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Hi everyone, it's uh JP from the Just Play podcast, and this is another vlog uh video series of Essenspiel, which is uh I think it's part four uh now, which is actually based on the third day, which is the Saturday. And uh yeah, Saturday being the the most crazy day at Essenspiel usually, and I think Saturday was actually sold out um yeah, like weeks or maybe a few weeks even before the show began. So there you go. Um however, Saturday I started with a lie in. I'll be honest, I'm as I said, trying to nurse this cold, trying to get this thing sorted out. So I've kind of been balancing, um, feeling a bit crap and having a great time, you know. So it's kind of a bit of both. So I thought I'm gonna have a lie in. Saturday's been busy, and the the underground um has kind of been a bit crazy um on a few of the days. So actually just having a lie in and not having to battle with with that and getting in. So yeah, I think we got into the the halls around quarter to eleven. Uh so only 45 minutes after it opened, so not really feeling like I've missed out a lot. And me and Rob um kind of uh attended together, and we had a bit of a mooch around hall three, and yeah, I think one of the things that kind of stood out was spoke with uh Wonderbow Games to talk about the new kelp expansion of his offspring and something else. I can't remember the name of it, but it's about more sharks, more octopuses, more abilities, more things going on. And those that have played kelp is that kind of one uh you know, 1v1 um game where one plays a shark and one plays an octopus. And yeah, I played it when I went to Memphis for work and uh yeah, fully enjoyed it and ended up buying a copy. So yeah, it's good to see what's coming out of that. And I think the campaign for that's launching next month. Um, I saw both David and Adam Turtsy doing their signings for Captain's Chair. Uh Adam all dressed up pretty much um with Picard's uh uh kind of uniform um kind of kind of thing. Uh it's not really his uniform, it's his kind of jacket. Um it's very cool. And they were just signing lots of um yeah, box lids for for different people. But it's really good to see like lots of fans enjoying that game and and kind of having that access to to the guys. Uh so yeah, that was cool to see. And for those that don't know, Adam is actually one of the travel, I say not travel companions, but it's one of our group that we've kind of organized uh hotel rooms for. So we're seeing him pretty much every day. So that's always a joy. And yeah, something we're gonna play together tomorrow, which I'll hopefully, if I remember, at the end of this video slash recording. Um, we kind of mooched all the way over to hall four and I fancied a demo. I said to Rob, we need to get a demo or something. So we went to Paverson Games and spoke with Julian, who's from Box Meeples, and and also completely forgot, completely forgot that last night um I meant to tell you about the the meal that I went to. And I said I'll tell you, and I completely skipped over it. So I'm gonna circle back time travel, get in the Anaquini Exo suits and go back in time and go back to Friday night. Because actually, me and Mark from Ninja Geek Games went out um to the cardboard alchemy uh meal um at the kind of Vietnamese restaurant, and yeah, we had a blast, we had an absolute blast. So we had at that meal was uh Peter Vaughan, who's kind of hosting along with Rosie, um Rosie Pocket from uh Cozy Board Games, and uh then we met Will and Sarah from Tantrum House, and they were absolutely delightful. And I've sat next to Will, so we're having a good chat about all things content creation and yeah, all everything, everything and everything, which is which is brilliant. Um, we had Askadelia from All Play um on our table as well, and then on another table, we had Amy and Maggie from Thinkerthema, we had Stella from Meeple University, um, and then we had Julian, which is why I was remembered, um, Julian and Libby from uh Paverson and slashed uh boxed meeples where they have their own YouTube channel and things like that. I didn't get loads of time to speak to Julian and Libby and and some of the others because they were on a separate table, so it's kind of the way it worked, but yeah, what an awesome night. What an awesome night. So privileged to be there and and kind of have that that time uh with fellow kind of content creators and yeah, for a little old me, it was brilliant. Um, so I really enjoyed that. And so, again, if any of the cardboard alchemy team are listening, thank you so much. I I I loved it, I'd love to do it again. So now let's time travel back to the present slash past with me. Um, so I went to Paverson Games and Julian was was there, and I basically took a photo and they have this yearbook for their class of 89 game that they're pushing, and uh yeah, got my photo on the yearbook there, and then I decided let's have a game. And he said, Oh, we have uh small batch, and I was like, Oh, what's a small batch? I've not really heard of it. Um, it's basically a distilled game, it's like a smaller version of a distilled. And Rob has been wanting to play distilled for God knows how long. Um, so I thought, well, let's do this, let's let's get some time, let's sit down and play. So Julian taught us um small batch, and then as he was about to start the teach, Mark Dainty from Notboard Gaming walks by. So I said, Oi, Mark, get your ass down here, and uh yeah, so he sat and joined us, and we we had a good four-player game um with uh another kind of convention uh goer. So yeah, we played small batch, and actually, I've played the still before. I prefer the small batch, I prefer it. It's just a cleaner, not say simpler version, it's still got the distilled um nature of you know shuffling your deck of cards and taking one from top and bottom uh to try and kind of make your your kind of mixes and and and alcohol alcoholic drinks to sell. So it has the kind of fun bits of distilled, but it replaces a lot of the the the noise and and excess by having this Arc Nova card river in the middle where you choose an action, you do the top section, and everyone else does the bottom. So it's that constant, everyone's doing something all the time. So yeah, I I thought that game was was pretty good, and again, I'll go into it in more detail um when I get back home. But yeah, really enjoy a small batch. So thank you, Julian. Thank you, Paverson, for that. Um, it wasn't long then before we went to do the meet and play. So every year on the Saturday, Essen does a meet and play event where people can go and meet content creators. So I decided to jump up there uh around two o'clock and uh yeah, and just kind of sat down. I saw Mike Dennis from Ready Sully play, so I kind of joined him um for basically a few games. So we played uh Ascend the Shinra Tower, uh Final Fantasy VII game, which is pretty much like Rhino Hero. Um, and you're kind of uh drawing two cards, you're picking one, and you're building this flimsy ass tower um and trying to get cloud uh from the bottom to the top, defeating enemies as as he kind of goes up. And it's just one of those kind of silly dexterity games with a final uh fantasy theme. But we we had a bit of a laugh and you know some tense moments trying to you know put a shaky, uh shaky cloud on onto the fifth kind of level of the tower. So we played that, uh, and then it started to set up a new game called uh Kinsuchi, which is kind of like a Japanese horror game. And I'll be honest, this this game's not really my my kind of game, it's got kind of like um you have a bunch of cards on the table, and everyone closes their eyes apart from one player, and then they kind of reveal the cards in the right order. And if there's certain icons that have been revealed or haven't been revealed, then you die and you put like a corpse token on, and then you have 10 seconds to write with your non-dominant writing hand um a clue to help the others to go through the the maze, as it were, without dying. And excuse me, and uh yeah, basically, yeah, and the next person kind of goes, and then the next person kind of goes, and then at that point, some people um yeah, were kind of coming up and and talking and to us and and and kind of saying hi. So I kind of like ejected from the game because I was having conversations, but I was okay with that because I you know it wasn't really really my thing anyway. Um, and it was just great to sit and talk to um you know lots of different people about you know just play and uh handing out some badges and and just talking generally about content creation, the hobby board games, and I had a uh blast. And before I knew it, it's like 5 um pm, and I thought, oh, I I need to go. Um, so I got back to the hotel and saw pretty much everyone else um yeah, there playing their games and things, and I managed to catch up with uh the both the Curlies. Uh so um, yeah, Curly and Becky and Rob, and we played container. So I really wanted to play container. This is the new one for more play, the smaller box, um, which is very kind of colourful and wacky in its kind of presentation. And yeah, we played a game, it's kind of a learning game, it was a bit rough around the edges because none of us have played it before. Um, but yeah, I had a lot of fun with container, it does what it needs to do. You you know, the closed economy in that game is very interesting when someone's hoarding all the money, and you're like, come on, you need to grease the wheels here to kind of make this happen. But yeah, I had a blast. I think it was really good fun. And I think now having played it, we played the short game, we probably need to play the long game. Um, so yeah, we played container and then um oh no, I did forget something. Uh actually in the hall I did visit Mindclash because they just sat down here and I managed to get these socks. Look how cool these are. So I got uh Anachrony socks. There they are. Again, if you listen there, you're gonna have to use your imagination. I've got anachriny socks with the Anachrony logo all over them, but they are cool, trust me. And I've got Tracarion socks, so we've got the little Tracarion shards on there, so that's pretty sweet. And then I've got obviously Void Fall socks, which just has the Voidborne vomiting all over uh the other socks there. So yeah, I had to get some cool socks, um which is pretty much good for the game. But we ended the night with the game on my list that I picked up um, I think the the first day, which was time span uh from Allion Games, and I wanted to get this played, uh, mainly because Curdy was leaving tomorrow and he likes Civilization style games, and I thought he might enjoy this one. So we got it played. What did I think of it? I thought it was great. I genuinely thought that was probably one of the best I I've played. I think my only complaint with the game is the component quality on the player mats. I just think they were a bit poor, uh, mainly because we're spoiled and we used to, you know, thicker cardboard boards that um don't warp and and all that kind of stuff. But these are really thin, flimsy bits of card, and they seem to bow a bit like that in the middle. And yeah, that's the bit I didn't like, just felt a bit cheap. Um, everything else is great. Uh the boards like really, you know, fine. The the wooden pieces are fine, the cards are fine, everything's fine apart from that. But the mechanics of this game was fun. Um, some people won't like simultaneous plays, and generally the main actions of the phases of the game is is pretty much uh play all at the same time. But you've kind of got that um, you know, your own puzzle that you're trying to work out of playing cards into your timeline, which pushes cards off the edge, which then enacts you know on deaf abilities, and you're trying to put luxury goods on cards so that when they roll off, they become income for you, and basically trying to generate this whole engine to to play cards and then use your workers to activate on the cards. So you've kind of got this very sliding uh worker placement uh spot puzzle, and it's just so clever. I I really enjoyed it mechanically. I lost, I sucked at this game, but I came away going, I've still really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed kind of how it worked, and I could have played that again if it wasn't the fact that it's pretty much midnight as I'm recording this. So I was like, no, I do need to sleep because I know I need to record the vlog and sit with you guys and share about what's going on. But yeah, I like time span and I think I had it quite low down on my SM preview list, but I think now having played it, I think it's going up. So yeah, let's see. Let's see how we get on playing it a few more times. So I think that's pretty much it for Saturday. There's a lot going on, even though I probably didn't do much in the the Essen Spiel Halls, I did more outside, which I'm actually happy about because I feel like I've been not playing as many games this session. Um, and a lot of the time, you know, previously I will play you know more and more games. Um, and that's probably because it's been a bit more business-y, um, which is not a bad thing. I think for the channel and for me to to kind of have those connections with publishers, um, which I you know really enjoy. I've been doing a lot more of that, I've been pushing a lot of that, mainly because of the change of the podcast. I think from last year I was representing whose turn is it anyway? And this year I'm representing obviously just play. Um, so yeah, basically putting a lot of energy into that. And and it's kind of a tale of two halves. So the first few days are more business, and I think the the second day, Saturday and Sunday, are gonna be more like play, playtime for me. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow's gonna be the last day. We're probably gonna do half a day. I'm gonna get in early, make the most of like three or four hours, and then we're gonna come back and play the big boy, Kingdom Come Deliverance, and that's probably gonna be the day, it's gonna be really easy. Um, I'm gonna get Rob on tomorrow. So, for those that are wondering where Rob is, and I think Stuart, you asked, if you're listening, Stuart, yeah, you said Rob, where's Rob? He's in the cupboard. Um, and the answer is absolutely, he's not allowed to come out until I say. So so yeah, and I say he can come out tomorrow. So we're gonna have myself and Rob. And Rob's played Kingdom Come Deliverance on um uh at Paul Grogan's house uh when he went to uh Games Day there, and he's already played it and he loves it, and I think he's very keen for me to play and see what I feel. So I will tell you all tomorrow what I think of Kingdom Come Deliverance, my first play, and whether it's as good as what people say it is. But there we go. But other than that, I think I'm going to leave you there. I am tired. I need to edit this and um basically upload it. So I'm gonna go and do that now. Thank you for following along with these vlogs. I've been enjoying doing them and and basically talking about the essence stuff. So thanks guys, and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.