At The Table with The Dice Tower - Inflatable Ice

10:03Tom Vasel:No, no, no. I mean, we have notes. Yes. I have my 22 words and then we run with it from there. Fair enough. I was not there. I was playing games. Yeah. In fact, I played so many games. That's what I did. I sat at tables and played games with people. Do you have a number? I know Tom asked me at the end of last episode how many I thought I was going to play. Did you make a prediction as well? No, I did bring, I brought, I packed games to bring with me to play, which was some things that were new that I had just gotten at Origins and some that I have already played and talked about on the show so that I could do an equal amount of, hey, this is new.

10:49Can you do a teacher? We're going to learn together. And I know this game. Let's play this all together and I can teach it. So I played all of them. That much I know.

11:01Tom Vasel:Nice. Plus other things that I signed up for one teach. And then the rest of it was people that I met saying, hey, do you want to play this game with us? And it was delightful. I did a lot of going with the flow. You know, I'd have a block of time and I'd say, all right, I'm just going to see what green flags are up. And I ended up with some lovely discoveries. I played Millennium Blades for the first time. I'd never done that before. And that was just on a whim. Saw people setting up. I'm like, oh, this I never had a chance to play this. They're like, sit down. We're teaching right now. They were even packing it up.

11:37Tom Vasel:I had just, I was just commenting on them packing it up in the box and they said, no, we're going to teach you. Sit down. Here we go. We're going to do it again. But I think I predicted 20 games. I was pretty conservative. I had 26 unique games played at Dice Tower East this year, which was pretty good. And that's not even counting the curling or the parsley. So 28?

11:57Eric Summerer:Woohoo! I had 16, I think, but that includes Monday. I played a lot of games Monday. I, my wonderful, terrific wife, it always astounds me because she just will play anything, even if it's not in her wheelhouse. She'll say, I'll wander through the hall and look for a green flag and sit down and play it. So I'm like, all right, let's see what happens. The first time she said that, I went in and found her playing Marrakesh from Queen Games, this giant Euro-style game. When I was on, I was like, what did you think? She's like, yeah, that was a lot. But hey, whatever. So then she went in and all did it again.

12:31Eric Summerer:And she ended up playing the older XCOM game from Eric Lack. I was like, wait, what? What are you doing? She's like, that's what they want to play. And so I'm like, so here's the thing, folks. If you want to get any game played, my wife will apparently play with you.

12:48Tom Vasel:Just have to find Laura and flag her down.

12:50Eric Summerer:She does that on game nights here on Tuesday night. She'll come in and sit down at whatever table and be like, all right. I'm so lucky. I do wonder if that's how we got married. She was like, all right. But anyway.

13:02Tom Vasel:Just looking for a green flag. All right. So one of the things that you sort of have been teasing over the past several months, especially after West, is the reorganization of the library. Dice Tower West was doing a lot of genre-based organization. And I think you took that to heart and did some changes to the East Library. You want to talk about those, Tom?

13:24Eric Summerer:Well, I mean, for a lot of people, they probably wouldn't have noticed because there are a lot of the games that are in the same spots. But we did move hundreds of games. I was like, we'll move a few games. And then it spiraled. And then Wendy said, let's move even more. And I was like, wow. But we also added more flags and more things that kind of said, again, the folks who run Dicestar West, give them the credit. They came up with this idea. I've always wanted the Dicestar library to be as organized as you can. It's impossible to organize a board game library perfectly. It just is. Sure. Most libraries do it alphabetically, which I despise because it doesn't look good.

13:58Eric Summerer:And it also doesn't make sense. If I'm looking for a game, I don't go, I'm in the mood to play a B game. It just – unless I'm talking about Bs. But that's not normally going to happen. But yet if I organize a library and I could say, how do we split it? Cooperatives over here. Deck builders over here. Wait, that game is deck building and cooperatives. I'll put it between those two. And there's just all kinds of things that can happen. So you do it the best you can. And I'm pretty happy with it. I'm going to have to make some changes before the next couple events because we got new games that need to be added in.

14:38Eric Summerer:And then I always have that tough stuff. But I'm not planning to make sweeping changes for a while because it's exhausting to make all those changes to move stuff. But the library was decimated. I do not, as of the recording of this podcast, have the stats. The only stat I know is that the first game checked out was Eternal Dex because I was there to see which was the first game. And the last game checked in by 15 minutes being late, boo, was brass. Big shocker there.

15:08Tom Vasel:I heard they just had to tear it out of their hands.

15:11Eric Summerer:I didn't quite tear it, but I stood over the table and glowered at them because they were still scoring. not again folks we're not trying to be jerks when we say games have to be back by a certain time but cons need to shut down is if you are ever at a con and you're like hey i feel like talking to these people now that the the lights have closed for the final day you're kind of being unintentional or not a jerk because a lot of these people need to get on the road trucks come in they have to be there at very specific times to load up on these docks. It's a very big deal for us when the con is over that we shut it down.

15:50Eric Summerer:We're not trying to be jerks at all, but you kind of are when you don't follow the closing rules. And there's rules posted very clearly. So I worked in the library, it was a Friday morning doing a setup and talking to people who didn't turn their games in when And you're supposed to overnight, they're supposed to be checked in before the next day. And having somebody come in and be like, OK, here it is. They're like, nope, this this was missing all night. Oh, yeah. And it's posted right here to turn them in.

16:21Tom Vasel:OK, well, and you're like, but there's a reason. Yeah. And especially that that closing time, like those last few games needing to come in by a certain time. There's you don't see them because they're in the library room, but there's like 18 people just waiting. often for that final game to come in so that they can close down all the shelves, pack them up. Correct. It gets to the point where you're only waiting for one or two games, and everyone's just sort of standing there waiting for the four people in the other room to finish playing. So you don't see that usually, but that's what's happening at that point.

16:55So.

16:55Tom Vasel:So, speaking of library reorganization, I went on a discovery quest because my game, Merchant of Venus, not my game, but my favorite game.

17:05Eric Summerer:I know, it's your game.

17:06Tom Vasel:It is in the library, and it was moved. It was not on shelf four, as it has been in the past several years. And so I wondered if Tom made good on his threat to remove it. And so I had to go looking for it just to make sure to keep my mind at ease. And so I looked it up in the book. There's a nice little catalog. Found Merchant of Venus. Found that it's on shelf, I believe, 26 now. Safe and sound. No problem. But then next to it, there was a little note that said Playmat B16. I was like, playmat? What? And so then I went, found the playmat. There is a Merchant of Venus playmat in the library. And so I had to open that up and look at that because I'd never seen that before.

17:45Tom Vasel:I open it up. And for those that don't know, there are two versions of Merchant of Venus. There's the original Avalon Hill printing from 1988 or something. And then there's the 2000s Fantasy Flight Stronghold version. That's the one that's in the library. This playmat, lovely, gorgeous playmat, is for the Avalon Hill printing of the game. And Julie just posted a picture into our chat document here. So it's for the Avalon Hill version, which is the one that I bring to the convention. So, of course, I took it and played with it. It was wonderful. It's cool. Tom saw me doing it, had a great time playing with this mat.

18:22Tom Vasel:But if someone had taken out the copy of Merchant from the library and then gotten this mat, the numbers are different for the planets. And so they would be so confused. And so I was confused. And I wondered how long it's been sitting there in the library that I did not know about it, this mat for the game that I bring to play.

18:41Eric Summerer:Well, Eric, you forced my hand here. So we've talked about this. He's sounding very reasonable at this point. he was not happy. I was confused. I was confused. Why were you confused? I've got photographic evidence. Look at that face. Look at that ivory face. You found a mat for your game. So this is what we're going to do. This is the only time I plan to do this, is Wendy said, well, since the mat doesn't match the game, we should kick the mat out. And I said, no, nay. Eric brings Merchants of Venus to every Dice Tower event, so we'll leave the mat in the library for him. But. But. To lack confusion with the one that's in the library, Merchants of Venus must go.

19:27Tom Vasel:No.

19:28Eric Summerer:And here's the reasoning behind that, Eric, and this is definitely the truth of it. Merchants of Venus gets played at every single Dice Tower Con. It really does. It gets played all the time. But you are always in the game, and it's always with the copy you have brought. My copy never gets played.

19:43Tom Vasel:I hear you, and sometimes I've checked it out of the library just to make sure the stats go up.

19:48Eric Summerer:You disdain my copy, Eric.

19:54Eric Summerer:So what do you want me to do here?

19:56Tom Vasel:I understand. But it was such a surprise to discover that this playmat had basically been waiting for me for, I think, years. It's funny because it might just be months.

20:08Eric Summerer:Who knows? I don't know how long it's been in the library, but we'll say years because that's definitely true.

20:15Tom Vasel:So that's one thing I learned. It was under one of the cages holding it up because there was a slant in the floor. They finally found it and rolled it up and put it in a tube. Yeah, it was holding up something.

20:31Eric Summerer:So Eric talks a big game. So one of the things I'm most proud of at Dice Tower East is the dexterity area. It is an area that has big, giant dexterity games. I got the idea from Board Game Geek. and it bugged me that Board Game Geek had some very rare, weird dexterity games you couldn't find anywhere, so I bought them all. I found them all. I'm taking them down. And then I keep getting more. And I buy gigantic ones that are like carnival style games. I got a few this year, Flap Attack, and it was very popular. And I love that. I love that people, where we put them to is in between the halls. So there's no way you're not going to pass by these.

21:09Eric Summerer:The location makes me amused. because people pass by them. And so people will stop and spend 5, 10, 15 minutes just playing a dexterity game. And I'm just happy about it. They get a lot of love being played. But when I was at IAPA, the International Association of Amusement Parks, whatever it's called, I saw a giant curling thing three years ago. And I was like, I want this so badly. But do we have the space? Because it looks so gigantic. And then finally this year, I pulled the trigger and we got it. this giant inflatable curling, although it's more akin to like half of a shuffleboard sort of.

21:49Eric Summerer:Sure. But it has giant, I mean, it's like curling. The rules follow curling to some degree. And so Eric was put in charge of setting this thing up, this monstrosity, but also playing it with people and decided to dress for curling in Florida weather. I did.

22:09Tom Vasel:I dug out my curling gear. I had the pants. I had a turtleneck and I had my fleece vest from my curling days. And I learned very quickly that it gets warm. Yes. So I was, I might not, if we do that again, I might wear a short sleeve shirt. Maybe just the fleece vest, just for flavor.

22:33Eric Summerer:Oh, just wear the fleece vest. Just, that's it. Marty McFly. Anyway. It's a very, very, very different type of show. How did you do it? I actually don't know the answer.

22:43Tom Vasel:As far as the tournament, we had 16 people, so we split into teams of four. There are only four curling stones for each team, so we just threw one each for each end of the competition. And we did two four-end games, and then the winners played the winners and the losers played the losers in eight end games. But we had the teams that weren't actually curling, helping with the organization, because you need to get the stones back to the other end of the sheet and take out any that bounce off the walls because they're out. And so we had everybody sort of maintaining the game so it flew, it flowed really, really well.

23:22Tom Vasel:And everyone seemed very happy. I made it to the gold medal game and then proceeded to fail spectacularly at all of my shots to the point where one of the other participants started using my name as a verb. And so when she missed a shot, she said, oh, I ericked it. I've been doing that for years. You know, I was a little sad that I wasn't helping with any of the events, and now I feel much better. I'm good now. And people continued to use my name as a verb throughout. So that's a thing now. But it was a blast. The curling sheet went really well. It held up very well. It had use the entire week.

24:05Tom Vasel:So, yeah, and we managed to pack it all up into its three very, very heavy bags. And it should be ready to go for next year. All right. I had mentioned that I did Parsley as well as an event. And it's gotten bigger and bigger each year. I think we had 50-plus people in the room this time going through the Jungle Adventure. The real reason why all the tables weren't filled and open gaming is starting to come out. That's what it was. They were all sucked up by parsley. I had people asking me like all week, what is parsley? I've heard it's great. And I've had other people say, I can't wait for this parsley adventure.

24:41Tom Vasel:It's, you know, I'm the computer. The entire audience is the player. And we go through a text adventure. And we're handing the mic from person to person. They're giving me commands. It was the perfect mix of people who knew what they were doing and people who had no idea what they were doing. So they were bouncing off into walls, getting lost in the jungle. There was a clue that they were supposed to pick up. And they kept entering the room, not getting that clue, and then leaving the room and then wandering. And then people were like, maybe we need to go look at the tiger. And then they'd go back and they'd go into the room and not look at the tiger.

25:11Tom Vasel:And then they'd leave. And finally, I get to the description of the room. And when they finally stumble in again, I'm like, there is a tiger here. It smells like tiger. They finally figured it out It was a blast Now I need to figure out what to do next There are only so many more of these adventures That are already written I'm going to someday have to write a Dice Tower Themed parsley adventure Oh But that's a future Eric problem I agree That sounds great Let's sidebar on that We have ideas I have to think about that I do want we should move on. But one last thing I want to talk about is what was your favorite game to teach to people, whether it's a favorite or one that you managed to learn at the con and taught to folks?

26:06Eric Summerer:Well, mine was this is a little self-serving here, but mine was Dwarves of Aquilon. So Dwarves of Aquilon, which was originally called Nain, N-A-I-N. on Board Game Geek, I believe that's still the name it's under there, or names. But it's called Dwarves of Aquilon now. This is a sequel to Nid of Lear. And that's because it's very I mean, it's like Nid of Lear with different scoring in many ways. So this has been out for a bit, but they are reprinting it in English. It's not been out in English before. So through a series of very strange events, the Dice Tower is the U.S. distributor of this game, Dwarves of Aquilon.

26:47Eric Summerer:What? We will have it at Gen Con at our booth. And we don't have that many copies because.

26:53Tom Vasel:So we have a game to sell at Gen Con this year.

26:56Eric Summerer:We do. Dwarves of Aquilon. It's a game I love. I don't know if we'll ever have it again or anything like that. This is not me turning into a distributor. It's because I love Nidavaleer. And when they made the offer, I was like, I never thought of this. But it would be fun to sell a game at the booth. So we shall. So we shall. So come by Gen Con booth and get it. Now, I know you're going to say, what if I'm not going to Gen Con? I don't know. I really don't at this point in time because we don't have many copies and we definitely aren't a distributor who wants to ship things to people. That's not my wheelhouse.

27:31Eric Summerer:So we'll see if we have any leftover copies and go from there. And I'm sure that if we don't, somebody else will. But anyway, I had a lot of fun teaching it because I love Knit of Lear. And like I said, this is like Knit of Lear but with different scoring. I actually think it's smoother than it in many ways and also more gamery because some of the things are – you can definitely mess someone over by forcing them to take – there's like one set of the dwarves that if you – they're like worth 10, 11, 12, 13 points. It's fantastic. But if you get a second one, like if Eric takes one, it's worth 13 points.

28:05Eric Summerer:He gets a second one worth 13 points. The second one is worth nothing. So if I can make Eric pick last and I'm like, oh, that's the only one you're getting. Sorry. But I'm giving you 13 points. Oh, no. Yeah. So there's a little bit of that. It's not that. It's still not a take that style game. It's fantastic. If you like Nidalea, I promise you'll like this. So that's Dwarves of Aquilon. Okay.

28:29Tom Vasel:Julie, how about you? Well, Cat Between Us, which we've talked about on the show, I brought with me. It was little. It's easy. And every time, like anybody who didn't know how to play it, I sat down. Well, we sat down and played it. Yeah. But I also sat with a couple different groups. I had it with me because it is small and easy to carry around. So it was definitely the one that I, and I do find it funny. I did not get this game myself, but also looking at the games I brought, everybody's like, wow, you really do have a lot of cat games. Three of them were acquired for me because Julie likes cat games.

29:06I'm not, it's become like, you know, like you own one little tiny frog figurine and suddenly you're the frog figurine lady. Yeah. I'm the cat board game person. And it wasn't entirely of my own doing because I play a lot of games and many of them are not good and they move along. But Cat Between Us is great. And I was really happy to teach it to a bunch of people who hadn't heard of it. But the gaming group in Columbus were the ones that actually got me onto it. So I'm really happy that I could pass that along to other people.

29:46Tom Vasel:Yes, and you taught it well. Thanks. My favorite was less easy to tote around because it was Mechs vs. Minions. I taught this game thrice over the course of the convention. It was set up in the hot games room because there is a new reprint coming. But the copy I set up in the Hot Games room was, I believe, one of the original printings that was in basically pristine condition. I don't know where this thing came from, but it was brand new. But set it up with the tutorial and the first scenario and ran people through it. And it was, one, really cool to rediscover Mechs vs. Minions. Still a fantastic game.

30:24Tom Vasel:And two, just cool to see the delight in everybody else. It's like somebody would be hovering over it, and they'd be like, oh, man, that looks complicated. I said, you want to play? I'll run you through it right now. And we'd go through that first scenario, and they were all super excited, and we had a blast stomping minions for that first initial scenario. Such a cool game, and just fun to see the delight and the discovery as they learned it. That's awesome. Woo! So all in all, a wonderful convention. I think we should do another one next year. Do you agree? Oh, I suppose so.

30:56Eric Summerer:Sure, and if you're listening to this right now and go, well, no, no, no, no. I really had a great time and very happy with how everything ran. There were so many events there like the – I know the virtual flea market went phenomenally. People just played lots of games, and I really wish I had more info on the games, and maybe I can sneak to the next episode, although next episodes are Gen Con preview. So we'll talk about it at some point in the future, but I'm very curious. What I actually asked Wendy to do is not just give me the stats on Dice Tower East, but now we have stats for the year of sorts because we will have Dice Tower Cruise, Dice Tower West, and Dice Tower East adding those stats together to see the most popular game of this year.

31:40Eric Summerer:Well, or last year, right, because they get added together. Sure, yeah. But just going off the top of my head, going around, like I said, I already mentioned Eternal Dex was very popular. Also, Campania was very popular. And from AllPlay, the reprint of containers I saw being played everywhere. Yeah. Layers seemed to be popular. I only had one copy of that. And, of course, games from companies that were there were popular. So you're seeing a lot of Arcane Wonders and a lot of AllPlay games being played. So there's stuff like that. But, yeah.

32:19Tom Vasel:And now, another tale of board gaming horror. Oh my, that's horrific. Gather round, children. I've worked for the same company for the last 13 years, and only a year or so after joining, I started building up a group to play board games at lunch. It eventually became very popular, and we played the four days a week we were in the office, skipping only Fridays when we all worked from home. Early on, it was just Carcassonne and Coo, But as the years wore on, we went through dozens and dozens of games. Fairly early, we even played Risk Legacy all the way through. Whenever we had to stop a game, we just put everybody's pieces into a coupon keeper and took a million photos of the board so we could set back up again right where we left off.

33:13Tom Vasel:Then one year, I bought Machi Koro Legacy, and we played nine out of ten games of it in February and March. And since it was coming to an end and we had all had a lot of fun with it, I bought Charterstone and we played the first game of it even before finishing up Machi Koro Legacy. Oh, did I mention that the February and March we were playing were in 2020? Yeah. With one game left to play in one legacy game and all but one in another, COVID hit and we were suddenly all sent home for a couple of years. I moved away to another state, and I felt so sad to go into a completely empty office to take away my work game collection of around 100 games.

34:01Tom Vasel:I left a few favorites, including Machi Koro Legacy, Bang the Dice Game, etc. But they were apparently all thrown away when everybody returned to office, and I was told that insects had invaded the games. We shifted for a while to playing online with Board Game Arena every day, but Machi Coral Legacy never got that last game played, and I have a copy of Charterstone in my garage with exactly one game played in it. I could get a recharge pack for it, but it would be more money for a game I don't know if I'll play any time soon, and it really just makes me a little sad every time I see it.

34:51This is what happens when you invite people to ask, when you ask people, please tell me about your legacy game experiences.

34:58Tom Vasel:Uh-huh. I was not expecting the bugs. No. Nobody was expecting insects.

35:05Eric Summerer:I will say the bugs thing does sound like a slight excuse. All the time.

35:14Tom Vasel:Yeah, we just threw away. They were infected with bugs. There were bugs. Don't feel bad. We had bugs.

35:21Eric Summerer:No, but I mean there might have been a bug. Like they might have opened a box and there's cockroaches. Like, well, the only way to be safe, throw them all out. Maybe. And this really does happen, right? So, look, I love legacy games we talked about at the beginning, and I've had many wonderful experiences. But there is the very real possibility you never finish. Now, this is not just legacy. This is also campaigns. Someone came to me and they're like, why is Tidal Blades 2 not in the library? And I said, well, it's a campaign. People are going to play through two things and you have to reset everything for the next.

35:52Eric Summerer:They just don't work. But at home, over on my shelves, I can't see them from where I'm sitting, but I almost can. And I know there's like five half-finished campaign games there. And I have an unfinished legacy game I'm working on. And I've definitely had three in my family that never finished. Like I was, I started Pandemic Legacy, my family, and that never finished. I started Ticket to Ride Legacy, and that never finished, and something else. It just happens.

36:20Tom Vasel:Machi Coral Legacy is that way for me. I don't think we're quite close. Like it's not one mission left. It might be closer to five, but it's, yeah, that's what it is. You have no time. I have no time. Oh, yeah. Well, I mentioned last time we're spending all that last few months doing Mice and Mystics. Yeah, how's that going? we're making slow progress we're still on the first box I should say they opened a book

36:49Eric Summerer:yeah it's just one of those things it's a sad fact you know and I don't know how to fix it because this is something that RPG people have been dealing with for years

36:59Tom Vasel:yeah oh yeah the campaign just falls apart

37:01Eric Summerer:Julie manages to do it because they're zooming away on it yes and I think that's kind of part of it but you can't zoom a board game very easily No. It's harder. It is much harder. And especially a campaign one where you're saving very specific things. So it's not a board game arena kind of thing for the most part.

37:24Tom Vasel:Apparently, the tabletop simulator version of Gloomhaven works pretty well. It does. Turns out. Because it saves it for you. Yes. And Frosthaven Digital is coming out now. Oh, well, isn't that neat? Thanks. thanks for that thanks for that window eric just serve that up for you i'll give you that 20 later

37:52that was not where i was going with any of this uh yes i agree but that's also like so i like to and we haven't done it recently but jennifer and i will take a long weekend to do our own private convention. Our private convention is this, this campaign game, we're going to play the whole thing.

38:12Tom Vasel:Now there you go. And we will for three days straight play nonstop and see how far we can get. And then either we play do another three day weekend or we never talk about it again.

38:25Eric Summerer:It's like, it's like a bucket of shame. You just don't bring it up. Yep.

38:31Tom Vasel:All right. Let's talk about some games.

38:38Tom Vasel:They say that every rose has its thorn, but not every rose has a hula hoop. Hooray. Hooray. You said hooray. That means you get to go first, Julie. Cool. All right. So of the many games that I have gotten over the past, what, three weeks, two weeks? Man, it's been a whirlwind. Woo. I've gotten to play a lot of them. And this first one is a rose for me, and that is Wispwood by CGE. So, you start with a cat, which is not what drew me in to playing the game. Okay? I know, but it wasn't. So, you have a cat, and there is a pool of different types of wisps that you're going to draft from. Those are Witch's Hats, Orbs, Jack-O-Lanterns, and Hearts.

39:33The back of each Wisp token has trees to build a forest. And then you have five cards laid out from multiple cards that you choose from that tell you the point value of each of the Wisps and the trees. Things like they have to be in the diagonal in your on your in your space or they can't be in the same roll or column, things like that. So on your turn you can do one of two main actions. You can either draft and place a wisp tile, in which case you're going to pick from one of the eight face-up wisps in the central pond or pool, and on either side of a wisp are polyamino shapes. So you're picking because of the wisp, because of the point spread you're trying to get, but also you're going to have to place it, you're going to draw some face down ones that are the forest side and build your polyamino and then place it on your space.

40:23And you have to place it orthogonally to other things in your forest, which to start is just your cat. or you can take a tree turn in which case you are taking up to three trees and filling in the spots that maybe you've got open gaps because of the specific polyaminos you're building. You're building in the first round a four by four grid, second round is five by five, third round is a six by six and then the only other thing that really rules wise is you can flip the cat and it's hiding behind a little tree so there's a little double layered token that on one side is just the cat and on the other it's the tree and you can see the little cat's face peeking out of the tree.

41:10Tom Vasel:It's adorable. It's really cute. And that lets you choose any of the polyaminos regardless of the wisp that you took or it lets you refresh the pool if you don't like any of the tokens that are out, which otherwise you have to wait until there's only all one of one kind, and then you can wipe it and replace the eight in the pool. That's it. And then it's a point salad you're scoring at the end of each round. It was lovely. I love the simplicity. I love the art. I like the dynamic polyamino choosing and selecting because you're building it so you can kind of look and see how it's going to fit. I like the player interaction because you're constantly switching tactics based on what's available in the pool and the shapes that are available to you.

42:03And there was a big run on witch's hats at one point in our game because the point spread for that was really high. But there was also hearts were, if you place them correctly, but you had to be cognizant of where you were placing them in surrounding the forest type of thing. So everybody was after Witch's Hats and there was a whole lot of hearts. So I ended up getting a ton of points because everyone was hyper fixated on their point spread. So I like that it's dynamic that way and you can still do a little bit of take that. And at the end, regardless, it was a very close game. We all had fun with it in the four player game that I played.

42:42So that is my rose.

42:45Tom Vasel:Wispwood. I enjoyed this as well. I think my favorite part is that between rounds, the trees go away, but the wisps do not. So you end up with this sort of empty space cluster that you now need to work around as you position things for the next round, which then makes it harder to efficiently complete your 5x5 or 6x6 grid. It does, but also gives you the opportunity, say, for example, you've placed things and didn't pay attention at the beginning for reasons that things are on the diagonal with your cat and you just did them on the diagonal. Well, you can move the cat now at the end during in between as well.

43:26So things like that. It was delightful. However, I also taught ink well. and that's a one to five player game where you are a medieval monk rushing to complete uh these beautiful beautiful pieces of art manuscript pages where on the back it's actually showing you a piece of the art that's actually from uh most likely bibles but manuscripts and you're using cubes to emulate the colors of ink there's general colors which are green blue red yellow, and then black. And then the gold cubes are specialty because of the gold leaf that's included in them. So you're playing and on your turn, you have one of two actions.

44:16Again, only two choices. You either take supplies from the layout and they are different shapes. So you have stars, circles, or diamonds. And each one of those has a certain ability attached to it. So So in the center, you only get the stars only have one gold cube, which can be filled in. It's like a wild. You can put it in for anything. But sometimes a gold is required. The more difficult your page is. Circles have three. Diamonds have two cubes, but are attached to a technique card. So you also get a bonus card that lets you do extra stuff. So you're doing that to fill in your page. So you either do that or you turn your page.

45:03And if you turn your page, that means you're scoring the points of what you filled. You can only fill completed inked sections of the page. So you can complete two-thirds. And as long as it's the two-thirds that are complete, like a cherub in one corner and a dragon in the other corner that are completed, all the cubes have been filled in those sections. You can score those, just not score completing the full page. If you do that, then you get an extra gold cube to start your next page. Whenever you have to refill the pool of cubes, which is whenever one of those shapes, the star, the circle, or diamonds, all of the pools of all the cubes in one of those sections is empty, you refill.

45:48And that advances the abbot. And the abbot is the time tracker. And everybody is, after every three rounds, is forced to turn their page in regardless. Which ends the game. with however many points you have. So it was an extremely take that game, which is fine. The technique cards are doing things that allow you to steal from other, from the drafting piles. So people are drafting less cubes when they go. Or there's a lot of take that to the game. There's a lot of taking things that will help you, but also can very much speed up the game and advance people, force people to advance quickly and the variety of pages are so asymmetrical that somebody could have a page with five small images and be able to score points and then somebody else has a page with only two images worth like 12 points each and be forced to advance page and not score anything in that round and there were lots and lots of edge cases for something that's described and sounds so simple there was a lot of but what about this but what happens with this especially with the technique cards.

46:55And all that would be fine if it was a complete and comprehensive rulebook. And it was not. But there was an online FAQ that reiterated the rulebook and offered no new information.

47:10Tom Vasel:Oh, I hate that. I need clarification. No, this is just going to reiterate what it says. So my demo of the game was really good and my expectations of the game were very high, but actually playing through it, Inkwell was a thorn in my book. That's sad. I'm very sad about it too. I think if they make the online FAQ more robust and actually make a rule book, I understand it's a very small box, but there was like, there weren't images. uh there were things were reiterated three four or five times in a very small rule book but then other things were mentioned only in examples uh it's it was very much a the rule book wasn't great but then even beyond that once we figured it out it just it felt like it didn't get play tested like it's most of the way there but it wasn't complete that was my feeling about it and I was not the only one as a group.

48:13We all bounced off it pretty hard. So, I know, I know. I usually don't have thorns, but that was a thorn for me. Who's next? Who wants to share next? Eric, do you want to share next?

48:28Tom Vasel:Sure. Let's begin with a rose. I played this one pretty early on in the convention. It's called Crafting the Cosmos. This is a release from Office Dog Games. It's got very pretty plastic pieces. The general concept is that you are arranging the elements required to form nebulas in this stellar map that you've got. You start out with a couple of proto-nebulas, and there's a recipe for these things. There's sort of a level one, two, and three, and they require certain elements like oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen to become a nebula. And so your job is to position the stars or the proto-stars that will have those elements.

49:07Tom Vasel:They sort of are labeled with those elements. And you're trying to surround the nebula so that you can flip it over and get points for it. And also have a breeding ground for life because you're also collecting proto-life. And if you get six little proto-life tokens next to a nebula that's been flipped over, you can also put a life token on there, which are worth points at the end of the game. That's the general concept, which is fun on its own because you're maneuvering these stars around and trying to score them. And there are some elements that the proto-life usually disappears, but you can upgrade them into a more advanced proto-life so that those tokens stick around so you can reuse them instead of having to start from scratch every time.

49:50Tom Vasel:Pretty cool. I really enjoy just maneuvering that, figuring out the puzzle of how to get pieces where they need to be so that I can complete things. But also really neat is the way that these actions are carried out. There is a central marble track where there's room for three marbles in four different zones. And you have your colored marble and you have some neutral marbles. And on your turn, you get to move three marbles. You have to move your own. That has to be one of the things that you do. And you can also move the neutral marbles around so that when you're done, wherever your marble is, that's the primary action you're going to take.

50:30Tom Vasel:You get some resources based on where your marble ends up. and you also get sort of passive resources based on what the marble situation is. So if there are three marbles in the moving action track, I will score three moves that I can do during the course of my turn, moving stars and proto-life around the board to complete things. But then I might also get other nebulas and resources and stuff to be able to take my turn with. and then after I've collected all the stuff, then I can position everything. I can put the protostars that I've earned down. I can move things around. I can flip things. So it's very much a collect resources and then do stuff.

51:11Tom Vasel:Even to the point where after you've collected your resources and you're figuring out the puzzle on your board, you can let the next player go so that they can collect their resources and do the marble track because that's really the interaction part is moving the marbles around. There's some goals that can be claimed as well in player turn order, But once you've done your interactive part, the next player could get started. I really like the puzzly aspect. That marble track is cool and unusual and unique. And I enjoyed it. It's thinky, but it's pretty and shiny. And so it's definitely rosy for me.

51:48Tom Vasel:That's crafting the cosmos. Then I played a game with Julie.

51:55Eric Summerer:Thorn.

51:56Tom Vasel:No, I played a couple of very lovely games with Julie. We sat down. We were like, do we want to do a recording in the corner and just talk about Tom while he's not here? Or do we want to play some games? We decided to play some games this time. Turn of events. So we sat down, played a couple of really nice games. And then we pulled out one called Puppy Pile. This is, I summarized it as guillotine with dogs. That's not quite right, but similar in a way. You have a bunch of standees. They represent different dogs. Adorable illustrations. Very cute. And there's there. Most of them are purebred puppies, but there's also a mutt in there if you're playing with the expanded version and also a cat in a dog suit, which is kind of cute.

52:41Tom Vasel:They all go on these standees in a row, a big old line leading from a puppy bed, a dog bed all the way across the table. Your job is you've been given a secret goal, a secret puppy to back, and you are trying to position that puppy to be the top of the puppy pile. So if you imagine the stack, the line actually being vertical, so the one closest to the puppy bed is on the bottom of the pile. It's getting smooshed by all that. It's getting smooshed by everybody else. It's getting smooshed at the bottom on the bed. Exactly. And you want your puppy to be on the top when one of the pick-a-winner cards come out of the deck.

53:22Tom Vasel:And if your puppy is the one on the top, at that point you win the game. on your turn you simply pull one of these cards and do what it says many of them take an aspect of the dogs like short hair long hair or are they a sporting dog or a working dog a size different size dog and you're moving them up or down in the pile and swapping positions and all sorts of stuff in the hope that when that scoring card comes up your dog is in position there's also a bluffing aspect where I might move a totally different dog or Julie might move the cat in the dog suit to make me think that the cat in the dog suit is her dog when it wasn't the whole time.

54:05Yep.

54:06Tom Vasel:So there's that. Ultimately, though, you're sitting there waiting for those scoring cards to come up because when that scoring card comes up, you take the top dog and you say, is this your dog? Is this your dog? No. oh, all right, that dog's removed from the pile and we keep playing, waiting for the next scoring card to come up, still maneuvering the dogs around. And I knew Julie was going to be a little salty about this when she looked at her secret dog, said nope, and then picked a different secret dog because it wasn't a dog she wanted. And so there was that. But then at one point, a card came up that said, flip the pile.

54:48Tom Vasel:You take the dog bed from one end of the line and move it to the other end of the line, completely flipping the order of the dogs. Julie said, nope, and we put that card back. And that's when we started looking at how many— We had been playing this game for quite some time at that point. It had been a while. We had seen one of the scoring cards come up, and neither of us won that particular dog. And we were waiting for the next one to show up, and then we finally started sifting through the deck. There were only two scoring cards in the entire deck. So we were just waiting for one other card. Then maybe we'd shuffle and keep going.

55:25Tom Vasel:At two players, it was a drudge. It may be better at three or four because you'd have more activity and you'd cycle through those cards faster. But I don't think it would rescue it. This was a thorny experience, despite the adorable puppies. It wasn't. We were not the target audience. It was absolutely for younger people. But also, they needed, based on player count, how many is that your dogs? And they needed five or six of those cards. So, then at a two-player, you have six of those cards. And then at higher player counts, you're down to two of those cards. There. I depped it. There you go. Yeah, that could work.

56:04Really what it needed, because otherwise...

56:05Tom Vasel:There's also a rule that says when those come up. Has everyone had a turn yet? Because it could be like the first card you draw. There was no seating in the order of the deck at all as far as when those scoring cards come up. So they had to write a rule that made sure everybody had a turn first before you score anything because that would be dumb. That game would have been gangbusters for Riley and Daniel 15 years ago. That's their, you know, they're going into their sophomore year of college now. That's the audience. I think the most fun we had is when we accidentally knocked over one of the standees and they fell down like dominoes and we went, whee!

56:44Yeah.

56:44Tom Vasel:That was the most fun we had with the game. Yeah. Yep. Anyway, that's Puppy Pile. Another thorny experience. Tom, pull us up.

56:54Eric Summerer:Oh. Oh, no. Me?

56:56Tom Vasel:Oh, no.

56:58Eric Summerer:We're doomed. I was just thinking, oh, next time we do a Dice Tower event together, we should do a game that all three of us play. We should. Whatever it might be. I love that. Okay. Alrighty. Okay. Wingspan Pocket. This is a new game just announced and shown off from Stonemaier Games. It is a small 30-minute version of Wingspan. And they definitely – that part is very correct. It's a deck of cards and a bag of eggs basically. And the cards have different foods on the back of them from wingspan and then various birds on the other side. So you'll start with six cards, four cards face down, two cards face up like in your reserve.

57:42Eric Summerer:That's your hand. But everyone can see what it is. So four of them are food and two of them are birds. And then you take one of three actions on your turn. You put some eggs on your nest. Everyone has a nest and or birds that can hold eggs. You draw some cards from the middle. There's face-down piles of food and face-up birds. You can take either or both. Or play a bird, and then you just discard food cards to put a bird in your line. And once someone has six birds in their line, the game will end. Here's the thing. Whenever you do any of these actions, you then run all the birds in your line.

58:22Eric Summerer:So, well, I mean, it's at most going to be six, and then when that happens, the game's over. But what this does mean is that first bird that you play is so important because you will be activating it maybe 20 times.

58:34Tom Vasel:Oh, yeah.

58:35Eric Summerer:As one of my opponents found out in one of the games I played, I played it several times. He played a bird that gave him an egg and then gave everybody an egg, including him. Yay, he gets two eggs. And we were like, that's fantastic. Yeah, thanks for all the eggs. Thanks for all the eggs. And he's like, oh, this would have been probably a better one to play later. And we're like, yeah. so it's interesting so this one for me is a I don't know and this is after playing it several times it is a question mark but it's hovering between the softest of thorns and the and a rose I don't know it's so it works it's fast it's quick it feels really random you get a good engine going in this game and you're like yeah and I can't catch up to you.

59:25Eric Summerer:You're going to beat me. But also because it's 30 minutes, should I care? That's where I'm confused on it, right? I'm pretty sure we haven't reviewed this yet. I'm pretty sure the other guys like it, but they're suckers. Again, I'm not sure if you're the targeted audience. I feast. And I say targeted in a very specific way. Well, here's the deal, though. So I think I am the target because I am enjoying a lot of these. That Catan on the road that stripped down 15 minutes. I gave that a nine. I think that's fantastic. That's true.

1:00:03Tom Vasel:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:00:04Eric Summerer:I don't know where I'm out of this game, and I keep playing it, hoping that light will shine on me if I like it or not. Obviously, I don't hate it because I would have stopped already. That's true. Right? Right? You know, but definitely I will insist that we play with the advance rules because you get six cards at the beginning of the game and you flip two of them up and those are your birds. But the advance are look at all six and pick which two are your birds. Okay, done. That's an obvious thing to me because that way you can start. It just bugs me a bit maybe that my engine is going. I'm like, oh, I'm going to lose this.

1:00:39Eric Summerer:Yes, there's still only like 10 minutes left of the game. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that I would pick this over Wingspan slash Wormspan slash Finspan. But I think a lot of people will like it. But I'm curious. I think this is going to be a game a lot of people like. I don't know that anyone's going to love it. I think that's where it's falling. But I might be wrong. I might be wrong. I hope it is.

1:01:04Tom Vasel:Well, I think if you only have so much time, Wingspan fans will be happy to play this as opposed to breaking out all of the accoutrement that come with. a full game of Wingspan.

1:01:16Eric Summerer:100%. You just throw it out there and play it. Definitely. Then we have another slimmed down game, Bunny Kingdom Town. That's a weird title.

1:01:27Tom Vasel:Yeah, it is.

1:01:28Eric Summerer:It's a two-player version of Bunny Kingdom by the famous Richard Garfield. And I don't like this one at all. So this one's a thorn. Here's the deal with this one. It's not a particularly complicated game. You have a five-by-five grid. And different spots open up on this grid for you to build buildings. And so you'll go back and forth drafting buildings and paying money, which you get a little bit of money each turn, but you pay some money to put these buildings in the grid. You then will score points. Each building is different. There's 25 buildings in a game, but you only use 20. Or maybe there's 30 buildings in a game, sorry.

1:02:06Eric Summerer:But you only use 20 per game. So you never know what buildings are going to come out. And you place these buildings out, and then you score for groups of buildings and get these golden carrots, which is the currency of the game. It's okay. But the game also has these scoring cards, which also Bunny Kingdom has. And I know this because I play Bunny Kingdom a lot. Bunny Kingdom, you draft it cards. And so you go around a table and you'd be like, ooh, should I take this one? It scores it to the game. Or should I take something that helps me during the game? The problem with these scoring cards is they give a lot of points possibly.

1:02:38Eric Summerer:but you also you really have no idea what your opponent has so i'm like oh i wonder if they're trying to make a lot of little neighborhoods that's like a group of houses or one big neighborhood or maybe they're trying to get purple buildings i just don't know the game's not long enough for me to figure that out now i am not a sore loser necessarily and i'm also proud of my son for his skills but 211 to 98 soured me somewhat particularly i don't know if you all how everyone else plays with their children i usually be like yeah let's just goof around and then halfway through i was like i'm not goofing around i need to like i'm struggling to survive and yeah but i'm gonna try it some more maybe because i'm curious about it but i'm worried about just kind of the randomness of these scoring cards they're they're cool when you get it you're like oh that sounds like a fun thing to do but since you don't know what your opponent's doing a lot of it does feel a little bit random like i'm gonna take this building and your opponent's like that is the one building i want it but i don't know that i could be like he he but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of strategy and going after the other player you're just trying to do some cool stuff with your things and you're accidentally messing up the other player and that worries me i would rather be more deliberate you trying to go after the other person or there's less interaction if that makes sense so yeah yeah we'll see what happens but not particularly impressed with this one wow We had such a great time playing games and we all decided to talk about Thorne's.

1:04:25You know what?

1:04:27Eric Summerer:When we were putting this together, I was like, they're going to talk very glowingly about games. So I'll just pick some that aren't as glowing because I have some games that are very glowing. I promise you all that will be next episode. I'll talk about some really cool stuff, although I think we're mostly doing Gen Con. Yeah. If there's time. I'm going to be positive the next time for sure because I have been playing so many great games. There's so much fantastic. and I also I loved at Dice Tower East for me I played a lot of older games I played Space Base I played Race for the Galaxy like I know these are great games let's play them and I love doing that

1:05:02Tom Vasel:yes there was a good mix of old and new for me I really I had a great time likewise but now it's time to get ready for Gen Con

1:05:10Eric Summerer:it is I mean like literally I'm pressing the stop button and getting ready for Gen Con thank you all for joining us I'll see you next time. Until then, I'm Tom Vassell. I'm Julie Ahern. And I'm Eric Sommerer. And you've been listening to a podcast called At the Table or something like that. Is it Dice Tower Table? It's a podcast.

1:05:30Tom 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 Mike Wazowski, talking about his girlfriend, is brought to you by Mycelia. Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:06:03Hey, remember that time that you two talked about your top legacy games?

1:06:07Tom Vasel:Yeah, yeah, that was great. Wasn't it? Yeah. I'm getting old. Ha ha ha ha!