1134 – Unboxing Hive Bottoms | Bored Game Unboxing

Notable Language:

• Don Knotts Con
• Old Cider Webs
• Papal-Style Lucha Libre Outfit (PSLLO)

Notable Culture:

• Hive Pocket Game
• Clint Eastwood
• The Matrix

Notable Talking Points:

• A String of Coherent Thoughts
• Surround your Yellow-Striped Friend
• Very Unsatisfactory Saltwater Taffy

Episode 1134 – Unboxing Hive Bottoms | Bored Game Unboxing

 

[START OF RECORDING]

 

SCOOTER: Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time for the podcast…podcaster that can’t even put one word to…podcaster; that’s one word. I can’t even put it together. Can’t put one word together; let’s not even think about putting two together, ‘cause when I think about conjunction, junction, what’s your function, is it to make one word or not? But it’s time for Sleep With Me, the podcast that is here to keep you company, take your mind off of stuff so you could fall asleep. I’m here to help, and this show does take a few tries to get used to. It’s a podcast you don’t really listen to, doesn’t put you to sleep; I’m just here to be your friend in the deep, dark night. So, see how it goes.

 

The reason I make the show and the reason so many people are listening along right now is one, a lot of us know how it feels in the deep, dark night. Whatever’s keeping you awake or whatever’s going on, I might not have been through it myself, but I could relate to how it feels, probably, and if I can’t, there’s someone listening right now who can. You deserve a good night’s sleep. You deserve a bedtime you could look forward to or feel neutral about. That’s why I make the show, so I put in so much work because I know how it feels and I want you to have a bedtime…you say hey, at least I got that weird podcast to listen to. It’ll keep me company and I’ll feel a little bit better.

 

But if you can get the rest you need and you deserve and your life is more manageable, you could be out there flourishing, that gives me mean…that gives my life meaning, to help you. But the show is very weird, too, so just a heads up. But that’s what people like about it. So, give it a few tries, see how it goes. I’m so glad you’re here. The structure of the show; we’re gonna have some support. That’s how the podcast is free, then there will be an intro to ease you into bedtime, and then we’ll have our bedtime story. So, I’m glad you’re here, I appreciate you coming by, and thanks for making it possible, my patron peeps.

 

INTRO: [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing? Trouble getting to sleep? Trouble staying asleep? Well, welcome. This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep. We do it with a bedtime story. Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press Play. I’m gonna try to do the rest. What I’m going to attempt to do is create a safe place where you could set aside whatever’s keeping you awake, whether it’s thoughts on your mind, things you’re thinking about, anything you’re feeling physically, right? Physical sensations, so anything physically coming up for you or emotionally, feelings related to physical…or your thoughts or feelings that are just there, feelings about the past, the present, and the future. Oh, boy. Or feelings; I’ve got them. Holy moly.

 

Don’t know what…yeah, feelings. I’m not in touch with them, but they’re all over me. Feelings; they’re here. Love you. Feelings; love you much. I mean, I really do try…I’m trying to live that way. Feelings; trying to live…can’t live with them, gotta live with them. Always with them. Always, always. Always with those feelings, and don’t get me started with those thoughts, because they’re comp…oh boy, do…talk about complimentary, my thoughts and my feelings and my physical sensations. Now I’m having all of them. But it could be something else that’s keeping you awake. Could be changes in your routine, your time, your temperature, you could be traveling, you could have something coming up, you could have guests. It could just be something temporary or this could be a ongoing thing.

 

Whatever it is, I’m here to keep you company so that you could fall asleep and to take your mind off of stuff. The reason I make the show is because you deserve a good night’s sleep. It’s really that simple. You deserve a bedtime you don’t have to dread, a bedtime you could feel neutral about or look forward to, a bedtime without rigamarole, and that…you say okay, yeah, I got that podcast to listen to. If it’s not this podcast…you’re already like, I don’t think this show is for me, check out sleepwithmepodcast.com/nothankyou. There’s plenty of other sleep podcasts out there that I have listed there, or other sleepy audio. But yeah, it’s like…what was my point? Oh yeah, this podcast doesn’t work for everybody but for most people, it works on the second or third try. So, give it a few tries at first.

 

But to go back to the reason I make the show, is if you get the rest you need, your life’s gonna be more manageable, and that’s important because if your life’s better, the world we live in is really a better place to be in. The other reason is because I’ve been there and hundreds of thousands of people that are listening right now have been there. We might not know exactly what you’re going through, but we can relate. That’s why I call it…it can be L-O-N-L-E-Y, right, in that deep, dark night. That’s why I call it the deep, dark night. So, I’m here to keep you company and make it less lonely, if I can, to be your bore-friend, your bore…I’ll explain all that coming up.

 

But the first thing I’ll do is I’m already doing it; I’m gonna send my voice across the deep, dark night, I’m gonna use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, pointless meanders, and superfluous tangents. So, I’ll go off-topic, I’ll get mixed up, I’ll try to explain something, I’ll forget how to do that, then I’ll double back. All that is to kinda…yeah, I guess all that’s natural, right, is all the extra words. Even now, I’m having trouble…say, here’s a saying; he can’t string a sentence together. I say wait a second, whose sentences have strings, anyway? I mean, I guess a string of…my brain just said a string of coherent thoughts is what they mean. I’d say wow, you’re…you really get…I’ve never met you. You’re a part of my brain that gets right to the point, huh? I am.

 

Oh, well, I like being quiet like that sometimes and just…but I was just saying okay, a string of coherent thoughts. The problem with the string of coherent thoughts for me is that they’re all lined up in a row, so I can’t see them until they already get here. Right, if they’re all lined up on a string, a straight line…I mean, any string I’m dealing with is nothing…there’s nothing gonna be straight about it. It’ll have more knots than a Don Knotts Con, you know, the convention I just invented for Don Knotts fans everywhere. It may exist already. It’s a double convention; it’s also for sail…fans of knots. Those aren’t spelled the same, I don’t think. I think Don Knotts has two T’s or something. You know, yes, every…the convention floor is divided by decades, of course, the different decades of Don Knotts.

 

Then, yeah, there’s a section for knots, and then the decades of knots; Knots Throughout the Ages. Believe it or not, that’s what we call the Don Knotts section, too. Oh, but what was I saying? Oh, a string of coherent thoughts. Obviously if they’re all lined up, I won't know if they’re coherent or not ‘til they’ve already passed me by. Normally they’re not. I say oh, too late now; still talking. So, that’s why I go on pointless meanders and superfluous tangents. I say well, I think this Don Knotts convention…could we rent…could we get Lansbury Con…Angela Con and Don Knotts and the Rom-Com Con all at the same time? Maybe? Okay. Well, here’s the thing…here’s the situation; okay, so, I got really lost in my thoughts there.

 

Superfluous tangents…I go off-topic all to keep you company so that you could fall asleep. Now, if you’re new, like I said, this podcast takes some getting used to, and you may already have strong, negative feelings about the show, or…you say, I don’t know about…where…when’s this podcast get sleepy? I say well, it’s kinda…that’s…it’s already…it’s the podcast that’s never going and always barely moving. Always making coherent thoughts, knotted for free. Coherent thought…strings of coherent thoughts lost in…I got a pile…oh boy, do I have…a couple in my garage. I said, those used to be strings of coherent thoughts, ‘cause they said I couldn’t string a thought together. Oh no, those are friendship bracelets. I’m sorry. One time…I got them confused.

 

I thought those were coherent thoughts; they’re just…are friendship bracelets and boondoggles two different things? I think they are, but I think you get…would you give a boondoggle to a friend? That could…is that a John Denver song? Anyone, anyone…oh, John…did John Denver and Kermit the Frog sing that together? I think they may have. Okay. Oh, I’m sleep…trying to introduce a sleep pod…yeah, so this podcast takes some getting used to, and I’ll explain a little bit about that here coming up. But if you’re doubtful or skeptical, of course you are. You’ve probably tried a lot of different stuff to help you fall asleep and a lot of it may not have worked, or it may have worked only once or twice. That’s how it is for me. So, just kinda stick around and see how it goes. You got nothing to lose.

 

Like I said, sleepwithmepodcast.com/nothankyou exists for people that loathe me or the podcast. Normal reaction. I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, clearly. Not everybody’s giving me friendship bracelets or boondoggles. Or, what are those things on…? What were those called…? I don’t know if they were friendship safety pins. I didn’t…I remember seeing those as a child, but that was…I didn’t have any friends that were crafting those for me. I did have friends at the time, just none that were so struck by my…our friendship that they said oh boy, I gotta craft you a boon…they send me on boondoggles, and…but oh, enough about me. About the sleep podcast and why it doesn’t make a lot of sense; well, a couple things to know. This is a podcast that doesn’t put you to sleep.

 

It’s here to keep you company while you fall asleep, to take your mind off of stuff. So, it’s the kinda thing…you kinda just barely listen to it. It’s a little bit like background noise but you can listen, because I’m not…this is a podcast that doesn’t put you to sleep. It keeps you company. I’m here to be your bore-friend, your bore-bae, your bore-sib, your bore-bud, your bore-bor, your neigh-bore, your bore-friend, your friend in the deep, dark night, to just keep you company. I think I said that a few times. So, if you can’t sleep, I’ll be here to the very end. If you need a break during the day, I’m here. So, just kinda see how it goes. But a couple other things to know…so, it’s in a podcast that doesn’t put you to sleep, it’s a podcast you don’t really listen to…structure can throw people off.

 

The show is structured in a very specific way, but as you become a regular listener, you could adjust the show. But for most people, this is how they listen. So, the show starts off with a greeting; friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, so you feel seen and welcome. Then there’s support for the show so that it can be free or optional to pay for and come out twice a week regularly, Sunday and Wednesday nights. That’s because the people that support the sponsors or support the show directly. Then there’s support for listeners who are having a tough time and communities around the show. Then there’s the intro. Now, the intro is not part of the support. The intro is ten to twenty minutes of me rambling and trying to introduce the podcast unsuccessfully.

 

A normal intro would be technically a string of coherent thoughts. Say, this is a sleep…the Sleep With Me podcast, sleepiest podcast on the internet, and we’ll be putting you to sleep here soon. I guess it’s counterintuitive, though, a sleep podcast, ‘cause you can…couldn’t…so, we’ll be putting together a sleep…super-slick, super sleep podcast where we just count down from twenty and we put you to sleep. That’s coming up next. Maybe I’ll just do that as a podcast. But what was my point? I don’t know. I got mixed up. Oh, the structure of the show. So, the intro goes on and on and on so that regular listeners, they know oh, this is something familiar, but it’s different every time.

 

While I’m introducing the podcast to new listeners, regular listeners are getting ready for bed or doing a wind-down activity or getting comfortable in bed. Some people are falling asleep. There’s a few percentage of people that skip the stories or pay so that they can listen to story-only episodes. But for the most part, the intro serves as a buffer between the day and the night, or between the evening and going to sleep, a wind-down. So, that’s why the intro lasts ten to twenty minutes and goes on and on and on, to ease you into bedtime.

 

Then there’s more support for the show so it can be free, and if you don’t like the support, yeah, you’re welcome to pay and skip all that. Then there’s a story. Tonight it’ll be kinda one of our more random, one-off-type episodes, and then there’s thank-yous at the end of the podcast. So, that’s the structure of the show, that’s why I make the show, and I’m really glad you’re here. I really appreciate you checking the podcast out. Give it a few tries, see how it goes, and I really hope I can help you fall asleep. Thanks again for coming by, and here’s a couple ways I’m able to do it for you for free twice a week.

 

Alright everybody, this is…it was gonna be a board game unboxing, but I’ll be straight with you; we played the game last night. It’s a two-player game and my timing could not have been better for buying this game, because my daughter and I both were under the weather, if you catch my drift, and at home for a week together. I bought this game. Now, thus far, my ability to win the game has been pretty limited. So, we’ll talk about this game. It’s kind of an unboxing. There’s two pieces…so, we’ll talk about this game and then I have some other stuff to talk about, too. So, kinda like a board game unboxing. This game is called Hive Pocket. There’s a non-pocket version of it, but…and it’s not exactly a pocket game. It’s more of a travel-sized game. It’s a two-person game.

 

It’s a game crawling with possibilities that I’ll have to change around a lot. It’s for ages nine +, and the box…it’s an award-winning game. It includes the pocket game…and the reason I got the pocket game was it comes with two of the expansions. It’s ages nine +, two players, twenty minutes per game, though I’ve lost in as few as a few minutes. My daughter is just…it’s a bit like chess…is a comparable thing. You don’t need a board. Includes a bag…it’s…easy rules, quick to play. Each of your pieces, similar to chess, moves in a different direction. I’m not saying it’s the same as chess…you slow your horsie’s roll…but it’s similar to chess. That’s a article I read about the game before I bought it.

 

But it is different because you can move your pieces or add pieces…your turn, and your whole thing is to kind of…in a similar way, you’re supposed to surround your yellow-striped friend. The pieces are…one, two…so, they’re eight-sided pieces? One, two, three, four, five, six-sided pieces. They’re tiles, essentially. The object of the game is to surround the striped yellow character with wings, the winged yellow-striped goddess, who we could call the queen. The queen named Bee. Yeah, you’re supposed to surround a queen named Bee with your other pieces. It can be made up of a mixture of your pieces or the opponent’s, and the first person to do that wins. In my case thus far, it has not been me. But maybe by reading these instructions, I’ll get better at the game.

 

I don’t think so, but…but the game, each player takes thirteen…all thirteen pieces of one color and faces them up…places them face-up in front of them. Play begins with one place…player pace…placing a piece — that’s tough to say — from their hand on the center of the table, and then the next player joining one of their pieces edge-to-edge. Players take turns to either place or move any one of their pieces. So, basically you have these tiles, and let’s say you have the nighttime tiles. There’s nighttime and daytime tiles, so that…you know, just like in chess. You have six-sided pieces. So, someone places…one is the queen named Bee. Another one…another kind of piece is the anties from a farm. Another piece is the makers of cider…cider-webs. Old cider-webs with aid…the…cider-webs; my friend with eight legs. Cider…oh, the cider.

 

So, let’s…I put down my cider piece and now I’m playing in the nighttime mode. Then you put your anty piece next to mine. You’d have to have it touching on one of the six sides. At this point I guess it doesn’t matter ‘cause we’ve each placed one piece. To go into more depth from the instructions, a new piece can be introduced into the game at any time. However, with the exception of the first piece placed by each player, pieces may not be placed next to a piece of the opponent’s color. So, when you’re placing a piece, not moving a piece, it can’t be touching your opponent’s…a piece of your opponent’s color when you’re moving it into gameplay, in a sense. So, right now we have a cider and an ant, and I don’t know who went first; I think the cider. So, let’s say I wanted a hoppy…old hopper from the grass, you know?

 

If I want to place a hopper from the grass, I’d have to touch it on one of…only three sides of my cider piece, because two sides…if I placed it on the other two sides, it would be touching the anty piece, which is not allowed. It’s possible to win the game without placing all your pieces, as my daughter has shown me, but once a piece has been placed, it cannot be removed. It can be moved but not removed from the field of play, which the only piece you’d want to remove from the field of play would be your queen, to get it outta there. Okay, but placing the queen named Bee…your queen named Bee can be placed at any time from your first to your fourth turn. You must place your queen named Bee on your fourth term…turn if you have not placed it before.

 

Also important is once your queen named Bee has been placed but not before, you can decide whether to use each turn after that to place another piece or to move one of the pieces that has already been placed. Each piece has its own way of moving, so when moving, it’s possible to move pieces to a position where they touch one or more of your opponent’s pieces. Also, all pieces much…must touch at least one other piece. If a piece’s only connection is between two parts…this is the first time they used this term, I guess, but when your pieces are in conjunction, that’s your hive. Your biome, I guess. If a piece’s only connection between…is the only connection between two parts of this continuity, it can’t be moved. So, you can’t leave…all the pieces are somehow connected.

 

No piece can be off on its own, so it can…there can be gaps. You know what I mean; all the tiles have to be connected…experience some sort of interconnection. That’s called the One Hive rule. Okay, so the pieces, the players in this play…the queen named Bee can only move one space per turn. Even though it is restricted in this way, if it’s moved at the right time, it could disrupt your opponent’s plans. So, it can’t move…it can only move to an open space that it can freely move to, too. Most of the pieces glide, which kind of…it’s not great to describe. But when…if you decide to play this game, which I highly recommend even though I’m not very good at it…okay, next up is old Beetle Bailey, famous at some point.

 

I think Beetle Bailey was the originator of…loved to…hung around with Felix the Cat and ate Dagwood sandwiches or something. But in this game, old Beetle Bailey is like the queen bee, only…like the queen, can only move one space per turn around the hive, but it can also move on top of the hive. A piece with the beetle on top is unable to move, and for the purposes of placing…of the placing rules, the stack takes on the color of the beetle. My daughter just used this to win against me very easily, ‘cause she put her beetle on top of my queen and then just built around my queen, and I don’t know how I’m gonna undo that. But you can place a beetle on top of a beetle, though. When it’s first placed, the beetle is placed in the same way as all the other pieces.

 

It can’t be placed directly on top of the hive even though it can be moved there later. Okay, so when on top of the hive, the beetle can move from piece to piece across the top of the hive. It can also drop into places that are surrounded and not accessible. The only way to block a beetle is…on top of the hive is to move another beetle on top of it. All beetles and skeedos can be play…stacked on top of each other. Okay, next up is a grasshopper. The grasshopper does not move around the outside of the hive like the other buddies. Instead, it jumps from its space over any number of pieces but at least one to the next unoccupied space along a straight line of joined pieces…straight row. This gives it the advantage of being able to fill in a space which is surrounded by other pieces, which you’ll find with the sliding, is tough.

 

The beetles and the grasshopper are good for that. So, it basically jumps over pieces like a checker-type thing, but it can jump over any number of pieces to a open spot, but only in a straight line. Cider is…moves three spaces per turn. No more, no less. It must move in a direct path and cannot backtrack on itself. It can only move around pieces that is in direct contact with…on each step of its move. It may not move across to a piece it is not in direct contact with. I gotta keep an eye on this rule for the ways I’ve been not doing well. But yeah, it’s good ‘cause you can move three spaces. The anty is…can move from its position to any other position around the board, provided the restrictions of eight and nine are [inaudible], too. The freedom of the movement of the ant makes it one of the most valuable pieces.

 

So, the ant can go anywhere as long as it can slide in there, ‘cause it can’t jump. Okay, then there’s two pieces we haven’t used yet, ‘cause we were still learning the rules; lady…the ladybird moves three spaces; two on top and then one…two on top of the hive and then one down. It must move exactly two on top and then move one down on its last move. It may not move around the outside. It may not end its movement on top. Even though it cannot block by landing on top of things like the beetle, it can move into or out of surrounded spaces. It also has the advantage of being much faster, I guess ‘cause it can move three instead of one. Skeedle is another character. It’s placed in the same was as other pieces.

 

Once in play, it takes on the movement characteristics of anything it’s touching at the time, including opponents, changing its characteristics throughout the game. Exception; if a beetle…Beetle Bailey is on top of the hive, it continues to move as a beetle. Oh, if it’s moved as a beetle on top of the hive, it stays a beetle ‘til it climbs back down, unless it’s touching a beetle, again, when it gets back down. If it’s only touching a skeeter, even a stacked skeeter and no other piece, it can’t move. So, that’s interesting. Okay, so some restrictions here that they were referring to…there’s the One Hive rule; the pieces in play must be linked at all times. The art is very basic but nice, and it’s very well-made tiles. The pieces in play must be linked at all times.

 

At no time can you leave a piece stranded and not connected or separate the hive into two. You can use this to your advantage by moving pieces to strategic positions around, leaving your opponent’s pieces unable to move. I thought the last game I was gonna win ‘cause I did that, but then I still lost. I locked two of my daughter’s ants down, but it still…it didn’t help me. Freedom to move…the buddies can only be…the buddies can only move in a sliding movement. If a piece is surrounded to the point where it can’t physically slide out of its position, it can’t be moved. Exceptions are the grasshopper which jumps out of the space, the beetle and the ladybug which climb up and down, and the skeeter which can mimick one of the three. Similarly, no piece can move into a space it cannot physically slide into.

 

When first introduced to the game, a piece may be placed into a square that is surrounded as long as it doesn’t violate the placing rules, in particular, the rule about pieces not being about to touch pieces of the opposite team. Unable to move or place; if a player cannot place a new piece or move an existing piece, their turn passes. The game continues until they’re able to move or place a piece or until their queen is surrounded. The game can end in draws. We’ve had multiple…I’ve drawn the game more times than I’ve won. The game ends as soon as the queen is surrounded by the pieces of any either team or either player. The person who’s surrounded loses the game unless the last pieces surround them also completes the surrounding of the other bee…of the other queen. In that case, the game is a draw.

 

It must be agreed to unless they can be resolutioned to a stalemate. So, that’s one game. I also have a bunch of other games. Let’s see what we got here. Yeah, so I got a couple…three games that I bought from…a long time ago. I think I bought everything they made. I don’t think the company is…I think I’ve talked about it. It’s called Cheap Rear Game…Cheap Rear Games. It has another name, too. But they were aware of two basic facts about board games; that they were expensive and at some level, they’re all the same. This is their…quoting them, the box; “If you ignore the clever shapes they come in and the pawns that are interchangable, sometimes the dice, the money, the counters, the pencils, just about everything and every part, the generic bits and pieces can account for as much as 75% of the game’s cost.

 

That gets passed on to you.” So, if you had a choice, you’d probably invest a little bit of money in one good set of gaming paraphernalia instead of twenty different ones. Then you could just buy the part…the game part of the game. Yet most companies sell the whole package, like bundling a can opener with a can of beans. Cheap Bottom Games come packaged with the bare essentials; boards, cards, and rule books. Usually they were printed in black and white. If you need anything else, they’ll tell you. It’s probably something you can scrouge from a game you already own or buy at a store, or you could even buy…you could buy the spare set of counters and money from them. ‘Cause I think when I discovered it, I just bought…they had a super-pack or something, a party pack.

 

But then I couldn’t…you know, I wasn’t as good as getting people to play. Once you’ve assembled a collection of generic game pieces, you can use them for every new Cheap Bottom Game. They standardized their things. So, I have three different ones…three different games here that I didn’t play a lot. The first one is in a box, and it’s for three to six players. It’s called CAG41, so I don’t know if it was their forty-first game. What you would need is a token for each player, some money, and some beans or some sort of counter. It’s called Secret Wrestling. Let’s see…here’s the descriptor; on the front page is a wrestler but in business clothes. They have a sweater-vest on and a dress shirt and dress pants, and then there’s a briefcase spilling behind them, but their…and their hands and their muscles are in the air, and they’re in disguise.

 

They’re wearing a covering so you can’t tell who they are. So, a little bit of Lucha Libre in there. So, business is rough; closing your business is worse. Some people it’s a struggle, and…or you could go and promote wrestling for big bucks. As you might suspect, this game is about Option 2. Let’s see, it’s a card game featuring clever strategy, funny wrestlers, and components from another game. You’re promoting wrestling, trying to get people into these…oh, businesspeople into these games. To begin the game, each player drafts a team of wrestlers and try to choose the right mix of balancing out your team. Then you challenge the other players to wrestling matches. The game was limited to 5,000…oh, because it used counters from another game…from the Atlas game Spammers, which was overprinted.

 

They let us have the surplus, so you’re lucky. This game is available for a limited time only. If you want, there’s other boxed games that they’re…listed. Okay, so, I think I may have played this game before just ‘cause there’s a rubber band around the cards and then there’s a bag of counters with numbers on there and some emojis, which is probably from the spamming game. Let’s look at the wrestlers. On one side of the card is the businessperson wrestler. Let me count the cards; one…okay, I have thirty-five cards. Let’s see how we have…this first person is ranked Number 1. Uno Idos. It’s actually two wrestlers doing the Snow White thing where they’re…they have a raincoat and they’re on top of one another. Contract price is $10,000. They get a 7 in Hit, a 2 in Tricks, and a 1 in Block.

 

Next up is the C-L-O-W-N, but not…with very few…their contract price is $13,000. They have a 2 rank; El Paoso. 5, 3, 5, so they’re kinda balanced. El Cheapo is just a person with a paper bag. They have another one rank…1 in Hit, 3 in Trick, 2 in Blocks. Louis Fresco kinda has a futuristic-type outfit on. Contract price is $18,000. Their rank is 3. Wow, they have a 4 in Hit, a 3 in Tricks, and 11 in Blocks. The Mighty E; she is in a superhero outfit. Contract price is $21,000. A 4 rank. 12 in Hit, 2 in Tricks, 7 in Blocks. Then we have someone; La Maniaca…La Maniaca. Contract price is $12,000. They have…they’re dressed like Olivia Newton John, but they’re wearing the kinda hat you would wear to…what is that…what do you call it when you’re fusing stuff or working on metal or whatever?

 

Let’s see…El Diablo Azul…dressed…full lich…Lucha Libre outfit. $23,000 contract price, 4 rank. 12 Hit, 2 Tricks, 9 Blocks. Gordon Glorioso; 5 rank, $28,000. 11, 7, and 8. That’s a…dressed as kind of a businessperson. Senior Roboto; that’s a robot also dressed like they wear red spandex, too. $23,000, 4 rank. 8-7-8. Number 3; El Ocho. That’s a Magic 8 Ball-type style outfit. $20,000; 5-8-7. La Enfairma; this is a nurse-style outfit. $16,000, 7-4-7, 3 rank. Enchilada Progresso; this is also kind of a superhero-type. 5-12-5. So again, these are definitely Lucha Libre-style wrestlers. La Nina, which is little kid, but they have a Viking helmet and a teddy bear, but they’re definitely…they were a 1 rank, $18,000, 2-1-5. The Cider; they have 9-11-12, $32,000. Santa; $27,000, 12-8-7, rank 5. Enrique; $13,000, Number 2, 4-6-3.

 

Someone in a papal-style Lucha Libre outfit. El Papa; that’s a 3, $20,000, 6-4-10. Wow, so I think every single…this is a lot of different ones. La Sambre; I don’t know what that is in Spanish. Everything else I’ve been…$24,000, 8-6-10. They’re kind of like a cat…like a Catwoman-type outfit. Los Caballeros; $28,000. They’re a team. 10-12-6. La Cucaracha; they’re dressed in that style of outfit. $11,000, 3-7-1. Poker Face; this one is dressed as a poker dealer. $31,000, 12-9-10, 12-10-9, 5. Oh, then they have characters from other games. So, they have one from one of their more popular games, Lord of the Fries. 8-12-10, $30,000, 5. They have someone that kinda looks like Clint Eastwood; 3, $19,000, 12-6-1. Then they have someone…another just Lucha Libre-style wrestling; $29,000, 9-12-8.

 

Then they have…this one’s Neo, the One. Unico. So, this game must have came out back then. 3-10-12, dressed as Neo from Matrix, but not the first one; the second or the third one. Then they have someone dressed like they’re going to Dios de Los Muertos Parade. $15,000, 10-3-2. They have someone from Making Lunch; 2-8-12, $23,000, somebody that doesn’t look like they want to be there, 4-2-1. They’re cleaning up or something. Angela Sky…maybe you could get your name on it. She has a angel-type…$17,000, 9-3-9. Los Calientes; $19,000, 6-11-12. The Moth; 1-6-2. It’s $9,000. Oh, the person from the cover and the back of the box is the Grump. $14,000, 5-3-6. Polo player…this…El Polo Loco. So, this might have been also…that’s funny.

 

8-4-2, a pun from better…now Better Call Saul, but back then it would have been Breaking Bad. A pirate, Doc; $16,000, 11-3-2. Okay, so, let’s see. Oh, it also came with a free game. I put Woody’s Castle, which is just a moving stone game. Free of charge…is it a two-player game? I might have to play that with my daughter. Let’s just do it, ‘cause it was just sitting on the top of this thing. It’s a free game from Cheap Bottom Games. Two to four players. Twenty-four colored stones; five red, eight blue, eleven white. The winner of the previous game goes first and passes to the left. It’s just one, two, three, four…one, two, three, four, five…four circles; four down, five across, and they’re all connected. Place the stone of any available color in an empty space on the castle.

 

After placing a stone, you score one point for every stone of the same color that it’s touching. So, if your red stone touches two red stones, you score two points. The player with the most points wins. Ties count as fractions wins. It’s a free game. Okay, so this game came with thirty-six cards — I only had thirty-five — sheets of cardboard tiles, and a plastic bag for storing the tiles, and these rules. What else do you need? Money in denominations of $1,000 and up, or you could use one dollar to mean…equal $1,000, and a betting token for each player, and some beans. So, setup; separate…first take all the tiles and separate them. Before the game, each player draws two random tiles to start their collection. The tiles are secret, like cards, but the number of tiles you hold is not a secret.

 

Then each player gets a token which will be used for betting in a stake of $100,000. Put the rest of the money in the bank. Then you draft; each player drafts five wrestlers. To begin, you shuffle the deck and deal six cards to each player. Each player keeps one card from these six and passes the other five to the left. Place the card you keep face-down on the table in front of you, and this process repeats with people taking one card and passing to the left until each player has drafted a total of five wrestlers. When you have only one card, pass…discard it instead. The cards each player has kept now become their hand. The discarded people are not used. Each player places one wrestler face-down on the table. Each player places one wrestler down on the table; these cards are then revealed together.

 

The person who has the highest-priced wrestler will take the first turn and from this point on, the turn proceeds to the left. If there’s a tie for the highest-priced…it is broken by the highest Hit value. Okay, so each player has five…Hit, Tricks, Blocks, contract price, and rank. That’s the price you promise the fighter you’re gonna pay them, but it’s also the amount you put…have to put up each time you put them in the match. Essentially, this is what…your stake, you know? The rank is their rating based on all their stats and it determines who can challenge whom. Okay. Rank increases by one point each time they win. This is tracked by adding a bean to the card. Ranks start between 1 and 5. If you don’t have somebody on…a wrestler on the table, you must immediately play another one from your hand.

 

This happens as your wrestlers retire and does not require a turn. When a player has no wrestlers in play and none in their hand, the game ends. Okay, so on your turn, you can play a wrestler, and that ends your turn. You could start a wrestling match; it has to be fair. So, you choose one person on the table…one wrestler of somebody else’s team whose rank is equal or greater than yours, and you start a match. The fighter cannot refuse…the wrestler cannot refuse, but they can forfeit. You can also call out and see…say hey, I want to see who wants to wrestle me. Your opponents may put forward one or more to accept. Only wrestlers that are smaller than yours are allowed to accept. You may then wrestle any challenger from whoever stepped up. If no one stepped up, you draw two tiles and end your turn.

 

You can manage your tiles, you can discard any number of titles…tiles, or even none, and draw the same number of replacements. In addition, after swapping your titles…tiles, you may draw one more tile for $5,000. Wrestling; when two wrestlers wrestle, their owners can play tiles to help…give them buffs, I guess, and all the other players may make bets on the outcome. To begin, place them both in the center of the table head-to-head so their stats line up with each other, kind of. So, Hit lines up with Block and each Trick lines up with Tricks. Each player draws one tile right before the match. If they are not the same rank, the lower-ranked wrestler draws the second tile. So, you can place bets if you’re not involved. The total prize money for side bets is called the side pot. It’s equal to $5,000 per better.

 

So, there could be three players on the side and thus, $15,000 in the side pot. This money comes from the bank. The side pot will be divided as evenly as possible to the nearest thousand among all players who bet on the winner, with the remainder going back to the bank. If no one bets on the winner, the side pot becomes part of the purse. Oh, so you almost have to bet on that, huh? The purse is equal to the contract price of the losing fighter, so it’s not set until it’s over. The loser of the wrestling match must play…pay the winner the contract play…price of the losing wrestler. For example, if Angela the angel loses, they pay $17,000 ‘cause that’s their contract price. To determine who wins, you compare all the values in all three columns. If a player is winning in two columns, they win regardless of the difference.

 

If they’re winning in one column and the other two are tied, they win. If there’s a tie for an…for a number of columns, then the wrestler who was winning the other one by total…more than the total wins. It’s also possible to have a perfect tie. Whoever is losing will take the first turn at the start of the match unless it begins as a perfect tie. After all side bets are placed but before the first tile is played, the player who would normally go first may forfeit instead of playing any tiles. If they do, it’s over, but no one retires. All bets are paid as usual. Player who goes second cannot forfeit. Proceeding; you can either pass, play a tile as follows…passing does not end the wrestling match. You can still pass one round and play on the next.

 

So, you play number tiles between 1 and 12, and you can put that on top of any combat stat on your side or your opponent’s if it doesn’t have a tile on it already. That tile’s number replaces it. There’s also swearing tiles; these…those are erasers. They remove a number tile from either side. There’s a money tile; the money adds $5,000 to the purse for each match, which comes from the bank…for this match. Lip style…tell me a secret. They allow you to look at your opponent’s tiles and then immediately draw another pile. There’s a computer tile; system error…allows you to rearrange all the number tiles on the fighters…rearrange, not discard. Tiles can be moved to any spot. This is a powerful tile. Junk tile…supplies. The junk tile stops the match immediately. This is only useful if you’re winning, obviously.

 

Except for the number tiles, all tiles return to the box as soon as they are played. The match continues until a junk tile is played or both players pass. But if you pass, it doesn’t necessarily get you out of it. After the match, usually the loser will retire and is discarded with all the tiles on them. The winner returns to the owner’s side of the table. The owner…the winner returns to their team, retaining the number of tiles that are on them, and they will bring those into the next match. The loser pays the winner the contract price of the losing team. Let’s see…players made side bets, collect their side of the pot. If no one bet on the winner, that money also goes into the purse. If the match ends in a perfect tie, then all side bets are off and no one pays anything, no one retires. Everybody goes home with a bean.

 

When a fighter wins, they get a bean, a counter that increases their rank by one. Nothing else changes. There’s no upper limit to the rank a fighter can attain by earning beans. There’s no benefit to gaining beads…beans; it just determines who can challenge whom and draws a bonus tile at the beginning. By attaining a higher rank and a better reputation, a fighter could be challenged by stronger fighters…wrestlers. Winning the game ends when one player has no wrestlers in play and can’t play any from their hand. To win, you must have the most money when the game ends. However, before counting your money, you have to pay all your wrestlers even though it’s still in your hand. So, you pay the wrestlers their contract price except for those that have retired.

 

Those that have retired, you pay equal to half of their price for all the wrestlers left in your hand, deduct these amounts from your stake, and the player with the most money wins. If there’s a tie, the tie is settled by a thumb war, I guess. This was designed by James Ernst Game, and the art is by Cheyenne Wright, and a bunch of people play-tested it. Ricksy, Rick F, Julie H, Dave H, Blue-Haired Steve…a bunch of other people. 2005 was when the game…it was copyrighted. About the counters; a long time ago, when jokes on the internet were still funny, there was a game, Spammers. It was about hackers and spam, but they made too many counter sheets. John said maybe James could write a game using these pieces.

 

But they said for the price of shipping, he’d send them these 5,000 sheets of counters, and then James Ernst made this game. Okay, then I have another game called The Bunny That Doesn’t Like the Earth. I don’t know if played this one, either. It’s two to five players. You and your friends are hardworking candy machines in the bunny’s factory, but the bunny doesn’t like Earth. So, they decided to get revenge on Earth by manufacturing a very unsatisfying brand of salt water taffy. Very funny. This is very Sleep With Me-esque. You gotta stop the bunny, even though you are aware the plan has no chance of success. You gotta bring the squirrels in and have them stop the machines that make the candy. It’s not a great plan, but that’s what you gotta do.

 

What you’ll need is pawns…this one just comes in an envelope, not a box; a very thin envelope. CAG33. You need pawns for every person, fifty counters, and some distinct counter to represent the bunny, and one six-sided dice. I don’t think I played this game. So, it comes with a two-piece board. It says The Bunny That Dislikes the Earth. Oh, there’s a Karen in this game. At the top is a Karen…looks like some sort of robot. Aware of global events as they happen…more certain than the others that the plan will work. Keystone of…and a powerful motivational speaker…then there’s a lane…these are all compute…some machines, I guess. Introspective taffy machine…oh yeah, these are the different machines, taffy machines. Doesn’t wish to cause any…just wants to make taffy. Protective of Silas.

 

Silas does not like noise, doesn’t want to save the Earth. But no, would give Silas a sense of pride he never found in making taffy. The most productive worker in the factory and the bunny’s favorite machine. Hercules is a fast-moving machine and has no notion of any of the others’ plans. Baxter is a machine that…no concern for the world. So, the board is just two pieces of cardboard. This is from 2001. I don’t know. Let’s read the instruct…welcome to Sweet Works Candy Factory outside of Happyville. Bunny doesn’t like the Earth, so wanted to make this unsatisfying salt water taffy flavor, but you and your friends…oh, you and your friends are the taffy machines and you want to foil the bunny. So, you’re gonna try to have the squirrels drop nuts in the machine.

 

You need the two-piece board, the rules, and the other components we talked about. Each player chooses a machine and places their pawn there. Your pawn will never move. The bunny starts in the office, which is the center platform on the board. Choose a player to go first and then proceed to the left. On each turn, you roll your dice. If you roll between a 1 and a 5, you can add a squirrel to a numbered platform…oh, to that number platform, and then that ends your turn. If the platform is empty, this is your only option. You can move squirrels if there’s one counter on the platform. Counters can mean squirrel or the bunny. You could pick up all the counters on that platform and move them as described below. If you move counters, you gotta move them all.

 

Let’s see, so you choose any path leading away from the platform, distribute the counters along that path. You visit the same space twice; you just can’t double back. For example, you picked up on the counters on Window 1, you could go one to the office, one to Window 2, one on the platform between Windows 2 and 1, and one back on 1. If you have a squirrel, drop a nut on any player’s machine. Usually this would be your own. That player takes the counter off the board and keeps it. The number of squirrels who drop nuts determines your score. The first player to collect five wins. But if you put the bunny on any player’s machine, that fixes…the bunny fixes that machines. It takes two squirrel nuts away from that player and release them. After he fixes the machine, the bunny returns to the office.

 

If you get a 6, you move all counters from any platform on the board. You win as soon as you collect six squirrel nuts, and…’cause then it shuts down your taffy-making. If you like this game, there’s also another game about…The Bunny Needs A Ham. I think I played that one. But yeah, that’s a couple games I got that I may or may not have played, and thanks and goodnight, everybody.

 

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