TDG: A Gest of Robin Hood

[@HomoLudens1871]

Well, this made my day. So I guess the next game I design needs to be Dune themed 🤣

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Thank you, sir. Great game!

[@st0ox]

Bad but spicy title suggestion: A Feast for the Baron

[@patrickols]

A Spice For All Seasons

[@gregbroxterman]

Ok, this joke is a little lazy but I love how it came out: Sheriff of Spicingham

[@st0ox]

@@gregbroxterman he takes from the poor and just keeps it ^^

[@agathianspy2469]

00:35 man i hate it so much when people try to roll their dice on my board and fuck the pieces up like that

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Ha!

[@bgm-1961]

I don't feel as passionately as you expressed it, but I agree. Which is why I use one of those folding leather dice trays and request all players to use that to roll their dice. (Or a dice tower). Yeah, rolling dice on the playing surface has always gnawed at my OCD. I don't understand how it's so okay with other people. :D

[@rode8173]

Great video Cody. Did not expect your reaction. Will definitely ponder this one. Cheers!

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Thanks!

[@eatingweevils]

I think the boardgame title comes from the 15th century ballad, 'A Gest of Robyn Hode'. The earliest tales of Robin Hood mentions his origins was from Yorkshire (being a proud Yorkshire man i do like to mischievously mention his Yorkshire origins when i visit Nottingham)😅

[@HomoLudens1871]

This is correct

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Thanks!

[@joshyaks]

Thanks for the review, Cody! This was the final push I needed to put the game on my "must have" list!

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Happy to help.

[@richard-mtl]

Wow, sounds really good. I'm a COIN mega-fan, but hadn't looked closely at this one because of it's non-historical nature, I prefer historical-based games. This review and others have made me regret my earlier ambivalence, and I am eagerly awaiting the delivery of my copy (which I ordered regardless, because it's GMT and it's COIN or COIN-adjacent so how could I not?). :D Thanks for the great review!

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it!

[@bgm-1961]

So, will your attitude toward selecting a COIN game rule out 'Red Dust Rebellion' for you?

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

@@bgm-1961 I’m looking forward to RDR very much.

[@richard-mtl]

@@bgm-1961 I had been ambivalent about it as well, until I spoke with Jason Carr. He convinced me that they were putting a lot of effort into the world-building and the "history" behind the cards. And I'm a big sci-fi fan in any case, so, it wasn't too difficult to bring me back on board!

[@bgm-1961]

@@TheDiscriminatingGamer Sorry... that was directed at @richard! Nonetheless, I look forward to your review of RDR! ;)

[@elqord.1118]

If Fred would bring this to boardgamearena I would probably faint!

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

I hope you manage to stay awake.

[@HomoLudens1871]

😮

[@patrakis]

Wow, that was an early review. Didn't even know the game was out. So glad you liked it. I've been waiting for it for a long time. Thanks for the review.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Thank you. Happy to help!

[@st0ox]

I received the Game this week as well here in Germany and I have to say this game is absolutely beautiful and has very good rules explanation, example of play and playbook with a lot of visuals. I really think that GMT sets here a new standard of how to make learning medium complex wargames fun again 😂 Sorry for being a bit satirical here, but I played a lot of overproduced Kickstarter/Gamefound wargames in recent years and a lot of them were really novel and good (with some tweaks), but had just terrible rules explanations and were not enough playtested in my opinion. Reading through the rules of GMT games most often reminds me of how good games can be play tested and how good the rules explanations can be. I admit in the past reading through the rules of some of the more complex GMT games like Empire of the Sun was more like reading a scientific paper and less fun, but on the one hand these games are very complex and the rules had to be so extensive to capture all the possible rule misunderstandings and on the other hand GMT really improved their rulebooks or had more luck with the rule describing skills of their game designers (I am not talking about rule design here, just the skill of how to present the rules). I have no inside knowledge, so I assume that GMT really helps the devs to improve the readability of their rulebooks and I appreciate it. Congratulations to all people involved in creating this amazing game!

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Good points. Thanks.

[@HomoLudens1871]

Joe Dewhurst is the dev on this game and made an amazing work making my rules clean and readable.

[@st0ox]

@@HomoLudens1871 I enjoyed the Learn to Play Ballad :-D

[@RogCBrand]

I had to look up "Gest" (a tale of adventure). Years of reading and seeing medieval stories, I'm surprised I'd never heard it used.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Yeah. Kind of unusual.

[@patrickols]

little history lesson from a French guy here “geste” is from the old French “chanson de geste” a long epic poem. Do not forget that around the time of Robin Hood the Normans (from northern France) were still in charge in England after the conquest of Guillaume Le Conquérant

[@RogCBrand]

@@patrickols That got me wondering if Jester was related, so I looked it up and it is. I wonder if they started out reciting epic poems, before becoming more of a comedic entertainer?

[@patrickols]

@@RogCBrand it come’s from the old French gestour or jestour a storyteller. However la Chanson De Geste was usually written down. Jester came into its own in Tudor time. I do not know for sure if La Chanson De Geste was ever really told in front of an audience I mostly remember in French class being taught that it was an epic poem, like the length of a short story but not a full novel

[@tfpp1]

@@patrickols But how do you PRONOUNCE it?! 😅 Gest as in ‘garage’ or gest as in gesture?

[@douglaspearson4853]

First up the game looks gorgeous. I have only played Fire In The Lake coin game. I loved it. If the could play solitaire I would be in. There are other I would love to play.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

It is a great looking game.

[@zfighter3]

I was waiting for this review. Thanks.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Happy to help!

[@stevenv9726]

Note: The bridge you add to the Board with an Event card does NOT allow carriages to cross==they need a road. It DOES allow Henchmen and Merry Men to move across the river directly. We had to look this up, too! Fun game, not as ebullient as you are with it.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Thanks!

[@LectionARICCLARK]

Looks so fun

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

It is.

[@RvLeshrac]

I do really wish that GMT would bring *all* of the COIN and COIN-adjacent games to a single app that isn't a simulator. Would love to be able to play all of them solo without consuming extra table space.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Interesting. Perhaps they will down the road.

[@RolandoRatas]

What did Robin Hood say when asked whether or not he would share the last available single bed with Maid Marian up in the forest tree house ? .. .. .... ... ... He Sherwood.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Ha! Good one.

[@eatingweevils]

Will you be reviewing the new version of Unhappy King Charles (2024) in the near future? One of things on wishlist is a English Civil War boardgame but not sure which one to buy.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

No plans at present, but you never know. Have you tried Cruel Necessity from Worthington?

[@eatingweevils]

@@TheDiscriminatingGamer Cruel Necessity is one of my shopping choices What I've seen in the review I like that it deals with ideology not just the battles of the English Civil War but still unsure about buying it yet. I'm keeping my eye on the new version of Unhappy King Charles mainly due to I noticed Skipton is on the map what I found unusual that its less known part of the civil war. Back in the Civil War Royalist skirmish parties from Skipton used to raid my town

[@gregbroxterman]

@@eatingweevils Sounds like you're looking for specific topics, but since you mention liking how CN deals w/ideology too I thought maybe I'd plug Fred's other great game Red Flag Over Paris, where half the spaces are geographic and the other half are political forces. (and plays in half an hour!)

[@inwyrdn3691]

I'm 99% sure it's "Jest", but I've been 99% sure about many things and have been wrong about all of them. "Sherwood Struggle" it is, then. What was the medieval equivalent of nuclear annihilation?

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Taxation.

[@syramento]

Gest, with a G, is correct.

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

@@syramento Danke.

[@FalkFlak]

Man, this would've been great as a 4 player team game. I have yet to find an entry point to COIN an hoped it could've been RobinHood. But My collection is full of 2p games already :-(

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

This one is great. Hope you get a chance to play it at some point.

[@mikolajwitkowski8093]

Oh come on. You have what 15 multiplayer Coin games and 3 two player ones. It's great that it is two player, you want a team game, you have many to choose from.

[@FalkFlak]

Oh, I meant team games in general. Sorry for the inaccuracy.

[@FalkFlak]

I usually let figure out english speaker to decrypt their own language but I see gest comes from middle (old) french geste, like jest so that's a good excuse :-D

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Thanks!

[@HomoLudens1871]

A lot of english is actually old french, so no excuse.

[@IslanKleinknecht]

It's pronunced "Gest".

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

That doesn't help.

[@HomoLudens1871]

Actually it's "Oest"

[@scott3656]

@@TheDiscriminatingGamer Definitely "Jest"

[@mikolajwitkowski8093]

A lot of commenters speculate on the pronunciation, well checking it in a dictionary it says it's jest. Don't people use dictionaries any more?

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Ha!

[@westcoastavengers1]

How is this game for board gamers who don't play war games?

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

@@westcoastavengers1 It’s not really a war game per se, it’s a COIN game. I imagine there’s a bit of a learning curve, but I think you’ll really like it.

[@michaelwelker8759]

Jest… jest argh

[@TheDiscriminatingGamer]

Danke