We're So Board!
We're So Board!
Episode 33 - Interview with Jamey Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games)
In this episode we interview Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games to answer the burning questions the community has. He tells us about what his day to day job looks like and what advice he has for other game designers/developers. Listen to find out what Jamey is willing to throw in for our Viticulture giveaway winner and whether or not you can expect a Big Bird card in Wingspan.
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Hello and welcome. I'm Jake.
Rachel:I'm Rachel.
Jake:And
Rachel:we're so
Jake:bored. Are you okay? You sound weird.
Rachel:It's fine. Just do the thing.
Jake:Okay, the Podcast where each episode we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with said game. To help answer the question, Will this cure boredom?
Rachel:That's right, we'll look at the mechanics complexity and replayability. And again, to determine if it's the perfect alternative to say, I don't know, having the dentist wrist deep in your mouth as he tries to sand down the extra filling from the cavity on your father's back molar. But it's between two teeth, so he can't quite get the right angle, all while having the world's smallest mouth.
Jake:That happened to you today.
Rachel:Yeah, I guess I guess I do have a very small mouth and man, he was just like stretching my cheek and he was getting in there. And like, we just got to sand down this one little piece so you can floss. Okay.
Jake:Yeah, I have the exact opposite problem. The bite block that they tried to use for me, the largest one they have still is loose in my mouth.
Rachel:Yeah, I think they need to use the child's one on me. And even then I have a hard time like opening my mouth wide.
Jake:Yeah, no, I have a giant mouth apparently. Anyways, before we get started, we wanted to just let everybody know, once again, we are streaming on Twitch. It seems like Wednesday is going to be our day of the week or evening of the week where we stream and tomorrow we will be streaming something we're not sure yet.
Rachel:Yeah, I don't know yet. But we'll definitely be on tomorrow. I believe Jake is working. So it'll be a little bit later in the evening. Sorry for people on the East Coast. But you know, it's it's unfortunate about his late working hours, I guess.
Jake:Yeah. So probably about 7:30 Our time, which is 10:30. East Coast time. Yeah. I am also streaming on Twitch announcement, everybody, I just made affiliate. I'm so happy. Very, very excited. Thank you all so much for everybody who has followed and everybody who has watched on stream. I really appreciate all the support. And my schedule. I no longer have to Well, I will be updating it probably every other week. But it is accurate now. So I'm updating that as needed. Yes. Very nice. Yeah. And we do a retro stream on Wednesday or the closest day to it. And right now we've been streaming Legend of Zelda Majora his mask my favorite game ever. That's great. We're about halfway through actually believe it or not a little more than halfway through. My channel is Naughty Dog 541. That's NAU gh t y de OC. 541.
Rachel:All right. So yeah, last announcement real quick. Before we get into what this episode is, we are giving away a copy of Viticulture Essential Edition. So that is currently going on. You can see a gleam giveaway link on our Facebook page. It's pinned right to the top. And there's a bunch of different ways that you can enter. It's all free shipping is open worldwide, except for countries that have shipping restrictions from the United States. So that's not very many. But that is there.
Jake:Yeah. So everybody going enter to get your free copy of viticulture. It's a great game.
Rachel:Yeah, I had a lot of fun with it. And speaking of viticulture, yes. Today we are interviewing Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games.
Jake:Yes, he is the owner, proprietor and designer of a lot of games for Stonemaier.
Rachel:Yeah. And personally, I believe designed that a culture. Yes. So that's why we paired these two episodes together.
Jake:Yeah. So we asked the community on Facebook for some questions that they would have for him. And we got to interview him.
Rachel:Yeah. So without further ado, these are the burning questions that you guys had for Jamey Stegmaier.
Jamey:Thanks for inviting me and thank you for your flexibility. I still can't believe I just didn't put the link convention I tend to be on the my calendar. I want to put next year's on my calendar. So don't forget again. It happens.
Rachel:No worries at all. That's the only convention you attend.
Jamey:Yeah, I mean, especially during COVID. Yeah, it was very COVID safe. But yeah, I don't I'm not a big convention. Attendee. I like to smaller game nights and chem groups to the big but I like the big every now and then you guys do you guys attend any and you're in Arizona. Is that right? Yeah,
Rachel:we're in Arizona. We're attending Gen Con for the first time this year and I'm not Sure to expect it's going to be very busy, I guess.
Jake:Yeah. I'm a little nervous, you know, 23,000 people or whatever,
Rachel:no more than that. Because last year they limited it to like 40,000. Like for COVID. Only 40,000. Yeah, that's a lot. It was crazy. So
Jamey:it's pretty big. It's the one that I like, is just, it's still a few 1000 people, which is a lot, but we're just playing games all the time. And GenCon is just a spectacle. It feels very different than like a big game night. Oh, yeah. That'd be a fun. Yeah.
Jake:Yeah. Thank you. We're excited.
Rachel:But anyway, yeah. Thanks for joining us. Welcome. Yeah, welcome. So we managed to collect some questions from the community of like, the top things that people would want to ask Jamey Stegmaier. So all right. That's kind of what I've got going on here. So
Jake:and is that the way that you pronounce your last Stegmaier?
Jamey:Yeah, we my last name is Stegmaier. Confusingly, the company name is Stonemaier a different name? Right. Yeah. You pronounce it correctly? Yeah. Perfect.
Rachel:It's a combination of last names. Right you, Alan stone. Allen stone? Yeah, I couldn't remember his first name.
Jake:Excellent. We'll just go ahead and get started with the questions. I know that you're limited on time today. Yeah.
Jamey:Let's jump in. Yeah, I'm happy to answer anything that you have for me. All right.
Jake:So first question that people wanted to ask you is what does a typical day for you look like as a board game designer and developer?
Jamey:Yeah, that's a good question. I'm glad they phrased it that way. Because very little of my time is actually spent on game design. And game development is a little bit of it. So a normal day. For me, it looks like my cat usually wakes me up around 630, or one of my cats does more vocal the to Walter. So I'll wake up around 6:30. And I'll jump right into work until around 11 o'clock. So four, four and a half hours. And by work, a lot of that morning work is content creation. So writing that day's blog post, or I'm doing videos that day, doing that type of creation, and replying to emails usually get a lot of emails, and then also doing like, anything social media related that I need to catch up on from the previous night. And usually, that keeps me busy for the full morning. And then the afternoon, some of that carries over to the afternoon. Sometimes I have some tasks, sometimes I'll do a meeting, sometimes a chat like this in the afternoon. And if I have time, that's when I do more of the project management side of my job. So a little bit of focus on game development for games or projects that I'm not the designer for. And just making sure that the various projects that we have in the works, because we usually plan two to three years out, okay, well, and so that's usually the next six hours of my day. And then I take a break for dinner. And then I come back to work for another couple hours at night. And that's when I get to focus on design for a few hours. And I love that part of the day. I love all the different part. I love the variety. But that is the time that I get to set aside for design.
Jake:I can see why. Wow. Yeah. That's a busy day. Yeah. So you work from like six until eight or nine at night.
Jamey:Yeah, with ample breaks for meals. And yeah, usually, it's not quite seven days a week anymore, because I do take more time on the weekends to do social stuff. But yeah, there's a pretty much every day. And that's that's my schedule every day, but I love it. I really do enjoy it.
Jake:Wow, that sounds awesome. Sounds like you love your job.
Jamey:I do. Yeah, yeah. Do you do?
Jake:Oh, yeah. For the most part, it has its ups and downs.
Rachel:Yeah, I wish we could turn this into like a full time job or you know, do like content creation type stuff. I really wish we could do that. But right now we both work full time doing other things to pay the bills,
Jake:right. Sure. So we're working towards kind of transitioning hopefully.
Rachel:Yeah. All right. So in your opinion, what characteristics make a good game designer?
Jamey:A good game designer? Yeah. Well, the number one thing that I look for when I work with another designer, and I try to embody this myself, oftentimes learning from other designers, is to be open to constructive criticism, really. I think that's a huge part of the design process, hearing that criticism and being willing to ask for it and being willing to hear it when you ask play testers. When you ask blind play testers, when you talk to developers or publishers, I would say that's by far the number one characteristic, and not only being able to hear it, but also being able to kind of speak your truth about it as well. Because whenever I work with a designer, they know the game way more than I do. And when I'm the developer, I know the game pretty well. But they know it's so much better than I do. So there might be certain times where I say like, have you tried this? Or have you thought about this? And I need that designer to be willing to say, Yeah, I have actually tried that. And it didn't work for this reason. I need them to be able to push back at certain times. So be able to hear that feedback, but also respond to it. But I think by far the most important aspect.
Jake:That makes total sense. Yeah, that makes total sense.
Rachel:I guess I have kind of a side question to add onto that. So do you feel like you end up being kind of picky about the designers that you have working for Stonemaier as a result?
Jamey:To a certain extent? Yeah, it's definitely part of the selection process. When we're thinking about publishing the new game, like a big part of it is the game itself. But when we work with a designer, it isn't the type of thing I think some publishers might do this, but maybe fewer fewer now, I think maybe the old school approach was a designer would finish the game. And they would just hand it off to the publisher. And the next thing they know, they would see, they would magically see the final version of the game. That's not how we work really like when the designer submits it to us. I continue to work with the designer very actively for the next usually six to eight months to make the game as good as possible. It's not a handoff, it's a collaboration. And so during the selection process, the submission process, I'm looking to see if the designer is someone that I want to work with. And that way for an extended period of time,
Jake:I have a couple follow up questions on that. Yeah. To park, how many submissions do you get, let's say in a year, and then how long is that process?
Jamey:Yeah, we usually get just the right, I think we usually get a few 100 submissions a year? Wow. Yeah, maybe two or three 200 or 300 submissions. I think that had that number, right. It might be even a little bit more than that. Because my co founder Alan stone, he's the one that is the first stop and the submission process, right? He sees the submissions, and he filters out a lot of them. And then he usually narrows it down to a few that he thinks might be a good fit or that I might be interested in. And then he lets me know about them. And we explore them for further. Okay, they I forgot the second part of that question, but that I answered the second part. Yeah,
Jake:yeah. How long is the process once you actually have that submission that you guys have chosen?
Jamey:Yeah, once we have the submission, I think Alan goes into that it's a form that people fill out on like a Google form. So I think he goes in there once every week or two, and filters out most of them. And then if a game gets past that point, we usually respond pretty quickly, maybe a few weeks later. And then if we want to go deeper, like we actually want to see and play the prototype, then it's a little bit longer process, but usually any designer submits to us. They know that I actually can't even remember how the form works right now. But I think it's said that they haven't heard from us in like two weeks. And it means that we're not interested. But Alan might also follow up with them to say no, thank you to write it in a fairly expedited way. We don't like to leave designers waiting for a long time. If we can.
Jake:No, I understand. Yeah. Well, yeah. So
Rachel:the reason that I wanted to ask about like, you know, being picky is So Jake, and I played our first Stonemaier game last year, like about one year ago, we played wingspan and just totally fell in love. Good game. And we've played several and actually reviewed several of your games since then, on our podcast. And I feel like all your games are just high quality and really well designed. Like, it seems like there's a lot of thought that goes into the mechanics and like how everything works. And so I can really appreciate like the process that you go through, I can tell, you know that it results in a good game.
Unknown:Well, thank you, I try to put a lot of love into all of our games. I know different games are gonna resonate with different people. I completely respect that they're games of ours that you end up not liking. But the love is definitely there. And the rubrics, the mechanisms, the art, the theme, the components. Yeah,
Jake:yeah, that is something that we've noticed about all your products. Everything is a good quality product as well, regardless of whether or not you like the game, everything, all the components, the rule books, everything is put together nicely.
Rachel:I don't know what you make your rule books out of. Like they feel so good.
Unknown:Thanks. Yeah, that was a discovery that I made a few years ago, I'd always just assumed that all rule books would just be that standard rule, book paper. And then one day, I heard about another game that had a special paper. And so I asked my manufacturer about it. And so since then, I think all of our rule books are made out of that special paper.
Rachel:Yeah. I love it. Thanks.
Jake:Good edition.
Unknown:Yeah, thanks.
Rachel:What's a difficult aspect about being a game developer that other people might not expect?
Unknown:So again, I'll answer that as asked. So as a game developer, specifically, so someone who works to home games instead of the design process, the being part? Or do you do Did you mean that both? Guess both? Yeah, I think so. People? So I'm just replaced those two words, because there's some overlap there in the process. So the most challenging the most difficult part of
Rachel:it, like, yeah, it's something that's difficult that like, you don't expect going into it. Like, oh, I didn't realize that I was going to have to understand Supply Chain Management, or, you know, whatever. Yeah, I
Unknown:mean, that's part of part of running the company. But most most designers and developers don't have to worry about that part. What is something about game design or game development that people don't often know about? Actually, okay, so here's one that I've learned along the way, especially working with CO designers at certain times, the prototyping can take a lot of time. Like whenever I make a new version of a game, there is the aspect of you actually playing that game, processing that information, processing the feedback and figuring out what to do next. But then I actually just had to get on the computer and get on InDesign and spend hours and hours going through and updating the text of the mechanisms of the icons or whatever I'm working with at that point. And I'm not even I'm not a graphic designer. I'm just doing this like a rudimentary prototype on InDesign. And so I think that that part of it is often overlooked, like just the sheer amount of time that you will spend and revising your prototype is a lot. And I think it's particularly important to think about for CO design, if you're working with someone else on it, like, you can have a lot of fun playing that game together and talking about it and discussing it. But eventually, someone is going to have to be the person who actually makes those decisions, and actually implements them into the prototype. And I think it's important to work that out pretty early on, and whoever doesn't do that, they need to know how much time that takes. Because I think a lot of people think the design process is just like having some good ideas and throwing them out there with no designer. But that's the actual work, I think that goes into having the game evolve over time. Okay, that makes
Rachel:sense. Yeah.
Jake:This is another question that the community wanted to ask you. What are some mistakes that you've made along the way that you would advise others against?
Jamey:Yeah, I would advise not making any of the mistakes that have made many mistakes.
Rachel:I think more of like, what would you tell people to watch out for?
Jamey:To watch out for it? Yeah. I mean, one lesson that I learned very early was budget as accurately as possible, very early on in the process. So this isn't something really for designers or development. But for running a company running a crowdfunding campaign. That budget is incredibly important. And for my first campaign, I had a rough budget, but I didn't plug in certain numbers, certain stretch goals, certain shipping costs as accurately as I should have. And I kind of got lucky with a couple of different things that happened, like we didn't meet a stretch goal that really would have made it difficult to finish off that campaign, I would have made it work, but it wouldn't have been pretty, I would have done well in my personal finances to make that happen. And with shipping, too, I should have been much more accurate about shipping. So yeah, I think that budget and being pretty detail oriented, or finding someone who is passionate about budgeting and accounting and having them having to help you figure that out is really important. Yeah. And can that can avoid so many mistakes if you get that right.
Jake:Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.
Rachel:Like, yeah, I could totally see that. That's gonna be hard to estimate. In some ways, though, right. Like, it's, you can estimate like how much something is going to cost to make, but I feel like, I don't know, especially with the shipping stuff that's going on right now. Like, what do you do in that case, where oh, you know, six months ago, when I was planning this out, it estimated at, at this price, and now it's like three or four times as much it that's hard.
Jamey:That is a quite a conundrum, especially especially now, for crowd funders. I mean, just one of the reasons that I moved away from crowdfunding, because I don't have to make those decisions until the day that we put the product up for preorder. And that's the day that we already have it available in our fulfillment centers. So I know that we're shipping it, I know, the shipping prices aren't going to change in the next couple of days, right? But for crowdfunding, you're right, you're estimating eight to 12 to 18 months in advance sometimes, and it's very difficult to do. So I do respect crowdfunders now who are waiting to charge shipping until much closer until they're ready to actually ship? Yeah, right.
Rachel:What aspect do you find most important when settling on a new game to publish? So examples are like theme accessibility, a balance, replay, etc.
Jamey:All of the above? I think those are that's a great list a great start to the list. I mean, one of the things, part of it is my gut feeling like is this thing going to be exciting for me to work on for a long period of time. And it's not about in the end, it is about me, I need to be passionate about it. But I'm often passionate about something because I think a lot of other people are going to be excited about the game itself. And a lot of it for me comes down to that integration of theme and mechanisms together how they mesh together. I don't want to paste on a theme after someone submits a game to me, I want a game design that we're the mechanisms of the theme are designed together. Pretty much from the start, like with wingspan, you mentioned wingspan earlier, I the one of the biggest things that drew me to it, were all the bird cards and how Elizabeth had designed these mechanisms that just made sense for the theme of that individual bird. There's so many cards where you can like read the little bird factor like oh, I can see how this bird fact matches this mechanism that she designed. Yeah. I love that. That's a that's not it's not an easy thing to do to design that many bird cards. No, because there's hundreds. Yeah, there's over maybe close to 300 at this point even more with the new expansion that we have coming out this year. That's a that's an incredible feat that Elizabeth continues to pull off. And so yeah, that type of thing, right? Well, I see something like that. And I'm like, Well, I There aren't many games that have this many uniquely designed cards where the theme fits the mechanism so well. That was what drew me to wingspan.
Jake:Okay, and you mentioned earlier that you prefer smaller board game nights instead of big conventions. What are your top three non Stonemaier favorite games to play at these
Jamey:play in general to play it like events?
Jake:I don't know the game night, you know, a game you and your friends getting together? Yeah,
Jamey:I host the game every Wednesday. Every other week is virtual. We usually play on board game arena, and then every other week is in person. We kind of just got into the habit of doing that during the pandemic. And it's it's two hours so there are certain games that I love that are a little bit longer than two hours so I won't answer them on this list. But I still I've been loving Dune Imperium with you to play Dune Imperium.
Jake:We've done an episode on Dune Imperium. Oh, cool. Okay. I'm a huge fan.
Rachel:That was surprisingly good.
Jamey:I love Dune Imperium. I recently played the expansion for the first time and love that too. That's one that I'll always gladly play. It can go a little over two hours, but I played it in shorter than two hours for sure. I love Quacks of Quedlinburg. That's good put up there.
Rachel:I've been wanting to play that I haven't had a chance yet.
Jamey:It's a lot of fun. It has a back deck building feel to it with a bag building and have simultaneous play. There's no downtime at all the numbers. Oh, yeah. And then what's one other one? I'll go over my shelf over here. One quick one here. Here's a quicker one that I like to play that game nights if if we have like 20-30 minutes, have you played Dice Miner? It's a relatively new game. No, it's a dice drafting game with all these beautiful custom dice. And you're kind of building a little bit of a dice engine. Over three rounds. You're drafting a few dice. And then at the end of each round, you're rolling all the dice that you have, and then you're drafting more of them. By the end of the game. You're rolling this giant handful of custom dice. There's a lot of luck to it, but I have a lot of fun with that game. Okay, yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. No, that sounds like a lot of fun. Just a handful of dice that you're rolling. Well, we have one final question that was kind of a goofy, like, end of interview question. But we actually have a few minutes. So Jake, do you have anything else that you wanted to ask that maybe we didn't think we would have time for?
Jake:We'll do that at the end? Give you a chance to just so whatever you want. Okay. Sure.
Rachel:Okay. All right. Oh, that's my goofy question then. So this came from the community. Is there any chance that there will ever be a Con exclusive wingspan card either featuring big bird or a pterodactyl?
Jamey:As a fun question there couple layers of that, too. So yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. I think there will be wingspan promos someday. So the way Elizabeth works, so Elizabeth drives wingspan completely, I'm here to support her, and to publish the game and help develop it, but she really drives a wingspan Okay, and so if she's excited about doing something wingspan related, that involves gameplay, then she either does or doesn't do it. I specify gameplay there because like for the speckled eggs that we made for wingspan she's not involved in that we just select the legs and I let her know that we're doing it. And so I'm saying all that because so far in the wingspan, evolution of the game, she's gone expansion, the expansion, but I think the day will come where she maybe needs a break from the game for a while, and just wants to design a little fun promo pack exactly like you described there. Some sort of winged creature, it could be something goofy, like Big Bird or someone mentioned, Larry Bird was a famous basketball player, and things like that. Flying dinosaurs, or I think the most likely will probably be extinct birds. Yeah. Okay. Okay, that isn't a spoiler by any means. But that's the one that I think she's most likely to do. The other part of the question, though, what would it be a Con exclusive. And one of the core philosophies of stomer games is that we don't do exclusives. Everything we do, we do promos, we do special things. We make things that we are excited to make. But we'll never do something that is strictly an exclusive because we want to make sure that the stuff that we make can invite people in and be as inclusive as possible for a long period of time, not just to the people who attended that one convention that one time. Okay, okay.
Rachel:Yeah, I really liked that. Tell me where I can get a copy of the Aboraculture expansion for Viticulture. I don't want to print and play, I want the actual expansion
Jamey:That's a good retort to what I just said. This is a philosophy that has evolved over time that we came to after that original viticulture campaign. Actually, it started after euphoria was when we did it. That's a fair request. And maybe we'll have to take you up on a Sunday. So far, we have kind of gotten by on the there's a company that makes nice game prototypes. And they are the ones that the called Print and play productions are particularly games. They are the ones that make our board culture right now.
Rachel:Oh, can I get it from the okay, because I was assuming it was literally like something that I would have to print in play.
Jamey:There is that option, but they also have like a really nice, like, I don't think you would even be able to distinguish it between an official still more production because they have the real files for it. They have the little cow meeples they have the class beads they have.
Rachel:Okay, we're gonna look into that.
Jamey:Yeah, there's a link on our website. I'll send it to you after we get off off this. I'll try to find it. I'm not sure they're in stock right now. But I think they should have a back in stock notification. Yeah, maybe that'll maybe that'll work for that. Yeah. That's one of the very few things that was originally unfortunately exclusive. And I wasn't sure afterward that there would be enough demand for us to make more of it. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah.
Rachel:Very cool. All right. Well, I think we're kind of getting towards the end here. So what did you want to ask Jake?
Jake:Yeah. Is there anything that you want to tell the community anything you want to share any news, any projects, you want to talk about? Anything? The time is yours to say whatever you want, really?
Jamey:Oh, well, thank you. That's very generous of you. I would say the newest thing We have that we've been talking about a little bit or the wingspan puzzles. We tried a little experiment with making jigsaw puzzles for wingspan. So if there are any puzzlers out there that that are wings, banners, and also love jigsaw puzzles, we made three different complexity levels, a 500 piece, puzzle, 1000 piece, and then a 1500 piece puzzle. So we tried to make them as nice as possible, as we do with with many of our things. So that's been the probably the newest thing that we've put out there and that I'm excited about right now. Okay, what about you, too, I get to talk about games that I love right now, what game were you most excited to get at the table that you might recommend?
Rachel:That I might recommend?
Jake:That's a good question.
Rachel:Okay. I can't talk enough about Abomination: the Heir of Frankenstein. Okay, yes, that's a Plaid Hat game. And like, it's just so thematic, you know, you're building like a Frankenstein monster. And so you're going in, you're collecting like all these body pieces. Like, you know, it's a little bit dark. But you're putting together all these components to make a body and like build a Frankenstein? And I don't know, I just have a lot of fun with that.
Jamey:Does the monster do anything after you build it? Does it come to life?
Rachel:Yeah, you end the game or you like you win the game if you managed to bring it to life. But okay, like you've got each individual you've got like a torso ahead, each arm and each leg. So you have to bring all of those pieces to life. Like they're separate items. And you know, you you flip the switch to hit it with electricity, and you have to roll some dice, and there's a chance that you destroy it, there's a chance you know that you bring it to life, and there's a chance that nothing happens. So that's cool. It's a really cool game. Probably over your two hour mark.
Jamey:I'll try anything once. Yeah,
Rachel:I think it's really cool. If you're okay with that a little bit of a darker theme. A little bit.
Jamey:Yeah, I'm okay with that. And I like that. It sounds like it's a very thematically designed game too. So I need to try that. Yeah,
Jake:the game that I really have been having a lot of fun with lately is called Crisis. It's a 2016 game released by Ludo creations,
Jamey:I've heard of it, but haven't played. Yeah. What do you like about it?
Jake:Well, it's a competitive game, but it has a cooperative element. Okay, there's this economy tracker, basically, the premise of the game is that you are the head of a company, each person is the head of this company that is trying to kind of balance the economy in this country. Okay. And if you as an entire group, make poor decisions, and don't meet certain goals, the economy starts to slide back into a not great spot. And each round, you evaluate that, and you draw an event card based on where the economy is that and so the worse you do the worst the consequences are, but it's competitive in the sense that you also want to get the most victory points by accumulating different commodities and selling different commodities. So it's got this kind of cooperative, but also competitive balance to it. It's weighted and a three out of five on board game geeks. Knows Yeah, it's only a three 3.040. Okay. So it says play time is two hours. But we've spent more time playing that for sure.
Rachel:Wait, so we played this game at a local convention that we had last month, I think. And we had a bunch of people who had played it before come and join, and it sounded like they don't really even consider the cooperative component. They'll just let the economy collapse and like not play the whole game all the way through, you basically just play and try to do your best until the economy collapses, and then the game is over. Okay, so that's one way of looking at it, I guess. But yes, yeah. If you actually try to keep the economy from collapsing, it can be also quite a long game. Yeah. But it's also one of the only worker placement games that I know of where it punishes you for placing a worker and then not being able to actually complete that slot. Yes. So if you don't have the resources, or you know, whatever, and you can't do that, it'll actually give you negative victory points for that.
Jamey:How does that feel in the game? Does it feel punishing? Or does it feel like a good restriction?
Jake:So for me, I feel like a restriction should feel punishing a little bit like you shouldn't just, I don't know, I feel like the punishment is okay. Okay, because it is entirely your choice. You put the worker there, and if you can't do it, that's up to you. Really, that's a risk that you took, and that's your fault. So it's not like a dice roll where hey, I'm going to risk it on this dice roll and something just happens and I can't do it. Okay, this is you didn't plan ahead properly. So
Rachel:I was just a Jake is really into games that are all about that. Like, I made this decision. I did my best like no, I guess maybe you'd call him a Euro gamer probably like he doesn't want to have anything based on chance or anything like that. It's literally If I didn't do it right, or hey, I did awesome. And that's because me and what I came up with.
Jake:Yeah. So I think it's not punishing, I think it's an appropriate level of restriction.
Jamey:Okay? Okay. I have put a rule like that in viticulture, where you can't, if you're not going to use the action, you just aren't allowed to put the worker there. And I put it in there not to punish players. But really, because I didn't want players intentionally blocking other players. That makes sense, right. And it really, I don't even know if it has mattered all that much. Because viticulture, you have so little time anyway, to build your vineyard that I think it's exceedingly rare that you would take an action just to block another player. But there are those times the games where you really need to like fill a wine order, where you see that someone else really needs to feel a wine order. I don't think it would feel good if I put a worker there just to prevent you from doing so. Right. So that's the intent of the rule there. Yeah, well, you don't lose victory points. Or actually, this game is actually almost saying like, you can do that you can block but you will lose victory points. Yes. Is that what Christ is doing?
Rachel:Yeah, I mean, it's not it doesn't even necessarily feel like it's to prevent people from blocking it. It really is about you didn't plan properly, because a lot of like resource management stuff. And so I think there can be those missteps where it's like, oh, I didn't, oh, I didn't do this. One thing that I forgot that I needed. And it's like,
Jake:well, that's something I like about viticulture, though, is that you also have that grande worker that yeah, helps prevent people from blocking. I mean, even if that row weren't in there, that would be another check and balance there.
Jamey:Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's flexibility. Always that that backup once once per year that you can you can use any action with that worker.
Rachel:Yeah. Which I really, really liked that mechanic. It really does feel like it's a good balance. Speaking of viticulture, we're actually doing a giveaway right now. We've got a contest or giveaway going on for the rest of the month. Okay. So if you want to, like say good luck to everybody or something like that, that'd be cool.
Jamey:What's the prize? They're getting Viticulture? Or an expansion?
Jake:They're getting a copy of viticulture.
Rachel:Yeah, they get a copy of Viticulture Essential Edition.
Jamey:Well, that's, that's awesome. Congratulations, anyone who wins that, and maybe I can throw on top of it. Maybe I could send a signed viticulture card or something to whoever, whoever wins it to make it a little sweeter.
Jake:I would be awesome.
Jamey:You wanna do that?
Jake:Yeah. If you don't mind.
Jamey:Yeah, yeah. Just let me know. When you pick your winner, let me know where to send a signed thing. And I'll pick a card or or a rulebook or something like that to sign send it to Okay,
Rachel:that's super cool. Wow.
Jake:Well, thank you. We weren't expecting that. That's awesome.
Jamey:Well, thank you for doing the giveaway. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the timing because we are coming out with a new viticulture expansion this year, Viticulure World, the cooperative expansion.
Jake:I'm very, very excited for this. It's to me Yeah. To be
Jamey:well, we're looking at June 1, I think will be the date for the preorder.
Jake:Okay, excellent. Well, I'm very excited. We will definitely be ordering it because I like cooperative games. So awesome.
Rachel:So yeah, I'm excited.
Jamey:But let me know when you if you do a review about that. So I can share on our website and on.
Jake:Absolutely, we definitely will be doing that.
Rachel:I think our next Stonemaier review is going to be charter stone.
Jamey:Okay. Where are you in the campaign?
Jake:We haven't started haven't
Rachel:started it yet. I actually, like I don't know if I misread something somewhere or, or what but I had a misunderstanding that it was a cooperative. Building, like a town building experience. And Jake was super excited.
Jake:It's all good. Like, oops, let's go play
Jamey:also does have like you are sharing the things that you're building, like you're building your own little part of a village, but you can place workers on any on any action that anyone has built. Okay, you are competing against each other to have the most victory points
Jake:each right. Yeah, okay. Yeah, well, I'll play it. I'll still have fun. Okay. I think that's it for us today. Is there anything that you else you want to plug anything that you want to advertise for your company?
Jamey:I think the big things and viticulture was the one coming up and the wingspan puzzles were the the other less recent thing. And I am glad we got out in the open that our board culture and for maggio are that you can at least get them kind of from print and play games. Also, looking at the link right now it looks like they are out of stock. And they don't have a way to ask for when they'll put it back in stock. So I'll contact them to put that link there. But there is a way to get it and it will. It really does look and feel like the real game. Yeah,
Jake:we will definitely be looking out for that too.
Rachel:I'm excited for that. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. It's really awesome to be able to talk to someone who's from such like an esteemed publisher. So really appreciate you coming on.
Jamey:Yeah. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Yeah, thanks for the time. It was nice to meet you both. No, thank you.
Jake:It's very nice to meet you.
Jamey:Alright, well take care enjoy the rest of your Monday. All right.
Jake:Thank you you as well. You to see why. And there you have it that That was Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier gains.
Rachel:Thank you all so much for listening. You can always hit us up on Facebook Twitter Instagram at so board podcast that's at sobo A R D podcasts. We love hearing from you about, you know, whatever games, you're currently enjoying Fun House rules that you have anything like that. You'll also be able to find pictures and short stories of what we've been up to recently, and interact with us all things, tabletop gaming. If you don't feel like doing it on social media, you can always reach out to us on email at we are so bored@gmail.com That's w e a r e s o Bo AR D at Gmail, and make sure you hit that subscribe button. It will alert you when new episodes come out. You can also leave a rating in places like Apple podcasts or Spotify. Wink wink nudge nudge. And that helps us out it helps other people find our podcasts. It helps out everybody. Yeah, absolutely. And the last thing that I've been telling people lately is tell a friend you like our podcasts you like hanging out with us. Tell a friend we're trying really hard to grow our audience right now. And that's gonna let us do more things like giveaways and fun content and all kinds of stuff. So help us out with that.
Jake:Yeah, we also want to thank Mitchell Mims, the he is the designer of our art. He is currently accepting commissions. So check him out at MIMSO ca Ra On Instagram, or his website, Mitchell Mims. That's mi ch e l m i m s dot c ar rd.co. Once again, we're giving away a copy of viticulture, all entries are free, nothing is paid for. All you have to do is go to our Facebook page and you can see all the different ways to enter the gleam giveaway.
Rachel:And once again, we are streaming on Twitch both us as a board gaming couple and Jake by himself streaming video games. So we will likely be on streaming tomorrow. We're not sure what we're doing yet, but you can always check Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to find out the exact time when we're gonna go live. I usually try to keep our schedule up to date on like the actual Twitch page as well.
Jake:My channel is naughty Doc 541. That's NAU gh t y d OC. 541.
Rachel:All right, well, thank you everybody for listening, and we will see you next time.
Jake:Thanks guys. Bye
Rachel:bye