Good evening, you are listening to Three Moves Ahead, and I'm your host, Rob Zagney. Joining me today, once again, is our friend, freelance writer Rowan Kaiser. Hello. And we're also joined by our old buddy, former PC gamer intern, now freelance writer, T.J. Hafer. How's it going? It's going pretty well. Good to have you back, DJ. Thanks. And finally, we welcome back, our friend,

now of Camposanto games, Nels Anderson. Hello. Today we're going to talk about the Crusader

Kings games and in particular the Sons of Abraham expansion. We're also going to get at

why the Crusader Kings, why Crusader Kings 2 in particular, seems to have

reached beyond the typical paradox audience, which is sort of history nerds like me and our producer

Michael Hermes, and sort of gotten its hooks into a much broader audience and a very different

sort of audience than strategy games usually reach.

But to start with, we should dive right into the main reason we're talking about Crusader Kings

this week, which is the newly released expansion, Sons of Abraham. Now, T.J. and Rowan,

I gather you both have been playing a bit of the new expansion, which adds a lot of new features, and T.J. and Rowan, I gather you both have been playing a bit of the new expansion, which adds a lot of new features.

And, TJ, I figured we'd start with you because you have a bit of an obsessive relationship with this game and its ability to, the way it allows you to play Germanic and Norse people.

Yes.

So I guess, you know, we'll start with you, T.J.

You know, maybe you can break down for us.

What are the, you know, what are the big new things in Sons of Abraham, the big changes

that you've noticed?

And how do you feel those have impacted the game?

Well, the sort of, you know, bullet points are they finally added Judaism as a religion,

which I've tried and failed a couple of times to get to catch on.

They're not in the best starting position in Europe.

There's one Jewish state, which is the Khazars who are surrounded completely by people of other

religions that want their land, and they have no allies. So they've added that start in. They've added

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