At The Table with The Dice Tower - Dice Tower West 2026

11:17Eric Summerer:It's the biggest small game I've seen in a while. Yeah. So many pieces for a small area.

11:22Tom Vasel:Yes. I don't want to set that game up.

11:24Eric Summerer:It looks terrible.

11:25Tom Vasel:It's a lot of pieces and a lot of resetting up when it's time to get it all set up again. This is based on a Prague Astronomical Clock. So there's a lot of timing required in this game. It has a system where you can... It's got a lot of rondelles. If you like rondelles, you're going to like... Is it rondelles inside of rondelles? It is, almost literally. I'm in. You move... Your basic action is that you're moving a little arm that's going to give you two things you get to do, but you can break the gears of your clock to move farther or turn one of the inner gears the other direction to sort of change up the combination of actions, which we did all the time.

12:10Tom Vasel:You're constantly breaking your gears, and then there's mechanisms for fixing them. And a lot of moving pieces, which is usually something I say metaphorically, but this is literal with all of this stuff as you're trying to score majorities and get goals faster than others and make sure that you have a method for repairing those gears to your clock so that you can get things set up again. I thought I was going to like it. I did like it. That's a rose for me. Orloj, the Prague Astronomical Clock.

12:40Eric Summerer:Did you spell it for our listeners?

12:42Tom Vasel:O-R-L-O-J. There we go.

12:45Eric Summerer:All right. Orloj is what we United Statesians keep saying. Oh, no. We pronounce things correctly all the time. Continue.

12:53Tom Vasel:We, yes. So one of the fun things about browsing the library is that you'll find things you didn't know existed. I came across a whole shelf of Freedom and Freeze games.

13:05Eric Summerer:I'm sorry.

13:06Tom Vasel:A designer I really enjoy. And so I'm always excited to see what's there and what people have in a library like this. And there was a title I had not played. And I took it out. It came out in 2020. It's called Fire Abend or Finishing Time. This is a game about managing a work staff. It's all about what the employees at this business do after work or on the weekends, basically. And it's a worker placement game. You've got all these people in your factory and you're sending them on leisure time. And so you can send them fishing or running, which is going to earn them... The currency of the game is stress or relaxation.

13:46Tom Vasel:And there's a point at which you are now stressed and you are now relaxed. But every time you send all your workers out, you then have to send them all back to work, which, depending on how many working hours they have in a week, produces a lot of stress. And so you work your way up this relaxation track, and then they're all in the red again. That sounds terrible.

14:04Eric Summerer:That's like a theming. Who wants that theme?

14:06Tom Vasel:It's a great time. It's an engine builder, but with people. You guys heard it here. You can also collect these, they call them strike tokens, where you can then improve the conditions of the workplace. So, you know, fewer working hours, better quality of pay, better pay, period. More vacation time. You start out with no vacation weeks, but then once you strike to do that, you spend these tokens to get vacation. You can then send your workers away from the system for a week or two at a time, and then you don't have to pay for them when they come back as far as their stress goes. And you try and maneuver your way to getting 40 relaxation, and that triggers the end of the game.

14:45Tom Vasel:It was different. It was, you know, a lot of freedom and free schemes. are unusual. You're fighting to get the most relaxed. Yeah. You're working real hard to be as relaxed as possible.

14:56Eric Summerer:The American way.

14:59Tom Vasel:You can go on blind dates so that now you have a partner meeple that can go on. You can go to the amusement park with your partner and they get you extra bonuses. You can go away for the weekend with them. You can take them on vacation, which costs double but gets you double the benefits. It's a fun time. Fierabend, which is a confusing German word to spell out. You can look up finishing time. That was a hula hoop for me. Where in the rankings was your 100th gameplay of Merchant of Venus? I mean, I didn't want to harp on it, but I did play my 100th game of Merchant of Venus this week. I took a picture.

15:33Tom Vasel:Yes. See how happy I am? So happy. Yeah. My favorite game of all time. My number one still. Spoilers. I had a great time. And I won just barely with my 100th game. The next guy was going to win on his next turn and I managed to steal it from him.

15:51Eric Summerer:I will tell you this for if you're listening and thinking wow Eric has only played his favorite game a hundred times a hundred is a lot and we were talking about this that if you think you've played your favorite games hundreds of times you probably haven't. I'm not counting board game arena but people think they've played games more than they have. Yeah. You know who was telling us that they oh vernon was telling us that he kept track of all the times his family played games and he would ask kids how many times you think we played this and they would guess 40 50 yeah and it's like half that 12 you know and that really is the case of things you don't play games so why don't you count board game arena no no i'm just saying because i'm working i mean you can just blow through games okay so there you can play hundreds of games yes so if someone says that then yes i believe them but if someone says i played this game 700 times in real life I doubt that and if they have kept track and have played it 700 times I just back out of the room anyway.

16:44Fair enough.

16:44Eric Summerer:For other reasons.

16:47Tom Vasel:Alright Tom, how about you?

16:48Eric Summerer:Alright, I play I got two games Fathom is my what's the one you knew was good? Rose.

16:56Tom Vasel:Yeah. Sorry.

16:57Eric Summerer:Fathom is a game about doing deep sea pinging and you're finding stuff under the water it sounds really cool and it's just putting stuff on a board and making patterns with it but But you do so in a really fun way. You're moving a ship around, and then you have a little submersible that moves out of your ship and goes around. And you might find a treasure. You might find an alien ship or something. But you're mostly finding fish and crustaceans and a lot of things I can't pronounce. I'm not kidding. There's a lot of words there. I know. Anemones. I played Sanibel with you. I know.

17:36Eric Summerer:i have a thorn in my game of sanibel anyway uh the but i i like the way you got the stuff on your board so everyone starts with a bag and i was like oh it's a bag building game it's not you have a bunch of colored tokens of your bag you pull some out and you can put them on your board but then you pass your bags around the table so you're getting different colors and you're trying to match colors you put colors on a sonar board that you're kind of pinging and pulling back off. It's just the way you build patterns. It's that same old build pattern stuff, but the way you do it is fun. And there's four little boxes in the game, modules, that add different ways to score.

18:08Eric Summerer:And you can just pick one of them and play with it. And each one comes with reference cards, which is nice. Of course, only two because apparently they believe in sharing reference cards.

18:20Tom Vasel:I know. This is your current hill to die on. I hate it.

18:24Eric Summerer:No one is opposed to me on this. If I'm like, does anyone here wish that people put less reference cards in games? No one's like me. I'm on board that train. It's like daylight savings time. Anyway, let's continue. Did you bring the soapbox for him? It's about back. The other game is the hula hoop, and this is a game called Shapely, which if you just heard the name of it, you would not know what it was about, per se. It's about shapes. What was that sound effect? I don't know. I don't know either.

18:52Tom Vasel:It sounds better when I'm on the microphone. What a pig.

18:54Eric Summerer:All right. So, Shapely is a game where you get a bunch of these little yellow shapes that remind me, just when I looked at them, of the shapes of perfection back in the days that you plugged in the holes. And you have four of them, and they're magnetic, and you get to put them on a little magnetic board. And then you get a word, and you have to make, like, bat or cow or tree out of these shapes. You could use one to four of your shapes. And so you do it as fast as you can, and then you put your token on the board in a turn order. and then you take all the cards, shuffle them, add two more cards, put them face up and then I show my picture to everybody and everyone has to guess what that is.

19:31Eric Summerer:The more people who guess it, the more points I get and you get a point if you get it correctly. But once people have guessed mine, bad or incorrectly, then the next person goes, there's now seven choices rather than eight to pick from. So if you're last, let's say it's a six player game, you're last, there's only three choices to pick from rather than eight. So our chance of getting your terrible drawing or terrible little thing is higher.

19:57Tom Vasel:Okay.

19:57Eric Summerer:People still get it wrong because it's hard to make a bat with three weird shapes. Okay. And I like that. I like the idea of it. Now, the game looks a little like it's sold at Michael's or some, not Michael's, TJ Maxx. It has that education look, but I thought it was a pretty fun game. It's from R &R, and it's very enjoyable.

20:20Tom Vasel:Nice. Have you played Glyphics, another party game similar to that, where you're making shapes out of other weird shapes?

20:26Eric Summerer:This one I liked because I like the idea of if I finish first, I'll take the first spot, which gives you two extra points, which is great. But also then people are picking your word out of a lot more choices. So that's kind of a neat thing. So I might not even pick that one. I might say I want people to go fourth. Also, every round you lose a shape. So you're down to three shapes. There's only three rounds. And then down to two shapes in your final round. but one of the spots you can go to will give you an extra shape

20:51Tom Vasel:or even an extra card.

20:52Eric Summerer:So next round I get two cards and I pick which one I'm going to do.

20:55Tom Vasel:Interesting. Sounds like more strategy than...

20:57Eric Summerer:It was. I thought it was a pretty neat game from R &R Games. So that's Shapely.

21:01Tom Vasel:Very cool. Thanks. Let's move on to something a little more horrific, shall we? Yes. And now, another tale of board gaming horror. Oh my, that's horrific. Gather round. children. In March 2017, my brother Tom and I met at my parents' farm for a family get-together. We live a few hours apart, and the farm sits at a convenient midpoint between our homes. It's where we celebrate special events and spend time together. Over the years, it's also become our main chance to play board games together. That weekend, we stuck mostly to lighter games, Catan, Flashpoint Fire Rescue, and Hanabi. My wife doesn't jump into every game, but she has a few favorites she'll join in and play.

21:54Tom Vasel:She has an uncanny talent for optimization, and in most games we play together, she wins. At the time, her favorite was the jewel-themed engine builder, Splendor, which she never lost. I don't remember every detail of that particular game, but I do remember the ending. We sat around the table. Tom, myself, my sister-in-law, and my wife. Like any normal session of splendor, we built up our tableaus, collected gems, and inched toward the fifteen prestige points needed to trigger the end. As the game tightened, each of us was just a move or two away from victory. Then it was my wife's turn. She played her turn, which awarded her a noble, and calmly announced, I have fifteen points, so I trigger the end of the game.

22:42Tom Vasel:A collective groan circled the table. Ah, I was so close, I said. She had won again. After hearing that she had finished her turn, Tom, who was sitting next to her, excitedly threw down gems and grabbed a card. He announced that not only had he also reached the point total, but he had 16 prestige points. In splendor, if multiple people reach the goal, the higher point total wins. That meant Tom had done the unthinkable. He barely won, finishing just ahead of my wife. For the rest of that weekend, and still to this day, Tom has refused to play Splendor again. The story resurfaces a few times each year during our gaming sessions.

23:26Tom Vasel:That shining moment of his greatest triumph. The one and only time he defeated my wife at her favorite game. But, in honor of Tom's 40th birthday, I feel compelled to reveal that this story has a much darker secret narrative. Later that night, a few hours after the game of Splendor, my wife quietly approached me with two sinister questions. Hey, in Splendor, once someone reaches 15 points, we've finished the round, right? Yes, I said. Everyone gets the same number of turns. She paused. Didn't Tom start the game? I stopped and stared at her as the truth dawned on me. A truth that has quietly consumed me until now.

24:17Tom Vasel:Yes, I said. That means Tom wouldn't have gotten another turn. You won. Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

24:35Eric Summerer:Have you ever had this happen? Or you realized something later on?

24:40Tom Vasel:I mean, this happened with my wife realizing she had won. We talked about this on the cruise, I think, last year. Where I gleefully announced that I had beat her by like two points. And then she went, oh, and lifted up her arm. And she had four points worth of bonus underneath. You have told that story and it's still good. by the way I beat you by two and then I had to well not laugh anymore I will say

25:06Eric Summerer:though that when a person comes there are a few people who are you know they cannot lose unless maybe it's the battle of Hoth but let's say they come to you later on several hours later and go you know we didn't do this this and this and I would have won I'm like too late the books have been written it has been sealed and thus ever more will be you lost submit your challenge

25:26Tom Vasel:before the results have been posted

25:27Eric Summerer:Sorry, we cannot go back in time. It's happened, but I will say, for me, it's the other part of it. Two summers ago, I played cribbage against my dad, beat him, played against my mom, beat her, and I have not played them in cribbage ever again because that's it. It's the first time I've ever beat either of them. I did it back-to-back, and I can't. That's it.

25:54Tom Vasel:I've won this game. That's my apex. I've pinnacled. There is no higher point. It's only downhill from here. So, and my mother's a little annoyed about that.

26:04Eric Summerer:Oh, no, I understand. It's Merchants of Venus. Eric's played 100 games, but he has zero and one against me, and I've retired. Nice.

26:12Tom Vasel:It does irk me just a little bit.

26:15Eric Summerer:And it wasn't, I also want to be clear, it was not a close game.

26:18Tom Vasel:It was not. You destroyed me. I looked so forward to that day. It was at Total Con many years ago. And yeah, I was going to play Tom at Merchant of Venus. I was going to teach it to him. And we went through it. But we only had so much time. So I think we were playing a shortened game just to make sure we got all the rules down and he could get a flavor.

26:36Eric Summerer:But every time I moved, I would move and be like, ooh, is this good? And Eric's like, that's amazing. That's amazing.

26:41Tom Vasel:He kept discovering every relic in the game and all of these special things that broke all the rules in Tom's favor. And yes, he destroyed me and has retired. My wife does this too. And I was somewhere in the building but had no idea that was happening. No. Yeah. If only you had learned. Yeah, Steph will say, I won that game already, and I don't need to play it again. And I'm like, but I need retribution. I need to play this again. No, no, I won already. I don't need to play that again. But conversely, when I play with Jennifer, who's one of my best friends, the deal is we keep playing until both of us have won at least once.

27:20That's the deal. Okay. So we play a game. If somebody doesn't like it, too bad. We're still going to play it until the other person.

27:28Eric Summerer:Oh, there'd be some games I'd still be playing. Yeah. If they want to. Oh, okay. That's better. Man, I'd be like, please let me win.

27:36Tom Vasel:You both can't leave. Yes. Hi. Quick timeout for a message from the Jack Vassel Memorial Fund, an organization dedicated to helping out gamers in their time of need. It's also an organization that would not exist without the tremendous generosity of the gaming community. And a perfect example of this is the annual auction on BoardGameGeek, which this year begins on March 12, 2026. You can find some wonderful donations from individuals and publishers that will make your gaming day just a little bit brighter while providing support to an organization that needs it. And if you know someone who needs assistance from a catastrophic event, send them to jackvassel.org to fill out our form.

28:21Tom Vasel:That's jackvassel.org. Thanks. All right, Julie, it's interlude time. I know. We're going to make a tradition. I think we should. So at previous conventions, we've sort of met up when Tom is not around. Right. Because we don't get to see each other in person very often. I know. and actually, you know, chat, especially when he's not around. I know. We are here. It's actually Sunday, although I'm not sure where I'm going to stick this in the show. We're going to probably interject this at some point into the podcast. Listen, just wherever you feel like it. Wherever it feels right. It's freeform.

29:03Tom Vasel:We've reached that level of Sunday where it's just like, whatever. Yeah. It's all good. It's fine. Everything's fine. So a couple of questions. Yes. Yeah. When we arrived to sit down at the table, there was a basket of chicken waiting for us. There was a basket of chicken at my table. Yes, this is your demo table for Van Ryder. And we later learned that it had been sitting around like all night. Since last night. Yeah, so it had just been like passed around like a hot potato. Yes. Or probably not very hot potato. It was late night chicken that got abandoned. Late night abandoned chicken. So I'd love to know what's the weirdest thing you found on a table, other than the chicken that we just found.

29:43Tom Vasel:either here or elsewhere that you've discovered? Well, I will say there's a tradition on the Dicetar cruise, or in cruises in general, to hide rubber duckies. Oh, yeah. I have found a stash. I think somebody left behind on accident because it wasn't just one hidden rubber. It was like a stash of rubber duckies. Oh, like all the duckies. It felt real bad because somebody had hunted them down throughout the ship. Oh. and then probably took them out to count their loot. So it wasn't the distribution. It wasn't somebody that was going to hide the ducks. It was someone who found many ducks. That's what it felt like.

30:20I don't know for sure. I never found out who got them. I re-hid them. Oh, all right. I re-distributed them throughout the ship. I like that. So that is the weirdest, but it was also a kind of bittersweet tale. Yeah. How about you? I mean, mine's food-related again.

30:39Tom Vasel:I found a corner of the gaming hall that was just piled with snacks. It was like this was Snack Central. And it was not clear who they belonged to. It was just, this is where everybody piled their snacks in the general vicinity. And I didn't know if there were rules. It was like a potluck table or... Nobody had left a sign. It was a leave. It was like the free little library, leave a book, take a book. Uh-huh. And I feel like, okay, so a lot of times somebody leaves out snacks and it would just be anarchy. Like, if you did that in a high school, it would be gone in seconds. No one was eating the snacks.

31:14Tom Vasel:Right, because we are gamers and we want rules. Yes. And there were no rules provided. It was a snack exchange. Yeah. That's probably what happened. Those are things that have been left behind. Which is still better than random game components that then have to be redistributed to their games in the library. So that's good. Yes. All right. So I have another question for you. Yeah. What is the silliest thing you personally have carried around at a convention? It's got to be setting up for some sort of big event. I know I've mentioned the banana costume that I've worn. That's a fan favorite. It is.

32:00And by fan, I mean it's my personal favorite.

32:03Tom Vasel:You as a fan. Yes. Appreciate that one. Me as a fan of you, Eric Sommerer. Yep, yep, yep, yep. I feel like this applies. We mentioned actually recently the live magical athlete that we did at one of the Dice Tower cons. That was carrying around a bunch of pool noodles and costumes. And so walking through halls, because this stuff doesn't just appear, you have to carry these things around to get them places. So a lot of weird props for the various events that we've done. that's usually the weirdest thing I've had to carry around. And often it's a longer distance you expect because you have to carry it from a van or a storage room all the way to wherever it's being done.

32:44Yes.

32:45Tom Vasel:Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, that's fair. Pool noodles. Pool noodles. Legit. I have also had... So again, I think... But that's, I think, the nature of board game conventions. There's a lot of things you carry that are non-sequitur, related to your game or cosplay. So that's the challenging part. so to think of that is the challenge is that that seems normal to me now the most unusual I'm going to say is soup we're back to soup again well because you know wanting a cozy little bowl of soup in the middle of a convention is weird also successfully getting it through crowds without spilling it or having it crushed against you oh wow high levels of challenge It was successful.

33:34The soup was worth it.

33:35Tom Vasel:Good. But I would not repeat the experience. Was there a lid on the soup? Yeah, it was a styrofoam container. I went to a place and got the soup and brought it. But then I was walking around. It was a precious, it was gems cupped in my hands. I'm just thinking of an open bowl of soup trying to go through some of the halls of Gen Con. That would be even more unusual. Precarious. And it's overfilled, and so you're trying to move really slowly. I like that idea. It was minestrum. It was delightful. I needed it. All right. All right. So the classic statement is what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

34:11Tom Vasel:But we have to spill the beans a little bit or spill the soup. Yes. What is something that you absolutely need to share that we haven't already talked about? All right. So I love Las Vegas. I love Las Vegas. I like coming here. And I don't gamble. but I like going like there's plenty of speakeasies or modern day speakeasies here there's tons you can look it up there's lots of like where you get passcodes and stuff like that there's dive bars that have been around forever Atomic Bar and Dino's and pool halls and the Punk Rock Museum and I usually go after gaming or working all day and then we're there late night and I have to get up early and I'm a hot mess by the time Sunday rolls around my dark, salacious thing that I'm sharing is that I did none of those and I went to bed early and I'm actually well rested on a Sunday for gaming and I'm a little ashamed of myself.

35:08Tom Vasel:So the scandalous secret is that you weren't at all scandalous. No, I was... Just boring. An upright citizen. It's shameful. Wow. Yeah, how about you? Well, I guess I could talk about the amount of money I put into a slot machine but I probably shouldn't mention that. That'll be one of those details that stays put. Okay, all right. What I will share is that we talked about the fact that I did do my 100th game of Merchant of Venus. That was so good! Yeah, and I also played my 101st game of Merchant of Venus here in Vegas. I was in the library. Because why stop? Somebody came over and said, hey, you know, I would love to learn this game from you.

35:50Tom Vasel:Do you have time? And I actually did. I had the afternoon free, and the timing worked out, and I didn't have my personal copy, so we had to check it out from the library. The library copy of Merchant of Venus is on a last chance shelf, so if nobody checks it out, it might be out of the library. So somebody checked it out. It wasn't me. The other guy that I was teaching it to is the one that checked it out. Because Tom will... Tom will check the stats. Yeah. He said he knows. I've considered going and checking it out in the library and then bringing it back after a little while. I mean, we've talked about you doing that on the podcast.

36:26Tom Vasel:Yeah, so he knows it's a possibility. But when Tom checks the stats, it will not be me that took out Merchant of Venus. Also, that copy was a mess, and I reorganized it and labeled all the baggies and sorted it. So the copy is now better, even though it may not be back next year. That's also bittersweet. That's two bittersweets. Two bittersweets. Wow. Can we finish off with something less, maybe more straight up street? So we're in the city of neon and flashing lights and bells ringing and music playing. What is the most extreme thing you've seen at a booth for a vendor to try to get your attention to come buy things here at the convention or any convention?

37:07Tom Vasel:I mean, the most extreme I think I've seen is like a, it was a multi-tiered booth. Not that there was a second floor, but they had like a large display structure. and the guy would climb it and maybe every couple of hours do a flash sale and he would get on top of this thing and he'd have a megaphone and he'd yell that they were doing a flash sale that some particular game was 20 % off or something like that. And they'd draw a crowd because they were climbing this thing and yelling. Maybe he was just standing on a table. Where convention? It wasn't Spiel. I thought it was Gen Con. Okay. I think it was Gen Con.

37:47I was about to say, maybe this was the same booth, but no. Okay. Because mine is Edgefield.

37:51Tom Vasel:Okay. And it doesn't happen anymore, but for several years in a row, the class booth, which also had two stories. A multi-tour, yeah. And you could climb up a ladder to the second, and then there was a playground slide down back down to the bottom. There was a slide, okay. And then the underneath part was like the open gaming. The underneath part was a bar where they served beer. So you still weren't buying games at it. It was literally an entire playground. For adults. For adults. Because the class games are, you know, the mini tabletop, or what do I want to say, like you're using magnets underneath to move around.

38:32Yeah, yeah. The magnetized pods to fight and everything. So they're more, what do you want to call it? Not necessarily board games or tabletop games, but more like family dexterity games type of thing. Really cool, but everything. And then at the end of the day, about a half an hour before the hall would close, they would do karaoke. And if you got up to do karaoke and sang, you got a beer for free. Wow. And I was absolutely there. First thing. at 6.30 because the hall there closes at 7. Yep, yep. The feel is weird. So that to me was pure magic every time. I'm not sure if it drove sales, but it drove a crowd.

39:22Tom Vasel:Awesome. We've got to stop because I'm running out of battery power on this little device. All right. It's time to get back to the regular show. Sorry, our alone time has to end. Magic over. Question. questions questions questions

39:39Eric Summerer:alrighty well we're going to close this show with questions from our audience here which we will repeat so that those listening can hear

39:45Tom Vasel:we also have a microphone that you can step right up to the mic what? I did not know that was a thing another microphone? technology so sort of like this is like the town hall meeting when you go see the board of education

39:59Eric Summerer:but not as I don't want to be as tense as those meetings Okay.

40:05Tom Vasel:So if you do have a question, you can come up and ask it here in the front. And now begins the time where we all stare at each other. Way to discourage people from doing it.

40:14Eric Summerer:They come up and step up and ask a question. Yeah, come on up.

40:17Tom Vasel:Hi there, Adam from the UK. Hello. I'm sure between the three of you, you've opened a lot of games. And I wondered if you'd ever had any disasters when opening a game. The reason I think about this is the combination between the game and a knife is usually used. you know it's cellophane we call it cellophane in the uk um shrink wrap yeah uh and the you know the decks of cards where you slide in the knife in the side and opening it um just as a couple of examples uh never yeah like was there any components that accidentally got thrown away and a friend of mine ended up in hospital because he sliced his hand no i mean there's your two extremes i just wondered in all the time that you've had games has there been any disasters is um several times coming from so as in punching my games to try to consolidate space to fit as many games as possible i have absolutely lost tokens i think that's the biggest i haven't opened anything and it's been completely a train wreck um and then as a publisher hearing about people opening a game and so i think that's a bigger thing for me is i've heard the worst case scenarios of well i bought your game and it looked like this on the inside and And you're really sad for that person and you replace it, but also terrified that you're going to get 15 more people saying the same thing.

41:35Which, thankfully, no. But yes, that's for me a bigger deal.

41:40Tom Vasel:I bought a copy of High Clue. It's a word game, party game. Really fun one. And I was very excited to get a physical copy of it. I got it at a friendly local gaming store. Got it home, opened it up, and it was moldy on the inside. But that wasn't your fault. It wasn't my fault. Or was it? I don't think so. I opened it right away. So the box, all the tiles were okay. It was just the box that was a problem. So I think I disinfected the tiles for a while and put it in a bag. So it's in a bag now.

42:15Eric Summerer:Okay, well, this could go on for a really long time, so I'll be short. I'm about to review a game next week that I'm going to give a one to, which I haven't done for a while, and I'm going to murder this game so much. But the game involved water for no reason. It turns water into steam as a fun thing. In a game? And you gave it a what? Because I'm still mad. I don't have time. It's a rule book. No one even knows if anyone in the world has played this game correctly. Anyway, the water got onto some of the cards that then stuck together. And so that was bad. So it's a game that has... Yeah, okay.

42:56There's more to it.

42:57Eric Summerer:Yeah, it's really terrible. All right. But I have cut myself once or twice. People in here are like, you're going to cut yourself once or twice. But the main thing, I think, is the pack of cards. That happens to me often where I'm trying to get it off, and I'm trying not to use my teeth to be a gentleman, and then you just give up, and then you can't, and then you crack it, and you can't, and there's no way. It doesn't come apart. It's been perfectly. So you're like, okay, just a little knife. I'll be real careful. and then it cuts the card side. It's a light knife work. It's fine. And then it cuts the card and then you're like, it was like that when I opened this to the other people at the table and they know that you're lying.

43:36Eric Summerer:Yep.

43:36Tom Vasel:And now you're sleeving that copy of the game.

43:39Eric Summerer:Yeah. But I've also, like you said, way back in the day, I remember buying a Habba game, no, a Ravensburger game that had a bunch of punch outs of animals. It was a castle, Ghost in the Castle or something like that. And I punched them all out and then threw the things away And then the game said, hey, you know, when you finish collecting these animals off the board, kids, put them in the punch outs. I was like, oh, oh, yeah. Do we still have the recycling come yet? Yeah, it had already come and it was gone. And so, yeah. Nowadays, when I don't open games much, I have children to do that. And I make them when they do it, though.

44:16Eric Summerer:I'm like, you hold that thing up to the light and look through it to see have you punched out at everything.

44:22Tom Vasel:Indeed. Thank you for the question. Thank you. Just a quick comment. The Merchant of Venice won, maybe because it was a shortened game with Tom. It didn't really count. Nope. Nope. Yeah, it's an asterisk. I think you might even call that a massive asterisk.

44:34Eric Summerer:If that's true, then you've only played 99 times.

44:37Tom Vasel:Nope, I got to count it. Starting fights. Starting fights.

44:41Eric Summerer:All right, any other questions? All right. Hi, I'm Prince Tender. Just had a silly question. It is, if you had to choose a board game to help you escape out of jail, what would you choose? So this game that turns water into steam here

44:58So many ways to go with that I mean, just as is

45:03Tom Vasel:It's not like the Monopoly boards Where you smuggle in a nail file

45:08Eric Summerer:My first thought would be the gold plate at Monopoly Because I could just buy my way out Yep, yep That's the practical answer I'm going to go with 1am jailbreak

45:17Tom Vasel:Yeah, there you go It's in the name I could just be like sorry no for strategy you'd never get that one in it wouldn't make it past security right what game comes with a full size shovel yeah

45:32Eric Summerer:what do you think people are in prison these days where a shovel would help in an old time prison

45:37Tom Vasel:with a stripping black and white striped clothes and I got the chain and the big ball yeah what game well good job

45:44Eric Summerer:by asking us a question that's never been asked before by the way

45:46Tom Vasel:yeah that's true that was solid

45:48Eric Summerer:does any game come with like a knife in it I don't think that's allowed. Nope.

45:52Tom Vasel:Nope, nope, nope. Maybe a sharp plastic piece. How about, is there a mini with a sword that I could just whittle my way through something? Maybe TI4.

46:00Eric Summerer:I could use the ship strategically as weapons. As like Keltrops? Against the guards.

46:05Tom Vasel:And just throw them.

46:06Eric Summerer:You can tell that we're hardened prisoners. We know the ins and outs. We've been in the joint. I'm trying to think of RPGs that are about jailbreaks, which I know there are several, so that you at least could strategize using it. But I'm trying to remember what.

46:21Tom Vasel:What has a really big, chunky first player marker? You could use it as a large, heavy object.

46:27Eric Summerer:El Grande, the old one?

46:29Tom Vasel:Yeah. Suburbia has a big, old, chunky first player marker, doesn't it?

46:35Eric Summerer:You could just throw the box of Suburbia at the person at that point. There you go.

46:39Tom Vasel:Gloomhaven.

46:40Eric Summerer:Gloomhaven, done. Gloomhaven is it. All right. Any other questions?

46:44Tom Vasel:Hey, guys. Hi. So my question is about expansion sets and rules, because games that have a lot of expansions, like Cosmic Encounter, for example, we're looking up, you know, text or whatever, and we got eight or nine different pamphlets and rules. We can never figure out where that rule for that one thing is, and it gets really complicated. And I remember the old Eon version with the ninth expansion came out with a comprehensive rule book with everything in it. and I've kind of wanted people to do that more, especially games that have a lot of expansions. So that way you have one place to look, one rulebook, especially when you get to like five or ten of them.

47:23Eric Summerer:What are your thoughts on that? Well, I don't like your example.

47:31Eric Summerer:But it's a weird concept, right? You can speak to this from a publisher perspective, right? But it's a weird concept because if you put that full rulebook in an expansion that ticks people off who then feel like you have to buy that expansion to get the rules for everything else. If you sell it separately, nobody will complain. I'm kidding. They'll all complain about that too. I would just say put it on the internet as a living document. I used to do that for Carcassonne because Carcassonne has had an expansion or two, and they would put it all in this one giant document. And I could print it out or nowadays just look it up on the thing.

48:05Eric Summerer:This is, again, I think I've really – I was talking to some people at the booth today – a really wonderful use of AI is to throw all these rules into one of the AI systems, and then you can ask it the question, and it finds it for you. It's fantastic. I will say, so having it as a living document is something that is, so as a publisher, you need to have a graphic designer who has time to do that and have the same, because you're also playing based off of older things. So I think it's a paying attention to as, you know, edge cases and you're giving an FA, making an FAQ, having that in the back of the, it's a lot of ongoing maintenance, which I think is good.

48:50It's whether or not the company has somebody who has the dedicated time to do it. So I think genuinely it's more about like it usually comes down to the graphic designer also being somebody who's like scouring BGG, like looking for those things. And then when it comes when things come in like an expansion, having the mindset to say, OK, I need a dedicated time to make it more of a not if not a living document, re-upping it to a BGG or something for a downloadable. because if not, it's very unlikely for somebody to pay money for just a rule book. And the cost of paper and binding is expensive. So you're not doing it alone.

49:34You're doing it and you're waiting for when you make the epic box of all the things.

49:39Tom Vasel:That's usually when you see it, the big box edition. Or you do it as a digital. That's money-wise. Otherwise, nobody's going to do it because it doesn't fiscally help them. I'm sort of torn by the promise of a living document like that, that if you don't have a physical rulebook, you can update it and make sure it fits with all the expansions and that it's a full reference document. But if there are a couple games that I've run into recently that don't have a physical rulebook, you open it up, it's got a QR code to scan this thing. No, boo, boo, boo. And I'm super annoyed. I hate it so much. Yeah, I want to have a real thing that I can live in.

50:16And that's the other tension is are you a, you know, never digital, all digital. Like for a board game, there's a lot. Most people, for a board game, you want a lot of physical. You want the physical components. You want to play the game. So there is also that built-in tension where people are going to say, that's not good enough. I want a physical copy. And why can't I print it out? And. Yeah. There's a lot. So.

50:41Eric Summerer:What you said is different. You said no rule book at all. There's no rule book at all. that and if you do that I'm automatically dropping your score by two points.

50:47Tom Vasel:That's 100 % fair. But they say but we can update it. See how easy that is. So it's a great idea. It's one that I think people don't do as much because the amount of mental load to remember and have the ongoing is they're more interested in making the next thing. Trading card games do it though.

51:08Eric Summerer:We just got the newest one. I forget what it's called. The one based on that popular video game, which I also forgot. Anyway, we just got one, and I was like, where's the rule book? The rule book was very sparse and barely said anything. And we went online, and there was a 700-page rule book. And I was like, oh, that's where the rule book is. There we go. But Warlord, they just re-released that and didn't even have a rule book. Or a QR code. You're just supposed to know. You just have to figure it out? Into it? You go to their website, and oh, there it is. Oh, okay. But they didn't tell you to go to the website either?

51:39Eric Summerer:It's on the box? So I assume that you know there's no rules. I guess I'll go to the website, print it on the box.

51:46Tom Vasel:If you can't figure it out, you don't deserve to play this game.

51:49Eric Summerer:Okay, so they didn't say for the rules go to the... They did not. But also no one's buying it except people who already know how to play. Fair. Because they made it look exactly like the way it was in the 90s, just in case.

52:00Tom Vasel:Excellent. Well, thank you very much.

52:01Eric Summerer:Thank you. While you're coming up, I do want to say to BGG, I would love if we could get some verification. when someone asks a question on a forum that the answerer is from the company or the designer and not just some random guy who's like, I'm pretty sure it's this. Quick story. Yeah. Our first game at Greenbrier Games was the Apocalypse. Yes. And there was, I don't remember his name, a Paul. I've blocked him out of memory. But there was, he would answer questions about that game. And then I would come in and say, no, that's not accurate. it. This is the answer. And he'd say, I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

52:42I designed the game, sir. I know I'm not. That's amazing. And multiple times. He and I had an epic... He was my arch nemesis for a while. So, yes.

52:52Tom Vasel:Wow. I like it.

52:54Eric Summerer:It was Eric. It was not Eric. The whole time. Alright, what's the next question?

52:59Tom Vasel:So, I wanted to ask, when developing a game, A, do you have any advice on how to source art for a game that has a lot of art in it? And B, would you advise against demoing a themed game without art? Okay, there's a lot of if-thens for that. So if you're doing it to show a publisher for them to pick it up and publish it, or are you talking about directly selling it? Where are you in the process?

53:27Eric Summerer:Looking for someone to pick it up and publish it, I would say. Cool. I think it's fine to, I know there's a lot of, in the board game industry, being down on AI, outsourcing to AI. If you're doing it as a, you're selling it knowing that the publisher is going to do the art, you're not doing it for profit, so you can, anything is an open license at that point. So clip art, fan art, you know, as long as you know it's not going, that's not art being used direct for sale to make money. I think it's all copacetic you're mostly and yes I think it's nice to have a little bit to show the theme if you're trying to show a theme but also if you're selling it to a board game company they should have the bandwidth to look at even something that is this and get the vision based on the gameplay the more you do obviously the easier it is for that lift but I wouldn't kill yourself trying to find tons.

54:28I know a couple like Richard Lanius likes to make a super pretty super pretty prototype and spends all the time but also I mean he's Richard Lanius he can do whatever he wants. I don't know if you really need that much. I think I've seen most games that I've seen are pretty basic. It's clip art. It's not super pretty and involved and I can see the vision. That's my job. I've seen ones that have been super pretty and And sometimes it does the opposite effect. Not always, but sometimes I'm like, okay, yeah, I see that you wanted this theme and it's very thematic. Sometimes I think, okay, you spent all this time on this.

55:11How close are you to this where I'm going to be afraid that you're going to push back a lot on me making adjustments?

55:18Tom Vasel:Yeah, you can almost force people into, if you put too much work into it, it almost locks it into that version of the game. Which is not to say, like, if you're making a game, I've seen games that were about, well, Alfaas was a trucking game that they turned into ley lines, which is about being little fairies in the woods. And it's a pickup and delivery, but it's thematically two completely different aesthetics. And that's what they decided to do with it. So it might stay exactly the same. It might change based on what they think, what a publisher thinks is going to give it the best chance to do well in the market, which may not be the same thing that you had the vision for.

55:59So really the question is, how far do you want to go? How attached do you want to be to it? And what are your lines for if somebody says, I want to change it to this, what are your hard lines of being like, no, thanks, I'll just take it back? Or sure, go ahead. That sounds great is, I think, a bigger question than taking all. So the more time and care you take on art, I think the more you're going to be attached to that, too. So I don't know if that answered your question. Thank you. It was meandering, but hopefully it's helpful. Thank you. Hello, everyone. So I've got a two-part question for you.

56:36So first, whether it's how much you enjoy a game itself or how pretty it is, what is it about a deluxe or collector's edition that makes you want to buy that copy? And second part of that is, do you have a favorite collector's or special edition of a board game?

56:56Eric Summerer:Well, I mean, I want a game. So I like the pretty pieces as much as anybody else. I want a game that's shiny and nice. I like the chunky pieces. But the biggest difference between a deluxe I like and a don't like is ease of setup. And the biggest example of that is Bézier Games. from the deluxe Suburbia to deluxe Casamad King Ludwig. Suburbia is so hard to set up from that that I just gave up and got rid of it. It was just a pain. While Casamad King Ludwig, it just boom, boom, boom, boom. The new Puerto Rico is really easy to set up. Also, that's my favorite one currently. I really like that deluxe one.

57:29Eric Summerer:Foundations of Rome. Well, I would have said Foundations of Rome, but Foundations of Rome was that only for a while. So it is the game. But yes, if we're counting that, Foundation Metropolis and Foundations of Rome.

57:43Tom Vasel:I think there's a sense with these special editions, too, that they become like heirloom. That's a word that gets thrown around. It's a marketing term a lot. It's an heirloom edition. But it feels like this is the version of the game that's going to last. This is going to be around. I'm going to give this to my children, and they're going to enjoy it. Don't worry.

58:00Eric Summerer:I guarantee you they'll make an expansion that won't fit in a year later. I know they will. But I agree. It's ease of use. So for me, a lot of it is when you get a player mat versus your basic mat, that to me is a litmus of does it make the gameplay easier and set up and break down, and during gameplay it becomes more intuitive? That's a big thing for me versus for deluxe versus basic.

58:28Tom Vasel:It's not just shinier, it's improved. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have time for one more? One more. After a lifetime of playing games, is there a mechanic or a genre that has kind of fallen out of favor that you'd like to see kind of come back? And then looking at the current situation, is there a genre or mechanic that you think has kind of like run its course and maybe you'd like to see less of that?

58:58Eric Summerer:That answer is going to change from year to year. Like right now I'm well over the next trick-taking game. goodness there's hundreds of them i'm not saying it's bad i'm just tired of seeing whereas a couple years ago it's rolling rights yes yeah yeah i can see that so it's never yeah it's never so like would i like to see something come back i would i wouldn't mind seeing more area control games i don't think we see as many of those nowadays or i'm kind of mid-weight dudes on a map monsters on a map type thing axes and allies that sort of thing there's not many of those that come out anymore.

59:33Tom Vasel:You used to say I Split You Choose was one that was underutilized, but I think I've seen more games doing that. Peak Team has a cool I Split and Giveaway Everything. No, that's terrible. Okay. Mechanism, but I've seen more people using it. That's not I Split You Choose. It isn't. But it's splitting. I think there should be some more splitting. So is chopping wood. He's just looking to argue is what's I am not running a fight. So sassy.

1:00:06Eric Summerer:You're not tired of a genre? Am I tired of a genre? No, I'm not tired of zombies. I'm never going to be tired of zombies. I was tired of zombies before I even started zombies. I think zombies, though, that we used to come in as too many zombies, that has definitely died down recently. Yes.

1:00:19Tom Vasel:There were far fewer zombies than there used to be. That was seen, though. That wasn't really mechanism. But yes. Zombies were so hot for a while.

1:00:28Eric Summerer:Hot zombies? Yeah. There was a game, yes.

1:00:35Eric Summerer:Oh, no. What a way to end here. I know. All righty. Well, thank you all. Thank you for the live audience who came. We appreciate that. Thank you to those of you who are listening and or watching. We're live at A Star West. We are at the halfway point, slightly over the halfway point, but there's still much more coming. That's it. Until next time, I'm Tom Vassell. I'm Julie Ahern. And I'm Eric Sommerer. I like how you pointed that. And we will see you at the table. Thanks for listening.

1:01:12Tom Vasel: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 asking Mr. Garcia to talk like Chris and Wendy is brought to you by Speak Yeezy. Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:01:44Tom Vasel:Did you hear the gasp when that?

1:01:46Eric Summerer:Yeah. What? Just when I think you can't sink lower on these puns. That was a stretch. No, that wasn't even a stretch. It was worth the journey. All right. Thank you.