At The Table with The Dice Tower - Come One, Come All!

24:05So it's best to avoid that situation before it happens. I have the teacher face and voice. So I don't usually get that. Oh, I know. I do that. But sometimes you have to do that behind their backs. No, I do it with direct eye contact with the parents. I, I a hundred percent don't, uh, and seem to not, uh, you know, again, uh, 12 years of teaching and, and I think I, however I handle it, I don't, maybe it's because I ha I'm also not that big and tall and imposing. Um, so, so maybe parents don't feel like I'm directly challenging or anything, but I, I have absolutely got up to groups of children and individual have been like, what you're doing right there, I see you're doing this and that's not appropriate here and you're going to need to stop or there will be this consequence.

24:59And I have not had parents get upset about it. They probably didn't like it, but they also haven't gone toe to toe with me. That's interesting. I think that's a different conversation altogether. But no kidding, Julie, you and I might be, I'm willing to go talk to people about this sort of thing most people aren't most people aren't very confrontational i get that we're not telling you have to be but if you set the rules ahead of time you don't have to deal with that that's true too people don't people don't like a confrontation your kid can't run around and jump in the area of the library where they're not supposed to be you know we have this one room that we're playing games with at the library they can't run over there and just start throwing books on the floor you you know or we won't be allowed to come back to the library right yeah right and i also and that's interesting but yes i agree there's all of this much easier when you communicate

25:55Tom Vasel:it in advance though speaking of setting up rules in advance uh food near or around the games um or for sale or something like that uh how do you communicate those policies if you have pizza in the middle of the day. How do you make that work? It depends on the location. Obviously, a library is going to have stricter rules than a church might have very, very loose rules. I have found a very weird situation where, like I said, we run this bash at a church here called Anthem. It's a really big church, really big auditorium. They tear down everything, put up tables. It's fantastic. And then their youth group comes in, and they have coffee and energy drinks and then they sell pizza.

26:42That's fine, right? I'm okay with this pizza. And then people order pizza in. Wait, what? And I just kind of want to smack those people. Like delivery? It's like, come on, man. We don't like that pizza.

26:54Tom Vasel:We want this pizza. That's weird. And you know what? That's reasonable. No one's making you eat that pizza. But then at least eat it outside or not in front. It just comes. Gauche is the word I think I'm looking for. and but again if you're eating if it's your game and you brought a game to the meetup and the meetup allows food you're eating food around it go for it but you know again you set these boundaries i don't with these big public ones i don't get too onto the case unless it's one of my games and then i'll just sidle up to the table and go hey guys can you just eat first and then play the game or something to that effect.

27:31Tom Vasel:Yeah. Put a little ring of tape in the corner and you can't, this is the food zone and you can't cross this food zone line when you still have food. I mean, you can do that, but if the space has a pretty lax food policy, that's so much harder to enforce. So, So, again, communicating, hey, please be thoughtful and maybe providing a space like this is the eating area. Great. But if somebody is eating outside of it, you really can't. That is a much harder and, you know, there will be the people who are mindful and thoughtful. That's great. There will be the people who aren't. You can ask them kindly to redirect.

28:18But again, if it's the venue's policy, it's I actually have the hardest time with the well-intentioned mini despots of their own fiefdom who want to reinforce with vigor that you have to kind of redirect as well. OK. Who really, you know, start decide that they are the self-imposed hall monitor and want to then get very upset about it. and I have to be like, yep, I understand. That's not their game. They've wandered by. That kind of a thing. And feel like those things where I'm like, thank you so much for caring about that game, but that was that person's game who was eating and you just gotta let it go.

29:04That kind of a thing. I've had bigger problems with that in the past than I have with the... Which is not to say we have enough people writing in that obviously it can be a problem. So I guess it's a setting, again, setting expectations so that it's not disproportionate to the actual of what is happening.

29:26Tom Vasel:Yeah. I also want to mention another, again, obviously our big thing here is send out an email with setting expectations beforehand. But what games are allowed or not allowed? So, for example, you might be playing in a public setting and I might say, you know what? I think it's a fun game to play, but we shouldn't bring cash and guns where people are all pointing guns at each other in a public place, right? Yeah, not in the middle of a library. Right, or more importantly, we're doing something out of church, and you know what? Cards Against Humanity, not appropriate for this situation. And there are multiple games along that line where you might be like, well, that's hilarious and funny.

30:07Yes, but we also said this was a family event. and so you yes and unfortunately this is one that I have had to deal with multiple times mostly at a game store event because it's more open in that regard but I've had to go to some people saying listen you know Cards Against Humanity I'm not going to tell you guys not to play it but I'm going to tell you to stop screaming it

30:31Tom Vasel:yeah yeah yeah I you know and that's that's a harder one because like i i can remember bringing the uh the kids when they were little uh to a game store where the owner and the employees were just their their casual conversation was not what i would consider appropriate for 12 years old and we were playing a game and I got two pairs of eyes just look at me with very big eyebrows raised. And I was like, we're going to finish this game and we're going to go somewhere else. So, you know, it comes, it also depends on the venue. Like, where are you? Again, what are the expectations of that venue? And if the store owner couldn't handle being age appropriate.

31:36that's that's a larger problem don't don't have a specific age kind of event but it does sort of

31:42Tom Vasel:bring up the you know it might not be the subject matter of the game but it could be people's behavior and subject matter of discussions and don't have to have a loud conversation in the corner of the r-rated movie you just watched um something like that for example yeah and And yeah, and you need to know who else is in the room and it's not just your basement that we're talking about here. Yeah, and then having to deal with that if you're the event organizer having to have that conversation with, well, we have an expectation that this is a mixed group and you need to sort of keep things appropriate in the room.

32:19Tom Vasel:And what you can do, what tools you have if they don't follow those rules. One last thing I want to mention was we talked about expectations that you present, but we need to talk about expectations for you, the event runner. If you are deciding to run an event and it's not a gamer event, so I'm taking out the whole Saturday games, we're going to get together and play, you know, campaign games and the new Stefan Feld game, just like an open gaming thing. Then you need to assume that you might not play many games. You personally. Your goal is to make sure that you are making sure everyone has a good time, that you are available to stand up and go talk to people when they come in.

33:03And you also need to realize that it may not as many people come as you think. Or, you know, you need to manage your expectations. You're waiting for this and people will even go, you've changed my life. I'm going to go buy a Calix immediately. You know. No, I mean, but that is kind of our thing. But people may come and play games at your thing and say, I really enjoyed playing Carcassonne. You're like, oh, there's so much more. And they're like, I would be okay if we played Carcassonne again at our next event next year. And you're like, oh. The end. Right. Oh, that's what you want. Yes, that's what they want.

33:38And so I think managing your expectations. Because people often start a gaming event because they are trying to get their gaming group going. But that may not happen. It may just be people coming in and having a great time playing games, and then they go and forget about it two days later.

33:56Tom Vasel:Yeah, this was a one-time thing. It was a nice distraction. Good job. And that's okay, too. You're still putting out a positive experience into the world, and that's still a win. So that's... As long as someone showed up, I have had events where no one shows up. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah. But, I mean, again, I set my expectation and I'm like, well, okay, next time maybe. And, you know, we could do a whole thing about, Eric put in here a little bit about advertising, but the thing about advertising is you could advertise so many different ways, whether Facebook, Meetup. I don't know if Meetup's still a thing or not.

34:38I have no idea. You know, through public things, but there are ways to do it. I literally said flyers at the beginning of this, so.

34:48Tom Vasel:a mimeographed zine you tape it to the telephone pole outside oh I advertise in phone books oh nice how's that working out for you shut up yeah it's hard to get the word out and I mean we've got a coffee shop nearby that has tried for several months to get a game group going and I talked about one time that I went and no one else showed up I sat there for an hour and a half and then packed up and went home And so how much do you keep that going? You have to sort of build that critical mass if you're going to do this multiple times. And how long do you bang your head against the wall if the word isn't getting out or people just aren't coming?

35:28Yeah. I mean, so maybe sometimes it's best to bring in someone with you, too. Like, at least you're not alone. And if two people are having fun, maybe a third person comes. And they tell two friends? They tell two friends? Yeah.

35:44Tom Vasel:I feel like there's a song here. All right. Let's move on to the next part of our show where we have a question asking us about this very thing. Questions. Questions. Questions. All right. We have this question from Samuel. Thanks for writing it in. But it adds another facet to our discussion. More facets. Yes. Samuel is saying he remembered Tom talking about he'd be fine. if somebody just wants to play Ticket to Ride and nothing else because, you know, we're happy with just whatever people want to play. But there is a couple at his church who in the summer, they have a biweekly game meetup. And every week, the same couple brings a blinged out copy of Wingspan and sits down with the same other couple or two people.

36:40and they play it endlessly on repeat until everything concludes, is the phrase that he uses. So to your logic, Tom, I can agree that it's fine that they enjoy a single game and that's all they want to play. But it's come to a point for me where they don't typically invite other people into their clique. They aren't much for conversation with others at the event and they can't be convinced to play anything else. So I ask, why are they there? if they seem that they're intent to play the same game with the same people each time, why show up at all? And that it seems like they're just having their own private event, but at the church, while everybody else is having a separate event.

37:23Frankly, several elves don't even know their names because they don't provide a window of opportunity large enough for people to feel welcome to approach them. They saunter off to their corner of the room and play Wingspan ad nauseum. And so what is, specifically calling out Tom, what do you think? Are their actions inappropriate for selling for the setting that they're in? Is he wrong for finding issue in their preference towards the same game repeatedly? In a public game meetup designed to help people in the congregation meet each other. Elizabeth Hargrave is okay with this. Right? For real.

38:02I'm sure Jamie isn't too mad about it either.

38:04Tom Vasel:No, no. He's probably fine. so this one's a little tricky in a sense that on one hand if they're coming and they find another couple and they're having a good time is it how is it affecting the rest are there people who are not able to get in the games are there people who are upset that they want to play with these other people because if not i would just let sleeping dogs lie they're not hurting anybody yeah you're Right. Trying to find the, trying to understand the mentality is where you're, that way lies madness, Samuel. They want to be, they want to be around other people without being around other people.

38:52Tom Vasel:Parallel play. Yeah, they want parallel play, which is, you know, a certain stage of development in primary school that you learn about for socialization. And maybe that's, you know, they're introverts and that's the level of socialization they can handle. It could be they don't have a table large enough to play Wingspan at home. And, you know, they might have little dinette sets at home and that's it. And so they like coming to the meetup so they can get four people around the table. It's a nice convenient spot for both couples to come and neither one has to host. So there's that as well. There's an advantage to meeting to play and not be the host of an event.

39:38Tom Vasel:So they are getting something out of it. It might be neat if somebody reached out and said, hey, I've been meaning to play Wingspan. Can I be the fifth seat on this one? Are you trying to ruin Wingspan by having five players there? Oh, there is that. Or they said sometimes another couple plays. Perhaps, perhaps other. But also, this is a, I get it. It's a public space and it's there for the congregation to meet each other. But it's also about being social. And sometimes that's the level of social that people can handle. And I can tell you now that if that's the level of social that I could handle, and I have well-intentioned people constantly coming up and being like, hey, what about this?

40:26Do you want to play this? I'm going to dig my heels in and say no, even if it was a potential possibility. I think taking it as a personal frustration is adding a mental load to your life that you don't need. you know the the the adage of the the woman in front of a puddle and uh two monks come by and she's like i can't get across this and one of the monks takes off his coat and puts it down she walks across the puddle and then walks away and he picks up his coat and they keep going and an hour later the monk and the other monk says that was just so rude she didn't even say thank you and the frankfurt monk says uh i you know i left that an hour ago why are you still carrying it you don't need to carry it it's not it's not like they're they're there they're happy if if there's a waiting list and they're taking up space and there's other people maybe it's a problem but otherwise i would just i would just let it let it be and you could also enjoy themselves else.

41:42Tom Vasel:If the thing is they love playing this particular game and your issue is that you want them to integrate more in the group, you could always ask them who won the last round. Hey, who's in the lead over there with the birds? And just bring them in. Just ask how their game's going. And then they're maybe reaching out a little bit with the greater group. They can still play their game. That's great. But who came out on top this time? and just get some conversation going. And then at least you have some back and forth, even if they are going to play their one game. Yeah. I mean, I really, really struggle to be like, to not, you know, Samuel, I feel the same way.

42:24I see people go sit. I'm like, come on, communicate, do it. But you know what? I have to let that go. Sometimes they're just having a good time. Let it go. Unless there's only two tables, then at that point you may have to you know but that's not what it sounds like it doesn't um and i could see it you know if if they are but but even if they're there if that's if i go to the same restaurant and order the same thing on the menu every week and the server there is like hey you know we've got this other the rest of the menu and i'm like nope i would still like the grilled cheese, please. It's, you know, it doesn't have to be a personal, it doesn't have to be a mental burden that you have to carry.

43:11Tom Vasel:Yeah. If that's what, if that's what they want, and that's what brings them joy, then you are bringing, helping bring joy to their lives. Just make sure that table's there in the corner for them to play at. Yeah.

43:30they say that every rose has its thorn but not every rose has a hula hoop all right time to talk about some games oh i want to talk about a game go for it okay so i was very excited to play this game called the secrets of warden keen this is from paolo mori and silvano sorrentino um savano you may know is the designer of decktective and deckscape games gotcha and so in this game you are now a group of players it says one to four but it's probably best with two or three but i mean you could play five two because it's a cooperative game and in this game you are the new caretaker of a of an old cemetery and the previous caretaker warden keen is like hey i was bored when i was here so i decided to learn more about these people and i'm going to write some mysteries for you to figure out okay so it might be like josie smith was murdered who murdered her and so you have a bunch of tombstones the the cardboard tokens that are laid out in front of you and by reading and looking at these tombstones and occasionally other stuff in the box but not too much other stuff it's mostly the tombstones you need to figure out mysteries like this person died of a broken heart why so the first couple are very easy to the point where we're like this seems pretty obvious should we look at the answer and we were right but they got trickier trickier now to be fair i'm only halfway through it as of speaking as i've also only played it last night and we played it in the hotel lobby where the lights were dim which i thought worked pretty well actually because we're like in a cemetery at night yeah but it was fun it the i think this is one of those times where the theme is stronger than the puzzles themselves like experience escape room people might go well these aren't that difficult of puzzles but i'm enjoying it i'm like oh i think this person was married to that person but they were having an affair with this person because that this note under a tombstone makes me think that.

45:44You know, I don't know. I find it to be very intriguing. And so I really like it. But I mean, I did, to be fair, go into this thinking I would like this game. So this is from Bombix, who makes a lot of excellent games. And the artist Florian Belmonte did a really good job. If you like escape room games, and I know you guys do. Yep, yep. And if you like the theme of death, and I know Julie does, I think you might get a kick out of this one. I went and looked at the comments, and some of the comments were like, the puzzles are too easy. And I thought, I don't know. I had such a good time. I don't know that I cared.

46:27Tom Vasel:How many puzzles are in the box? 11. Okay. And as far as I can tell, so far anyway, nothing was destroyed. And you could, I think you could jump around from puzzle to puzzle. Maybe. I'm not sure. because I don't know. No, there was definitely a clue from one puzzle we used in another one. So they built. Sort of. It's interesting. Like the dates on the tombstones, like the latest date of someone dying is 1920. It's like the late 80s of the 1800s to the 20s. That's the kind of time frame. I don't know. It gives a vibe. I'm sold. I'm sold. Yeah, it's a neat little game, and I enjoyed it. Nice. Another game that I was not sure if I would like it or not is Six Sighted Seas, SSS.

47:20This is from Solus Game Studio, designed by Crozet Kreski. And this is the only game that they've designed. This game comes in a long, thin box, which I really dislike, because it's a playmat. and you set this playmat up. It's a two-player game and you both are pirates attacking each other. And so you have a coin total on the side. One person starts at 12, one person starts at 13. And there are three ways to win. If you get that coin total up to 22, if you control four islands in the middle of the table at the beginning of your turn, or if you kill your opponent. Each person starts with 12 life on their ship.

47:59So if you sink their ship, you win. And the way you do this is on your turn you roll a single die each player gets a ton of dice and i let's say i roll four i'm like four well what's my coin total my coin total is 12 did i go over 12 no i can roll another die and i can keep going but if i ever go over my coin roll my coin total with one of my rolls then i bust and i can put some dice in an evade where i can spend them to avoid shots for my enemy but that's about it you basically lose your turn otherwise you can stop anytime you want and then start assigning dice. You can save dice for future turns.

48:34You can stick dice on actions, and the actions are shoot your opponent ship, discover islands in the middle of the table, which will give you, if you control an island, you might get a free reroll once per round or a free flip a die to the other side, increase your coin total, things like that. It's very, very simple. It is a 15-minute game. I've played it several times now, and each time I've really had a blast with it. It's just fast, quick. I think all three ways to win are very viable. Is there luck? Yeah, you betcha. But who cares? It's simple and it has that push your luck feeling like, oh, my thing is a 13.

49:12That's easy. And your first die rolls a six. You're like, not a problem. Your second die rolls a four. And you're like, well, that's 10. A one, two, three, I'm still fine. In fact, if you roll exactly your coin total jackpot, you get to roll another free die and it doesn't affect you at all. But it's tricky, right? But it's also not like we're not talking things that take forever to figure out. A simple, fast one. I played it with people in the studio. I played it with my son. Had a good time across the board. So other than the box size, I don't like these tubular boxes. But I do like everything else about it.

49:50So this was a surprise for me here. Hula hoop, I think, right? Yes. Yes. So six sided C's. That's the word six, S-I-X, hyphen sided, and then C's. I always say that because sometimes if you search for the number, you don't find it.

50:10Tom Vasel:Yeah, it doesn't always work. Oh, yeah. Julie, how about you? Well, I played a couple games this week from trying to get through the rest of my Gen Con games. And one of them was Trinket Trove, which was Gamehead is the publisher. But the designer is Rocco Privatera, who, you know, back in the day designed a little game called Ninja Dice. So I was pretty excited to play this one. And it is a rose for me. I really enjoyed it. It's very simple. you are so you're dealt four cards to start and they are all trinkets and then you get your little character which is a you know either a mouse or i believe there's a vole um i know very cute little animals art is great and then you have these trinkets and the trinkets all have a value of two through eight and then on them um depending on how many in a set you get there's a certain point value.

51:18So you put out the number of players, that's how many trinkets you put out in the cards, and then you bid. And in player order, you put them down. So you can put any number of cards, but your cards are also your end game scoring. So you have to think about what you're putting down. And you bid. So if I put down two cards or one card or three cards, whatever I put down, the number of cards counts first and then the value at the top of them when you add them up second and if there is the same equal value type of thing then you can then it's the first person who played versus in turn order and then finally you can put down zero and just flip a card from the deck and then in turn order you're gonna collect two sets because there will be two sets the number of cards that you put out in the first place and then the ones that you used to bid.

52:16But you can't pick back up your own bid. And so you're gathering cards that way. And so you're constantly losing cards when you bid and then gathering cards back up when you pull up your sets that you're collecting. And at the end of either five or six rounds, depending on the number of players, you then finish and you're putting the cards in set order. So if I have, and then based on the number, so twos will only, you need two twos for a set, three threes, that type of thing. But let's say if I have five and I have three fives, I'll only get five points. But if I have four fives, it jumps up to 50.

53:05So that's just so you're building the sets that way. And whoever has the lowest points at the end of the game wins. So it's very simple. But at the same time, the strategy for playing of what am I putting down? How many cards am I putting down? I'm spending these cards to then pull back up cards. And I can't pick those cards back up. So I'm going to be losing those. Is it worth it for this other, whatever other people are playing? If I'm not early and if I'm early in the turn I don't know what other people are playing if I'm at the end of the turn I'm gonna pick less but I'm gonna get to see what everybody else played so it was very fun for a lightweight strategy game I very much enjoyed it it was a rose for me cool um I also replayed from I remember playing this a lot at the beginning of the pandemic because it was a game that we could play online.

53:59Remember playing games online remotely? And that would be Avenue, which was an important game. And it is a flip and write game where in simultaneously, as long as people have the map or, you know, you screen shared a map and people printed it out and played it at their end, everybody can play. and so it's been a minute since i played it this is the first time i've played it in person with people uh all you're doing is you have a through f you have different houses and then the rest of the grid has different types of uh grapes so you're trying to build your own the best vineyard that has the most grapes every round so you're going to flip a card, it's going to tell you, you know, house D.

54:53And then you're going to flip a bunch of cards that give you six different shapes. So they're either curves in the corners or a straight line, horizontal or straight line vertical. And you're trying to build paths that wander around. Every time you flip over, let's say, so you're at F, you flip over the card and you're going to then go through and have all of these weird little shapes that you're trying to make a road that meanders around the house of F that gets the most amount of grapes. And then once you hit, there's two different colored cards. When you get four of the yellow backed cards, you stop and F is done.

55:36And you count however many grapes you were managed to collect for that one. You're going to do that five times and however as most points wins it's a hula hoop for me i was surprised at how well it held up i thought it was going to be kind of boring um to be honest because it's simple enough that we could all play it online it was still a lot of fun because the puzzle of like what comes out when and trying to get these shapes to do what you want them to do they don't They're very tricky, and it is a fun little meandering path. So that was a hula hoop for me, and that was Avenue.

56:14Tom Vasel:All right. Up to my games. Let's begin with something called Sequence Queens. This is a new game from Goliath Games that re-implements the classic game of Sequence. This was a surprise for me at Gen Con. I did not know this existed, but they had huge signs all over their booth displaying this game. Do you like Sequence? I do enjoy the original game of Sequence, which has you playing a standard deck of cards. It's actually a double deck of cards and placing tokens onto a grid. And you as a either individual or teams, you can have partners and it can be played in either two or three players slash teams.

56:54Tom Vasel:You're trying to make rows of five, five in a row, up, down or diagonal. and if you're playing with two individuals or teams, you have to get two of these sequences on the board in order to win. What Sequence Queens does is a couple things. The main board is still the same, although they've thematically adjusted the deck. So now instead of the face cards being Jack, Queen, King, they're now Ladies, Knights. You better say Queens at some point. So queens have taken the role of the jacks, and they are now the wilds. And I guess it's ladies and knights are the two other phase cards on the board, and aces.

57:38Tom Vasel:That's it. Those are the ones on the board. So functionally, the board works exactly the same. You are trying to get five in a row, and on your turn you play a card, and you put a token out on the board, and then draw a card to replace it. However, there's now a new board. There is a court board up on a separate section, and you play pairs in order to claim spaces on those areas. And that just has, I think, two instances of the values. So there's a space for tens and a space for fives, et cetera. And so I play a pair of fives, and I can put a token on the five, one of the fives. I'm trying to make three in a row on that space.

58:15Tom Vasel:And in order to win, I have to get both the proper number of sequences, either one or two based on the number of players, and one alliance on the court board up on top that I need in order to win. If I complete an alliance, not only have I done that toward victory, but I also draw an additional card, and now my hand size has increased for the rest of the game, which is pretty cool. I'm torn on this game because I like those new strategic choices. Queens can add or remove. They can be wild. They can remove chips from the main board or the alliance board. They can be wild when playing as pairs onto the alliance board.

58:58Tom Vasel:It expands the options for each individual card in the game, which is pretty cool. I don't agree with the upgrade of the basic deck. I think rejiggering it just to adjust the queens is an interesting decision, but it makes it confusing. The spacing on the board is a little wonky. It is a smaller board than the classic sequence mat that we have. So it's harder to see diagonals, potential diagonals. And the original sequence came with chips that then could be flipped over when a sequence was completed that said, hey, this is locked. You can't mess with this anymore. These are those plastic gems, those, you know, clear, yeah, clear gems in different colors that you place out on the board.

59:46Tom Vasel:It makes it harder to see the diagonals and where the potentials of sequences are. They're just less functional than the basic chips. So while this is a illustrative upgrade and a component lateral move, I guess. I think my classic edition of Sequence is more solid, and I'm trying to figure out ways to implement the mechanics of the crown board into my classic edition of Sequence, but then I have to, again, reverse engineer which values are what, because the queens are now... I don't know what I'm going to do. This just barely crosses over into Thorn territory. I like the expanded gameplay, but the functionality of the board doesn't work for me.

1:00:29Tom Vasel:That's Sequence Queens. Next is another one of those 18 Escape games from Grand Gamers Guild, but this one comes out of the Endangered Rescue line. I think I've talked about Endangered Rescue games here before. They have a very educational bent to them. And this one specifically is an alliance with a show called Science Friday, Sci-Fi. And the designers here are Ace and Anna Ellett. This is about the chambered nautilus. And so you are, I knew going in that it was going to have a lot of educational material. There are a lot of puzzles that are like, learn about different cephalopods and match up the traits of those in order to solve this puzzle or learn about the chambered nautilus and what is preventing them from flourishing.

1:01:21Tom Vasel:and what are the big challenges in conserving this animal. I knew that going in, and it certainly delivers on that front. There are some puzzles that definitely go that route. You know, match this expert's statement with the news report that you can read in the help articles. And solid, that delivers on that front. I was a little annoyed with some text puzzles. There are a number of emails that you basically have to decode and figure out the secret puzzle hidden message in an email text. And it will give you an example. I'm not going to spoil it, but there's an example in the top of the puzzle that explains what the rules are for figuring this out.

1:02:02Tom Vasel:And a lot of these gave me some trouble. I had to sort of figure out what the pattern was in the beginning. But one in particular drove me nuts because the example shows you how to decode. Here's a string of text. Here's what you learn from this. But it didn't show me anything that I wasn't getting. Like you get this piece of information from these three words, but it doesn't show me any words that I'm not supposed to get information from, if that makes any sense. You showed me the positives but never any negatives and therefore I didn't know how to weed out what out of the giant email I now was reading was important.

1:02:44Tom Vasel:And that – I had to go straight to the hints on that one because it just – I was not given all the information I needed to work through the puzzle. There were some tricky ones in here. In that three dot level, this is only a two, but it did get a little esoteric and logic jumpy in a couple of places. And so I made it in about an hour and 20 or so. But that one text puzzle had me kind of annoyed. It's a rose. I was expecting to enjoy this. I did enjoy this, but it has a couple of pointy bits that I was— It's a thorny rose. Yeah, I was annoyed with a little bit. uh that's endangered rescue chambered nautilus well there you go folks a bunch of different games to talk about and think about and play and this is still pre-essen there's still a gazillion games coming out this year but don't think about that for now organize your game group yes um get ready clean your game group up before your father gets home

1:03:49Anyhow, thank you all for listening Thank you all for joining us We'll see you all soon Send us more tales of horror and questions We need them, send them to me at tomatdicetower.com Send them, be horrifying Anyway, until next time I'm Tom Vassell I'm Julie Ahern

1:04:05Tom Vasel:And I'm Eric Sommer And we'll see you again on this show called At the Table Thanks for listening At the Table is produced by Tom, Julie, and Eric with assistance from the team at Dicetower Studios. You can find us online on Facebook or on BoardGameGeek in the Dicetower Guild. Promotional consideration has been provided by publishers in the form of review copies of games. Dave Culling arranged our theme based on themes by Timothy Pinkham and our pilot project, Creating Billboards for Mice, provided by Miniature Adventures. Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:04:45I'm still not over the pizza ordering where you can buy pizza. I'm still upset.

1:04:50Tom Vasel:Just have it delivered to your table in the middle of the game meetup. I am hurt for those. Like, what kind of pizza? Maybe we need to do a taste testing. And what do the people selling the pizza in the corner think? They're like, what? We're right here. We're right here. Yeah.