Unpub Mini Vancouver

I love playing boardgames. I hope by now that's obvious. I love finding new ones or rekindling my love for old ones. But discovering new classics before they're even on the market is a rare and wonderful privilage, and last weekend I had the joyous opportunity to disscover not one, but several of them on the same day!

Unpub Mini Vancouver was a one day event organised to allow local game designers show off their prototype games, and a chance to have them playtested by a whole lot of new people outside their usual circle of friends. One of my regular gaming buddies, Chase, brought along his game, Berlin Noir which I've played several times and seen go through various iterations over the last few months. Another of the prototypes there was from one of the organisers, Marcel, who brought For Greed or Glory, a game I played at Terminal City Tabletop Convention earlier this year. With so many others on offer, I didn't play either of those, but luckily I'm friends with both, so technically I can pester them to bring their games over and play any time I want.

I arrived at the venue, Magic Stronghold around 11:30am, and there were already a few people playing various games. I was trying to be there by 10:30, but got utterly lost on the way. Apparently, they moved recently, so, while Google Maps dropped the pin on the current location, when I asked it to route me to the store, it took me to the old location. I just didn't double-check, blindly climbing aboard the indicated bus! Anyway, I got there eventually, and with more than enough time to game!

The first prototype I played was Town Builder, by Eric Raué, who happened to be the other organiser of the event! This is a drafting card game, where players collect and construct buildings in a town, competing over projects and materials for the top score.

One of my favourite touches was in the layout. This game was visually beauitful, with wonderful, colourful card art, and fantastic, clear card layout. Each card serves a dual purpose of both building and material. If you want a card as a building, you take it and lay it sideways to represent that it's under construction. But every card can also by materials to construct your projects, repersented by the material icons at the base of the card. If you want a card to be contruction materials, you take it and place it upside down under a project you're currently building. The materials icon is upside down in relation to the rest of the card, but rightside up when it's used as a resource! Genius! The only game I've ever seen have a similar design feature is the original Cheapass Games The Big Idea. I loved it there, and I love it here.

The art on Town Builder, by Fillipe Martin, is gorgeous. Eric claims there's still a lot to be done, but apart from one greyscale card, I loved how the rest looked on the day. The difference between "complete" and "nearly complete" seemed to be in object definition, with completed cards having buildings and elements outlined in sharp, clean lines. "Nearly complete" had this soft, almost impressionistic feel to them, a slight haze that made the scenes depicted into a dreamy, summer day. I really liked that style, but I can also see what Eric is looking for.

Play is clear and fast, with almost no downtime between your turns, even in a 4-player game. The whole game took a little over 30 minutes to play, even with having to explain the rules to two new players. Players draw two cards from the central face-up cards per turn, so you can decide to start a new project, or work toward completing a current one. It's worth noting at this point that it's a whole lot of fun to steal a building another player wants, just to throw it away as a resource for one of your own buildings!

But what's Town Builder like as a game? Honestly, it's great! I mean, Eric says it needs more polishing, and I'm sure he knows best, but I loved playing it as is. We all ended very close to each other in the final scoring, even though I was playing a 4-player game against the designer and another designer who had played a few times before. I got an awesome combo right at the end, triggering, if I recall correctly, four cards and completing two buildings! It plays fast, borrowing a gameplay mechanic from Bohnanza. The game ends when the discard deck is resuffled twice. The first play through the deck is the longest. When the deck is shuffled once, players already have a lot of cards out of it in play, either as buildings or resources. The second shuffle is a bit smaller again, and everyone knows the end is coming fast, so completing buildings becomes a top priority.

With a 30 minute playtime, Town Builder is a fast, fun drafting game that is easy to learn and beautiful to look at. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Kickstarter next spring for this one, and I'll be letting you all know about it when it comes up!

The second game of my day was the even faster real-time co-operative monster masher, World Defence Force, by Adrian R. Walker. Players work together to trade and swap coloured cards in order to build up a stock of single colours to buy attack cards from central, shared piles in three minute rounds. At the end of each three minutes, whatever monster is showing on the Monster Deck takes its frustrations out of the Population Deck, eating a bunch of them and diminishing the players options. With only 100 cards in the Population Deck at the start, it's pretty devestating to watch 20 of them get munched on, then another 20 three minutes later and then another 15!

World Defence Force is frantic, but less stressful than something like Escape The Curse of the Temple, which can feel overpowering at times as players talk over each other and all continue to act simultaneously. In World Defence Force, players take actions individually, going clockwise around the table in standard turn order. Every turn is "Draw a card, discard a card, swap a colour set with an Attack card, if possible, and draw back up to five cards", all of which can be done fairly quickly, and planned, roughly, during other players turns. If one player takes 20 seconds to make a decision, that affects the time for everyone, but most players turns are over in less than 5 seconds.

The card design in World Defence Force is super clean and clear, something I really love. Each Population card is just a big block of colour in a thin boarder, and Attack cards are similar colour blocks with number printed big and bold on them. Each colour has its own unique pattern as well, which is just visual flavor, but really appealed to me during play. I wonder if Adrian has tested the patterns for colour-blind players, or if it's just a neat feature? Ensuring the patterns are visually distinct without the colours would certainly broaden the reach of this game.

World Defence Force was a blast to play. We had six players, including the designer and three others who had played a version of it before. Only myself and one other were totally new to the game. I certainly had a good laugh playing it as it stands, though there was a lot of discussion after about adding additional mechanics. I kinda like it for how clean it is, though additional, optional, mechanics might be nice once you've started to master the basic version. Another winner in my book, but there seems to be a while to go before we'll see it pop up on Kickstarter. There was a lot of blank monster cards, and Adrian is looking into options for the round timer. Maybe an app?

After breaking briefly for some lunch, The Shrine, by Shad Millar and Jay Cormier was the third game I played at Unpub Mini Vancouver. This is a strategy game where players place cubes on a 4x4x4 play space. Each cube is one of four colours, and has either two or three symbols out of an available four, with the same symbol on opposite facing surfaces. So some cubes might have two dots, two squiggles and two X's, while others might have four X's all around, and two squares on opposing faces.

Players chose one cube to play from four revealed cubes out of a big bag of possibilities, placing the cube in the playspace. Cubes placed on top of or next to other cubes must have matching touching faces. When a player places a cube they gain resources of the colour they placed and any touching cubes. Those are used to buy cards that count toward victory.

Once all the cubes are placed, the number of each symbol facing upwards on the final tower is counted, defining that symbols value. Only those sides facing up count toward victory, not the ones exposed to the sides. Then that value is multiplied by the number of those symbols on the cards you have, giving you the score for the symbol.

The Shrine is interesting, because when we played it, both myself and the other player in our two-player game thought we had broken it very early on. My opponent had a lot of dots on his cards, so for him, dots had a high value. With three dots facing up early on, he simply built three towers of four cubes straight up, guaranteeing him that high score right off the bat. I couldn't place cubes fast enough to block him by creating voids. Voids are created where two blocks facing each other with a single space between have different symbols on their facing sides. Because all cubes have the same symbols on opposing sides, this is an impossible to fill space, so a void cube is placed in that space, blocking the symbol on the cube beneath from scoring.

However, by the end of the game, we realised that the benefits of that strategy were somewhat deceptive. While my opponent built straight up, he left me to fill out the base layer, stacking it with symbols that were of benefit to me. While I lost in the end, his dots netted him significantly less than my squiggles, because hight doesn't count for anything during the scoring. I had seven squiggles facing up. With my six squiggles on my cards, I scored 42 points in one go. Had I played a bit better, I could have won, while allowing him to waste his time building his towers.

I really enjoyed The Shrine, and would love to play it again a few more times. I'm not sure if there's any problems with the mechanics, because I got so distracted by what seemed to be a huge issue while we were playing, but turned out to be seemingly balanced on the whole. It's certainly a fun game, and a level of strategy I can get my head around. It's in no way basic, or simple, but it is clear and easy to learn the core mechanics of, while the strategy emerges through play.

Finally, I wrapped up my long day of gaming playing a game I wanted to try since before I walked through the door. I first saw Sloops!, by Sébastian Bernier-Wong and Peter Gorniak back in March of this year at the first annual Terminal City Tabletop Convention. Back then I simply didn't have the time to play it, as I was playing so many other games over the one day I had. So when I heard it would be at Unpub Mini Vancouver, I put it at the top of my list of games to play. So it was with just a smidge of irony that Sloops! became the last game I played of the day.

Sloops! is a game of naval combat with a worker placement element for drafting an action deck and gaining resource tokens. The turns are divided into two phases, an Island Phase and then the Sea Phase.

The worker placement mechanic is during the Island Phase, when you place crew around the island. All players take turns to play theier three crew one at a time, and then purchase cards that go into your deck. Unlike a lot of deck building games, purchased cards are first placed into your hand, rather than your discard pile, so that you can immediately use them in the next phase.

The Sea Phase is all about moving your ship and dealing damage, awarding victory points. Cards are played from hand to maneuver your ship or fire cannons. Damage is dealt with cannon blasts or ramming other ships, or rocks if your hand of cards really sucks. Ramming damages both ships, but only awards a victory point to the aggressor. Each time a ship takes damage, the player gains a Damage Card into their deck, which has no ability and just clogs up your later hands. The game ends when all the Damage Cards have been distributed.

As we started our 4-player game so late in the day, I didn't get to experience a full game. We cut it short, playing out three or four full rounds. Still, that was enough to know that Sloops! is a hilariously fun game. The theme is really well implimented, and feels like a core part of how the game plays, rather than a skin wrapped over some mechanics.

The worker placement element is great, with lots of choices and decisions to make. Do I want to claim a card I can't afford first, hoping I can claim the required resources with the next two crew members, leaving me open to being blocked by the other players? Do I spend a turn pooling resources for the next turn? Did I forget to grab some Cannon resources, meaning I now hold a Fire Cannons card I can't use? Yeah... yeah... I totally did. Dammit.

The Sea Phase is the action part of the game. Players play cards to move their ship around the ocean and islands, hoping to draw near other ships and wreck havok. We had great fun pulling along side each other, unleashing a hail of cannon shot, and then parting ways in a most gentlemanly fashion! There was a lot of ramming ships as well, with some player turns ending up as a series of ramming and being rammed.

Everyone had a lot of fun playing this one, and laughter at the table was an ongoing and regular feature. Turns are very clear and straight-forward, aided by the division of elements into the two seperate phases. Despite the two phase turn, Sloops! plays very fast. Players only have three crew to place on the island, and the Sea Phase is just a matter of going around the table as players play cards from their hand and move or fire their ships. I look forward to getting to play a full game of this in the future, and watching how it grows and develops, mostly in terms of components, which are mostly stand-ins for now.

Given that there was a wide selection of games on offer at Unpub Mini Vancouver, I'm delighted to be able to report that I really enjoyed the four that I played on the day. It probably helps that most of those games are well into their development cycles, and, though still evolving, they each have a solid grasp on where they want to be.

Whatever my experience was, it's clear that Vancouver is home to some incredible board game developers, and I look forward to adding many of the games on display at Novembers Unpub Mini Vancouver to my shelf in the future!

Related Reading: Check out Loaded Dice's review of the event and what they thought of the games they played in their Recap post.

Cosmic Encounter

Some of my favourite games are the ones that encourage a lot of player interaction throughout the game. BattleStar Galactica is filled with discussions of trust and traitors. Bohnanza is all about trading and negotiating for better deals. Resistance is entirely built on agreements and lies. Your only chance of winning co-operative games like Pandemic, Forbidden Desert and Elder Sign are based on the players working together to maximise their team's potential.

In Cosmic Encounter, players form and disolve alligences to gain colonies in a bid to expand across the galaxy. Players start with five home planets in their own system, and a random alien race from a massive stack of possibilities. The objective is to gain five foreign colonies among the other player's home systems.

Gameplay is actually fairly basic. On each players turn they draw a destiny card that directs who they will attack. Then both the Attacker and Defender, collectively refered to as the "main players", declare if they will accept allies. They can be selective with their choices, or simlpy declare that they're accepting help from all sides. Starting on the Attackers left, the other players then choose who they will ally with, based on invitations, or opt to sit this combat out if they're unsure of the results. Allying with a successful side grants rewards, the most important of which is a colony if the Attacker wins. Because of this, players will generally ally with the Attacker early on, but once a player is close to victory, they usually stop recieving Attacker ally invites. We'll come back to this in a minute.

Once allies are all declared, the main players play an encounter card face-down in front of them. This modifies the attack value granted by the ships committed to each side, and can reinforce a victory, flip a seemingly hopeless fight, or initiate negitiations. Once these are revealed, other cards can be played in to affect the final outcome, adding to values, cancelling deals, zapping cards and more. Even alien race powers can often activate at this point. Unless otherwise stated, at this stage, anyone can play cards, evevn if the player isn't directly involved in the battle.

If the Attacker wins, she and all her allies gain a colony, destroying the Defender and his allys, sending their ships to the Warp, a zone in the centre of the board from which ships can be recovered for future roles. If this was the Attackers first attack, they then have the option of a second attempt, starting by drawing a new destiny card to see who they will attack. Thus, they can potentially get a maximum of two colonies in a full turn.

If the Defender wins, all the Attackers and her allies go to the Warp, while the Defenders allies get to claim rewards. The Defender gets nothing, except the glory of a planet defended.

And that's it! Every turn is "declare attack, declare allies, play an encounter card, resolve encounter". It's pretty straight forward, but the immense joy of Cosmic Encounter is in the player interaction, and the huge variety of alien races on offer.

The core box comes with 50 races, each with their own unique rules and play style. That alone allows for a huge number of possible play variations, meaning that you'll rarely see the same set of aliens vying for victory. But each expansion adds between 20 and 30 new races, so that, at the time I write this, with all the expansions, I have a total of 165 alien race to chose from! It is so much fun watching races interacting with each other. No two games are ever alike. Some races make small changes to the base rules, while others can be more dramatic, even affecting other players actions. Alien races are sorted into three colours; Green, Yellow or Red. This represents their overall difficulty, though in my experience, most regular boardgamers will be able to just right in a play with any of them. Really, red aliens just have a slightly more complex ability, or one that requires the player to keep track of things during play. Most of the wording on the cards are clear and it's easy to understand how they effect the gameplay.

The other aspect that really changes every game you'll play of Cosmic Encounter is the level of player interaction. Players are constantly discussing who they and the others should ally with, the benefits of joining one side or the other, the effeect of another power on their turn and more. Discussion and debate takes up the majority of the playtime in Cosmic Enounter.

Do you ally with the Attacker and gain a colony yourself, but allow him to gain one too? Do you even invite allies as the Attacker, knowing you're giving them a colony out of their turn? Do you invite allies, knowing that you're going to lose, but hopefully hurting others in the process?

While you're trying to make these decisions, other players are negotiating for power. How confident is the Attacker in his hand of cards? If I help you now, will you help me later? No, but I won't help her either!

Victory is just five colonies, and can be shared by more than one player. If you're on your Attack turn, are you willing to share victory with the Red player? Is he willing to take a shared victory over going it for himself on his turn? It's all about tenuous verbal agreements that don't have to be upheld.

In a game where victory is a point based system that is clearly visible to all at all times, the endgame can drag out, as no one is willing to help the player in the lead. It happens in Monopoly and Settlers of Catan, and it happens in Cosmic Encounter as well. As stated earlier, once players get close to victory, they stop recieving invites. But in Cosmic, this only serves to keep everyone together, such that, at the end of the game, we've often had all the other players with four colonies apiece. Also, as mentioned, shared victory is always an option, so good negotiations can offset the slow endgame with a powerful, unstoppable alligence of races.

There are problems. Victory can sometimes come simply because players have spent all their cards stopping the others before it gets to your turn. With all the powerful cards in the discard pile, you can win by attrition. That being said, a sure victory can be snatched away at the last moment, as has happened to me several times before. It all looks great until your opponent Morphs your Attack +40, or another player steps in and Cosmic Zaps your alien race ability.

Overall, I love Cosmic Encounter. Games range from 45 minutes, where the last player in turn order didn't even get a chance to act as the Attacker, to three hours of back and forth negotiations, as players gain and lose colonies, and races combo off each other in interesting and complex ways. Finally, Cosmic is also one of the few games I own where I completely love the expansions. While each one does add some new components, like space stations, new decks or or additional tokens, it's the extra races that are most fun, and those are worth paying for alone.

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Making Babies Is Easy, Except When It Isn't

Yesterday I announced on this blog about our impending end to free time and peace of mind. It was full of joy and happiness.

But as so many people will tell you, that's not always how it goes.

What some of you might not know is that Claire and I have been trying for this for about two years, and during that time we've had some painful close encounters. At least twice, we think we lost an embroy at around the five or six week mark, and every month that went by without even the hint of a successful fertilisation was another month of hope crushed.

When I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in October of 2012, Claire and I agreed to accelerate our plans a bit. By then we were married four years already, when most couples would already have a few kids. But we had moved to Canada and were still settling down. We hadn't even applied for Permanent Residency yet, and our long term security was not entirely steady. But I felt like I was suddenly on a clock, like this diagnosis put a timer on how much time I have left to potentially be a good father[1].

So we talked about it. We looked at our finances and our lives as they stood. It's said that there is never a perfect time to have kids, and if you're waiting for that, you'll go on waiting. We were in a good place, and so it made sense to try.

Over the last two years we've had moments of hope and moments of despair. There were times when we thought it might just be destined not to be. But we had each other, and for that, I am eternally greatful. Claire has been amazing through everything, not just in relation to the pregnancy, but my diagnosis, work, the fact that Prometheus is such a terrible movie, the Permanent Residency process, everything.

What changed that brought us to this point? Mostly, once again, that's on Claire. Last February/March, Claire took up swordfighting as her hobby and main form of exercise at Academie Duello in downtown Vancouver. She loved it, and started doing it three nights a week. Then, around June, she went to see a naturopath, specifically one related to diet and lifestyle. She had been having some stomach issues around eating certain foods, so, after a few tests and trials, Claire changed her diet, cutting out dairy and gluten. The naturopath recommended some suppliments, and changed the type of folic acid Claire was using to a fast absorption one.

Before the end of July, Claire announced that she was pregnant. We went to Whislter for a vacation at the start of August and had a blast, driving ATV's and spending a day relaxing in an outdoor spa resort.

Since then, we've just been following the growth of our little Spawnling via an app on Claire's phone. It's grown from a lemon to an avacado to a turnip and beyond.

If you're reading this and currently trying to get pregnant and it isn't happening, take heart. Sometimes these things need to take time. Try a new activity. Try a new diet. Talk to us. Talk to the professionals. Ask for help. You're not alone, and you never will be.

It has not been easy to get to this point, but it's been worth it.

[1] It's very important to note that I no longer think like this. I did during the first two weeks and now and then during my lowest times in the first six months. But since then, I've come to honestly believe right to my core that very little has changed, and it won't for a long time. There is no timer, no clock ticking down over (or inside) my head. Life was amazing even before the pregnancy, and is only getting better. We landed a science vessel on a comet flying beyond Martian orbit yesterday. I am living in a golden age, and my own little bubble of life and living glows brightly.

Growing Secrets Exposed

Next March, Claire and I will be welcoming a new addition to our family. Here's an early preview!

This has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to keep secret. When Claire agreed to marry me, we agreed to keep it to ourselves until we had the engagement ring. When we planned how we would get married six months in advance of our holiday to the US in 2008, we agreed to not tell anyone beforehand. When we got married in Las Vegas, we agreed to not tell anyone for a week until we were back in the land of fast, stable wifi and we could Skype everyone.

But when we discovered Claire was pregnant at only six weeks, I almost exploded. I wanted to shout it to the world, but we both knew that was just stupid. So many things can go wrong at the early stage, so we agreed that the smart move was to not tell anyone yet. When we got the first ultrasound at 10 weeks, it was just a tiny blob of cells. We told immediate family, but asked them to keep our secret as well.

Eventually we hit a point where we were confident enough to start telling some friends, but even then, we agreed to keep it a secret until we had the 20 week ultrasound, as it would be something more tangible to show off.

Finally, thankfully, the time has come.

Last Monday, November 10th, 2014, at 8:30am, Claire and I went to the hospital for the 20 week ultrasound and spent a half hour with the doctor as she photographed and measured every conceivable aspect of our little Spawnling[1]. I got to be amazed at her talent for pattern recognition, as I watched the screen fade between "mostly grey amorphous blobs" and "mostly light grey amorphous blobs". Every now and then I spotted a hand or a leg. The head was easy to see, but once it was measured, I was lost on rest. Our future bundle of joy was being a bit of a pest though, resting it's hand on it's chin, covering it's chest, and making some scans difficult. Despite the doctors repeated thumping of Claire's belly, Baby[2] refused to move or shift position. At one point, she was showing off Baby's facial features, when Baby visibly turned from the camera, leaving us looking at a perfectly formed spine and back of head.

We did get to watch it kick, which was nice. It's still too small for me to see or feel from the outside, though Claire tells me it's already starting to give her some trouble. We might be watching a movie or playing a video game, when Claire will poke at her belly and shout "Keep it down in there!"

All is great with mother and baby. Claire is still swordfighting three days a week, and sometimes at the weekend too. She's having to go easy on some of the floor exercises, but part of swordfighting is knowing how not to inflict injuries, so she's not having a problem with the fun bits of swinging large metal objects at each other. I'm doing great, mostly just smiling non-stop and constantly looking at Monday's scan, then smiling some more. All our friends know about the baby by now, so I've started telling anyone that will listen to me on a regular basis, like the English guy that works in the comic store, or the lifeguard in the morning at the pool I swim in.

2015 is going to be an amazing year. I just hope I still get time to play boardgames!

[1] Claire started calling it the Spawnling from around week 8. It stuck pretty fast.
[2] There was some discussion as to wheather we'd find out the gender before the birth. In the end, we agreed to keep this one a surprise until the big day, as I want, and find out in advance for the next one, as Claire wants. What can I say? I like surprises!

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Making Babies Is Easy, Except When It Isn't

Dixit

As far as my gaming experience goes, Apples To Apples was the start of a new genre of boardgames for me, the basic theme of which is a single judge that others are playing towards. The massively popular adult party game Cards Against Humanity is cut from the same cloth, but I find it difficult to enjoy. I'm simply not that vulgar at heart, and find it difficult to laugh at some of the more extreme cards[1].

Dixit is a beautiful card game about imaginative descriptions. Each tarot-sized card contains no text, just a single, stunningly painted image. The judge for the round picks one of her cards in her hand and describes it in some imaginative way. In games I've played we've had players sing, name a popular TV series, simply point to another player announcing "You and me"[2], speak a phrase in Chinese, and play a short piece of music from his phone, to name just a few of the more imaginative clues given.

Based on the clue, it is then up to the other players to pick a card in their hand that most closely matches the clue. All the cards are put together, shuffled and then dealt out. The other players then have to guess the judge's card from the ones revealed, secretly choosing a card and voting simultaneously.

The fun of Dixit is in describing your card, or choosing a card that matches the description given. Interpreting the art on the cards in an unusual way requires some ingenuity, and even more when you need just one or two other people at the table to key into what you mean.If the judge was too obvious and everone guesses her card, then she gets no points, and everyone else gets a few. If the judge was too obsure, and no one guesses her card, then, again, she gets no points, and everyone else gets a few. In the Goldilocks zone, where a few vote for the card and few don't, the judge and those who voted for her card get points. Other players cards who received votes also get a small number of bonus points.

Dixit is a popular game at my table. It's short playtime allows us to break it out before a bigger game, or fill in time before food. It's also one of the few games that comfortably allow above six players, and we've had a few games with seven. While there was a 12 player version of Dixit available in the past, that is now out of print, so we've had to fudge the components we have to allow extra players.

The core game comes with 84 cards, and each expansion adds another 84. As a nice touch, the the latest edition of the core box has space for three expansion desks, giving you a huge selection. But part of the fun is seeing the same card described in a new, imaginative way, so don't feel obliged to buy expansions too quickly.

A fun game that always results in a lot of laughs, Dixit is simply beautiful to look at. A lot of time every game is spent just staring at the beautifully presented cards.

[1] - "Super-soaker full of cat pee" stills gets me every time, though.

[2] - I used that clue with a friend, and it worked. She was the only one to guess my card; a picture of a little boy sitting in front of a TV playing Super Nintendo, with the characters flowing out of the screen.

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To Blow Up King And Parliment

Almost missed this year! For tradition! For continuity! For Alan Moore!

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!