 So this is a game, Meeple Circus that I heard. I don't know when I first heard about it because it's pretty new. Like it's weird. It feels like the term Meeple Circus like is just like the first time I heard it. It didn't feel new. It felt like there's always been a Meeple Circus. Yeah. The Meeple Circus of every tabletop game ever because pretty much anyone who plays tabletop games. What do you do when you're bored because Joe Jojo takes forever on his fucking time. It's like whenever it's your when it's not your turn in a tabletop game, you're sitting there in front of you. You're playing settlers. You got a bunch of little houses and steaks or Meeple's and you play with them. That's just what you naturally do. Meeple Circus. The actual game does. If you've ever played settlers, you know exactly how high you can stack all your pieces. Right. It is a game in which you stack wooden board game pieces competitively. Now there are official game. It's not like a thing you do while you're bored. Now there are a lot of tabletop games like via Palletti or Jenga or Rhino Hero that involve some sort of stacking component and lots of construction games and destruction games. We reviewed many of them on Geeknice and a lot of them have similar problems. The one problem being well one person knocks it down. Does everyone else win? That's kind of lame. Or one person knocks it down via Palletti and now we have a really hamfisted and kind of crappy scoring mechanism to determine who won that really removes the skill component. So Meeple Circus is one of the rare stacking pieces games that has a pretty legit win condition and is about your skill of stacking and doesn't seem to have a very low skill cap because many of the games that try to solve this problem end up having such a low skill cap that over the course of a packs everyone in our group is playing perfectly in the game because it's boring. So pretty much how it works is the app. It's an app controlled game. But the app does not actually do much. The app is mostly a timer. It just plays a song. Yeah. It's a timer with a circus song. It plays the did it did it did it did it song. So the circus has three acts right and in the first act you got a pretty simple circus. You don't have a lot of pieces to work with. And you know you build a little everyone is simultaneously making you know it's like it's like the timer starts and has to build their circus and you're trying to arrange the Meeple's in such a way according to the rules that they are worth the most points for you. For example there might be bonus points for putting a purple guy on top or something right or like you get you get a red guy that you have a measuring stick for how high is your red guy off the ground. And some guys can't be on the ground or they don't get points. Some guys can't be under another guy. Yeah. Some guys are just animals. Each Meeple has different rules. There's camels and elephants and sticks and balls and barrels and all sorts of like the strong man is a strong man. There's a there's this generic acrobats all kinds of different Meeple's they all do different things. You want to stack them in different ways. And then you go after you do that everyone gets points. You do round two which is pretty similar to round one only now everyone has even more Meeple's and it gets a little crazy as you're doing this draft mechanic where you know what's likely to like what the scoring things are like what will be scored. And then you're sort of drafting to collect pieces like I'll take this card that gives me to the blue guys and an elephant. Yep. So you do round two. It's the second act of the circus and then the third act of the circus. This is where shit gets crazy right. And the third act of the circus. Everyone goes individually one at a time not simultaneously. And while you're doing this not only do you have to construct something according to the same rules and get the most points. Not only do you have even more Meeple's than before but you have to do some sort of performance aspect. Right. For example what was one of them where you say like hop every time that you place a certain thing or something. So basically in the first two rounds everyone builds a thing simultaneously when the timer runs out whatever's standing that's what gets scored. But then in the third one you all take turns being the audience and they'll end like the person of a rule like clap your hands every time you place a piece. So I place it please clap my hands actually do a performance for the third act of the circus. And that gets you points if you succeed at it. If you if you miss up clapping once is why the other people aren't doing it simultaneously. They're judging your clapping. They're like you have to be clapped. Nope. She didn't clap. No. The good news is they're all objective things. There's no ambiguity. They're very well written. You're not going to be able to like unfair. You're never going to have a question of like was that a clap. It's like no it's pretty clear. The most fun part of that piece of the game is that one everyone people tend to choke in that part. And that's just really funny to watch one shot. You still got the timer. You're all by yourself. Everyone's looking at you. Yep. When I mess up in the first round don't really notice this because they're busy with their own crap and you're performing right. It's like it's like more circus role playing even though you're still just stacking meeples together. But to you don't say anything if you're in the audience if the person messes up their performance like if they forget to clap once I can roll play the audience. No. No. The audience just be quiet. Don't let them know. So they keep doing it. Not realizing that they failed long ago. Oh no. But I could I could just boo with their bad circus. Oh yeah. I'm not satisfied. That clown sucks. And if Dumbled comes out yeah. So the game was set up in the first look area at PAX which is a pretty good area in general. It's kind of an aside but I think it's worth it to talk about an area that was created at unplugged and we scooped up some games from Essent like board games that aren't like published widely in the US yet the kind of games you can't get at your game store. There's only a few copies so far like preview copies stuff like that games that are like the newest newest hotness. They're not going to be in the library. No one's going to bring them to PAX. These are like the only copies you're going to see for like maybe another few months before they come out in the game store and here they are at PAX. They're set up already on tables where they have a permanent home. You sit down and play them when no one else is playing a minute and unplugged. These games were highly trafficked in a very visible area. You couldn't sit down to play any of them because everyone was board game fans playing them all the time. But at PAX they were in the back and hidden and no one noticed them or cared about them and they weren't on the printed books in the map or anything. So you could totally go over there if you knew what was what and play them to your heart's content. So I really like Meeple Circus and I think a lot of people would probably enjoy it and should buy it. But I don't think it's a game that I would buy myself. The few problems I see with it based on talking to people who have played it a much more are people who are saying forcers observing people playing this game over the course of an entire PAX is that if you play this game more than occasionally you can pretty much get to the point of perfectly stacking every time and I played the game one time and I got the maximum points available to me based on the cards that were available in the game. I could not have gotten any more points than I was gotten and it reminds me actually a lot in that way with potion explosion. Yup. And potion explosion is a game with a fun gimmick is marble machine and Meeple Circus is a fun gimmick and app and stacking all kinds of cool meeples. But there's a way the scoring mechanism works is the maximum score you can get and you either hit the maximum or you don't and potion explosion it's two potions a turn and in Meeple Circus is just all your meeples stacked correctly. What did you draft and what gets scored. Yep. So as long as your stacking skill is up to snuff and you're not a small child or someone you know who can't stack meeples for some reason you're going to get the maximum points and the game comes down to the drafting part. So it's just the drafting part. And I think you know on the one hand that reduces the replay value of Meeple Circus itself. But on the other hand I don't think the game is actually a problem. I think the problem is simply that the game needs more pieces to make it harder. It needs an expansion or something to where it's like all right no no no. Literally you're going to have so many meeples and so many things going on that are so ridiculous. You cannot score maximum points you know. But you got to calculate what the best you think you can do is and then it's like all right. This is the best I think I can do. But I could get one more guy standing on a ball. Do I go for it or not. You know me know the app is going like we've all been watching the Olympics lately you know the figures in all that. So think of it if the game had a little more components it has this aspect now just this aspect breaks down among skilled players that you choose how ambitious you want to be. And you can if you increase your maximum score by trying something that's very difficult that might pan out or you might knock it down at the last second and score nothing. Yep. So if you added a few more pieces I think you could extend that feeling. The game needs to give you more pieces and more scoring mechanisms to the point at which nobody can possibly get the maximum score possible with their own meeples unless they're a God of perfect balance and that right. Plus you know the imperfections of the meeples themselves and the table you're playing on and all that right comes into play such that you have to figure out how much you're going to risk. Are you going to go for that crazy move where you get four perfectly round things all stacked on each other or not. Are you going to go for it. How high do you want to put a stick vertically which you're not allowed to do actually but you know just to get your red guy even higher you're going to put another elephant up at the top. So there is one problem with the game. Wait a minute. I'm looking at the back of the box. I think it shows a stick vertical. It totally does. There's a vertical stick. I think there was a rule that there's like pieces had to be played in a certain way. So this is a problem with the game. The rules as they are in the printing that we had access to. Oh they're not real well written enough. Are ambiguous to the point that they are unusable. And we had to make a lot of value judgments as to how pieces could actually be played. Can I lay this elephant on a side but about upside down. Can I put the stick vertically. People's people who taught us the game said things were not allowed that are clearly drawn on the back of the box. So that is a problem. And I don't know if there's official or anything yet. We didn't look into that. We kind of just didn't care. Yeah. It's not. It's not a game that's so serious that it's worth your time to look into that. But yeah there are some questions like can an elephant be laying on its side or does it have to be standing up. It can definitely be on its head or standing up but can it be on its side. I don't know. I put my camel's humps down. Oh yeah. The pieces are well designed though in that they're mostly capable of similar equivalent scores. Yeah. There's like a highly varied in interesting collection of different kinds of meeples that have interesting shapes. Like you know you set a camel up. It's like OK you got this round ball that will roll around. You just put a camel and put the ball between its humps and then you get a guy standing on that. And now you got a guy standing on a ball and you got points. Right. Or you can be like me and bounce a guy standing on a ball like a badass. Now the game does have an app and it's sort of required. But all the app does. The only thing it does is play the timer of how long you have on your turn. But the circus music is essential. It plays some did it did it style circus music. And it has. Now it has some symbols like and they'll come in in different intervals to sort of tell you when you're running out of time. But I will admit I actually would have preferred to just have a countdown timer telling me exactly how many seconds I had left because I didn't play the game enough times to internalize what the like everyone seemed to be very worried time would run out. And I think part of it was that we were keeping the app off to the side. We should have put the app front and center on the table so it could be more visible. True. True. But still the app gives you a lot more time than you think. But you'll have to play it a bunch to internalize. I was never. I played you know somewhat hurriedly not super rushed. But I always came in under the clock. It was never at least not as I maybe I'm remembering wrong because my memory is awful. But I don't remember one time I knocked my thing over and I couldn't rebuild the entire thing in time before the time ran out. Yeah. But you could still build how just get as many points as you can. I built something. Yeah. Wasn't great. No. But I feel like I don't know if I want to own this game because I own a lot of games and I don't know how much play it would get if I tried to play a lot. I feel like this is kind of game where it's like if someone else busted out I'll play it if there's an expansion. I definitely want to play it again for sure. I want to see expansion that it adds a round where you have to do a dexterity like flick kind of thing. But yeah. I feel like if I bought it it wouldn't get played really very much at all. But the one case where I would buy it is if I was in some sort of family situation with small children or anyone who is below a school any situation where you can have a lot of players who are below the skill cap who will not get perfect you know stacking every time. Like if I hosted game nights for like different people on a regular basis as opposed to just like our local friends I would probably have this and bust it out. It's the kind of game where like people are I don't know who's going to want to play this game over and over and over again but you can playing it for the first time is a hella blast. So as long as you keep playing it with different people all the time you definitely want to you know get a copy because it does make a spectacle. It's definitely got to go into a gaming library. It's got to go to convention. It's got to go to school. It's got to go at a meet up. If you set this up somewhere like in the middle of a like mid-tier convention or like a meet up or something it'll gather a crowd of people who will just want to watch. Like it and people who want to play it like one two three times. Yep. You know some children might get hooked on it and keep playing but I think adults will play a few times and be done. Yeah I met some people at PAX who had played it to the point that they had completely ruined it and there was no further replay value at all. But I think an expansion that's complex enough could make it fun for quite a while. I feel like one. Especially if you added in stuff like you just said like the flicking mode. One like flick like round one do a stack round to do a trick round three do a stack round for the performance that involves a stack and a dexterity move. Right. So I think I think the way you do it. I think you would set it up like you make your stack you score it and then you have to do the trick after. But with a stack your trick is going to mess up your thing. Right. Yep. Or do it separately. It's like OK you have to make a stack and you have to set up a trick and execute the trick separately. Like OK I'll make a seesaw here and flick a guy and he has to you know I'll make a human cannonball over here and get a guy to hit another guy. Good. I did it. And I'll make my stack something like that. Yeah. I don't know. At least as it is despite its minor flaws in terms of add like another act to the circus and that's the act you do a trick. So it's like stack trick and act to and then act three. You know I don't know because the game the game took a while to play. But a lot of that was debates over what was legal placement. Oh yeah. Again to the poorly not take long at all because rounds one and two are completely simultaneous. So no matter how many players you have round one and two will always take the same amount of time which is less than 15 minutes if you include the scoring. And then the round three is going to increase linearly based on how many players you have. But it only goes up to how many players five maybe two to five. Yeah. So if you have five players you know it takes maybe what it's going to take you another I don't know 30 minutes at the most people this game under an hour with five players. I people at PAX explicitly said they do this. If they have a four player game two of the people will do their performances in the third round simultaneously. And each one has a judge and then they swap that'll speed things up and literally cut the time in half. But you will you will lose the enjoyment of seeing everyone's performance. Yep. But you do not need the app. That is one thing to make clear. The app is just a timer XCOM. You need the app. You do not need it in Meeple Circus. When I sat down probably want to use I sat down at the table. I was like I want to play this game. And then the guy who's going to teach us is like all right you have the app. And immediately I was like maybe I don't want to play this. But then he was like no no no. It's just a timer. Yep. You don't actually need it. But yeah it's a pretty good game. There's a lot of people who probably should buy it. It's not one. I did the most thing. I just can't believe no one did this earlier. I know right. It's like well there's not already exist. I feel like there are a lot of Americana style board games that do this in a very simple. I'm talking about this specific thing of make a game out of the fact that everyone stacks Meeple's all the time. Yeah. Everyone does this thing. Maybe we should make a game out of it. The right way. Why did Meeple's I've been stacking Meeple's since 2000. Oh something. Why did it take until 2001. One seven for this game to come out. But if any of you do have it and you bring it to a pass I'll probably play it at least once. Yeah I'd play like once you know at a convention. This has been Geek Nights with Rima and Scott special thanks to DJ Pretzel for the opening music Cat Lee for web design and brand OK 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. SciTech Mondays gaming Tuesdays and McComick 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.