 So packs prime our friends brought a game called pendente Pendante is made by Serlin games who you may know from such other games as Yomi and puzzle strike Serlin is the dude who sort of thinks the same things that we do He's all about winning and playing to win and stuff like that And he's a dude who was like big in the fighting game community, but Wasn't as good at moving his hands really fast. He's much better at it than we are but not you know Not good enough to be pro. So that's why he made games like Yomi and puzzle strike Which are like these skill winning type games that lets you experience that high level interplay without needing to master Basic low-level skills along the way. So the new game from Serlin games relatively new at least is Pendante, this is the kind of game that and when we describe it to you You'll feel this the kind of game that people like us usually will ignore or shit, huh, right? So it's Texas Holden poker With two key differences, right? There are other differences, but they're two key differences difference number one pandas Difference number two. It's a different deck of cards. Not usual deck of cards Yep, and it's interesting because what this game does at its core is it takes say Texas Holden Which you need to be good at poker to enjoy Texas Holden pretty much or have so much money You don't care that you lose. Well, you don't have to play for money I mean we didn't play this for money. Wow, Texas Holden without money is Well, then you're just playing for points But that's the thing the if you play Texas Holden like the differentiator of skill between like the person who's got like nine points of skill the person who has eight point eight points only comes out over a long period of play Pendante distills that So that it's a relatively short game It plays more like a German board game or a few like the kind of table-gum games We like and you get the brain feel and the excitement of The important rounds of Texas Holden without having to play a hundred rounds of Texas Holden and without having to be Most of them everyone just falls right away exactly and they're for almost no money And then the big one happens exactly on Dante every round is the big round So this game much like I said for that my thing of the day video It's a game that has is way more fun than it has a right to be and we've resisted when our friends are like, hey Let's play this game We were like we'll play it once so we can review it and then we finish and then we all were late at the most So we should we play it again? Should we play it again? Should we play it again one night? We played it all night until they kicked us out It was just really the other thing is just so easy to play compared to other games that had much more setup You know all this is just take a deck of cards shuffle them give everyone some chips and plates You know it's more setup than say sushi go Yeah, but it's a lot less setup even than seven wonders We got to sort all the cards out and everything so there's the subtle key differences to explain the game in detail It's pretty simple. You play basically Texas Holden But when you buy into a hand and you bid on a hand, you're not just bidding like I have the best hand You're not putting money in saying I got the best hand or fold You're betting on what hand you will have by the end right you're betting on a specific hand There are ten hands you can possibly have you put a chip onto one of them And you can't bet some crazy different amounts either you can't be like all in on pair It's you bet a fixed amount or you quit right So it's either bet five on one of the ten hands or fold those are your two options So I'll bet five on three of a kind. I have a three of a kind is what you're saying. Yep Or I will I will have three of a kind I will eventually have three of a kind not I will have at least three of a kind not I will have you know Something you know better than three I will have exactly three of a kind if you have four of a kind and you bet on three of a kind Well, I guess that includes three of a kind But you don't get your credit for your four of a kind you only get the credit for what you bet on So the game works pretty much like Texas hold them in that regard though because you go down the river Pulling up cards along the way, but every time a new card comes out you have to bet you have to fold or Bet at or better than what you already bet on so you might have like you might be going for I don't know And inside straight right and you think that's a great idea. You might be getting it You never know you're not getting you're only gonna spend you think I can spend 10 bucks to see maybe a miracle will happen so you bet on straight and then you bet on straight again and Then you bet on and meanwhile you just got like a three of a kind but Sorry, bro. You can't go down. You can only go up. You can't go down to three of a kind So even though you have it. It's basically meaningless So there's another mechanic here much like how Texas hold them has all of its terminology It's poker terminology Pandante has panda equivalence of that So you buy breakfast you buy you take breakfast if you want Then you have snacks and then you do like the pause and the tail and all these little things So it has this fun little like interplay of using the words in the nomenclature of the game To the point that it started messing up my poker right brain Now the snacks are actually a big component of the game right the way the snacks work is If you are the highest bidder in terms like I'm betting on straight flush fuck so much I got a flush. That's not as good as a straight flush. I got a flush good If you are the highest better at any given snack time you get free snacks Which means from your you know hidden cards you can throw some out and you draw a card and Then you may or may not keep that card throwing away another card So you still have two cards, but you can swap in and out by going big and betting big You actually have a chance to make that big a reality with all the snacks You can still get snacks if you are not the highest better But you have to pay for those snacks and the further away you are from the top the more you have to pay So if you're betting on pair and someone else is betting on straight flush You have to pay like 20 bucks To have a chance at snacks. So there's already a good, you know because what's the fun part of Texas hold them What's the fun part of poker the big blood and being and everyone falls for it Yep, and you make mad money when you had nothing this game distills poker into the bluffing in the odds and nothing else And it does it quickly. So I might I might bet a fluke Even though I could not possibly have a fluke and I intend to fold just to make everybody's snacks more expensive And because I can see even though I can't possibly have a fluke Maybe the snacks will make a fluke happen. Yeah so And I'll give free snacks the game obviously because the deck is not a normal poker deck the hands you can get our Difference, right? So there are six suits with ten cards per suit number one Joker one through ten One do you guys examine? Oh, no, is there and is there a ten? Oh, is it two through ten? I think it's one through ten That would make 11. Yeah, right. I don't know nine. I don't remember. I think it's two through ten. I don't remember anyway Also the six colors and then there's one wild card. Well, it's a wild card. Yeah, watch out It's prismatic. It's got all the colors and there's some fun rules around that But there's only one wild card. Yep, and there's some special rules around the wild card So you play the game you bet everybody bets you buy snacks if you want and then another card comes out in the in the community cards and then you bet snacks and you do this three times and Then the showdown everybody gets to use a power So this is actually another bluffing aspect right based on the colors of the cards in your hand There are six powers six colors six powers You can it goes around and each person gets to claim zero one or two powers Right and try to use those powers so I can be like I'm gonna do the red power twice The red power is put five bucks in or if everyone puts five bucks in or folds So doing that twice means everyone in the whole game has to put in ten bucks or fold except me because I'm using the power, right? Oh, no, I think I have to do it too, right No, no, okay. You don't remember this game at all. I only played it a pack. So it was already a month ago So bravery every other player must put in five gold right fold Draw a card then discard a card, but you have to reveal a card that you kept orange deal a sixth Community card. Oh shit. Everybody gets that that happens a lot a blue Privately see a random card from a highest hand. So someone who's beating you as a highest hand You can see a card in their hand Black the fun one greed steal five dollars from the lowest hand unless they reveal a blue card from their hands Hopelessness purple you get to fold because normally you can't fold at that point You're already into deep. Yep, but that's like last-minute folding So you can pull some shenanigans and then fold if they don't work out And there's a clever mechanic where if you use a power you can declare up to two powers because you can have two cards You know your car you have two cards in your hole Anyone can challenge you and there's a challenge mechanic. It's like you you're not showing your two hidden cards and you use these powers I'm like I'm using two red powers red power twice. Yep People can either say, okay, we'll do the red power twice or they can say challenge you You don't have two red cards the cards are designed in such a way that you can reveal their color without revealing their number So I have to then either say yeah, you got me and then I owe them some money Yep, because they challenge me and I was lying I give them money or I show them the colors and then They owe me money. Yep, they challenged me and they were wrong. I did have two red cards So they got to give me one which can be great if say I'm bluffing that I have a fluge And I show a card that corroborates my story that I have a flu You might really need say to use the orange power to have a chance at this hand-winning But using you don't have any orange cards or Using it implies that I don't have the hand and I'm Hail marrying right or you might have a really shitty hand and Want to say purple I'm gonna fold to just get escape, but you don't have a purple and some of the calls y'all I don't know you lose that's the worst The worst or your hand is totally awesome and you want to kick some ass So you use red or black to take money from people or but you don't have red or black and you get called out You have the crazy awesome and sometimes you'll use orange or green Just to make everyone think that you're actually bluffing. Yeah, if you're using orange or green It seems like you're desperately trying to get a good hand So people will think you don't have the real hand But all you did was just draw a card and throw one away and then you go down the challenges So after the powers after all that the cards are out there Whoever has the highest hand everyone has a chance to either challenge them right or say yeah, you win I bet on five of a kind and no one else bet on anything close to five of a kind I just win without revealing anything whatsoever unless you challenge me so Challenges in this stage are interesting because in on normal challenges with the powers if you are wrong You owe the other person some money. It's not a big deal If you challenge someone's hand and they're winning and you're right You get a little bit of money and of course they don't win Mm-hmm and the next thing that goes down to the next person if you challenge someone and you're wrong They actually have the hand I have five of a kind read them and we you are fucked you owe them so much money It is devastating. You just lose the game basically. Yeah So if you are not challenged and you win and you were bluffing You can tell everyone yo dogs. I was bluffing you're stupid and then you get to draw a Panda Lord this panda lords are so ridiculously Waggles all about waggles fuck everybody else We pretty much only took waggles because he was so much better than the other pan Well, I think we took waggles mostly because of the waggle action on the card That's also an excellent reason to take waggles But the Panda Lord if you haven't have one and you can just take one. There's there's one of every color They just have weird powers like waggles power is the triple play quote during the ability phase You can play up to three different abilities that cannot be Challenge so you could just be like red red red everyone put 15 in the middle or fold everyone right now And you lose waggles, but you know, hey, that's ridiculously strong Yeah, so if you basically bluff your way to victory on one hand you get a panda lord Which comes close to ensuring victory on a future hand So when it is a huge incentive to win via bluffing So what look again the design of the game is pushing you toward the fun parts of poker And it's kind of glossing over the really really tedious parts of poke Right, but at the same so while it's basically pushes you huge incentives Just bluff your way to victory at the same time it ridiculously punishes anyone for Challenging if you're right so it's like you have this built-in defense Making it sort of easier to actually bluff your way to victory because people are scared to challenge you if you actually have the hand Because they will just be fucked if you do have the hand now in my experience playing the game Nobody ever fucking has the hand except that one time The early games pretty much that we played of this everyone Person actually had the hand and someone challenged them that person was out the person who had the hand won the game the end Because they just got so much money from that it was over Yeah, not only did they get the money from winning the pot. They got the money from the person who just got hosed I think what happened is our friend had so much money. They couldn't be unseeded They won a second hand then they had that was enough money to win the game But then I think pretty quickly what happened is our friends started getting competent at the game part of the problem was that it's not easy to calculate the odds or Visually feel the odds of the six color ten car deck Yeah, I think it was very hard to calculate the likelihood of like what are the odds he has a flu Oh, I'm pretty good. Actually. There's like ten cards of that color, right? So the odds at those is he's got two of them. So like I had like five snacks He's seen like seven cards this game and plus the ones in the table It's like they could easily be all houses not that hard to get fluce is slightly harder to get I don't know if it's because it's on the far right side or because we just really like the word fluce Only a panda would know what a fluce. Yep. It says in the instruction manual flu the games Flavor text and just that the art and everything on the cards was well done to the point that We started using its terminology despite making fun of how dumb its terminology was when we learned the game Flush became the breakaway word of packs For the rest of the weekend. Yeah, fuck your official swear word. Flush is the official word of packs prime 2014 I think the problem was we looked up flush on Urban Dictionary and came up with something involving a female ejaculation so A few of us looked that up and laughed about it and then everyone else came back And then someone bet on a flush who was not there when we had looked it up and that sealed the deal The other thing about this game is all the pandas on the cards have really great expressions Especially the number one where the pandas put the red the pandas putting his hands in the air like what what raise a roof Our convention was if you win You have to make the red one pose Unless you win with a panel or then you have to make the pose of that panel or basically We kept making the poses of all the pandas and saying flush a lot This is a must have in your game library If you're the kind and it takes up somewhat little space and you probably already have poker chips of some kind if you're a gamer Yeah, it's a deck of cards special deck of cards couple of challenge cards And little betting cards that remind you like what the order of the you don't even really need the betting cards You really just need the deck I think you need the betting cards So it'll tell you very helpful if people don't know how to play but once you're all good at the game You don't need that anymore I think you'll always need them so you will never forget the order of victory If you play the game enough you will know the order of victory Yeah, just you're gonna remember that a straight is less than a full house less than a flush Yes, because it's much easier to get a straight when there's six suits Yep, but a rainbow straight versus four or five of a kind a rainbow straight is less than four of a kind And less than five and I see you can see that over my shoulder because I have the betting No, because I remember that rainbow straight is in the top left Flush is in the bottom right and then just to the left of flush should be Regular straight, but seriously if you run board game nights If you are the guy who shows up at a con and has like hey, I got a game We should play this is the the this is like the perfect example of a social game That is good to get everybody warmed up and to get the kinds of people Who don't want to learn a difficult game and bulk it playing a game To start playing a game and get really invested in it. I think this is also really good If you find those people I know a lot of them who are They like to play poker right they're in the texas hold them whatever But they it's hard to get them to play real board games. This could be the bridge game You can get them into sort of that like fluge culture While they're still playing a poker ish game that they like and you can go straight from fluge culture to brick for wood culture Yeah, you can and that's the bridge you can get them over the heap if they're unwilling just play Well, here's how serlin sells himself. He just gives you a set of bullet points. No player elimination Uh, well, I guess you're not permanently eliminated. Well, we'll get to that Yeah, no, you don't have to fold all the time like you do in human poker It is panda poker though seriously as an aside, but you do fold a lot folding is if you Play poker with people and you are not a poker person My only advice to you is you need to fold about five times more often than you think you do Last time I played poker for real monies in college I basically just folded whenever I didn't have a hand And didn't fold when I did have a hand and started raising the roof And I just had when I lost because I had no hand I lost almost nothing and then when I did have the hand someone usually stayed in And I had the hand so I made mad money and then I won Quote it's actually fun to play for its own sake when no real money is on the line The pandas are laughing and joking the whole way through that is true But the game has two set it has its core rules and you can just play it and it's totally fun Just pick up game go nuts poker. It's awesome Uh, then there's a section where serlan's like so If you want to play it for real money if you're panda enough to play it for real money Are you panda enough here are the for serious rules and all they do What's the difference with real money? Well, I mean you're playing with real money. What's the fixed bet you said it like at a dime I forget it's in the back of the book. It's basically the same It's basically the same the only difference is the bank doesn't cover The money that you owe when bullshit happens You can't go through all like in the forest and get free money from the bank to come back in after you've lost You can buy back in with money money Real money. Yeah So I kind of wanted to try playing this with real money effects. No one else was super into it I mean that's super into jail I would not be worried about jail. I'm sure if you played games for real money And enforcers noticed you would not be welcome Scott even if you're playing for real money You use poker chips. You settle up afterward. Jeez It's like it's like me playing hearts for money in middle school I'll be the bookie and I will also play That's fine Good There's we're not giving the house a cut and oops The book is slightly skewed here. Yeah, you oh everyone owes me 10 bucks There's no book. There's poker chips. What are you gonna have counterfeit poker chips? No, I'm writing down in the book what happened and then you'll forget what happened Then we'll look at the book and see what now we know by day. You know what you do you take your fucking poker chips We all go somewhere like at a restaurant and then we exchange poker chips for money That's how it goes down. Everyone walks out with chips in a little baggy. Yeah, I'm not trusting you and your bookie I'm not gonna write down how many chips everyone has He blagged the bookies But I tie wrong seriously It is rare that I will just uncategorically and without reservation recommend a game for these purposes Now granted, this isn't greatest game of all time territory. No, but this is not even close to Tigger's new freighties This fills a slot in the game library that no other game currently fills Right. It is it. So in that respect, there is no other game that you can buy to do what Pandante does Which is panda poker. So you should get it if possible This has been geek nights with rim and scott special thanks to dj pretzel for the opening music cat Lee for web design and brand okay for the logos be sure to visit our website at front row crew dot com for show notes Discussion news and more remember geek nights is not one but four different shows sci-tech mondays gaming tuesdays Anime comic wednesdays and indiscriminate thursdays geek nights is distributed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license Geek nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience But unlike those other late shows it's actually recorded at night