News & Week in Review - More Radlands & Zoo Tycoon, Services For New Designers & More!!

hey I'm Alex R from board game Co and this is news and weekend review where we're going to dive into a variety of news pieces the videos of the week the games I play the board game geek hotness all that and more with links and time stamps down below before we dive into all of that though we do have a sponsor this week and this week's sponsor is Fury lands ashes of Avalon the board game well I'll have a link to it down below you can go ahead and back this now on Kickstarter in Fury lands you're going to be going on Epic campaign H cenario is going to take roughly 60 minutes to go through it's a two to four player game we going to be picking your character and then building out that character you can Master up to 120 skills across nine different lines and as you grow in the campaign you're going to be taking points and various skill points putting them into various skill trees which will both enhance the amount of skills you have access to from those skill trees as well as going to give you stronger and stronger skills many of the skills are going to be stronger as you put points into things which means there's a near infinite variety of ways to build out and customize your characters to find those competitive advantages as far as how you're going to build a character which cards and skills are going to be part of that character what gear you're going to have them as well as how strong each individual skill grows based on how that build is meanwhile you're going to be G engaging against a variety of monsters a bunch of Boss missions as well Final Bosses you go through this campaign there's a ton to explore in Fury lands in Fury lands ashes of Avalon we'll have a link to the campaign down below and with that we're going to move from Fury lands into radlands radlands announced an expansion coming out radlands Cults of chrome which I uh knew for a while well new as real term I this is this is the first I found out about this I always suspected radlands would have an expansion I believe when the they originally came out that they're like we're not going to expand it and I was like it's a well-received game usually well-received games get expansions even when people say they won't be I'm looking at you Dominion but radlands Cult of chrome it's an expansion does not look like it's going to be a Kickstarter game it looks like it's going to be available at Gen Con so if you want to check this one out this is radlands an expansion to a very popular two-player head-to-head game from roxley games then we're going to have over here we have a One-Stop shop for Te for tabletop creators basically we have pts publishing technology and solutions this is basically a uh One-Stop shop for working with various game creators this is something that uh is being run by the people who did who by it's being run by the people responsible for matago or something like that there's some overlap with matago and this uh company Stone me has a whole blog on this one you can check it out Jamie STM has a whole blog post but the general idea is they started doing this as like a favor to people that were close with the industry and then from there grew it into an actual thing as they realized there was more and more demand for this kind of of knowledge in the board game Space where people who had done things can basically pass on that knowledge to others which is interesting timing because we also have over on board game wire we have all about games Consulting a similar kind of venture I don't know what the full level of overlap between what these two companies do but in both a in both instances both companies are there to help tabletop creators navigate things that they may not know how to navigate to give them knowledge and information about things that they just aren't informed about it's basically taking all that front-loaded knowledge you have to deal with when you start a game and taking it and going to experts who can help you along the way so pts or aacg or a a GC I should say aagc uh something technology and solutions and all about games Consulting you can reach out to either or both of those companies if you are a Creator who's looking to have some of those smooth edges taken care of along the way we also have Zoo Tycoon the board game we have new Shores an expansion announced for Zoo Tycoon I believe this announced a while ago I think this is the first time we're seeing the cover or art or you can go ahead and check out the kickstarter preview page already but this is Zoo Tycoon getting an expansion to that game we also have over here we have a hedm coming to you from Floodgate I don't know a lot about this game so far I do know it's polyomino based and the Box looks cute from Floodgate those are three things I know about the game and now you know three things about the game that you may or may not have already known we also have over here Aries AR is putting out a turnup a game but ancient Rome from Martin Wallace Martin Wallace puts out a ton of games they're generally very well received he's obviously the creator of brass Birmingham the number one game on Board Game Geek uh age of steam Railways of the world all these various Games and More Steam as well ton of games uh he has his own publishing company but he still does design work for other companies as well and this a turnup coming to you from Aries games about founding Rome the fall of the Western Roman Empire as you try to increase your uh influence over the Eternal City we also have katma over here katai maybe katai the beers of Brooks River this is coming to you from uh what's it called oh my gosh it's coming to you from where is this uh the company is I'm always blanking on the name of the company it is I'm blanking I'm blanking where is it ospre games ospre games we have catme uh coming to you a game of a beers this is not the typical game I usually see from OS days these days they usually have like games that look like heavy Euros or games that are wor games those are the main categories of things I tend to see from ospry uh katmai looks very different looks lighter more accessible and nature themed which feels different for Osprey game so if you're interested in that you can go and check that out and that is basically we have there which brings us to the uh board game gek hotness we're going to go and review the board game gek hotness as usual we are reviewing just a bunch of games that are currently trending in the hotness over here this week we're going to be talking about a few things let me just scroll down and see which ones I have over here we have in general I try to pick a few but every week There's always new ones old ones things dropping in things dropping out we obviously have Terraria the board game over here because they just announced the crow well the crowding campaign just launched doing fairly well a Terraria based on the video game so if you want to check that one out I still need check with the campaign page I haven't done so yet I've played Terraria the board the video game so I'm curious to see how they uh implement the board game aspect of things but we also have other things over here we have Expeditions cuz the uh expansion just launched that one not heavily going to go into that I talked about that in the prior week I think most the ones I want to talk about are actually higher up over here we have e this one over here did has been delivering and being generally well received I think is currently ranked in 8.3 on Board Game Geek the current uh information I've seen about it mostly seems to be it's very heavy it's amongst the heavier games from garl games but so far most feedback has been fairly positive as always check out the negative reviews as well to see if it's for you like if you go on the board reviews you can see a bunch of people who love the game but check out the people who rated a 62 because those are information those are pieces of information to check out to see if a game is for you and see if those complaints resonate with you or whether you're willing to look past them and give a game a shot all games will have mediocre reviews it's a question of which ones uh resonate with you and which ones make you think whether at the game we also have over here we have a sphinx over here Sphinx is coming to you from impatience games the people who brought you um uh on onm and Cason and Arion and all those various games in the oners series I don't know if Spinx is in the oniv ver series it looks intriguing I believe I will be reviewing it at some point we also have almost in board game news itself we have rad Lance by the way rad Lance which makes sense because we covered this already with the announcement of the expansion rad Lance has been jumping up in the board game gig hotness over here that's because of the expansion nothing crazy going on similarly we have Expedition at number two Gears of corruption similar reasons we talked about this this is the new expansion to Expeditions which I had a review go up this past week if you want to check that out and the lastly number one spot for all the wrong reasons we have one is of the first ccg which was going to be a news piece I was going to put in the news piece and I was like you know what maybe we'll cover in the hotness because it's currently the number one game of the hotness and this is the number one game of the hotness for all the wrong reasons and I I I always want to be mindful here there's been questions about well we'll get into other things at different points but I'm always mindful on covering news pieces that have a villain so to speak and the reason is because frankly to do something like that proper Justice from a journalistic perspective you should be reaching out to all the people involved I should be reaching out to board game geek I should be reaching out to one is of the first I should be reaching out to anyone else uh Jonathan Gilmore to a variety of people along the way who have been a part of this thing so to really do this kind of new story full Justice you really need someone like you know board game wire does a great job with this stuff uh king of ravage will often do a great job with this stuff so there's there's different type of people who take more of a journalistic deep dive approach and I'm not doing that I will try to be as Fair as I possibly can with the knowledge I do know but I'm not like doing a full deep dive on the story the short version of one of the first is one of the first launched on Kickstarter they unfortunately got cancelled because they had nfts in their project which Kickstarter does not allow there's a lot of Buzz along the along the way around the fact that they had a lot of AI art they very proudly owned their inclusion of AI art in the project and there's a whole different conversation to get into the nature of AI art and how it's done I think an interesting thing to begin with is they very much owned it they weren't like hey we use AR AI they were like no AI art if that makes sense and that definitely the combination of that plus the combination of it being a ccg with a high degree of fomo and get everything in now definitely put a lot of people who are already anti- aai even more so against this project it became a beacon because it did one and a half million and so and the combination of all the factors just made it something that people who are anti- aai were more vocal about this project than you might be about a project that raised $30,000 ultimately the the project was canceled not because of the AI but because of the inclusion of nfts as a reward which goes against kickstarter's policies and at that point I believe they said they were going to do a pre-order on their own site but it seems they went back to Kickstarter at some point I missed when that happened they relaunched their Kickstarter currently around a million so not doing the same 1.5 the first time which has got to hurt cuz as a Creator you're like looking at 500,000 just lost which is got to really suck although it's always a question of how much of that was because people did want nfts and now they're no longer present so I haven't done a full Deep dive into that aspect of things what I do know is currently it's trending on BGG because there are still a lot of vocal people around it and and people who are vocally against the project because of the nature of what it represents which to a lot of people and I understand the fears and concerns around this to a lot of people it's the it's the feeling that you can just AI art something and just bring something to life and that combined with the nature of being a very collectible ccg combined with it having nfts in the project or at least in the past version of the project it does very much paint a picture of the constant of what people often call Tech Ros now I don't know the people behind ones are the first I don't I've Loosely talked to one of them briefly on Facebook I think they sent me an email one time ask me if I wanted to cover the game I said it's not for me I don't want to get involved in this kind of thing but very much I am someone who tends to be more understanding of the AI art conversation to begin with For Better or For Worse it's a complicated conversation but I'm not immediately against it I think there are very often things to be mindful of or concerned about I'm not immediately against all use of AI art that's a long conversation for a different day but even for myself coming at from that stance which you can agree with or disagree with even this project I'm like I would like to stay a healthy 10t away because of the combination of a I ccg and nft inclusion it really paints a picture of again what I referred to as Tech Ros it doesn't mean anyone in the project is bad doesn't mean anyone is this that or the other I'm always hesitant to use labels because it others people very it's very it's very easy to point a picture of US versus them when you apply any kind of label to another human being and I don't know the people behind the project I don't know their intent I don't know their stance I don't know if they're trying to get a fast one over someone or if they're just trying to bring something to life and they really believe fully in the vision that they're doing I don't what I do have is I have a bunch of external things that do paint a negative picture all taken together but I don't know the full picture of everything so I'm trying to be fair as I'm trying to be fair in the way I cover this in terms of properly characterizing the things that are flags and there are more to come while also being mindful that I don't know the people behind it I don't want to demonize anyone along the way as far as further Flags some of the issues that have been present is The Game's been getting a lot of poor ratings on Board Game Geek a lot of people are against the project BGG does allow people to effectively raiding bomb a project as I call rating bomb is that it's called I think it's called rating no there's a thing for I can't remember what it's called review bomb review bomb that's what it was rating bomb sounded wrong the people are effectively review bombing the project which BGG is the best of my knowledge does allow what BGG does not allow is a coordinated effort from the creators of said game to enhance those ratings and that does seem to be what's been happening as a nature to combat the negative ratings so seemingly a lot of people behind ones at the first have been rating the game very positively and those ratings have been removed which again to be fair to all parties from the side of one is of the first that would feel very unfair all these ratings of people who haven't even played the game they're review bombing the project and our ratings are taken away by BG that's got to feel unfair and I'm sympathetic to that stance what is unfortunate is they chose to resolve that sympath that that that unfairness by directly calling the owner of bgg's phone which is not a listed number they got a hold of his personal number they called his personal number to try to deal with this which I hesitate to use the I hesitate to use the word harassment but I certainly am find calling it inappropriate it's an inappropriate way to to resolve the problem by not going through the proper channels by hunting down the im's phone number and that certainly doesn't make anyone who's heard about this biased towards W of the first there's also additional aspect that over on Kickstarter they've docked uh they've docked someone who has been very vocally critical of the project they've docks their information uh basically and docks Loosely docks I want to be clear they didn't you know announce home address but they basically linked other clarifying information about that Persona over on Kickstarter now to be very clear it does fit kickstarter's definition of doxing it is a loose doxing meaning me judging from the side point with my own two cents it doesn't feel nearly as harm furl as the nature of giving someone's you know personal information out onto the internet it is a light doxing but still doxing nonetheless so it's there's a difference between stealing a dollar and stealing uh you know $1,000 there is a difference in life both can be wrong but there are gradients I think this is wrong and I think there are gradients and in general the way they've been communicating people like the way they're Kickstarter campaign page right now is they' kind of sized up the issues by removing all the comments they possibly can while basically pinning every single comment that is positive to the top so that they kind of you kind of have to really scroll on the kickstarter page to actually get to constructive dialogue because that's been the way to shut down the opposition which again I'm sympathetic to what they're trying to do they're trying to effectively manage what feels like an unfair attack against their project by people who are just anti- aai the way they're handling it though is just making the problem worse now make no mistake they're also oh and I I haven't there's other things as well there's the nature of people have screenshots from within their Discord of basically people saying hey we're going to open up fake credit cards to go ahead and back this project and then everyone like laughing along with it and being like hey it's not really fraud if you never intended to pay in the first place like these are actual screenshots from the Discord now again to give full credit very often these types of things are probably joking they're probably meant injust I don't know about you but conversations I've shared with people that I thought were private I wouldn't want those taken out of context and I I would be very hesitate them the amount of things I've said to friends I guarantee you I couldn't run for president anywhere not just because I'm Canadian so I can't be president here but there's no political office I could ever hold if screenshots of conversations I thought were private between a bunch of buddies were released and that's not to justify Behavior I think we all operate a c with a certain looseness when we think we're in a comfort a comfortable Zone it doesn't mean that the behavior is okay it just means that I'm hesitant to hold too strongly jokes against people while also thinking that they're relevant especially with the nature of ccgs ccgs already have a hard reputation on crowdfunding because of the nature of people investing tons of money at them hoping they take take off and some I mean there's a whole lot of rumors around ccgs on crowd I don't even know but because I whatever there's a lot of things about C gen crowdfunding they do have a not the best reputation especially when they don't come from established people in the industry like I think it's very different an alter ccg situation versus a wonders of the first ccg situ situation and so what I'm kind of left off with this is my own two cents from being on the sidelines from everything I put together is it really feels like wonders of the first are a bunch of people who don't necessarily have the same concerns about certain elements of technology in the space as other people do meaning people have different stances people in life are allowed to have different stances but with they've done is they've taken those stances brought a board game to life have had to deal with a lot of people who are upset about the nature of everything it represents for better for worse fair or unfair they have to deal with that crowd and the way they've dealt with that has only made the problem worse so I'm kind of sympathetic to the situation they found themselves in while also being less sympathetic to the way they've handled sad situation and only made it worse and I I hope that's as Fair as a coverage of the entire situations I can convey I don't want to demonize people I'm not here to do that I I don't know the full situation of everything I do think personally I'd stay away from the project on at my end because there's too many things that are problematic for me even if I can be reasonably understanding of everything going on as much as I can be that's kind of where we are that's your uh news piece about one of the games in the boarding continus the number one game in the boarding cess for all the wrong reasons and with that we're going to go ahead and continue to that was a longer segment than usual last week's weekend review by the way last week's week review was incredibly short why won't this stop stop there we go uh last week's weekend review was incredibly short because I had my son on my lap and I was like you know what I I felt a little rushed and this week we're taking more time with it although he's still homesick still was the wrong board he's homesick again so uh he's actually upstairs and I'm just hoping he doesn't come down so we'll see how this goes anyways with that let's go ah and dive into the games I play as usual the games I play this is a short listing of some of the games I've played this past week starting off with canvas canvas is always a fun game I'm glad I got to play it this week because I always enjoy playing through canvas and um that's kind of the extent of it I like canvas I think canvas is a very flexible game that accommodates a variety of player counts of skill different skill levels I think it expands very nicely as far as the overall what the game does and how like the the various expansions that they add to the game how simply they incorporate into the game I like canvas I recommend canvas that's kind of where we are with that I've also started playing through divis I've gotten the first two scenarios into divis I think maybe three I think there was two I think there's two scenarios into divis I'm not yet sold in divis I plan and continue to play it I'm not yet sold like I I played the first two scenarios and it kind of was the first experience I had the first time round which is to say not a bad game but there's games that like hook me a bit more and there's games that don't and as a legacy game that wants me to play 12 games I'm currently like will I play 12 games I don't yet know it depends on how it iterates and develops as I continue to play through it so I tend to like Legacy games we'll see what happens with divis for right now I will be continuing to play it and you'll have thoughts and opinions as I get further into it as have code names played a whole bunch of rounds of code names this past week uh managed to be on timel playing code names in general playing code names always a fan of code names I've playing a ton of cod names duet the past several months and I've been playing a lot of code names the past several months it is still one of the most played games in my collection easily especially when you combine the two games together Cod and cod duet it's a it's a good game I like the puzzle trying to fit things together I love so Clover and L cames they're both phenomenal games in my collection and we have dominion Dominion is continuously fun as well I continue to play through the app uh the real problem I have is I have all the like the I have all the cars for all the Dominion sets and I'm like I still want to own that I don't know how often I'll actually play that cuz the app is so easy to table Dominion it makes the entire experience so satisfying and so streamlined that it makes it hard to justify playing through U the physical copy but I still want the physical copy so we'll see how that goes and that's kind of a small smattering of the games I've played which brings us to the weekend review starting off with past Saturday this past Saturday we had a preview for never Rift I think it was a preview the gameplay was earlier preview was for neveri was Saturday this was a sponsored preview done by Meg on the channel never is a also a ccg game more about trying to uh Place Cards into a grid to tame various creatures we also had later on Saturday we had a review for rebirth I gave rebirth a 3.5 out of 5 I thought it was satisfying a little on the light side uh it kind of reminds me of cascadeo recently another reia thaan game enjoyed both neither one blew me away but both were enjoyable on Sunday we had gains being added to the collection this is a new video series that generally was well received a lot of people like seem to like the addition of it which I'm grateful for I'm always hesitant when I introduce new things as to whether they actually have an audience but effectively I talk about the games leaving the collection all the time I don't really tell you about the games that I've chosen to incorporate or add to the collection you usually see them over time or it might be implied but it's not clear and so I want to make that process clear although it will be an imperfect process because some I'm going to play a game that I'm like I'm not yet sure and I need more time but we'll see how those play out but either way that's going to be uh Sunday's video people overall enjoy that one later on Sunday we had a deluxe games video going over a bunch of board game deluxified care of this one on Monday we had two back not two back or not to back going through a variety of crow cloud my words on Monday we had two back or not to back going through a variety of crowdfunding campaigns on Tuesday we had a Tales of Realms and runes preview this is a uh two to three player game which is already interam player account done by Meg this is a sponsored preview later on Tuesday we had a rocket rescue preview again another sponsored preview done by Meg of well rocket rescue and then last day on Tuesday we had a grim coven unboxing I've been saying grim koven and I've seen a lot of people in the comments being like is it Grim koven or Grim coven and I'm like I don't know at all I just say Grim koven because that's what the word looks like to me and it's not a word I often say but I think is it a coven of witches or a coven of witches like it's a coven of witches but Grim Coen makes more sense to me I don't know the correct anination and never rely on me for that on Wednesday Wednesday we had my top 10 favorite role r games going over well shockingly enough my top 10 favorite rolling rights on T on Thursday Thursday we had a groom coven review and now I'm calling groom coven because people said it so I'm just easily influenced we had a Grom COV review I gave it a four to five I really enjoyed the game overall the biggest thing I wanted to see was more character depth as far as how you built your character out I wanted to see more interesting card combinations that could really be charming and interesting and fun as it was I still enjoyed the game but I think it could be like I think it could easily be a 4.5 or a five even uh no maybe not a five maybe a five I think it could easily be a 4.5 depending on how the characters are built in the final game in its current stance I like the game a lot but uh the main thing I want to see was more character depth as far as how you can build them out in different and interesting ways similar to games like slay the fire when you really can really have different builds for your character I didn't get that same sense of Freedom currently from playing the game then we have that was Thursday L later on Thursday we had I think we had an aonia gam play that might have been pushed so we'll see what actually is in that spot there might be a different game instead but we'll see and now I changed something else I changed it what went up Thursday something else went up Thursday but I don't remember what it was oh my gosh what was it now now I'm bothered where's my phone where's my phone let me go to my uh on Thursday cuz we had three let me go ahead and see here notion cuz I changed this and I changed I forgot to post uh I forgot to take notes of this video schedule sorry for this mid video cut over here not really cut Thursday we had Grim coven okay first we had an Expeditions uh Gears of corruption review going up then we had a bunny boom sponsored gameplay and then we had Grim coven review so got mostly right I just forgot to change things around agonia got pushed so we'll have another agonia gameplay for you soon uh but not this week on Friday Friday we had upcoming crowdfunding campaigns going through a variety of crowdfunding campaigns for the upcoming month of June so in case you want to get some uh spoiler or teasers or I don't know why I said that I don't say spoilers teers in case you want to get a heads up on the things you might be spending money on in June that video will cover a bunch of the popular titles coming and then lastly we have that was Friday that is lastly which means it's today today we have a few things we're going to have a review for Expressions going up not Expeditions that went up earlier a review for Expressions as well as a review for spectral from bitewing games and then next week we have a few things we'll have games leaving the collection the always there compliment to the games that are being added to collection which is a new video series by the way I asked in the video whether you guys want um the the video to be combined or separate most of you wanted it separate which I appreciate cuz I wanted it separate too and then we also have games that had massive hype a video about games that had massive hype that uh kind of the hype changed or not died I haven't got the title for this but basically every once in a while games will come out that just balloon in how insanely popular they are for a very short time as people try to get their hands on copies and pay through the nose to get your hands on a copy and then eventually they become more available that's this video I haven't figured out the title because I don't know how to convey that in a short accessible title that that's what's coming up anyways and then as far as that as far as the games on the table as usual these are games I hope to be diving in this week we have seven Citadel which I've been halfway through the rules and starting to dive into it so hope to be playing this a little bit this week we have Surfs Up which is a like game from good games publishing all about trying to play cards it reminds me of um it reminds me of Chomp is that what it's called is it called Chomp no chom's a different game Chomps from all play it reminds me of a game from Mayday games I want to say that had little like almost Lego figures who' bite sharks the Sharks would bite the Lego figures and pull off their legs get bit get bit that's what it is reminds me of get bit in the uh gameplay haven't actually played it yet but read the rules and we also have the art project which I still haven't finished playing through all the scenarios which I kind of want to do before I get rid of it I do not think this is a forever game but I have't enjoying this one I want to continue playing through it and we have de Rock Galactic which I'm overdue on a review for and I've only played the first two scenarios I need to play more of it before I go ahead and review it so I hope to be diving into that this week as well and that's what we have that is basically everything until next time I'm Alex rler from board game Co I hope you enjoyed enjoy this video and as always I hope you have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

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Length: 24min 1sec (1441 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024