At The Table with The Dice Tower - Going East 2025

12:31Eric Summerer:You mean so clover. Yes. You're mixing things. That's so clover. That's a new TV show coming. It's like that's so Raven. I mashed up Disney with you now. No, that's not on the list actually. Wow. Well, not in the top 50. My secret inquiries backfired. Got it.

12:51Tom Vasel:I think Cretaceous Rails was out a lot.

12:53Eric Summerer:Yes. Cretaceous Rails was number 15 or tie for number 15. Okay. And again, that one would have probably got checked out more. That one also was in the Hot Games room. Right. So that was also being played consistently. Mostly this one, the biggest complaint whenever people played it was, how do you buy it? And I was like, I don't know.

13:12Tom Vasel:Yeah.

13:12Eric Summerer:It's one of those Kickstarters that came, you backed it, and I don't think they made too many extra copies. So that's kind of a bummer. But maybe that means it will be reprinted. All right. I'm curious. How did Fromage do? Well, Fromage was tie for number four. Oh, there we go. All right. It was a three-way tie, Bomb Busters Fromage and River Valley Glassworks. All very popular games. And again, I was like, I guess I should have had an extra copy of Fromage. But Fromage was in the Hot Games room.

13:40Tom Vasel:Yep, as was River Valley Glassworks. Like two or three copies were in there, I think.

13:44Eric Summerer:Yeah, in fact, looking here, the top games. So the top game of Hot Street, that was not in the Hot Games room. But number two, Lord of the Rings Duel for Middle Earth was in the Hot Games room. Number three, Toy Battle was in the Hot Games room. And then the three-way tie for number four were in the Hot Games room. And then the tie for number seven, these were not in the Hot Games room because I thought, well, one was Castle Combo. And the other one, I thought the hotness for this was over, but it's not. Sky Team continues. Wow.

14:17Tom Vasel:That's a lot of small two-player games.

14:20Eric Summerer:It is, and that's why they get checked out. But if I had to pick a game of the con, it would be one of the number nines. One of the number nines was Kelp. But we had two copies in the library. We had two copies in Hot Games Room. And I saw people bringing their own copies and playing it. Considering this game can take two, three hours, that's pretty impressive. And this is SETI.

14:40Tom Vasel:Ah, yes.

14:41Eric Summerer:SETI is just being played everywhere. And it's a longer game. So if we went by time, this and Galactic Cruise maybe.

14:53Tom Vasel:Yeah, there was a lot of Galactic Cruising going on too.

14:56Eric Summerer:Yeah. Yeah, but that one didn't make the top list, but I'm pretty sure it's because each game is four hours. True. So we're going by a number of checkouts. And SETI was one that I had several people ask if I wanted to play, but we could never get a hold of a copy. Huh? Yeah, well, I tried. I air-shipped one in, you know, and it went to the wrong address. Oh, no. And then we had someone get it, and then we had one come to the right address, but it came after we left, and someone from Fort Myers drove that up for us. Oh, that's really nice. Well, they were coming to the con, but yes, it was still very nice of them.

15:27Tom Vasel:That's pretty awesome. That was said he was on my list to play, and it just never, the stars never aligned. I have played it. I just, you know, it was one of those ones that it's hard to find people to play with. And my gaming group was like, okay, we've played it once. We're good. But you go to a convention so that you can find people who will play larger, heavier games, which didn't work out for me as much this time.

15:53Eric Summerer:Okay. Well, you know what? Maybe at the next con, the three of us need to just play a game together.

15:57Tom Vasel:That does seem like a good idea.

15:59Eric Summerer:All right. I'll schedule it.

16:02Tom Vasel:I did play a game with Julie. She taught me Mezin. We didn't even have time to finish it. We didn't even have time to finish it. We didn't even play. We played 25 % of Mezin.

16:13Eric Summerer:Yep. We did. What happened? What made it end early?

16:16Tom Vasel:We had a booth shift.

16:18Eric Summerer:You had one booth shift. One.

16:20Tom Vasel:Yes, and we both looked at each other and said, we have to be at the same place. We might as well play this game together. Yep. Next question. Next question. What is your favorite old game to teach? We have so many new games here, but, you know, we also have a lovely library, and I've had a lot of people. Actually, I've heard quite a few people talking about how they've been playing their old favorites, and they get together with their friends and this is where they can play them. Yeah. What is your favorite old game to teach? Boy, I think last year I would have said Power Grid. You did say Power Grid.

16:53Tom Vasel:I did say Power Grid. I played it a lot with groups and I think we talked about it on the show. But if I had to go back a little bit, I'm going to stick with Freedom and Freeze. One of my favorite ones to pull off the shelf that most people haven't played and that I can still play in that shorter time period or talking about an hour or so is Fearsome Floors. the one where you're running from a monster, you're sliding on the little pools of blood and trying to escape, and you've got to move really fast, and they've got the cute little Scooby-Doo characters and the greasers and all sorts of stuff.

17:24Tom Vasel:And that one most people haven't seen, but you immediately grasp the idea. What it is. We are running from a monster. It's coming this way. We're going that way. We've got to get out the door. Here's how the movement rules work. And most people tend to enjoy it. That's nice. Nice. So you gave me these questions, you know, right before we started, and I haven't had time to think about them. Well, that's what editing is for. So we can cut out all of the thinking noise. All right. That's going to be a Kinesia game. That much I know. Okay. I mean, so Raw would be a nice one. That one's not a bad one to pull off the shelf.

18:00Tom Vasel:Agreed. And teach to new folks. And the new production makes it feel like a newer game. I haven't played the newer one. Really? Uh-uh. Haven't even looked at it. Oh, it's so pretty. But I will say, I played, so speaking of it, when I was a teacher, I would cycle through games. So recess, indoor recess, or end of the school year especially, when you have downtime and people could earn board game time with me. So I had games out. But the ones that I played were the more advanced. So they felt very grown up playing with me. And Raw was one of those games. that, and I, but it had to be kind of, it wasn't just an earn it, it was also the kids who could sit long enough to play something like that, but Raw was definitely one of them.

18:44Yep. So that is something that I love to teach, but I've taught all ages.

18:47Tom Vasel:Yeah. So definitely, yeah, that is a good one. Yeah, what about card games, Kinesia card games? Like money or trendy? No, I don't do card games. You don't like those? Well, never mind then. I don't play the card games. Forget I mentioned it. Not that I don't play them. They're just not what I gravitate to. Yeah. I will say I did like walking around the con and just seeing people play everything.

19:13Eric Summerer:Old games, new games, long games, short games. I don't know. I'm always kind of tickled by that to see people playing just whatever. I taught Race for the Galaxy three times. Three times? Wow. People had never played it before. Yeah. I had a chance to – I was playing just – in the morning I would always come in with my container of small card games that were mostly – but then during the day I was like, I'm going to play Space Base. I'm going to play Nidavoli or games I like a lot. Space Base, by the way, the new expansion has a card in it that says you can buy the card for 150 gold and you win.

19:53Eric Summerer:Whoa. So there's a new you win card. So I have a new goal. And in this game, I got a money engine going, and I got 102 gold. That is not enough to win. So I was like, all right, if everyone else just stops getting points for a while, calm down, everybody. And just let me save up my money. I can pull this off. But it did not happen. So strange. How unusual. That's impressive. 150 gold is a ton, considering the board goes to 40. and the most expensive card is usually, there's a few that cost like$35 or something. You don't need more than that. And I'm not buying anything, just watching everyone else get points.

20:35Eric Summerer:Like, slow down. Of course, everyone's like, we know what you're doing. We don't believe you. You can't sneak 150 gold. People are like, what are you doing? Oh, I'm just thinking. I haven't found what I want to buy yet. Just window shopping.

20:53Tom Vasel:Don't you lose the money if you don't spend it?

20:55Eric Summerer:No, no, no. You lose money in space space. If you spend any money, you lose all of it.

21:00Tom Vasel:Ah, so if you buy nothing, you just sit there.

21:03Eric Summerer:Yeah. Often people will do it early in the game. They'll skip a turn. It feels bad to skip a turn because you want to buy a card every turn. Right. But you might skip a turn to get a better card on the following turn.

21:13Tom Vasel:Right. I guess it's been a while since I used that rule. I'm just like, buy. I'll buy that.

21:18Eric Summerer:Yeah, well, it makes sense. I mean, usually your best bet is to buy something every turn. And if not, it's a fun way to play the game. But yeah, that was my almost could have had it. Mostly I was teaching hot streak, and I taught that several times. I played one game of Ready, Set, Bet. I saw that one. And after that was done, I was like, whew, my voice. Oh, that's right. So here I'm playing Ready, Set, Bet. And I roll the same horse twice in a row. And behind me, a voice goes, bonus. I'm like, what the? Oh, it's scary.

21:52Tom Vasel:But I didn't flinch. I stood behind you for like five minutes while you were in between rounds setting up for the next one. And people would come by and they're waving at me. I'm like, quiet. Tom doesn't know I'm here. So that I could do that to throw you off. And you didn't even flinch. Inside I flinched. Okay, good. Meanwhile, I scurried away and played an entire afternoon of my father's work. Wow.

22:19Eric Summerer:Yeah. I'm starting to think my father's work is an RPG and a board game. It kind of is, which is – I was okay with it. Right, but it's not like a combat one. It's a resource management RPG. That is what it feels like. How many people did you play it with? Four of us. Ooh, four is a long game. And we played a new – so I had played one of the boxes. So this was the second box that I've played. So I have one more to have played each one of them once. But I – yeah, and it was long. But it was really satisfying. What is box two? Is that the disease? Yes. I jumped right to the third one. Yeah, see, in this game, there's a disease, Eric, and you are trying to cure it.

23:05Eric Summerer:But the way you cure it could be anything. I could be like, well, I'll just make people immortal. I'll turn them into zombies. That cures a disease. Stuff like that. Because you are Frankenstein or one of his compatriots. Well, you're generations of. You're actually the son of Frankenstein and then the grandchild and then the great grandchild. As you do the three different generations.

23:25Tom Vasel:It's one I've always wanted to try, but apparently it's a long one. It doesn't have to be. If we had less players who were more RPG players, I feel like, or at least we were playing it much more like an RPG, so we were like herding cats playing it. But we had a great time doing it. That was the important part. Speaking of long games, I played my 97th play of Merchant of Venus at East, and now I'm trying to figure out what to do for number 100. Did you bring it with you? Maybe that's what we should play, and you can just crush us. There you go. Yes, I brought it with me. I have my travel copy. I should probably just remove the copy in the library.

24:04Tom Vasel:Sometimes I check it out and just return it immediately so that the stats show that somebody took it out.

24:08Eric Summerer:You know that I can figure out stats, right? I'm not dumb over here. I can see how long games are checked out.

24:14Tom Vasel:Oh. So sometimes I check it out and walk around with it for two hours, and then I bring it back.

24:20Eric Summerer:I played a good game of Cosmic Encounter where everybody backstabbed everyone the entire game, and nobody got upset about it at all, which was really fun. That's the magic part. That second part. A couple came, and the guy, Ian, his name was, he was like, oh, that is my favorite game. And five minutes in, everyone said, have you played this before? You know, because he was playing so chaotically, and he was just like, chaos. house and then we just played and his wife made an unbreakable deal with another guy at the table which apparently then broke at the last second and she and her husband won but they definitely were not planning for that to happen it just worked out so i guess all's well that ends well but either way it was it was a very fun game i think you can something i mean there's no question at cons you can sometimes have not great gaming experiences true but i think the best gaming experiences that happen at cons.

25:13Eric Summerer:You just can have some really great games sometimes.

25:15Tom Vasel:Yeah, it's sort of that fresh slate of relationships sometimes, and you build them just based on what's going on in the game, and you don't have any other backstory to back that up.

25:27Eric Summerer:Yeah, I don't know. There were so many people that I walked around and talked to people and had a great time. I will say one of the most checked out games, Deep Regrets, is missing. Oh. It was You know, we double check the library when we pack it up, but sometimes games get missed. We triple check when we get here to the studio, and that one was gone. So if you accidentally have it, let me know. I'd love to get it back because Deep Regret's not an easy game to get. Interesting.

25:56Tom Vasel:I don't have it.

25:58Eric Summerer:Eric. Eric immediately gets offensive as he knows he should. To be fair, that's one that I'm really bummed that I did not back the Kickstarter and really wanted. So, you know, it wasn't me, but it could have been me. Oh, my word.

26:13Tom Vasel:That would be a power move. It would. So, since Tom has left us alone here in the booth and... To his detriment. To his detriment. We need to plan. Yeah. What game do you think would be hilarious to make Tom play at a convention? Just a crowd is gathered and Tom now has to play this. Happy Salmon. Happy Salmon would be fun. Like Vicious Fishes. Yep. Pie Face. Oh, yeah. Yeah. One of the several different bathroom potty games. Yes, any one of those. Any one of them. That would be good.

26:51Eric Summerer:How about Cards Against Humanity?

26:54Tom Vasel:Cards Against Humanity. I'm sure he would be delighted to play Cards Against Humanity. Yeah, but then if I would have had to play it. With his children or his mother. See, but Cards Against Humanity, if we were playing them, that means we'd be playing, and I do not want to punish myself like that. That is true. That is true. I mean, there are so many games that Tom has refused to play over the years that he said, I'll never play. Oh, man, what does he say? I will never play this game. I'm sure there's a bunch of heavy Euros that he would probably not sit down at, but that's not fun to make him do.

27:30Tom Vasel:That's just any one of the after dark versions of games. Yeah. Any drinking game that would probably... See, but if we're trying to get him to play them, I feel like instead of taking it and making a drinking game, we turn it into a dessert eating game and we could get him to play it. Ooh, if we involved key lime pie in some way... Right. And so instead of alcohol, you have tiny little spoons of dessert or something like that, and you have to do a quick bite of key lime. A little rondelle game. And each rondelle space has an amuse-bouche. Or like the jelly bean amuse-bouche. An amuse-bouche. And it's a little key-lined tart.

28:15I feel like we could get him to do it. There are ways. There are...

28:20Tom Vasel:Dessert is how we make it happen. Yeah. And it's also pie-face. And it's also pie-face. We smoosh two games together. Excellent. I think we have a plan. I'm in. So there were lots of other things going on. We had events pretty much the entire time. We were spread out a lot more. Tom mentioned that we're in a larger space this year. So the hot games and the demo games were in a separate section, separate room, basically. And the events were well away, like all the way in the back corner of the hall. And it was even like three event rooms. They split up the space a little bit so we could have multiple things going on at once in the event space, which was interesting.

29:04Eric Summerer:Didn't stop people from going to events, though, that's for sure. Agreed.

29:07Tom Vasel:No, we had giant versions of games.

29:08Eric Summerer:You had a lot of people come eat parsley.

29:10Tom Vasel:I did. It was a delicious, all these foodies showed up to eat parsley. No, I had about, I want to say 30 to 40 in the audience, and we passed the microphone around in sort of a zigzag pattern in the rows of the audience. They were all giving me commands, and they helped guide the robot dog through the space station. Did they? We made a hero of a space mop. It was a joyous experience, and they all managed to survive and not get blown up. I mean, I think they did get blown up. They got blown up once, and we reset. They saved the game for each other.

29:46Eric Summerer:That's fine. I was amused. I watched Julie show Andrew Bosley. He can't draw. Actually, it was Eric who did that. Eric was a jerk, everyone, to Andrew Bosley.

29:58Tom Vasel:Andrew Bosley is the best sport ever. Honestly. He really is. He really is. Because not only did he, this was a game of Pictionary, and then there was a panel of Dice Tower folks, Julie one of them. We also had Zee and Mike in there. So they were guessing what Andrew was drawing, and then each round they would choose an envelope, and that would be a new set of restrictions. And that should be so easy because he's so talented, right? Except no. Yes. So we had simple things like you have to hold the pen from the very end. You can only use straight lines. He was blindfolded at one point. But not only did he accept all of these restrictions with aplomb, he also like climbed all over the stage and got on his knees to draw stuff and was just like really into it the whole time.

30:44Eric Summerer:He also did a pretty good job. His restrictions, he was still 10 times better than I am at art. It was my favorite was when he used stick. I was going to say post-its. He made a post-it giraffe, and you knew it was a giraffe, and quickly, because we had a timer.

31:00Tom Vasel:He was amazing at the post-it round and the stamping round. We gave him, like, an auto-stamper, and he had to make, like, mountains and trees. That's pretty funny. It was so noisy. And I had to brace the easel. We were worried about the easel collapsing on this round, and he just was slamming the paper with this stamp, and it worked. That game could have gone horribly off the rails, and it didn't, and that I'm just delighted with. no it was great he also was very patient in the round where he had to tell us what to draw yes the final round was actually called andrew bosley can't draw and he had to be gordon ramsay

31:36Eric Summerer:telling you what to do which was fun he's not gordon ramsay though because he's very nice no he was more like my dad teaching me how to drive where he was like that's a train wreck but okay no no he'd be like he'd say draw a circle they draw a giant circle he's like i meant smaller

31:51Tom Vasel:The other direction, but you're good. You're good. You're doing fine. That was a joy. And then we had some panels. We had other game shows. There was a movie showing as well. All sorts of stuff going on.

32:04Eric Summerer:Yeah, The Hobby, it's called, and that's coming out very soon on streaming. I like Amazon and stuff. So definitely check that out. A lot of people enjoyed that, watching that as they sat in the freezer and watched it. It was very cold back in the event.

32:20Tom Vasel:It was very cold. I mean, convention spaces tend to be very cold. They just need to crank the AC. And also, Florida loves its AC, I've noticed. But just the way that the rooms get divided, and if there's lots of people in one room, it sort of evens out. But the event space would be empty for a good portion of the day, and then everyone would come into this ice box for some sort of event. It was interesting. Bring a hoodie. We sold out of hoodies in the booth.

32:48Eric Summerer:You would think – I was going to say, you would think we had some sort of hoodie side gig going on at the booth. We don't bring enough. I was like, we should bring more. And that cracked it, kept it down a little bit more. You absolutely sold out of hoodies. You make so much money.

33:01Tom Vasel:I believe they were making more hoodies every night to restock.

33:06Eric Summerer:They were not. But I did walk around the room. I saw a few people wrapped in blankets. I was like, hmm. All right. We're going to have to look in the AC. I mean, I'm all – AC needs to be cold if you're listening because if it's not, you get too many people in a room and suddenly it's unbearable. It doesn't work, yeah.

33:22Tom Vasel:There has to be a medium.

33:23Eric Summerer:But it was colder than normal, I think.

33:25Tom Vasel:Yes, it was. So one of the things we didn't really talk about, the dexterity hallway. We set up a whole bunch of big, giant dexterity games in the hall, and people can just show up and play them. Four boards of Crokinole, some really hard-to-find games or ones you might not have been able to see, like pirate billiards, and some interesting, like, Crokinole-style flicking games that you don't normally run into. A nice tabletop curling set. Really, really cool. But around the corner was Tom's coveted Pitch Car collection. And I wanted to know, you've been running the Pitch Car Championship of the World at Dice Tower East for many years now, and I want to know, Tom, your design tips when it comes to building a good Pitch Car course.

34:12Eric Summerer:it doesn't matter really i mean okay good thank you moving on people are you have to realize that people it depends i had a lot of people playing this time it was a very crowded event um i always have a jump in the event because everyone just likes to watch people make the jump and if someone does a good job everyone cheers at the end of our game there was a guy who won and he said well i one but the guy in second place had this amazing shot where he shot it through a corkscrew I had made and it went through then rolled down and went around the corner and landed in first place at one point and everybody just lost it because it was such an amazing shot and that sort of thing is fun I've 3D printed some weird stuff but I always make it long straightaways and then something weird that will cause all sorts of havoc and then some more normality and then havoc all the way to the end because if someone gets ahead I want them to have a miserable time until they get to the end.

35:11Eric Summerer:But, yeah, it's just fun. I don't even make a circular track because I know we won't finish. If someone does finish, that's the end of the race. Otherwise, at the end of 50 minutes or whatever, I run them for 50 minutes. It seems like the perfect length, and whoever's ahead wins. We did have two guys shoot it, and then they were like, I'm out. Nope, and they left. I just want to point out that I've 3D printed some weird stuff is pretty much the synopsis of our entire niche industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of that. Well, you guys were doing weird stuff at the booth. What was going on there?

35:51Tom Vasel:All right, new question. New question. We've been at this a while, and it seems like Tom is not grasping the concept of Rose Thorn Hula Hoop. He had it. He had it for a year, and then he lost it. I don't know what happened there. I don't know either. We need to figure out a way to get this across to Tom. I'm thinking flashcards could work. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We could just drill it. And he gets a gold star every time he remembers. We'll make a little chart. We go with the demerit system. Oh, all right. The opposite. He's going to lose points. He'll lose. He will start with 500 gold stars, and we'll start ripping them off the page.

36:39Tom Vasel:In all your years of teaching, did that ever work? I never tried it because I valued my income. I just see you pacing in front of the class. And my professionalism. You all begin with 500 gold stars. You will gradually lose them as the time continues on. All right, so we could. Flashcards, maybe. Demerit system, maybe not. I can see Tom responding so well to that. like any other human being. Okay. How about, you know, one of the best ways to learn something is through song. A la Schoolhouse Rock. Right, yes. You know, we could take a note from the Chipmunks, the Chipmunks song. Podcast, podcast time is here.

37:23You have to listen to us, I fear.

37:26Tom Vasel:Oh, I like that. Some games are good and some are bad. When you don't like them, we are sad. Oh my. Okay, we're almost there. Some games feel like a loop-de-loop. And those we call a loop. I think we... Nailed it. Tom, please learn our way to rate the games we play each date. Oh, wow. Sondheim. You don't have to worry, but we got it. I will say I saw Camilla lose spectacular spectacularly in giant Jenga. There was quite a crowd to watch that. I came out after, I think it was after our booth shift. We walked out of the room and there was this giant tower. They're standing on chairs. I think there was a theoretical limit to Jenga where you could, in theory, get every piece to be a single piece or a single or double or whatever it is.

38:28Tom Vasel:You can't pull any more pieces out of the tower. And they were very close to that theoretical limit. And finally got to the end and collapsed the tower. It was epic. And they had drawn a big crowd in the hallway. Everyone applauded when it was over. And then they just scattered because they didn't want to clean that up. Nobody wanted to clean it up. All right. Anything else we want to mention? Any other cool demos? We're going to talk about specific games in just a little bit.

38:52Eric Summerer:Yeah, no. I wouldn't say thank you to all the publishers who came. There's a lot of little games being showed off. And everyone had such great attitudes. It was just – it was fantastic talking to everybody, coming in. I always come in the very early morning shift and there's only like five people there. But that lasts for all of like 10 minutes and then more and more people show up. Yes, they've learned. They've learned that you're there early. Yes. You've conditioned. Well, when I go to bed though – and I usually go to bed around 10 and I look around and I'm like goodbye. That's usually because there's so many people there.

39:25Eric Summerer:I was there. So, yeah, we played – I got to play Revenant Society with Brian Drake. I got the Friday night all-play first look so people could see previews of games that are coming out. It was super fun and very well attended. There were people waiting to play games. So it went from, sure, you can play a full game to, we're going to play like a half of a game. Then I'm sorry, you're going to have to move on type of thing. But everybody was a really good sport. Everybody loves being there. I think that's happened a couple years in a row. So that was really fun. And it's really fun to demo things that are new and shiny.

40:05Tom Vasel:Yeah. Big shout out to all the volunteers as well. We've cultivated almost a staff that reassembles every year and just makes things happen. They know what they're doing and they're doing it with a smile. And even those late night shifts, Tom, you go to bed and you're like, I'll see you folks later. There are still folks on staff and making sure everything is working properly and then come in early the next morning. Absolutely have the mission statement of making sure that everybody's having a good time and playing games.

40:37Eric Summerer:Yeah, it was just it was fantastic. So thank you to everybody who came, you know, kind of sad that it's over. But also I was like, all right, let's go to the next thing. Let's get this library home now, which we did. And it all made it here, except for deep regrets. Um, and, uh, yeah. So we got it already set back up. It's set up, ready to go for the next one. More games. And, oh, now I got a lot of games to review. Yeah. Speaking of reviewing, we should talk about some. Let's do it. All right.

41:10Tom Vasel:They say that every rose has its thorn, but not every rose has a hula hoop. What have you been playing, Julie? So I feel like both of these are ones that Eric has preceded. I'm just I'm just copying Eric. But let's talk first about my rose, which was Positano in the hot games room. So I played it this weekend for the first time. Now I saw it at Origins. They were Slugfest games was like diagonally across from us. And I just saw people flocking to that booth. the whole time to play it. And I wasn't surprised. It's very pretty. But getting to play it, I can see why people enjoyed it. So it was definitely a rose for me.

42:01One to four players. It's lighter than I thought it was going to be. So you are playing, we are stacking cubes to emulate the very colorful houses that are on the cliffs of Positano in Italy, which is a pretty big vacation spot. What you're doing is on your turn, you are bidding, you take two cards, you put them together, one is a set number, and the other is the modifier. So you have a range of plus five to plus 22 in various increments. And each one of those you're going to add to the three different numbers on the other card, which are your bid. And there are three numbers, one for each stack of tokens that you can take.

42:46One stack is for the square, the space location that you're going to place your building. The second one is for how many cubes you can buy that round. And then the third are the modifiers and the roof. So at the end of the game, what you're doing is based on the windows that are visible on your buildings and the roof you're multiplying. And that's the simplest of concepts. Genuinely trying to track, has anybody else used their plus 22 modifier yet?

43:23Eric Summerer:You know what? I really need not just, I don't just need a gold. I need to upgrade that other one from a silver to a gold because somebody built in front of this other one. So that silver is actually worth a lot of points at the end because nobody's built in front of it. And I have a lot more windows so I can upgrade and get more points. That piece of it, that strategy was delightful in something that was so short. So it was a lot more strategy than I thought it was going to be when I walked over and looked at it. And I was like, oh, it's got a toy factor. You get to play with cubes. I'm good.

43:57And then I played it. I was like, oh, no, no. There is some fun strategy to do this. I played several games of it. I saw somebody win with just the gelato, which is kind of your bonus, Or I should say, when you don't get a good quote-unquote card, usually there's a little gelato cone on it, which is worth one victory point at the end. I saw somebody win with gelato, which I never thought I'd see. So there are multiple ways to win the game, some of them surprising. And that was my rose. Cool. And my hula hoop, which was the surprise one, came out of the field with diatoms, which is a 25th century.

44:42You are building, you're using hexagons that have different colors on them. And then at the nexus of whenever you complete a close off a circuit of different hexes forming a complete space with no empty pie, whatever those colors are, those are the number of the type of shape that you can get. So if there was three triangles worth of green, you would get a green triangle. If there's one triangle of green, you get a circle. so you're doing that and then you're building them on your own board to make patterns that are the points at the end so it's abstract pattern recognition point solid and I didn't know like again on the lighter side I was again thinking oh it's just going to be pretty and didn't think about it at all really and so I didn't think to buy it my game group brought it over and I'm already obsessed because the pattern piece of it, what you're going to put where, because you can't guarantee you're going to get a star for a specific space.

45:59But thinking about it in the terms of you have to have matching colors or matching shapes that line up will give you the points was delightful. So that was my hula hoop. And that's Diatoms. It's one to four players, and 25th Century publishes it. Cool.

46:17Eric Summerer:Have you played Diatoms, Eric?

46:18Tom Vasel:I have not. I haven't played either of these. I think Julie was thinking of a different Eric.

46:22Eric Summerer:What? She was thinking of Tom, who has played both of these. But anyway, thanks, Julie. Oh, wow. Yikes. All right. I agree with you, though. They're both good games.

46:32Tom Vasel:Yeah, I looked at Positano, and it looked, at least component-wise, similar to Tower Up, with building buildings and stuff, but it sounds just like the gameplay is very, very different. Yes. So I was able to grab off the library shelf. I showed up early that day, and people were running for stuff. And I was like, I really don't know what I want. But then I spotted on the shelf a game I'd been wanting to try. And that is the newest horrified World of Monsters, which I had not yet had a chance to play. Of course, that's not really going to be true in another month or so. I think the D &D version is coming out in just a little bit.

47:04Tom Vasel:World of Monsters adds Cthulhu into the mix. It's like a mystical Nexus village that you're in. Cthulhu's in there. The Sphinx is in there. The Yeti is in there. and uh oh shang shi is in there um so four monsters which is less than previous editions of this game it also includes rules uh horrified in the last two editions have added rules to allow you to mix and match the monsters so instead of saying dracula goes next they say the red hand monster goes next and that could mean any number of monsters that you can add in from other sets So you actually can combine World of Monsters and the Greek monsters together in some combination.

47:48Tom Vasel:So we played Cthulhu, we played Chang-Chi, and we played the Yeti monsters. And it's very similar to other horrified games. You're collecting items around the board, moving around, trying to avoid the baddies as they attempt to attack you, escorting the, they call them legends here. Actually, they call them both Legends and Townsfolk because they can't quite decide in the rulebook. We'll get to that in a second. What they want to do. So very similar to other Horrified Games. And then, of course, the difference is going to be the way that these monsters operate. Chang-Chi had us building a sword, which we could then attack him with the Yeti.

48:30Tom Vasel:We had to escort his kids home and then get rid of the Yeti himself. and then Cthulhu, usually it's a two-step process to get rid of these monsters. Cthulhu is a four-step process. You have to get a bunch of items, then escort Cthulhu into a portal, which sends you to R 'lea, and then you can go there and battle him and do an extra couple things, shackle him with items, and then eventually take him out. We did manage to do that, but not without some significant difficulty in understanding the rules, and this is where this becomes a thorn for me. The rulebook for Horrified in the last two editions has been, let's say, muddy.

49:09Tom Vasel:Some confusion in how things are worded. And what bothers me the most is that if you look at, there's like these placards that describe how the monsters work. And usually when you have a question about something like that, you go to the rulebook and it will give you examples or more verbose explanation for what you're doing. The last two editions, this one included, they just reprint what is on the placard already in the rulebook. That's not helpful. We need to see diagrams. We need to see examples. We need to see more information than what is already there. And I don't understand why they haven't done that.

49:48Tom Vasel:And the R 'lia concept, they actually, it's on the back of a placard that you have to find. Like, for more information on how R 'lia works, check out this little footnote in the bottom of one of the other things. It was very confusing. We sat there just like scratching our head on how to defeat Cthulhu for a long time. And we're not the only ones that are thinking this because we went looking for answers. So I like having more Horrified. I think the first two editions are just so beautifully tuned, it's disappointing to see these last couple. And so that's what makes it a thorn for me, Horrified World of Monsters.

50:25Tom Vasel:Much happier with a game called Peaks. This is my rose. Peaks is an engine building mountain climbing game. You have a little player board, a pretty significant player board. You're trying to move around the world and climb various famous peaks, a bunch of mountains that Tom knows by heart. And each of these mountains is going to require a certain amount of energy. You've got like a stamina track and you've got an energy track. The stamina is what you will reset to automatically or most efficiently. and you can bump that up over the course of the game. You have three actions on your board. You've got a rest action, which helps you regain your stamina.

51:04Tom Vasel:You can either go up to your, let's see, it's energy versus stamina. You can go up to your stamina level for one action or you can go up a certain amount, say you were already at your stamina level and you can add a little bit more energy. You can prepare, which lets you get equipment. You need some, some of these mountains require carabiners. They require pitons. They require, what else is on here? A tent, a pickaxe, stuff like that. You can acquire goods and you can also climb the mountains, which is spending that energy, getting rewards for doing so. And you can also climb other people's mountains.

51:42Tom Vasel:You'd be like, I'm going to climb K2 now. And if somebody else has the energy required to do that and the equipment required to do that, you can't say no. They can be like, yeah, I'm here too. We're going to do this together. And they can get the rewards for climbing that. And so what do I take versus what do you take? There's usually two rewards on these cards and choosing whoever's leading the expedition chooses first. You can also upgrade these actions. So then when I take a prepare action, not only do I get one piece of equipment, I also get to draw more cards. Or I get to, this is also how you get cards into your hand.

52:17Tom Vasel:You basically announce you're going to climb this mountain and then climb it later. I can upgrade my rest action so I'm going to get more let's see what do I get oh I get bonuses moving around the board there's different regions where these mountains are and I can get bonuses for stopping in those regions when I travel to go climb said mountain lots of moving pieces you've got this board you're upgrading all the actions this is totally my jam I really really enjoyed my play of peaks

52:49Eric Summerer:I'm very much wanting to play this one so Good. Good. And your horrified comments echo everyone else who said the same thing. Agreed.

52:57Tom Vasel:I'm not the only one saying this, unfortunately. Yeah.

53:01Eric Summerer:Already, I don't know, a few years ago there was a game on Kickstarter called Radioactive Bees. I saw you playing this one. The theme is it's a tile-placing strategy game that resembles a post-apocalyptic beehive under construction. So we mocked it because it looks like an abstract game. that's about building a beehive, and we mocked it because what does this post-apocalyptic mutant bees have to do with anything? So we laughed at it. So someone hunted me down at Dice Tower East and made me play it. As a side note, folks, I decided to play it, but this is like a 1 % chance of this happening. Please do not try to do this.

53:43Eric Summerer:You need to play it the right way,

53:45Tom Vasel:and then you'll review it correctly.

53:46Eric Summerer:Yeah, I mean, there's stuff like that too, right? but that's I mean that's again I don't mind if people think differently than me but anyhow he was a very nice person and we played it but you know what I shouldn't have because it was bad but here's the thing I think it's only bad for me this is a game in which you place these pieces these little hex pieces on the board kind of in a hex grid sort of like you know blocus and things like that and you place them and if you can't place anywhere on the bottom level then you have to place on top of other pieces. On each of these hex pieces you have, they're all groups of three hexes, you have one or more of your bee shapes on them.

54:25Eric Summerer:If someone covers up your bee, you get points. So you kind of want them to cover up your bees. But at the end of a round, there's this very fiddly thing where every bee that's not covered up has a little tiny ring put in it. So in the future now, those bees are two to cover up. And if they don't get covered up, then a smaller ring goes inside that one. But you're not going to guess what happens if those don't get covered up. Is there a third ring? An even smaller ring goes inside that one. And then in the fourth round, if that doesn't get covered up, then a mutant bee gets put in it. At the end of the game, all your bees are worth one, two, three, or four points.

55:01Eric Summerer:And I just can't wrap my mind around the math here. Like, I don't want my bees covered up in round one. Then now they're worth two points when they get covered up. So wouldn't it have been better if they just got covered up in round one and two? But wait, if they get covered for rounds two and three, I get four points. And you know what I mean? It kind of comes into that. Should I let my bees get covered up or not? And with four players, I think maybe a two-player game would be fine. But tactics was out the window, right? You're just like, well, this is what I can do on this turn.

55:32Tom Vasel:Just have to fill up the board.

55:33Eric Summerer:But the fiddliness of putting those rings in at the end of every round, it was like, wow. And then you have to carefully unbuild what you've built because you don't want any of the rings to fall out. So, yeah, unfortunately, not a big fan of this one. This was a thorn. The next game is 13 Leaves, which I just spent some time looking for on Borgi Meat because I thought it was called 12 Leaves.

55:55Tom Vasel:But 13. You forgot about a leaf.

55:58Eric Summerer:Yeah, you're right. Okay, so this game has Cranial Creations published it, and the cards have beautiful pictures of leaves. And the back of the cards are green. They're really boring. But this is a card-shedding game. and in this game you there is in the deck I think there is two number one leaves and then there is three number twos and so on and so forth and there's eight sevens but then there's seven eights six sevens etc. until you get down to two thirteen leaves. That's the distribution. You get some cards given to you. You need to get rid of cards. So you play a card in the middle table. Let's say I play a five.

56:36Eric Summerer:So now Eric has to play a card lower than a five on one side of the five or a card higher. So he plays at 10. So now Julie has to play a card that's lower than a 5 or higher than a 10. Rude, Eric.

56:48Tom Vasel:I know.

56:49Eric Summerer:Yeah, it was pretty rude. But she plays a 10 because you can play on top of another card if you want to. You can also play as many cards as you want. So let's say Eric had played two 10s. Then Julie would have to play either a card that's 5 or lower or 10 or higher, but if it's 10 or higher she has to play two of them. Oh boy. Now I'm really a jerk. Yeah. Bad strategy too. unless you have a really fantastic hand.

57:14Tom Vasel:I have the 2.13. I played this at 3, and it was so ho-hum.

57:18Eric Summerer:I was like, what a boring game. Then I played it at 5, and it kind of came to life. It's basically a card-shedding game, but I enjoyed it. So my caveat here is don't play less than 4. Play 4 or 5. And good grief, they didn't even try it with a theme. But I guess that's better than Radioactive Bs. I'm complaining about both ends of the scale here. Radioactive Bs is like, there's a theme. I'm like, no, there's not. Don't lie to me. 13 Leaves is like, there's no theme. I'm like, I know, but could you at least pretend?

57:47Tom Vasel:So there's no pleasing you is what you're saying. We handed you radioactive bees, and what do you want?

57:55Eric Summerer:I want there to be a semblance of theme. By the way, folks, if you're looking for this game, 13 Leaves, it's the number 13, not the word 13. Oh, there you go. And we'll put that in the show notes. Also, you say there's no theme, and that's true, but it is quite lovely. It's more almost like the ink patterns of leaves or watercolor. Oh, they're gorgeous. It just bugs me that the back of the cards are just green.

58:24Tom Vasel:Not even an illustration? They're just plain green?

58:27Eric Summerer:Yep. Well, there's some faded green leaves that you can barely see unless you look closely at the cards. It would make a delightful den wallpaper. Oh, cool. I've been looking for that. Yeah. Yeah, the leaves themselves, the cards are great. But anyway, a nice little card-shedding game. I've been playing a lot of trick-taking card-shedding games lately because everyone's producing them stock. And they very rarely stand out to me. I find them to be amusing, but no one's going to talk about them ever again. This one I liked. So it's my hula hoop because I wasn't expecting to. All right.

59:03Tom Vasel:13 leaves.

59:04Eric Summerer:That is a hula hoop, right? did i get it right you did you did congratulations i'm so proud of myself me too the song helped i didn't hear the song no you didn't no you didn't but you will great i'm still looking forward to it all righty folks summer is here it's hot stay inside play board games um lots of great games we'd love to hear from you i need some tales of horror i need some questions that we can answer in the show. Send them to me at tomatdicetower.com.

59:38Tom Vasel:And next time Gen Con. That's true. We're talking Gen Con.

59:43Eric Summerer:But I always want to be clear because sometimes people are like, you always talk about cons. We're talking about the games from Gen Con which you'll be able to get regardless. And sometimes the food.

59:52Tom Vasel:And sometimes the food which you could get shipped I guess.

59:54Eric Summerer:Don't get that pizza looks so gross this year. Alright, anyhow. I'm Tom Vessel. I'm Julia Hearn. And I'm Eric Sommerer. And this has been a show about board games called At the Table, I think.

1:00:09Tom Vasel:We need another song. 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 Board Game Geek in the Dicetower Guild. Promotional consideration has been provided by publishers in the form of review copies of games. Dave Culling arranged our theme based on themes by Timothy Pinkham and our Cthulhu-tainted seabirds are brought to you by Deep Egrets. Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:00:42Eric Summerer:That was a good one.

1:00:43Tom Vasel:I'm really sorry. I stole the game so that I could make that pun.

1:00:47Eric Summerer:Yeah, okay. Bring back my deep egrets.