but oh my God, is it hard to win. This is a six by nine grid at opposite ends, seats each of the players' pieces. One sets red, one's green, not that really matters. You have two rows of pieces that go in the back two columns. The front row of the pieces are

all the same, and they give you the following move options. Move forward one, move left four, move right two, or back three. The back row are also the same pieces, but different set. These ones are move forward two, move left one, move back four, and move right three. Now this is printed on every single tile, so you don't have to remember that. It's all right there, right in front of your face, staring at you when you mess it up. Players take turns, moving. Move one of your pieces, what it says

on the tile. Trying to get one, just one, you don't have to do any more, to reach the opponent's edge of the board, the opposite side. When moving, you can jump over pieces, yours or opponent's. You can land on opponent's pieces, but not your own. Any pieces landed on are captured, and any of your opponent's pieces you jumped are captured. That's it, I just taught you how to play Zensu. Sit down and try to beat me at it with having five games under my belt, and you're gonna be lost. That's what

this game is. - Yeah, this is checkers to the next level. I mean, again, it's Duke needs checkers almost. Again, you've got perfect knowledge. Everything is right there in front of you, so you're missing that part of Duke, but the fact that these pieces, two different pieces move in two different ways, and they are moving in different, each direction is that very different count of movement. Makes for a really interesting, and I wanna say asymmetric, but it's not really asymmetric. - No, it's n

ot. - It's symmetrical. - There's only two pieces in the entire game. - But the pieces move in this interesting way because the difference in moving left and moving right and forward and back, and it really allows for a wild combination. I'm sure there are some math people who are just digging into the possibilities in this game and loving it. - Yeah, and it's so, like, there's so much you have to think about because pieces move so many different ways. Like, I constantly moved parts into spots t

hat I thought were perfectly safe. Just to have Dee kinda look at me funny for a bit, kinda second-guess herself, like, oh, I'm almost to be playing in a trap, then go, okay, and I'm like, oh, I kept forgetting the jumping rule. Like, in this game, a perfect move is to use that move four left and take out three of your opponent's pieces at once because they did something dumb, right? Like, you just don't get that move. That move's not in chess or checkers, and what this game actually looks the m

ost like is shogi, which is the Japanese version of chess, and the pieces even look like shogi pieces, which the best I've ever done is I tried to play shogi on board Game Arena and just lost so badly against easy AI, I gave up. Now, even once I started to remember, especially the jumping rule, the jumping rule, like, checkers, you jump, but you can also land. I'm just, in my head, I wanna do the can move four, can move two, can move three, this spot is safe, and then I totally forget that you c

an jump over that space and take me. Once I started to remember this, it got better, like once it started to happen, but even then, there's so many ways each different piece can move, and you'd be able to jump your own pieces, and even Deanna, who totally got the jumping over thing and right from the start, was completely baffled the first time I jumped backwards over one of her pieces and captured it, and she had this WTF look and was like, what'd you just do? And I'm like, the pieces move back

wards. She's like, oh my God, I totally, it's right on the piece, they're in your face. I'll admit, I was getting frustrated with myself. I wasn't angry at De for winning, I wasn't anything about that. It was just, I was so frustrated because it's in your face, it's right there, it's on the tile. - But there are so many pieces right there in your face that you have to consider all the different directions and different distances in every direction for two different sets of pieces that, again, th

e combinations, combinatoric masterpiece. - Yeah, and I don't get it. No one is talking about this game. Why is everyone talking about Shobu and boop. when there's Zensu? Not that I'm saying this is necessarily better than those two, but it's on par with them at least. For perfect information, this and Shobu are up there. - And it's not new either, it's 2021. - No. - So I think that's-- - I don't know. - 2021 is probably its problem. This probably was a pandemic-buried game. - And Derek. Anyway,

fascinating, chess-like game. De is, I gotta play with Gwen. We've gotta play, that's the next thing. So I have a feeling once Gwen plays this, my game's gonna be missing because she'll have it in her backpack to bring with her to school. And she's a member of the chess club and I totally expect her to go to chess club and go, "If you like chess, check this out." I personally lost five times in a row and still wanna play it again. And so it must be doing something right for me to still want to

play it. And it's one of those games, I don't sit and, okay, here's an example. We're sitting there, we're playing at the table and I have my mood planned, but I need the washroom. I go to the washroom and in the washroom, I'm doing the flipping Queens Gambit thing in my head, going, "Well, if I jump here and if I jump here and I come back from the washroom and play this perfect move." Like I literally sitting on the can thinking about my next move while not at the table. All right, enough about

Shobu. We don't have to review it now. We just praised it so much that we don't have to say anything else outside media should be happy with our coverage. Now we'll do a full review at some point. Next Monday night, Tron came over. We played some games together. De and Gwen, me and Sean played Mlem, which mainly I wanted Sean to try it before we reviewed it. Cause even he described the way you described this game, it sounds like it makes sense, but you don't really get it until you see it. And

you basically shared your thoughts on Mlem during the review. - Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it was fun. And I'm not, the one reason I wanted to play it is because I'm not a Knizia fan his games could come or go, I've hated some. I've got no real opinion about others. It's just not really my kind of math, math the board game. Whereas this one, because of that family level, I think it really, family gaming level brought it to that step where I'm like, "Oh yeah, no, I can really kind of enjoy thi

s and see it as a fun, throwaway game without having to get into the math heavily and worry about that." - Yeah, I think you were in there with the rest of us cheering people on or cursing them or like, "It's that hole when you send your cat thing, right? Like, oh, is this gonna be a big cooperative one where we're gonna go as far as possible? Or is this gonna be a, screw you, you're not going anywhere?" I'm still fascinated by that. That to me is the most fun part of that game. Next up, since y

ou were here and Mlem plays pretty quick, we also broke out Wreck Raiders. Now I kind of gave an overview of this one last week. That's the treasure diving game in Kids Tables board games that my family has really been enjoying. Now it was Gwen's first game as well as yours and Gwen really liked it. - Yeah, no, Wreck Raiders was interesting. It was about what I expected. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it at all. The theme, I think, is part of what sort of like, "Yeah, I couldn't really care

less about this theme." The little on the cutesy side, but I think your daughters enjoy it specifically because of the level of cutesy there. - Yeah. - The drop table is interesting. It's nice to see a drop table, although as we discovered, don't drop too hard. - Yeah, don't literally just drop. - Yeah, bouncing board blocks. - Bouncing board blocks. - You know, there's a bunch of ways to score, but it's not a huge point salad. You're really only scoring three things. So you can focus, although

what you focus on certainly does matter. So it's interesting. I think the player interaction on the board is great. And I think for Kids Table board games, it really achieves what they're going for in their space. It's not a space that I'm particularly involved with right now, but had I, you know, a couple of younger kids and, you know, we were sitting around playing family board games all the time, I would probably be looking into more of what they offer because of it. - I'm actually a little

surprised. I thought you enjoyed it more than that. That night, it seemed like you were getting really into it. - I mean, it was fun. I just, it was, you know, I could take it or leave it. It was enjoyable. Again, not negative in any way, just not something I'm going to be raving about or eager to jump in on again. - Oh, that's fair. Personally, I think we're pretty much ready for review at this point. So I'll come up with final thoughts in the next couple of weeks. But to me, it's the kind of g

ame I'm going to keep because I host public play events. I doubt it's one I'm going to break out on a regular game night here, on a birthday, on a new, well, maybe New Year's Eve because the light kids thing does go well with about the beverages. But I think for me, it's going to be a public play game, but I'll also keep it because my kids really like it. - Yeah, no, I didn't, Dee says, Dee's right in the shot. I would rave about it to parents. Absolutely. Again, this isn't marketed for me. So t

he fact that I'm not loving it isn't a shock, but I absolutely see why this should be in family collections, 100%. - Yes. All right, the last one I am going to bring up is that Asmodee has relaunched the Dominion app. I'm not sure how much of this is relaunched, what's new, what's not, but it's now available on all platforms, iOS, Android, Mac, and Steam, and includes cross-platform play. There's a big push right now for people to check it out who have never seen it before. And I went and did th

at and found out I already owned it, which was interesting. So I don't know if it was on Steam and got pulled or came back or whatever. It doesn't actually matter. - My understanding is the big new thing or things are the iOS version, which I believe is actually new. I believe the Android and Steam have already existed. The cross-platform play, but also starting, I think tomorrow possibly, or maybe the fifth, they're gonna be doing some bundling and discounting of the expansions. So if you wanna

delve into Dominion deeply, far more than just the base play, which most people tire of Dominion, the base game pretty quickly. There's a reason why there are so many expansions of it. It can be overwhelming because there are so many expansions, even though individually they're not that pricey. There are a lot of them. So they're gonna start bundling those and giving some discounts in the coming week or weeks. - All right. Now what people should know is the early access version on Steam and all

devices right now is free. So that just gives you the base game card. So we're checking out if you have enjoyed Dominion. One of the things I do like though is even with that, they do this thing called daily Dominion mode. And that gives you a set of cards featuring all the sets, whether you bought the apps or not. You don't need to own the expansions to play this. And it's this whole global thing that has to do with the cross-platform play, where everyone that plays Dominion that day on daily

Dominion mode plays with the same set of cards. And then you get ranked across the world, which I gotta say is a cool way to at least get to play the game with some new cards without having to pay. So I do recommend checking that out. My only complaint, the interface is good. It's really well done for that style of game. But if you are used to the Star Realms app, you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna sell cards you wanted to buy. It is a completely different interface than Star Realms. And i

t drove me bonkers until I got used to it. That and the AI is either exceptionally good, or I am absolutely terrible at Dominion because like even on the easy AI, I'm barely winning. And if I go to the normal AI, I'm just crushed by like 50 points every game. - Now maybe they may have updated the AI. I don't know. I've had this game in my Steam account for ages. And I wasn't that bad against the AI. But again, it's been a while since I've played it. I haven't actually played it since they made t

his new release, new notification and send out the PR. So maybe things have changed. I need to pull it up again. - Yeah, so this isn't one. We're doing a full review. This is it. This is all you get. I just figured we'd spend some time talking about it. They told me they gave me a free code for the game, but then it was free anyway, which I thought was a little weird, but whatever. I'm like, eh, we checked it out. If you like Dominion, it's a solid way to play Dominion. And it seems like you'll

be able to get a expansion sheet. I gotta say as someone who doesn't own any of the expansions, suddenly collecting peasants had me completely baffled. That is the one problem with playing on that daily Dominion mode. There's no way to open the rule book in another window. Well, I guess on your phone, you open another tab and go Google it. But there was nothing in the app to tell me what the heck these peasants I was collecting in the one game were for. All right, wrapping things up. Let's see i

f we get done before 11. As for next week, we are taking a week off from recording we mentioned earlier. It's worth mentioning again. Sean's out of town from work. Also means we're not gonna get together for any gaming. Deanna and I are gonna spend some time out of town ourselves for a much needed break first of the year and really first since November, well, before November, like since before holiday season. So I expect some more Zensu for sure. Maybe some cartographers and probably some Star W

ars deck building game, maybe more. As for work wise, I am hoping to use the time where I'm not working on things like show notes and things like that for the podcast to get out some written reviews that I wanna try to catch up on. Right now, the podcast that you're listening now is ahead of everything else as far as content. So we're talking about stuff on the show, but it's not ending up on the blog or anything or on YouTube until a couple of weeks after. So if you're listening, you're getting

the cutting edge version or if you're here live, so you do have that bonus. Before we start locking things down, let's take a moment to thank a selection of our Tabletop Bellhop Patreon patrons. Their support helps keep this show going. - Carlos, thank you, Tycho. - Valentine Pasche, thank you. - Diane Tousignant, thanks Ma. - Chris Leary, thank you, Chris. - Brian Shein, haven't seen you in the Discord. I hope everything's all good. You had nothing bad happening. Hopefully you're just so busy

war-gaming. You haven't had time to check in. Thank you, Brian. (bell dings) - Well, that was the double bell. That means our ship's coming to an end and we're gonna have to drop that portcullis. Oh, wait, no, sci-fi episode. We're going to have to beam everyone out. - Even if we're not always here live, you can find us at tabletopbellhop.com, as well as all over the web as Tabletop Bellhop, one word, and on your podcatcher of choice as the Tabletop Bellhop gaming podcast. - Now, I know we're ab

out to take some time off, but that's just in regards to podcast recording. There's still lots to get done and stuff going on behind the scenes, and you know what would make for an awesome incentive to both of us? Coffee. Keep us caffeinated and motivated by buying us a brew through ko-fi.com/tabletopbellhop, always one word. - Well, that's all for us tonight. Another way you can show your support is by giving us a thumbs up, a like, leaving a comment, or better yet, tell your fellow friends an

d gamers about our show. For the Tabletop Bellhop gaming podcast, I'm Sean. - And I'm Moe. - Thank you. - And, game on.