Episode 255 - Our Board Game Go Bags
February 19, 2026
Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Trajan, The Gang, and Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated. Then we talk about what we would put in our board game go bags (if we had them) to take to gatherings that aren't necessarily about board games.
Intro: 0:00
Announcements: 0:39
Recent Games: 2:10
BG Go Bags: 20:08
Outro: 28:58
Bloopers: 30:02
Games mentioned this episode:
Trajan: 2:10 (How to Play)
Mancala: 3:29
The Gang: 10:38
Texas Hold'em: 10:43
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1: 18:55
Just One: 22:28
Sausage Sizzle!: 22:43
Bomb Busters: 23:22
Cribbage: 24:23
ito: 24:49
Flip 7: 25:00
Bezzerwizzer: 25:14
Taskmaster: The Board Game: 25:22
Cross Clues: 26:42
Wavelength: 26:57
Click Clack Lumberjack: 27:21
ICECOOL: 27:27
Jenga: 27:48
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Use the code "BLITZ2026" to get 10% off your entire cart.
Board Game Blitz's theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Transcript
[00:00:06:23 - 00:00:39:18]
Crystal: Hello and welcome to episode 255 of Board Game Blitz, a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to learn how curling works. Board Game Blitz is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week, we're talking about our board game go bags! First, we discuss a couple of games we've played recently, Trajan, The Gang, and Clank Legacy. Then, we talk about the games we take with us to social gatherings that aren't centered around board games. And now, here are your hosts...
Ambie: Ambie
Crystal: and Crystal
[00:00:39:18 - 00:02:06:11]
Crystal: One quick announcement before we hop into the main episode, and that is that while you haven't heard us talk about it in a while, Tabletop Live Network is going to be ending officially. Even though I don't stream really at all anymore, and Ambie just streams puzzle and video games on her personal Twitch channel, we're coming back out of retirement on the Blitz channel for one night only during the TLN marathon. We're doing it old school, the big long 27-hour non-stop board game marathon like we did early in the pandemic with a bunch of other board game streamers. We're sending TLN out with a bang. If you do not know what TLN is, Tabletop Live Network is a large group of board game streamers who play board games on the internet, and we formed a group, and then we did it together for a very long time, and that time has unfortunately come to an end. But if you want to see our final stream with TLN, tune in the whole weekend, March 7th and 8th, but we specifically, our time slot is going to be March 7th at 8pm Pacific time. Should be a lot of fun. I'm really-- I'm looking forward to it, mostly because while it was kind of a moment in time for me personally, during the pandemic and the years following, it was a really wonderful thing. TLN has been a great way to build community within the online board game space, and I'm really grateful that we got to be a part of it.
Ambie: Yeah, it'll be fun.
[00:02:10:20 - 00:02:19:11]
Ambie: Recently, I played Trajan. Trajan is a game designed by Stefan Feld published in 2011 by-- Who is this one by?
[00:02:19:11 - 00:02:22:11]
Crystal: I imagine that one's been published by a lot of publishers, probably.
[00:02:22:11 - 00:02:40:15]
Ambie: I'm not sure which version this is. I see Passport Game Studios on here and Hutch & Friends. I'm not sure who it's currently published by, because there's been a new version. This is an old version. I haven't had this game for a long time. And the last time I played it was actually in 2018 at BlitzCon, where I taught you--
[00:02:40:15 - 00:02:45:17]
Crystal: Oh! I was going to say, you taught me how to play Trajan. That's the last time you played it. Wow.
[00:02:45:17 - 00:02:55:19]
Ambie: It is. But I played it again recently, and I still like it. So Trajan was actually my first how to play video on the YouTube channel. Board Game Blitz. So yeah, I've got-- This is good memories.
[00:02:55:19 - 00:03:09:01]
Crystal: I mean, when you come out with a how to play video, you don't go for the low-hanging fruit for your first one. Most people would probably be like, "How to play Hungry Hungry Hippos," or whatever. You're like, "Nope! Full on Trajan."
[00:03:10:13 - 00:03:30:04]
Ambie: So Trajan is a heavy-ish strategy game. It takes like-- It's two to four players, 60 to 120 minutes. So I played three players, and it took us an hour and 20 minutes. All of us had not played in a while. Actually, one of us had played kind of recently, like within the last year, maybe. But in the game, the main mechanic is Mancala.
[00:03:31:17 - 00:05:20:13]
Ambie: So you have your own board. There's a shared board that has a lot of stuff on it, lots of different actions. I'm not going to show you to show it all, but you have your own player board that has little bowls printed on it. There's six spaces, and you have these little wooden hexagon-shaped things. Or they're octagons, actually. They're octagonal action markers. You have 12 of those. So you're going to start out with two in each little bowl. And on your turn, you're going to be picking up all from one bowl and then going clockwise, dropping one off in each bowl. And there are different colors, too. So there's two of six different colors. And then the bowl that they land in is the action you do. So there's six different actions you can do.
There's like a military action where you're going to be going on the board, going to different spaces with your military people, and you get stuff. There's a Senate action where you go up on the Senate track, and you get points. And then also at the end of each round, the person highest on that track gets a bonus. There's a Trajan action where you can get a Trajan tile, which is something that you're going to be putting on these actions to get bonuses. There's a building action where you go on this building site where you get stuff. Basically, you go stuff and get stuff. There's a shipping action where you're like getting cards and then you can turn in sets of cards to get points. And then there's a forum action where you can just like grab tiles off the board. And so the tiles are going to have different things, like they can have extra actions they give you. So sometimes you can get tiles that give you extra actions. If you do an action, then you can do it again. There's tiles that give you food or there's like three food types. There's bread, fire and military, I think. At the end of each round, there's going to be like demand that comes out. The game lasts four rounds, but then each round is like four phases. And at the end of the first three phases, a demand tile will come out and tell you what you need to pay at the end. So instead of like paying food for your workers or whatever, it's paying these demand tiles. And so you'll have to get those from the actions you do in the game.
[00:05:20:13 - 00:05:34:25]
Crystal: OK, so it's so those are the types of demand tiles.
Ambie: Yeah
Crystal: I think at one point you said there's three different types of food -
Ambie: Oh, yeah, it's like it's like food!
Crystal: Bread, fire, or military.
[00:05:36:16 - 00:05:40:15]
Ambie: Yeah, it's like food because you're feeding your people.
[00:05:40:15 - 00:05:46:28]
Crystal: There are fire eaters. That's a thing.
Ambie: Yeah.
Crystal: But don't eat the military. That's not good for you.
[00:05:46:28 - 00:08:08:17]
Ambie: But basically, like there's all these different actions that you're doing and you're not going to be able to just do one action a lot. But you do want to like do actions multiple times because you get more stuff. Like for the military, you're trying to go get further and you get tiles and you get more points if you go further. So you want to be doing that multiple times. Each action, like if you do it more, you're going to get better stuff. But to do the actions, you have to do the Mancala thing. So you take off the tile, the things and you move it around and then you have more in the next section, right? Because you dropped one off. So just like in Mancala now, you have to like, OK, in order to get this, I need either one from the one before it or two from the one to before it or something like. So if you want to do it multiple times in a row, you kind of have to plan ahead.
And there's a lot of planning ahead. And then also the Trajan tiles are a bonus thing. And that's a cool thing about this game. You get these Trajan tiles that give you bonuses and you start the game with three of them. There's different types of bonuses you get. They give you like extra cards or extra people going in the different actions or bonus demand tiles. And they also give you points. But they're going to go on each action spot and they each have two colors on them. So for example, like this one has blue and pink on there and it's going to be on the action spot. So if you land on that action and do that action and there's a blue and pink of your marker there, because remember, your markers have different colors. So if you have a blue and pink when you land on that action space, then you'll get that bonus tile. So in addition to planning ahead, the number of Mancala action markers you have for doing those actions, you also want to take into account the color to match up and get the bonuses. So there's a lot of planning ahead with the Mancala action, but it's like solo Mancala on your own board. Everyone has their own little board of Mancala. And then you're doing like the actions on the board, like the military is a shared thing. Whoever gets there first is going to get the points and the buildings too. Whoever gets there first and shipping whoever does it first gets more.
So yeah, there's lots of lots of ways to get points. It's fun. I like the planning ahead. So like this time, it had been a long time since I played, so we were all rusty, but I had fun with planning. And I went heavy on the Trajan tiles, which is fun, because like I just got a bunch of extra ones and then was doing bonus actions to get more at one time. And then I was like planning the colors so that I could land all them and get the extra points. And that was fun. So I like Trajan. I think it's my favorite Feld game. It was my favorite Feld game before, but I haven't played that many of his other ones that much, maybe because I didn't like them as much.
[00:08:08:17 - 00:08:16:08]
Crystal: Well, but your thoughts on some games have changed over the years. So it's nice to know that with an eight year gap that this one still hits, right?
[00:08:16:08 - 00:08:34:13]
Ambie: Yeah, yeah, it was still fun. It's like a classic game. And we've had it on the shelf that long and just hadn't played it. I guess it's not like super long or heavy. I mean, it is kind of it is pretty heavy just because it has a lot of actions and stuff. But like even though it has a lot of actions,
Crystal: like it's not quite as thinky as some of the other games you play.
[00:08:34:13 - 00:08:37:01]
Crystal: Like I feel like it's not as brain burning necessarily.
[00:08:37:01 - 00:09:50:17]
Ambie: Yeah, because you are planning ahead for the Mancala, but you don't have to plan like that far ahead. And it's not too hard to get the colors matching because you can move another one and then like get the color when you drop it off. Even if you're not taking that action, you can drop it off as you pass by. So usually it won't be too hard to match up the colors. Oh, another thing that's cool is like to figure out how long a round lasts. Depending on player count, there's these tracks that go around. So it scales well for player count because for two players, there's like 11 spots and then there's 16 spots for three players and then more for four players. So each time you go, you move the marker, the number of spots that you like picked up for your Mancala tokens. The first round, it's just going to be two. You pick up two and go two spaces. So you move the round tracker two times. And then if you have like all of them up on one space and you have to do like seven on one turn, then it's going to go seven. And so the round is going to go faster and you'll get fewer turns if you're doing like the big thing. Yeah so like each loop is one fourth of the round and brings out the demand tile. And so like people can kind of end it if they see like, oh, there's three spaces left in this round and then we're going to have to feed and like, okay, well, I can either go one space and let the other person like other people will have a turn or I can just do four. And then like, they won't have the turn to get the thing that they need.
[00:09:51:19 - 00:09:59:13]
Ambie: So that's kind of cool too. And it gets scary or stressful. It's like, oh no, like I'm going after them and they could end it.
[00:09:59:13 - 00:10:18:14]
Crystal: Yeah. I remember enjoying the Mancala aspect of this because I played Mancala as a kid. So that mechanism is kind of hardwired in my brain. But I definitely, I remember when we played this, it was one of those games where I was like, oh, I would need to play this again to like, because it's the first time it's hard to kind of wrap your head around all of the different things that you need to do.
[00:10:18:14 - 00:10:27:11]
Ambie: Yeah. But I guess I still remembered a lot of it, even though it's been eight years. Yeah, almost exactly eight years. Wow. But yeah, that's, that's Trajan. Good, good game.
[00:10:27:11 - 00:13:54:18]
Crystal: Well, I recently got to play a game that was the hotness in board game world two years ago in 2024 and that is The Gang. So The Gang is the cooperative Texas Hold'em poker game that came out that everybody was buzzing about. And I can't tell you how many people I know in like board gaming circles had asked me if I had played this because for those of you who were not aware, I used to work in the poker industry. Like I came out to Las Vegas originally because I worked in the poker industry and I was also a amateur poker player for a long time. I played online after the like kind of poker boom started back in like '03 around there and then just yeah, I spent a lot of years doing very pokery things. So I stepped away from the world of poker kind of entirely at a certain point. And I have a lot of mixed feelings about the world of poker that we definitely don't need to get into here.
But I was very curious about this board game because how do you play Texas Hold'em cooperatively? Well, that's not exactly what happens. The Gang was designed by John Cooper and Kory Heath and published by KOSMOS Games. And in The Gang, three to six players are going to be dealt hands as if they were playing a game of Texas Hold'em poker. I am not going to explain the rules to Texas Hold'em. If you do not know how to play Texas Hold'em, please feel free to look those up on your own. But basically, everybody will have two whole cards and then there are a set of chips equal to the number of players that the players can grab from. The chips are numbered and on one end of the scale is the best hand and on the other end is the worst. And you're supposed to grab the chip that you think your hand falls into amidst all of the current poker hands. But you can't see anybody else's cards. This immediately became problematic, not like in a horrible way. But because if you and the people you're playing with have very different knowledge levels of Texas Hold'em or poker strategy in general, I found it's really hard to tell what people think is good and bad in this game.
So, yeah, like I would grab a thing and then everybody else would be grabbing other things. And what's neat is you can actually grab tokens from other players. Like if somebody else has the best tokens, like saying they have the best hand, but you had two aces in the hole, you would obviously want to grab it because you have the best hand possible. But then they can grab it back from you, but then you can grab it back from them. And that is part of the way the game is supposed to be played because you're not allowed to talk to one another about what is in your hands. Where I found this game the most interesting for me personally, and I could see this actually being an annoyance for other players, depending on who I would be playing with. Because I was playing with other people who had limited experience with Texas Hold'em and poker hand rankings in general, I found myself within the rules of the game explaining to the other players what I thought all the other players had. I would say, OK, here's so and so. I think they have this in their hand because on this round they did that and on this round they did this. And I made sure not to include any information about the cards in my own hand, because that would be cheating if I use like information from my own cards. But you can just speculate about other things.
[00:13:54:18 - 00:14:04:19]
Ambie: Did you play with the challenge cards?
Crystal: We did not play with the challenge cards.
Ambie: Some of those are like you have to guess what the person who has the highest rank has.
[00:14:05:27 - 00:15:46:25]
Crystal: I would be good at that. And I think- so I'm good at reading people. That serves me well in games like this. But yeah, I found it both very fun and also super maddening. Like we were not good at it at all. But I just wanted to keep playing. This is one of those games that like feels like an activity and I'm not mad about it. I recognize why so many people were enamored with it. But I also do feel like it was overhyped at the same time. Like I think both things can be true. Like I get why it was hyped. I think it was overhyped. It's still fun. But like I was looking at the page today on BGG and it got nominated for a Golden Geek for most innovative board game. There's not anything innovative about this game at all. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But like what is innovative here? There's nothing.
Ambie: I guess maybe it cooperative?
Crystal: I don't know. I think that's one of those things where people are so hyped about a game. They're nominating it in every category they can. Or maybe they're just weren't a lot of innovative games in 2024. I don't know. But regardless, I didn't even explain how you play through a bunch of rounds and you can see the flop, the turn and the river. And so after each of those happen, you grab tokens again, a new set of tokens and you have all the past rounds tokens laid out in front of you. So I might have said that my first hand, like my whole cards were really horrible. But then later on, I might say that I think I have a really strong hand and people can use what they can see on the board to get kind of glean what I might have. And then you have to essentially in that final round have the numbers in the correct order based on how strong your hands actually are. That's very difficult to do.
[00:15:48:04 - 00:16:05:10]
Crystal: At least for people, again, who have very differing levels of knowledge about poker hand rankings and poker in general. And we did also have one player that was basically ranking his hand based on its possibility instead of its actuality.
Ambie: Yes. That's-
Crystal: Like he was, he had an open ended straight draw-
Ambie: that's how Toby started playing.
[00:16:05:10 - 00:16:17:16]
Ambie: Yeah.
Crystal: Yeah.
Ambie: That happened to us, like, because Toby played a lot of poker. So when we heard first playing, Toby was ranking based on the possibility. And then we're like, no, no, you have to make it like what you have right now. And he's like, oh, but then that's so boring.
[00:16:17:16 - 00:16:54:07]
Crystal: Yeah, this is not intended to be for only poker players. It's intended to be approachable for anybody. But yeah, if you were like, if you're betting on an open ended straight draw and then don't make the draw, now this hand that you said was really strong is all of a sudden crazy week. And everybody's going to be like, what is wrong with your hands? Like, how did it get worse? It should not have gotten worse generally unless it's just now lessened because somebody else's hand is awesome. But it's fun. I get it. I like it. I don't know if I'm going to be playing it a lot. I don't know if I'll add this one to my collection, but I'll definitely play it. More in the future.
[00:16:54:07 - 00:17:09:25]
Ambie: Yeah, I played it last year, I think. Yeah, I liked it. I don't own it. But yeah, as I said, like Toby was way more familiar with poker. But after we played a few rounds and he stopped betting based on possibilities, we got a lot more in tune and we were able to do it actually pretty well. And we did the challenge ones too.
[00:17:09:25 - 00:17:27:26]
Crystal: Nice. Yeah, we didn't do any of the like advanced mode stuff, but I do want to try that stuff at some point as well. And I do think if I played this with the same group over and over that we would kind of get a better idea of what people consider to be strong hands. And I think it would get easier for sure.
[00:17:27:26 - 00:17:32:01]
Ambie: It does have a cheat sheet little card. So it tells you like the ranks of the hands.
[00:17:32:01 - 00:18:38:16]
Crystal: Well, yeah, but then so the thing was we found that like one of the players really just not know poker kind of at all, like very base level, bare knowledge of poker. And so when they're looking at the hand rankings and they see all of the big stuff listed first, you know, the Royal fresh straight flush flush straight or full house straight like all that stuff is up there and you have like a single pair.
Ambie: Oh, so you think that's low, yeah
Crystal: You might think your hand is horrible. But in the context of Texas Hold'em, in most situations, a pair is a very good thing. And so trying to convey that to them like they weren't doing anything wrong by any means. They were playing it completely logically based on what they were looking at. But yeah, the cheat sheet can be detrimental in that way because they're like, well, it's not any of those hands. And so-
Ambie: It doesn't show the probabilities of that.
Crystal: Yes, the probabilities are definitely and we did we were kind of like, yeah, we were like, on average, this is what's going to win an average hand of Texas. And then it's like, oh, OK, that helps kind of make everything else shake out a little bit more clearly.
[00:18:38:16-00:18:53:05]
Crystal: I also wanted to mention very quickly that my group finished Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated and I can confirm officially that other people on the Internet are right. This is the best legacy game.
[00:18:54:08 - 00:20:03:26]
Crystal: I think if Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 came out today, it could be better than Clank Legacy season one. But Pandemic Legacy walked so Clank Legacy could run. That's the way I see this. Like Pandemic Legacy was amazing. It was a mind blowing experience, but it had flaws. And I think that's just the nature of there weren't as many legacy games yet. People hadn't really honed their craft in regard to designing legacy games. And Clank Legacy has a good story. It has good progression. It doesn't feel quite as repetitive as some other legacy games I've played. It doesn't feel draggy in that you're playing the same thing over and over. Just satisfying and fun and dynamic. And I really liked it. There were not quite as many surprises as I would have liked. I like really fun, unique surprises in a legacy game. And it did not have those. But the experience was so amazing overall that I really don't care. So my group will be moving on to Clank Legacy 2 after Dice Tower West. That is the plan. So we'll have to see how that one holds up. But I have high expectations based on how this one went.
[00:20:05:25 - 00:21:06:16]
Crystal: I know Ambie mentions this in the outro of every episode, but if you're one of those people that turns off the show before the outro plays, I mean, I can't really blame you, but that means you're missing out on the announcement that we have a Discord. And if you're not in our Discord, you should join because it's a very fun place to be. And you get to meet wonderful people like Andrea, who suggested our topic for tonight's episode. Andrea said, "What is in our board game go bag?" We're old now, so we don't really like go out to social gatherings on a whim anymore. But if we did, what would be in the game bag we would grab? Like it's not a board game meetup. It's just a friend gathering or maybe a family gathering. And we need to grab a bag of games just in case. What do we put in that bag right now? For me, this changes frequently, like with kind of like what's hot and what's new and what I've just picked up necessarily or what I'm really loving. So yeah, I this one shifts for me quite a bit. And it also is dependent on my mood in the moment.
[00:21:06:16 - 00:21:32:25]
Ambie: Yeah. And for me, I don't have a like a board game go bag because I don't go out much. And also I don't play board games when we go out as much now with kids. Because like it's also very like group party situation dependent. Like where are we going? Are we going to someone's house? Are we going to a restaurant? Are we what type of gathering? How many people are there? What type of people? Is it family with lots of kids? Is it family with just adults? Is it just friends, adults or like how many?
[00:21:32:25 - 00:21:38:00]
Crystal: So Ambie stays at home stressing about what should go in the bag instead of going out.
[00:21:39:05 - 00:21:44:05]
Ambie: Yeah. And then I just like, oh, I can't bring anything. Then just go and bring food.
[00:21:44:05 - 00:22:25:04]
Crystal: I try generally if I don't know, like let's say I'm going to a place and I know a couple of the people who are going to be there. I know there are people who would be willing to play board games potentially, but I don't know a lot of the people that are going to be at the event necessarily. I'll try and put a variety of games in the bag. And in a lot of situations, like maybe nine out of 10, the game bag doesn't even get opened. I just bring it with me, like carry it out of the car into the person's house or whatever. Sit it next to my chair. We talk and do things for a few hours and then I pick it up and I leave. But sometimes somebody will be like, what, what you got in that bag over there, Crystal? And then it's like, oh, it's so funny you asked. Board games.
[00:22:26:08 - 00:23:03:17]
Crystal: And I've heard some, I mean, Just One is a classic for me that always comes pretty much wherever I go and usually works. Strike is another classic that's very fun to teach just about anyone. But some newer ones that have been hitting my go bag in recent past include Sausage Sizzle! because I get to tell people to yell the word wiener over and over again. That's not in the official rules. That's in the Crystal rules. But anytime somebody rolls the hot dogs, the sausage is you got to yell wiener as loud as you can. And then everybody else at the party wants to know what you're doing. And that's how you get people to play board games.
[00:23:05:01 - 00:23:34:10]
Ambie: Yeah, for me, I think if I did go to an event. Or something with people. This is so rare for me. So foreign of a concept. I would probably bring like, yes, something that I've been really into lately or like a newer game that's approachable. So for me, like right now, that's Bomb Busters. Although that only plays up to five. So it depends like if it's like a smaller group, I probably wouldn't be going to an event with a lot of people expecting to play board games. If it's not a board game event, I think that's just me.
[00:23:34:10 - 00:23:37:17]
Crystal: Sometimes you just force people to play board games.
[00:23:38:22 - 00:23:57:12]
Ambie: But yeah, like Bomb Busters is easy to play or like easy to teach. And it's my latest obsession. I also just like always have a deck of cards with me. I think I used to like always have a deck of cards with me in my purse. And now I have one in my backpack, I think I don't take it out that much. But like it's an emergency deck of cards. If you need one, like
[00:23:57:12 - 00:24:03:25]
Crystal: People are like, Oh, what's in your emergency kit? And people are like gauze, tape, band-aids, a deck of cards.
[00:24:03:25 - 00:24:05:10]
Ambie: I mean, I have that too.
[00:24:07:01 - 00:26:12:05]
Ambie: You never know when you need it.
Crystal: I have an app on my phone that's like it contains like a bunch of generic card games, right? Like it's got Spades and Hearts and Solitaire and Free Cell and all like all of the generic 52 card games you can imagine. And I recently re-picked up Cribbage, which I used to play when I was a kid, my sister and I played Cribbage together. And I don't remember why we played Cribbage. I don't know, remember who taught us. I just know we liked it. And I saw that it was in my little app and I was like, I should pick that back up. And man, Cribbage is fun. I feel like so now that you talk about having a deck of cards around, I'm like, I feel like I should put a little Cribbage board in there.
Ambie: Yeah.
Crystal: Some other somewhat recent titles that I really like. Ito is fun. It's kind of like The Mind in that you have to get things into the correct order between one and a hundred, but you're naming things to do it instead of just putting the numbers down. I really like Flip 7 as a light card game. That's fun and easy to teach. And for trivia, trivia games can work in some situations really nicely, especially because you can like team up in large groups and people can kind of come and go from those teams. And Bezzerwizzer, the newest edition of Bezzerwizzer is so great for that. And I really enjoy bringing that one out in certain situations. And the Taskmaster board game, I've not yet had an opportunity to bring it, but it's in like, it's kind of like on, I'm ready to bring it to an event and be like, to make people do tasks. I own now the regular Taskmaster board game, the Taskmaster Secret Series game, and I just ordered the Taskmaster escape room game, but I do not, I did not get the new board game because they had both things paired together that you could order and it was already sold out. And if you ordered each item individually, which were still available, you had to basically pay the full cost of the item again and shipping. So it was significantly more expensive. And I was like, if they're both in stock, how is the bundle deal not in stock that doesn't make any sense? That's weird. So I just ordered the escape room and not the new board game because I already own two Taskmaster board games, but I'm very excited that more gamers are getting into Taskmaster now.
[00:26:12:05 - 00:27:01:02]
Ambie: Yeah, you mentioned ito, that's a good one. I was thinking like, when I do go to places, I kind of look at my shelves. So as I mentioned before, it depends on like who I'm going with. I usually think of like, who's going to be there? Because like with family, it's like, okay, I know these people, like, they might like this or like friends, they might like this game. If I played other games with them, then I bring like a new game that I think they would like. But a lot of times it's like the lighter party games that I have, like my shelves are set up by type kind of. So I have like my cooperative party word games on a shelf. So like Codenames or Cross Clues, I think is probably one I would bring now because I like Cross Clues a lot. That's my go to word party game because it's real time. Everyone's giving clues and receiving clues at the same time. So I like that. So that would be my thing for that. But yeah, like ito is good because and that's a lot more. You know, it has like a Wavelength feel, but it's a lot more portable than Wavelength. Wavelength is a big box!
Crystal: That's very true.
[00:27:01:02 - 00:27:04:29]
Crystal: Yeah, because Wavelength is super fun also. But yeah, much bigger box.
[00:27:04:29 - 00:27:26:17]
Ambie: Yeah. Yeah. And then like, if it's with my kids, I'll be looking at kids stuff or like asking my kids what they want to bring. And they're like, no, I don't want to bring anything. Maybe some dexterity games. If it's like kids and adults or even just adults, like dexterity games are fun. I like Click Clack Lumberjack. I used to play that with just adults and now my kids play it. So that's a good one.
[00:27:26:17 - 00:27:43:01]
Crystal: And I've seen ICECOOL be really good with both adults and kids too, because like sometimes kids are way better. Sometimes they're way worse. It's like one of those things where like those little weird trick shots at the penguins, like the skill level varies wildly and you can get some just like random shots that are awesome in that game.
[00:27:43:01 - 00:27:57:25]
Ambie: Yeah. And dexterity games tend to be good in party settings. Well, like for things like Jenga or like Click Clack Lumberjack or something like you don't really have to be there for the whole game. You can like get in and out. It's not like super serious. It's very easy to learn.
[00:27:58:26 - 00:28:18:10]
Crystal: And similar to my wiener situation, when the Jenga tower falls, everybody party goes, what was that? And then it's like if you, because there may have been another Jenga fan nearby that did not know Jenga was happening and now they know and now they can come over and play. And I don't know who I'm attracting by yelling wiener all the time, but I'm attracting somebody.
[00:28:18:10 - 00:28:24:16]
Ambie: So I guess you only don't want to do stuff like this if you're meeting up at like a library or someplace that's quiet.
[00:28:24:16 - 00:28:32:14]
Crystal: Yeah, don't yell... PSA from your friendly hosts of Board Game Blitz. Do not yell wiener in the library.
[00:28:34:07 - 00:28:36:22]
Ambie: So yeah, it does depend where you're going.
[00:28:36:22 - 00:28:58:12]
Crystal: Very true. Well, we would love to hear from you all what games are currently in your either actual or theoretical board game go bag. What are the games you're bringing to a gathering where board games might get played, but it's not the sole focus. Let us know on social media or in our discord that I mentioned earlier that you're definitely going to come join if you're not already a part of.
[00:28:59:16 - 00:29:54:22]
Ambie: And that’s it for this week’s Board Game Blitz. Visit our website, boardgameblitz.com for more content and links.
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. It’s not too late to get your copy of Vampire Survivors, the board game. Purchase your copy though the pledge manager on Gamefound today! And don’t forget that when you make any purchases at GreyFoxGames.com, you get 10% off everything in your order–including exclusives–when you use the code BLITZ2026 at checkout!
Don’t have a regular game group to play with? Join the Blitz Discord for weekly gaming meetups, as well as discussions about gaming, puzzles, and more by following the link in the show notes.
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Our theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Until next time,
Look around the shelves gamer baby
Is that one box where you hoped it’d be?
Bye everyone!
Crystal: Bye!
[00:30:02:21 - 00:30:29:22]
Ambie: Hexagon shape things. Hexagon cubes. Know what shape that's called.
Crystal: You can just say token if you want.
Ambie: Yeah, but they're like, or they're octagons actually. They're octagonal action markers, but they're like the wooden like 3D octagons that have been extruded to be 3D. Like that shape. Like a rectangular prism octagon
Crystal: Octagonal tubes?
Ambie: Yeah, anyway.
[00:30:30:28 - 00:30:38:17]
Ambie: Six years. No-
Crystal: Eight years?
Ambie: eight years. I know what year it is now.
Crystal: Math is hard. It's fine.
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