At The Table with The Dice Tower - Julie and The Giant Teach

10:25Eric Summerer:But finally, Nobody believed in you. Right, no one believed in you. And it does happen. I mean, it's not to say that's the case. But also, the first time I played Dominion, I didn't go, meh, pass. I was like, what is this? Can we print this? No, something to me. Railground already has it. Fine. When you play these games, they're usually not someone going, hmm, pass. This is too weird for me. It can happen. and it has happened in the past maybe where a game that became very popular was turned down by several publishers but it was eventually printed by somebody. Yes. The other half then is I said if a truly great game is out of print and copies become spare so it will be eventually reprinted.

11:09Eric Summerer:And what I mean by that is I say this not because I'm like intoning some great truth to the world. I say this for you the consumer. You don't need to worry you're like, oh, there's only six copies of this game. I must buy it. Like, ah, it will come back in print. Just wait for it. You don't need to get Star Wars Queen's Gambit. You can now wait for the King's Gambit and get that when it comes out. Which, by the way, in turn brings down the price of the original, usually. I'm always amused. Usually. It's not always the case. But you can get Star Wars Epic Duels for a pretty inexpensive price compared to what it was for a while.

11:49Eric Summerer:because, well, frankly, Unmatched is way better.

11:53Tom Vasel:Oh, yes. Epic Duels you can get for, I think, not very much at all. But I bet the Queen's Gambit copies are still pretty expensive right now.

12:02Eric Summerer:Yeah, so when people refute this, there's usually, you know, they want to show a couple games. There are a couple things I cannot, well, I cannot, and no one can control that can stop things. One is intellectual property, and that's the case with Star Wars Queen's Gambit, right? you would have to get permission from Disney to do a game based on Star Wars Episode I, which if you might notice... Which is how old? It's not in the theaters. I know how old it is. That's great. It is almost 27 years old because I went and saw it on my honeymoon. Ouch. What do you mean, ouch? That was a good time. My hip hurts from you saying that.

12:42Eric Summerer:Yeah, truth. but but also that movie is not particularly popular they're not popular is a wrong word i'm saying disney's not going i wish more people watch this movie it is what it is it's on disney plus go watch it if you want but they are not trying to drive sales to that they want you to go see the mandalorian and grogu right that's what they want to push right now right they'll always push the big things. So they're going to charge a pretty penny for this intellectual property anyway, and what company wants to pay that price for a game that people might go gaga over, but they might not. And that's the second thing with these games is you might think everyone in the world wants this game, but if there's only like 10 or 15 copies at any given point for sale somewhere, and they're not selling, then people don't want it that bad.

13:37Eric Summerer:there was a game that i was just at dice tower west at the flea market so i walked around at the flea market and i saw buck rogers oh yeah okay yeah well that was a very popular game in the 80s um and i thought i wonder if i should buy that game but i didn't because you know what it's not that great of a game and people aren't exactly knocking the doors down for it and just because a few people really want something doesn't mean it will sell incredibly well as many publishers have unfortunately found out. They're like, everybody, I'm hearing, everyone just keeps talking about this game. It needs to be reprinted.

14:11Eric Summerer:So they'll reprint it and print thousands of copies and then they just sit there, many of those copies, because the people who were dying for it, either A, bought it, or B, complained very strongly that it wasn't like the original. And then that was it. Those were the only people who really wanted it. A lot of people, including us, gets stuck in the past sometimes and we say this game's amazing. Nostalgia is a very strong motivator for sure.

14:42Tom Vasel:And sometimes it works. I mean, entire publishers have been built around bringing titles back. Restoration being one of them. Stronghold Games began from bringing stuff back that they thought were diamonds in the rough that had been forgotten. Sure, but in those two situations,

14:58Eric Summerer:Restoration doesn't just bring the game back. they make it better as much as they possibly can they change these things the original dark tower and the original fireball island and original thunder road are nothing like the current versions really other than theming and stronghold games stayed on that track for what two games and then they were like also we'll print new stuff there was half a dozen i think but yeah I think there was three, and I'm not kidding. I think it was Survivor, the backwards Stratego game, which I'm forgetting what it was called. Intrigue. And what was the third one? There might have only been two, Eric.

15:42Eric Summerer:Code 777. Oh, yeah, you're right. Code 777. Outpost. Outpost was a piece of trash. But anyway. Oh, yeah. So intellectual property stops it. People not really wanting the game, like it's not really that popular. where sometimes a game does exceed expectations. The biggest example of this by far is when Fantasy Flight reprinted the old Netrunner game as Android Netrunner. Oh, yeah. That went gangbusters. But a lot of old games, people are like, we're bringing them back. And it comes out to a resounding people go, oh, yeah, that's a nice game. But then there's also the other possibility that the designer and or publisher and or whoever holds the rights just says no.

16:26Eric Summerer:And this is the example, the biggest example of this one, would be Glory to Rome. Yeah. Between the designer and the publisher, somebody in that mix doesn't want that game reprinted. So guess what? Until it becomes public domain in 80 years, it can't.

16:44Tom Vasel:You've got to wait a little while. So I went online and some people made some lists of games

16:50Eric Summerer:that are exceptions to vassals law. Yeah, I've seen this list. There are lists? Yes. So I thought I would go through this list. So this list was printed in 2015. So the first game on here is Container. Well, guess what? That one was republished. There's a new version. Yeah. Then they put 18xx games. Well, guess what? Those have definitely not only been reprinted, not all of them have been reprinted, but there's been a new one comes, two new ones come out every year. Magic Realm.

17:20Tom Vasel:I think you're talking about pretty niche, like individual titles or something that isn't available. And that's a small group that is worried about that.

17:29Eric Summerer:Magic Realm doesn't have a reprint. Although, again, I'm pretty sure if there was a reprint of the game, nobody would buy it. In fact, I have a copy of Magic Realm in the Dice Tower East library.

17:41Tom Vasel:I consider taking it out every time. And I'm like, I don't want to deal with looking at the rulebook.

17:47Eric Summerer:Well, someone printed a much better rulebook, Eric, online. and I was going to print it out until I saw it was 200 pages, and I said, that is a waste of my ink.

17:56Tom Vasel:Someone at West was playing Magic Realm, and it took like an entire, it was some sort of super deluxe version, but they had printed multiple tackle boxes worth of stuff, and they had a binder for the rule book, and I looked at it, and I kind of looked over his shoulder and said, this is one I would like to experience, but no, not no, no, thank you, bye. Well, that was rude, but you said no, no, thank you, no? I said inside my head. On the inside. I thought you were saying this out loud.

18:25Eric Summerer:Like, what is wrong with you, Eric?

18:30Eric Summerer:But again, Magic Realm is one of those games that, yes, and there's a lot of games that have super fans. They have everything. But that doesn't mean the game itself would be popular if they reprint it. And then people try to reprint it. There's a game, and I apologize if I forgot the name, that Mr. B Games has published a game that's based on Magic Realm and stuff. And that's fine, but again, it hasn't really taken off. Civilization, well, that was reprinted under different names, including Mega Civilization. Twixt, guess what? No one wants to play Twixt. Come on now. Union Pacific? Well, that was pre-printed as Airlines Europe.

19:15Eric Summerer:Yeah. This person wrote Zendo, and they wrote, certainly not as a box set ever again. Well, guess what? It definitely came out as a box set, and it sold. This is an old list. Well, yeah, but that's the thing. I'm trying to show that. And Zendo came out as a box set, and guess what? It sold pretty terribly. It just didn't sell very well. I like it. I got a copy of it, but it just wasn't that popular. Extra Blatt, they put here. Well, that's a game about making newspapers. That didn't do particularly well. Warhammer Quest, that one did not happen. Necromunda did happen. What's Havana? I don't even know.

19:49Eric Summerer:Kingmaker. They actually did do a new version of Kingmaker. Egesia. Oh, you know what? That's one that Stronghold did. Stronghold did do that one. They did Egesia. They put Buck Rogers on here. The Omega Virus. This is one I wonder if Restoration has in their back pocket.

20:08Tom Vasel:I believe they've announced that they're working on something because they had a small mini project that they released quickly as like a little card game. And they've announced that they're working on something with Omega Virus.

20:20Eric Summerer:Big City was reprinted. Robo Rally was reprinted.

20:26Tom Vasel:Several times.

20:27Eric Summerer:I think people just want the old version. Well, maybe not. And then they put a bunch of war games on here. I'm not. Oh, Yinch was definitely reprinted. So go figure.

20:42Eric Summerer:Manhattan was reprinted. Glory to Rome was not. HeroScape. That was one of the ones that people said, well, there you go. And guess what? That's never going to happen. Has brought it back. Talisman was brought back. HeroQuest came back. People said that one wouldn't come back. Democker. You know what? Maybe Stronghold did do a bunch of reprints because that's another one that they did. Um, Rife and Brighton, I didn't put on the list because the law said if copies are spares. And Um, Rife and Brighton copies are not spares. Go to Essen and look in the used book game stores. You can get a copy for 15 euros.

21:20Eric Summerer:The Palaces of Carrera was reprinted. Star Wars Queen's Gambit. We just talked about that up front. That's under legal woes. Not much I can do about up front. gulo gulo was just reprinted too battlestar galactica was reprinted as unfathomable

21:37Tom Vasel:right but that's another example where the license is just a little too fraught you won't see battlestar galactica again unless a new version of battlestar galactica gets produced

21:47Eric Summerer:as a television property they are talking about that yeah they are talking about it endeavor was reprinted dune was reprinted blood bowl was reprinted tobago was reprinted finca was reprinted. A Study in Emerald that just came out as a Cthulhu game. Pueblo was reprinted. Ascending Empires was reprinted by WizKids.

22:14Tom Vasel:Publishers have looked at this list and just cherry-picked everything.

22:17Eric Summerer:It's not so much that they looked at this list. I don't ever want people to think that. It's that if there's demand for a game out there, publishers will look at that. Again, I feel like people forget sometimes publishers, there are a few publishers who are in it for the hobby, which is probably not a good business decision, but they want to make money. So if lots of people would like a game to be reprinted, they'll go, maybe we should reprint this. But as many, many publishers have found out over the last decade in particular, reprinting an older game doesn't automatically equal lots of money.

22:53Tom Vasel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think that's going back to the Restoration Games announcement of the Lord of the Rings King's Gambit. That's a property that they can push in addition to saying this is an old game that we're bringing back. And it's also interesting. I don't know if you've looked at the actual press release from Restoration, which doesn't have a ton of details. But whenever they refer to the original game, there's no Star Wars. Those words do not appear in the press release. It is just the Queen's Gambit as if it was just a property, a game floating in the ether and had no IP association at all.

23:24Tom Vasel:Um, and, and I just think it's interesting. That's probably the way that they had to do it because they couldn't use those particular words in the official announcement at all. Right.

23:33Eric Summerer:Oh, even in the trailer, Eric, they showed a chess piece, which definitely confused people who didn't know about the original game. Cause they're like, wait a minute. I've heard of the queen's gambit. It's a wonderful show on Netflix.

23:45Tom Vasel:It's a Netflix show. Yes. This is not about the Netflix show. Um, and, and so, but they, in addition to saying we have a game we're bringing back, It's not just the nostalgia. It's also a Lord of the Rings game, which remains a viable property considering all the other Lord of the Rings games that are still doing well.

24:03Eric Summerer:And it also means that they have to still do something with the IP. This is a joint venture they're doing with, I think, Space Cowboys, or is it Repos? Yeah. Who's owned by Asmoday. And Asmoday owns the Lord of the Rings license. But Asmoday also recently announced that they would let other people use the Lord of the Rings license if the game made sense. In this case, it does. So, yeah, I'm excited about this. I'm excited. It's weird for me because the way this works is I'll hear about reprints of older games, and I get mildly excited these days. I used to get much more excited. This one in particular I'm very excited about.

24:41Eric Summerer:To be fair, I think Justin told me about this a very long time ago. And I was like, ah! He's like, you can't tell anyone. I'm like, fine. But I love Star Wars Queen's Gambit. and they even remade that slightly in a game called Risk Star Wars, which is like a very, very watered down Star Wars Queen's Gambit. But I'm looking forward to this. But a lot of times there's a lot of older games that I like a lot, and they'll say, we're reprinting it. And I'll go, that's nice. Are you doing nicer pieces? What's the case? And then I'll see the game published, and it's like, whoo. I'm like, yeah, I guess that just didn't make as big of a splash as we once thought it might do.

25:20Eric Summerer:Deluxe versions can change things. That's what Awakened Realms is doing. They did Puerto Rico, Castles of Burgundy. Now they're doing Concordia. And that's cool that they're doing these games and they get the buzz. But I think a lot of times that buzz is because of the huge deluxe version. It's not like I suddenly went to conventions and see people playing Puerto Rico everywhere.

25:40Tom Vasel:Well, I've seen a lot of people playing the deluxe version of Puerto Rico.

25:44Eric Summerer:Sure. You're seeing that one. But it's not like there's suddenly a resurgence in it. And it's also hard to tell because they didn't publish a normal copy of the game along with it so that we can compare the two of them. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know. Again, I just say as a consumer, don't let someone go, oh, this really expensive$400 out of print game. You have to have it. You really don't. If it's that great of a game that everyone should play, some publisher will reprint it in some form and you'll get it. even games that the number one glaring omission to this vassals law is glory to rome glory to rome is in the dice tower library and gets checked out on average once a convention that's surprising right if it's that amazing it should have a line of people wanting to play it and i'm not even i'm not trying to put down the game at all i'm not it's just that i think this idea in our heads is often more exciting than the actual playing of games sometimes.

26:48Eric Summerer:It's like, ooh, I wish I owned this game. Not so I can play it as much, so that I can own it.

26:54Tom Vasel:And that's a different hobby. That's a different hobby. And now, another tale of board gaming horror. Oh my, that's horrific. Gather round, children. I have attended on average about 10 conventions a year for the past 15 years, which puts me at well over 100 conventions. At many of these events, sadly, I am setting up booths, teaching other people how to play, working at the sales counter, or taking meetings. So when I have an uninterrupted day to play games, I know it's going to be a good day. At Dice Tower West, I knew I would not need to set up a booth, and I would have Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday to play games.

27:47Tom Vasel:Anticipating this, I made a list of all the games I wanted to try to play. I looked at the Dice Tower West library to see how many of my list were available and wrote down what shelf they would be on. Likewise, I noted if they were in the demo zone. Finally, I knew there would be several set up in the Hot Games area. Knowing the Hot Games would be a challenge to get a seat at, I chose my number one game that I hoped to play, Galactic Cruise. I had prepared a little in advance by watching Monique and Naveen's How to Play, so I knew what to do on a turn and what many of the icons meant, but was by no means an expert.

28:27Tom Vasel:I had met a few people and was chatting while we waited for the library and hot games to open and start the convention. They expressed interest in potentially joining my game. One other player had played Galactic Cruise once, but otherwise we were all new. Because it is a heavier game, we looked around to see if someone could teach us. Jason from the Dice Tower came up and offered to teach. However, it was clear he had not played it himself for a while. Halfway through, I was clarifying things based on the video I had watched, but my recollection was also in no way a comprehensive understanding of the rules.

29:07Tom Vasel:Gameplay began, and Jason stepped away. It was very clear very soon that we were woefully unprepared. But full of the joy of being at a show and getting to play games, we decided to power through. Two hours into the game, someone came over and offered to do a teach, but at that point we were too far gone, and playing out of begrudging spite. One of our group decided to leave, apologizing that she just was in over her head. Since the game is tailored to the number of players, this skewed our experience even further. But I could not blame her. She was the smart one. Several more hours crept by, and every once in a while, a lovely, helpful, charming member of the Dice Tower would swing by to see if we wanted help.

29:55Tom Vasel:We barely acknowledged their presence, choosing to seal ourselves away in our grim determination. If we were playing incorrectly at that point, we didn't even want to know. Closing in on the fourth hour, we finally finished, and in the final round, one Eric Sommerer walked over to the table and said, oh, I know this game pretty well. Would you like me to teach it? He did not know how close he came to jeopardizing his own well-being until this very moment.

30:33Eric Summerer:I'm feeling a bit of inception here.

30:36Tom Vasel:I remember this. I did. I came over and I checked in a couple times before just to, you know, see how things were going, but I was always on my way to something else. and the look in Julie's eyes, there was like a fire, there was like flames from the side of her face and it was this resignation of, yeah, it's too late to help us. It was way too late. Oh my goodness. So this obviously slightly punched up for dramatic purposes.

31:10The poor group who were like, we'd love to play with you And then we got in and they were like, this was not it. This was not what we were hoping for. And when somebody got up from the table, I said, okay, let's do a temperature check, everybody. Does everybody want to get up from the table? Because that's okay. It's okay.

31:30Tom Vasel:That's what you want to do. And they were like, no, we're in this together. So to the lovely people who played Galactic Cruise with me, I do apologize. Because by the end, we're like, okay, we could play this again now. Not right now. But we could play it again and have a good time and know what we're doing. But that first one was brutal. So having somebody who knows the teach well, and this is not – Jason was on another – teaching other games. There was nobody around at that point who had played that game to do the teach. They showed up a little later. so he was doing his best it was not the one he had anticipated teaching he even was like hey do you want to play this other game i know the other game is the other game is puerto rico

32:19Eric Summerer:sure was so wait so so julie you and i we came in and we i remember we played sanibel that was like the opening game yes was it the same people just migrating one of the players one of the players from sanibel came over and then before that there had been several people who were sitting around talking and they were like yeah so when i when we played i jumped over afterwards it was available nobody had jumped on it and they were waiting for me they were ready to play i saw i saw y 'all playing it and i and i was like oh they're starting that's kind of you know like to start that game but okay and then i went over at i don't know an hour in and i just got a look and I was like, oh, I'm bothering.

33:03Eric Summerer:And then I went to bed. Right. But like, Chrissy came by. Just everybody came by to say hello. And then they were like, oh, and there was somebody who did the teach. I saw him do a teach for other people throughout the course of the weekend, who was quite knowledgeable, but he wasn't there at the start. And by the time he came over to offer and then started to tell us, like we were doing things wrong. And I was like, I don't want to hear this right now. know two and a half hours i don't i believe you but also for consistency what are the lessons we can learn from this yeah i so like should you not start a game that heavy that late well i mean

33:45Tom Vasel:when do you start it like say 7 38 yes that seems still reasonable um i think you did a lot of things right though you had looked at a how to play and and got a general sense of things um and and there was somebody at the table that had played before, but just teaching and playing once are very different things. I was optimistic at the start. I think it's hard because this is one of those things where knowing the game is very important and knowing the best way to teach something requires somebody to have known the game. And for Galactic Crew specifically, there's a lot of interlocking systems that you need to know what you need.

34:26Tom Vasel:I would always start with... Here's what I discovered in gameplay that I know for strategy next time. You have interlocking gameplay for building your ships and getting the people on the ships. There is an entirely different set of rules and places to look on your board for actually doing a cruise. And that is also involved. Yeah. You have to pay attention to. and and it is i feel you know having now looked at some uh reviews and everything that that's the the critique is that that there's a disconnect between not necessarily disconnect it's just it catches people up when they play um especially the first time so we were putting off actually sending people on a cruise because we weren't sure what that looked like and we were so good at the building the ship that we and so that made the game drag out longer because right that's what triggers the end game is launching the ships yeah correct so it was we were hoist on our own petard as it were we it we were the the makers of our own dragged out destiny but at the same time that piece of it was, you know, we were so happy that we finally understood the complexities of the first part of the game.

35:49We weren't paying attention to the second part. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:51Tom Vasel:I should note that I think this was the first play of this copy of the game. I set that game up in the Hot Games room. And so I had set it up with some, the player mat was there or the, you know, the deluxe mat, which doesn't easily allow for the basic mode. There's one side of the board, the basic board, that is a beginner's game. And I didn't completely set it up with the beginner's game. I set it up with a couple of interesting things that I thought were cool. I probably shouldn't have done that. As a second time, coming close to jeopardizing your own well-being here, Eric.

36:29Eric Summerer:As a side note, there's one thing I learned from this Dice Tower West thing is when we set up all these hot games, setting up a game and then teaching it to people is fun. Setting up a game and then moving on and setting up another game and then moving on and setting up another game, I think after the second game, it's not fun anymore. To just set up games, especially games that are this heavy. This is a tricky thing at cons because I would see people playing these heavy games. They're like, we're looking for a teacher. I'm like, I'd love to teach it, but to teach it properly, I need to stay there for almost the first hour.

37:01Eric Summerer:That's a long – like for Galactic Cruise, that should be the case, right? Correct. It should be taught. And then you stay put and make sure people are doing it right. But you should also be there for a long time, right? Because when I was learning Galactic Cruise, I had questions not just in the first 20 minutes. I had many questions. There are a lot of games you can teach and say, I think you got it. I can go. But there are many games you can't. Yeah. But let's talk about games. And, Julie, I'd like to jump into yours because I'm very curious your thoughts on the first game on your list here.

37:32Oh, we're doing Roses, Thorns, and Hula Hoops?

37:35Eric Summerer:We're jumping on, I guess. That was the sharpest and rudest of segues.

37:40Tom Vasel:Almost missed my exit. Yeah.

37:48Tom Vasel:They say that every rose has its thorn, but not every rose has a hula hoop. Yes. Okay. So, yes, I have roses. So my first game is a hula hoop and it is an RPG. which is pirate Borg based on the system for Mork Borg. Don't get excited. Eric has nothing to do with Star Trek. Yeah, I was, I was wondering. Yeah. Okay. So for anybody who doesn't know, it's a, it's a paradigm. So it's in the same realm as a Pathfinder or D and D, but simplified, I would say simplified rule sets. So you have a d20 that you're going to roll to do something. And then usually several different dice that are your modifiers.

38:40That type of thing. For this one, it is pirate themed. You are pirates. So all the missions are going to be about doing piratey things. The modifiers they have are strength, agility, presence, toughness, and spirit. So that's it. You only have five different modifiers. It's not a big, huge list of then things that break out and do different things. You're going to do something with one of those five things as your modifiers when you play. And they had, you roll to attack and you roll to defend. That's a little bit different as opposed to just having an AC for a set defense. one a couple other things that they had there was a there's like a luck aspect where you get luck points that you can gain and then spend to re-roll your dice and but the part of it i enjoyed the reason it was a hula hoop for me was the ridiculousness of the of the characters and the way they said it so we had in our group which you rolled to randomly develop your character we had a parrot that had an eye patch because he had one eye the parrot

40:04Tom Vasel:was the main character? no this is one of the everybody playing different characters so we had a parrot we had a vampire who was doing real badly because during sunlight they act like they're hung over I myself was a ghost and in the beginning I was inhabiting a buccaneer named Three-Tooth Teresa and I decided instead to defect and jump into the body of a naval officer. So I was an admiral and that so that was like there was it was there was the storytelling was not necessarily about the fighting or the adventure it was it was literally about the ridiculousness of the characters and and what they were doing so we had a good time um we ruined the entire story of the gm because i jumped into the admiral's body and then the fight that was supposed to happen between the pirates and the naval the navy didn't happen because i just told them to stand down.

41:20And so he had to pivot and throw zombies at us. And it was fun. Like we giggled and laughed and it was a very silly and very fun time. I had never played it before. And it was a hula hoop for me because I enjoyed it. But also because of the sheer ridiculousness of how they've set up character creation. And therefore the narratives are also equally as ridiculous. It's very Pirates of the Caribbean.

41:45Tom Vasel:Do you think the pirate theme really helps with the the ridiculousness like that opens itself up to more silly pirate tropes and more than other genres i think i think that might be it i don't typically like pirate games but i think most pirate games are trying to take themselves very seriously and i just i like that it's a

42:07Eric Summerer:this is one of my favorite rpgs i've ever played oh yeah yeah i'm playing it right now with the career here at Dice Tower and it is it's full of random charts for everything. Yes. Which I guess would bother people but it's just so zonky and without being cartoonish you're still like doing pirate stuff. It's cool but I highly recommend it. The balance is delightful. It's one of the easiest RPGs to get into. You're just kind of you can wing it for most of it. They know that. It's I wouldn't compare it as Eric to Pathfinder at all because this has way less rules. Oh interesting. Yeah. neat it's it's mostly about the storytelling and yes the storytelling is pirate stuff it's you're on an adventure okay and uh that was yes where where sometimes you're a ghost inside a person so you have to play two people simultaneously and then two different people simultaneously it's fine okay it was a good time i highly recommend it uh my rose was Fin Span.

43:11I, so I mean, if you like Wingspan and you like Wormspan, it's, it's the simplified streamlined version. And I very much enjoyed it for anybody who hasn't played at this point. It's you, you can assign your three divers, uh, six divers, uh, to the three different columns, or buy cards. So your two actions are either putting out fish, so buying the fish to put, you know, card to push out or activating one of your columns. That's it. Those are the two choices, not a menu of different choices of things you can do. So feeding them, getting food, that's not part of it. Putting out a card is either going to cost you other cards, your eggs or baby fish that are out on the board already or eating another fish which means it has to be a carnivore it'll have a little symbol on it and you have it has to be bigger than the previous fish so instead of tucking cards the little fish gets eaten by the bigger fish gets eaten by the bigger fish gets eaten by the bigger fish and that's how that's working out um to get you know points for tucked cards uh like you do at wingspan so that or you're going down one of the columns this was the hardest part for me because you're going from top to bottom instead of from left to right and that caught me up a little bit sometimes but it makes sense because you're going from the surface down to you know the depths where there isn't any sunlight and from left to right is also important in placement because you have the fish that are closest to the shore and like the reefs and things out to deep water sea fishing from left to right in the comp so you have two different ways of looking where to place them which was kind of neat and thematic and i appreciated that uh but i did love how streamlined it was how quickly we could play the game and still feel all the puzzle pieces of getting them into the right place wanting to do it and then activating and having the most optimal turn where you got to activate things on your cards that let you you know add more add more eggs and then turn those eggs into babies and those babies grouped up into a school of fish and school got you more points at the end of the game that kind of a thing it was fun but much lighter and so it meant more quickly which meant from learning to play it to teaching it was only one game.

45:47And then I've played it a ton ever since.

45:49Tom Vasel:Nice. So that was Finsman. Cool.

45:52Eric Summerer:What about you, Eric?

45:53Tom Vasel:All right. So I have a new game from Space Cowboys. It's called First Giants. In this game, you are running a museum. And you are trying to collect various, I guess, fossils that are going to go in your museum and try and outscore your opponents. There are four galleries in the center of the board that will have two cards each. And on your turn, you can either take one of your four markers and put them on one of these four galleries and claim one of those two cards in each of those. But you can only do that once in each of the galleries before you retrieve your markers. So as you are placing them out, your options become more limited, and the opponents also know that.

46:35Tom Vasel:They might know you can't go for this card because you have already placed in that gallery and claimed a card from that corner of the board. So I just put out a marker and claim the card. Many of these cards will have sort of abilities. Some are instants, some are as you do more things. They can trigger each other. When you acquire them, they get placed in the upper portion of your play area. They're in your study zone. You are studying these fossils. And as long as they're still in your study zone, they can trigger each other and cause these effects and do stuff. That will earn you some points.

47:07Tom Vasel:It'll earn you some amber, which is the currency of the game. It will allow you to trigger other abilities and stuff like that. And these have, the cards are numbered 1, 2, and 3, and they come in five different suits, types of fossils. You also have this mechanism where you can retrieve your markers. And when you do that, you can either get more amber or spend that amber to bank, put on display. That's what it is. Display these fossils. That's taking stuff from the upper portion of your board, the study zone, and putting them into the lower portion of your board in clusters. Either the same size, so you're trying to get all five colors of the two size, or the three sizes of a particular type.

47:49Tom Vasel:All the reds. I want the one, two, and three. The first thing you put on display is just sitting there on its own. No biggie. But as soon as you add a second one, you've defined what type of exhibit it is. If I add another red to the set, it's now a red exhibit. If I add another two to the exhibit, it's now a twos exhibit. That will start earning me little stanchion points. I get to expand. Every time I expand my display, I put a little marker there to say, hey, I'm making my exhibit bigger. Also, if I'm the first one to expand a particular type of exhibit, I'm claiming some sort of bonus, like a promotional bonus.

48:24Tom Vasel:And every time I make it bigger, I make it harder for people to steal that. But if somebody makes a bigger exhibit than I do, they can steal it from me. And once I complete an exhibit, it flips over those stanchion tiles to be worth even more points. That's essentially the game. You keep churning along until you run out of those stanchion tiles. There's a certain number based on the number of players. I like the decision of when to bank these cards. Some things are instance, and so I know I can just get rid of those and put them on my display as soon as possible. But other things continue to trigger, and I want to keep using them as much as possible.

49:03Tom Vasel:But I will also need to bank them, put them on display if I'm going to score points for them by the end of the game. And that's a cool decision. Also, when to retrieve your tokens. I see a card I want, but I've already placed, so I need to get my stuff back before I can claim that card. and other people are seeing that and they see me claim my stuff and now they're going to start trying to take those cards I want. It's a cool interactive drafting element that pushed all the right buttons for me. It's a little like Splendor but with some extra decisions about what you're doing to score these cards.

49:38Tom Vasel:First Giants was a rose for me. A hula hoop moment came to me at some point in West or in any convention. It gets to be like Sunday afternoon. I've only got so much time before it's time to start cleaning everything up. And I'm in the library looking for something. Why are the games always gone? Yeah. And I found something that I had played online but never in person before. This is a game called Art Deco. This came out in like 2020, 2021, something like that from Rio Grande. It is a deck building game. But with some interesting twists. You are a different type of museum. You're collecting art pieces.

50:18Tom Vasel:Your starting deck has mostly money, but a couple of art pieces in there. The art comes in different flavors, different styles of art. And so you're going to be collecting cards that are worth, there are coin cards that are worth straight up money. But there are also these paintings that can be used as currency. And as the value of that particular type of painting goes up, suddenly those paintings are now worth more as currency. So if I've got an art deco piece that's worth, it's like a level three painting, it's mid-game or something, it's now worth three coins in my hand. And suddenly it's worth more than the coin cards that I've been holding onto for the beginning of the game.

51:00Tom Vasel:Those coin cards also have instant super deluxe effects that cause you to burn them from your deck, but they do something really strong. So you have these cool decisions of what to do with my deck, when to get rid of these pieces of currency. I am claiming more pieces of art from various galleries. And as the game goes on, the price of those paintings is going to go up. So that's a cool little mechanism. I'm also trying to display these things in galleries, in museums, which takes those things out of my hand, puts them out on the board. I score points for them, but they cost money to display. It's going to earn me points, get me possible bonuses, fill up those galleries, which trigger some endgame scoring opportunities.

51:42Tom Vasel:But that thing is no longer in my hand, and I've just increased the value of that painting. So if I've managed to get more of that type of painting in my hand, now I'm going to reap the benefits of that for final scoring, more currency. But if I just got rid of my last yellow painting, that's not going to help me as much for the stuff that's in my deck. Those are some cool decisions. It is a Rio Grande release, so the art design is okay. It's functional. It's not the prettiest game in the world. I almost wish that they had. They do have different artists for each of the styles of painting, similar to Canizia's modern art.

52:21Tom Vasel:It has that same design aesthetic where they've got people to emulate these styles of art. But I wish that each of the cards had its own art piece or there was more variety of art in the deck. I understand that's money. But it was a fun game and some cool decisions for a deck building game. If that's a genre you enjoy, I recommend trying out Art Deco because it's got some cool twists and decisions to make. That was my hula hoop.

52:50Eric Summerer:Okay, let's talk about a slight pink rose. A pink rose. A blush.

52:55Tom Vasel:Okay, I like it.

52:59Eric Summerer:speaking of that i don't know if you guys when i was in college there was apparently a whole code to roses you bought for people oh yeah you know like they're like if you buy a yellow rose it means you're this red rose means love and i'm like well but i thought red roses just look nice i don't necessarily love and it was confusing uh i'm glad those days are over right well victorian times there was the we've we've decreased the language of of flowers over over this past two centuries They used to have lots of meanings. Right. Well, that's the whole... You couldn't just buy a bunch of... Yeah, that's Tussie Mussie, right?

53:32Yeah, that is.

53:34Eric Summerer:Well, anyhow, this is a slight rose up. And I mean, I like it. It's called The Winds of Numa Serra. That's N-U-M-A space S-E-R-A. This is a game from Dark Rose Studios. Huh. I didn't realize Rose was in their title. So this is a game that looks very old school and even feels a little old school, but also new. you have this faction with a big erasable board on it, and you're going to have three leaders, and you put them on your board in order of succession. So one of them is your current leader. If they die, you have the next leader. If they die, you have the next leader. If all three die, you're eliminated from the game.

54:12But A, I think if that happens,

54:15Eric Summerer:the game is minutes from over, and B, you have to really have people hate you for you to have all three die. And the game progresses through a series of you get a bunch of money over the course of the game. You're buying equipment. And then you fight to capture strongholds. You're also trying to improve and buy better armor and equipment for your characters and upgrade skills with this money that you have. And then you draw from this deck of random cards that are sometimes good, sometimes bad. And then you're fighting each other and or taking strongholds. You can fight unarmed strongholds, but after a while, strongholds run out, so then I need to steal some of yours.

54:56Eric Summerer:The game has four victory conditions, and when anyone reaches two of them, they win. So if I have – there are different – like there's these skills, and if you get to level three and two skills, which is very expensive, but if you do it, that's a victory condition. If you kill two of your opponent's heroes, that's a victory condition. If you control four strongholds at the same time, that's a victory condition. And then if you basically level up into these, there's these like different classes that you can level up into if you meet different requirements, you get one. So near the end of the game, everyone is like, we're all really close to getting the second one.

55:33Eric Summerer:And you're fighting back and forth. You fight because you have a certain – every leader gives you an attack and defense, but skills and weapons give you more. When you fight each other, you roll a die that ranges from a plus three to a minus three, which can be very swingy. but you can buy equipment like I had a backpack that said if you roll a minus three roll again and if I upgraded that skill it could be if you roll minus two or minus three roll again so now it was very Ameritrash attacking each other going back and forth but uh at the end of the day I found it to be very enjoyable it's it's it's weird because it feels like a product of of an older time and it looks so complicated because the table's covered with tarot-sized cards.

56:19Eric Summerer:Everything is just huge cards. And people come by and be like, oh, and they back away. But it's not that complicated. You kind of know what you have. And the game does things that are fun, like every turn you draw a card from this random event card. Some are good, some are bad. But you can upgrade a skill that says you draw two and pick one to keep. Well, that helps a lot if you draw a bad one. and so I enjoyed that aspect of this game a lot about two hours and a lot of fun cool

56:50Tom Vasel:winds of Numa Sarah I'm trying to figure out where I've heard Numa Sarah before and then I realized it's I think you might be I'm thinking of Fruma Sarah from Fiddler on the Roof and it's a totally different thing

57:01Eric Summerer:wow I never can tell where Eric's mind is going I thought you were going to say Numenera which is a gaming thing

57:07Tom Vasel:yeah that's something else

57:07Eric Summerer:but no Fiddler on the Roof my fault All right, and then the next game is Catan on the Go. Catan on the Go is a card game in the Catan universe, but as opposed to every other card game that has come out from Catan, this is literally Catan the card game. And I say that because there is Catan the card game, which is a fine two-player game, but it's not Catan as a card game. It's a very, very different game. Sure.

57:39Tom Vasel:There was also another card game that was Catan the card game.

57:41Eric Summerer:Right. There's a lot of different games out there, but they're always just spinoffs. Catan on the road. Sorry, I keep saying on the go. It's Catan on the road. Catan on the road is literally Catan as a card game. The way this works is there's a whole deck of resource cards and you just shuffle them, all the five resources together. You also have a line of buildings in the middle of the table, settlements, roads, nights, and cities. Everyone starts with one road and one settlement. On your turn, when it's your turn, everybody at the table draws a resource card. Everybody. Then you may trade with one person.

58:21Eric Summerer:If anyone trades with you, whatever the trade is, they get to draw another card. They get a card for trading with you, and you get whatever the trade is. Okay. Then you may build one of the face-up cards in this row. As soon as you build a card, it's replaced. A settlement is worth one point. So if you build a settlement, which costs the same as it does in the Catan, a brick, a wood, a sheep, and an ore. No, not an ore. A wheat. Sorry, a wheat. Then you now have another victory point. But whenever you build a settlement, you also draw an event card from a little event stack. And three of those event cards are robbers, which said if you have over seven cards, you discard half of them.

58:57Eric Summerer:If you build knights, you are protected from the robber a little bit more. Each knight increases the number of cards that you can have when that robber shows up. And as soon as someone gets two knights, they take the largest army card, which is worth two points. And if I want to take that from Eric, I would have to get three knights, more knights than him. Then there's roads. Each road that you get, if you get three or more roads, you get the longest road, and people can take those back and forth from each other. But each road, if you have one road, you can trade with the bank four resources for one.

59:29Eric Summerer:But if I have two roads, it's three to one, three roads, two to one. And if I have four roads, it's a one to one trade. And cities, which upgrade a settlement from one point to two point, says that on my turn, instead of when everyone draws a card, I draw an extra card for each city I have. And in fact, you can upgrade a city to a metropolis, which will give you two extra cards on your turn. And that's worth three points. Here's the thing. And I'm not kidding here. I give this game a nine out of ten. Whoa. So this takes Catan and boils it down to 15 minutes. That's what it says in the box. It says 15 minutes, and it is 100 % accurate.

1:00:07Eric Summerer:I played this with my family, and my wife said, I'm never playing Catan again because she also gets annoyed when no one trades with her, right? Yeah. Which happens a lot in our family because she's a mean, nasty woman in gaming. I love my wife, but anyway. So we don't trade with her because she always wins. But she liked it and said it was just – to me, it took away from all the – I get – I'm not saying it takes away from Catan plus seafarers plus cities and nights, things that take Catan in bigger directions. But base Catan can take an hour, an hour and 30 minutes sometimes, and it's a slow buildup.

1:00:46Eric Summerer:But this one, you get the cards. They're random cards. But you know what? Catan's super random. I can put my settlement on an eight that's on brick, and then for the entire game, Julie rules five, sixes, and sevens. It's so fast. It's so simple. It's so easy. I played it with my family. I played it with gamers. It has been a hit across the board to the point where I'm actually going to buy an extra copy of this. I'm putting a copy in the Dice Library. I'm buying an extra copy for my house just so we have this filler game to play in between. I'm very impressed with this. Huh. Nice. it made me very happy it's designed by Benjamin Teuber based on his father's game Catan and it just makes me, I'm just very pleased there's a lot of Catan products which are kind of like eh, this is not one of them the only negative thing about this one, and I hate it with all my heart is it has one of those tuck boxes where you have to cut the cards in half and slide them in no!

1:01:43yeah I know

1:01:44Eric Summerer:they're so awful, those boxes but other than that it's it's fantastic so that's katan on the road i'm going to have to get it and then also find somebody to upgrade the box situation and i'm going to yeah it's happening well i just put my stuff in those photo boxes you normally so yep that makes it a lot easier to to

1:02:09Tom Vasel:pull stuff out and play yeah i have a bunch of those photo box carriers and i've filled them all up so I have to start swapping stuff out and the really garbage card games need to go away but I've thrown away the box for those garbage card games so then what do I do just put them in a baggie

1:02:23Eric Summerer:yeah we put them in a bag and someone will buy it because people can't help themselves fair enough alrighty folks well that is it for another episode we'll see you in a couple weeks don't forget to come and see us at a convention but you know what for now let's enjoy the month of no conventions I'm sure don't email me with the conventions that happen in April I'm sure they're out there and they're fantastic. But for me, it's the month of no conventions. So I get some breathing room. Until next time, I'm Tom Vassell. I'm Julie Ahern.

1:02:54Tom Vasel:And I'm Eric Sommerer.

1:02:56Eric Summerer:And we'll see you at the table.

1:02:58Tom 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 top-class local area networks are brought to you by Sweetlands. Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:03:28Woo!

1:03:30Tom Vasel:Flames coming out of Julie's face. Just the fire. Breathing. The heaving. Look. Flames.

1:03:38Eric Summerer:Man, I wish she had punched you. It would have been a much better story. But it would have probably also been the end of the podcast.

1:03:46Tom Vasel:I just get decked. What did I do? What did I say? Why?