Giant Bombcast 489: Cash 4 Wrestling

This bombcast reeks of MURDER.

I complained to the Gonner dev on twitter about not being able to change button layout. "You have no idea how difficult that is." He's a swede so the answer was expected but he may have hinted at a patch.

This makes me a happy, happy hippo!

Chicken Dinner!

Yeah, Jason. We're good.

Am I really the first one here?! Where is everybody?

@icyeyes: Right behind you, buddy!

and ah three!

yo yo yo

I will not stand for the amount of board game bashing in this week's podcast. It's an injustice, I tell you!

Overall I think they're too harsh on board games that are complex or have a lot of pieces. That being said, Ben has a point that some board games people speak highly of have pretty low player interaction, and I'm also not a very big fan of those games.

For example, people talk a big game about Terra Mystica, but it's like if Catan had no trading so the only interaction with others is constructing buildings that block them off from constructing their own buildings, or buying certain once-per-round resources before others can that round. It's well balanced for what it is, but it's just pretty dull that each player is largely playing their own game of solitaire by converting resources and buildings into other things that increase your victory points, and then at the end you all do your taxes to see who has the most deductions and gets the biggest refund. ...Yay.

BRAD!

Of course the board game discussion will be very authoritative.

"They don't make not-complicated board games any more." That's not true at all. Board games are getting somewhat bigger, and there are a ton of new ones coming out all the time that go all over the place in terms of theme, gameplay mechanics, complexity, type of player interaction, and length of time.

That being said, there's some work involved in making people have fun playing games (which, hopefully, one person is willing to do, so others can just come along for the ride).

Things that are helpful:

- When the host knows the group that's playing and picks something appropriate for them. It's actually a skill that you develop if you host enough things. But it NEEDS to happen. If someone isn't having fun, it doesn't matter if the game is good or not. It's not going to be fun for anyone, even if it's a great game in another group.

- Someone needs to know the game. Reading the rulebook for the first time as a group sucks. Pausing to consult the rulebook every two seconds sucks. Learning a game for 2 hours sucks. You REALLY need someone who has kind of honed the skill of explaining rules quickly, coherently, and accurately to know the game so they can get the group up and running quickly (especially if people who aren't as into board games are playing).

Get those two things going, and there's a lot of fun stuff to try/do in board games. There's a ton of stuff that's way more fun than Risk, Life, or Monopoly, but is waaaay less complicated and lengthy as Arkham Horror or Ora et Labora.

That being said, it's not for everyone. But yeah, just wanted to stick up for the hobby a little bit. It's really easy to get a bad slice of it but that's not how it always is.

Fire Pro and Splatoon 2 here to bump us briefly outta that summer drought (as though I don't still have a hefty backlog for this year to be clearing out).

Ben Pack uploading videos now. Moving up the ladder

As of this week, every single videogame podcast I listen to has begun devoting a chunk of time to PUBG.

Hell Waypoint was both PUBG and Breath of the Wild this last Monday.

The tide will not be turned back. I feel like I'm just going to wake up one day after going into a fugue and find it on my Steam list with 100 hours already logged.

Crazy that of all games, he played Ora Et Labora! That game has been out of print for quite awhile and is kind of great, but if you're not big into Euro strategy games, of course it seems overwhelming. Ben said that he wishes games weren't getting so complex but honestly, there are so many great quick and easy to play games in the "hobby world" of board gaming. If you're reading Ben, hit me up and I'll recommend you some great stuff that you'd enjoy! Congrats on making it through though.... that's definitely not the game to play if everyone is new and are learning as you go.

Only 2 hours long?

What fresh hell is this?!?! :p Setting up my new Oculus while listening!

There's board game discussion? As a person who spends way too much money on boardgames I am going to cringe aren't I?

edit: OK, thankfully they didn't talk about it how I assumed they would lol. Also, stuffed crust is great when its fresh. Once cold or over an hour old the cheese is just a paper thin coat over the inside of hollow crust, which sucks.

Uwe Rosenburg's games always take ages to play haha.

Wait, did Ben say the 3DS version of Smash 4 came out 6 years before the Wii U version?
(It came out about 1.5 months before the Wii U version).

We missed you Brad!

I think that people who don't play modern board games aren't aware that there are literally several hundred board games released every year, sort of like video games. There's just as many genres of board games as there are in video games.

It would be like someone who rarely plays video games playing Farm Simulator 2017 and saying how laborious it was compared to video games like Galaga and Asteroids. There's a board game for any length, genre, group interactivity, complexity level, etc... that you can think of.

Update that car software

Cool, Brad is back

finally so excited, keep up the great work guys!

What kind of car does Jeff have?

The orange one is staring at me.

Sorry I'm late. I couldn't decide if i wanted to post on the podcast, the premium podcast, the video podcast, or the premium video podcast. Now that I'm here I wanted to say...wait, I forgot. Damn it...

What's the return on twitter followers? We have a twitter based president.

nier automata is a JRPG, they just made it more fun by making the combat not-turn based and clunky.

Boy I'm looking forward to new games coming out so that i don't have to hear about PUBG anymore! I don't think I've been as disinterested in a game that the crew was into since dota came out.

When it comes to PUBG's desert level, would Sandstorms be too much of a "Fucked by randomness" element? In my mind it would be similar to the bombing zones, either you just try to outrun them or get indoors.

Man I could not agree more with the board game discussion. I feel like a lot of modern board game design follows the philosophy of "more mechanics = better game" and it frustrates and annoys me. I have much more respect for games that can create a lot of intrigue out of simple mechanics, like Diplomacy, or Love Letter.

@singing_pigs: I would argue, as a person who loves those games you're picking at, that there's PLENTY of those guys you are wanting. Seriously, there's hundreds. For the rest of us who want moderate challenge to deep dive there's also plenty of those. That's the cool thing about board gaming right now; its not just a ton of imported German or Eastern European games.

I think complaining about the games like that is it seemingly comes from a position that there's not enough out there for the "casual" board gamers when in fact most of the popular games are smaller like that. Even some of the more complicated games, like Captain Sonar, are actually incredibly easy...they just require a large number of people to play. Hell, Cards Against Humanity (before it quickly got played to death) is one of the most simple mainstream card games out there.

The desert map they showed is clearly set in the Sonoran Desert; you can tell based off the foliage in the screenshot (specifically, the presence of saguaro cactii). Sonora is a weird desert in that it has massive summer monsoons that makes it the "wettest desert on Earth"; this is why it's able to support the massive saguaro.

The vegetation in Sonora is often actually very dense, just mostly low-lying other than the saguaro. Could make for interesting gameplay.

Marion's Pizza or Bills Donuts?

Where it's at?

speaking of old tweets, I was just looking at one of my all-time favorites.

For people who got scared off by the 'they don't really make not complicated board games anymore'. There are of course a wide variety of modern games that are simple or complicated depending on what you're looking for. Besides, Risk and Monopoly aren't exactly the simplest of board games, they're just well known board games (with ill repute). Some examples of good games that are at least as simple are:

Sushi Go (drafting card game)

Hanamikoji (2 player elegant card game)

Love Letter (deduction card game)

El Grande (worker placement)

Raptor (2 player small grid movement, simultaneous action)

Tzaar (2 player abstract simple easy to set up)

Ticket to Ride (route collection/hand management)

Mysterium (social deduction, cooperative)

Jaipur (2 player set collection card game)

7 Wonders (simultaneous turns, card drafting)

Dogs of War (worker placement, tug of war)

And I'm sure there are many, many more with a theme that you would like and mechanics you would be surprised by how fun they are.

For people who think board games are probably all the same I just got done playing Pandemic Legacy a co-op board game about disease control on Earth that permanently changes each time you play it with a little story that develops and changes and escalates the game in surprising and pretty crazy ways and moved on to Captain Sonar, a real time (so no turns) team vs. team Battleship game in which each team consists of a captain, engineer and radio operator frantically moving around on a map trying to find the enemy sub and sink it before they get blown up themselves.

And I'm looking forward to playing Fury of Dracula. A game in which one player will play as Dracula and the other players will play vampire hunters and will try to find him and kill him before he grows too strong. But Dracula has hidden movement on the board and leaves behind some nasty shit where-ever he traveled so the hunters have to work together and try to gang up on him without getting singled out. But those board games are a little more complicated in ways.

Impact > WWE even meltzer said it !

Also fuck that owl

My opinions have drifted further and further from everyone on this site as the years go by.

There's board games between Snakes and Ladders and Arkham Horror, there isn't just these two type of extremes.

@hauntyu: it's a Lexus but I forgot the model - you can see it clearly in the drive to E3 featuring Danny' O'Dwyer

Mayor Jeff!

Can't wait for Alex to come back and do that Fire Pro QL.

This was a good ass podcast.

Yeah, I'm usually not annoyed by their opinions, but man there is something for everyone out there now they should dig a little deeper.

Also, it sucks but always budget twice the time to learn a huge board game, especially a heavy euro type game!