Hooray!

I've really missed these videos. I'm glad you found the time to start them up again!

I don't see how to download any format. On your site and on Archive.org it only appears as embedded.

Check the left sidebar at archive.org. I'll make it clearer on the blog, then, as well.

On Archive the download links are over on the left side of the page.

Ya, thanks. Silly me.

Hooray!

Downloading into iTunes right now. 432.9MB holy filesize batman.

Yup, as my beta testers can tell you, I'm still trying to figure out the best settings on the new Final Cut Express I'm using; they changed the way it exports files so that some of my old faithful settings are no longer there. The "default ipod" setting, which is what you currently have, produced that big file.

So, rather than put it off another week (as I'm traveling later this week) as I try one setting after another (each with an hour render), I'm using some of their defaults and will continue to play with it myself to try and figure out a better balance of settings and quality for the next one. Once I hit on it, I'll replace the old file.

Scott

Oh I'd much rather have it now than wait a week for a smaller file.

Hooray! I've missed this while you've been moving Scott. Hope you've managed to sell the old place.

I really think you could test Stage6. It's a wonderfull and free site, using DviX format (at the same site the visitor could download the player, for free also).
One example: Dvonn http://juegosmontt.info/2007/10/dvonn-video-instruccional.ht...

Whoa, you can play coral tiles in front of your screen in addition to 4 behind? How did I miss that? Maybe I just didn't think of the potential.

Welcome Back Scott

Nice job, Scott! Reef Encounter is not the easiest of games to get a handle on, and I think your review will help many gamers approach this game that may not have otherwise.

I'm a bit sad that you don't give a grade anymore... even if they were grouping in the A's and B's it gave us a feel for your level of enjoyment with the game. I hope you'll rethink this decision and maybe come up with another way to quantify your happiness with the game as a whole.

GET IN MY BELLY! OM! NOM! NOM!

I'd torrent that sucker.

I do this here with my personal rankings, so if you are curious, you can see the numbers there. Also, for the On Board Games podcast, I use Red-Yellow-Green to talk about things. But the A or A- rating I was giving to everything was just not informative, as any game I put on the show is a game I like.

Glad you are!

Very cool! Like many others, I've been awaiting the return of your videos with much anticipation.

Welcome back.

Glad to see your back. Also I love this game so thanks for the input on it.

Especially after seeing your front! (Nyuk nyuk nyuk.)

Seriously, though, thanks for the explanation. I've had this game sitting on my shelf for a while now, and I think I'm finally ready to try it out.

Looks to me like the resolution is a lot higher than it used to be. Higher than necessary for iPod. That seems to be why the much larger file size, near as I can tell.

It's like Scott in Hi-Def.

Excellent work, and actually gave me some interest in a game that there had before been none. Nice too see Rick again too!

Nice work, Scott! Glad to see you do Reef Encounter, as I just bought it and this has encouraged my wife to play it with me (your Thurn and Taxis episode did the same for that game!).

One point, though: in your sample turn, when you expand the pink coral into the white one, you make a point of mentioning your placement at the top right so that no size-2 coral can grow there and threaten you. You then go on to talk about the other two existing corals on that board as being your only threats, however your pink coral has a size-3 gap to the lower right that is super-ripe for demolishing you, or at least splitting your pink coral in half!

I understand your reluctance to get too deep into strategy, but I think it would have been beneficial to do a little more discussion of how you might try to protect yourself from attack by orange, yellow, or that 3-gap (i.e., ensure coral strengths are in your favor, move your shrimple, etc.).

Another point that would have been useful is the concept of enlarging the coral of someone else in order to get the eaten coral tiles in front of your screen -- you don't have to "own" a coral in order to enlarge it, which isn't immediatley obvious. In the sample turn you use, given the proper cubes and tiles, instead of using your pink coral to eat away at the green player's white coral, you could expand the yellow player's orange coral into the same place, then split it off with a single pink tile (assuming you hadn't already made a cube-and-tile move) and claim a nice size orange coral for yourself in addition to the white tiles you got. Which move you would make it obviously dependent on which cubes and tiles you already have, whether you value a pink coral or an orange coral more, etc.

Anyway, kinda nit-picky on my part, as you did a fantastic job (as usual!) with a very complex game. Thanks again for all your effort and keep up the great work!

I'm hoping that your next episode will be 1960, as I really want that game and an episode from you will do wonders for convincing my wife that we need to get it.

--V.

Oh, and we are making Reef Encounter our Featured Game for our next Game Night. We included a link to this episode in our evite so people can be at least somewhat familiar with the game before they get here.

Thanks again!
--V.

Great episode, Scott. I ordered the game based on it.

One suggestion, though: don't let the designer (or at least THIS designer; I enjoyed the Power Grid episode with Friedemann Friese) talk about the game. He came off as aggressively snotty, and I told myself that I would never buy a game made by a this dude. The strength of his design, and your enthusiasm, won me over in the end, but MAN did that guy rub me the wrong way.

Weird, Breese came off totally different to me. I thought he was a quiet, nerdy, but quite nice person after watching the video.

Edited to correct the spelling of "Breese".