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So does anyone have a good house rule for crows & ravens in Wingspan? Or is their eggs for choice of food special ability not as OP as my limited play experience makes it seem?
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Aug 8, 2020 20:18
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What's the consensus on Parks? Really as good as its BGG rating? Thoughts about it as a two player as opposed to a three player game? My wife and I just hit four National Parks/Monuments so we're fired up from the theme.
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Oct 10, 2020 06:04
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Trip report: my daughter just spent a month with my wife and me, and several games, three of which were new, hit the table regularly: Pandemic Season One: I'm probably the last person in this thread to play it. Got through the whole year with 17 plays. We all loved it, winning December on the first try due to good luck and tight play, putting a welcome end to the tension ramping up throughout the whole year. I picked up season 2 but fatigue from the other two players and my daughter's approaching departure date kept it off the table. Looking forward to playing it eventually, especially as I've picked up from mentions the game is tighter than Season 1 (e.g., we opened box 8 instead of 8 on the Advent calendar due to not reading closely, missed the sticker for one of the boxes at first due to looking at and not behind the tab on the calendar, etc., and I've heard Season 2 is better about this stuff as well as providing some drastic changes to the base game). Parks (and Nightfall): Thanks to whomever recommended this to me a couple of months back. Played the base set for about a week before Nightfall appeared. Base game is great and flavorful -- plus we love the theme; we visit lots of National Parks -- but some no-brainers like Crater Lake were missing from the base set. Nightfall solved this problem and added some welcome complexity. A great addition to my collection. Slightly more complex than expected for a game sold in Target but still a gateway game. Pan Am: Lightweight, flavorful game. Only got three-four plays as we picked it up late in my daughter's visit. People have complained in reviews/comments about the randomness of the directive cards, but each card's benefit is a crapshoot compared to the concrete gains from placing your engineers on other spots. I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a quick (30 minute-ish), lightweight gateway-type game. Very easy to teach. Scratches the same sort of itch as Ticket to Ride, though of course the mechanics are different. I'd say I prefer it to Parks by a slim margin. And three old favorites made repeat appearances: 7 Wonders: I love this game heart and soul, but only with 4+ players. With 3, there's a need to focus on defensive play missing from larger groups. Still fun of course, but nail biting trying to weigh gaining points vs. denying opponents on each single card. Wingspan: my daughter had played but my wife hadn't. Easy game to teach, but of course the first game is stumbling around trying to figure out how to balance the four actions. Only two things I don't like about Wingspan: round four tends to devolve into everyone just laying eggs and unbalanced engine combos (e.g., in one game my wife had in her lay eggs/grasslands row both a 1 egg for 2 food crow and a bird whose activation that allowed you to activate another bird again; that game was a blowout). Still a favorite of mine. Morels: the favored casual 2 player game in the house. Whenever only two of us were in the mood for a game or available, this was the game. It's not my favorite game because so much depends on getting morels, but it's a good way to fill 20-30 minutes. Obviously anyone looking for deep or cutthroat games won't take much away from these impressions, but just thought I'd share our month o' games
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Jan 24, 2021 05:17
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rydiafan posted:Speaking of winning December on the first try, the one thing that soured Season One for my group was crushing December, and then finding out that not only was there a final score, but because we ended the game without bothering to destroy the last military outpost, which we easily could have by stalling one more turn, we had tanked ours. Edited to add (obviously) Pandemic Season 1 end of game spoilers: I was surprised by the scorecard too. IIRC we ended up with the middle tier of victory, but we could have been one tier higher if we hadn't opened box 8 by accident. On the other hand, we used at least two of those cards, so we might have lost a month or two and ended up with a lower score. I think knowing there was a final score accounting with points based on 1) winning months on the first try and 2) final board state {which accounts for success on final objectives} would have been nice to know without giving details to game the final score up.
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Jan 24, 2021 06:07
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My fellow goons, I need a recommendation: a two-player cooperative game that's not in the Pandemic family and isn't Arkham Horror. I'm looking for something relatively casual and lightweight to play with my wife. Suggestions?
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Feb 3, 2021 06:24
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Look Sir Droids posted:Is there anything I should know about Twilight Struggle before playing it the first time, other than reading the instructions? Since it's your first time playing: You can't afford to give up your military ops points. Fortunately, you can coup even at DEFCON 2 so long as the target isn't a battleground country; however, especially as the US, you may have trouble finding a legal target in the early game so don't put it off for too long! If you can, hold on to the opponent's non-one-time good cards until turns 3 and 7. If you can keep Decolonization from coming up an extra time in the game you've just avoided handing that Commie bastard 4 Ops points that break the rules on placement. Or, that Capitalist Pig has one less chance to screw up your hand with Five Year Plan. If you're the US, you'll be behind the USSR in VPs and struggling to keep equal in influence for a good part of the game. This is by design. Don't lose hope! Make gains where you can, recognize that you can't match the USSR everywhere, and whatever you do make sure you don't get knocked out of regions -- getting couped out of South Africa before you have anything else going on there can be painful. If you're the USSR, don't get complacent. Solidify your gains and lock down your regions to prevent unexpected loss of Domination. Make sure you understand the conditions for Presence, Domination, and Control, especially Domination. It can be easy to flip your opponent's Domination of a region to Presence.
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Feb 4, 2021 02:14
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By the way belated thanks for all the recommendations I got for two-player coops. I finally searched them all on Boardgamegeek to take a closer look. One question: what's the replayability like on Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective? I think I'll be headed to my FLGS to pick up Codenames: Duet and, pending the answer, either Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective or I might roll the dice on Aeon's End, though I have to be careful with that one because El Fideo posted:Edit 2: Aeon's End is a cooperative deckbuilder about being space wizards trying to protect the last human city from horrible monsters, but it's a bit crunchier and also has a terrible quarterbacking problem, so that might not be great if
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Feb 4, 2021 20:54
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How many cases does it come with?
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Feb 4, 2021 21:43
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PerniciousKnid posted:Does PanAm count as existing IP? It's not a traditional IP and in any case it's closer to theming (like Pan Am) than having game mechanics reflect an IP like BSG or Dune, but I'm really taken with Parks (especially with the addition of Nightfall). It could easily have been a bit of shovelware to sell on a rack to a semi-captive audience and outdoors aficionados, but it's a quality game. Apropos of Parks and Pan Am, this coronavirus hellscape has given me renewed appreciation for lighter, more casual games. If I didn't spend 95% of my gaming time with my immediate family, who aren't hardcore gamers, I don't know if I'd own a copy of either.
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Feb 13, 2021 18:36
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Llyranor posted:I don't even calculate score for Sherlock Consulting Detective. We just investigate as much as we want and enjoy the narrative. I think my wife and I investigated something like 12 leads the first time we played and were surprised to see that the target was four , but upon reading the solution we both immediately clicked that the game wants you to work like Holmes...solve the mystery by gathering relevant data, making inductive leaps, and deciding what are the key leads. We like that style better, but obviously the best way to play the game is the way it's most enjoyable to you.
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Mar 25, 2021 17:38
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StarkRavingMad posted:Yo, where’s my Columbo boardgame, someone kickstart this ASAP The best card in the game would have to be the "Ahh, just one more question..." card
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Mar 26, 2021 16:51
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I would love Memoir '44; thank you, kind goon.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:35
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We're playing Pandemic Season 2 while our daughter is home from college. It's tearing our family apart. I have the concept of how to mitigate things using Box 6 but it never seems to work out right in terms of cards/pawns/locations. Lost March 1&2, April 1&2, and May 1 before squeaking out May 2. Oof [large]
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Jun 23, 2021 19:04
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We finally finished Pandemic Season 2 last night, squeaking out a win in late December with a count of 7 on the incident meter, but that felt more like luck than anything else. If we hadn't previously built a supply center in J'Berg & made it permanent, had a permanent broadcast tower in Lagos to send red cards, and as well as having put all the red cities into play in November with the Captain, there'd be no way to have won the game -- and that's not counting the luck needed to pull an airlift special event early because the runner died in early December. December was tuned too tightly I think; we just happened to have done those three key things required to make victory possible at all.
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Jul 7, 2021 18:15
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silvergoose posted:How'd you like it, in the end? We never managed to get the group together for more than a few sessions, and it never *quite* landed like season 1 did. It definitely felt more difficult than season 1 (e.g., in S1 I think we went 11/12 or 12/12 on months but we dropped at least 4 months in S2; in S1 our win on 1st half of month % was higher, etc.). That difficulty ramp was frustrating but not overly so (like the end of game would have been if we hadn't been lucky). Still, I think there were some days where we played, lost twice, and decided to box it up instead of going for a third game due to getting disheartened at two brutal losses. (It didn't help that we got the second +15 cubes probably a month after we should have due to focusing on the wrong things.) Mechanically, I think we enjoyed exploring the world and reconning new regions to add them, even if some of the discoveries weren't great (forsaken cities). The theme definitely felt fresher than S1 and yet another rage zombie virus/false flag government op to take over the world. Quality of life improvements were appreciated (in S1, I accidentally opened package 8 instead of Advent Calendar 8 because of misreading the card; S2 didn't seem to have these ambiguities). Finally, the quality of the stickers was better; the back page of the S1 manual was littered with city improvement stickers that had fallen off cards and we had Sharpied the names of those stickers right onto the cards, as they came off during shuffling. Only one S2 sticker came off of a card. For those who have played Season 0, how would you rate the difficulty and the novelty compared to S1 & S2? (Not that I'll get to play until January, when my daughter comes home from college again; not enough time to run through it on the rest of her visit now.)
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Jul 7, 2021 21:19
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OSU_Matthew posted:My spouse and I really enjoyed Parks quite a bit too! Surprisingly fun, was not expecting the mechanics to work as well as they did, especially for two. A bit bummed we bought it before New River Gorge had its designation upgraded to a National Park, so there’s no tile for that otherwise wonderful place. Otherwise I completely agree, there’s a few mechanics that could use clarification in the rules and probably some balancing that would help with the bonuses and stuff. Forgot to comment on this...my wife & I love Parks. Best with 3 we've found; one trick I read on BGG that works well for 2P is to always make the first seasonal chevron the Parks/Gear chevron in order to allow the 2nd player a chance to grab first hiker (otherwise the opportunity cost of visiting only one park is too great). I will agree that some of the bonus cards are worth a lot more than others, the primary weak spot in an otherwise solid game. Oh, the other thing that drags down thegame is I never get any of the really good gear like sunshine counts as forests, but I suppose that's technically not a problem with the game per se
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Jul 7, 2021 22:43
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Gort posted:BSG kinda gets worse with every expansion though And at least it didn't have "Crossroads" or whatever the trial/boxing mini game was
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Jul 8, 2021 22:21
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Opinions on good 2P legacy non-Pandemic games? Thinking about looking into something new to start with the wife
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Jul 16, 2021 23:50
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Koskinator posted:Heard good things about Aeon’s End Legacy, if you’re into deck building.
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Jul 26, 2021 20:06
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the holy poopacy posted:wait, does anyone not play pandemic like this I prefer to play by quarterbacking in a loud, overriding tone and sighing loudly whenever someone goes against my decrees; when someone else's plan works, it's always "dumb luck" and "statistically improbable". OK, maybe not aloud, but this may be my inner monologue when I'm outvoted on a move
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Aug 1, 2021 19:43
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Aeon's End questions again... So I picked up AE:Legacy a little while ago. I think my wife and I are close to done with it (only one unopened nemesis, but Legacy deck is still sort of thick, so I think we have to refight some of the nemeses at their tougher starting powers), so I'm looking at the next step. I rmemembrr seeing somewhere that AE:L was compatible with other AE set(s). Any guidance as to which set(s) are compatible and/ or which are the best to get? Figured I'd check the goon consensus before I looked through BGG.
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Aug 17, 2021 18:46
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Apologies if I missed it, but was there an opinion on Unfathomable with four players? That's the largest number I'm able to bring to table within my bubble
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Oct 13, 2021 03:11
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Wingspan -- I'd recommend the Oceania expansion. It comes with new action mats that slim down the "rewards" per action. E.g., IIRC, to lay three eggs "for free" you have to have four birds in your grasslands, though if you have fewer birds you can buy extra eggs for bird cards or food. Unless you already have your grasslands nearly full, then there actually starts to be a meaningful choice about your fourth round actions, especially if you have caching/predation powers in your forest or wetlands. It also introduces some interesting card mechanics for a change of pace (such as end of game powers). Just be warned that there are two(?) bonus cards that are actually only used with the automata game so pull those out. Also, it introduces a new food type, nectar, that serves as a wildcard but rots at the end of each round. The game adds scoring for whomever uses the most nectar to play birds but as it's so useful on its own we've houseruled away getting points for using it. The European expansion is OK -- it introduces end of round powers -- but IIRC its just got more birbs to look at. And the Oceania birbs are prettier anyway
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Oct 26, 2021 16:48
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alcaras posted:Any recommendations for good 3p games of low-medium complexity? (2 to 2.5 on bgg's weight scale) I feel like Pan Am is best at 3p and I like it quite a bit; one of the easiest games to explain Parks is a great game and plays well at 3p Opinion here is divided on Wingspan but it comes in at #21 overall on bgg
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Oct 27, 2021 03:56
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This is violence
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Nov 4, 2021 18:34
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Major life hack:
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The Eyes Have It posted:I played a lot of Death Valley this weekend. Like all button shy games, it packs a lot into fewer than twenty cards. I wanted to thank you for mentioning this game. My wife and I recently visited Death Valley, so I decided to get a copy. It's a cute little quick filler game. Maybe not super deep, but there's a little work you have to do remembering what gets hidden in each player's scrapbook (if anything does). The only problem (and maybe it's not a real problem; just seems like it after a few plays) is that one of the cards is a little OP; it allows you to look at the top card of the deck and give it to either player, which is a great way to cause the other player to bust, requiring conservative play once your opponent gets this card. Oh well, it's still fun.
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Nov 5, 2021 21:05
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The Eyes Have It posted:Funny you should mention this. We played this wrong at first, but the answer lies in the order of phases in a turn. Ahh, I should have caught that. Makes it a lot less deadly. Thanks
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Nov 5, 2021 21:36
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I like Wingspan more than the consensus, I think -- I enjoy the challenge of assembling an engine without knowing what all my components will be and having to adjust on the fly -- but it is admittedly more random than it should be. I agree that Parks is the superior game, except as a 2P game, where I find it to be weighted against the second player (even with the camera). One house rule that has improved it as a 2P game is automatically choosing the "Parks" chevron as the first season's trail chevron, but I'd still pick Wingspan over Parks as a 2P game by a slim margin.
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Nov 16, 2021 04:38
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Lawlicaust posted:If they are just getting into games, I would avoid anything like Mage Knight or Fury of Dracula. I would recommend games that are much easier to learn even if they might grow out of them after a few months due to simplicity 8 makes it really difficult. Ticket to Ride jumped out at me as a strong contender even before seeing this list.
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Nov 23, 2021 19:16
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Just played Viticulture for the first time yesterday. I had lots of fun with it. Thinking about getting it for home, but wondering about how much fun it is with two players. (I can see it'll be good fun with three for when my daughter comes to visit and it'll be good to pull out when guests come over to play.) Worried that with two it might be an exercise in frustration in fighting over the single worker placement spot and switching off useful turns. Thoughts?
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Nov 28, 2021 21:25
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Golden Bee posted:In the starter game, everyone is a good guy for the first turn. Which I think is neat. Reminds me of something I read, fictional dialog between Adama and Tigh: A: "One more jump and we're halfway to Kobol." T:"And that's why we might be fracked. Our resource numbers are too high. What if you turn out to be a Cylon in the sleeper phase? Or me? Or for frack's sake -- both of us?" A: "Right as always, Saul. Time to sacrifice a couple of civilian ships." Missed my chance to play Unfathomable when I had to choose between it and BSG. I hadn't played BSG since the before times, chose it, and was not disappointed even with a skin-of-the-teeth loss on the last turn minus one. So how does Unfathomable compare to "base" BSG? BSG with the "right" expansion components? Is there a good breakdown somewhere?
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Nov 30, 2021 20:10
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Never played an auction game until last weekend, when I played both Ra and Medici. Any recommendations for easier-to-get/more contemporary offerings in the genre? If it matters, my wife and I preferred Ra by a bit.
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Dec 11, 2021 01:37
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Can someone give me a quick bullet on how much has changed between Power Grid and Power Grid Recharged? Much appreciated!
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Dec 23, 2021 19:19
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Magnetic North posted:This is wrong for two reasons. I just wanted to recognize the thought and effort you put into this post. The first question that has to be answered is, "What is/are the point/s of the list?" and your answer rings true for one very reasonable answer to that question.
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Dec 24, 2021 23:33
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Magnetic North, As you mention big box stores for availability in your OP, can I make three suggestions mostly focused on games available from big box retailers? 2-player light: Azul* (* for technically 2-4) 3-5 light: Parks (I think if RollftGalaxy is Light, so is Parks; medium with Nightfall?) Threadban Prada Slut
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Dec 27, 2021 14:21
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Admiralty Flag posted:Can someone give me a quick bullet on how much has changed between Power Grid and Power Grid Recharged? Much appreciated! Didn't see an answer to this and I didn't want it to get lost in the new thread discussion, so I wanted to try asking again; I want to know if it's worth getting Recharged. BTW introduced Power Grid to my wife and daughter a couple of nights ago as "like Monopoly but actually fun", and even though we were a player or two short of optimal it was a big hit.
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Dec 27, 2021 19:33
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Phelddagrif posted:If you own the original edition, there's no need to buy Recharged. There aren't any big changes in the new box, and the changes to the rules can be easily carried to the first edition if you want. Thanks!
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Dec 28, 2021 18:42
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