Talk Cardboard

Just for reference, the population of Klaipėda, the third largest city in Lithuania is approximately 161 000 people. The number of attendees in this year's Spiel Essen was 220 000 people, meaning they managed to cram the entirey of Klaipėda and much more into just eight convention halls and every one of those people were buying board games.
I appreciate that that is maybe not everybody's jam, and aspects of it are not our jam either. But getting our mitts into a jar of Bonne Maman filled with gooey new board game releases - put a bib on me and fire up the toaster!
In this special joint episode of No Pun Included and Talk Cardboard we cover 16 new releases from Spiel Essen 2025, which you can either listen to here or partake in the video version https://youtu.be/NHVLn-ZxVWs
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On to the timestamps:
0:00 Cold Open2:46 Intro5:42 Night Soil (Unranked)9:11 Bouba Kiki14:14 Nocturnis17:56 Formidable Farm/Formidabel!22:00 Tax the Rich27:44 Echoes of Time36:30 Fearless41:30 National Economy48:23 Thesauros1:00:34 biD Coin1:07:20 Kikai/Bricolage Heads1:16:46 Tag Team1:26:59 Recall1:36:14 ???1:56:10 ??2:03:33 ?2:14:53 Outro

Spinning pandas, evolving primates, and... Capitalism! We have all three for you in this episode - thankfully not all in the same game.We could have had three games about mammals, but we didn't think this through. 
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Onto the timestamps:
00:00 Cold open02:09 Intro03:45 Panda Spin18:34 Primates32:51 Tycoon: India 198148:25 Correspondence

Only three games this episode? What gives? Well, in the tried and true brand tradition, we decided to go back to our original formula. But no sad trombone noises please - we're really, definitely, honestly going to make it work this time...
On this episode, we have Identity - a trick taking game that promises personality, Out of Sorts - a game of inventing a cataloguing system for books in an alien library, and Magical Athlete - a game of racing a banana, a giant baby, and various other quirky things round a track.
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On to the timestamps:
00:00 Cold open & intro05:50 Identity14:16 Out of Sorts28:57 Magical Athlete42:03 Correspondence 

There are episodes where we bring as much knowledge as we can about whatever board game we are talking about. And then there are episodes where we just want to share why something didn't click so much that we didn't want to go beyond game one. Apropos of nothing, today we'll be chatting about Brink, a "trading cubes in space" game that conceptually riffs on Catan but in execution whiffs on us.
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On to the time stamps:
00:00 Cold Open & Intro
Work in Progress: 
2:08 Tenby
7:26 Railroad Tiles
10:42 Rumble Nation
18:53 Winter Rabbit
Audience Correspondence:
25:05 Vantage, Neurodivergence in Board Games
Main Feature:
31:23 Brink

Well, Hot Dog! Do we have an episode for you! We peruse the lofty promises of Vantage, try to keep ourselves on track in Railroad Tiles, discuss whether selling doughnuts at night is really worth your time in Taiwan Night Market, and Efka tells us about angry dice you can chuck about in the bath, in Wroth. 
But wait! That's not all! The main game on our podium is Hot Streak - which not only has a hot dog, but also a fish, a bear, and HM the Queen herself in a game of racing, falling down, getting back up again, and trying all over again. Phew. 
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On to the timestamps:
00:00 Cold Open & Intro
Work in Progress: 
00:54 Vantage19:14 Railroad Tiles25:01 Taiwan Night Market28:26 Wroth
Audience Correspondence:
36:19 Gaming Tables
Main Feature:
41:23 Hot Streak

Pew pew kaboom! That's the sound of every child's living nightmare - their toys coming to life and unleashing an arsenal of deadly weaponry in their bedroom. Many a sleepless night I've had in my youth with this vivid imagery - blood, guts, plastic viscera strewn across my chewbacca rug - which might I add, also comes alive and eats the other toys... anyway, turns out they made my nightmare into a board game and you can now play it.
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On to the time stamps:
0:00 Cold Open
Work In Progress
0:56 The Old King's Crown6:24 Ensemble12:19 Haggis
Audience Correspondence
16:14 Trick Taking
Main Feature
27:51 Toy Battle

Good news, we're still on holiday. Better news - we're still doing the holiday cast, which means more free podcast more delivered to more you. Moorish! You know what else is moorish? Trees! Just can't get enough of those suckers. And you know where trees live? That's right, in Germany. And you know what Germany has? Autobahns. But also forests.
Apropos of nothing, let's talk about a board game called Black Forest which is about a forest in Germany.
Once again, no timestamps because we're still on holiday and it's still just one game in the episode. You'll be fine.
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SHIRTS! Find them on https://no-pun-included-shop.fourthwall.com/

Good news, we're on holiday. Better news, we're not leaving you without podcast. It's a smaller episode, yes, but it is Talk Cardboard delivered right to your door, for free! Mmmmm, free podcast, what could be more delicious? Oh, I know, human suffering! If you feel like what you need more in your life is a cardboard simulation of robots slaughtering endless amounts of flesh bags on the moon, Moon Colony Bloodbath has got you sorted.
 
Not doing timestamps cause we're on holiday. Also, it's just one game. You'll be fine.
If you’d like to check out our bonus episodes - become a patreon supporter on http://patreon.com/nopunincluded
SHIRTS! Find them on https://no-pun-included-shop.fourthwall.com/