Plus there is a little news to go along with the Loki talk. Around a trailer, that didn’t come out, plus some potential changes to the Marvel movie slate. And, as interestingly, two shows now also rumored to be getting second seasons. And, of course, if you like board games, like I do, the Marvel Dice Throne X-Men Kickstarter.

Thanks for Listening to 10 Minute Marvel

I hope that you are enjoying the podcast. If you are, there are a few ways that I always talk about that you can support 10 Minute Marvel. Firstly, please consider sharing it with your friends. Word of mouth really is a great way to help more people find the podcast and personal recommendations are always great. As well as then subscribing or leaving a rating and review. Both of those make the podcast easier to find on the podcast services. You can find the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcast, and Spotify.

We also run a Patreon and that is another way you can help support. The Patreon, found here, goes to help improve the quality of the 10 Minute Marvel Podcast, pay for advertising and more. It also helps improve the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel and Nerdologists.com website. Thank you, again, for listening and for considering supporting us financially.

Comments or Questions: Did you like Loki Episode 2 and Miss Minutes?

What is Miss Minutes up to? I think there is more to her than we’ve still seen, though we now know more. And what is is that Miss Minutes knows about Renslayer? I did a video on a few guesses over on YouTube (which you can see below).

You can let us know all of those things down in the comment section below. Or tweet them to me @TheScando or by using #10MinMarvel. And there is now the 10 Minute Marvel Facebook page as well where you can join in the conversation, here. And follow us on YouTube for more content, here.

Thank you again for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

We see here two tweets that got me thinking about this topic. And it’s not a topic that I’ve been ignorant of, in fact, it’s one that I think about fairly often. And the first tweet is much more general than just board games, but Rodney Smith talks about how it matters with board games as well in his video.

The Golden Rule of Being a Fan

We start today in an interesting place. I won’t directly touch on the topic, because I think we as fans of things need to consider what I hope is what we all want.

We want more people to find joy in our fandoms.

Basically, the rule, as is said simply up there, we want more people to join into our fandom. We want more people to love and find joy in the things we love and find joy in. The more people who find joy in the things we find joy in, the more we have in common with people, and the more we can share the joys of our life. That is the ideal that I hold for being a fan and one that I hope that fandoms as a whole can agree upon.

Where It Goes Wrong

However, it often goes wrong. And Rodney talks about it with board games, and I’m going to talk about it in that light as well generally, but this covers a lot of things. It tends to go wrong when current fans expect other people to be fans in the same way they are fans.

A board game example, a person who loves euro games might look down upon a new gamer who likes lighter games like Munchkin. A television example, a Doctor Who fan might look down on someone who prefers Peter Capaldi to David Tennant as the Doctor. A movie example, a Star Wars fan might look down on a new Star Wars fan who enjoys the prequel trilogy.

You can see how it works, because someone doesn’t enjoy the fandom in the exact way that someone else does, it isn’t as good. Their enjoyment of the fandom is less valid than the person who has been the fan longer or is the fan in the “right way”.

How We Tackle This

I could have spent more time on the negative, because it gets me annoyed. Rodney Smith is one of the nicest people out there and you see how passionate he is about the issue. But I see too many other posts who will just talk about the negative aspect and not about how we can help change things. And honestly, we need to change things. We look at big aggressions or slip ups and they are bad, like the gamers who scoff at female gamers, or similar to that, and we point fingers and call those people horrible. But it’s extremely insidious and easy to step on someone’s excitement out of a place that looks like it’s better. It is equally as harmful though to getting new people into the fandom or hobby.

The most common example of this is, and again going to board games, a conversation on Facebook or Twitter that goes something like this.

Newbie: “I’m so excited I just picked up Munchkin, I’m so excited to play it.”

Person in Hobby: “Munchkin sucks.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “Have fun with that game.”

Person 3 in Hobby: “Munchkin isn’t a good game, you should play Scythe instead.”

Written out like this, you can easily see what the issue is. The newbie is excited for their new game, they are probably just getting into games and like lighter fare that is closer to what they have played before. The first response is just bad. If you don’t like the game, great, don’t step on someone else’s fun and excitement. The second response is probably fine, I through that one in there to make it look more realistic in responses. The third one is also bad because again it’s negative and ruining someone’s fun. It hedges itself in being positive by giving unsolicited and not useful advice. If this person posting their excitement is truly new to the hobby, Scythe is not a jumping in point, or whatever the person’s favorite game might be.

It might seem weird, but I’ve seen all of these responses and more negative ones. Why doe we like to be negative about things and ruin other people’s joy? As Rodney says in his video: “It’s not special not to like something.” Maybe it’s a power play, but honestly, I think most of the time it’s because people are excited or excited and disappointed might be better. They see someone say, “I got a new game” and they think it’ll be something maybe they’ve been interested in and then when it isn’t get they get disappointed. I think that this is where especially comments like “X isn’t good, try Y instead” come from. The person is trying to get their excitement back by getting someone to agree with them or to like their thing. But to the person who posted, it’s just negative.

So what’s better? To quote Thumper from Bambi: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Honestly, it’s that simple, there is nothing that requires you to respond to a tweet or Facebook post on something you don’t like. In fact, it’s 99% of the time better to ignore them and show support to things you do like. A newbie to a hobby or fandom will generally gravitate towards the parts that are positive and away from the parts that are negative, as most people will. But if there is too much negative, a newbie might just leave a hobby or fandom. If you do feel compelled to respond, let’s see a better response.

Newbie: “I’m so excited I just picked up Munchkin, I’m so excited to play it.”

Person in Hobby: “That’s awesome, I hope you enjoy it.”

Doesn’t say that you like the game, but you are wishing joy upon the person and eventually, maybe that person will agree with you that Munchkin isn’t great and they want to play Scythe, but let them get there and let them grow into the hobby instead of pushing away.

But let’s look at another situation:

Newbie: “I’m thinking about getting Munchkin, is it a good game?”

Person in Hobby: “Munchkin sucks.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “I used to like Munchkin.”

Person 3 in Hobby: “Munchkin isn’t good, you should get Scythe.”

Now, I went with all wrong answers here. Now, the person who started asked for an opinion on Munchkin, saying Munchkin sucks is an opinion, but doesn’t give any information nor is it said in a constructive or useful way. It’s aggressively negative for no good reason. The second one is saying the same as the first, just in a much nicer way. And the third one, the person asked for advice, but it was about Munchkin, not about Scythe or whatever the person’s favorite game again.

It falls into the same lines as the other example above and reasoning as to why those are not good responses. Let’s say that you really don’t like Munchkin, what is a better response?

Newbie: “I’m thinking about getting Munchkin, is it a good game?”

Person in Hobby: “I’m not a big fan of Munchkin, I don’t like how much take that there is in it. If your group likes that sort of thing though, it’d probably work for you.”

The big difference, it’s a nicely stated that the person doesn’t like the game. They only talk about the game the person asked about. And they gave a reason why they don’t like it. I even wrapped it up with an encouraging thing clarifying that for some people the game will work.

One final example that I see often as well:

Newbie: “I’m just getting into the hobby. I have Catan, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, and Exploding Kittens, what game do you think I’d like?”

Person in Hobby: “Those games suck.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “I remember when I liked those games.”

Person 3 in Hobby: “Scythe”

Again, it’s fairly easy to see what is wrong with these. They are very negative, two don’t answer the question and they tell the person they are doing it wrong. At least the first two do, the third one is just Scythe again. And it might seem like I’m picking Scythe, but honestly it’s one I see a lot of people use, I could also say my favorite game as well, Gloomhaven. But it’s also not useful to suggest massive games that the person would struggle with. It’s possibly less hurtful than the other two, but can push people away because it’ll make them feel inferior if they try a big game like Scythe or Gloomhaven and are overwhelmed by it because of what they have played before.

Then answering a question like this, think of it as stepping stones. You might want them to play Scythe, but that means you need to help get them there, taking the same steps that basically every gamer did from Classic Games to Modern Classics to Hobby Games to Scythe. If you need help with that, here’s a bit of a cheat sheet.

So what’s a better response?

Newbie: “I’m just getting into the hobby. I have Catan, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, and Exploding Kittens, what game do you think I’d like?”

Person in Hobby: “Hmmm… I think that Five Tribes or Small World could be interesting for you.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “Good question, what do you like about those games? Something like Potion Explosion could be interesting, maybe if you like the set collecting and completing stuff parts of Catan and Ticket to Ride.”

Pretty easy to see how these are better. They give suggestions in line with or a bit more complex with that the person has played before. I think it’s always good to ask clarifying questions as well. The second person asks the general question of what is liked, but then gives a specific element of both Catan and Ticket to Ride, set collection in their reasoning. That sort of engagement makes the new person feel more involved in the hobby and in the group.

Go Forth and Grow the Fandom

Now, we are all going to slip up on this. I know that I do it from time to time as well. For me, it is something I intentionally don’t want to propagate throughout a hobby or a fandom that I love, this negative response. And I truly believe that most gamers, most fans, they want their hobby to grow. With that, I do believe there is a bit of letting go of your fandom or hobby just like you hold it. That can be hard, but when you can do that, your hobby and fandoms will grow. You will learn new things and see things in a new way, and it’ll strengthen your own joy in a fandom or hobby. I hope in the upcoming years we see more fans of board games grow and more fans of every fandom come into light and that we can all enjoy those similar things in our own way remembering that just because someone likes something a bit different than you, it doesn’t have a negative impact on your own joy.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Cthulhu: Death May Die

The biggest box of them all is for Death May Die. Now, do I really need another game with a Cthulhu theme, probably not, but is this one I’ve wanted for a while? Yes it is. This game, if it had been at my FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) when I had my free game up to $100, I probably would have picked it up over Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea, but I’m happy, because I have both now. Death May Die is different from the Fantasy Flight Arkham Games in that it’s more of a dice chucker. You are getting in there, getting madness and hoping to stop things from falling apart. Original a Kickstarted game from CMON, it was known for having a giant Cthulhu add-on buy, which can’t be used with the game, but looks awesome. I didn’t get that, which I’m fine with, but the base game, I’m excited to try it and most likely go mad and die.

Aeon’s End Expansions

Now for the “get to free shipping” part of the Point or Order, I got two more of the small expansions for Aeon’s End. Now, I’d feel bad about it, but I love the game, and I need to play it way more. The expansions add little tweaks to the game or new content to play with. Between the two expansions, I get two new mages, and three new nemesis to face off against. The only thing that they don’t give you is a better storage solution for when you have everything. I am hoping some day I’ll get it all down to one or two boxes. Aeon’s End is a game that I’ll eventually get most things for but one that I will get them over time, don’t need them all now.

Formula D: Track Expansions

Two track expansions were what I picked up from the garage sale. Now, there were some other interesting games, but I had primarily gone to see if the Battlestar Galactica was there. It was not, and he had sold it for $150, which was more than I’d have paid for it anyways. But, since the person running the sale set times for people to show up, I felt bad about not buying anything. And he had two expansion tracks for Formula D, a dice chucking racing game that I want to play. I got the base game shortly before the pandemic, if I remember correctly. It hasn’t gotten to the table. These tracks give the game more variety, which will be fun.

Deep Madness: Epic Monster

I swung by my FLGS again, and I’ll tell the story below. When I do that, I generally pick up something, though yesterday I dropped off a bunch to sell as well (see Point of Sale Article coming out today as well). But they still have expansions that are hard to find for Deep Madness. You basically have to get them used. As long as they are there, I will slowly pick them up. Do I need more for the game right now, the answer is no. But when will I see them again, who knows. Deep Madness is one that I should play on Malts and Meeples soon. And I think more monsters in a game is never a bad thing, except being bad for my winning percentage.

Dice Throne Adventure Painted Minis Season 1 and 2

Join me for story time. I was browsing Facebook, scrolling through like one does, on Saturday. I’m part of the Minnesota Board Game selling and buying group and I happened to see that someone was selling Dice Throne Adventure for $70. But it wasn’t just Dice Throne Adventure, it had the Season 1 and Season 2 minis for the game characters and the painted ones from the pledge. Are they need for the game, no, but do they look very cool, generally yes. I had wanted to get them during the Dice Throne Adventure Kickstarter, but getting the Treant vs Ninja duel pack, and just the cost of Dice Throne Adventure, I decided I shouldn’t. The two seasons of minis, as an add-on, cost $70. So when I saw them for the same price, plus getting Adventure for $70, it seemed like too good a deal to pass up. I knew I could just turn around and sell or trade the Adventures immediately, and store credit is just easier than selling it myself. So now I am really happy to own those painted minis, will it cause the game to hit the table more, probably not, but will it look cooler when it does, most definitely.

Which of these games looks the most interesting to you? Have you had any awesome purchases recently?

I think I am most excited to get Dice Throne Adventure to the table now with the minis.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

What Are Grail Games?

I kind of talk about that already in the first paragraph, but let’s dive into the concept more so. A grail game is a game that is out of print, or hard to find for some reason. It is also a game that you really want to get your hands on. Why you want it so badly could be a number of reasons. For some people, the game just sounds fun, so they really want it, or it might be one that they played growing up, so they want to own it because of that. But for whatever reason, it’s a game that the person really wants and is very hard to find.

So How Do You Find Them?

Now, this completely depends on how quickly the person wants to get a grail game. For me, I have a few games that I’d consider grail games. I’ll talk about them shortly. But I won’t go out of my way to get them. For a lot of people, they want to get them faster, so they will go on ebay or other sites, Board Game Geek has a market place that often has most games for sale, and they will buy them or bid on them at those locations. That’s going to be a great way to focus on buying what they want.

I, on the other hand, am waiting for them to come to me for lack of a better term. One that was previously a grail game for me was Tannhauser which I talked about in the Point of Order article yesterday. I found that one at a used book store. I have some other games that I’m keeping an eye out for at my FLGS, All Systems Go!, to see if they ever show up used, or I’m keeping an eye for a local seller who is selling it on Facebook Marketplace via the board game selling group there. If it pops up, I will get some of my grail games.

What Are Some Of My Grail Games?

Battlestar Galactica

Let’s start with a big game. It oddly enough is in a genre of games, or around one, that I don’t love too much. It often gets lumped in with social deduction games, though this is closer to a Dead of Winter than something like The Resistance. Battlestar Galactica was a big game put out by Fantasy Flight Games, you are trying to get to Earth, but there are Cylons aboard your ship and chasing you who are going to try and stop you. The game always has that one goal, but you are dealing with issues that come up and adding things to help secretly. This game definitely blends both being a board game and a social deduction game, but gives you a little more to go on, and gives you a lot of game to play. However, it’s been out of print for quite a while without any indication that it’ll come back into print. Battlestar Galactica is a grail game for a lot of people as well, which makes it hard to find without paying a lot for it.

Solomon Kane

Now, this game is a newer game. But I failed to mention one way a board game can end up being a grail game. And that is if it’s a Kickstarter game. There are often games that are Kickstarter exclusives because they would be too big to go to retail, or the retail version will have less. Solomon Kane by Mythic Games is one that I am bummed I missed on Kickstarter. It seems to have a really unique concept to it. In the game you are controlling, kind of, Solomon Kane as he goes on adventures and deals with mysteries and monsters. It’s a campaign based, or at least story based game. I love that type of game, but you are only kind of controlling him, you play different virtues. You are prudence, courage, temperance, and justice, and using those things, you control where he goes and what he does. I like that it gives all the players at the table a communal character that they control. That is a unique concept that I haven’t seen before. However, this one is just fulfilling now or will be shortly, and it costs $200 for just the base game, and bundles are being sold for $500 or more on Ebay, so it’s a grail game that I’ll be waiting on and hoping for a second Kickstarter for.

Mechs vs Minions

Mechs vs Minions might be the easiest of these games to find. Originally put out by the same company that has been extremely successful with the video game League of Legends, this game comes with a ton of stuff. They sold it at a reasonable price point and it came with more minis than a lot of spendier games do on Kickstarter. The programming aspect of this game, creating basically a plan of what your characters are going to do was an interesting idea as well. Now we have more programming games, and there were even a few back then, Robo Rally, but Mechs vs Minions put it into a really big box. It’s one of those games that to play it, I know that I’ll have to buy it, because right now I don’t know anyone who has the game. But I want to give it a whirl and program my way through scenarios and play the campaign that they created for the game.

That’s what a grail game is and what my grail games are. What board games would you consider a grail game that you really want to get into your collection? Is there any overlap with mine?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Why Might You Want to Cull?

This is a tough question, and for each person it’s going to be different. The common reason is that you’re running out of room. You have a collection of something, movies, board games, RPG books, manga, art supplies, etc that you have loved and collected for a long time, but now they are taking up too much room. You haven’t used them in a while or you have another nerdy hobby you’re more focused on now. That is a good time to clear out some things from that collection. It might also be that it’s just taking up space, you have the space to store it, but you never use it or look at it anymore. For that reason you might look to free up the space just so you have more space available. Or, maybe you have a collection that has some value, for example you collect Magic: The Gathering cards for a while but aren’t playing anymore, maybe you look to move them so that you can get some funds for your current collection. That’s a great reason to cull some of the nerd clutter out of your life.

How Do You Cull?

Another tough question, how can you be brutal enough to get rid of some things that have given you joy in the past? It’s tough, going through board games, I got rid of 16 different games and it’s tough to get rid of some of the games. For some of them, it was the fact that I haven’t gotten them to the table either at all or in a long time. I got rid of the game Power Grid, which is a fun game that I have good memories playing, but it hasn’t made it to the table in a long time, and looking forward, I don’t know that it ever will again. I have other games that I prefer to play now, and if I really want to play it again, I can probably find someone who has a copy or find it on a game shelf at a game shop. I will say, you have to be brutal at times when culling and sometimes you need to do a second pass. When you go through something you haven’t seen in a while, you open up a box or find something that you’ve forgotten about and the memories come flooding back. You remember the good times you had with something and all of a sudden, something you haven’t looked at in years seems to have value to you again. Ask yourself this when that happens, if you put it back into the box or onto the shelf, is it just going to sit there again for a year? If the answer is yes, you maybe should cull it. And if you can’t quite bring yourself to do it now, set it aside, and when you are done going through once, come back to the maybe pile and go through it again. Especially if this going through the maybe pile is a day or two later, you might find that you are now ready to let go of things since you have had your reminiscing and now you can now move on from it.

Where Can it Go?

This is something that can maybe help you get rid of more. Is there a spot that you can donate it to where people will enjoy it? Or a place where you can sell it and pass on what you’ve enjoyed to someone else. In my case with the board games, I’m going to see if one of the breweries that I like is interested in the games. They have a game shelf that I could help refill for them as games at breweries end up missing pieces or getting beer spilled on them. But maybe that isn’t your scene or you have comic books you want to donate. Is there a Children’s Hospital that you could give them to, or somewhere that can donate them to people who would want them. Or, you can sell yourself.

The piece of advice I have to give when selling them yourself is that the person the comic book or movie or board game is most valuable to is you. If a game cost you $100 and you’ve played it twice and enjoyed it but won’t play it anymore for whatever reason, $80 seems like a reasonable price plus shipping to someone who is out of town. It’s going to run them $100 after shipping (shipping board games is expensive). I’d love to say that you’ll be able to get that value, but you likely won’t and as much as it might hurt, you might need to sell your memory for less than it seems worth. Spend time on Amazon and eBay figuring out the actual cost of an item used and if you are just going to list it locally on Craigslist or Facebook group, go slightly cheaper, even if it seems too cheap to you. These are things you determined you don’t need anymore and getting something for them is better than nothing, especially if you’re selling something so you can get money for your next nerdy hobby. Finally, opposite of that, there can be things that have a certain value to you and anything less won’t do. It might be because they are rare and worth that much or it might be that anything less than a certain amount isn’t worth losing the memory. However, that is a special case, don’t do that all the time.

I’ve Tried to Cull, but I Just Can’t Do It

It is tough, sometimes when looking at something you haven’t touched in years, you still can’t get rid of it. I’m not an expert on hoarding or I’m not going to tell you that you’re a hoarder. If you are, hopefully you can find someone to help you with that. But if it’s just tough to get rid of your old action figures that are sitting in a box in the basement, recruit some help. Have someone go through it with you and ask you a second time if you really need it. Or someone who can listen to your story about the game one last time and help you be tougher about getting rid of things. This part I don’t have much advice about because it’s something that is tough and personal for a lot of people. I don’t want to belittle what you’ve gone through with your hobby and the memories you have with them. It might help to also remember that those memories are yours even if you don’t have the action figure or board game or movie anymore. While they might work as a trigger for the memory, the memory itself will always be yours no matter if you have the item or not. Finally, it might help to remember you don’t need to do all of this at once. If you have six boxes of comic books that you want to go through, go through one of them and start there. You don’t have to go through all of them at once, because that loss can seem like a lot, but doing a little at a time and moving forward on it that way can help a lot to slowly clear out the parts of the collection that don’t mean as much anymore.

Hopefully these are some helpful suggestions. It’s tough, and I’m a pragmatic person so for me, culling things is easier than a lot of people, and it’s still tough for me. That’s why, with the board games, I want to give them away somewhere that I know people will enjoy them. Instead of just giving them away randomly to a Savers, I want to put them somewhere that I know where they are going, but also with the hope that they’ll be able to get people into board gaming and be there for a lot of people.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.