Episode 89 transcript

intro music

Introductions

Neilan: Hello everyone and welcome to episode number 89 of the Board Game Barrage podcast. I am your host Neilan and with me as always are my co-hosts Mark and Kellen. Say hello.

Mark: Hey.

Kellen: Hello. 89, that's a good year. (Mark: Wait, your birth year?) That is the year of my birth.

Neilan: Oh wow. And the world has never been the same. Sorry, that wasn't meant to be as sarcastic as it came across!

Kellen: Your life would never have been the same Neilan. (Neilan: Oh wow.) But also I wanted to give a shout out to someone on Instagram who messaged us and said that they finally realized that the tanks - the red, green and orange tanks that we were referring to - were not tank tops, but in fact artillery tanks. But now I'm thinking about matching tank tops.

Neilan: I like the idea that we exclusively wear tank tops, when we record.

Mark: SHUX, the SHUX report in tank tops.

Neialn:. Ooh, yeah!

Kellen: Can you imagine just sitting up there on the panel with just a tank top on that's bright green?

Neilan That's perfect.

Mark: It would be traumatic to all the people in person there.

Neilan: Today on the episode, we're going to be talking about classification. This is in light of the changes that BoardGameGeek has been making to the site regarding how they classify and sort mechanisms for board games. We're going to be talking about why we need to classify board games, whether we think it's something important. And what games maybe straddle the linse of the system. All that's going to be coming up later in the episode.
Before we carry on, I want to give a brief call out to our Patreon. This is a good way to support the show. It's one of the best ways you can support us in fact. We use it just to cover the costs of recording equipment, that sort of thing. You can find that at www.boardgamebarrage.com/patreon or patreon.com/boardgamebarrage and one of the benefits available, at one of the tiers on Patreon, is a bonus episode. So we do these once a month.

Mark: We're about to do it today.

Neilan: Yeah, we're going to release one very shortly, the one for September, and we will talk more about board games, we also talked about other stuff we're interested in; video games, podcasts, TV shows we've been watching.

Mark: We get deep. Deep and personal.

Neilan: It's a little bit more off the cuff, a little bit looser.

Mark: I'm wearing a multi-cuffed suit right now, in preparation.

Neilan: That's what the tank tops come off!

Mark: That's right. The tank tops come off and the cuffs come on.

Kellen: It's uncensored. I think that's the biggest draw Neilan, you buried the lead there.

Mark: It saves me 45 minutes of editing time because I don't have to worry about censoring Kellen's ... (Kellen: Kalen Allen.) ... diatribe.

Neilan: So please check this out, it's a huge boon for us. It's a nice way to show you support.

What We've Been Playing

Neilan: Let's carry on with the games that we've been playing. Mark, what you got for us, way back in 2018, on my gencon, most anticipated list. There was a little, there are actually two bird related games. I can't remember one of them. Oh, no. Speaka me know which I've never played, but the other one was peep Motz, and I've been searching for this game far and wide. I could never get my hands on it and no opportunities to buy it. Yeah, so that's a joke for anybody who's willing to show but I finally have had it. I could have had in common, I could have had a giant coffee table.

Box. But instead, I've traded a pack of Games game for it, which is fantastic Scrooge McDuck, but that we've played it, we've all played this actually. I've played it about seven or eight times in the last month or so, this is peat moss in case I haven't said it already. So this is a card game. I like to describe it as a less intense version of Arboretum. What you're doing in this game is you've got a hand of bird cards to six different suits, six different types of birds. Each suit goes from 1 to 6 with two copies of each card. So there are like two like Sparrow cards. There are value 3 for example, into Sparrow Cards value for from 1, to 6 for each of the six types of birds. And what you're doing it on your own is you're playing a bird to one of two or three, depending on the player count columns, basically. And if the birds you've placed in a column exceed, the lead bird, there is a lead bird.

Each column, then you take the lead bird and you score it and you also get some other points. You score in one of three ways. You score up with the seed cards that you've acquired in placing the birds and exceeding, the value of the lead bird you score by having these mating pair. So, the mating pairs are having both of any suit of bird of the same numbers represent. For example, there are, as I mentioned, there are two Sparrow cards that are value to if you can acquire both of them into your scoring, that is Five Points, so you're hunting for mating pairs, if you can get them. Which is difficult to acquire. And the final thing is for each of the six suits recent six types of birds. If you have the most birds or are tied for the most birds, then you score some value based on the numerical value of those cards. So for example, for blackbirds, if I have 5 Blackbird cards and Milla has five Blackbird cards him and I will both score for the values of our black bird Birds. If Kalin had for Blackbird cards, all those Cards except for mating pairs would not score at all. So in that way it's got that Arboretum thing of trying to at the end of the game have the most representation in a suit in order to score for it and that a little bit of the Cutthroat nature where if you're a little bit off in that respect you score nothing. It's a little nicer than Arboretum though because two ways to score again with the mating pair is that is not contingent on you leading as soon after the game. I really really like this game. It scratches are Arboretum a tree.

Being as brutal or as Cutthroat you feel a little more relaxed. What did you guys think of people? Mots, I think. Broadly speaking, there are two main differences between how we classify Arboretum and Pete mats. I'll reach my I like a whole lot. Like I said, Arboretum is a lot. Meaner, it also feels a lot more interactive in general just because of that meanness. But also to some extent the way that the playing of cards Works in people mites felt a little bit more complex and It weighs like there's a lot more consideration is like three distinct piles. There are two different ways you can play at. You got to be trying to beat the bird or sort of just be fall in line behind the bird. And then each of those has numerical components as to what you're allowed to do. After you do that. It feels like, there's a lot more to think about before you take an action that is traded off an arboretum with a spatial puzzle, which has a bunch of sort of fiddly rules to it, but in some ways felt a little bit more straightforward. Yep. I don't think I liked

Either of those trade-offs for me, the interaction in the meanest of Arboretum mixed with the relative Simplicity of how you play kind of wins out for me. Yeah, I was still would say for sure Arboretum is my favorite of the two games, but those are interested in criticisms but by virtue of that as well, piedmont's is a friendlier game. So it does feel like something that would be more accessible and you know, perhaps go down easier with certain groups then operate them. Does? Yeah. Yeah. Peep mots is spelled pcie. D planet, Mars is spelled p. Damn it p peep. Oh no, dang it. I brush up on your Trident will spell later. Okay, what do you think of people months, is what I'm trying to get us thinking the whole time was it? If someone wanted to Google this they wouldn't know because you just step King peep mods p and he's saying it over here in a stupid accent people.

It's is good. I think I agree with Nealon in the sense that it was very mechanical. Ultimately, it is. Do you want to beat the bird and a pile or do you want to not beat the bird? And both of those have cascading effects that go in different directions but it's not like self-evident or it's not really straightforward. What happens when you do those things. There was a lot of the game where I was just asking you. Okay, if I do this, what happened? Like because it's you do a math equation, then you do another math. And then you check this pile. But with that said, for a small box card game. Yeah, it offered a lot of decisions, I enjoyed playing it. And at this point, I would not turn down a game. I actually don't personally like Arboretum from a spatial puzzle perspective. So I probably prefer piedmont's at first blush, but I think I love these type of card game and so in that vein, you know, I'd be happy to play more happy to try to figure out how to beat you, you know.

You've talked a little bit about the problems or perhaps perceived problems of what happens when I go deep into black and then one other player also goes into black, but then Dan is alone, collecting yellow birds and he can get the majority of that color, just by virtue of no one challenging him. And there are games that do a good job of sort of mitigating that for me, but sometimes it feels like you, maybe halfway through the game in a position or like, well, multiple other players. Chose to go against the two suits that I went into. So, Now, I'm at a severe disadvantage going into the last half of the game which is funny, actually because it feels similar and we won't cover it for too long. But Mark introduced me to Irish gauge a game that he talked about last week and really liked. And I also really liked this short under 45 minute train game distillation thing, but that has sort of a similar thing, but it's so impacting by the ability to buy shares in the companies. So there's sort of the suits of trains that are on the track and you you could be disadvantaged if someone goes into it with you but then you have a shared incentive to make that grow together. So it's an interesting thing that I feel like works really well and Irish gauge which is that you may want to go it alone because once someone else invests into that color, the Dividends are split you now both getting the benefits, but then you actually both have an incentive to build it up together and so that Sheridan.

09:46 To read. Whereas in piedmont's if you come into that suit and then suddenly you're in a race for it, Nilan or I was going to get and Pete mods because we both went pink, then he managed to hide more pink cards in his hand and that is the fun of the game to. I'm not saying that's a problem with the game, it's always just one. I wonder about, you know, especially in games and piedmont's has more suits than the amount of players. But in a four player game with four different things to invest in, you know, if one player chooses to go for something that someone else has already, Be gone for sometimes that balance gets long. Sure. Absolutely. I think there's some ability to mitigate that early on by if you're just aware and maybe this is a function of me having played the game now, seven or eight times, just seeing what people are going into and pivoting early. There's also the fact that just because you're going for a color doesn't mean necessarily because it's sort of hard to get a card from your hand, to the scoring Pile. In general, it can be hard just because somebody's going for a color, doesn't mean that they're gonna be able.

Put cards of that color onto the pile, but I understand completely what you're saying, anyway, that is people months, I'm gonna be talking about ERA. This is a review copy, given to us at gencon by Plan, B. A- feel. This is designed by Matt leacock. He of pandemic, it is in some ways, a re-implementation of roll Through the Ages which in its simplest form, is sort of a dice drafting roll, right? Right type game, that is emulating civilization. Type game error keeps a lot of the same systems in that. You have a bunch of dice, you're able to acquire more over the course, of the game of different colors, which have different faces on them and then Yahtzee, or King of Tokyo style, Your Role, pick some to keep re-roll, pick some to keep re-roll. And then once you have your final set of symbols, these give you actions or resources that you can then spend. So some of these resources might just be wooden stove.

No trade goods which are used for building buildings. One of them would be food which is actually used to feed the dice. You have each die represents a portion of your population says, you get more dice. You need to feed them over the course of the game and then some of the symbols are for building these structures. So once everyone has rolled and revealed, you collect your resources, some of the faces on the dyes are also skulls, which sort of give you disasters, which would be negative effects. And then you go into building your board. I haven't described this portion yet and is probably the most striking thing about era and The crucial main difference between it and roll Through. The Ages is the game includes these plastic boards with little plastic bright colored pieces, that have Lego style notches that you just fit onto these holes in your board. So you also literally physically building your little city. Your little village may include big structures like universities and monasteries, you can create walls and keeps around them.

All of these things cost different amounts of resources. So, during the build phase, depending on how many bold you get home, your resources, you want to spend your place in cool things and your borders give you new abilities and you Dice new ways to score at the end of the game and you just have to keep doing this until several of the building piles have run out in which case the game ends everyone scores and that's it. The way that the disaster system works is quite interesting because the skulls and your dice don't always contribute towards negative effect. So if you have one

Down your diced a bad thing to. It's a bad thing, but three, it's actually hurts. Your opponent's for is bad for you. Five is bad if your opponent. So, there's a little bit of a push, your luck element to Rolling the skulls, which is interesting. It's not necessarily going to be bad for your first role has two skulls. You might want to push towards 3 for example. So there are fun little ways to interact with other people's boards. There's another degree of interaction, which are these swords and shields witching used to steal resources from other players and they can use to defend against you. So there are definitely some Points of interaction, but mostly you're sort of trying to build a high-scoring village on your board. So that the end of the game, you saw the most points, there are points for having the biggest walled area for having collected more culture throughout the game. There are negative points you can get and that's basically the gist of the game. You guys played this at gencon. Yeah. Before I get into my thoughts and era, what was your impression of it? So I play this is Gen Con and I I'm a little fuzzy on a blood. I remember liking it I do like the push.

Luck on the bad guy result thing which is interesting and something that I don't really. In these games where you're rolling dice Yahtzee style and you're getting locked out of bed dice, it's kind of a nice mitigation of that. It's hard to see past the sort of overproduction. Yeah. Because, you know, we have this game now on our table as a recording and like these pieces are just massive, like the player board where you're at fixing your buildings is like this big yellow border of these little holes all over it and the building pieces are these Massive things. So I remember enjoying it, not being necessarily blown away, but liking parts of it, I mean, it's essentially a role in, right? Right. But I absolutely, that's $80 or how many dollars? Well, this is the thing I want to get to, which is. Yeah. So the thing that Mark described is we use why I use the word Toy Factory. A lot. This is like the epitome of this does feel like you're literally playing with Legos and that comes with a cost. We spoke about this a little bit last week, but tapestry, there is a price to pay for this much plastic.

Sick. It's literally, you know, a typical square box game where half of the volume of the game is plastic, that's expensive. The MSRP of this game is around $70 which I think undoubtably component wise. If we were to evaluate a game purely on the physical production is not unreasonable but for the scope of what this game is offering which like Saigon is basically a glorified Rollin, right? Something that is somewhat recreated in The games that we've liked recently, like cartographers for example, it's just a lot to ask, like you'd have to really be invested in the physicality of the pieces. And this is, it seems, especially sort of worrying to me where it shows so much DNA with roll Through the Ages which is a much older game that you could get for $20. Probably obviously, the spatial puzzle is probably going to be a big part of that consideration, so that might be something you would want specifically. But I just find this really hard to justify.

Even the experience that I played, this several more times you guys have since Gen Con and I had this curb of, again being intrigued enough. Buy it at Gen Con 2012, talk about it more, but each time I played it, it's just steadily dropped off in my appreciation, I just I don't find it that compelling even as someone that likes spatial puzzle, type games and Rollin rights, I just find the kind of stayed experience that certainly doesn't justify its price. So there is two things I wanted to comment on era one that I really like, and I don't know if it's played out in further games, but one of the things that happened at gencon is because you are rolling, your dice behind your screen and because you are Yahtzee, rolling them. There's this element where the trade-off is, do I go for swords to fight other people? Do I go for Shields to protect myself or do I collect the resources, know, my just moving up on the tracks to get good stone, wood, and food. All the stuff that I need to build buildings, but as you're rolling those dice

I kind of go oh you know handful of Swords back here boys. You know like you guys are about to get Godlike, don't, you know? But what you're doing is just pure Bluff free because what you'd actually hope to do is that everyone else waste their turn getting Shields. While you use an incredible turn getting resources, was there any element of people playing it like that? That's what name's not really. Not that I could tell like that probably would have made it a little bit more fun I suppose but I think a lot of people would sort of trying to sneak Sword attacks on people rather than Bluff their way into them. So interesting. Yeah. And then the other thing that we've talked about is that the resources themselves are not depicted by having resources. You don't get little wheat tokens. They're actually just on the board as Peg. And so, once it all resolves and this is similar to tapestry resources are just at the bottom of the board. When it's like, oh, Mark Stowell one wheat from you. All I do is pick up the peg from 7 and put it in 6 and it feels

So like yeah. Less satisfying. Yeah well like it almost feels like nothing happened like okay whatever. Whereas if I had to actually like give that resource to Mark, you know, I'd be chucking. And so that's just a weird instance where the physicality of the component does, you know, especially that feeling right when someone reaches over and takes your resource, you know, marks reaching over and grabbing stuff and it's all over right him. But the peg, something about it just makes it feel It'll how funny is it that in a game? That is so much about physicality, one of your gripes with, it was justified? I'm not, I'm not commenting on that, but when you're gripes about, it is about a lack of physicality, that's crazy. The main reason for it, mechanically is a each of these resources, is Cap to the different value which is in itself, a little bit silly, but it still doesn't seem to justify the. Yeah, exactly. The lack of what could be a really good physical component. So for you kneeling, like if this is stripped down to its core elements,

09:56 Turned out, it wasn't a factor if this was boiled down to a role in right. The foundation itself is not strong enough to Warrant you enjoying it even on that level. I wouldn't say so yeah at several points while you've been playing this I've been trying to imagine this as a literal rolling right or you know a cardboard Tile game and say well you're just placing tiles in a grid. I just don't think the game I've ever felt that compelled by while I was playing it. Despite the overproduction right? Which is Deniability fun. It has a beautiful cover, beautiful artwork on the front true. Yeah, that what you guys are reacting though? It's it's beautiful. It's well-made certainly, that is a think all I have to say about era Medieval Age, Kevin what you got. All right, so let's talk about a game that we all play together and I will not bury the lead like everyone else on this podcast. Does that we loved playing together. This is a 20-17 release.

Atlas games. This is cursed. Court curse court is a very straightforward gambling game and who knows what classifications BG puts it at? And who the fuck cares? I winked? What do you mean? He'll like, you hell for Applause, their comment in curse. Court, there is a big board in the Middle with nine. Nobles on it, pictures of nobles thinks blender and nine different versions of homeboy, from the cover, and then different genders and races, but pretty much the same thing. Nine. Nobles are arranged in a 3X3 grit. Placed in the center of the table. Everyone gets a card with a picture of one of those Nobles placed between each player. So in a five player game, I have to do math, there are four cards. So there would be one between Mark and I there One between Nealon and I and we all get to look at those cards before the round begins and that depicts one of those Nobles in the three by three grid. And those Nobles will hit meaning when scoring happens that card exists. So, the way that the game works is, you're placing a series of bets on different configurations of those three by three Nobles, one of the simplest bets that you can make is that one of the Nobles will hit. So if you have the card between you and Nealon That's a pretty safe bet. You can put your marker on that picture and if it's still there, at the end of the round, you will score points because you know, it's there. But remember, only you and Nealon know, it's there. So in addition to the cards that are shared between each player, so there's that partial information between the players, there is cards that are being flipped up as you bet to give public information. So you start the game with one piece of public information. So not only are you betting on that.

Cards will show up at the end of the round but you're also betting on different configurations, like diagonals rows columns, all of the edges of the three by three grid all of the orthogonal pieces to the middle, you're betting on the for in the bottom right corner the for and the top left corner. So there are a lot of different bids that you can make. And when you make a bid, you can attach your poker chips to it. And these poker chips are not points, they're not money at the end of the game, they're not anything, but The strength of your bid. So you can bid five and in order for someone to knock you out of the space, because only one person can be on anyone's face. You must double their bid. So if you've been five, someone has to put 10 pieces under their piece in order to knock you out of that space. So a lot of what the game actually is, is bluffing and doublethink and determining who knows what about what's going on on the board because you will not know everything. So someone might start the game by

A huge bid on one card and that means they know something, or they're trying to get you two together. So everyone will ultimately get for bets out onto the board each round, and then it will score and then you'll wipe. And then you'll do it two more times. So there's a variety of strategies that you can use the most points that you can score in the game is actually, if there are four of the same Noble card drawn, whether that's underneath the hidden information, whether Other, that's shared to the Blow and the amount of chips that you have is 20. So if you want to ensure that no one will ever be able to kick you out of a space, you have to bid 11. So a lot of our rounds of this game started with someone bidding 10 or 11 daring. Someone to be the one person to double up on them, but you never know if people are just seriously bluffing you. So a lot of what you do in this game is actually look at the colors on the table at the bids that people are making look around at all the other players and try to Figure out what those cards are. And I just have got to hand it to Nealon, because in the first round of this game, his I'm sorry, dude, it was kind of cute because, like, Mark, you know, Marcus playing 4D chess for the best trying to like Bluff us out and kneel and just like be lines for all the information that he knows in the corner. Like all four of his orange tokens were like, right in one area. So it's like, I want

What the hell Neil has because none of those cards were outright and it was just like, I looked at that, I look to your pieces and I look to your smiling face and I was like bless his heart. The thing that was hard to gauge in the early portion of the game is how much people would be willing to like double up on someone's bed. So, I had this would like very undervalued perspective of chips. I'm like yeah, I'm putting like three or four things you thinking think. Yeah. No one's it has been eight chips to beat me there and meanwhile that happens all the time because you just run out of places. Has to play. Really? Yeah. Do you play is over 3 round three is like scoring's and I was doing okay after the first two, but I was playing sort of again sort of filling the game out trying to playing a little bit on the conservative side and then in the last round of the game, I just said to myself, I'm just going to go all bluffing. I'm just going to try to draw people into making bad bets and it worked out well, but it was just really fun to do also because you know, I saw two cars I had that I had information to and I saw the one that was shared and

None of them included, the Central Noble that Noble because it's in the center is sort of like part of a lot of different configurations, like a lot of the configurations that are available to bet on go through that middle character so that middle character wasn't visible. So I just said, I'm going to put a small bet on the middle character just to sort of like intimate. That I know that maybe it appears at least once and having that information that nobody else had that misinformation that nobody else had I was sort of fun to see that people were making other bets not necessarily taking me out of the center spot, but like making Bets with assumption. Like okay, I can bet on the three role in the middle because I know that marks made the middle one. So even if I don't think it's worth pushing them off. I know that these three are going to come through. So just seeing how that, cascaded throughout the game was interesting and then it, at the end, what people are starting to get desperate, because the spots are running out, somebody did make a big push and knock me out of it.

All which first of all locked, her out of making a good bet because that bet was a garbage bag because that car wasn't available at least I didn't think it was available. It could have been but nobody was challenging me on it so I had a feeling it was not going to be scoring but then it gave me my token back and so I could replace that that Bad Bet was a good bet, it was sort of a fascinating aspect of the game. There's something really simple that I think this game does really, really well. Which is that it's in your best interest. It to bet strong early. If you think you have precise knowledge but the knowledge that the table has is only ramping up as each round right dresses. Because something in common points are very early is that you very quickly get to a point where, oh, no one cares about this lady in the corner. So probably no one has seen that card and because all of the cards are known by someone at all points, the game, there are no cards are just flash revealed at the end, like this, someone has seen

Recall, that is going to be revealed then. But so if that spot is never been owned by anyone, you can safely assume that's probably not in the grid, but that doesn't necessarily reveal itself early. And by the point that it does, it might be too late, right? So, for example, in one of the rounds that we had, I had to of the same Noble, to my left, and right, and kelan immediately before me, but very, very high on that Noble, which imply to me. He also had the noble to his left and right. So, I'm thinking I know, calendars in the get the spot, which is probably the most valuable. Able spot in the whole game, right? Three cards of a single no ball and you can't do anything about it. But it's because Calendar, that made the right move of building. Really strong on what he had, the best knowledge. Sure. Yeah. And that was the thing. That Kevin was implying. I did quite badly in the first route. Although that was my best round. Actually, I think that it's so fascinating. I think fascinating is a good word Because by the very end of the round when everyone just has one bid left or one token left place on the board. You pretty much know what's not there, right? And you know, it's not there because all of the pieces are either jammed in one. Corner jammed in the middle or jammed, you know, there's an empty area and without communicating with each other. We've all told each other, you probably don't want to go up there. And so in that third round, what Mark did was so fun is because he built infrastructure. That was just a lie, right? And then that lie without anyone speaking, you know Dean contributed to the lie and then someone else jumped and dry it. Yes suddenly suddenly Marxist over there laughing at us and we bet everything that that's that

10:06 Right. Another thing I was concerned about was that the three rounds with the white between would just result in a game that plays the same between round 1 and round 3? But what I found is that I got to a lead in round 2 and so I actually played round three more conservatively than I wanted to maybe led to my my downfall to lose the game in the end. But there is some sense that in the first round you go big or if you get a lead you might have to play a little bit differently or evaluated because your actual scores Are pretty relative then there. Maybe it turns where you're actually trying to hurt or Target someone specifically. Because as long as Mark doesn't score points, I'll win the game, right? So this is Curse chord. This is one. I've already spent an hour today, dreaming up my Pokemon re-themed. That's not a lie. I've been Googling Pokemon cards how to acquire some from the original set because those cards could be the ones that you flip over and then you have like a beautiful art and the middle. That's awesome. Because I don't

Another Splendor game in my life because nothing can kill Splendor that is cursed Court from Atlas games. I imagine will be playing more of this. Yeah, hundred percent. Okay, so at this point in the show, we usually like to read a review. This is a good way to support the the podcast. You can do this in the iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you leave your podcast reviews on your preferred platform. This one came in via email comes from a, I think it's It's pronounced Tarjay. It says Dear Sir or Madam for over 20 years. Tato Target is operated retail stores. Selling various Goods under the target. Trademark using its distinctive red and white logo, in promoting its stores and services. It's come to our attention that you're using the target name in your podcast board game barrage. This unauthorized uses in violation of targets, trademark and copyright rights and constitutes trademark and copyright. Infringement Target does not authorize sponsor endorse or approve.

Your business zero stars. That sucks. Just a bad review. Yeah well I mean I guess it has happened at some point of yeah. I guess you'd be honest but that's a sort of a bummer review. Well, we did say we'd read them all so yeah you know. Okay he presenting them in preferably a little more. Yeah I'll be more about exactly. They didn't pick a tank. The show did are obviously read say did mention red in there. That's implied. Maybe.

feature topic

Yeah, let's pick things back up with our future topic for the week. We're going to be talking about board game classification. So this was inspired by BoardGameGeek. They've been making a lot of changes to the recently.

Yeah, the side we design is with come in recently in the last week with a rework of the way that they classify board game mechanisms. So let's start with a little bit of background about how this all kicked off so BoardGameGeek. So of used to observe broadly classify games by a handful of mechanisms that you would have imagined stuff like area control, worker placement, that's oxygen, stuff like that. Yeah. And the category system, you know it mostly worked. It was a good way to give a brief rundown of what sort of systems again. Cooperated. So earlier this year, Jeff angle Steen and Isaac shall have published a book, called building blocks of tabletop game design, mostly intended for game designers, I assume with. But where they broadly categorize about 200 different game mechanisms divided into 13 categories. I think it's worth very quickly going for the categories are so their categories of the types of mechanisms are action mechanisms are control auction card related, economic movement, resolution set. Collection structure, which I guess is this broad structure of the game? Turn all the mechanisms and certainty Victory and endgame conditions and worker placement and these get further subdivided into. Like I said it's sub total of 200 different mechanisms which fall into these different classifications there also have local codes, they're associated with each one. For example, one of the mechanisms might be a CT - oh one, which is the first sub mechanism in the action mechanisms? I'm bored. Ex-wife has chosen to Levy surface. These onto the site for their games. Where for each game, you now see the very distinct mechanisms are most strongly associated with these games. So let's get a very quick to taste around the room. You guys have seen this happening of the last week. Broadly speaking, how do you feel about the change? I like them. I'm all for more information being available, like, I have like a which I what I believe is like a human nature attraction. Into classifying things. So I like it. I think it's just more information about the games and I think it's our final amount of classification and I like in general I'm opposed if Mark is in favor I will always be opposed. So let's just do this. Looking at the category awk awk one, I love block 1 block 1 through the quad. His wife ever talk with rock 16 open auction, English auction. Turn order until Pass auction sealed, bid auction sealed bid with can Insulation constrained bidding once around auction, Ducks auction. Second bid auction selection order bid, multiple lot auction closed. Economy auction, reverse auction. Dexterity auction fixed placement auction and Dutch priority auction. Is it important, is it important neon to have all 16 types of auctions depicted here? Well, I was going to say, I still don't know what type of auction Taj Mahal is, despite all of those sub classifications. So it's inherently weird, like

Like you listing all of those? I don't know what they mean. I mean no. I mean this is a reason to look him up like if you sure and to be and to be Gigi's burn for one so long. I mean they do that, I will say it, you can click on each of these. You can find out what they mean but my counter I think I'm against them as well in general terms mark, because like BG is at once. Yes, a good way to be an encyclopedic. Classification knowledge database ASA board games. I think these serve that function perfectly but it's also a front end user experience where you're going to look at a game like code name to be like, what does this entail? And you're going to see a CT - 27 and have to click through to find out exactly what that means and some of them are self-explanatory. Like you know, if it says Rondell, I think that is pretty pretty clear that Is what the mechanism is, but some of them, literally, some of the descriptive names, you gave me. I have no idea what those entails as someone that is deep in the hobby. So, one of the interesting things is that Jeff angle scene is said that this list is not meant to be exhaustive, which is something that I don't really understand. Because if the goal is to get so granular that we have 16 types of auctions, for example, like, what else like is it, because of human nature that we could never get? Get all of them depicted and we would otherwise the way I took that is to mean that he is admitting up front that they may not have covered everything. But then the goal would still be too. Yeah, I don't think that I'm saying that is a refutation of the year that the goal is to get everything. And so, how does this make you feel and conjunction with like music and stuff? Because hearing teenagers and 20 year olds argue, about what genre of music, something fit into and like specifically going into the sub categories, you know, we're past Rock.

Roll. This is yeah you know new age. Pop or whatever. Yeah. And like those arguments always devolve into nothingness. Well, yeah, sure. I don't know if there's like very much meat on the bone or there's very much weight to the argument or reason to get up in arms about it but I think it's fun. I think it's fun to like classify music into thrash, metal versus britpop versus indie folk or whatever. I think it's Fun. It's a fun thing like to do that kind of thing. I mean, you're preaching to the choir. Like I'm exactly the sort of nerd that would go down this Rabbit Hole. Okay, that's okay. So, quit my sight but I still don't think it's a valuable service to most people. Okay, that's fine. And I do think that the implementation is not where it should be. And I think it's probably the implication is not where they want it to be. I mean, that's that, maybe. So, so if some of this information, some of these like, subcategories in these,

I like the way that gives our coded if it was available but maybe a little less in your face when you went to a game. I would vote for that, that'd be fine. But I like the idea that they're making this effort to codify all games. I think it's cool. I think in the most shallow way it is a noble Pursuit. I mean it's you know it's like being a historian of board games. It's like, right? If the value which we are to take from this, which I assume given its Origins is academic. A chair like an actual. You know, taxonomic categorization of these things is definitely admirable. How much of that needs to be surface for me, it's not even just the historical academic side of the categorization. I think I would use it and I think a lot of people in board gaming, no matter how much they care about are don't care about like, is this game and act whatever? Whatever. But, you know, if you're playing a game and you said, oh, I like this about a game or I like this game, what? Seem to, like it, the idea that you could go to the BoardGameGeek page and see this list of codes, and then like, type in that was, of course, like, oh I like this auction in this game. But I didn't like this auction and I like this aspect of it and then if you could say, okay well this code, this code, this code apply. I'll do a search for these three codes. I think that gives you a result of games that are probably what you're looking for much more than like Draft sure in theory, in theory. I would agree with you but I do think that this breaks down, it might not be in anyone's best interest to give a specific example, but I didn't have to go very far to find this example. I thought what would be like a game that everyone knows that? You know, everyone kind of know. The sort of game it is that we have broad appeal, I thought code names, okay? So I looked up with code names how was classified before and how was classified after? Yeah, obviously Board Game Geek is in flux constantly. So this snapshot is from about a year ago. So code names, used to be classified as

10:17 Memory. Pattern recognition feels like the mayor tree thing where you're trying to find groups of words at coalesce together. It is now categorized I'm going to leave off the Kurds collecting. That's counter to my point here as team-based game. Push your luck memory that doesn't sound like code names at all thinking based say, regime based Games push, your luck and memory. Those are the core mechanism case of code. Well, but sorry, but The Upfront is one of those action like a CT, cuz Like this, some of them feel like they're more or less necessary for understanding, what the word means? Well, no, I mean, so one of them is Str, which is the structure of the game that's team-based game UNC, which is uncertainty, which I don't even know what that category is about about on certain. It's not a lack of certainty. Thank you. I'm very uncertain about all of this UNC. The is the third one as well. So we have two uncertainty mechanisms and one structure based mechanism and I don't think we've honed in on anything.

Well, is your ideal of your argument is that implementation rather than the existing, because I'll be totally it. But again, I'm behind the intent of the system, but I think the current list as we have them is both to exhaustive in some ways and doesn't cover all grounds and others. I don't have any quarrel with that. I think it's a step in the right direction and I think that give them time to put the pattern recognition code on code names. I agree with you that the newest Version of codenames classification is not as illustrative of the game as the previous one, but I think that they're going for more specificity and once they get there I mean I think it's all for the good I think more time and more crowdsourcing and talking to the users about what they'd like to see. I think at all can only better. I'd much rather have this then sticking with the original way because for whatever reason, for lack of momentum or They just think that that's the one way in the only way to do it. I like this. I think this is a thing that we look back on in two years and say this was a good thing to do. Let me ask you this Mark. Let me ask you this because you have position that its moral or Noble, right? Okay. I said it was very shallow way. So let's not have any like, abolitionists analogies or something, you know, whatever you said it was Noble. Okay. Go ahead. Write the moral thing to do. Yeah. But let's just talk about art, man. You know, like let's let's just sit down here. This is talk about are like I like to pull us, you know, and other genres, you know. So if we could

Construct film, you know, female protagonist Coming of Age story. You know, love triangle, historical setting. You know, if we could break this out into, you know, a thousand pieces. Suddenly, you know, who's making our art. Computer surfing robot. Maybe they should give me a chance. Mark. Did you play 504 by friedemann friese and does not decide that? This is the way forward? What happened to you? I don't understand what you're arguing. Is your argument is that by identifying things with labels. We are now, I don't know. I game is more than the sum of its mechanisms.

You mean I just said it with a straight made, not people who are watching on. NewsChannel 8 can tell that you're like the game exists between the mechanisms, okay but there are mechanisms. So let's just label the mechanisms. I'm not saying there's not some magic that is also there. But I'm saying what is the harm of labeling as much as you can to do. I mostly agree with you. I think that the specific thought that I'm having is how every year game that comes out now. Feels like last year's here. No game with one mechanism changed in a different paint job. Okay? And so if you can break it out into like I like these four mechanics in this conjunction. It just feels something about it. Feels mildly cynical to me, to be honest. And I'm not like, I'm not talking. I'm just like something about the idea that you could classify games in this way feels cynical. I'm gonna go one step further and say, no even cynical by the defensive because like to say that, you could have two games that have the same list of

And then someone could Brody look at me as though these games share and like Say that we break down the system further where five years from now we have 500 mechanisms in the cover all possible things right. Sure. And we have to roll in right games for life with that example, that use 20 of these different mechanisms, right? You're saying that like now we've classified these two games. Someone is going to look at one of these games. Find the other games that have this cross-section mechanism. Be like oh I should play all of these other games. Like you can't quantify every element of a game you can't like even the most Ortant parts of a game. Can be mechanically Quantified in that way, I know. But so are you getting taxonomy in general? Like, they're not kill two. Birds are birds, but they're like different again. It has taxonomic value. Yeah, it does not have end-user value, but it does not full a service to people wanting to find game. I disagree with you, more than I can express on this podcast so you can express anything to ask. Mark. It's true. You're Me that if we were able to. And I'm not even saying that this 500 category think is necessarily the ideal, it might be off top my head. I don't know if that's what I'm hoping for. But let's say we had 500 ways to break down a game that we and maybe you'll depart at this point, but we could all agree is like, okay. These are five hundred ways that we can quantifiably break down a game, okay? And let's say that I liked game a and in that game we pulled out 18 different, Things that were a great. Like this is the music like yeah these this is what describe I love this game. I want to play more of game. A can somebody give me another game that's like game a okay please somebody and I put in the 18 codes in BoardGameGeek and tells me well maybe no game hits all 18 but here's something 15 or 16 or 17. Do you genuinely think that you would play those games and feel like they would be capturing what you like about what? Nice game.

No, they're not even not even in their entirety. But you think that there's a chance that they would come close to capturing what you like, 1 million percent chance. Look, I'm not saying that I wouldn't just play them if I could distill whatever I want. Like the things, I like to put a game, put it into BoardGameGeek, how to list come out. I'm not let me like, oh, I'm gonna buy all these games nothing. But it's gonna open my eyes potentially, the games? I've never heard of potentially, like, what are I mean? I feel like as long as you're still doing your due, diligence of like, Researching the game, but you're telling me that we should do this because they're aliens II. Know I'm coming around to that as a starting point, okay? Say as like, okay, these are games, that broadly, sort of cover the basics of what I'm looking for, right? And now this is a starting point into your research into right, they're pursuing like because the other games that are like this game could have existed or could be like, you know, they're just not very glitzy or whatever reason. They just haven't hit the public consciousness.

If we quantify it and we spit out a list, I'm not saying it's going to even, I'm not even like it but it's going to put it into my purview. Now it's something I can think about I just question the value, okay? Even of even of saying that there is value in finding games that are the same subset of mechanics as games you like up and rewind. The tape here to the point where you called this idea offencive know they specifically offensive in that if two games would have had this

Match of mechanics that there is any relative value between them blowing my mind. But you're okay. Noble. What's just like he's Noble? It's Noble. Yeah as in it's morally a good thing to do and to be clear I don't think the whole system is offensive. I mean the idea that you would hone in on specific games and say these games are comparable because they share these mechanics and they're not they're academically taxonomic. Lika more than that I know more than John academic level. There is something between them. That is similar. What do you? I don't understand how you could be making this argument because their games, their entertainment products, there is, there are salting is career, did you think about that you didn't for one second? Because you're not Noble, you cannot create quote, unquote aesthetic, value by breaking down a product, okay? To its constituent number, like Star Wars? Yeah. Okay.

wrap

Thank you guys so much for joining us for the first ever episode of the Board Game Barrage podcast. You can find us at www.boardgamebarrage.com or on Instagram at boardgamebarrage, on Twitter at ...

Neiilan: @BrdGameBarrage.

Kellen: Oh yeah we lost the character count ...

Neilan: Right up against the limit for that.

Kellen: Board Game Barrage is too much. You find us anywhere, feel free to give us some comments, some feedback, anything you'd like to hear about. We'd love to talk to you and interact. But I think that's all we got. Thanks guys.

Mark: See you later.

Neilan: Bye.

outro music

Kellen: Thanks to Heart Society for letting us use the fantastic What's On Your Mind, Kid? Check them out at heartsocietymusic.com

[ See Episode Format. ]

outtakes

Kellen: But Scythe, Neilan, is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is literally pretending to be a 4X game and it is a dry, non-interactive Euro.

Neilan: It's a good game.

Mark: Biblios is the best game of all-time.

Kellen: Oh my gosh.

Mark: Biblios is the best game of all-time.

Kellen: Stay on topic Mark!

Mark: That has to be included in this first ...

Kellen: Is Biblios even a game?

Neilan: We're gonna have the Biblios segment every week.

Mark: That's right. I'm all for that. Let's do it.

Kellen: This is a mutiny.