At The Table with The Dice Tower - Escaping Gen Con 2025

11:26Tom Vasel:Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting decision because you'll be, you've set it up at the beginning of the event and you're trying to maximize space and squeeze everything together. And then you sell out of something. And now do you continue demoing that game that's sold out? Or do you try and promote something else that you can still sell at this convention? Most people were smart and had, you know, like a QR code where you could go to their

11:47Eric Summerer:website and purchase it. Yeah. Things like that. So most publishers have gotten savvy about that. But we actually sent – so our biggest seller ran out on Saturday. And so our warehouse manager who was there jumped in the truck and drove the five hours down to our warehouse and drove back so that we'd have it again for Sunday. Thanks, Jeff.

12:14Tom Vasel:Yeah, that's – if you're close enough to make that happen, that's a good thing to do.

12:19Eric Summerer:Yep. So you try to plan. But then there's, you know, so going on Sunday and Sunday being my shopping day, I get to see that aftermath. And, you know, the ones who were, there were a couple of like from Japan, publishers from Japan where they brought what they could bring. Yeah. You know, that's what they could do.

12:39Tom Vasel:There's no flying back to Japan overnight to bring back more stock.

12:43Eric Summerer:There's not. So, you know, I get to talk to them about their games, but that's as close as I got.

12:50Tom Vasel:So shopping day on Sunday, how many did you end up with? Tom predicted, I think, 13 games for you, Julie, and he said somewhere between 8 and 20 for me. Yes. Was he close?

13:01Eric Summerer:Oh, he was super close. So I got four of the Grand Gamers Guild's little holiday hijinks.

13:12Tom Vasel:Oh, yeah.

13:14Eric Summerer:So that brought it to a total of 14 because I also got an Advent calendar as a gift. Okay. Because they had sold out of this year's one by the time I got there. So I bought one as a gift. So I'm not counting that. That would make it 14. I have 14 games.

13:29Tom Vasel:I ended up with exactly eight. Although, you know, there's some review games that come in there too that maybe about double that when I was bringing stuff home. So I think a better Gen Con.

13:38Eric Summerer:The review games double it. 16. Don't lie. Don't lie to the people.

13:45Tom Vasel:All right, fine. I did better on the suitcase. The suitcase was less full than it has been in the past. I was restrained. Restraint, I tell you.

13:53Eric Summerer:I take it that Vantage wasn't one of them? The 10-pound game?

13:58Tom Vasel:Vantage, I was worried because Tom said it was so heavy. It was. I ordered it beforehand. It actually arrived right before I left for Gen Con. I sorted it last night and played it last night, but there's a lot of cards. It's like 1 ,700 cards in there.

14:14Eric Summerer:Sure. Yeah. And it is 10 pounds.

14:17Tom Vasel:It is a heavy game. So, yeah, I didn't want to bring that on the plane and ordered it from Stonemaier.

14:24Eric Summerer:No one asked me how many games I brought back. How many games did you bring back, Tom?

14:30Tom Vasel:80. Yeah. You also had your own van and a team.

14:35Eric Summerer:Yeah. That's true. things though let me brag about some of the other stuff I got I bought some books I got some art I'm very happy with the art I got my favorite piece is this giant bear with some arrows sticking out and there's a little warrior she's standing in front of the bear ready to fight it I was very happy with that that's pretty cool I got another space picture so another one from Ellen I was going to say, who is the artist of the bear? Do you know? I don't have her card in front of me. Oh, good. But it was fantastic. I actually picked two pieces up from her. I also got one that shows this huge dragon with another warrior standing in front of the dragon.

15:20Eric Summerer:I feel like I tend to like that David V. Goliath type motif.

15:27Tom Vasel:You need to hang them next to each other.

15:29Eric Summerer:No. One went to my house, and one is going to be at work. and the space won't be at work. So I got three piece artwork, but they were very, very good. So it was Alan Panicol, the neon-y... Spaceship stuff. Yes. Yep. A fleet of spaceships. Nice. The Fifth Fleet, I think it's called. Anyway, I was very, very excited about that. I picked up a few other stuffed animals and I always get a little bit of RPG stuff that I can read and or play. But man, there was just so much stuff there I had to stop. On Sunday, I was like one last pass through the hall. And halfway through the hall, I was like, that's done.

16:15Eric Summerer:Well, it wasn't even just dangerous. It was a lot to go through that hall. There wasn't a quote-unquote game of the show at all. but there were some trends I noticed I did notice that there was no company that had like one big game the games were spread across many different companies CCGs are back trading card games there's probably seven or eight of them out there and they had lines people want to play them I'm not talking about the big ones like Lorkana and Star Wars and Altered, which came out a couple years ago. Which also did.

17:01Tom Vasel:Right. They still had lines, though. Like, the Lorkana line was still a thing this year. Right. I wasn't expecting it to be.

17:06Eric Summerer:In their room, because we were two rooms down, so every morning I'd greet the people waiting in line for Lorkana for going to my room. Yeah, it's interesting to me. I guess it's back for a bit. I'm sure it will fade out for a bit, but there are new ones. There are old ones that are getting reboot it like warlord i just found that to be kind of a fascinating thing and we're seeing a bit of a migration away from the exhibit hall to the rooms right across the hall uh there's a lot of those and upstairs rooms but also into the game hall there are more and more companies out there i went out and said hi to cardboard alchemy who was out there and avalon hill and there was just a lot of companies out in that giant gaming hall.

17:53Eric Summerer:So there's booths everywhere. Like, I never saw this before. Maybe I just missed it last year. But upstairs, if you go around a corner upstairs, there was a long line of like booths that were different charities and or just odd things like universities.

18:14Tom Vasel:Oh, yeah. They had that there for a few years right across from the Pathfinder room.

18:18Eric Summerer:Yes. Yes. But there was like 20 booths there. That was a lot.

18:23Tom Vasel:Yeah, a lot of community groups. The Ghostbusters cosplay group is up there. A lot of schools. A lot of charity groups. Yeah.

18:30Eric Summerer:So that's what that was. I saw the Ghostbusters, and I was going to go look, but the guy just kept shouting that he wasn't afraid of any ghosts. And I didn't want to go close because he was just grabbing people and asking if there were ghosts around them.

18:42Tom Vasel:So they were aggressive Ghostbusters.

18:44Eric Summerer:They really were. And I was like, well, that's cool, but I'm going to look at a distance. And I couldn't figure out what the booth was. So it's just Ghostbuster cosplay.

18:51Tom Vasel:It's sort of like the 501st Legion, the Star Wars cosplay group, but for Ghostbusters.

18:56Eric Summerer:I do remember the year they did steampunk Ghostbusters and walked out. Oh, I remember that too. And it was so good. So yeah, that's a thing.

19:07Tom Vasel:There were certainly a few things that sold out really fast. You know, I was sort of surprised at the lines that would just appear super quickly. Lightning Train, I think, was one. You mentioned Ace of Spades selling out. I saw a lot of 12 Rivers flying around. So there were certainly games that people were running for, but it wasn't all at one booth. You're right.

19:27Eric Summerer:Yeah, I enjoyed, you know, just the diversity of games that was there. You know, there's not any one type of game that's out there. There's just there's so much out there. And if you like miniatures, if you like painting, if you like RPGs, it seemed to be nicely spread. there's not some any one sort of genre that's that's dominant out there so there's just a lot of cool things i noticed that this year too just walking around it seemed lots for like you said collectible card games like you had so many different kinds of games and different sizes of publishers and it seems like a good representation as a whole which was lovely and of course some of the publishers are not you know obviously they're not thrilled about the tariffs and everything that's going on.

20:15Eric Summerer:And a few publishers weren't there. But the mood was still cautiously hopeful. And I don't think the consumers were caring because they were buying like mad. People walking around, they did not have carts, but I was hit with several backpacks.

20:32Tom Vasel:Backpacks were still a thing, yes. Very full backpacks. From the beginning, like right off the bat, a full backpack. 8 a.m.

20:42Eric Summerer:I want to say thank you to everybody who came out to the Dice Tower Awards. Eric did a phenomenal job, as always, singing a song that people say is a very hard song to sing. So that's...

20:52Tom Vasel:It was tricky. It's still running through my head, and I don't need it to anymore.

20:58Eric Summerer:What song was it based on?

21:00Tom Vasel:It's Putting It Together from Sunday in the Park with George. It's a Sondheim piece.

21:04Eric Summerer:I knew it was a Sondheim piece. I didn't know which one.

21:07Tom Vasel:We did playing games together, and it was all the nominees for the game of the year. And, yeah, you can find it online. If you search for the Dice Tower Awards, you can watch it. It's right there at the beginning. And then stick around, because at some point, I believe I talked to a puppet. I'm not 100 % sure about that, but I think that happened.

21:25Eric Summerer:We got to give Eric props for that, because, so I was looking for things to put into the show, and Analog Arnie is a puppet reviewer who does very good reviews. Not just that he's a puppet. If he wasn't a puppet, his reviews would be very good. And so I invited him onto the show, and he's like, let's surprise Eric. And I was like, that makes the show so much harder to do and prepare. But to surprise Eric, I will do it. And so backstage, Eric didn't know who the puppeteer was, so I just kept distracting him with stupid stuff, and he wasn't thinking about anything other than singing his song really anyway.

22:02Tom Vasel:Yep. I was a little distracted, yes.

22:04Eric Summerer:So we snuck the puppet on stage and we're like, I said, I guess I'll have to prod Eric to stand up and go over and interact with the puppet. And you would think he scripted it. It's ridiculous. Eric didn't waver at all. I'm going to do something worse next year. I've got to break Eric somehow.

22:23Tom Vasel:From my perspective, I was just told to introduce the next presenter. And then to my left, a table has appeared. I think I saw them setting up the table. I had no idea what it was, and I didn't care. And the puppeteer snuck in behind me and pops up this puppet, and now here's Arnie on stage, and he calls me over. Eric, I need your help. And I have no idea what's going on. I didn't know what the exit ramp was. I didn't know what I was doing.

22:50Eric Summerer:I will say, your improv skills were fantastic. Arnie was not expecting you to have such good improv skills. I believe he thought you were called to pieces. Now, I know that because I saw the script. The script was broken for the puppet, was broken into many different things. If Eric doesn't know what to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If Eric then is at a loss for words, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that stuff was just thrown right out. Yeah.

23:16Tom Vasel:Thanks a lot, Eric. It was epic. It was something for sure.

23:21Eric Summerer:Yeah, so thank you to everybody who came to that. I had a good time, although, as always, I'm thankful to be back. I would love to start playing these games. Eric wants to talk about food. I want to point out that it's Eric and not me.

23:34Tom Vasel:Actually, I think it was Julie that wanted to talk about food.

23:37Eric Summerer:It was me. It was 100 % me. I did.

23:39Tom Vasel:I will say that I did go to the food trucks. And Tom mentioned this last time, but timing is vastly important for these food trucks. If you watch on the Dice Towers video channel, we have some vlog footage. And I have some footage from when I went at lunchtime, like 1230, and how many people were there and how long the lines were. versus showing up at like 11 and eating a little early and no wait for anything. Huge difference. There were tons. It was like 30 different food trucks, all sorts of possibilities and lots of different culinary adventures. I had something called Cupzilla, which was like a Korean barbecue pot of something or other.

24:20Tom Vasel:I had some island noodles. I wanted to get some Indian-Mexican fusion, but I couldn't find the truck after the first day. It was all sorts of stuff.

24:30Eric Summerer:I will say I feel for the truck drivers because I also know that the Indianapolis State Fair is open the same time.

24:38Tom Vasel:And it's still ongoing. So I feel like they had to like finish, wrap up and then skedaddle over there as fast as possible.

24:48Eric Summerer:So it's a big week for all the food trucks. I was more eating light lunches or I would run to the subway in the Hyatt because that was never that crowded. But my dinners were spectacular. And I especially want to call out the Mediterranean Island restaurant. I forget what it's called. The Greek restaurant. The Greek Isles, I think it's called. It was amazing. It was very, very delicious. And I love flaming cheese. That was good. And then I went to Shapiro's, I think, three different times.

25:23Tom Vasel:Wow. I mean, that is an epic deli. It's a very big deli and a very famous one. There's a version in the airport. I did not know that. If you miss going to the real one in downtown, you can go to the one in the airport and get a smaller menu.

25:38Eric Summerer:So this year I had my nephews with me, and they are 14 and 18. so i forgot a lot of going out to dinners and instead did uh uber eats but still locally uh king dough is really good and it's just far enough away that you'd have to take a lift or an uber to get to it um or you know have it ordered and delivered but is lovely they have outdoor seating and everything like that and that's my when people especially vegan um when i recommend it to people because they have regular pies and then they have an assortment of vegan pies. And so that was one that we had quite a bit of. The boys were really into that.

26:23Eric Summerer:And that was an easy one. So we ended up eating a lot of pizza this week. All righty. Well, that's enough, I think, about Gen Con because we are here really to talk about some games. And we got some games coming up soon. So let's jump to that. We do.

26:38Tom Vasel:And now, another tale of board gaming horror. Oh my, that's horrific. Gather round, children. It was a warm, sunny morning at BGG Spring at the Dallas Airport Hyatt. Three friends and I quietly perused the BGG library before selecting a few games, including a hot game we were eager to play, SETI. At this particular convention, the entire 11th floor is reserved for gaming. Many moderately private rooms of varying sizes, most with only enough room for a few gaming groups. A perfect area for anyone easily overwhelmed by large crowds or noise. Having arrived relatively early that morning, we had our pick of the mostly empty rooms.

27:30Tom Vasel:We chose a room at the far end of the hall and started setting up a game in the corner next to a window with a hazy view of the sprawling DFW airport. The day was off to a great start. As we played, a couple other groups started to trickle into the room. A second group came in and set up Shackleton Base. Later, a third group set up Galactic Cruise. we admired from afar with hopes of playing one of those games that weekend. Naturally, it came time for us to dive into our main course, SETI. Lunchtime drawing near, the room was nearly full with gamers deep in thought, all contemplating epic games of space travel, science, technology, and of course, victory points.

28:17Tom Vasel:A few more people entered the room to claim the remaining unoccupied seating. They were pleasant enough, but a bit loud, reminiscing about their prior evening and current state of sleep deprivation. Their crew gradually increased, joining them in discussions of the convention so far. Unfortunately, we heard every word, whether we wanted to or not. Lunchtime! This new group converted one of the tables into a makeshift sandwich artist station. That's fine. Not everyone has to pre-make their lunch and snacks like we did. Greg, what do you want on your sandwich? Uh-oh. As we tried to focus on the majesty of SETI, it became apparent that one guest in particular was louder than her cohorts.

29:07Tom Vasel:Strong vibes of Will Ferrell's 2001 SNL skit about voice imodulation. And a little bit softer now! Over the next couple of hours, We unwittingly became familiar with tales of the dog she got during COVID, the process of buying and selling houses, and the drama of tumultuous interactions with target customer service. Does anyone want cupcakes? They're from the store. I didn't make them. Apparently, the Shackleton base and Galactic Cruise Gamers were just as conflict-averse as we were. Everyone kept their heads down and pretended not to be bothered. But then... Kazoos. Yes, kazoos. Our fellow gamer brought out duck and cover.

29:54Tom Vasel:If you're familiar with duck and cover, you might say it doesn't include kazoos. It does not. But it will be more fun for everyone if we use kazoos instead of saying quack. There was shouting and kazoos and laughter abound. It was too much. I apologized to my friends as I stuck in my earbuds and tried to drown out the chaos with my own music. We plowed through the final round of SETI and left the room as quickly as possible. My friends and I managed to rebound from this experience. We like SETI very much in spite of those circumstances, and we had a tremendous weekend of gaming. But rumor has it that to this very day, if you quietly tiptoe past the meeting rooms on the 11th floor of the DFW Hyatt, you can still hear the faint sound of kazoos.

30:53All right.

30:54Eric Summerer:I would like to talk about the hidden tale of horror in this story. Oh, boy. Yes. So at the beginning. this person says three friends and I quietly went through the library before selecting a few games including a hot game SETI. They said they went there, they started playing games which means they weren't playing SETI they were just sitting there not playing it and not allowing other people to check it out and I hate that so much

31:25Tom Vasel:and hiding on the 11th floor

31:26Eric Summerer:Boo! You deserve the kazoos Oh no! I send those kazoos upon you with a fiery annoyance. I'll tell you, folks. Was it you, Tom?

31:39Tom Vasel:Did you send them?

31:40Eric Summerer:No, I did not. That'd be funny, but no. No, but really, folks, when you go to a game convention, check out one game at a time. If you check out a game and you don't play it, you are being selfish and rude. You really are. You're taking a game out of circulation and just setting it on a table so that nobody else can play it. Just so that when you want to play it, it's ready. Boo. But also don't bring kazoos. That's rude. Bring vuvayas.

32:14Tom Vasel:Also read the room when you enter a quiet room. I mean, for those small rooms, those are pretty much designed to be the quiet gaming space. If you're going to bring out kazoos, you want to be in the larger or a room that's been specifically designated as a loud room, which I know some conventions have done. And play kazoos in there.

32:36Eric Summerer:But also, so SETI is a very long game. Throughout the course of the entire game, you're saying nobody from the convention was wandering around to have a quiet word.

32:46Tom Vasel:That is interesting. Yeah, that no one was monitoring those rooms.

32:50Eric Summerer:Eating food, making lunches while also playing the games that were from the library potentially. I find that interesting.

32:58Tom Vasel:So there are multiple horrors in this story is what you're saying.

33:01Eric Summerer:Having been to this convention, these rooms, and I went to them, and it was kind of neat because you go up to the 11th floor. It's a bunch of suites. It's pretty quiet up there, and there's a lot of people playing games just kind of chill up there. and so there may not be people walking through there as much from the convention because you have to like deliberately go there.

33:23Tom Vasel:I would also say that some of those when you have a convention that has those spread out spaces and if people are planning to maybe break the rules or bend them when it comes to the food policy or something like that, finding those side rooms is where to go because they tend to be less monitored.

33:39Eric Summerer:What, Eric, is your problem? Are you trying to give advice here?

33:42Tom Vasel:I don't want to give advice. I'm saying it happens because we've been on the other end of that. in monitoring those rooms and having to say, yeah, this spread is not allowed.

33:51Eric Summerer:Yeah, definitely.

33:52Tom Vasel:You can't set up a deli tray here.

33:54Eric Summerer:There's a lot of things that happen. Even if they were homemade cupcakes. We had, I've seen a hot pot, which breaks so many rules, including fire marshal rules. That, the chutzpah. Look, folks, from the side of the people who run the convention, running conventions is work, right? We put rules into place. We want people to have fun. The convention is designed for people to have fun. But you are a bad example to your children and to other people when you just break simple rules. If there's a rule that says no eating around the games and you're like, wow, that doesn't apply to me, you're a jerk.

34:39Eric Summerer:And I'll call you a jerk for that because you wouldn't accept that if you put rules over people. if you told your kids not to do something and did it anyway you'd be pretty annoyed about that and yet you sit there in your entitledness to break rules like well no one can see us here it's not that big of a deal these rules are set for purposes the hotel if they see people eating food will charge the convention for that not you yeah right yes yes yes and it happens in these back rooms like Eric said and you think well I'm back here I can get away with whatever I want then don't go to conventions snacking deals stay home and break do you make the rules at your house break your own rules do whatever you want

35:28Tom Vasel:so so there are multiple reasons why Tom chose this tale of horror also give me unconscious minds back I love so yeah during the awards ceremony unconscious mind won an award and they actually called it out said whoever took Tom's copy of Unconscious Mind, give it back.

35:46Eric Summerer:Which was pretty amazing.

35:47Tom Vasel:That was pretty cool.

35:49Eric Summerer:Be more amazing if that actually, that call to arms actually worked.

35:52Tom Vasel:If somebody was in the audience and went, oh, fine. Yeah, and walked it up. Yes.

35:57Eric Summerer:Yeah, well, I mean, this stuff happens. We lost the game at Dice Tower East and actually two of our games walked away from our table at Gen Con.

36:04Tom Vasel:We did. We had a giveaway and some people took the want to win free games and didn't think, oh, I need to enter to do so. I'm just going to take them now. It just saves time.

36:14Eric Summerer:I guess the sign said, want free games. People were like, they're mine. That's not how that works. I do want them. Thank you.

36:22Tom Vasel:I do. Thanks for asking. I'm amazed that these expensive games are just sitting here at this point. Like, no one wanted this one? Anyway.

36:31Eric Summerer:We had a, we made miniature player aids for our different, we had 30 people learning, doing Learn to Play at any time. and slowly all the ones that we shrank down because you can use the back of the rule book, but we made little sleeve cards, mini versions of them so that it took up less space. And clearly a lot of people were like, this is neat and also walked away with those. Oh, yeah. Because they couldn't grab the whole game that was laid out.

36:58Tom Vasel:It's a fine line between freebies and stuff that we made for the con that we absolutely need.

37:03Eric Summerer:I think in general practice, always ask if something's free. It's just a very simple thing. is this free? Can I take this? Don't assume. If you're not sure, and you should almost always not be sure, you know, if there's mints on the way out of the restaurant, are these free?

37:21Tom Vasel:All right, we need to talk about some games that we played. Let's move on.

37:30Tom Vasel:They say that every rose has its thorn. But not every rose has a hula hoop. All right, who wants to go first?

37:38Eric Summerer:I do. I want to talk about a couple games here. My first is Giraffe Raff. That's two words.

37:44Tom Vasel:I like that title.

37:45Eric Summerer:This is a remake of a game. Originally, it was called Exhaust. It's from Hisashi Hayashi. And so in this game, you are dealt a whole bunch of cards, and your goal on your turn is to play cards. Because if you can't play cards, you lose. Guess what? Everyone else wins. It's a joint victory for everybody else. Hooray. Okay. Unless you play the advanced version, if you can't play any cards, then you take a rotten apple, then you play again. And if you ever get two rotten apples, you lose, and everyone else wins. So essentially, you have some cards in your turn, and you will play them to one different spot.

38:23Eric Summerer:So let's say there's a spot for red cards. I can play a card there as long as it is the highest card played to that spot. So if I play the red 13 there, only the red 14 can be played now. at that spot. So you have to think carefully. I have a red 2 and a red 13. I guess I'll play the red 2 there so I can play the 13 later, but then someone else plays a 14 and you go, oh, man. Or you can play a pair somewhere, but someone else would have to play a higher pair. There's also a spot where you can just play any number of cards you want, and then the next person just has to play one more card than you.

38:59But also realizing that if you have no cards to play,

39:02Eric Summerer:you lose. Now, some things give you rewards, draw more cards from the deck, or they give you Apple tokens. Apple tokens are great because on your turn, you can play an Apple token and do nothing. You're still in the game. So I kind of like it. It's almost there. It's just a little weird. And at the end of each round, it's like Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple. How you don't got apples? Well, there you go. you're out it kind of fizzles a little it's it's an interesting idea i i like the concept and it's unique but it just doesn't hit on all cylinders for me so that is giraffe raff i think some people will like it but i think a lot of people will struggle with where do i play cards well i can play a run over here of three cards it has to be one higher than the last run but that's a bad idea because I'm getting rid of five cards from my hand.

40:04Eric Summerer:You know, things like that. You have to kind of, but that gives me a reward of a card and an apple. So is it worth it? That sort of thing. Hmm.

40:15Eric Summerer:My rose is Tag Team. So Tag Team is a new game from Scorpion Mask, who at this point, I don't know that they can do wrong. I mean, especially with their short games. The Sky Team is still being played consistently.

40:34Tom Vasel:Very true.

40:34Eric Summerer:So in Tag Team, there are, I think, 16 fighters in the box. There's all kinds of things. There's a modern-day Joan of Arc. There's a guy who turns into a bear. There's an old Kung Fu master. So you draft two of these people. Each of them has a certain amount of health. And then you get a card for each person, and you build a two-card deck. so Eric might you know get the bear guy and a golem and he puts the golem card on top and the bear guy's card on the bottom right you don't shuffle them

41:05Tom Vasel:you decide which one's going on top

41:07Eric Summerer:you decide which one's where you then reveal the top card of your deck and it's now an auto battler it will say how much damage I do to you your card will say how much damage you do to me the person you hit is the person whose card was revealed and so everyone has different group you know different amounts of health and there are cards that heal you. There are cards that avoid the attack of your opponent. And then you reveal the second card and do the same thing. And now you've gone through your deck. You do not shuffle your deck. You flip it back over. But then you have another deck of cards that has a pile from each of the two fighters you have.

41:43Eric Summerer:You've shuffled this deck. You will draw three cards from it and you will pick one of those cards to add to your deck. Once you pick that card, you may insert it anywhere in the deck. You can put it on the top, in between the two cards or on the bottom. and then you run through the deck again. And then you do that again and again and again, and you're slowly changing the order of the deck. And I'm like, man, Eric blocks my six attack every time. So I'm going to put a card on top of my deck so that the cards...

42:13Tom Vasel:The six attack is delayed. Yeah, right.

42:14Eric Summerer:So it's delayed a bit. But Eric has out-thought me on that. And the characters are so different. It's also like 10 minutes. They all have special powers. you know there's a group that can't take more than one damage at a time but they're also have like hip five hit points you know there's a lady with a snake that the snake token keeps flipping back and forth and so depending what side it's on it does damage to the opponent it's just really interesting i i love it i played every character and against every character and man it's so fast It's so fun. You're not making a lot of choices in the game, right?

42:54Eric Summerer:But just choosing where that card goes and then you'll watch what happens. And also great art, great components. So this is Tag Team. It's from... Scorpion Masque. Gritza German Quarantine Le Brat. Hmm. I really like it. Yeah. And it also sold like mad at Gen Con.

43:14Tom Vasel:Yes. I came home with a copy. I haven't had a chance to get it to the table yet, but it sounds fascinating, that deck-tuning, auto-battling thing.

43:21Eric Summerer:It does. It sounds right up your alley. Yeah.

43:24Tom Vasel:Julie, how about you?

43:26Eric Summerer:Well, all right, I'm going to start with my hula hoop, and that would have been Oddland from Allplay, which is a game for one to five players. It's tiling and then placing a meeple. So it's very simple. what you're doing is on your turn you're playing a map card and you have two in front of you and then you redraw up to two cards and then you must place one of the species meeples on the newly placed card so super basic but the thing is each one of them scores differently so the order that you put them in and of course they're all mashups art wise you have the alligator bear mashup and you have the owl moose mashup.

44:16Eric Summerer:So each one of them behaves and scores points based on the habitats that surround them. So you're trying to do it advantageously. But of course, you're putting the tiles down in a central map. So lots of people can cut you off from the various points you can get. And then you can reciprocate. It is fun, quick, silly, take that. And we played it in our group. And it was one that after a full day of Gen Con and running around and collecting things was very easy to get to the table. So that was my hula hoop. My perennial rose is one. So we're, you know, I'm going to be going through a lot of new games, a lot of them, but I have all these games that I love and there's, I like to revisit them and especially right before Gen Con to remember that I don't have to get every single game.

45:12Eric Summerer:I have lots of games that I like. Yep, yep. One of the games that is chosen rather frequently in my house is At the Gates of Loyang, which is for one to four players. You are a farmer planting vegetables and then selling them at market. In the game, you have a harvest phase where you gather up all the crops that you've sown eventually those those crops will go to seed and you have to get a new vegetable plot to fill up but those are the things that you're going to try to sell or purchase in various ways then you have an action deck which modifies gives you little helper workers at your market that will modify that's a little bit of a fun action because the first player will place one down and then you You can choose to either pick it up and put one of yours down or hold and keep one of your cards.

46:10Eric Summerer:The action phase is the majority of the game where you're sowing vegetables to seed to grow new ones, putting vegetables in your shop, buying vegetables from the shop, selling vegetables to the shop. or the big part of it being selling your vegetables to your regular customers or two customers coming through, each one giving you different victory points. When you do that, you're going up a path of points, but each one is an increasing number. So you have to spend that much to get to the next. So moving up very quickly, one through six, seven, but then getting to the 14, 15, that becomes increasingly difficult.

46:54Eric Summerer:and then at the end it's a worker placement and resource management so you can only have whatever storehouses you have to carry over vegetables to the next day the rest have to be discarded and the game concludes after nine rounds it is one of our favorites we play it a couple times a year at least and I like to revisit one of our favorite games before Gen Con every year so this is a rose for me

47:22Tom Vasel:nice Loyang is one I've never played. Bringing back the old stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

47:27Eric Summerer:How about you?

47:28Tom Vasel:I'm going to start with a rose. This is one that I was very much looking forward to heading into Gen Con, and I was not disappointed. The game is called Flip Tunes. It's from Thunderworks Games. It's a small box deck building game where you're casting a cast of animated characters. But, you know, lots of deck building games have that deck tuning. You're sort of culling cards and adding new ones. This one is very limited in that scope. you have just six cards that start your deck. They're the basic ones, and they're going to produce fame. On your turn, or in fact, on everyone's turn, they're all going to deal out cards until they have six in front of them.

48:03Tom Vasel:Three on the top, three on the bottom. I say they deal out until that point because there are some cards that can stack on each other and do that. So you have a tableau you've created. It's going to produce a certain amount of fame. Certain cards are going to interact with each other. There are some that trigger. If you have the least fame in a round, you get to do a bonus. And so you look at how much fame everybody has, then you go and turn order around the board. You get to buy more cards and cull some cards, remove them from your deck by spending your fame. This continues until somebody crosses 30 fame.

48:36Tom Vasel:So it's this race, this very focused deck-tuning game where you're hoping for that nice lucky round that crosses 30, but that doesn't end the game. That gives whoever did that a bonus, but then one more flip, and then everybody does one more round. Whoever scores the most on that final turn is going to win the game. So you might have some awesome cards that then get removed from your deck after you triggered the endgame. So it's an interesting little final showdown at the end. It also uses a dynamic market, sort of like King Domino, where the cards are ranked a little bit and they have numbers on them and they're going to be put in that order in the market and that market goes more expensive as it goes along the road.

49:17Tom Vasel:But if you get a number of strong cards in one round, that pushes a few of those strong cards down to the cheap section of the board. And so you can get some interesting deals if you are able to buy them first. I like the theme. I think the deck tuning is a lot of fun. Very happy with flip tunes. The Four Doors is my hula hoop. It was a bit of a journey because I was excited about this as well. We talked about it in the preview episode. The Four Doors is a new cooperative game from Matt Leacock, as well as Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle, who have a nice pedigree of roll-and-write games, as well as some other stuff.

49:53Tom Vasel:They're known for Fleet the Dice Game. So, good stuff. This is from Happy Camper. It's a family-weight co-op game. Not very expensive. I think it was$20 to$25. When I opened it up, though, I was a little disappointed at how close it skewed to Forbidden Island. It almost felt like Forbidden Island, the card game. You've got four doors. You need to get relics from each of those four doors. There are different suits, basically, collecting the cards that are going to do that. But then nasty spirits are coming in on the side, and they're going to try and close those doors. And if they reach one threshold, they're going to half-close the door.

50:29Tom Vasel:And then if they reach the threshold again, they're going to close the door completely. And if you have not gotten the relic from that particular door, you're going to lose. You have to collect all four, get everybody to the helicopter. No, wait, sorry, the top of the lighthouse and play a particular card to escape. And as soon as I was reading that, I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is just Forbidden Island, the card game. However, we started playing and a couple of the big twists are that there is not a good deck and a bad deck in the four doors. It's one deck. depending on when you are drawing the cards.

51:04Tom Vasel:They're going to be used either as good cards in your hand or bad cards heading up on the doors. The doors have two sides to them, a left and a right side, and that's where the stacks are going to be. If they reach four, then bad stuff happens. So you have all of these cards. If you spend your resources to remove the ghost cards, the bad cards from the doors, they will go back into the system. But if those doors fill up and cascade, those cards get removed into what they call the hollow, and they're now out. And eventually you start running out of cards if you let this stuff happen. So you have to keep the cards in the system to keep things moving, and that presents some new difficulties, some novel challenges.

51:45Tom Vasel:I was very, very happy with that. The other cool thing is that when you get one of these relics, effectively the statues from Forbidden Island, but it's a little card token, it gives you something you can do with that suit of cards that you can no longer use. So now you can spend orange cards to do something cool instead of just having them be chaff in the deck, which is also really, really cool. The cards can be used for actions as well as fighting off the demons and for movement and all sorts of things. It feels, when it's all done, it feels similar, but also different enough to be a recommendation.

52:23Tom Vasel:and I was pleasantly surprised by the four doors.

52:27Eric Summerer:I don't think I would be surprised. I'm expecting good things from this game. I'm expecting good things from this company.

52:35Tom Vasel:I think it was the slight disappointment when I opened it up, but yeah.

52:39Eric Summerer:It was the journey.

52:40Tom Vasel:It was the journey. I kind of want to play both now.

52:43Eric Summerer:At this point, like one right after the other. Do it. Do it. I've heard mixed bag, Julie, about flip tunes, so I'm curious.

52:51Tom Vasel:I liked it. I've heard multiple plays. It could start to go down, but I'll have to play it again to try that out.

52:58Eric Summerer:Well, report on it once you have. Speaking of reporting, folks, that is it. We're reporting at the end of this episode. It's over. We have a brief bit of a breather here. There are things coming up in the future, obviously, and Essen looms in the horizon like a vulture of evil. Oh, it looms.

53:19Eric Summerer:But it's coming. but in the I don't know I'm making up I'm making up word pictures on the spot where you still haven't got caught up in a sleep from Gen Con is what I'm hearing one more day I feel and I will be there one more day alright folks well thanks so much for watching don't forget or listening sorry don't forget to sign up for Dice Tower West we'll see you later until next time I'm Tom Vassell I'm Julie Ahern

53:46Tom Vasel:and I'm Eric Sommerer

53:48Eric Summerer:and we'll see you again at the table

53:51Tom Vasel:Thanks for listening. At the Table is produced by Tom, Julie, and Eric with assistance from the team at Dice Tower Studios. You can find us online on Facebook or on BoardGameGeek in the Dice Tower 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 that time all the sumo wrestlers got off the subway at the same time is brought to you by Lightning Train. Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

54:25so you don't want to do a little bit of the singing we could just it's still running through

54:29Eric Summerer:my head so yeah i gotta get it out somehow sing for me sing sing and dance